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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential female people in Mathematics,
#851
Helen MacGillivray
#65003
Overall Influence
Helen Louise MacGillivray is an Australian statistician and statistics educator. She is the former president of the International Statistical Institute, the International Association for Statistical Education, and the Statistical Society of Australia, and chair of the United Nations Global Network of Institutions for Statistical Training.
Go to Profile#852
Doreen Thomas
#75000
Overall Influence
Doreen Anne Thomas, is a mathematician and electrical and mechanical engineer. She is an emeritus professor of Mechanical Engineering at Melbourne University and director of the start-up company MineOptima.
Go to Profile#853
Alex James
#62859
Overall Influence
Alex James is a British and New Zealand applied mathematician and mathematical biologist whose research involves the mathematical modeling of wildlife behaviour, gender disparities in academia, and the epidemiology of COVID-19. She is a professor in the school of mathematics and statistics at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, and a researcher with the Te Pūnaha Matatini Centre of Research Excellence for Complex Systems, where she is Deputy Director for Industry and Stakeholder Engagement.
Go to Profile#854
Marie Françoise Ouedraogo
#31222
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Marie Françoise Ouedraogo is a Burkinabé mathematician. She has previously served in government as permanent secretary of the national policy of good governance. Biography Born in December 1967, Ouedraogo was raised in Ouagadougou. She was drawn to the study of mathematics at a young age as she received good grades without putting forth much effort. She was educated at the University of Ouagadougou, where she wrote her first thesis on Lie superalgebras in 1999. Akry Koulibaly served as her doctoral adviser. From 2005 to 2008 Ouedraogo served as the permanent secretary of the national policy of good governance.
Go to Profile#855
Coralie Colmez
#24909
Overall Influence
1988 - Present (36 years)
Coralie Colmez is a French author and tutor in mathematics and mathematics education. Early life and career Coralie Colmez is the daughter of mathematicians Pierre Colmez and Leila Schneps. Colmez was raised in Paris, France.
Go to Profile#856
Lynda Wiest
#75279
Overall Influence
Lynda R. Wiest is an American mathematics education researcher and professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. Research Wiest investigates mathematics education, educational equity, and teacher education.
Go to Profile#857
Ralucca Gera
#75512
Overall Influence
Ralucca Michelle Gera is an American mathematician specializing in graph theory, including graph coloring, dominating sets, and spectral graph theory. Her interests also include personalized learning in mathematics education. She is a professor of mathematics at the Naval Postgraduate School.
Go to Profile#858
Elisabeth Frink
#14560
Overall Influence
1930 - 1993 (63 years)
Dame Elisabeth Jean Frink was an English sculptor and printmaker. Her Times obituary noted the three essential themes in her work as "the nature of Man; the 'horseness' of horses; and the divine in human form".
Go to Profile#859
Mary Silber
#57975
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Mary Catherine Silber is a professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Chicago who works on dynamical systems, in bifurcation theory and pattern formation. Education and career Silber completed her Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989, under the supervision of Edgar Knobloch. Her dissertation was Symmetry and Spatial Pattern Selection.
Go to Profile#860
Xiaojun Chen
#75097
Overall Influence
Xiaojun Chen is a Chinese applied mathematician, Chair Professor of Applied Mathematics at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her research interests include nonsmooth and nonconvex optimization, complementarity theory, and stochastic equilibrium problems.
Go to Profile#861
Chiara Sabatti
#57745
Overall Influence
Chiara Sabatti is an Italian and American statistician and statistical geneticist, and a professor of biomedical data science and of statistics at Stanford University. Her research involves the analysis of high-throughput genomics data.
Go to Profile#862
Alison Harcourt
#39401
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (95 years)
Alison Grant Harcourt is an Australian mathematician and statistician most well-known for co-defining the branch and bound algorithm along with Ailsa Land whilst carrying out research at the London School of Economics. She was also part of the team which developed a poverty line as part of the Henderson Inquiry into poverty in Australia and helped to introduce the double randomisation method of ordering candidates used in Australian elections.
Go to Profile#863
Alona Ben-Tal
#74820
Overall Influence
Alona Ben-Tal is an Israeli and New Zealand applied mathematician who works as an associate professor and deputy head of school in the School of Natural and Computational Sciences at Massey University. Her research concerns dynamical systems and the mathematical modeling of human and bird breathing and of electrical power systems.
