- Per Bak (1948–2002) Danish theoretical physicist, to whom is attributed the development of the concept of self-organized criticality.
- Bela H. Banathy (1919–2003) Hungarian systems scientist, design scientist, educator, author and coordinator of many international systems research conferences.
- Béla A. Bánáthy (born 1946?) American systems scientist, who works at the International Systems Institute at the Saybrook Graduate School.
- Yaneer Bar-Yam (born 1959) American physicist, systems scientist and founding president of the New England Complex Systems Institute.
- Gregory Bateson (1904–1980) British anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields.
- Kenneth D. Bailey (born 1943) American sociologist, who worked in the field of research methods, systems theory and environmental demography and ecology.
- Stafford Beer (1926–2002) British management scientist, known for his work in the fields of operational research and management cybernetics.
- Maamar Bettayeb (born 1953) Algerian control theorist and systems scientist in the fields of singular value decomposition and model order reduction.
- Harold Stephen Black (1898–1983) American electrical engineer, who revolutionized the field of applied electronics by inventing the negative feedback amplifier in 1927.
- Alexander Bogdanov (1873–1928) Russian physician, philosopher, economist, science fiction writer, and revolutionary.
- Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British economist, educator, peace activist, poet, religious mystic, devoted Quaker, systems scientist, and interdisciplinary philosopher.
- Murray Bowen (1913–1990) American psychiatrist and pioneers of family therapy and systemic therapy.
- Valentino Braitenberg (1926–2011) German neurologist and cyberneticist and pioneer in embodied cognitive science.
- Richard Peirce Brent (born 1946) Australian mathematician and computer scientist who is known for Brent's method of root finding.
- Gerrit Broekstra (born 1941) Dutch scientist and professor of organizational behavior and systems sciences.
- Walter F. Buckley (1922–2006) American sociologist, and among the first to apply General systems theory to sociology.
- Mario A. Bunge (1919–2020) Argentine-Canadian physicist and philosopher, author of the 8-volume Treatise on Basic Philosophy (1974–1989), comprising semantics, ontology, epistemology, philosophy of science and ethics. His systemism includes the CESM (composition-environment-structure-mechanism) model for describing and explaining concrete systems.
- J. Doyne Farmer (born 1952) American physicist, and one of the founding fathers of chaos theory.
- Mitchell Feigenbaum (1944–2019) American mathematical physicist whose pioneering studies in chaos theory led to the discovery of the Feigenbaum constants.
- Peter C. Fishburn (1936–2021) American scientist known as a pioneer in the field of decision making processes.
- Irmgard Flügge-Lotz (1903–1974) German-American mathematician who developed the theory of discontinuous automatic control systems and laid the foundation for automatic on-off aircraft control in jets
- Heinz von Foerster (1911–2002) Austrian-American scientist combining physics and philosophy. Together with Warren McCulloch, Norbert Wiener, and John von Neumann, Heinz von Foerster was the architect of cybernetics.
- Jay Forrester (1918–2016) American computer engineer, known as founder of System Dynamics, which deals with the simulation of interactions between objects in dynamic systems.
- Charles François (1922–2019) Belgian specialist in the field of cybernetics and systems science, known as founding editor of the International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics
- Christian Fuchs (born 1976) Austrian social scientist who focuses his research on information society theory, social theory, critical theory.
- Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American visionary, designer, architect, poet, author, and inventor. He was one of the first to propagate a systemic worldview and explored principles of energy efficiency and material efficiency in the fields of architecture, engineering and design.
- Murray Gell-Mann (1929–2019) American physicist and Nobel Prize winner in physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles.
- Ralph Waldo Gerard (1900–1974) American neurophysiologist and behavioral scientist and one of the founders of the Society for General Systems Research.
- Jamshid Gharajedaghi (born c. 1940) American organizational theorist, management consultant, and Adjunct Professor of Systems thinking
- Tom Gilb (born 1940) American systems engineer.
- Harry H. Goode (1909–1960) American computer engineer and systems engineer and professor at University of Michigan. Until his death his was president of the National Joint Computer Committee (NJCC). He wrote the famous System Engineering Handbook together with Robert Engel Machol.
