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,
#1951
Melinda Tan
#51092
Overall Influence
Melinda Tan is an academic who is currently rector of the University of Central Lancashire campus in the UN Buffer Zone in Cyprus. Career Melinda Tan received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English language and literature in 1991 from the National University of Singapore and a post graduate diploma in education from the same institution in 1992. She was awarded a Master of Arts degree in English language teaching and applied linguistics from the University of Nottingham in 1997. Tan remained with the university to study for a doctor of philosophy degree, lecturing there during this time. She received her doctorate in applied linguistics in 2000.
Go to Profile#1952
Christine Lang
#47562
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Christine Lang is a German microbiologist and entrepreneur. Life and work Lang was raised in Bochum, West Germany, with her brother Joachim Lang. She studied biology from 1976 to 1981 at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum and the University of Sussex. In 1985, she obtained a Dr. rer. nat. in Biology in Bochum on the molecular genetics of fungi, with her thesis entitled "Extrachromosomal in vitro genetics in fungi: chondriome vectors in yeasts." She then worked in industrial research at the Hüls Chemie research center . In 1993 she moved to the Technical University of Berlin and habilitated in the field of microbiology and molecular genetics under the supervision of Ulf Stahl.
Go to Profile#1953
Ursula Wertheim
#132280
Overall Influence
1919 - 2006 (87 years)
Ursula Wertheim was a German literary scholar and university teacher at Jena in East Germany. The primary focus of her writing and teaching was on Germany's eighteenth and nineteenth century classical literature.
Go to Profile#1954
Tracy Mackenna
#169737
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Tracy Mackenna is a British sculptor and artist, creating works with her partner Edwin Janssen. She was Course Director at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design. Education Tracy Mackenna studied at the Glasgow School of Art between 1981 and 1986. She is a Royal Scottish Academy's Academician.
Go to Profile#1955
Ruby Keeler
#147798
Overall Influence
1909 - 1993 (84 years)
Ethel Ruby Keeler was an American actress, dancer, and singer who was paired on-screen with Dick Powell in a string of successful early musicals at Warner Bros., particularly 42nd Street . From 1928 to 1940, she was married to actor and singer Al Jolson. She retired from show business in the 1940s, but made a widely publicized comeback on Broadway in 1971.
Go to Profile#1956
Bogumiła Lisocka-Jaegermann
#91970
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Bogumiła Lisocka-Jaegermann is a Polish social scientist and writer, specialising in the fields of history and development of the Third World and developing countries. Most of her works focus on Latin American history, social and economic development. She is currently working for the Institute of Regional and Global Studies of the Warsaw University and Collegium Civitas. In the past she also collaborated with the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#1957
Petra Vinšová
#189719
Overall Influence
1991 - Present (35 years)
Petra Vinšová is a Czech curler. At the national level, she is a three-time Czech mixed champion . Personal life As of 2020, she is a PhD candidate in polar science. Teams Women's Mixed Mixed doubles
Go to Profile#1958
Jill Thompson
#80424
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Jill Thompson is an American illustrator and writer who has worked for stage, film, and television. Well known for her work on Neil Gaiman's The Sandman characters and her own Scary Godmother series, she has worked on The Invisibles, Swamp Thing, and Wonder Woman as well.
Go to Profile#1959
Debbie Reynolds
#188441
Overall Influence
1932 - 2016 (84 years)
Mary Frances "Debbie" Reynolds was an American actress, singer, and businesswoman. Her career spanned almost 70 years. She was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer with her portrayal of Helen Kane in the 1950 film Three Little Words. Her breakout role was her first leading role, as Kathy Selden in Singin' in the Rain . Her other successes include The Affairs of Dobie Gillis , Susan Slept Here , Bundle of Joy , The Catered Affair , and Tammy and the Bachelor , in which her performance of the song "Tammy" topped the Billboard music charts. In 1959, she starred in The M...
Go to Profile#1960
Michele Perkins
#96160
Overall Influence
Michele D. Perkins is an American university administrator, who served as the 15th president of New England College. Education She completed a bachelor's degree in theatre and performance studies from Northwestern University. She then earned a master's degree in communication from Emerson College. Perkins completed a doctorate in education in higher education management from University of Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#1961
Sabrina Raaf
#162181
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Sabrina Raaf is an American, Chicago-based, mechanized sculpture artist, and photographer. Career Sabrina Raaf attended Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. receiving her Bachelors in the School of Foreign Service. After graduating in 1994, she attended Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington D.C.. At Corcoran she befriended David Adamson while attending his computer-art class, and in 1995, Raaf became gallery intern at the David Adamson Gallery. As a photographer and aspiring curator, Raaf organized a show of women photographers including herself.
