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).

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List of the most influential female people in Mathematics,

#1451

Florentina Bunea

#110813
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Florentina Bunea is a Romanian-American statistician, interested in machine learning, the theory of empirical processes, and high-dimensional statistics. She is a professor at Cornell University. Education and Career Bunea earned Bachelor's and Master's degrees at the University of Bucharest in 1989 and 1991. After working as an assistant professor at the Politehnica University of Bucharest from 1991 to 1995, she returned to graduate study at the University of Washington. She earned her Ph.D. there in 2000; her dissertation, A Model Selection Approach to Partially Linear Regression, was supervised by Jon A.
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#1452

Bhramar Mukherjee

Bhramar Mukherjee
#105274
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Bhramar Mukherjee is an Indian-American biostatistician, data scientist, professor and researcher. She is the John D. Kalbfleisch Distinguished University Professor, John D. Kalbfleisch Collegiate Professor and the Chair of Department of Biostatistics, a professor of epidemiology and global public health at the University of Michigan. She serves as the associate director for Quantitative Data Sciences at University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center. Mukherjee holds a Senior Honorary Visiting Fellow position at the Biostatistics Unit of the Medical Research Council, working on the theme of population health at the University of Cambridge, UK.
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#1453

Bettina Eick

#122981
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Bettina Eick is a German mathematician specializing in computational group theory. She is Professor of Mathematics at the Technische Universität Braunschweig. Life and education Eick was born on May 16, 1968, in Bremervörde, Germany, to Hans and Eva Eick. She attended the Rheinische-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen from 1987 to 1993. During that time she spent a year at the Queen Mary and Westfield College doing mathematical work under the direction of Charles Leedham-Green. In 1993 she completed her Diplom thesis under the supervision of Joachim Neubüser.
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#1454

Sonia Natale

#125387
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Sonia Luján Natale is an Argentine mathematician specializing in abstract algebra. She works as a professor of mathematics at the National University of Córdoba, where she earned her Ph.D. in 1999, and as a researcher for the National Scientific and Technical Research Council.
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#1455

Tatyana Krivobokova

#106729
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Tatyana Krivobokova is a Kazakh statistician known for her work on spline estimators, with applications in biophysics and econometrics. She is University Professor for Statistics with Applications in Economics at the University of Vienna.
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#1456

Emily Simonoff

#45983
Overall Influence
Emily Simonoff is Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services Neuropsychiatry Service, head of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry department at the Institute of Psychiatry and lead for the CAMHS Clinical Academic Group at King's Health Partners, King's College London.
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#1457

Weiwen Miao

#122914
Overall Influence
Weiwen Miao is a Chinese-American statistician, statistics educator, and scholar of legal statistics and nonparametric statistics. She is a professor of mathematics and statistics at Haverford College.
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#1458

Carol K. Redmond

#91810
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Carol K. Redmond is an American biostatistician known for her research on breast cancer. She is Distinguished Service Professor Emerita in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Pittsburgh.
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#1459

Galit Shmueli

#82221
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Galit Shmueli is a data scientist who works in Taiwan as Tsing Hua Distinguished Professor at the Institute of Service Science, National Tsing Hua University. She is the author of many textbooks in business statistics and is known for her work on information quality, and on clarifying the difference between explanations and predictions in statistical analyses.
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#1460

Sharon Arroyo

#120792
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Sharon Filipowski Arroyo is an American applied mathematician and operations researcher who works for Boeing as a Boeing Technical Fellow. She works in the Applied Mathematics Group of Boeing Research and Technology on mathematical optimization applications in aircraft manufacturing and management.
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#1461

Heide Gluesing-Luerssen

#123333
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Heide Gluesing-Luerssen is a German mathematician specializing in algebraic coding theory. She is currently the Royster Research Professor at University of Kentucky. Education and career Gluesing-Luerssen earned her doctorate in 1991 from the University of Bremen, and taught in the mathematics department of the University of Oldenburg from 1993 to 2004. While there, she completed a habilitation in 2000. She moved to the University of Groningen in 2004, and to Kentucky in 2007.
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#1462

