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,
#3601
Buxing Han
#101116
Overall Influence
#3602
Howard Gobioff
#57320
Overall Influence
1971 - 2008 (37 years)
Howard Gobioff was a computer scientist. He graduated magna cum laude with a double major in computer science and mathematics from the University of Maryland, College Park. At Carnegie Mellon University, he worked on the network attached secure disks project, before he went on to earn his PhD in computer science. He died suddenly from lymphoma at the age of 36.
Go to Profile#3603
Hiroyasu Iso
#101257
Overall Influence
#3604
Jayme Luiz Szwarcfiter
#73814
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Jayme Luiz Szwarcfiter is a computer scientist in Brazil. Biography Szwarcfiter graduated in 1967 in electronic engineering from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro . He received his MA in 1971 from COPPE. In 1975 he obtained his PhD in computer science from the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, England, under supervision of Leslie Blackett Wilson. He is currently a professor emeritus at UFRJ. The Journal of the Brazilian Computer Society dedicated a special edition in 2001 to Szwarcfiter's major publications. Among others, he has written joint articles with Donald E. Knuth and Christos...
Go to Profile#3605
Peter G. Harrison
#61422
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Peter George Harrison is an Emeritus Professor of Computing Science at Imperial College London known for the reversed compound agent theorem, which gives conditions for a stochastic network to have a product-form solution.
Go to Profile#3606
Ivona Brandić
#85906
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Ivona Brandić is a Bosnian–Austrian computer scientist known for her research on cloud computing. She is University Professor for High Performance Computing Systems in the Institute of Information Systems Engineering of TU Wien.
Go to Profile#3607
Nobutaka Hattori
#101302
Overall Influence
#3608
Lora Aroyo
#74075
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Lora Aroyo is a Dutch computer scientist at Google Research, and formerly a professor at The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands. She is best known for her work in user modeling, digital humanities, and for the CrowdTruth crowdsourcing method. She was the founding head of the user-centric data science research group in the VU Computer Science department, president of the User Modeling Society, a former vice-president of Semantic Technology Institute, Chief Scientist at Tagasauris, and a member of over 100 scientific program committees and editorial boards. She was one of the few female...
Go to Profile#3609
Nasser M. Nasrabadi
#101333
Overall Influence
#3610
Prasant Mohapatra
#55590
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Prasant Mohapatra is an Indian-American computer scientist. Mohapatra is currently the Provost of the University of South Florida. Previously, he was Vice Chancellor for Research at University of California Davis .
Go to Profile#3611
Fan Ren
#101377
Overall Influence
#3612
Robert Samuel Weiss
#101379
Overall Influence
#3613
Zhiming Liu
#93181
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Zhiming Liu is a computer scientist. He studied mathematics in Luoyang, Henan in China and obtained his first degree in 1982. He holds a master's degree in Computer Science from the Institute of Software of the Chinese Academy of Sciences , and a PhD degree from the University of Warwick . His PhD thesis was on Fault-Tolerant Programming by Transformations.
Go to Profile#3614
Alexander Anoprienko
#51856
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Alexander Anoprienko is a Professor of the Computer Engineering Department of the Donetsk National Technical University . He also holds the position of the Director of the DonNTU Competence Center as well as the Director of the DonNTU UNITECH Technological Park. Since October 2014 he has held the position of the provisional Rector of DonNTU.
Go to Profile#3615
Dhruv Grewal
#101489
Overall Influence
#3616
Richard Cleve
#78033
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Richard Erwin Cleve is a Canadian professor of computer science at the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo, where he holds the Institute for Quantum Computing Chair in quantum computing, and an associate member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.
Go to Profile#3617
Yoshihiko Nakamura
#101507
Overall Influence
#3618
Jan Eugeniusz Krysiński
#29632
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Jan Eugeniusz Krysiński is a Polish scientist, specializing in fluid mechanics and turbomachinery research, and former rector of Lodz University of Technology. Krysiński is a graduate of General Secondary School number three under the patronage of Tadeusz Kosciuszko in Lodz. In 1957 he completed his studies at the Technical University of Lodz, where he then started his scientific work. Since that time, he has remained employed at the university. He defended his PhD dissertation in 1965 and habilitation in 1975. In 1980 he was awarded the title of a professor in technical sciences. Since 1991 he has held the position of a full professor.
