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
Mary Martin
1907 - 1969 (62 years)
Mary Adela Martin was a British artist best known for geometric abstract painting and for her collaborations with her husband Kenneth Martin. Biography Martin née Balmford was born on 16 November 1907 in Folkestone, United Kingdom. She studied at Goldsmiths' College, London from 1925 to 1929 and at the Royal College of Art from 1929 to 1932 where she met and married Kenneth Martin in 1930. She exhibited at the A.I.A. from 1934, mainly as a still-life and landscape painter, using her maiden name. During the war Mary taught drawing, design and weaving at Chelmsford School of Art from 1941 to 1...
Go to Profile#2002
Dorothy Brady
1903 - 1977 (74 years)
Dorothy Elizabeth Stahl Brady was an American mathematician and economist. She was a professor of economics at Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania from 1958 to 1970. Early life Born in Elk River, Minnesota, she grew up in Portland, Oregon, attending Lincoln High School and later Reed College studying mathematics and physics. She was married to fellow Reed student Robert A. Brady from 1924 to 1936, they had a son in 1933.
Go to Profile#2003
Geneviève Guitel
1895 - 1982 (87 years)
Geneviève Guitel was a French mathematician. She is mostly remembered for the introduction of the terms échelle longue and échelle courte to refer to two of the main numbering systems used around the world.
Go to Profile#2004
Florence Marie Mears
1896 - 1995 (99 years)
Florence Marie Mears was a professor of Mathematics at The George Washington University. Background and education Mears was born in Baltimore, Maryland and attended Baltimore public schools. She received her undergraduate degree in Mathematics at Goucher College, earning a Phi Beta Kappa Key. She received a master's degree from Cornell University in 1924 after completing her thesis on "A Special Function of One Variable." She then went on to achieve her doctorate from Cornell in 1927, completing her thesis on the "Riesz Summability for Double Series" with thesis advisor Wallie Abraham Hurwi...
Go to Profile#2005
Elizaveta Litvinova
1845 - 1919 (74 years)
Elizaveta Fedorovna Litvinova was a Russian mathematician and pedagogue. She is the author of over 70 articles about mathematics education. Early life and education Born in 1845 in czarist Russia as Elizaveta Fedorovna Ivashkina, she completed her early education at a women's high school in Saint Petersburg. In 1866 Elizaveta married Viktor Litvinov, which, unlike Vladimir Kovalevsky , would not allow her to travel to Europe to study at the universities there. Thus, Litvinova started to study with Strannoliubskii, who had also privately tutored Kovalevskaya.
Go to Profile#2006
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#2007
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#2008
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#2009
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#2010
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#2011
Carlotta Longo
1895 - Present (129 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#2012
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#2013
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#2014
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#2015
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#2016
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#2017
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#2018
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#2019
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#2020
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#2021
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#2022
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#2023
Emily Kathryn Wyant
1897 - 1942 (45 years)
Emily Kathryn Wyant was an American mathematician known as the founder of Kappa Mu Epsilon, a mathematical honor society focusing on undergraduate education. Early life and education Wyant was born on January 16, 1897, in Ipava, Illinois. Her father was a student in Illinois and later a shopkeeper in Bolivar, Missouri, where she graduated from high school in 1914. She attended the University of Missouri on a part time and summer basis while supporting herself as a school teacher, finally completing a bachelor's degree in education in 1921.
Go to Profile#2024
Georgia Caldwell Smith
1909 - 1961 (52 years)
Georgia Caldwell Smith was one of the first African-American women to gain a bachelor's degree in mathematics. When she was 51, she earned a Ph.D. in mathematics, one of the earliest by an African-American woman, awarded posthumously in 1961. Smith was the head of the Department of Mathematics at Spelman College.
Go to Profile#2025
Frances Hardcastle
1866 - 1941 (75 years)
Frances Hardcastle was an English mathematician, in 1894 one of the founding members of the American Mathematical Society. Her work included contributions to the theory of point groups. Biography Born in Writtle, just outside Chelmsford, Essex, Hardcastle was a daughter of Henry Hardcastle, a barrister, by his marriage in 1865 to Maria Sophia Herschel, daughter of the astronomer, mathematician, and chemist Sir John Herschel.
