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,
#4251
Ahmad Umar
#111922
Overall Influence
#4252
Fredric M. Menger
#111926
Overall Influence
#4253
Peter Skalicky
#39628
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Peter Skalicky is the former rector of TU Wien, Austria. After taking his A-levels in Vienna, he studied physics at TU Wien. He wrote his PhD thesis on Röntgen topography. In 1973 he became an associate professor. Since 1979 he has been a full professor of applied physics. From 1991 until 2011 he was rector of TU Wien. He was followed in this function by Sabine Seidler.
Go to Profile#4254
Danny Greefhorst
#57296
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Danny Greefhorst is a Dutch enterprise architect and consultant at ArchiXL, known for his work in the field of enterprise architecture. Biography Greefhorst obtained his master in computer science at Utrecht University in 1995 with the master thesis ""A Simulation Environment for Ariadne." Furthermore, he became IBM Certified Senior IT Architect in 2004. He is TOGAF 9 level 2 and ArchiMate 2.0 certified.
Go to Profile#4255
Ulrich Zimmermann
#111946
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
#4256
Mohammed Bennamoun
#111964
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
#4257
Lester D. R. Thompson
#111991
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#4258
Steve Scott
#98794
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Steve Scott is a computer architect who currently serves as Corporate Vice President at Microsoft. Scott was previously a Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Cray Inc., Principal Engineer at Google and the chief technology officer for Nvidia's Tesla business unit. Scott was employed by Cray Research, Inc., Silicon Graphics, Inc., and Cray, Inc. from 1992 to 2011 .
Go to Profile#4259
Mohsen Naghavi
#112021
Overall Influence
#4260
Bruce 6. Buchanan
#112032
Overall Influence
#4261
Shinji Watanabe
#112064
Overall Influence
#4262
A B M Shawkat Ali
#67121
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
A B M Shawkat Ali is a Bangladeshi origin-Australian author, computer scientist and data analyst. He author of several books in the area of Data Mining, Computational Intelligence, and Smart Grid. He is a newspaper columnist. He is an academic and well-known researcher in the areas of Machine Learning and Data Science. He is also the founder of a research center and international conferences in Data Science and Engineering. He is now an Adjunct Professor in Data Science in the School of Engineering and Technology, Central Queensland University, Australia.
Go to Profile#4263
Holly Johnson
#35108
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
William Holly Johnson is an English artist, musician, and writer, best known as the lead vocalist of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, who achieved huge commercial success in the mid-1980s. Prior to that, in the late 1970s he was a bassist for the band Big in Japan. In 1989, Johnson's debut solo album, Blast, reached number one in the UK albums chart. Two singles from the album – "Love Train" and "Americanos" – reached the top 5 of the UK Singles Chart. In the 1990s, he also embarked on writing, painting, and printmaking careers.
Go to Profile#4264
Daniel N Klein
#112154
Overall Influence
#4265
Christian Peter Kubicek
#112155
Overall Influence
#4266
David B. Johnson
#112213
Overall Influence
#4267
Ning Gu
#112221
Overall Influence
#4268
Laura Fabbri
#112236
Overall Influence
#4269
Khalid S Khan
#112243
Overall Influence
#4270
Jarkko Kari
#66951
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Jarkko J. Kari is a Finnish mathematician and computer scientist, known for his contributions to the theory of Wang tiles and cellular automata. Kari is currently a professor at the Department of Mathematics, University of Turku.
Go to Profile#4271
Tetsuo Asano
#29020
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Tetsuo Asano is a Japanese computer scientist, the president of the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. His main research interest is in computational geometry. Education and career Asano was a student at Osaka University, earning bachelor's, masters, and doctoral degrees there in 1972, 1974, and 1977. He was on the faculty of Osaka Electro-Communication University from 1977 until 1998, when he joined JAIST. From 2012 to 2014 he was dean of the School of Information Science at JAIST. He became president of JAIST in April 2014
Go to Profile#4272
Kazuro Kikuchi
#81717
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Kazuro Kikuchi is a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Systems at the University of Tokyo and a long-time researcher on optical fiber communications. Professional background Kikuchi received a B.S. degree in electrical engineering and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electronic engineering from the University of Tokyo. He joined their Department of Electronic Engineering in 1979, where he is currently a professor.
Go to Profile#4273
Bruce Conner
#14126
Overall Influence
1933 - 2008 (75 years)
Bruce Conner was an American artist who worked with assemblage, film, drawing, sculpture, painting, collage, and photography. Biography Bruce Conner was born November 18, 1933, in McPherson, Kansas. His well-to-do middle-class family moved to Wichita, when Conner was four. He attended high school in Wichita, Kansas. Conner studied at Wichita University and later at University of Nebraska, where he graduated in 1956 with a bachelor of fine arts degree. During this time as a student he visited New York City. Conner worked in a variety of media from an early age.
Go to Profile#4274
Andrew J. P. White
#112321
Overall Influence
#4275
Minoru Takahashi
#112326
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
#4276
Tatsumi Ishihara
#112332
Overall Influence
#4277
Tanja Schultz
#93806
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Tanja Schultz is a German computer scientist specializing in speech processing. She is professor of computer science at the University of Bremen and the former president of the International Speech Communication Association.