Go to Profile#3619
Jacquelyn Ford Morie
#83290
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Jacquelyn Ford Morie is an artist, scientist and educator working in the areas of immersive worlds, games and social networks. Until 2013 she was a senior research scientist at the Institute for Creative Technologies. In 2013 she started a spin-off company called All These Worlds, to take her work in virtual worlds and avatars to a broader audience.
Go to Profile#3620
Stephanie Wehner
#70423
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Stephanie Dorothea Christine Wehner is a German physicist and computer scientist. She is the Roadmap Leader of the Quantum Internet and Networked Computing initiative at QuTech, Delft University of Technology. She is also known for introducing the noisy-storage model in quantum cryptography. Wehner's research focuses mainly on quantum cryptography and quantum communications.
Go to Profile#3621
Adam Tauman Kalai
#64684
Overall Influence
Adam Tauman Kalai is an American computer scientist who specializes in Machine Learning and works as a Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research New England. Education and career Kalai graduated from Harvard University in 1996 and received a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University in 2001, where he worked under doctoral advisor Avrim Blum. He did his postdoctoral study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before becoming a faculty member at the Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago and then the Georgia Institute of Technology. He joined Microsoft Research in 2008.
Go to Profile#3622
Johan Pelck Olsen
#101565
Overall Influence
#3623
Sylvia Wilbur
#70153
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Sylvia B. Wilbur was a British computer scientist who helped develop the ARPANET, was one of the first to exchange email in Britain, and became a leading researcher on computer-supported cooperative work.
Go to Profile#3624
Khurram Nasir
#101648
Overall Influence
#3625
M. F. Husain
#5406
Overall Influence
1915 - 2011 (96 years)
Maqbool Fida Husain was an Indian artist known for executing bold, vibrantly coloured narrative paintings in a modified Cubist style. He was one of the most celebrated and internationally recognised Indian artists of the 20th century. He was one of the founding members of Bombay Progressive Artists' Group. M.F. Husain is associated with Indian modernism in the 1940s. His early association with the Bombay Progressive Artists' Group used modern technique, and was inspired by the "new" India after the partition of 1947. His narrative paintings, executed in a modified Cubist style, can be caustic and funny as well as serious and sombre.
Go to Profile#3626
Nathan Nelson
#101658
Overall Influence
#3627
Minh Do
#79652
Overall Influence
Minh N. Do is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in Urbana, Illinois. He also holds positions at the Coordinated Science Laboratory, the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, the Advanced Digital Sciences Center, and the Department of Bioengineering.
Go to Profile#3628
Philip A. Meyers
#101671
Overall Influence
#3629
Anatoly Shalyto
#77522
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Anatoly Abramovich Shalyto is a Russian scientist, doctor of sciences, and professor. He was awarded by Russian State Government in 2008 for his achievements in education and his development of the technology for Automata-based programming called "Switch-technology." He is also an initiator of the Open Project Documentation Initiative.
Go to Profile#3630
Robert Morris
#2987
Overall Influence
1931 - 2018 (87 years)
Robert Morris was an American sculptor, conceptual artist and writer. He was regarded as having been one of the most prominent theorists of Minimalism along with Donald Judd, but also made important contributions to the development of performance art, land art, the Process Art movement, and installation art. Morris lived and worked in New York. In 2013 as part of the October Files, MIT Press published a volume on Morris, examining his work and influence, edited by Julia Bryan-Wilson.
Go to Profile#3631
Gautam Sethi
#101707
Overall Influence
#3632
Paulina Komar
#101729
Overall Influence
#3633
Larry Norton
#101737
Overall Influence
#3634
Makoto Murata
#56402
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Makoto Murata is a Japanese computer scientist, Ph.D. in engineering, and Project Professor at Keio University. He participated in the W3C XML Working Group. The Working Group designed XML1.0, a markup language specification. Murata and James Clark designed RELAX NG, an XML schema language.
Go to Profile#3635
Lu A. Maria Gambardella
#101848
Overall Influence
#3636
Farshad Fotouhi
#79951
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Farshad Fotouhi is the dean of Wayne State University's college of engineering. Farshad Fotouhi joined Wayne State University in 1988 as faculty in the Department of Computer Science. From 2000 to 2004, he was associate chair of the department, and from 2004 to 2010 he was chair.
