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,
#4901
Joseph S. Ross
#121156
Overall Influence
#4902
Mark Coeckelbergh
#77729
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Mark Coeckelbergh is a Belgian philosopher of technology. He is Professor of Philosophy of Media and Technology at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Vienna and former President of the Society for Philosophy and Technology. He was previously Professor of Technology and Social Responsibility at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK, Managing Director of the 3TU Centre for Ethics and Technology, and a member of the Philosophy Department of the University of Twente. Before moving to Austria, he has lived and worked in Belgium, the UK, and the Netherlands. He is the author of sev...
Go to Profile#4903
Sharad Malik
#121176
Overall Influence
#4904
Charles Lee Isbell, Jr.
#103857
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Charles Lee Isbell Jr. is an American computationalist, researcher, and educator. He is Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Before joining the faculty there, he was a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing starting in 2002, and served as John P. Imlay, Jr. Dean of the College from July 2019 to July 2023. His research interests focus on machine learning and artificial intelligence, particularly interactive and human-centered AI. He has published over 100 scientific papers. In addition to his research work, Isbe...
Go to Profile#4905
Edo Vellenga
#121223
Overall Influence
#4906
Quan Zou
#121234
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#4907
Nadeem Javaid
#121265
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
#4908
Andreas Uhl
#121266
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
#4909
Michael K. Lindell
#121272
Overall Influence
#4910
Leonardo Pantoni
#121289
Overall Influence
#4911
Ken Jacobson
#121324
Overall Influence
#4912
Kasper Hornbæk
#116483
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Kasper Hornbæk is a professor of Computer Science at the University of Copenhagen. He was inducted into the CHI Academy in 2020. Kasper Hornbæk received both his M.Sc. as well as his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Copenhagen. He is best known for his work on usability in human-computer interaction.
Go to Profile#4914
Kikuo Okuyama
#121357
Overall Influence
#4915
Grant Drumheller
#38433
Overall Influence
Grant Drumheller is an American figurative painter. Biography Drumheller earned his BFA and Master of Fine Arts degrees cum laude from Boston University. He also studied with Philip Guston, James Weeks and Reed Kay. Drumheller has taught at Boston University, the Art Institute of Boston and is currently Professor of Art at the University of New Hampshire. Originally he painted large works alluding to myth and allegory, but now works on smaller pieces.
Go to Profile#4916
Jeremy Z. Kolter
#121390
Overall Influence
#4917
Wenke Lee
#121412
Overall Influence
#4918
Laura Grigori
#60153
Overall Influence
Laura Grigori is a French-Romanian applied mathematician and computer scientist known for her research on numerical linear algebra and communication-avoiding algorithms. She is a director of research for the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation in Paris, and heads the "Alpines" scientific computing project jointly affiliated with INRIA and the of Sorbonne University.
Go to Profile#4919
Gordon Luikart
#121453
Overall Influence
#4920
Janos Sztipanovits
#93567
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Janos Sztipanovits is an electrical engineer and computer scientist. He is the E. Bronson Ingram Distinguished Professor of Engineering at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Vanderbilt University. He is the founding director of the Institute for Software Integrated Systems at Vanderbilt.
Go to Profile#4921
Herbert Nagasawa
#121463
Overall Influence
#4922
Francisco Jurado
#121486
Overall Influence
#4923
Asbjørn Drewes
#114884
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Asbjørn Mohr Drewes is a clinical professor at Aalborg University and a consultant at Aalborg University Hospital. He specialises in internal medicine, gastroenterology and hepatology. Asbjørn Mohr Drewes defended his Ph.D. thesis at Aalborg University in 1998 and his doctoral thesis at Aarhus University in 1999. He is currently the director of the research group Mech-Sense.
Go to Profile#4924
Thomas R. G. Green
#94898
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Thomas R. G. Green is a British cognitive scientist, and Visiting Professor at the University of York, known for his contribution to cognitive modelling and the development of the concept of cognitive dimensions of notations.
Go to Profile#4925
Kurt Vanlehn
#121517
Overall Influence
#4926
Hideki Imai
#89829
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
is an information theorist and cryptographer, currently the director of Research Center for Information Security , National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology and a full professor at Chuo University. His notable work includes research in coding theory, block cipher design, and public-key cryptography.
Go to Profile#4927
Katy Börner
#67597
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Katy Börner is an engineer, scholar, author, educator, and speaker specializing in data analysis and visualization, particularly in the areas of science and technology studies and biomedical applications. Based out of Indiana University, Bloomington, Börner is the Victor Yngve Distinguished Professor of Engineering & Information Science in the Department of Intelligent Systems Engineering and the Department of Information and Library Science at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering and a member of the Core Cognitive Science Faculty. Since 2012, she has also held the pos...
