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.
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List of the most influential female people in Mathematics,
#2001
Charlotte Barnum
1860 - 1934 (74 years)
Charlotte Cynthia Barnum , mathematician and social activist, was the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale University. Early life and education Charlotte Barnum was born in Phillipston, Massachusetts, the third of four children of the Reverend Samuel Weed Barnum and Charlotte Betts . Education was important in her family: two uncles had received medical degrees from Yale and her father had graduated from there with a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Divinity. Her brothers Samuel and Thomas would both graduate from Yale, and her sister Clara would attend Yale graduate scho...
Go to Profile#2002
Emilie Martin
1869 - 1936 (67 years)
Emilie Norton Martin was an American mathematician and professor of mathematics at Mount Holyoke College. Life Martin earned her bachelor's degree at Bryn Mawr College in 1894 majoring in mathematics and Latin. She continued her graduate studies at Bryn Mawr under the supervision of Charlotte Scott. In 1897-1898 she used a Mary E. Garrett Fellowship from Bryn Mawr to study at the University of Göttingen. In Göttingen, Martin and Virginia Ragsdale attended lectures by Felix Klein and David Hilbert. Although her name and dissertation title were printed in the 1899 commencement program, her Ph.D.
Go to Profile#2003
Charlotte Wedell
1862 - 1953 (91 years)
Charlotte Bolette Sophie, Baroness Wedell-Wedellsborg was one of four women mathematicians to attend the inaugural International Congress of Mathematicians, held in Zurich in 1897. Wedell was originally from Denmark, the daughter of and Louise Marie Sophie, Countess Schulin, and the granddaughter of . At the time of the Congress, in 1897, she had just completed a doctorate at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, with Adolf Hurwitz as an unofficial mentor. The subject of her dissertation was the application of elliptic functions to the construction of the Malfatti circles.
Go to Profile#2004
Louise Duffield Cummings
1870 - 1947 (77 years)
Louise Duffield Cummings was a Canadian-born American mathematician. She was born in Hamilton, Ontario. Education and career As a young child, Louise Duffield Cummings studied at the public schools and Collegiate Institute at Hamilton.
Go to Profile#2005
Vera Šnajder
1904 - 1976 (72 years)
Vera Šnajder was a Bosnian mathematician known for being the first Bosnian to publish a mathematical research paper and the first female dean in Yugoslavia. Šnajder was born on 2 February 1904, in Reljevo, one of the neighborhoods of Sarajevo; her father directed an Orthodox seminary. She began her university studies at the University of Belgrade in 1922, and graduated in 1928. She took a position as a schoolteacher at a girl's gymnasium in Sarajevo, and married , a Jewish philosopher who at that time was working at the same school.
Go to Profile#2006
Carlotta Longo
1895 - Present (131 years)
Carlotta Longo born Carlotta Bresolin, was an Italian mathematical physicist who wrote a doctoral dissertation in 1918 related to general relativity, and then became a high school teacher in Rome. Longo's thesis, advised by Tullio Levi-Civita, presented what Ludwik Silberstein called a "geometrically elegant investigation" of electrostatics in general relativity.
Go to Profile#2007
Mary Graustein
1884 - 1972 (88 years)
Mary Graustein was a mathematician and university professor, and was the first woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics at Radcliffe College. Life and research Mary Florence Curtis was the oldest of five children born to Jennie Esther and Frank Abbott Curtis in Westminster, Massachusetts. She attended Fitchburg High School in Massachusetts and in 1902 she began her undergraduate studies at Wellesley College. She was a Wellesley Honors Scholar throughout her college years and received her Bachelor of Art's degree in 1906.
Go to Profile#2008
Susan Miller Rambo
1883 - 1977 (94 years)
Susan Miller Rambo was the second woman awarded a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and had a long teaching career at Smith College. Biography Born in Easton, Pennsylvania, Susan Rambo was the eldest child of George and Annie Rambo. Her father was a wholesale grocer. She graduated high school in Easton, then entered Smith College, located in Northampton, Massachusetts. After graduating from Smith, she taught high school mathematics in Hoosick Falls, New York until 1908.