Go to Profile#4278
Sripal Bengaluru
#112419
Overall Influence
#4279
Martin Gellert
#112433
Overall Influence
#4280
Bettina Speckmann
#65115
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Bettina Speckmann is a German computer scientist who heads the Applied Geometric Algorithms group in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science of Eindhoven University of Technology in Eindhoven, Netherlands, where she is a professor. The main topics of her research are computational geometry and information visualization, especially focusing on the geometry and visualization of objects in motion.
Go to Profile#4281
Michael Karas
#112477
Overall Influence
#4282
Charles Ng Wang-wai
#90118
Overall Influence
Charles Ng Wang-wai is the first CLP Holdings Professor of Sustainability and Chair Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology . He is also the vice-president of HKUST and the dean of the Fok Ying Tung Graduate School at HKUST, Clear Water Bay Campus. He is the immediate past president of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering , where he served as the 17th President from 2017 to 2022.
Go to Profile#4283
Eliezer E. Goldschmidt
#30770
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Eliezer E. Goldschmidt is an emeritus professor of agriculture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He earned his Ph.D. in 1968 and has been a professor since 1982. Contributions His research has focused on general agriculture and on various citrus species.
Go to Profile#4284
James Samuel Clark
#112576
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
#4285
Yoram Cohen
#112577
Overall Influence
#4287
Enrico W. Coiera
#112617
Overall Influence
#4288
Jean Gallier
#35055
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Jean Henri Gallier is a researcher in computational logic at the University of Pennsylvania, where he holds appointments in the Computer and Information Science Department and the Department of Mathematics.
Go to Profile#4289
Jonathan Hadgraft
#112640
Overall Influence
#4290
Stefan Roth
#107755
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Stefan Roth is a German computer scientist, professor of computer science and dean of the department of computer science of the Technische Universität Darmstadt. He heads the Visual Inference Lab. He is known for his research on computer vision and machine learning techniques in computer vision. His research focuses on recognition and tracking of people and objects, scene understanding, statistical image modeling and processing and motion modeling and prediction.
Go to Profile#4291
Mordechai Ben-Ari
#49538
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Mordechai Ben-Ari is a professor emeritus of computer science education at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Ben-Ari has published numerous textbooks in computer science, developed software tools for teaching computer science, and written influential papers in computer science education. His primary focus has been on books and tools for learning theoretical concepts in computer science and mathematics, such as concurrency and mathematical logic.
Go to Profile#4292
John Allen Clements
#36359
Overall Influence
1923 - Present (103 years)
John Allen Clements is a physician known for his role in the study of pulmonary surfactant. He graduated from Weill Cornell Medical College in 1947. He is a professor at University of California, San Francisco.
Go to Profile#4293
Daniel Kráľ
#72371
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Daniel Kráľ is a Czech mathematician and computer scientist who works as a professor of mathematics and computer science at the Masaryk University. His research primarily concerns graph theory and graph algorithms.
Go to Profile#4294
William H. Green
#73170
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
William H. Green Jr. , is a Hoyt C. Hottel Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, working in the field of chemical reaction engineering. His research largely focuses on using computers to accurately predict the products and time evolution of systems of reacting chemicals. He has been recognized for “developing and disseminating methods for predictive chemical kinetics based on quantum chemistry”. He published approximately 300 journal papers and book chapters, which have been cited more than 13,000 times.
Go to Profile#4295
Beena Pillai
#43316
Overall Influence
Beena Ramakrishnan Pillai is an Indian microbiologist, geneticist, and a scientist at the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology. She is known for her studies on gene regulation influenced by small RNA and histone variants and is a recipient of the Young Scientist Award of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and the Young Scientist Medal of the INSA. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded her the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science awards, for her contributions to biosciences, in 2017–18.
Go to Profile#4296
Henryk Krawczyk
#93099
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Henryk Krawczyk is a professor and rector of Gdańsk University of Technology since 2008. Scientific degrees MS in Design Computer Architecture, GUT, 1969PhD in Analysis Testability of Digital Systems, GUT, 1976DsC in Diagnosability Conditions for Computer Distributed Systems, GUT, 1987Prof. granted by President of Poland, 1996
Go to Profile#4297
Sven Windahl
#60902
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Sven Windahl is a Swedish professor of communication studies as well as a consultant in the field of organizational communication. His most influential work is the book Using Communication Theory from 1989, co-authored with Dr. Benno Signitzer and Jean T. Olson. The book has been translated into many languages.
Go to Profile#4298
Wiro Niessen
#110281
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Wiro J. Niessen is a Dutch scientist in biomedical image analysis and machine learning. He is full professor at both Erasmus MC, University Medical Center Rotterdam and Delft University of Technology. He is founder and scientific lead of Quantib, an AI company in medical imaging. In 2015 he received the Simon Stevin Meester Award from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. From 2016 to 2019 he was president of the Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Interventions Society. In 2017 he was elected to The Netherlands Royal Academy of Arts & Sciences. He is director of the ...
Go to Profile#4299
Brandon Michael Henry
#112674
Overall Influence
#4300
Bidyut Baran Chaudhuri
#52202
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Bidyut Baran Chaudhuri is a senior computer scientist and the pro-vice-chancellor of Techno India University in West Bengal, India. He is also adjuncted to Indian Statistical Institute , where he was a professor for about three decades. He was the founding Head of Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Unit of ISI. Moreover, he was a J.C. Bose Fellow and INAE Distinguished Professor at ISI.
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