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,
#3751
Alexandra Boltasseva
#66682
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Alexandra Boltasseva is Ron And Dotty Garvin Tonjes Distinguished Professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University, and editor-in-chief for The Optical Society's Optical Materials Express journal. Her research focuses on plasmonic metamaterials, manmade composites of metals that use surface plasmons to achieve optical properties not seen in nature.
Go to Profile#3752
Nalini Venkatasubramanian
#89189
Overall Influence
Nalini Venkatasubramanian is a Professor of Computer Science in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. She is known for her work in effective management and utilization of resources in the evolving global information infrastructure. Her research interests are Multimedia Computing, Networked and Distributed Systems, Internet technologies and Applications, Ubiquitous Computing and Urban Crisis Responses. Dr. Venkatasubramanian's research focuses on enabling effective management and utilization of resources in the evolving global information infrastructure.
Go to Profile#3753
Eisuke Nishida
#103992
Overall Influence
#3754
Fan Dong
#104052
Overall Influence
#3755
Masabumi Shibuya
#104067
Overall Influence
#3756
Rolf Niedermeier
#90975
Overall Influence
1966 - 2022 (56 years)
Rolf Niedermeier was a professor of computer science, known for his research in computational complexity theory, especially in parameterized complexity, graph theory, computational social choice, and social network analysis.
Go to Profile#3757
Amitabh Varshney
#79030
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Amitabh Varshney is an Indian-born American computer scientist. He is an IEEE fellow, and serves as Dean of the University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences. Before being named Dean, Varshney was the director of the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies from 2010 to 2018.
Go to Profile#3758
Robert W. Haley
#104101
Overall Influence
#3759
Mark D. Robinson
#104129
Overall Influence
#3760
David R. Karger
#104143
Overall Influence
#3761
Akihiko Kondo
#104146
Overall Influence
#3762
Fabio Paternò
#74274
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Fabio Paternò is Research Director and Head of the Laboratory on Human Interfaces in Information Systems at Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologie dell'Informazione, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche in Pisa, Italy.
Go to Profile#3763
M Paul Scott
#104160
Overall Influence
#3764
Abdul Mannan Choudhury
#17711
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Abdul Mannan Choudhury is a Bangladeshi academic, educationist and freedom fighter of the liberation war 1971 of Bangladesh. He is currently the Vice-Chancellor of the World University of Bangladeshand Professor Emeritus. He was formerly a professor and a selection grade professor at the University of Dhaka.He is also one of the Advisors of the National Council for Freedom Fighters, President of Bangamata Sheikh Fazilatun Nesa Mujib Parishad & Swadinata Shikkoh Parishad, Honorary Fellow of Bangla Academy and winner of several gold medals for education, administrative and war of liberation. O...
Go to Profile#3765
Aniruddha M. Gole
#24822
Overall Influence
A. M. Gole is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. Since 1992, he is also the NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Power Systems Simulation.
Go to Profile#3766
Ýmir Vigfússon
#100873
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Ýmir Vigfússon is an Icelandic hacker and a computer security expert. Currently, Ýmir is an assistant professor at Emory University, where he leads the Emory SysLab , and a member of ICE-TCS and of the ALNET Group .
Go to Profile#3767
Rajendra Prasad
#104256
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
#3768
Arnoldus Wilhelmus Maria Smeulders
#104259
Overall Influence
#3769
Reza Derakhshani
#85096
Overall Influence
Reza Derakhshani is an inventor and professor of computer science and electrical engineering at the University of Missouri Kansas City. He is known for inventing and developing a biometric security system that uses the patterns of blood vessels in the eyes. His research has encompassed biometrics, biometric spoofing, biomedical signal and image processing, and computational intelligence.
Go to Profile#3770
Srinivas Devadas
#104278
Overall Influence
#3771
David Abramson
#80558
Overall Influence
Professor David Abramson FIEEE FACM FTSE FACS is an Australian computer scientist. He has been Director of the Research Computing Centre at the University of Queensland, Australia, since 2012. He has been involved in computer architecture and high performance computing research since 1979.
