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,
#4701
Yuliang Li
#118586
Overall Influence
#4702
Dai Fukumura
#118589
Overall Influence
#4703
Hideyoshi Harashima
#118625
Overall Influence
#4704
Masaru Katoh
#118647
Overall Influence
#4705
Eyke Hüllermeier
#118657
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
#4706
Peter Vogel
#46753
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Peter Vogel is an Australian inventor and technologist known for developing the Fairlight CMI. Career Vogel has worked in the electronics industry since graduating from Cranbrook School, Sydney in 1972. His first major achievement was the development of the world's first commercial sound sampling electronic musical instrument, the Fairlight CMI. Along with his school friend Kim Ryrie, Vogel was co-founder of Fairlight, the company that made the CMI from 1975 to 1999. Along with Tony Furse of Creative Strategies, the two were awarded the CSIRO Medal in 1987.
Go to Profile#4707
Barbara Boucher Owens
#86602
Overall Influence
Barbara Boucher Owens is an American computer scientist noted for her leadership in computer science education. She was the Chair of SIGCSE from 2007 to 2010 and an elected member of the SIGCSE Board for 16 years from 1997 to 2013.
Go to Profile#4708
Walter Darby Bannard
#15609
Overall Influence
1934 - 2016 (82 years)
Walter Darby Bannard was an American abstract painter and professor of art and art history at the University of Miami. Biography Bannard was born in New Haven, Connecticut and attended Phillips Exeter Academy, where he graduated in 1952. He attended Princeton University, where he befriended Frank Stella and Michael Fried, who were also interested in minimalist abstraction.
Go to Profile#4709
Alexei A. Efros
#97206
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Alexei "Alyosha" A. Efros is a Russian-American computer scientist and professor at University of California, Berkeley. He is widely recognized for his contributions to computer vision and his work has been referenced in media outlets including Wired, BBC News, The New York Times, and the New Yorker.
Go to Profile#4710
Kenji Doya
#118728
Overall Influence
#4711
Jack Sklansky
#118729
Overall Influence
#4712
Albert S. Kobayashi
#80937
Overall Influence
1924 - Present (102 years)
Albert Satoshi Kobayashi is an American engineer and scientist. Early life and education Kobayashi was born on December 9, 1924, in Chicago. He graduated from the University of Tokyo with a bachelor's degree in 1947. He earned a master's degree from the University of Washington in 1952 and a doctorate in mechanics from the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1958.
Go to Profile#4713
Wei Lu
#118739
Overall Influence
#4714
Cristina Sernadas
#57173
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Maria Cristina De Sales Viana Serôdio Sernadas is a Portuguese mathematical logician whose research topics have included object-oriented specification languages and logics for information systems, and the use of category theory in the combination of multiple types of logic. She is Professor for Logic and Computation in the Department of Mathematics of the Technical University of Lisbon.
Go to Profile#4715
David H. Ledbetter
#118762
Overall Influence
#4716
Aleksander S. Popel
#118792
Overall Influence
#4717
David Artis
#118802
Overall Influence
#4718
Alan Robert Dennis
#118804
Overall Influence
#4719
Takayuki Komatsu
#118815
Overall Influence
#4720
Khalid Aziz
#118817
Overall Influence
#4721
Richard Vuduc
#109836
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Richard Vuduc is a tenured professor of computer science at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research lab, The HPC Garage, studies high-performance computing, scientific computing, parallel algorithms, modeling, and engineering. He is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery . As of 2022, Vuduc serves as Vice President of the SIAM Activity Group on Supercomputing. He has co-authored over 200 articles in peer-reviewed journals and conferences.
Go to Profile#4722
Gudrun J. Klinker
#111129
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Gudrun Johanna Klinker is a German computer scientist known for her work on augmented reality. Professional career Klinker finished her graduate studies in informatics 1982 at Hamburg University. From 1983 to 1988 she worked as a teaching and research assistant at the computer science department of Carnegie Mellon University, where she earned her Ph.D. in 1988. From 1989 to 1998 she worked as a member of research staff up to scientific leader in research projects e.g. at Cambridge Research Lab of DEC, European Computer-Industry Research Center in Munich and Fraunhofer project group for augmented reality in Munich/Darmstadt.
Go to Profile#4723
Muhammad Wasif Saif
#118873
Overall Influence
#4724
Davide Capodanno
#118896
Overall Influence
#4725
Jason Nieh
#111877
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Jason Nieh is a professor of Computer Science and co-director of the Software Systems Laboratory at Columbia University. He is most well known for his work on virtualization. He was one of the early pioneers of operating-system-level virtualization, introducing key concepts such as process namespaces and file system layers which led to the development of Linux containers and Docker. He was an early proponent of desktop virtualization, conducting many of the early studies demonstrating the feasibility of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. He developed and influenced many key technologies for Arm...
Go to Profile#4726
Robert Williams
#10318
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Robert L. Williams, often styled Robt. Williams , is an American painter, cartoonist, and founder of Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine. Williams was one of the group of artists who produced Zap Comix, along with other underground cartoonists, such as Robert Crumb, S. Clay Wilson, and Gilbert Shelton. His mix of California car culture, cinematic apocalypticism, and film noir helped to create a new genre of psychedelic imagery.