Go to Profile#4928
Lie-Liang Yang
#103847
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Lie-Liang Yang is a Chinese-born computer scientist. He is the professor of wireless communications in the School of Electronics and Computer Science, at the University of Southampton, United Kingdom.
Go to Profile#4929
Kai Zhu
#121562
Overall Influence
#4930
Sulev Mäeltsemees
#48788
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Sulev Mäeltsemees is an Estonian public administration and local government scholar and generally held to be the father of municipal autonomy in Estonia. Born in Tallinn, Mäeltsemees received his degrees from the University of Tartu and worked, among others, as director of the Department of Social Infrastructure and Regional Economics of the Institute of Economics of the Estonian Academy of Sciences . He is currently professor and chair of regional policy at Tallinn University of Technology, where he already worked from 1978 to 1986 and currently also serves as dean of the Faculty of Social S...
Go to Profile#4931
Benjamin Besse
#121589
Overall Influence
#4932
Christine Jérôme
#121596
Overall Influence
#4933
Joan Jonas
#7860
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Joan Jonas is an American visual artist and a pioneer of video and performance art, and one of the most important artists to emerge in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Jonas' projects and experiments were influential in the creation of video performance art as a medium. Her influences also extended to conceptual art, theatre, performance art and other visual media. She lives and works in New York and Nova Scotia, Canada.
Go to Profile#4934
Hiroshi Takayanagi
#121622
Overall Influence
#4935
Chris Harrison
#103791
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Chris Harrison is a British-born, American computer scientist and entrepreneur, working in the fields of human–computer interaction, machine learning and sensor-driven interactive systems. He is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and director of the Future Interfaces Group within the Human–Computer Interaction Institute. He has previously conducted research at AT&T Labs, Microsoft Research, IBM Research and Disney Research. He is also the CTO and co-founder of Qeexo, a machine learning and interaction technology startup.
Go to Profile#4936
Joachim von zur Gathen
#95847
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Joachim von zur Gathen is a German and computer scientist. His research spans several areas in mathematics and computer science, including computational complexity, cryptography, finite fields, and computer algebra.
Go to Profile#4937
James A. D. W. Anderson
#28450
Overall Influence
James Arthur Dean Wallace Anderson, known as James Anderson, is a retired member of academic staff in the School of Systems Engineering at the University of Reading, England, where he used to teach compilers, algorithms, fundamentals of computer science and computer algebra, programming and computer graphics.
Go to Profile#4938
Hans Witsenhausen
#91359
Overall Influence
1930 - 2016 (86 years)
Hans S. Witsenhausen is notable for his work in the fields of control and information theory, and their intersection. He has many foundational results including the intrinsic model in stochastic decentralized control, the Witsenhausen counterexample, his work on Turán graph, and the various notions of common information in information theory.
Go to Profile#4939
Yingxu. Wang
#121659
Overall Influence
#4940
De-shuang Huang
#121667
Overall Influence
#4941
Subburaman Mohan
#121672
Overall Influence
#4942
Tom Novak
#64872
Overall Influence
Thomas P. Novak is the Denit Trust Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Marketing at The George Washington University School of Business, where he co-directs the Center for the Connected Consumer and the Connected Consumer Panel. Professor Novak’s research since 1993 has focused exclusively on consumer behavior in online environments and digital marketing. His current research interests deal with consumer motivations for using social media, the impact of the social web on consumer well-being, and post-social media marketing including the gamification of marketing, the Internet of Things, an...
Go to Profile#4943
Margaret Philomena Rayman
#121678
Overall Influence
#4944
Divyakanth Agrawal
#121696
Overall Influence
#4945
Anne-Marie Kermarrec
#115604
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Anne-Marie Kermarrec is a French computer scientist. She is Professor at EPFL , where she heads the Scalable Computing Systems Laboratory at the School of Computer and Communication Sciences. Her research concerns distributed computing, epidemic algorithms, peer-to-peer networks, and systematic support for machine learning.
Go to Profile#4946
Hong-seok Lee
#121718
Overall Influence
#4947
Yong-dong Zhang
#121736
Overall Influence
#4948
Mark Wilde
#109458
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Mark McMahon Wilde is an American quantum information scientist. He is an Associate Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University, and he is also a Fields Member in the School of Applied and Engineering Physics and the Department of Computer Science at Cornell.
Go to Profile#4949
Vincenzo Fogliano
#121794
Overall Influence
#4950
Ivar Andreas Mjör
#121814
Overall Influence
