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,
#4101
Brent R. Waters
#109664
Overall Influence
#4102
Kimitaka Kawamura
#109669
Overall Influence
1991 - Present (35 years)
#4103
Judith S. Olson
#73200
Overall Influence
Judith S. Olson is an American researcher best known for her work in the field of human-computer interaction and the effect of distance on teamwork. Olson began her career at the University of Michigan before later moving to the University of California, Irvine. She retired in 2008 with over 110 research articles to her name.
Go to Profile#4104
Thomas Thum
#109719
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
#4105
Vicente Valor Caselles
#109737
Overall Influence
#4106
Tom Friedman
#17194
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Tom Friedman is an American conceptual sculptor. He was born in St. Louis, Missouri and received a BFA in graphic illustration from Washington University in St. Louis and an MFA in sculpture from the University of Illinois at Chicago . As a conceptual artist he works in diverse media including sculpture, painting, drawing, video, and installation.
Go to Profile#4107
Carla Ellis
#85322
Overall Influence
Carla Schlatter Ellis is an American computer scientist and Emeritus Professor of Computer Science at Duke University. She is known for her work in energy management on mobile devices as well as for her dedication to increasing the number of women in the field of computer science. She is one of the founding members of Systers, an international email list of female computer scientists that was founded in 1987. Systers, which was initiated by Ellis and 12 other female computer scientists who met at a Symposium on Operating Systems Principles , has since grown to over 3000 members.
Go to Profile#4108
Isao Noda
#109784
Overall Influence
#4109
Alberto Del Bimbo
#109787
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
#4110
Gabrielle Rocap
#30000
Overall Influence
Gabrielle Rocap is an American marine biologist and academic noted for her research on the evolution and ecology of marine bacteria and phytoplankton. She is one of the researchers who discovered microorganisms in the Pacific Ocean that consume arsenic to survive. She is currently a professor in the Oceanography department of the University of Washington.
Go to Profile#4111
Marc Quirynen
#109833
Overall Influence
#4112
James S Goodwin
#109844
Overall Influence
#4113
Alexei J. Drummond
#109852
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#4114
Emilio Ros
#109857
Overall Influence
#4115
Dawoud Bey
#24607
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Dawoud Bey is an American photographer and educator known for his large-scale art photography and street photography portraits, including American adolescents in relation to their community, and other often marginalized subjects. In 2017, Bey was named a fellow and the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and is regarded as one of the "most innovative and influential photographers of his generation".
Go to Profile#4116
Adrian David Cheok
#63926
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Adrian David Cheok is an Australian electrical engineer and academic. He is a professor at in Tokyo, Japan. In the 2019 federal election, he ran to represent the Division of Boothby as a member of the far-right Fraser Anning's Conservative National Party. Cheok has been described as a sex robot expert.
Go to Profile#4117
Shigeki Matsunaga
#109885
Overall Influence
#4118
Sadamichi Maekawa
#106803
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Sadamichi Maekawa is a Japanese researcher, who was born in Nara Prefecture, Japan in 1946. He obtained his B. Sc. , M. Sc. degrees from Osaka University, and D. Sc. degree from Tohoku University. He was a research associate and an associate professor at Institute for Materials Research, Tohoku University, and a professor at Faculty of Engineering, Nagoya University, and a professor at Institute for Materials Research, Tohoku University. After serving as a director of Advanced Science Research Center in Japan Atomic Energy Agency , he became a senior advisor at RIKEN Center for Emergent...
Go to Profile#4119
Ming-wei Chang
#109908
Overall Influence
#4120
Ralph Semmel
#46970
Overall Influence
Ralph D. Semmel is an American engineer and computer scientist. He became the eighth director of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland on July 1, 2010. Biography A native of Monroe, New York, Semmel earned a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering from the United States Military Academy at West Point, a Master of Science degree in systems management from the University of Southern California, a Master of Science degree in computer science from Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Go to Profile#4121
Elliot Morris Soloway
#109938
Overall Influence
#4122
Nader Bagherzadeh
#85298
Overall Influence
Nader Bagherzadeh is a professor of computer engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine, where he served as a chair from 1998 to 2003. Bagherzadeh has been involved in research and development in the areas of: Computer Architecture, Reconfigurable Computing, VLSI Chip Design, Network-on-Chip, 3D chips, Sensor Networks, Computer Graphics, Memory and Embedded Systems. Bagherzadeh was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2014 for contributions to the design and analysis of coarse-grained reconfigurable processor architectures.
Go to Profile#4123
Ben Bederson
#108636
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Benjamin Bederson is a Computer Science professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, a member of the University of Maryland Human-Computer Interaction Lab, and a co-founder of Zumobi. His father was Benjamin Bederson, Sr., a Professor of Physics Emeritus, New York University.
Go to Profile#4124
Olga Sorkine-Hornung
#101945
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Olga Sorkine-Hornung is a professor of Computer Science at ETH Zurich working in the fields of computer graphics, geometric modeling and geometry processing. She has received multiple awards, including the ACM SIGGRAPH Significant New Researcher Award in 2011.