Go to Profile#2009
Elizabeth Williams
1895 - 1986 (91 years)
Elizabeth Williams was a British mathematician and educationist. Life Williams was born on 29 January 1895 in Pimlico, London. She studied in Chelsea and Forest Gate during her childhood, and at the age of 16 began attending Bedford College, University of London for a college degree. At Bedford, one of her mentors was Alfred North Whitehead. She became a grammar school teacher, but had to stop teaching when she became married in 1922. Because of this situation, she founded her own school in North London with her husband, and then in 1930 she took a position in education at King's College Lo...
Go to Profile#2010
Laura Guggenbühl
1901 - 1985 (84 years)
Laura Guggenbühl was an American mathematician, one of the earliest women in the U.S. to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics, known for her work in triangle geometry and the history of mathematics. Life Guggenbühl was born in New York City, to a family of Swiss immigrants; her father, a butcher and baker, died by 1920. She graduated from Hunter College in 1922 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics, after also taking some classes at Columbia University and New York University. She became an instructor at Hunter College while earning a master's degree and Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr College in 1924 and 1926 respectively.
Go to Profile#2011
Marion Elizabeth Stark
1894 - 1982 (88 years)
Marion Elizabeth Stark was an American mathematician. She was one of the first women to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics. Education and career She got her A.B. in 1916, and her A.M. in 1917, both from Brown University. In 1917, she became the professor of mathematics Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina. In autumn 1919, she started teaching in Wellesley College as a part-time instructor, while attending courses of Helen Abbot Merrill and Mabel M. Young. In the 1923 summer quarter, and, supported by a fellowship, in autumn 1924 through summer 1925, she studied at the University of Chicago where she received her Ph.D.
Go to Profile#2012
Alice Roth
1905 - 1977 (72 years)
Alice Roth was a Swiss mathematician who invented the Swiss cheese set and made significant contributions to approximation theory. She was born, lived and died in Bern, Switzerland. Life Alice attended the Höhere Töchterschule of Zürich, a municipal school for higher education for girls. After graduation in 1924 she studied mathematics, physics and astronomy at ETH Zurich under George Pólya. She graduated with a diploma in 1930. Her Master's thesis was titled "Extension of Weierstrass's Approximation Theorem to the complex plane and to an infinite interval". After that, she was a teacher at multiple high schools for girls in the Zurich area while continuing working with Pólya at ETH.
Go to Profile#2013
Nora Calderwood
1896 - 1985 (89 years)
Nora Isobel Calderwood was a Scottish professor and mathematician. Early life and education Calderwood was born in 1896 in Blairgowrie, Perthshire, in Scotland. Her father Daniel Scott Calderwood was the headmaster of the Blairgowrie Public School. Her family then moved to Edinburgh when she was still young, after her father was appointed as the headmaster of the Church of Scotland Normal School.
Go to Profile#2014
Mary Clem
1905 - 1979 (74 years)
Mary A. Clem was an American mathematician, and a human computer. She was a staff member at Iowa State University, and was recognized for inventing the “zero check” technique for detecting errors.
Go to Profile#2015
Louise Hay
1935 - 1989 (54 years)
Louise Hay was a French-born American mathematician. Her work focused on recursively enumerable sets and computational complexity theory, which was influential with both Soviet and US mathematicians in the 1970s. When she was appointed head of the mathematics department at the University of Illinois at Chicago, she was the only woman to head a math department at a major research university in her era.
Go to Profile#2016
Grace Marie Bareis
1875 - 1962 (87 years)
Grace Marie Bareis was an American mathematician and educator who became the first person to receive a doctorate degree in mathematics from Ohio State University. Bareis was an assistant professor at Ohio State University where she taught for 40 years until her eventual retirement in 1946.