Lynda Benglis

Lynda Benglis
#13653
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Lynda Benglis is an American sculptor and visual artist known especially for her wax paintings and poured latex sculptures. She maintains residences in New York City, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Kastellorizo, Greece, and Ahmedabad, India.
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#1463

Małgorzata Peszyńska

#118595
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Małgorzata Peszyńska is a Polish and American applied mathematician specializing in the mathematical modeling and computational solution of flows through porous media and their geological applications, including the effects of global warming on methane locked in permafrost. She is a professor of mathematics at Oregon State University, on leave as program director for computational and data-enabled science and engineering and computational mathematics at the National Science Foundation.
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#1464

Lučka Kajfež Bogataj

Lučka Kajfež Bogataj
#71445
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Lučka Kajfež Bogataj is a Slovenian climatologist, specialist in agricultural meteorology. Early life and education She graduated in 1980 from the Ljubljana Faculty of Natural Sciences and Technology and received her doctorate from the Faculty of Biotechnology. She then pursued post-doctoral training in the U.S. and Sweden.
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#1465

Judith Rousseau

#111134
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Judith Rousseau is a Bayesian statistician who studies frequentist properties of Bayesian methods. She is a professor of statistics at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and a Fellow of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis.
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#1466

Delia North

#109763
Overall Influence
Delia North is a South African statistician and a leader in statistics education in South Africa. She is the dean of the School of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
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#1467

Kseniya Garaschuk

#87340
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (42 years)
Kseniya Garaschuk is a Soviet-born Canadian mathematician and mathematics educator. She is an associate professor of mathematics and statistics at the University of the Fraser Valley, and the editor-in-chief of the mathematics journal Crux Mathematicorum.
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#1468

Eleonora Di Nezza

#130596
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (38 years)
Eleonora Di Nezza is an Italian mathematician, a CNRS researcher at the Centre de mathématiques Laurent-Schwartz and a professor of mathematics at Ecole Polytechnique, in Palaiseau, France. Her research is at the intersection of various branches of mathematics including complex and differential geometry, and focuses on Kahler geometry.
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#1469

Elena Vázquez Cendón

#126945
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
María Elena Vázquez Cendón is a Spanish applied mathematician specializing in the use of differential equations to model waves and shallow water, and in the use of finite volume methods and upwind schemes to compute numerical solutions to these differential equations and other hyperbolic partial differential equations. She is a professor of applied mathematics and dean of mathematics at the University of Santiago de Compostela.
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#1470

Andrea B. Troxel

#141173
Overall Influence
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#1471

Motoko Kotani

#119966
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Motoko Kotani is a Japanese applied mathematician, specializing in discrete geometric analysis and crystallography, and an academic administrator. She is the executive vice president for research for Tohoku University, the former executive director of Riken, the former president of the Mathematical Society of Japan, and the president-elect of the International Science Council.
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#1472

Chiu-Yen Kao

#110924
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Chiu-Yen Kao is a Taiwanese-American applied mathematician specializing in shape optimization, image segmentation, and mathematical biology. She is a professor of mathematics at Claremont McKenna College.
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#1473

Nicole Megow

#89779
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (48 years)
Nicole Megow is a German discrete mathematician and theoretical computer scientist whose research topics include combinatorial optimization, approximation algorithms, and online algorithms for scheduling. She is a professor in the faculty of mathematics and computer science at the University of Bremen.
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#1474

Diana Miglioretti

#126863
Overall Influence
Diana Lynn Miglioretti is an American biostatistician specializing in the availability and effectiveness of breast cancer screening and in radiation hazards from medical imaging; she has also studied connections between Down syndrome and leukemia. She is Dean's Professor of Public Health Sciences and head of the biostatistics division in the UC Davis School of Medicine. She co-leads the U.S. Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium.
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#1475

Yingying Fan

#102996
Overall Influence
Yingying Fan is a Chinese-American statistician and Centennial Chair in Business Administration and Professor in Data Sciences and Operations Department of the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. She is currently the Associate Dean for the PhD Program at USC Marshall. She also holds joint appointments at the USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, and Keck Medicine of USC. Her contributions to statistics and data science were recognized by the Royal Statistical Society Guy Medal in Bronze in 2017 and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics Medallion Lecture in 2023.
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#1476

