Tim O’Reilly: The World’s 7 Most Powerful Data Scientists Posted on : Feb 19 - 2015

 1 Larry Page, CEO, Google

Google, more than any other company, has pushed the boundaries of what is possible with big data. Along with Sergey Brin, he built the search engine that tamed the web, solved the problem posed by John Wanamaker a century ago ("Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half."). And in his quest to provide access to all the world’s information, he has accumulated the largest database on the planet.

2 Jeff Hammerbacher, Chief Scientist, Cloudera and DJ Patil, Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Greylock Ventures

Hammerbacher and Patil coined the term "data scientist.” Now it’s Silicon Valley's hottest job title. These two built the first formal data science teams at Facebook and LinkedIn, respectively. Now at Cloudera, Hammerbacher has been key to driving the success of Hadoop as a standard tool for processing large, unstructured data sets with a network of commodity computers. As Data Scientist in Residence at Greylock, Patil is seeking out the next generation of hot data-driven startups.

3 Sebastian Thrun, Professor, Stanford University and Peter Norvig, Data Scientist, Google

When Thrun and Norvig decided to teach their Stanford course, Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, over the internet, they managed to sign up over 140,000 students and proved that AI is no longer just an academic subject. Norvig is Google's chief scientist. Thrun is leading Google’s efforts to build a self-driving car that relies on AI algorithms and the memory of hundreds of thousands of miles driven by Google’s street view vehicles, recording and measuring everything they saw.

4 Elizabeth Warren, Candidate, U.S. Senate (Massachusetts)

The banking system excesses that led to the economic crash of 2008 are an example of big data gone wrong. As the provisional head of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, Elizabeth Warren began the job of building the algorithmic checks and balances needed to counter the sorcerer's apprentices of Wall Street. In her campaign for the US Senate, she promises to continue that fight.

 5 Todd Park, CTO, Department of Health and Human Services

Park is leading the charge to transform American healthcare into a data driven business. From medical diagnostics to insurance reimbursement to community health statistics, he is finding ways to use data to make healthcare more effective and affordable.

6 Alex "Sandy" Pentland, Professor, MIT

Sandy is not only a wide-ranging polymath, he's providing the intellectual leadership on how sensors, the internet of things, geolocation and promiscuous connectivity can be used to uncover insights regarding human behavior. Sandy is also looking at privacy - an important adjunct to the data space - and helping develop the conversation regarding the trade-offs between privacy and the value of personal data.

7 Hod Lipson and Michael Schmidt, Computer Scientists, Cornell University

Cornell computer scientists Hod Lipson and Michael Schmidt created an AI program that could distill the laws of motion merely by observing data from the swings of a pendulum. In the process, they kicked off the field of robotic science in which AIs try to derive meaning from datasets too large or complex for humans to study. Source