Go to Profile#4727
Patrick Drew Mcdaniel
#118969
Overall Influence
#4728
Bernhard E. Boser
#118975
Overall Influence
#4729
Tarik Taleb
#118979
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
#4730
Roxana Geambasu
#67060
Overall Influence
Roxana Geambașu is a Romanian-American computer scientist who is an associate professor of Computer Science at Columbia University. The topics of her research include cloud computing, security and privacy, and operating systems.
Go to Profile#4731
J. R. Icha Rd Mcintosh
#119054
Overall Influence
#4732
Aldo Di Carlo
#119073
Overall Influence
#4733
Alfred John Menezes
#119078
Overall Influence
#4734
Péter Kacsuk
#110941
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Péter Kacsuk is a Hungarian computer scientist at MTA-SZTAKI, Budapest, Hungary. Biography Péter Kacsuk received his MSc and university doctorate degrees from the Technical University of Budapest, Hungary in 1976 and 1984, respectively. He received the Kandidat degree from the Hungarian Academy in 1989. He habilitated at the University of Vienna in 1997. He received his professor title from the Hungarian President in 1999 and the Doctor of Academy degree from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 2001. He is currently the Head of the Laboratory of Parallel and Distributed Systems , Computer a...
Go to Profile#4735
Alex Katz
#5245
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (99 years)
Alex Katz is an American figurative artist known for his paintings, sculptures, and prints. Since 1951, Katz's work has been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions and nearly 500 group exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally. He is well known for his large paintings, whose bold simplicity and heightened colors are considered as precursors to Pop Art.
Go to Profile#4736
Angela Sasse
#57076
Overall Influence
Martina Angela Sasse is a German psychologist whose research spans the areas of human–computer interaction and computer security. She is Horst Görtz Endowed Professor of Human-Centred Security at Ruhr University Bochum. and has a part-time position as Professor of Human-Centred Technology at University College London.
Go to Profile#4737
Tomiwa Sunday Adebayo
#119141
Overall Influence
#4738
Nicole Megow
#89779
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Nicole Megow is a German discrete mathematician and theoretical computer scientist whose research topics include combinatorial optimization, approximation algorithms, and online algorithms for scheduling. She is a professor in the faculty of mathematics and computer science at the University of Bremen.
Go to Profile#4739
Stephen Kent
#97965
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Stephen Thomas Kent is an American computer scientist, noted for his contributions to network security. Kent was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1969 he graduated from Ridgewood Preparatory School in Metairie, Louisiana, and in 1973 from Loyola University New Orleans with a B.S. degree in mathematics. From 1973 to 1974 he attended Tulane University as graduate student in mathematics, then moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a graduate student in computer science from 1974 to 1980. He received his master's degree from MIT in 1976, and his PhD in 1980.
Go to Profile#4740
Valérie Vilgrain
#119150
Overall Influence
#4741
Michael Michal
#119152
Overall Influence
#4742
François Flückiger
#84320
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
François Flückiger is a French computer scientist who worked at CERN. He was selected for induction in 2013 in the Internet Hall of Fame. Internet contributions Flückiger was in charge of the CERN external network. He contributed to the creation of CCIRN , RIPE and Ebone . Flückiger was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in August 2013 for his leadership in establishing the Internet in Europe.
Go to Profile#4743
Nagarajan Ranganathan
#84732
Overall Influence
1961 - 2018 (57 years)
Nagarajan Ranganathan was a Distinguished University Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of South Florida, Tampa, United States. He was elected as a Fellow of IEEE in 2002 for his contributions to algorithms and architectures for VLSI systems. He was elected Fellow of AAAS in 2012. He served as the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on VLSI Systems.
Go to Profile#4744
Jason H. Moore
#98021
Overall Influence
Jason H. Moore is a translational bioinformatics scientist, biomedical informatician, and human geneticist, the Edward Rose Professor of Informatics and Director of the Institute for Biomedical Informatics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is also Senior Associate Dean for Informatics and Director of the Division of Informatics in the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Informatics.
Go to Profile#4745
Andreas Ziegler
#119218
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#4746
Alan Daugherty
#119223
Overall Influence
#4747
Matt Robshaw
#77740
Overall Influence
Matthew John Barton "Matt" Robshaw is a cryptographer. Formerly a lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London and a member of the cryptography research group at France Telecom's Orange Labs, he is now a Technical Fellow at Impinj. He coordinated the Symmetric Techniques Virtual Lab for ECRYPT. Robshaw's notable work includes the cryptanalysis of a number of cryptographic primitives, including the extension of linear cryptanalysis to use multiple approximations, and the design of the block ciphers Crab and RC6.
Go to Profile#4748
Mitsunori Fukuda
#119275
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#4749
Hideki Yoshikawa
#119282
Overall Influence
#4750
Stephen Lin
#119287
Overall Influence
