The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people in Computer Science,
#3501
Stanley C. Solomon
#99003
Overall Influence
#3502
Joel Dudley
#91718
Overall Influence
Joel Dudley is currently Associate Professor of Genetics and Genomic Sciences and founding Director of the Institute for Next Generation Healthcare at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. In March, 2018 Dr. Dudley was named Executive Vice President for Precision Health for the Mount Sinai Health System . In 2017 he was awarded an Endowed Professorship by Mount Sinai in Biomedical Data Science. Prior to Mount Sinai, he held positions as Co-founder and Director of Informatics at NuMedii, Inc. and Consulting Professor of Systems Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics at Stanford University School of Medicine.
Go to Profile#3503
Mark Jenkinson
#99019
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
#3504
Susan B. Davidson
#67380
Overall Influence
Susan B. Davidson CorrFRSE is an American computer scientist known for work in databases and bioinformatics. She is Weiss Professor of Computer and Information Science at University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation work on distributed databases included results on statistical and mathematical techniques for data resolution as well as mechanisms to avoid database conflicts.
Go to Profile#3505
P. Venkat Rangan
#88676
Overall Influence
Prof. P. Venkat Rangan is an Indian computer scientist. He is the current vice chancellor of Amrita University. A pioneer of research in Multimedia Systems, he was the founder and director of the Multimedia Laboratory at the University of California, San Diego, where he served as a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering. By the age of 33 he was one of the youngest full professors at University of California, San Diego. Dr. Rangan also founded Yodlee Inc. and served as its CEO, for which in 2000, he was selected as one of the 25 best entrepreneurs by the President of the United St...
Go to Profile#3506
Tamal Dey
#60154
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Tamal Krishna Dey is an Indian mathematician and computer scientist specializing in computational geometry and computational topology. He is a professor at Purdue University. Education and career Dey graduated from Jadavpur University in 1985, with a bachelor's degree in electronics. He earned a master's degree from the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore in 1987, and completed his Ph.D. at Purdue University in 1991. His dissertation, Decompositions of Polyhedra in Three Dimensions, was supervised by Chandrajit Bajaj.
Go to Profile#3507
Kaisa Sere
#82891
Overall Influence
1954 - 2012 (58 years)
Kaisa Sere was a Finnish computer scientist, specialising in research into formal methods. Kaisa Sere was born 3 June 1954 in Gamlakarleby. She received an MSc in mathematics in 1979 and a PhD in computer science in 1990, both from Åbo Akademi University in Turku, southern Finland. She undertook formal methods research in action systems, distributed systems, hardware design, neural networks, and program refinement. She undertook joint research with Ralph-Johan Back and was involved in many collaborative European research projects. She also supervised 19 PhD students.
Go to Profile#3508
Ian Gent
#39879
Overall Influence
Ian Gent is a British computer scientist working in the area of artificial intelligence and specialising in the area of constraint programming. He is a professor at the University of St Andrews. He first wrote about the phase transition in many NP complete problems, in particular SAT. He was also one of the first researchers to investigate full generic methods to handle symmetry in constraint programming.
Go to Profile#3509
Susan Hockey
#60208
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Susan Hockey is an Emeritus Professor of Library and Information Studies at University College London. She has written about the history of digital humanities, the development of text analysis applications, electronic textual mark-up, teaching computing in the humanities, and the role of libraries in managing digital resources. In 2014, University College London created a Digital Humanities lecture series in her honour.
Go to Profile#3510
Davood Toghraie
#99106
Overall Influence
#3511
Philip Hodge
#99124
Overall Influence
#3512
Austin Henderson
#80682
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
D. Austin Henderson is a Canadian computer scientist who pioneered work in email, virtual desktops, computer-supported collaboration, and human computer interaction. He chaired one of the first SIGCHI CHI conferences in 1985.
Go to Profile#3513
Ramakant Nevatia
#99179
Overall Influence
#3514
Christel Baier
#80208
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Christel Baier is a German theoretical computer scientist known for her work in model checking, temporal logic, and automata theory. She is a professor at TU Dresden, where she holds the chair for Algebraic and Logic Foundations of Computer Science in the Faculty of Computer Science. Baier is the editor-in-chief of Acta Informatica.
Go to Profile#3515
Wang Dingsheng
#95910
Overall Influence
Dingsheng Wang is a Chinese researcher, physicist, nanocatalyst, and professor at the Tsinghua University. He is a fellow of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research publication on design concept for electrocatalysts won the 2022 Nano Research Top Papers Award.