Go to Profile#864
Carrie Diaz Eaton
#65791
Overall Influence
Carrie Diaz Eaton is an associate professor of digital and computational studies at Bates College, a co-founder of QUBES , and project director for Math Mamas. Diaz Eaton is a 1st generation Latina of Peruvian descent and is also known for her work in social justice in STEM higher education.
Go to Profile#865
Wiesława Nizioł
#63865
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Wiesława Krystyna Nizioł is a Polish mathematician, director of research at CNRS, based at Institut mathématique de Jussieu. Her research concerns arithmetic geometry, and in particular p-adic Hodge theory, Galois representations, and p-adic cohomology.
Go to Profile#866
Ruthmae Sears
#75581
Overall Influence
Ruthmae Sears is a Bahamian-American mathematics educator, focusing on systemic inequities that impede student understanding of mathematics. She is an associate professor for secondary mathematics education in the University of South Florida College of Education.
Go to Profile#867
Elżbieta Pleszczyńska
#54541
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Elżbieta Pleszczyńska is a Polish full professor of statistics, activist of disability rights movement. Biography She gained an M.Sc. in mathematics at University of Warsaw, Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry in 1956. She held position at Institute of Mathematics PAS until 1972. She received her Ph.D. in 1965 in the area of discriminant analysis . Her habilitation thesis, titled "Trend Estimation Problems in Time Series Analysis", was accepted in 1973.
Go to Profile#868
Guergana Petrova
#75796
Overall Influence
Guergana Petrova is an applied mathematician known for her research on numerical methods for solving differential equations. She is a professor of mathematics at Texas A&M University. Education and career Petrova earned bachelor's and master's degrees from Sofia University. She moved to the US for her doctoral studies, completing a Ph.D. at the University of South Carolina.
Go to Profile#869
Cami Sawyer
#72868
Overall Influence
Cameron Cunningham Sawyer is an American mathematician who has worked in New Zealand at Massey University and the Ministry of Education. Trained in algebraic topology, her work in New Zealand has focused on mathematics education, educational technology, distance learning, and the needs of Māori students in mathematics.
Go to Profile#870
Cristina Toninelli
#75492
Overall Influence
Cristina Toninelli is an Italian mathematician who works in France as a director of research for the French National Centre for Scientific Research , at the Centre de recherche en mathématiques de la décision of Paris Dauphine University. Her research concerns the probability theory and statistical mechanics of phase transitions in interacting particle systems, including bootstrap percolation, glass transitions, and jamming. She has also studied cellular automata and group testing.
Go to Profile#871
Dolores Richard Spikes
#48132
Overall Influence
1936 - 2015 (79 years)
Dolores Margaret Richard Spikes was an American mathematician and university administrator. Born in Baton Rouge, Dolores Richard attended public and parochial schools in that city and, still in her home city, went on to Southern University from which she earned her B.S. degree in mathematics in 1957. Also at Southern she met her future husband, Hermon Spikes.
Go to Profile#872
Jenny McNulty
#75773
Overall Influence
Jennifer McNulty is an American mathematician and academic administrator, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Her research is in combinatorics, specializing in matroid theory and graph theory.
Go to Profile#873
Cindy Greenwood
#80359
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Priscilla E. Greenwood is a Canadian mathematician who is a professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of British Columbia. She is known for her research in probability theory. Education and career Greenwood graduated from Duke University with a B.A. in 1959. She began her graduate studies in operations research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she became exposed to probability theory through a course on stochastic processes offered in 1960 by Henry McKean. Soon afterwards, she switched to the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she completed her Ph.D. in 1963 under the supervision of Joshua Chover.
Go to Profile#874
Pao-sheng Hsu
#75304
Overall Influence
Pao-sheng Hsu is a mathematics educator, Career Hsu completed her PhD under George Bachman at Polytechnic University in 1975; her dissertation was titled An Application of Compactification: Some Theorems on Maximal Ideals.
Go to Profile#875
Asha Rao
#74824
Overall Influence
Asha Rao is a mathematician and expert in cyber security. She is the Associate Dean, or Head of Department, of Mathematical Sciences and Professor at RMIT University. Education and career Rao completed her PhD in Algebra at the University of Pune. She started working at RMIT University as a lecturer in 1992, and became a Professor in 2016.
Go to Profile#876
Mariette Yvinec
#61101
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Mariette Yvinec is a French researcher in computational geometry at the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation in Sophia Antipolis. She is one of the developers of CGAL, a software library of computational geometry algorithms.
