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,
#4851
David Goldblatt
#120648
Overall Influence
#4852
Sanja Fidler
#103573
Overall Influence
Sanja Fidler is an associate professor at the University of Toronto and Director of AI at Nvidia. She is also a co-founder of the Vector Institute, University of Toronto and Canada CIFAR AI Chair. Her research is in the areas of computer vision and artificial intelligence.
Go to Profile#4853
Weng Marc Marc Lim
#120671
Overall Influence
#4854
Subhasish Dey
#41674
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Subhasish Dey is a hydraulician and educator. He is known for his research on the hydrodynamics and acclaimed for his contributions in developing theories and solution methodologies of various problems on hydrodynamics, turbulence, boundary layer, sediment transport and open channel flow. He is currently a distinguished professor of Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur . Before, he worked as a professor of the department of civil engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur , where he served as the head of the department during 2013–15 and held the position of Brahmaputra Chair Professor during 2009–14 and 2015.
Go to Profile#4855
Diego Krapf
#48924
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Diego Krapf is an Argentine-Israeli-American physicist known for his work on anomalous diffusion and ergodicity breaking. He currently is a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Colorado State University.
Go to Profile#4856
Martin Nieger
#120704
Overall Influence
#4857
Elaine Shi
#100103
Overall Influence
Elaine Runting Shi is a Chinese and American computer scientist and cryptographer, whose research has included work on blockchain and smart contracts, secure distributed systems, and the oblivious RAM model, and cryptographic techniques for encrypted computation. She is an associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.
Go to Profile#4858
Giuseppe Vallar
#120749
Overall Influence
#4859
Mario Herrero
#108564
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Mario Herrero is a professor of sustainable food systems and global change in the Cornell CALS Department of Global Development. He is also the director of Food Systems & Global Change, a Cornell Atkinson Scholar, and a Nancy and Peter Meinig Family Investigator in the Life Sciences. With a focus on increasing the sustainability of food systems, Herrero has made significant contributions to the field, benefiting both people and the planet.
Go to Profile#4860
Hong Jin Fan
#120757
Overall Influence
#4861
Janice E. Cuny
#78269
Overall Influence
Janice E. Cuny, known as Jan, is an American computer scientist noted for leading efforts in broadening participation in computing. She is a past co-chair of CRA-W: Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research from 1997-2000.
Go to Profile#4862
Hiroshi Kasai
#120767
Overall Influence
#4863
Bernd Krämer
#88705
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Bernd Johann Krämer is a German computer scientist and professor emeritus of the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics. Biography Bernd Krämer studied electrical engineering and computer science at the Technical University of Berlin where he also obtained his doctorate in engineering. From 1975 to 1989 and again from 1990 to 1992 he was a scientist and project leader at the Gesellschaft für Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung, the German National Research Center of Computer Science, which later became part of the Fraunhofer Society. From 1989 to mid 1990 he was an adjunct professor in the Computer Science department at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.
Go to Profile#4864
Roni Rosenfeld
#103677
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Roni Rosenfeld is an Israeli-American computer scientist and computational epidemiologist, currently serving as the head of the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University. He is an international expert in machine learning, infectious disease forecasting, statistical language modeling and artificial intelligence.
Go to Profile#4865
George M Shaw
#120798
Overall Influence
#4866
Grigore Roșu
#112103
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Grigore Roșu is a computer science professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a researcher in the Information Trust Institute. He is known for his contributions in runtime verification, the K framework, matching logic, and automated coinduction.
Go to Profile#4867
Ferenc Andras Jolesz
#120805
Overall Influence
#4868
Athena Vakali
#118335
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Athena I. Vakali is a Greek computer scientist whose topics of research include social networks, cloud computing, smart cities, and content delivery networks. She is a professor of informatics at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
Go to Profile#4869
Mary Amanda Dew
#120813
Overall Influence
#4870
Meredith Gardner
#21420
Overall Influence
1912 - 2002 (90 years)
Meredith Knox Gardner was an American linguist and codebreaker. Gardner worked in counter-intelligence, decoding Soviet intelligence traffic regarding espionage in the United States, in what came to be known as the Venona project.
Go to Profile#4871
Kirk Martinez
#83212
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Kirk Martinez is a Professor in Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton UK. He gained a BSc in Physics from the University of Reading and a PhD in Image Processing in the department of Electronic Systems Engineering at the University of Essex. While Arts Computing Lecturer at Birkbeck College London he pioneered the digital imaging of paintings together with The National Gallery, London in the European project VASARI . This led to development of art imaging projects to print accurate art books , view high detail images on the web and find art images online . He has ...
Go to Profile#4872
Laura Waller
#90359
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Laura Ann Waller is a computer scientist and Ted Van Duzer Endowed Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She was awarded a Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Fellowship to develop microscopes to image deep structures within the brain in 2017 and won the 2018 SPIE Early Career Award.
Go to Profile#4873
Maya Ackerman
#79044
Overall Influence
Margareta Ackerman is a Russian-American computer scientist known for her research in cluster analysis and algorithmic composition of music. She is an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at Santa Clara University, and the founder and CEO of algorithmic music firm WaveAI.