Go to Profile#2017
Frances Harshbarger
1902 - 1987 (85 years)
Frances Harshbarger was an American mathematician. Education She obtained her B.A. with honors in 1923 at Grinnell College, and went to West Virginia University to serve as a half-time teacher and simultaneously work on her mathematics graduation; in 1925 she finished her M.A. After that she became head of the mathematics department of Potomac State College in Keyser, West Virginia. In 1927 to 1929, she was an assistant, in 1929 to 1930 a fellow, at the University of Illinois. In 1930, she obtained her Ph.D. in mathematics with a thesis in algebraic geometry, advised by A. B. Coble. She was one of the first American women who obtained a mathematics Ph.D.
Go to Profile#2018
Elizabeth Stephansen
1872 - 1961 (89 years)
Elizabeth Stephansen was a Norwegian mathematician and educator. She was one of the first Norwegian women to be awarded a doctorate degree. Biography Stephansen was born in Bergen, Norway. She was the eldest daughter of Anton Stephan Stephansen and Gerche Reimers Jahn . Her father was a merchant and owner of a textile shop. He later established the textile factory, Espelandfos Spinderi & Tricotagefabrik, in Arna. She was educated at the Bergen Cathedral School graduating in 1891. She was fluent in the German language and traveled to Switzerland to continue her education. She attended Eidgenössische Polytechnikum in Zurich and graduated in 1896.
Go to Profile#2019
Rachel Blodgett Adams
1894 - 1982 (88 years)
Rachel Blodgett Adams was a pioneering American mathematician and one of the first women to earn a doctorate in mathematics at Radcliffe College in 1921. Biography Rachel Blodgett was born in Woburn, Massachusetts, the oldest of three children of Mabel Edith Owen and William Edward Blodgett ; neither of whom attended college.
Go to Profile#2020
Nadeschda Gernet
1877 - 1943 (66 years)
Nadeschda Gernet, also Nadezhda, Russian: Надежда Николаевна Гернет, , was a Russian mathematician. Gernet was the second woman in Russia to earn a doctorate. She extended the calculus of variations to further functions on the basis developed by her instructor, David Hilbert, and was one of the first to include inequalities in the calculus of variations.
Go to Profile#2021
Mary Domitilla Thuener
1880 - 1977 (97 years)
Mary Domitilla Thuener was a nun and mathematician who served as the first head of Villa Madonna College. Early life and education Thuener was born on October 25, 1880. Her father was an immigrant from Germany who married an American; they had seven children but only three survived. Eleanor, the oldest, was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. She completed her studies at St. Mary’s Academy in Monroe, Michigan in 1905, took orders as a Benedictine nun, and entered the St. Waldburg convent in Covington, Kentucky, taking the name Mary Domitilla. There she came to work as a teacher in two local Cat...
Go to Profile#2022
Lois Wilfred Griffiths
1899 - 1981 (82 years)
Lois Wilfred Griffiths was an American mathematician and teacher. She served as a researcher, mathematician, and professor for 37 years at Northwestern University before retiring in 1964. She is best known for her work in polygonal numbers. She published multiple papers and wrote a textbook, Introduction to the Theory of Equations, published in 1945.
Go to Profile#2023
Elizabeth Buchanan Cowley
1874 - 1945 (71 years)
Elizabeth Buchanan Cowley was an American mathematician. Life Cowley was born on May 22, 1874, in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. She had four siblings, but they and her father all died by 1900. Cowley's mother, Mary Junkin Buchanan Cowley, later became a member of the Board of Public Education of Pittsburgh, and was the namesake of the Mary J. Cowley School in Pittsburgh. Cowley's grandfather was James Galloway Buchanan, a surgeon in the Union Army.
Go to Profile#2024
Florence Lewis
1877 - 1964 (87 years)
Florence Parthenia Lewis was an American mathematician and astronomer. Early life and education Born in Fort Scott, Kansas, Lewis attended the University of Texas for her undergraduate degree, which she received in 1897, and Radcliffe College for a master's degree, which she received in 1906. She earned her Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University in astronomy and mathematics.