- Brian Goodwin (1931–2009) Canadian mathematician and biologist
- Barbara J. Grosz American computer scientist who developed the SharedPlans model for collaborative planning in multi-agent systems
- Arthur David Hall III (1925–2006) American electrical engineer. He worked for years at Bell Labs. He was one of the founders of the (IEEE) and was among the first general systems theorists. He wrote A methodology of Systems Engineering from 1962.
- Stephen G. Haines (1945–2012) American organizational theorist and management consultant
- Debora Hammond American historian of science and a systems scientist
- Albert Hanken (1926–2016) Dutch mathematician and Emeritus Professor Systems theory at the University of Twente
- Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Nobel prize economist and a philosopher who made pioneering contributions to complexity theory. He notably wrote The Theory of Complex Phenomena (1967).
- Francis Heylighen (born 1960) Belgian cybernetician working on self-organization and the evolution of complex systems
- Derek Hitchins (born 1935) British systems engineer and was professor in engineering management, in command & control and in systems science at the Cranfield University, Bedfordshire, England.
- John Henry Holland (1929–2015) American pioneer in complex system and nonlinear science. He is known as the father of genetic algorithms.
- Simon Ramo (1913–2016) American physicist, engineer, and business leader
- Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian mathematician, psychologist and systems scientist; cofounder of the International Society for Systems Science
- Eberhardt Rechtin (1926–2006) American systems engineer and respected authority in aerospace systems and systems architecture
- Barry Richmond (1947–2002) American systems scientist
- Luis M. Rocha (born 1966) Portuguese-American systems thinker
- Robert Rosen (1934–1998) American biologist and systems thinker
- Len Troncale (born 1943) American biologist, systems theorist, Professor Emeritus of Cellular and Molecular Biology, and former Director of the Institute for Advanced Systems Studies at the California State Polytechnic University
- Arnold Tustin (1899–1994) British engineer
- Jaan Tallinn (born 1972) co-developer of the original Skype distributed system, co-founder of the Future of Life Institute and Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, accredited/trained physicist
- Stuart A. Umpleby (born 1944) American cyberneticist working in the field of cross-cultural management, cybernetics, group facilitation methods, systems science and the use of computer networks.
- John Nelson Warfield (1925–2009) American electrical engineering and systems scientist, and member of the Academic Committee of the International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics.
- Kevin Warwick (born 1954) British cybernetician with interests in artificial intelligence, robotics, control systems and biomedical engineering, especially implant technology.
- Duncan J. Watts American professor of sociology
- Paul Watzlawick (1921–2007)
- Geoffrey West (born 1940) British physicist
- Douglas R. White (1942–2021) American complexity researcher, social anthropologist and sociologist.
- Brian Wilson British systems scientist, known for his development of Soft systems methodology.
- Stephen Wolfram (born 1959) English theorist known for his work in theoretical particle physics, cellular automata, complexity theory, and computer algebra.
- A. Wayne Wymore (1927–2011) American mathematician and systems engineer. Founder and first Chairman of Systems and Industrial Engineering (SIE) Department at the University of Arizona.
- Warren Weaver (1894–1978) American mathematician and communication scientist
- Norbert Wiener (1894–1964) American mathematician and one of the founders of cybernetics
- Lotfi Asker Zadeh
- Erik Christopher Zeeman (1925–2016) Japanese-born British mathematician known for work in geometric topology and singularity theory.
- Gerard de Zeeuw (born 1936) Dutch scientist and professor Mathematical modelling of complex social systems at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
This list is based on the following sources:
- ASC cybernetics, A history of cybernetics, website 2007.
- Charles François, Systemics and cybernetics in historical perspective, in: Systems Research and Behavioral Science, jaargang 16, p. 203–219, 1999
- ISSS, Luminaries of the Systemics Movement Archived 2007-08-20 at the Wayback Machine, webpage, 2007/06/10.
- Principia Cybernetica, list of cybernetic and systems scientists, website 2007.
And further:
- The Wikipedia articles in the field of systems, systems science and systems theory. For example: catastrophe theory, chaos theory, complex adaptive system, complex systems, control theory, cybernetics, ecosystem ecology, multi-agent system, systems biology, systems ecology, systems engineering and systems theory.
- Other notable sources, listed separately.