Fang Lee Cooke

#142122
Overall Influence
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#1477

Tanja Bergkvist

#116541
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Tanja-Helena Dessislava Bergkvist is a Swedish mathematician and blogger. She earned a Ph.D. in mathematics in 2007 at Stockholm University, and has served as a professor at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Uppsala University, and the Sigtunaskolan Humanistiska Läroverket. She has also worked as a researcher at the Swedish Defence Research Agency. She has gained notoriety for her conservative approach towards gender studies.
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#1478

Elizaveta Levina

#122867
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Elizaveta Levina is a Russian and American mathematical statistician. She is the Vijay Nair Collegiate Professor of Statistics at the University of Michigan, and is known for her work in high-dimensional statistics, including covariance estimation, graphical models, statistical network analysis, and nonparametric statistics.
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#1479

Carla Cotwright Williams

Carla Cotwright Williams
#103905
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Carla Denise Cotwright-Williams is an American mathematician who works as a Technical Director and Data Scientist for the United States Department of Defense. She was the second African-American woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics at the University of Mississippi.
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#1480

Sybil P. Seitzinger

#33192
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Sybil P. Seitzinger is an oceanographer and climate scientist at the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions. She is known for her research into climate change and elemental cycling, especially nitrogen biogeochemistry.
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#1481

Elisabetta Matsumoto

#109570
Overall Influence
Elisabetta Matsumoto is an American physicist whose scientific interests include the study of knitted fabrics' special mathematical and mechanical properties. After earning her PhD Matsumoto accepted a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard University's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.
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#1482

Jo Hardin

#92841
Overall Influence
Johanna Sarah Hardin is an American statistician who works as a professor of mathematics at Pomona College. Her research involves high-throughput analysis for human genome data. Education and career Hardin is a Pomona graduate, earning a bachelor's degree there in mathematics in 1995. She initially planned to do actuarial science, but was led to statistics by a faculty mentor, Donald Bentley. She went to the University of California, Davis for her graduate studies, earning a master's degree in 1997 and a Ph.D. in 2000. Her dissertation, supervised by David Rocke, was Multivariate Outlier Dete...
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#1483

Nairanjana Dasgupta

#87725
Overall Influence
Nairanjana Dasgupta is an Indian statistician at Washington State University, where she is Boeing Distinguished Professor in Mathematics and Statistics. Her research interests include large-scale multiple testing in bioinformatics, as well as applications involving nutrition and lactation, and the growth of apples.
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#1484

Anna Marciniak-Czochra

#130383
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Anna Marciniak-Czochra is a Polish applied mathematician and mathematical biologist. Since 2011 she has been a professor of applied mathematics in the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Sciences at Heidelberg University.
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#1485

Catherine Sugar

#103826
Overall Influence
Catherine Ann Sugar is an American biostatistician at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she is Professor in Residence in the Departments of Biostatistics, Statistics and Psychiatry and director of the biostatistics core for the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. Her research concerns cluster analysis, covariance, and the applications of statistics in medicine and psychiatry.
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#1486

María Dolores Ugarte

#120750
Overall Influence
María Dolores Ugarte Martínez is a Spanish statistician specializing in spatial analysis, spatio-temporal analysis, epidemiology, and small area estimation. She is a professor in the Statistics, Computer Science, and Mathematics Department at the Public University of Navarre.
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#1487

Gerta Rücker

#124942
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Gerta Rücker is a German statistician known for her expertise in meta-analysis, and in its application to studies of borderline personality disorder. She is a researcher in the Institute of Medical Biometry and Statistics at the University of Freiburg.
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#1488

Karen Brucks

#126885
Overall Influence
1957 - 2017 (60 years)
Karen Marie Brucks was an American mathematician known for her research in topological dynamics, and for her advocacy of women in mathematics. She worked for many years as a faculty member and administrator at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.
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#1489