Go to Profile#1962
Anna Jaquez
#58942
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Anna Jaquez is an American artist, art professor and metalsmith. She lives and works in El Paso, Texas. Jaquez is an art professor at the University of Texas at El Paso . She has work in the permanent collection of the El Paso Museum of Art.
Go to Profile#1963
Nanette Fabray
#153185
Overall Influence
1920 - 2018 (98 years)
Nanette Fabray was an American actress, singer and dancer. She began her career performing in vaudeville as a child and became a musical-theatre actress during the 1940s and 1950s, acclaimed for her role in High Button Shoes and winning a Tony Award in 1949 for her performance in Love Life. In the mid-1950s, she served as Sid Caesar's comedic partner on Caesar's Hour, for which she won three Emmy Awards, and appeared with Fred Astaire in the film musical The Band Wagon. From 1979 to 1984, she played Katherine Romano, the mother of lead character Ann Romano, on the TV series One Day at a Time.
Go to Profile#1964
Olive Wheeler
1886 - 1963 (77 years)
Dame Olive Annie Wheeler, DBE was a Welsh educationist and psychologist, and Professor of Education at University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, now Cardiff University. Early life Born at the High Street in Brecon, Olive Wheeler was the younger daughter of Annie Wheeler, Poole, and her husband, Henry Burford Wheeler. Henry Wheeler was a master printer and publisher. She attended Brecon County School for Girls. She received an Honours Central Welsh Board Certificate in 1904. She attended University College of Wales, Aberystwyth and graduated with a BSc in Chemistry in 1907, and a MSc in 1911.
Go to Profile#1965
Paola Sebastiani
Paola Sebastiani is a biostatistician and a professor at Boston University working in the field of genetic epidemiology, building prognostic models that can be used for the dissection of complex traits. Her research interests include Bayesian modeling of biomedical data, particularly genetic and genomic data.
Go to Profile#1966
Ella Eaton Kellogg
1853 - 1920 (67 years)
Ella Eaton Kellogg was an American dietitian known for her work on home economics and vegetarian cooking. She was educated at Alfred University ; and the American School Household Economics . In 1875, Kellogg visited the Battle Creek Sanitarium, became interested in the subjects of sanitation and hygiene, and a year later enrolled in the Sanitarium School of Hygiene. Later on, she joined the editorial staff of Good Health magazine, and in 1879, married Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, superintendent of the Battle Creek Sanitarium.
Go to Profile#1967
Helen M. Walker
1891 - 1983 (92 years)
Helen Mary Walker was a statistician and prominent educational researcher, and the first female president of the American Statistical Association when she was elected in 1944. From 1949 to 1950, she was also president of the American Educational Research Association and served on the Young Women's Christian Association from 1936 to 1950.
Go to Profile#1968
Anne C. Morel
Anne C. Morel was an American mathematician known for her work in logic, order theory, and algebra. She was the first female full professor of mathematics at the University of Washington. Education and career Morel graduated in 1941 from the University of California, Los Angeles. She began graduate study in mathematics in 1942 at the University of California, Berkeley, but left her studies to serve in the WAVES during World War II. She returned to her studies in Berkeley in 1946, and completed her Ph.D. in 1953. Her dissertation, A Study in the Arithmetic of Order Types, was supervised by Al...
Go to Profile#1969
Violet B. Haas
1926 - 1986 (60 years)
Violet Bushwick Haas was an American applied mathematician specializing in control theory and optimal estimation who became a professor of electrical engineering at Purdue University College of Engineering.
Go to Profile#1970
Beatrice Worsley
1921 - 1972 (51 years)
Beatrice Helen Worsley was the first female Canadian computer scientist. She received her Ph.D. degree from the University of Cambridge with Maurice Wilkes as adviser, the first Ph.D. granted in what would today be known as computer science. She wrote the first program to run on EDSAC, co-wrote the first compiler for Toronto's Ferranti Mark 1, wrote numerous papers in computer science, and taught computers and engineering at Queen's University and the University of Toronto for over 20 years before her death at the age of 50.
Go to Profile#1971
Adele Goldstine
1920 - 1964 (44 years)
Adele Goldstine was an American mathematician and computer programmer. She wrote the manual for the first electronic digital computer, ENIAC. Through her work programming the computer, she was also an instrumental player in converting the ENIAC from a computer that needed to be reprogrammed each time it was used to one that was able to perform a set of fifty stored instructions.