Go to Profile#3772
Cathal Gurrin
#91131
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Cathal Gurrin is an Irish Professor and lifelogger. He is the Head of the Adapt Centre at Dublin City University, a Funded Investigator of the Insight Centre, and the director of the Human Media Archives research group. He was previously the deputy head of the School of Computing.
Go to Profile#3773
Qingyan Chen
#10564
Overall Influence
Qingyan Chen is the Director of the PolyU Academy for Interdisciplinary Research and Chair Professor at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, active in the field of building science. He is Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University in the United States. He is the editor-in-chief of the academic journal Building and Environment.
Go to Profile#3774
Ananthram Swami
#104287
Overall Influence
#3775
Peter Lucas
#97848
Overall Influence
1935 - 2015 (80 years)
Peter Lucas was an Austrian computer scientist and university professor. Life Peter Lucas graduated in 1953 and then studied telecommunications at the Vienna University of Technology. He completed his studies in 1959 with a diploma thesis on the topic of programming electronic calculating machines. Then he was a member of Heinz Zemanek's group and was responsible for the system programming of Mailüfterl, the first fully transistorized computer in continental Europe.
Go to Profile#3776
Emina Torlak
#98720
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Emina Torlak is an American computer scientist and software engineer whose research concerns software verification, program synthesis, and the integration of these techniques into domain-specific languages. She is an associate professor of computer science at the University of Washington, and a senior principal scientist for Amazon Web Services.
Go to Profile#3777
Stephen S Rich
#104316
Overall Influence
#3778
Leysia Palen
#92518
Overall Influence
Leysia Palen is an American computer scientist known for her contributions to human–computer interaction and disaster informatics. She is a professor of computer science, professor of information science, and founding chair of information science at the University of Colorado Boulder. At Colorado, she directs a research project titled "Empowering the Public with Information during Crisis", and is co-director of the Center for Software & Society. She also holds an adjunct affiliation with the University of Agder, and is a member of the CHI Academy.
Go to Profile#3779
Jin Zou
#104352
Overall Influence
#3780
Ian Sommerville
#93482
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Ian F. Sommerville , is a British academic. He is the author of a popular student textbook on software engineering, as well as a number of other books and papers. He worked as a professor of software engineering at the University of St Andrews in Scotland until 2014 and is a prominent researcher in the field of systems engineering, system dependability and social informatics, being an early advocate of an interdisciplinary approach to system dependability.
Go to Profile#3781
Ivan Rival
#83851
Overall Influence
1947 - 2002 (55 years)
Ivan Rival was a Canadian mathematician and computer scientist, a professor of mathematics at the University of Calgary and of computer science at the University of Ottawa. Rival's Ph.D. thesis concerned lattice theory. After moving to Calgary he began to work more generally with partially ordered sets, and to study fixed point theorems for partially ordered structures. He was a frequent organizer of conferences in order theory, and in 1984 he founded the journal Order. As a computer scientist at Ottawa, he shifted research topics, applying his expertise in order theory to the study of data...
Go to Profile#3782
Adenike Osofisan
#78114
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Adenike Osofisan , is a Nigerian professor of Computer science, who specializes in data mining and knowledge management. She is the first Nigerian woman to hold a Ph.D. in Computer science, a feat she accomplished in 1989. In 2006, she became a full professor at University of Ibadan, a promotion that made her the first African woman to become a Computer Science professor.
Go to Profile#3783
Alexander Berg
#79731
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Alexander C. Berg is an American Assistant Professor of computer science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He specializes in web mining as well as machine learning and computer vision.
Go to Profile#3784
Aalt Bast
#104430
Overall Influence
#3785
Anders Blomqvist
#33282
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Anders Blomqvist is a Swedish professor of pain research at Linköping University. Anders Blomqvist was born in Norrköping, Sweden. He obtained a doctorate degree in medical science in 1981 and was appointed associate professor of anatomy in 1983 at Uppsala University, Sweden. Between 1984 and 1986 he was a visiting research fellow at Florida State University, followed by two years as a research associate at Uppsala University and ten years as a senior lecturer at Linköping University. In 1998 Anders Blomqvist was appointed professor of pain research at Linköping University.
