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,
#4351
Michael Joseph Rybak
#113323
Overall Influence
#4352
Xiaohu Yu
#113329
Overall Influence
Xiaohu Yu from the Southeast University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2012 for leadership in the development of mobile communications in China.
Go to Profile#4353
Luc Moreau
#86894
Overall Influence
Luc Moreau is a Professor of Computer Science and Head of the department of Informatics, at King's College London. Before joining King's, Luc was Head of the Web and Internet Science, in the department of Electronics and Computer Science, at the University of Southampton, UK. He is best known for his work in provenance and was co-chair of the W3C provenance working group.
Go to Profile#4354
Kenneth W. Church
#113354
Overall Influence
#4355
Cem Gabay
#113355
Overall Influence
#4356
Yoshihisa Inoue
#113411
Overall Influence
#4357
Xiao-feng Wu
#113417
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
#4358
Jacques Robert
#113422
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
#4359
Zohreh Vanaki
#113475
Overall Influence
#4360
Devi Parikh
#113497
Overall Influence
#4361
Chris Ofili
#7545
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Christopher Ofili, is a British painter who is best known for his paintings incorporating elephant dung. He was Turner Prize-winner and one of the Young British Artists. Since 2005, Ofili has been living and working in Trinidad and Tobago, where he currently resides in the city of Port of Spain. He also has lived and worked in London and Brooklyn.
Go to Profile#4362
Yoonkyung Lee
#97581
Overall Influence
Yoonkyung Lee is a professor of statistics at Ohio State University, and also holds a courtesy appointment in computer science and engineering at Ohio State. Her research takes a statistical approach to kernel methods, dimensionality reduction, and regularization in machine learning.
Go to Profile#4363
Richard Thomas Watson
#113595
Overall Influence
#4364
Aaron Sloman
#113608
Overall Influence
#4365
Meral Özsoyoglu
#51553
Overall Influence
Zehra Meral Özsoyoglu is a Turkish-American computer scientist specializing in databases, including research on query languages, database model, and indexes, and applications of databases in science, bioinformatics, and medical informatics. She is the Andrew R. Jennings Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at Case Western Reserve University.
Go to Profile#4366
Eugene M. Luks
#67704
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Eugene Michael Luks is an American mathematician and computer scientist, a professor emeritus of computer and information science at the University of Oregon. He is known for his research on the graph isomorphism problem and on algorithms for computational group theory.
Go to Profile#4367
Jacob Benesty
#113673
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
#4368
Ai Weiwei
#15557
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Ai Weiwei is a Chinese contemporary artist, documentarian, and activist. Ai grew up in the far northwest of China, where he lived under harsh conditions due to his father's exile. As an activist, he has been openly critical of the Chinese Government's stance on democracy and human rights. He investigated government corruption and cover-ups, in particular the Sichuan schools corruption scandal following the collapse of "tofu-dreg schools" in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. In 2011, Ai Weiwei was arrested at Beijing Capital International Airport on 3 April, for "economic crimes". He was detained for 81 days without charge.
Go to Profile#4369
Sharon Goldwater
#99168
Overall Influence
Sharon J. Goldwater is an American and British computer scientist, cognitive scientist, developmental linguist, and natural language processing researcher who holds the Personal Chair of Computational Language Learning in the University of Edinburgh School of Informatics. Her research involves the unsupervised learning of language by computers, and computer modeling of language development in children.
Go to Profile#4370
Allen C. Cheng
#113701
Overall Influence
#4371
Aidong Zhang
#92736
Overall Influence
Aidong Zhang is a computer scientist whose research topics include machine learning and bioinformatics. She is William Wulf Faculty Fellow and Professor of Computer Science at the University of Virginia, where she also holds affiliations with the Department of Biomedical Engineering and School of Data Science.
Go to Profile#4372
Chia Shen
#47830
Overall Influence
Chia Shen is a Chinese-American computer scientist specialized in human–computer interaction, visual learning, and computer-supported collaborative learning. She is a program director at the National Science Foundation overseeing cyberlearning and STEM education initiatives.
Go to Profile#4373
Frank Soltis
#35666
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Frank Gerald Soltis , is an American computer scientist. He joined IBM Rochester in 1969, and is most well known for his contributions to the System/38 and IBM AS/400 architectures, in particular - the design of the single-level store used in those platforms, and the RS64 processor architecture. He retired from IBM in 2008 upon the merger of the System i and System p product lines into IBM Power Systems. Prior to his retirement, he held the title of Chief Scientist at IBM.