Go to Profile#877
Kaye A. de Ruiz
#75862
Overall Influence
Kaye A. de Ruiz is a mathematician and educator who has spent the majority of her career teaching calculus and statistics at the United States Air Force Academy. Education De Ruiz received her Bachelor of Science degree from Southern Oregon College and a Master of Science degree from Oregon State University. While working at the Air Force Academy faculty as an instructor, she completed a Ph.D. in applied statistics at the University of California, Riverside in 1990; her dissertation, A Mathematical Model for a Paired Comparison Experiment on a Continuum of Response, was jointly supervised by Robert J.
Go to Profile#878
Christina Birkenhake
#84772
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Christina Birkenhake is a German mathematician specializing in algebraic geometry. She is a lecturer at the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg, in the research group on algebra and geometry. Education and career After studying mathematics at the University of Münster beginning in 1982, Birkenhake earned her doctorate in 1989 from the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg. Her dissertation was Heisenberg-Gruppen ampler Geradenbündel auf abelschen Varietäten [Heisenberg groups of ample line bundles on abelian varieties], and her doctoral advisor was Herbert Lange.
Go to Profile#879
Jeanne Peiffer
#49426
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Jeanne Peiffer is a Luxembourg historian of mathematics. Contributions She deals with scientific journals in the 17th and 18th centuries, also from a scientific sociological point of view and with the aspect of the history of the specialization of mathematics journals, with perspective in the Renaissance in connection with geometry and optics, and the letter as a communication tool of mathematics in the 18th century.
Go to Profile#880
Christina Tønnesen-Friedman
#75877
Overall Influence
Christina Wiis Tønnesen-Friedman is a Danish-American mathematician specializing in Riemannian geometry, especially of Kähler manifolds and Sasakian manifolds. She is Marie Louise Bailey Professor of Mathematics at Union College in Schenectady, New York.
Go to Profile#881
Chris Stevens
#57079
Overall Influence
Terrie Christine Stevens, also known as T. Christine Stevens, is an American mathematician whose research concerns topological groups, the history of mathematics, and mathematics education. She is also known as the co-founder of Project NExT, a mentorship program for recent doctorates in mathematics, which she directed from 1994 until 2009.
Go to Profile#882
Sylvie Boldo
#73769
Overall Influence
Sylvie Boldo is a French mathematician and computer scientist. Her research combines automated theorem proving and computer arithmetic, focusing on the formal verification of floating-point arithmetic operations and of algorithms based on them. She is a director of research for the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation , affiliated with the Formal Methods Laboratory at Paris-Saclay University and the INRIA Saclay-Île-de-France Research Centre, where she co-leads the Toccata project for formally verified programs, certified tools and numerical computations. She is als...
Go to Profile#883
Laura Miller
#38940
Overall Influence
Laura A. Miller is an American mathematical biologist, known for her research in biomechanical applications of fluid dynamics including insect flight, jellyfish propulsion, and blood flow in embryonic hearts. She works at the University of Arizona as a professor of mathematics.
Go to Profile#884
Vera W. de Spinadel
#75016
Overall Influence
1929 - 2017 (88 years)
Vera Martha Winitzky de Spinadel was an Argentine mathematician. She was the first woman to gain a PhD in mathematics at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1958. Between 2010 and 2017, she was full Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Urban Planning of the University of Buenos Aires. In 1995, she was named Director of the Centre of Mathematics and Design. In April 2005 she inaugurated the Laboratory of Mathematics & Design, University Campus in Buenos Aires. From 1998 to her death she was the President of the International Mathematics and Design Associati...
Go to Profile#885
Dorothée Normand-Cyrot
#75800
Overall Influence
Dorothée Normand-Cyrot is a French applied mathematician and control theorist, known for her work on discrete-time nonlinear control systems. Education and career As a teenager entering the French university system in 1971, Normand-Cyrot found the grandes écoles closed off to her because she was female; instead she went to a lesser university to study mathematics. Her mentors included algebraist Andrée Ehresmann and, a few years later, control theorist Michel Fliess.
Go to Profile#886
YoungJu Choie
#69656
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
YoungJu Choie is a South Korean mathematician who works as a professor of mathematics at the Pohang University of Science and Technology . Her research interests include number theory and modular forms.