Go to Profile#2025
Jessie Forbes Cameron
1883 - 1968 (85 years)
Jessie Forbes Cameron was a British mathematician who in 1912 became the first woman to complete her doctorate in mathematics at the University of Marburg in Germany. Life and work Jessie Cameron was born on 8 January 1883 in Stanley, Scotland, one of eight children whose parents were James Cameron, a school principal at a village school in Perthshire, and his wife Jessie Forbes.
Go to Profile#2026
Gillie Larew
1882 - 1977 (95 years)
Gillie Aldah Larew was an American mathematician, the first alumna of Randolph–Macon Woman's College to become a full professor there, and eventually the dean of the college. Early life and education Larew was the daughter of farmer and lawyer Captain I. H. Larew, and was born on July 28, 1882, in Pulaski County, Virginia. Her father had eleven children, three of whom died before Larew was born and five of whom were from a second wife after Larew's mother died in 1887. She was privately schooled before attending Randolph–Macon Woman's College from 1899 to 1903.
Go to Profile#2027
Sheila Scott Macintyre
1910 - 1960 (50 years)
Sheila Scott Macintyre FRSE was a Scottish mathematician best known for her work on the Whittaker constant. Macintyre is also known for co-authoring a German-English mathematics dictionary with Edith Witte.
Go to Profile#2028
Mary de Lellis Gough
1892 - 1983 (91 years)
Sister Mary de Lellis Gough was an Irish nun who spent most of her life in the USA. She is notable for being the earliest known Irish woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics. Life She was born in Kilmore, County Wexford, Ireland. Her parents were Ellen Dunne and Walter Gough. She attended the local St John of God's primary school. She emigrated to Texas in 1909 with a group of young Irish women, and joined the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, taking vows as Mary de Lellis in 1911.
Go to Profile#2029
Annie Leuch-Reineck
1880 - 1978 (98 years)
Annie Leuch-Reineck was a Swiss mathematician and women's rights activist. She was one of the most influential participants in the Swiss women's movement during the 1920s and 1930s. Life Provenance and early years Annie Reineck was born in Kannawurf, a village in the countryside between Erfurt and Magdeburg in Germany. Erhard Reineck , her father, was a protestant church minister and superintentant originally from Magdeburg. Her mother, born Marie Godet , was from Neuchâtel in francophone western Switzerland. Annie grew up in Kannawurf and then in nearby Heldrungen. She received her early education at the home of her elder sister, Theodora .
Go to Profile#2030
Mary Cordia Karl
1893 - 1984 (91 years)
Elizabeth Karl was an American mathematician who contributed significantly to the theory of orthopoles in geometry. This was the subject of her PhD thesis at Johns Hopkins University in 1931. She was Head of the Mathematics department at College Notre Dame of Maryland until 1965, when she retired with the title of Professor Emeritus.
Go to Profile#2031
Mary Cleophas Garvin
1899 - 1990 (91 years)
Sister Mary Cleophas, born Linetta Anna Garvin, was an American mathematician. Early life Linetta Garvin was born in Vickery, Ohio, one of six children of Odelia Margaret and automobile and meat salesman Austin Edward Garwin.
Go to Profile#2032
Frieda Nugel
1884 - 1966 (82 years)
Frieda Nugel was a German mathematician and civil rights activist, one of the first German women to earn a doctorate in mathematics. She earned her PhD at Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg in 1912, under the supervision of August Gutzmer.
Go to Profile#2033
Eugenie Maria Morenus
1881 - 1966 (85 years)
Eugenie Maria Morenus was an American mathematician and college professor. She taught Latin and mathematics at Sweet Briar College from 1909 to 1946. Early life and education Morenus was born in Cleveland, New York, the daughter of Eugene Morenus and Maria Euphemia Van Blarcom Morenus. Her father managed a glassworks. She graduated from Monogahela High School in 1898. She earned a bachelor's degree from Vassar College in 1904, and a master's degree from the same school in 1905. She completed doctoral studies in mathematics at Columbia University in 1922. Her dissertation under Edward Kasner w...