Go to Profile#4374
Md Aminul Haque Bhuyan
#41629
Overall Influence
Md Aminul Haque Bhuyan is a Bangladeshi academic and the current Vice-chancellor of Bangladesh Islami University since April 2022. He was the 9th Vice-chancellor of Shahjalal University of Science and Technology and of Z.H. Sikder University of Science & Technology, Shariatpur, Bangladesh.
Go to Profile#4375
Oscar H. Ibarra
#113815
Overall Influence
#4376
Paul Franklin
#48747
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Paul J. Franklin is an English visual effects supervisor who has worked with visual effects since the 1990s. Franklin won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and the BAFTA Award for Best Special Visual Effects for Inception , and won a second Academy Award for Best Visual Effects for Interstellar . He shared the wins with Andrew Lockley, Peter Bebb, and Chris Corbould. Franklin has also been nominated for an Academy Award for The Dark Knight . He was nominated for BAFTA Awards for Batman Begins, The Dark Knight , and The Dark Knight Rises .
Go to Profile#4377
Clement Richard Boland
#113846
Overall Influence
#4378
Siavash Teimouri
#13943
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Siavash Teimouri is an Iranian architect, artist and scholar. Born in Tehran, Iran, he graduated from the College of Fine Arts, University of Tehran with the highest mark under the supervision of Hooshang Seyhoun. He was then granted a scholarship to pursue his education in France in 1962, where he studied at École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts and graduated with a Diploma of Architecture in 1969 under the supervision of Le Corbusier. He worked with world-class architects of his time and received the French Association Architects' Prize in 1967. He is a member of the French Society of...
Go to Profile#4379
Yuet W Kan
#113873
Overall Influence
#4380
Andrew Wee
#102867
Overall Influence
Andrew Wee is a professor of physics at the National University of Singapore. External links NUS Bio
Go to Profile#4381
Philippe J. Flajolet
#113889
Overall Influence
#4382
John Nerbonne
#42548
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
John A. Nerbonne is an American computational linguist. He was a professor of humanities computing at the University of Groningen until January 2017, when he gave his valedictory address at the celebration of the 30th anniversary of his department there.
Go to Profile#4383
Frank K. Mcdowell
#113908
Overall Influence
#4384
Isabelle Bloch
#113929
Overall Influence
#4385
Susumu Goto
#113938
Overall Influence
#4386
Amy Goodloe
#71729
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Amy Goodloe is the creator of the websites Women Online and Lesbian.org, a non-profit organization focused on documenting activities and work by lesbians on the web. She also initiated and maintained mailing lists that served as online discussion spaces for LGBTQ communities. She was a professor of writing in the Women and Gender Studies department at the University of Colorado-Boulder.
Go to Profile#4387
Frédo Durand
#113949
Overall Influence
#4388
Torsten Seemann
#113952
Overall Influence
#4389
Jim Yang Lee
#113960
Overall Influence
#4390
Christian Bogdan
#113982
Overall Influence
#4391
Arivalagan Pugazhendhi
#114016
Overall Influence
#4392
Philippe Parola
#114017
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
#4393
E. Allen Emerson
#114049
Overall Influence
#4394
Niklaus E. Zimmermann
#114071
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
#4395
Takashi Hashimoto
#114073
Overall Influence
#4396
Bernhard Ryffel
#114085
Overall Influence
#4397
Kenji Kabashima
#114087
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#4398
Niki de Saint Phalle
#3347
Overall Influence
1930 - 2002 (72 years)
Niki de Saint Phalle was a French-American sculptor, painter, filmmaker, and author of colorful hand-illustrated books. Widely noted as one of the few female monumental sculptors, Saint Phalle was also known for her social commitment and work.
Go to Profile#4399
Stanisław Miedza-Tomaszewski
#80083
Overall Influence
1913 - 2000 (87 years)
Corporal Stanisław Władysław Miedza-Tomaszewski , underground nom de guerre Miedza , was a Polish war artist, and underground fighter. Member of the Polish resistance during occupation of Poland in World War II. In cooperation with Józef Walaszczyk, he was helping Jews living in the Warsaw ghetto, bringing them food, medicines and documents. He escaped from the transport to Pawiak prison after arrest, and left besieged Warsaw with the civilian population. Miedza-Tomaszewski is the author of the 1977 memoir Benefis konspiratora about his Warsaw Uprising experiences. Those events served as the b...
Go to Profile#4400
Gilbert N. Hanson
#114128
Overall Influence