Go to Profile#1972
Anna Johnson Pell Wheeler
1883 - 1966 (83 years)
Anna Johnson Pell Wheeler was an American mathematician. She is best known for early work on linear algebra in infinite dimensions, which has later become a part of functional analysis. Biography Anna Johnson was born on May 5, 1883, to Swedish immigrant parents in Calliope, Iowa in the United States. Her father, Andrew Gustav Johnson, was a furniture dealer and undertaker. Her mother, Amelia , was a homemaker. Both of Johnson's parents came from the parish of Lyrestad, in Västergötland, Sweden. Johnson had two older siblings, Esther and Elmer. At the age of nine her family moved to Akron, Iowa and she was enrolled in a private school.
Go to Profile#1973
Hildegarde Kneeland
1889 - 1994 (105 years)
Hildegarde Kneeland was an American home economist and social statistician, known for her time-use research. Education and early career Kneeland was born in Brooklyn, studied at the Packer Collegiate Institute, and graduated from Vassar College in 1911. After graduate study at Teachers College, Columbia University, she taught nutrition at the University of Missouri beginning in 1914. In 1917 she returned to graduate study at the University of Chicago, working there with Hazel Kyrk.
Go to Profile#1974
Maria Adelaide Sneider
1937 - 1989 (52 years)
Maria Adelaide Sneider was an Italian mathematician working on numerical and mathematical analysis. She is known for her work on the theory of electrostatic capacities of non-smooth closed hypersurfaces: Apart from the development of precise estimates for the numerical approximation of the electrostatic capacity of the unit cube, this work also led her to give a rigorous proof of Green's identities for large classes of hypersurfaces with singularities, and later to develop an accurate mathematical analysis of the points effect. She is also known for her contributions to the Dirichlet problem...
Go to Profile#1975
Grete Hermann
1901 - 1984 (83 years)
Grete Hermann was a German mathematician and philosopher noted for her work in mathematics, physics, philosophy and education. She is noted for her early philosophical work on the foundations of quantum mechanics, and is now known most of all for an early, but long-ignored critique of a "no hidden-variables theorem" by John von Neumann. It has been suggested that, had her critique not remained nearly unknown for decades, the historical development of quantum mechanics might have been very different.
Go to Profile#1976
Ada Lovelace
1815 - 1852 (37 years)
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace was an English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. She was the first to recognise that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation.
Go to Profile#1977
Marjorie Lee Browne
1914 - 1979 (65 years)
Marjorie Lee Browne was a mathematics educator. She was one of the first African-American women to receive a PhD in mathematics. Early life and education Marjorie Lee Browne was a prominent mathematician and educator who, in 1949, became only the third African-American woman to earn a doctorate in her field. Browne was born on September 9, 1914, in Memphis, Tennessee, to Mary Taylor Lee and Lawrence Johnson Lee. Her father, a railway postal clerk remarried shortly after his wife's death, when Browne was almost two years old. He and his second wife, Lottie, a school teacher, encouraged their daughter to take her studies seriously as she was a gifted student.
Go to Profile#1978
Grace Chisholm Young
1868 - 1944 (76 years)
Grace Chisholm Young was an English mathematician. She was educated at Girton College, Cambridge, England and continued her studies at Göttingen University in Germany, where in 1895 she received a doctorate. Her early writings were published under the name of her husband, William Henry Young, and they collaborated on mathematical work throughout their lives. For her work on calculus , she was awarded the Gamble Prize for Mathematics by Girton College.
Go to Profile#1979
Euphemia Haynes
1890 - 1980 (90 years)
Martha Euphemia Lofton Haynes was an American mathematician and educator. She was the first African American woman to earn a PhD in mathematics, which she earned from the Catholic University of America in 1943.
Go to Profile#1980
Bella Subbotovskaya
1938 - 1982 (44 years)
Bella Abramovna Subbotovskaya was a Soviet mathematician who founded the short-lived Jewish People's University in Moscow. The school's purpose was to offer free education to those affected by structured anti-Semitism within the Soviet educational system. Its existence was outside Soviet authority and it was investigated by the KGB. Subbotovskaya herself was interrogated a number of times by the KGB and shortly thereafter was hit by a truck and died, in what has been speculated was an assassination.
Go to Profile#1981
Klara Löbenstein
1883 - 1968 (85 years)
Klara Löbenstein was a German mathematician. She was among the first women to obtain a doctorate in Germany. Her doctoral work was on the topology of algebraic curves. Life and work Löbenstein was born in Hildesheim, Prussia on 15 February 1883 to merchant Lehmann Löbenstein and his wife Sofie .