Go to Profile#2034
Käthe Kollwitz
1867 - 1945 (78 years)
Käthe Kollwitz was a German artist who worked with painting, printmaking and sculpture. Her most famous art cycles, including The Weavers and The Peasant War, depict the effects of poverty, hunger and war on the working class. Despite the realism of her early works, her art is now more closely associated with Expressionism. Kollwitz was the first woman not only to be elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts but also to receive honorary professor status.
Go to Profile#2035
Mary Gertrude Haseman
1889 - 1979 (90 years)
Mary Gertrude Haseman was an American mathematician known for her work in knot theory. Biography Mary Gertrude Haseman was born in or near the small town of Linton, Indiana, the seventh of nine children, to Elizabeth Christine and John Dieterich Haseman. Despite being raised on a farm, she and her siblings all pursued higher education; they all attended college, five had master's degrees, and five, including Mary, earned PhDs.
Go to Profile#2036
Eleanor Pairman
1896 - 1973 (77 years)
Eleanor "Nora" Pairman, also known as Nora Brown, was a Scottish mathematician and only the third woman to receive a doctorate in math from Radcliffe College in Massachusetts. Later in life she developed novel methods to teach mathematics to blind students.
Go to Profile#2037
Clara Eliza Smith
1865 - 1943 (78 years)
Clara Eliza Smith was an American mathematician specializing in complex analysis who became the Helen Day Gould Professor of Mathematics at Wellesley College. Smith was the daughter of Georgiana and Edward Smith, of Northford, Connecticut. She studied at Mount Holyoke College, then a seminary, while also studying art at Yale University. Her studies in the seminary program included geometry and trigonometry, but the college did not offer degrees at that time. She completed the program in 1885. After working as an art teacher at the Bloomsburg State Normal School in Pennsylvania from 1889 until...
Go to Profile#2038
Josephine Burns Glasgow
1887 - 1969 (82 years)
Josephine Elizabeth Burns Glasgow was an American mathematician whose Ph.D. thesis, "The abstract definitions of the groups of degree 8" was published in the American Journal of Mathematics. She was the second woman to receive a PhD from the University of Illinois.
Go to Profile#2039
Mary Landers
1905 - 1990 (85 years)
Mary Kenny Landers was an American mathematician who taught for many years at Hunter College. She was also known as "an early advocate of academic collective bargaining". Early life and education Mary Kenny was born on February 5, 1905, in Fall River, Massachusetts, one of six children of an Anglo-Irish mailman. After attending public school in Fall River, she became a student at Brown University in 1922. Beyond mathematics, her interests at Brown included violin and debate. After graduating in 1926, she became an Anne Crosby Emery fellow at Brown and earned a master's degree in mathematics t...
Go to Profile#2040
Louise Nevelson
1899 - 1988 (89 years)
Louise Nevelson was an American sculptor known for her monumental, monochromatic, wooden wall pieces and outdoor sculptures. Born in the Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire , she emigrated with her family to the United States in the early 20th century. Nevelson learned English at school, as she spoke Yiddish at home.
Go to Profile#2041
Gertrude Jekyll
1843 - 1932 (89 years)
Gertrude Jekyll was a British horticulturist, garden designer, craftswoman, photographer, writer and artist. She created over 400 gardens in the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States, and wrote over 1000 articles for magazines such as Country Life and William Robinson's The Garden. Jekyll has been described as "a premier influence in garden design" by British and American gardening enthusiasts.