Go to Profile#3637
Stephen Burgess
#101881
Overall Influence
#3638
Thomas Zacharia
#17367
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Thomas Zacharia is an Indian-born American computer scientist. He received his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from National Institute of Technology, Karnataka in 1980 and a master's degree in Materials Science from the University of Mississippi in 1984. He obtained his doctoral degree from Clarkson University in 1987.
Go to Profile#3639
Isaac L. Auerbach
#69833
Overall Influence
1921 - 1992 (71 years)
Isaac L. Auerbach was an early advocate and pioneer of computing technologies, holder of 15 patents, founding president of the International Federation for Information Processing , a member of the National Academy of Sciences, an executive at the Burroughs Corporation and a developer of first computers at Sperry Univac. International Federation for Information Processing established Isaac L. Auerbach Award in his name.
Go to Profile#3640
Michael Rosemann
#60014
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Michael Rosemann is a German information systems researcher and professor at the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. He is currently the director of the Centre for Future Enterprise at QUT. His research interests include revenue resilience, business process management, trust management and innovation systems. Rosemann is also the honorary consul of the Federal Republic of Germany in Southern Queensland.
Go to Profile#3641
Chandra Kintala
#50717
Overall Influence
1948 - 2009 (61 years)
Chandra Kintala was a computer science researcher in New Jersey, United States and Bangalore, India from 2006–2009. He worked at Bell Labs in AT&T, Lucent and Avaya in New Jersey, where he and Dr. David Belanger invented a language and a software tool used in AT&T for data analytics on very large databases. With Dr. Yennun Huang, he worked on Software-implemented Fault Tolerance and Software Rejuvenation in the 1990s. He also worked in distributed systems and network software research at Bell Labs.
Go to Profile#3642
Klaus Henning
#65552
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Klaus Henning is a German information scientist. He held the professorship of Information Management in Mechanical Engineering and was director of the Center for Learning and Knowledge Management at RWTH Aachen.
Go to Profile#3643
Dirk Roos
#101974
Overall Influence
#3644
Richard M. Epand
#102007
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
#3645
Eric Schmidt
#54635
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Eric Emerson Schmidt is an American businessman and former software engineer who served as the CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011 and the company's executive chairman from 2011 to 2015. He also served as the executive chairman of parent company Alphabet Inc. from 2015 to 2017, and Technical Advisor at Alphabet from 2017 to 2020. In April 2022, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimated his net worth to be 25.1 billion.
Go to Profile#3646
Marilyn Tremaine
#72107
Overall Influence
Marilyn Mantei Tremaine is an American computer scientist. She is an expert in human–computer interaction and considered a pioneer of the field. Education Tremaine received a BS in mathematics, physics and French from the University of Wisconsin, and later in 1982 obtained a PhD in communication theory at the University of Southern California - with the last two years of her PhD spent at Carnegie Mellon University under the direction of Professor Allen Newell.
Go to Profile#3647
Stephen Hearst
#55199
Overall Influence
1919 - 2010 (91 years)
Stephen Hearst was an Austrian-born British television and radio executive. Early life and career Born in Vienna, the son of a dentist who was close to the Mahler family, Hearst had begun to study medicine, but fleeing from the Nazis became imperative after the Anschluss in 1938 had driven him underground because of his Jewish background and anti-fascist activities. The family settled in Britain, and after a brief period studying horticulture and being interned, Hearst served in the Pioneer Corps during the war. After demobilisation, he studied history at Brasenose College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#3648
Manuel Serrano
#102130
Overall Influence
#3649
Haoyuan Li
#86723
Overall Influence
Haoyuan Li is a computer scientist and entrepreneur specializing in distributed systems, big data, and cloud computing. He is best known for proposing Virtual Distributed File System , and creating an open-source data orchestration system, Alluxio. He is the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Alluxio, Inc, a company commercializing the Alluxio Data Orchestration Technology. He is also an adjunct professor at Peking University. He is a frequent speaker on the topic of AI, Big Data, Cloud Computing, and Open Source at conferences.
Go to Profile#3650
Felienne Hermans
#87772
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Felienne Hermans, Felienne , is a scientist working at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam as a full professor. Her research interests include programming education and spreadsheets. Academic career Hermans received her MSc in computer science from Eindhoven University of Technology, and her PhD in software engineering in 2013 from Delft University of Technology. Following that she was an assistant professor at Delft University of Technology, heading the Spreadsheet Lab.
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