Go to Profile#4874
Masayuki Murata
#120879
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
#4875
Satoshi Sasaki
#120880
Overall Influence
#4876
Anna Molka Ahmed
#34780
Overall Influence
1917 - 1994 (77 years)
Anna Molka Ahmed was a Pakistani artist and a pioneer of fine arts in the country after its independence in 1947. She was a professor of fine arts at the University of the Punjab in Lahore. Early life and career Anna Molka Ahmed was born Molly Bridger to Jewish parents, in London, England on 13 August 1917. Her mother was Polish and father was Russian. She converted to Islam at the age of 18 in 1935, before marrying Sheikh Ahmed in October 1939, who was then studying in London. She studied painting, sculpture and design at St. Martin School of Arts in London, and received a scholarship to th...
Go to Profile#4877
Chen Yutian
#100262
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Chen Yutian is a Chinese research scientist currently employed at Deepmind. Biography Chen earned his B.E. of Electronic Engineering from Tsinghua University in June 2007. He went to the University of California, Irvine, in the United States to pursue a doctoral degree, and received M.S. and Ph.D. of Computer Science in machine learning respectively in December 2009 and June 2013 respectively under the supervision of Professor Max Welling.
Go to Profile#4878
Sing Bing Kang
#100357
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Sing Bing Kang is a computer scientist known for his work in image-based modeling and rendering. He is a distinguished scientist at Zillow. Kang has a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University, completed in 1994. His dissertation, Robot Instruction by Human Demonstration, was supervised by Katsushi Ikeuchi. He worked for Microsoft Research before moving to Zillow.
Go to Profile#4879
Piero Picci
#120912
Overall Influence
#4880
Carlos Cruz-Diez
#6803
Overall Influence
1923 - 2019 (96 years)
Carlos Cruz-Diez was a Venezuelan artist said by some scholars to have been "one of the greatest artistic innovators of the 20th century." Career In 2020, the Pérez Art Museum Miami acquired Chromosaturation , a site specific installation initially conceived in 1965, and presented in venues all over the globe, such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston , United States; Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais in Paris ; and Museo Würth La Rioja, Spain .
Go to Profile#4881
Lars Kai Hansen
#120914
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
#4882
Mark Nixon
#111211
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Mark S. Nixon is an author, researcher, editor and an academic. He is the former president of IEEE Biometrics Council, and former vice-Chair of IEEE PSPB. He retired from his position as Professor of Electronics and Computer Science at University of Southampton in 2019.
Go to Profile#4883
Rupert Palme
#120928
Overall Influence
#4884
Shengxiang Yang
#120934
Overall Influence
#4885
John Wylie Lloyd
#120945
Overall Influence
#4886
Narayanan Shivakumar
#106098
Overall Influence
Shiva Shivakumar is an entrepreneur that worked for Google between 2001 and 2010. He was a Vice President of Engineering and Distinguished Entrepreneur, helped build Google's R&D centers at Seattle-Kirkland, Zurich, and Bangalore; he and his teams launched AdSense, Dremel, Sitemaps , Google Search Appliance and other key products.
Go to Profile#4887
Parvin Mirmiran
#120984
Overall Influence
#4888
Varda Shalev
#91989
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Varda Shalev is an Israeli medical researcher,a professor of medicine at the Tel Aviv University School of Public Health, and a primary care physician. She is also the co-founder and Chief Medical Officer of Alike. In 11.2022 she became a managing partner at Team8 foundry.
Go to Profile#4889
John M. Last
#55565
Overall Influence
1926 - 2019 (93 years)
John Murray Last was a preeminent Canadian public health scholar, prolific author, scientist and teacher whose reference texts are used by schools of public health as well as community medicine and epidemiology practitioners throughout the world. He was also an outspoken advocate for change, especially on the need for a stronger and more effective voice for public health, and the need for political action on climate change.
Go to Profile#4890
Hui Zou
#102076
Overall Influence
Hui Zou is currently a professor of statistics at the University of Minnesota. Selected publications Honors and awards Fellow of the American Statistical Association, 2019Highly Cited Researcher in Mathematics, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018Fellow, Institute of Mathematical Statistics, 2015.Institute of Mathematical Statistics Tweedie New Researcher Award, 2011National Science Foundation CAREER Award, 2009New Hot Paper in Mathematics, 2008Fast Breaking Paper in Mathematics, 2006
Go to Profile#4891
Thomas R. Gruber
#121013
Overall Influence
#4892
Robyn Owens
#54770
Overall Influence
Robyn Anne Owens is an Australian applied mathematician and computer scientist known for her research in computer vision and face recognition, and on the non-invasive imaging of lactation. Formerly a professor at the University of Western Australia and the deputy vice-chancellor for research at UWA, she retired in 2019, and remains affiliated with UWA as a professorial fellow.
Go to Profile#4893
Sudeep Tanwar
#121030
Overall Influence
#4894
Weiying Lin
#121034
Overall Influence
#4895
Luc Mouthon
#121050
Overall Influence
#4896
Cheng-lin Liu
#121086
Overall Influence
#4897
Vincent Hayward
#103893
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Vincent Hayward, was a scientist and engineer. His reaserch focus was on touch and haptics. He was a professor at Sorbonne University, Institute of Intelligent Systems and Robotics , where since 2008 he led a team dedicated to the study of tactile perception and the development of haptic devices. In 2020, he was elected to the French Academy of sciences.
Go to Profile#4898
Thomas Braun
#121099
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
#4899
Christian Szegedy
#121138
Overall Influence
#4900
Anil Kumar Saxena
#121143
Overall Influence