Go to Profile#3516
Oliver Bimber
#86783
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Oliver Bimber is a German computer scientist. He is professor for computer graphics at the Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria where he heads the Institute of Computer Graphics. Curriculum Vitae At the age of 36, Oliver Bimber was appointed to a full university professor and became head of the Institute of Computer Graphics at Johannes Kepler University Linz. From 2003-2010 he served as a Junior Professor of Augmented Reality at the Media System Science Department of Bauhaus University, Weimar. He received a Ph.D. in Engineering from Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany, and a Habilitation degree in Computer Science at Munich University of Technology.
Go to Profile#3517
Michael W. Allen
#35760
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Michael W. Allen is an American software developer, educator, and author. He is known for his work on e-learning, and led the development of the Authorware software. Biography Allen received a BA in psychology from Cornell College, and MA and Ph.D. from the Ohio State University in educational psychology. From 1971 to 1984 Allen worked for Control Data Corporation on its PLATO computer-based education system . He rose to be director of advanced educational systems R&D. Allen founded Authorware in 1984, incorporating it in 1985. Authorware merged with MacroMind-Paracomp in 1992 to form Macrom...
Go to Profile#3518
Kunio Doi
#99303
Overall Influence
#3519
Frank Ruskey
#39261
Overall Influence
Frank Ruskey is a combinatorialist and computer scientist, and professor at the University of Victoria. His research involves algorithms for exhaustively listing discrete structures, combinatorial Gray codes, Venn and Euler diagrams, combinatorics on words, and enumerative combinatorics. Frank Ruskey is the author of the Combinatorial Object Server , a website for information on and generation of combinatorial objects.
Go to Profile#3520
Nicolai Petkov
#85053
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Nicolai Petkov is Dutch computer scientist, and professor of Intelligent Systems and Computer Science at the University of Groningen, known for his contributions in the fields of brain-inspired computing, pattern recognition, machine learning, and parallel computing.
Go to Profile#3521
Mike Belshe
#79096
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Mike Belshe is an American computer scientist and entrepreneur. He's a co-founder and CEO of BitGo, Inc. and a cofounder of Lookout Software in 2004. He is the co-inventor of the SPDY protocol and one of the principal authors of the HTTP/2.0 specification.
Go to Profile#3522
Nicolas Demartines
#99359
Overall Influence
#3523
Mandy Chessell
#38866
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Amanda Elizabeth Chessell is a computer scientist and a Distinguished Engineer at IBM. She has been awarded the title of IBM Master Inventor. She is also a Member of the IBM Academy of Technology. Outside IBM, Chessell is the first woman to be awarded the Silver Medal of the Royal Academy of Engineering. In 2002 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
Go to Profile#3524
Choon Ki Ahn
#99375
Overall Influence
#3525
Kim Guldstrand Larsen
#99387
Overall Influence
#3526
Helen Frankenthaler
#3385
Overall Influence
1928 - 2011 (83 years)
Helen Frankenthaler was an American abstract expressionist painter. She was a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work for over six decades , she spanned several generations of abstract painters while continuing to produce vital and ever-changing new work. Frankenthaler began exhibiting her large-scale abstract expressionist paintings in contemporary museums and galleries in the early 1950s. She was included in the 1964 Post-Painterly Abstraction exhibition curated by Clement Greenberg that introduced a newer generation of abstract painting that came to be known as color field.
Go to Profile#3527
Richard M Sharpe
#99487
Overall Influence
#3528
Mikołaj Bojańczyk
#30067
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Mikołaj Bojańczyk is a Polish theoretical computer scientist and logician known for settling open problems on tree walking automata jointly with Thomas Colcombet, and for contributions to logic in automata theory. He is a professor at Warsaw University.
Go to Profile#3529
Carl Landwehr
#63727
Overall Influence
Carl E. Landwehr is an American computer scientist whose research focus is cybersecurity and trustworthy computing. His work has addressed the identification of software vulnerabilities toward high assurance software development, architectures for intrusion-tolerant and multilevel security systems, token-based authentication, and system evaluation and certification methods. In an invited essay for ACSAC 2013, he proposed the idea of developing building codes for building software that is used in critical infrastructures. He has organized an NSF funded workshop to develop a building code and research agenda for medical device software security.
Go to Profile#3530
Wilhelmina Holladay
#44946
Overall Influence
1922 - 2021 (99 years)
Wilhelmina Cole Holladay was an American art collector and patron. She was the co-founder of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2006. Early life Holladay, known as "Billie", was born in Elmira, New York, on October 10, 1922. Her father, Chauncey Cole, worked as a businessman; her mother, Claire Elisabeth née Strong, was a housewife. She was close to her maternal grandmother, whom she credits with inculcating a perception of beauty. Holladay graduated with a degree in art history from Elmira College in 1944. She went on to study art history...