Go to Profile#4125
Ami Moyal
#81983
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Ami Moyal is the third president of Afeka Tel Aviv Academic College of Engineering. He is a professor in electrical and computer engineering and expert in the field of human machine interaction via speech recognition.
Go to Profile#4126
Michael Heath
#94758
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Michael Thomas Heath is a retired computer scientist who specializes in scientific computing. He is the director of the Center for the Simulation of Advanced Rockets, a Department of Energy-sponsored computing center at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and the former Fulton Watson Copp Professor of Computer Science at UIUC. Heath was inducted as member of the European Academy of Sciences in 2002, a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery in 2000, and a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics in 2010. He also received the 2009 Taylor L. Booth Education Award from IEEE.
Go to Profile#4127
Ryan Galloway
#109952
Overall Influence
#4128
William Richard King
#109975
Overall Influence
#4129
Valeria de Paiva
#48362
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Valeria Correa Vaz de Paiva is a Brazilian mathematician, logician, and computer scientist. Her work includes research on logical approaches to computation, especially using category theory, knowledge representation and natural language semantics, and functional programming with a focus on foundations and type theories.
Go to Profile#4130
Graeme Eisenhofer
#109977
Overall Influence
#4131
Luiz Velho
#92551
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Luiz Carlos Pacheco Rodrigues Velho is a Brazilian applied mathematician working primarily on computer graphics and computer vision. He is a full researcher and professor at Instituto Nacional de Matemática Pura e Aplicada and leading scientist of VISGRAF, laboratory that conducts researches in the field of modeling, rendering, imaging, and animation.
Go to Profile#4132
Gerold Schuler
#110011
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
#4133
Amit X Garg
#110022
Overall Influence
#4134
Rena Gasimova
#106917
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Rena Tofiq Gasimova is an Azerbaijani computer scientist, who holds the position of Sector Chief at the national Information Technology Institute . Career Gasimova graduated in 1985 from the Faculty of Automatics and Computer Science, Azerbaijan Polytechnic Institute named after Ch. Ildirim.
Go to Profile#4135
Tony Wright
#37649
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Tony Wright , also known as Sue Ab Surd, is an artist who created album covers such as Bob Marley's Natty Dread and Traffic's The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys and others including Bob Dylan's Saved. His art work for The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys and Steve Winwood's Arc of a Diver were listed amongst Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Album Covers. The cover for The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
Go to Profile#4136
Josef Neu
#110057
Overall Influence
#4137
Ian Roberts
#110071
Overall Influence
#4138
Michael O. Thorner
#104051
Overall Influence
Michael O. Thorner is David C. Harrison Professor Emeritus of Internal Medicine at the University of Virginia specializing in endocrinology and metabolism. He was previously the chief of the division of endocrinology and metabolism and the chair of the department of internal medicine.
Go to Profile#4139
Manfred Reichert
#110083
Overall Influence
#4140
Gavin Lowe
#72154
Overall Influence
Gavin Lowe is a British academic. He is a professor of computer science and tutorial fellow at St Catherine's College, Oxford, a professor at the University of Oxford, and President of the Senior Common Room of St Catherine's College, Oxford. His research interests include computer security, for which he developed the cryptographic protocol analysis tool Casper, and concurrency.
Go to Profile#4141
Evangelos Terpos
#110130
Overall Influence
#4142
John T Lis
#110141
Overall Influence
#4143
Seong‐whan Lee
#110174
Overall Influence
#4144
John D. Hayes
#110177
Overall Influence
#4145
Mulugeta Bekele
#17433
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Mulugeta Bekele is an Ethiopian scientist and academic. He is an associate Professor of Physics at Addis Ababa University , Ethiopia. He completed his PhD in Physics at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India in 1997. He has been awarded the Andrei Sakharov Prize by the American Physical Society "For tireless efforts in defense of human rights and freedom of expression and education anywhere in the world, and for inspiring students, colleagues and others to do the same." He is the president of Ethiopian Physical Society since October 1998 and an Associate Member of the Abdus Salam ...
Go to Profile#4146
Alexandra Newton
#46126
Overall Influence
Alexandra C. Newton is a Canadian and American biochemist. She is a Distinguished Professor of pharmacology at the University of California, San Diego. Newton runs a multidisciplinary Protein kinase C and Cell signaling biochemistry and cell biology research group in the School of Medicine, investigating molecular mechanisms of signal transduction in the Phospholipase C and Phosphoinositide 3-kinase signaling pathways. She has been continuously funded by the US National Institutes of Health since 1988.
Go to Profile#4147
Craig B Taylor
#110226
Overall Influence
#4148
Dan Graham
#5354
Overall Influence
1942 - 2022 (80 years)
Daniel Graham was an American visual artist, writer, and curator in the writer-artist tradition. In addition to his visual works, he published a large array of critical and speculative writing that spanned the spectrum from heady art theory essays, reviews of rock music, Dwight D. Eisenhower's paintings, and Dean Martin's television show. His early magazine-based art predates, but is often associated with, conceptual art. His later work focused on cultural phenomena by incorporating photography, video, performance art, glass and mirror installation art structures, and closed-circuit television.
Go to Profile#4149
Fei Wei
#110260
Overall Influence
#4150
Jonathan Robert Glass
#110279
Overall Influence