Go to Profile#3786
Michael R. Lyu
#93764
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Michael R. Lyu is the Choh-Ming Li Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in Shatin, Hong Kong. Michael is well known to the software engineering community as the editor of two classic book volumes in software reliability engineering: Software Fault Tolerance and the Handbook of Software Reliability Engineering. Both books have also been translated into Chinese and published in China. He was also named in The AI 2000 Most Influential Scholars Annual List with three appearances.
Go to Profile#3787
Jörg Rinklebe
#104483
Overall Influence
#3788
Elaine Oran
#77081
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Elaine Surick Oran is an American physical scientist and is considered a world authority on numerical methods for large-scale simulation of physical systems. She has pioneered computational technology to solve complex reactive flow problems, unifying concepts from science, mathematics, engineering, and computer science in a new methodology. An incredibly diverse range of phenomena can be modeled and better understood using her techniques for numerical simulation of fluid flows, ranging from the tightly grouped movements of fish in Earth's oceans to the explosions of far-flung supernovae in space.
Go to Profile#3789
Jun Murai
#17215
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Jun Murai is a Japanese professor and administrator known as "the father of Internet in Japan" and "Internet Samurai". He is a professor at Keio University. Murai is the founder of JUNET and founder of the WIDE Project. Murai graduated from Keio University in 1979 and received a Ph.D. from the same school in 1984. On October 1, 2009, Murai became the Dean of the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies.
Go to Profile#3790
Liam Gillick
#8599
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Liam Gillick is a British artist who lives and works in New York City. Gillick deploys multiple forms to make visible the aesthetics of the constructed world and examine the ideological control systems that have emerged along with globalization and neoliberalism. He utilizes materials that resemble everyday built environments, transforming them into minimalist abstractions that deliver commentaries on social constructs, while also exploring notions of modernism.
Go to Profile#3791
Lee E. Brasseur
#70957
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Lee Ellen Brasseur is an American Professor of technical communication at the Department of English at the Illinois State University, and expert in the field of visualization, known from her 2003 book "Visualizing Technical Information: A Cultural Critique".
Go to Profile#3792
Steve Simske
#52551
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Steve Simske , also known as Steven J. Simske, is an American engineer and scientist specialized in biomedical engineering, cybersecurity, anti-counterfeiting, Variable data printing, imaging, and robotics. He is a full professor of systems engineering at the Walter Scott Jr. School of Engineering of Colorado State University.
Go to Profile#3793
Mohammad Tariqul Islam
#104630
Overall Influence
#3794
Steven James Linton
#104652
Overall Influence
#3795
Catherine Pelachaud
#97527
Overall Influence
Catherine Pelachaud is a French computer scientist specializing in human–computer interaction and known for her work virtual assistants and on recognizing and generating facial expressions. She is a director of research for the French National Centre for Scientific Research , affiliated with the Institut des Systèmes Intelligents et de Robotique , a shared research center of CNRS and Sorbonne University.
Go to Profile#3796
Fernanda Viégas
#52562
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Fernanda Bertini Viégas is a Brazilian computer scientist and graphical designer, whose work focuses on the social, collaborative and artistic aspects of information visualization. Biography Viégas studied graphic design and art history at the University of Kansas, where she obtained her bachelor's degree in 1997. She then moved to the MIT Media Lab, where she received an M.S. in 200 and a Ph.D. in Media Arts and Sciences in 2005 under the supervision of Judith Donath. The same year she began work at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as part of the Visual Com...
Go to Profile#3797
Sylvie Chevret
#104686
Overall Influence
#3798
Alan W. Black
#93999
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Alan W Black is a Scottish computer scientist, known for his research on speech synthesis. He is a professor in the Language Technologies Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#3799
Stephen Partridge
#55302
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Stephen Partridge is an English video artist who studied under David Hall and his career as an artist, academic and researcher, helped to establish video as an art form in the UK. Life and work Stephen Partridge attended Maidstone College of Art and the Royal College of Art. He was in the "landmark" video shows of the 1970s including "The Video Show" at the Serpentine in 1975, the "Video Show" at the Tate Gallery London in 1976 , the Paris Biennalle in 1977 and The Kitchen in New York in 1979. During the eighties he exhibited widely and also became interested in works for broadcast televisi...
Go to Profile#3800
Lior Rokach
#104723
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