Go to Profile#3531
Tsuhan Chen
#81264
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Prof Chen Tsuhan is the Deputy President at National University of Singapore. He is currently the Chief Scientist of AI Singapore. Prior to his current appoint he was the Dean of the College of Engineering at Nanyang Technological University from 2015 to 2017. He was previously Director of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University from 2009 to 2013.
Go to Profile#3532
Olga Troyanskaya
#58423
Overall Influence
Olga G. Troyanskaya is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University and the Deputy Director for Genomics at the Flatiron Institute's Center for Computational Biology in NYC. She studies protein function and interactions in biological pathways by analyzing genomic data using computational tools.
Go to Profile#3533
Rose Dieng-Kuntz
#65549
Overall Influence
1956 - 2008 (52 years)
Rose Dieng-Kuntz was a Senegalese computer scientist specializing in artificial intelligence. She was the first African woman to enroll in the École polytechnique. Life and career Her area of specialization for her PhD was the specification of parallelism. She worked for the National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control in France, a French national research institution focusing on computer science, control theory and applied mathematics, where her research specialization was on the sharing of knowledge over the World Wide Web.
Go to Profile#3534
Joanna McGrenere
#62459
Overall Influence
Joanna McGrenere is a Canadian computer scientist specializing in human–computer interaction, adaptive user interfaces, and universal usability. She is a professor of computer science at the University of British Columbia.
Go to Profile#3535
Robert L. Brent
#99697
Overall Influence
#3536
Yoav Freund
#99740
Overall Influence
#3537
Gwo‐jen Hwang
#99754
Overall Influence
#3538
Hasan M. Elahi
#64241
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Hasan M. Elahi is a Bangladeshi-born American interdisciplinary media artist whose work has an emphasis on technology and media and their social implications. His research interests include issues of surveillance, sousveillance, simulated time, transport systems, and borders and frontiers.
Go to Profile#3539
Nazrul Islam
#99783
Overall Influence
#3540
Tie-Yan Liu
#79148
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Tie-Yan Liu is a Chinese computer scientist. After completing his degree from the department of electronic engineering at Tsinghua University, Liu began working at the Microsoft in 2003, and was appointed the assistant managing director of Microsoft Research Asia in 2015. Liu joined Microsoft Research AI4Science as a distinguished Scientist in 2022. Liu was elected an IEEE fellow in 2017, and granted an equivalent honor by the Association for Computing Machinery in 2021.
Go to Profile#3541
Bernard Mayes
#21514
Overall Influence
1929 - 2014 (85 years)
Anthony Bernard Duncan Mayes was a British broadcaster, university dean and author who founded one of America's first suicide prevention hotline. Biography Born in London, Mayes was educated at University College School. After studying classical civilizations at Downing College, Cambridge, he worked first as a school teacher of Latin, Greek and history. He was then ordained as an Anglican priest. Mayes emigrated to the United States in 1958 and became an Episcopal worker-priest and director of a student house attached to Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village and New York University. He then moved to the Diocese of California where he held a parish near San Francisco.
Go to Profile#3542
Ajay M. Shah
#99795
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#3543
James L. Kennedy
#99831
Overall Influence
#3544
Martin Farach-Colton
#93938
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Martin Farach-Colton is an American computer scientist, known for his work in streaming algorithms, suffix tree construction, pattern matching in compressed data, cache-oblivious algorithms, and lowest common ancestor data structures. He is a Distinguished Professor of computer science at Rutgers University, and a co-founder of storage technology startup company Tokutek.
Go to Profile#3545
Kenneth Noland
#5127
Overall Influence
1924 - 2010 (86 years)
Kenneth Noland was an American painter. He was one of the best-known American color field painters, although in the 1950s he was thought of as an abstract expressionist and in the early 1960s he was thought of as a minimalist painter. Noland helped establish the Washington Color School movement. In 1977, he was honored with a major retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York that then traveled to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and Ohio's Toledo Museum of Art in 1978. In 2006, Noland's Stripe Paintings were exhibited at the Tate in London.
Go to Profile#3546
Yang Chen
#99931
Overall Influence
#3548
Arndt von Haeseler
#66544
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Arndt von Haeseler is a German bioinformatician and evolutionary biologist. He is the scientific director of the Max F. Perutz Laboratories at the Vienna Biocenter and a professor of bioinformatics at the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna.
Go to Profile#3549
Tommi S. Jaakkola
#100020
Overall Influence
#3550
Fotios Zaharoglou
#71060
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Fotios Zaharoglou is a Greek computer scientist. He received his Diploma in Electrical Engineering from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 1986, his MS in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 1987, and his PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, San Diego in 1993. His work on the applications of topology to the theory of distributed computing along with Maurice Herlihy, Michael Saks and Nir Shavit, was awarded the 2004 Gödel Prize.
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