Eve Torrence

#122230
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Eve Alexandra Littig Torrence is an American mathematician, a professor emerita of mathematics at Randolph–Macon College, and a former president of mathematics society Pi Mu Epsilon. She is known for her award-winning writing and books in mathematics, for her mathematical origami art, and for her efforts debunking overly broad claims regarding the ubiquity of the golden ratio.
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#1490

Vicki Hertzberg

#90630
Overall Influence
Vicki Stover Hertzberg is an American biostatistician, who is currently professor in the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing of Emory University, where she founded and continues to direct its Center for Data Science. Previously she worked as a professor of biostatistics and bioinformatics in the Rollins School of Public Health of Emory University between 1994 and 2015, serving as the department chair 1994-2001.
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#1491

Jennifer A. Hoeting

#68134
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Jennifer Ann Hoeting is an American statistician known for her work with Adrian Raftery, David Madigan, and others on Bayesian model averaging. She is a professor of statistics at Colorado State University, and executive editor of the open-access journal Advances in Statistical Climatology, Meteorology and Oceanography, published by Copernicus Publications. With Geof H. Givens, a colleague at Colorado State, she is the author of Computational Statistics , a graduate textbook on computational methods in statistics.
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#1492

Eva Gallardo

#121911
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Eva Antonia Gallardo-Gutiérrez is a Spanish mathematician specializing in operator theory. She is a professor of mathematics at the Complutense University of Madrid, deputy director of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences , and the president of the Royal Spanish Mathematical Society.
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#1493

Elizabeth A. Thompson

#122125
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Elizabeth Alison Thompson is a British-born American statistician at the University of Washington. Her research concerns the use of genetic data to infer relationships between individuals and populations. She is the 2017–2018 president of the International Biometric Society.
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#1494

Marie-Claude Gaudel

#67880
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Marie-Claude Gaudel is a French computer scientist. She is a professor emerita at the University of Paris-Sud. She helped develop PLUSS language for software specifications and was involved in both theoretical and applied computer science. Gaudel is still active in professional societies.
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#1495

Mei-Cheng Wang

#115885
Overall Influence
Mei-Cheng Wang is a biostatistician in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research includes both theoretical work on survival analysis and statistical truncation, and applications to medical questions including prenatal and infant care, AIDS infection, and kidney disease.
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#1496

Viola Spolin

Viola Spolin
#7991
Overall Influence
1906 - 1994 (88 years)
Viola Spolin was an American theatre academic, educator and acting coach. She is considered an important innovator in 20th century American theater for creating directorial techniques to help actors to be focused in the present moment and to find choices improvisationally, as if in real life. These acting exercises she later called Theater Games and formed the first body of work that enabled other directors and actors to create improvisational theater. Her book Improvisation for the Theater, which published these techniques, includes her philosophy and her teaching and coaching methods, and is considered the "bible of improvisational theater".
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#1497

Janice Lough

#143029
Overall Influence
Janice Lough is a climate scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science at James Cook University, researching climate change, and impacts of temperature and elevated on coral reefs. She was elected to the Australian Academy of Science in 2022 for her research in climate change, coral reefs, and developing high resolution environmental and growth histories from corals, particularly the Great Barrier Reef.
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#1498

Kathrin Klamroth

#120360
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Kathrin Klamroth is a German mathematician and computer scientist whose research topics include combinatorial optimization and facility location. She is a professor in the department of mathematics and computer science at the University of Wuppertal.
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#1499

Rachel Levy

#111062
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Rachel Levy is an American mathematician and blogger. She currently serves as the inaugural Executive Director of the North Carolina State University Data Science Academy. She was a 2020-21 AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow, serving in the United States Senate and sponsored by the American Mathematical Society. From 2018-2020 she served as deputy executive director of the Mathematical Association of America. As a faculty member at Harvey Mudd College from 2007-2019 her research was in applied mathematics, including the mathematical modeling of thin films, and the applications of fluid mechanics to biology.
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#1500

Deirdre Smeltzer

#127565
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Deirdre Longacher Smeltzer is an American mathematician, mathematics educator, textbook author, and academic administrator. A former professor, dean, and vice president at Eastern Mennonite University, she is Senior Director for Programs at the Mathematical Association of America.
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