Go to Profile#2042
Hettie Belle Ege
1861 - 1942 (81 years)
Hettie Belle Ege was an American professor of mathematics. From 1914 to 1916, she was the acting president of Mills College. Early life Ege was born in Erie, Illinois on March 31, 1861, the daughter of Joseph Arthur Ege and his second wife, Catherine Rebecca Reisch Ege. Her parents were both from Pennsylvania; her father died the year she was born, and her mother remarried in 1869. She attended Western College in Oxford, Ohio, graduating in 1886; she later graduated from Mills College in 1903, with further studies at the University of Chicago, the University of Munich, and the University of C...
Go to Profile#2043
Margarethe Kahn
1880 - 1942 (62 years)
Margarethe Kahn was a German mathematician and Holocaust victim. 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 Margarethe Kahn was the daughter of Eschwege merchant and flannel factory owner Albert Kahn and his wife Johanne . She had an older brother Otto . Five years after the untimely death of his wife Johanne, their father married her younger sister Julie , with whom he had a daughter, Margaret's half-sister Martha .
Go to Profile#2044
Charlotte Mary Yonge
1823 - 1901 (78 years)
Charlotte Mary Yonge was an English novelist, who wrote in the service of the church. Her abundant books helped to spread the influence of the Oxford Movement and show her keen interest in matters of public health and sanitation.
Go to Profile#2045
Annie MacKinnon
1868 - 1940 (72 years)
Annie Louise MacKinnon Fitch was a Canadian-born American mathematician who worked with Felix Klein and became a professor of mathematics at Wells College. She was the third woman to earn a mathematics doctorate at an American university.
Go to Profile#2046
Wang Zhenyi
1768 - 1797 (29 years)
Wang Zhenyi was a Chinese scientist from the Qing dynasty. She breached the feudal customs of the time, which hindered women's rights, by working to educate herself in subjects such as astronomy, mathematics, geography, and medicine. She was well known for her contributions in astronomy, mathematics, and poetry. She was an acclaimed scholar: "An extraordinary woman of 18th century China."
Go to Profile#2047
Mary Esther Trueblood
1879 - 1939 (60 years)
Mary Esther Trueblood Paine was an American mathematician and sociologist who taught mathematics at Mount Holyoke College and the University of California, Berkeley. Early life and education Mary Trueblood was born on May 6, 1872, near Richmond, Indiana, the daughter of Rev. Alpheus Trueblood of the Society of Friends, and the niece of pacifist Benjamin Franklin Trueblood. She did her undergraduate studies at Earlham College in Richmond, graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1893, and became a mathematics and Latin teacher there. Her cousin, Thomas Trueblood, taught at the University of Mich...
Go to Profile#2048
Hildegard Rothe-Ille
1899 - 1942 (43 years)
Hildegard Rothe-Ille, born Hildegard Ille, , was a German mathematician. Career She was one of Issai Schur’s doctoral students. According to Alexander Soifer, “Van der Waerden walked away from Ramseyan prehistory. Issai Schur, on the other hand, continued to produce Ramseyan mathematics, and moreover directed and inspired his PhD students Richard Rado, Hildegard Ille and Alfred Brauer to do the same.”
Go to Profile#2049
Anna Irwin Young
1873 - 1920 (47 years)
Anna Irwin Young was an American professor of mathematics, physics and astronomy and in 1916 was a charter member of the Mathematical Association of America. Biography Young was born in what is now Chicago Heights, Illinois on November 25, 1873. Her father was Rev. Samuel Young of Ireland, and her mother was Eliza Caskey Young.
Go to Profile#2050
Lili Bleeker
1897 - 1985 (88 years)
Caroline Emilie "Lili" Bleeker was a Dutch entrepreneur and physicist from Middelburg known for her designs and the manufacturing of optical instruments. In the era she grew up, it was the norm for women to become housewives whose chief roles were to perform domestic duties, but Bleeker did not want to conform to these standards. She wanted to pursue an education, and never married her life-long partner, Gerard Willemse, which was quite anomalous at the time. She would later emerge as one of the first women in the Netherlands to become a doctor in physics and mathematics. After earning her Ph...
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