Go to Profile#887
Elizabeth A. Stuart
#60274
Overall Influence
Elizabeth A. Stuart is a professor of mental health, biostatistics, and health policy and management in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research involves causal inference and missing data in the statistics of mental health. She was a co-author on a study showing that post-suicide-attempt counseling can significantly reduce the risk of future suicide.
Go to Profile#888
Mythily Ramaswamy
#70978
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Mythily Ramaswamy is an Indian mathematician and professor in the Department of Mathematics at the TIFR Centre for Applicable Mathematics of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Bangalore. Her research involves functional analysis and controllability of partial differential equations.
Go to Profile#889
Irene Mulvey
#64728
Overall Influence
Irene Mulvey is an American mathematician. Mulvey completed her doctoral dissertation, titled Periodic, Recurrent and Non-Wandering Points for Continuous Maps of the Circle at Wesleyan University in 1982, where she was advised by Ethan Coven. She was appointed to a professorship at Fairfield University in 1985. In July 2020, Mulvey was elected president of the American Association of University Professors, succeeding Rudy Fichtenbaum. Later in an exclusive interview made by Vox, she claimed that state bills targeted at Diversity, equity and inclusion programs damage not only high education but...
Go to Profile#890
Jacqueline Chen
#52106
Overall Influence
Jacqueline H. Chen is an American mechanical engineer. She works in the Combustion Research Facility of Sandia National Laboratories, where she is a Senior Scientist. Her research applies massively parallel computing to the simulation of turbulent combustion.
Go to Profile#891
Hinke Osinga
#79599
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Hinke Maria Osinga is a Dutch mathematician and an expert in dynamical systems. She works as a professor of applied mathematics at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. As well as for her research, she is known as a creator of mathematical art.
Go to Profile#892
Judita Cofman
#75886
Overall Influence
1936 - 2001 (65 years)
Judita Cofman was a Yugoslav-German mathematician, the first person to earn a doctorate in mathematics at the University of Novi Sad. She was known for her work in finite geometry and for her books aimed at young mathematicians.
Go to Profile#893
Itala D'Ottaviano
#40823
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Itala Maria Loffredo D'Ottaviano is a Brazilian mathematical logician who was president of the Brazilian Logic Society. Topics in her work have included non-classical logic, paraconsistent logic, many-valued logic, and the history of logic.
Go to Profile#894
Marion Walter
#68203
Overall Influence
1928 - 2021 (93 years)
Marion Walter was an internationally-known mathematics educator and professor of mathematics at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon. There is a theorem named after her, called Marion Walter's Theorem or just Marion's Theorem as it is affectionately known.
Go to Profile#895
Jane Cronin Scanlon
#63906
Overall Influence
1922 - 2018 (96 years)
Jane Smiley Cronin Scanlon was an American mathematician and an emeritus professor of mathematics at Rutgers University. Her research concerned partial differential equations and mathematical biology.
Go to Profile#896
Julia Chuzhoy
#70533
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Julia Chuzhoy is an Israeli mathematician and computer scientist at the Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago, known for her research on approximation algorithms and graph theory. Education and career Chuzhoy earned bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in 1998, 2000, and 2004 respectively. Her dissertation, on approximation algorithms, was supervised by Seffi Naor. She has been at the Toyota Technological Institute since 2007, and also holds a position in the Computer Science Department of the University of Chicago.
Go to Profile#897
Christiane Tretter
#78920
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Christiane Tretter is a German mathematician and mathematical physicist who works as a professor in the Mathematical Institute of the University of Bern in Switzerland, and as managing director of the institute. Her research interests include differential operators and spectral theory.
Go to Profile#898
Tinne Hoff Kjeldsen
#73588
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Tinne Hoff Kjeldsen is a Danish mathematician who works in the Department of Science, Systems and Models at Roskilde University, and in the Department of Science Education at the University of Copenhagen. Her research interests include the philosophy of mathematics, history of mathematics, and mathematics education.
Go to Profile#899
Atsuko Miyaji
#69214
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Atsuko Miyaji is a Japanese cryptographer and number theorist known for her research on elliptic-curve cryptography and software obfuscation. She is a professor in the Division of Electrical, Electronic and Information Engineering, at Osaka University.
Go to Profile#900
Nathalie Wahl
#86125
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (48 years)
Nathalie Wahl is a Belgian mathematician specializing in topology, including algebraic topology, homotopy theory, and geometric topology. She is a professor of mathematics at the University of Copenhagen, where she directs the Copenhagen Center for Geometry and Topology.
Go to Profile