Top Influential Computer Scientists Today
Computer science as an academic discipline is less than a hundred years old, but our fascination with mechanical devices and procedures dates back millennia. Today, computer science is a huge academic (and professional) discipline, as the modern world has embraced computing in every facet of life—from big data in physics laboratories to social media apps on ubiquitous smartphones. In what follows, we’ll look at the most influential people in the field of computer science today.
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Computer science as an academic discipline is less than a hundred years old, but our fascination with mechanical devices and procedures dates back millennia. The 9th century Persian astronomer and mathematician Muhammad bin Musa al-Khwarizmi is often credited with the invention of the algorithm, a key idea undergirding all of computing. But modern computing started with the groundbreaking work of British mathematician and code-breaker Alan Turing. Turing’s ideas about mechanical procedure, later known as “Turing Machines,” laid the theoretical groundwork for what was to come-digital computers, programming languages, and the modern world of the Internet and smart phone. Turing, truly, was the father of computer science.
By 1946, the world’s first programmable electronic computer, called the ENIAC, launched an arms race for ever more powerful computer hardware, and the study of computer programming and algorithms design was also in full swing. The first academic degree in the fledgling field of computer science, called the Cambridge Diploma in Computer Science, was awarded in 1953 by the University of Cambridge in England. The degree proved to be auspicious, as it was quickly recognized around the world, as work continued and expanded in earnest on computing in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. Computer science quickly became a “hot” and important academic degree, particularly as personal computers arrived in the 1970s and 80s. Today, computer science is a huge academic (and professional) discipline, as the modern world has embraced computing in every facet of life-from big data in physics laboratories to social media apps on ubiquitous smartphones.
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In what follows, we look at influential computer scientists over the last decade. Based on our ranking methodology, these individuals have significantly impacted the academic discipline of computer science within 2010-2020. Influence can be produced in a variety of ways. Some have had revolutionary ideas, some may have climbed by popularity, but all are academicians primarily working in computer science. Read more about our methodology.
Note: This isn’t simply a list of the most influential computer scientists alive today. Here we are focused on the number of citations and web presence of scholars in the last 10 years. There are other highly influential scholars who simply haven’t been cited and talked about as much in the last 10 years, whereas some new faces have been making a splash in the news, speaking events, and publishing, publishing, publishing. Our AI is time sensitive. To find some of the big names you might have expected to see here, we encourage you to use our dynamic ranking system and check influence over the past 20 and 50 years.
Want more? Discover the history of influential computer scientists:Of All Time | Last 50 Years | Last 20 Years | Black Computer Scientists | Women Computer Scientists Note: The time-specific links above take you to rankings that dynamically change as our AI learns new things!
Top Influential Computer Scientists 2010-2020
- #1
Daphne Koller
#1375Overall Influence1968 - Present (57 years) - #2
Tim Berners-Lee
#56Overall Influence1955 - Present (70 years) - #3
Yann LeCun
#191Overall Influence1960 - Present (65 years) - #4
Scott Aaronson
#2078Overall Influence1981 - Present (44 years) - #5
Erik Demaine
#5876Overall Influence1981 - Present (44 years) - #6
Donald Knuth
#27Overall Influence1938 - Present (87 years)Donald Ervin Knuth is an American computer scientist and mathematician. He is a professor emeritus at Stanford University. He is the 1974 recipient of the ACM Turing Award, informally considered the Nobel Prize of computer science. Knuth has been called the “father of the analysis of algorithms”. - #7
Zvi Galil
#4060Overall Influence1947 - Present (78 years)Zvi Galil is an Israeli-American computer scientist and mathematician. Galil served as the president of Tel Aviv University from 2007 through 2009. From 2010 to 2019, he was the dean of the Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing. His research interests include the design and analysis of algorithms, computational complexity and cryptography. He has been credited with coining the terms stringology and sparsification. He has published over 200 scientific papers and is listed as an ISI highly cited researcher. - #8
Geoffrey Hinton
#140Overall Influence1947 - Present (78 years) - #9
Nick Bostrom
#186Overall Influence1973 - Present (52 years) - #10
Nancy Lynch
#4885Overall Influence1948 - Present (77 years) - #11
Manuel Blum
#1115Overall Influence1938 - Present (87 years) - #12
Shafi Goldwasser
#895Overall Influence1958 - Present (67 years) - #13
Michael J. Fischer
#3870Overall Influence1942 - Present (83 years) - #14
Stuart J. Russell
#353Overall Influence1962 - Present (63 years) - #15
Wendy Hall
#5410Overall Influence1952 - Present (73 years)Dame Wendy Hall is a British computer scientist. She is Regius Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton. Early life and education Wendy Hall was born in west London and educated at Ealing Grammar School for Girls. She studied for undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in mathematics at the University of Southampton. She completed her Bachelor of Science degree in 1974, and her Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1977. Her doctoral thesis was titled Automorphisms and coverings of Klein surfaces. She later completed a Master of Science degree in Computing at City University ... - #16
Gerald Jay Sussman
#1008Overall Influence1947 - Present (78 years) - #17
Charles E. Leiserson
#80811Overall Influence1953 - Present (72 years) - #18
Hal Abelson
#1376Overall Influence1947 - Present (78 years)Harold Abelson is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , a founding director of both Creative Commons and the Free Software Foundation, creator of the MIT App Inventor platform, and co-author of the widely-used textbook Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, sometimes also referred to as “the wizard book.” - #19
Lenore Blum
#4928Overall Influence1942 - Present (83 years) - #20
Raj Reddy
#881Overall Influence1937 - Present (88 years) - #21
Oskar von Stryk
#16526Overall Influence - #22
Bruce Schneier
#529Overall Influence1963 - Present (62 years) - #23
Subhash Khot
#13613Overall Influence1978 - Present (47 years) - #24
Adi Shamir
#474Overall Influence1952 - Present (73 years) - #25
Andy Hopper
#130960Overall Influence1953 - Present (72 years)
Honorable Mentions in Computer Scientists
- Luciano Floridi, University of Oxford
- Kristian Kersting, Technische Universität Darmstadt
- Susan Landau, Tufts University
- Barbara Liskov, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- David Parnas, McMaster University
- Mike Paterson, University of Warwick
- Gunther Schmidt, Universität der Bundeswehr München
- Gene Spafford, Purdue University
- Bjarne Stroustrup, Columbia University
- Jeffrey Ullman, Stanford University
- Manuela M. Veloso, Carnegie Mellon University
- Luis von Ahn, Carnegie Mellon University
Cybersecurity is an emerging field within the discipline of computer science. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, jobs in the field of cybersecurity are expected to grow at an extremely robust rate of 33% between now and 2030. We explore this emerging field in the following articles:
- Is an Online Bachelor’s Degree in Cybersecurity Worth It?
- How To Get an Online Bachelor’s Degree in Cybersecurity
- How To Become a Cybersecurity Analyst
- What Jobs Can I Get with an Online Bachelor’s Degree in Cybersecurity?
- What Jobs Can I Get with an Online Master’s Degree in Cybersecurity?
A number of highly-ranked schools now offer online degree programs in cybersecurity. To learn more about one of these top programs, check out our interview with Jason Denno from the University of Arizona, discussing their online degree program in cybersecurity.