Go to Profile#1982
Klavdiya Latysheva
1897 - 1956 (59 years)
Klavdiya Yakovlevna Latysheva was a Soviet mathematician known for her contributions to the theory of differential equations, electrodynamics and probability. She was honoured with the Order of Lenin and the Medal "For Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945".
Go to Profile#1983
Mary P. Dolciani
1923 - 1985 (62 years)
Mary P. Dolciani was an American mathematician, known for her work with secondary-school mathematics teachers. Education and career Dolciani earned her Bachelor of Arts degree at Hunter College in New York City, and she completed her doctor of philosophy at Cornell University in 1947 with B. W. Jones as thesis advisor. She taught briefly at Vassar College before returning to Hunter, where she spent the next forty years. Dolciani taught mathematics there, and at times, she also served as a Dean or the Provost.
Go to Profile#1984
Alice Lee
1858 - 1939 (81 years)
Alice Lee was a British mathematician, one of the first women to graduate from London University. She was awarded a PhD in 1901. She worked with Karl Pearson from 1892. She demonstrated that the correlation between cranial capacity and gender was not a sign of greater intelligence in men compared to women.
Go to Profile#1985
Virginia Ragsdale
1870 - 1945 (75 years)
Virginia Ragsdale was a teacher and mathematician specializing in algebraic curves. She is most known as the creator of the Ragsdale conjecture. Early life Ragsdale was born on a farm in Jamestown, North Carolina the third child of John Sinclair Ragsdale and Emily Jane Idol. John was an officer in the Civil War, a teacher in the Flint Hill School, and later a state legislator.
Go to Profile#1986
Mary Frances Winston Newson
1869 - 1959 (90 years)
Mary Frances Winston Newson was an American mathematician. She became the first female American to receive a PhD in mathematics from a European university, namely the University of Göttingen in Germany. She was also the first person to translate Hilbert's problems into English.
Go to Profile#1987
Winifred Edgerton Merrill
1862 - 1951 (89 years)
Winifred Edgerton was born in Ripon, Wisconsin. She was the first woman to receive a degree from Columbia University and the first American woman to receive a PhD in mathematics. She was awarded a PhD with high honors from Columbia University in 1886, by a unanimous vote of the board of trustees, after being rejected once.
Go to Profile#1988
Isabel Maddison
1869 - 1950 (81 years)
Ada Isabel Maddison was a British mathematician best known for her work on differential equations. Education Isabel Maddison entered University College in Cardiff in 1885. She was awarded a Clothworker's Guild Scholarship to study at Girton College, Cambridge, where she matriculated in 1889. A fellow student who matriculated at Girton at the same time as Maddison was Grace Chisholm . Maddison attended lectures at Cambridge by Cayley, Whitehead and Young. In 1892 Maddison passed the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos Exam earning a First Class degree, equal to the twenty-seventh Wrangler, but she w...
Go to Profile#1989
Stanisława Nikodym
1897 - 1988 (91 years)
Stanisława Nikodym was a Polish mathematician and artist. She is known for her results in continuum theory, especially on Jordanian continuums. Life Stanisława Dorota Liliental was born in Warsaw to Regina Lilientalowa, an ethnographer, and Nathan Liliental. Stanisława had a younger brother, Antoni . She attended Helena Skłodowska-Szalay's primary school, and went to Warsaw's private school for women for 7 years. She joined the Warsaw University in 1916, reading mathematics under Stefan Mazurkiewicz, Zygmunt Janiszewski, and Wacław Sierpiński
Go to Profile#1990
Wealthy Babcock
1895 - 1990 (95 years)
Wealthy Consuelo Babcock was an American mathematician. She was awarded a Ph.D. from the University of Kansas and had a long teaching career at that institution. Early life and education Wealthy Consuelo Babcock was born in Washington County, Kansas, the second child of Ella Babcock and Cassius Lincoln Babcock. She graduated in 1913 from Washington County High School and taught for two years in one-room country schools in Washington County. The following year, she matriculated at the University of Kansas where she was a member of the women's basketball team. After receiving her Bachelor of Arts in 1919, she taught for a year at Neodesha High School in southeastern Kansas.
Go to Profile#1991
Cora Ratto de Sadosky
1912 - 1981 (69 years)
Corina Eloísa Ratto de Sadosky was an Argentine mathematician, educator and militant activist in support of human and women's rights in Argentina and beyond. She played an important part in the Argentine University Federation supporting republican interests during the Spanish Civil War and helping victims of Falangist oppression. In 1941, following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, she established and headed the anti-fascist Junta de la Victoria which stood for democracy and women's suffrage. In 1965, Ratto founded Columna 10, a journal denouncing the conduct of the United States in the Vietnam War.
Go to Profile#1992
Angelina Cabras
1898 - 1993 (95 years)
Angelina Cabras was an Italian mathematician and physicist. She earned degrees in mathematics from the University of Turin in 1924 and in physics from the University of Cagliari in 1927. She obtained a position in mathematical physics at Cagliari, later moving to the institute of theoretical mechanics there. Her research concerned higher dimensional rigid body dynamics, the theory of relativity, and inductance.
Go to Profile#1993
Käte Fenchel
1905 - 1983 (78 years)
Käte Fenchel née Käte Sperling was a German-born Jewish mathematician, best known for her work on non-abelian groups. Life Käte was born in Berlin to a newspaper reporter and a bookkeeper, Rusza Sperling . As a child, she quickly learned to read and write, faster than most children. She was allowed to skip several grade levels and was awarded scholarships to attend private school. She enrolled at the University of Berlin, but she found that she faced daunting obstacles there in the form of gender discrimination because she was pursuing studies in pure mathematics. She was encouraged to write ...
Go to Profile#1994
Divsha Amirà
1899 - 1966 (67 years)
Divsha Amirà was an Israeli mathematician and educator. Biography Amirà was born in Brańsk, Russian Empire to Rivka and Aharon Itin. She immigrated to Israel with her family in 1906. Her father was one of the founders of Ahuzat Bayit , a founder of the Tel Aviv Great Synagogue, and the owner of the first publishing house in Jaffa. She graduated in the second class of the Herzliya Gymnasium in 1914.
Go to Profile#1995
Helen Abbot Merrill
1864 - 1949 (85 years)
Helen Abbot Merrill was an American mathematician, educator and textbook author. Biography Merrill was born on March 30, 1864, in Llewellyn Park, New Jersey; her father was a New Jersey insurance claims adjustor of colonial stock. She moved to Massachusetts as a child. She entered Wellesley College in 1882, intending to major in Greek and Latin, but switching to mathematics after one year, and graduated in 1886. In 1893 she began teaching at Wellesley while also studying and guest lecturing abroad. In 1903 she earned a PhD in mathematics at Yale under the direction of James Pierpont. In 1920 she was appointed vice-president of the Mathematical Association of America.
Go to Profile#1996
Thyra Eibe
1866 - 1955 (89 years)
Thyra Eibe was a Danish mathematician and translator, the first woman to earn a mathematics degree from the University of Copenhagen. She is known for her translation of Euclid's Elements into the Danish Language.
Go to Profile#1997
Grace Andrews
1869 - 1951 (82 years)
Grace Andrews was an American mathematician. She, along with Charlotte Angas Scott, was one of only two women listed in the first edition of American Men of Science, which appeared in 1906. Education Andrews was one of five children of Edward Gayer Andrews, a Methodist Episcopal bishop and school administrator; she was born in Brooklyn, and moved frequently as a child, including stays in Ohio, Iowa, Washington DC, and Europe. She was a student at Mount Vernon Seminary and College, and obtained her undergraduate degree from Wellesley College in 1890, taking a five-year program at Wellesley th...
Go to Profile#1998
Roxana Vivian
1871 - 1961 (90 years)
Roxana Hayward Vivian was an American mathematics professor. She was the first female recipient of a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania. Early life and education Roxana Hayward Vivian was born to Roxana Nott and Robert Hayward Vivian on December 9, 1871, in Hyde Park, Boston, Massachusetts. She went to Hyde Park High School and then, from 1890 to 1894, to Wellesley College where she graduated in Greek and mathematics.
Go to Profile#1999
Carol Karp
1926 - 1972 (46 years)
Carol Karp, born Carol Ruth Vander Velde , was an American mathematician of Dutch ancestry, best known for her work on infinitary logic. She also played viola in an all-women orchestra. Life Born in Michigan to a farming supply store manager and a housewife, Carol and her siblings graduated from high school in Ohio. After that, she graduated from Manchester University, Indiana and went back to Michigan to study at Michigan State University , where she earned a master's degree in 1950.
Go to Profile#2000
Mabel Minerva Young
1872 - 1963 (91 years)
Mabel Minerva Young was an American mathematician active at Wellesley College. Life Young was born July 18, 1872, in Worcester, Massachusetts. She began study at Wellesley College in 1894. Going to graduate study at Columbia University, she graduated with a master's degree in 1899. First she taught English at Northfield Seminary. In 1904 she began her long service at Wellesley College, beginning as an assistant in mathematics and becoming a full professor.
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