Go to Profile#2026
Mary Emily Sinclair
1878 - 1955 (77 years)
Mary Emily Sinclair was an American mathematician whose research concerned algebraic surfaces and the calculus of variations. She was the first woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics at the University of Chicago, and became Clark Professor of Mathematics at Oberlin College.
Go to Profile#2027
Marie Gernet
1865 - 1924 (59 years)
Marie Gernet was a German mathematician who in 1895 became the second woman to obtain a doctorate at Heidelberg University. The first was Käthe Windscheid, who earned a doctorate for her work on English pastoral poetry in the previous year. Gernet was also the first native German woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics, 13 years earlier than Emmy Noether. She was the only German among the first eight women to earn a mathematics Ph.D. in Germany.
Go to Profile#2028
Anne Cobbe
1920 - 1971 (51 years)
Anne Philippa Cobbe was a mathematician at the University of Oxford. She was an inspirational and supportive pure mathematics tutor at Somerville College which, during her time there, was still a women's college.
Go to Profile#2029
Annie Dale Biddle Andrews
1885 - 1940 (55 years)
Annie Dale Biddle Andrews was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley. Early life and career She was born in Hanford, California, the youngest daughter of Samuel Edward Biddle and Achsah Annie Biddle .
Go to Profile#2030
Nelli Neumann
1886 - 1942 (56 years)
Nelli Neumann was a German mathematician who worked in synthetic geometry. She was one of the first women to obtain a doctorate in mathematics at a German university. Biography Nelli Neumann was born in Breslau, Prussia, the only child of Jewish parents Max and Sophie Neumann. Her father was a judicial officer, while her mother died when Nelli was two years old. After ten years in the private Höhere Töchterschule in Breslau, Neumann attended grammar courses and graduated from the König-Wilhelm-Gymnasium boys' school in 1905. Her father promoted her mathematical talent by arranging private mathematics lessons given by Richard Courant.
Go to Profile#2031
Ruth Goulding Wood
1875 - 1939 (64 years)
Ruth Goulding Wood was a professor of mathematics who researched non-Euclidean geometry at Smith College. Wood was also a member of the American Mathematical Society. Life and career Wood was born on January 29, 1875, in the city of Pawtucket, Rhode Island. After attending primary and secondary school in Pawtucket, Wood pursued and graduated with a bachelor's degree from Smith College in 1898. Wood then decided to further her education by attending Yale University, graduating with a Ph.D. in mathematics in 1901. Her thesis, Non-Euclidean displacements and symmetry transformations, concerned t...
Go to Profile#2032
Leila Bram
1927 - 1979 (52 years)
Leila Ann Dragonette Bram was an American mathematician. She was one of the first to study mock theta functions, and for many years directed the mathematics program at the Office of Naval Research, a position where she set the program for much of mathematics research.
Go to Profile#2033
Cora Barbara Hennel
1886 - 1947 (61 years)
Cora Barbara Hennel was an Indiana mathematician active in the first half of the 20th century. Early life and education Hennel was born in Evansville, Indiana to Joseph H. and Anna Marie Thuman Hennel. After high school graduation Cora and her older sister Cecilia taught in country grade schools to save money for college. In 1903, both Hennels entered Indiana University and shortly thereafter, convinced their parents to move with their younger sister, Edith, to Bloomington. All three sisters attended and graduated from Indiana University. Hennel earned her earned her A.B. in Mathematics in 1907, her Masters in 1908, and in 1912, became the first person to earn a Ph.D.
Go to Profile#2034
Lorna Swain
1891 - 1936 (45 years)
Lorna Mary Swain was a British mathematician and college lecturer, known for being one of few female mathematicians to contribute their talents to the war effort in World War I, and for being one of few early female lecturers at University of Cambridge. Academically, she is known for her work in fluid dynamics as well as her deep desire to see more women pursue higher education and teaching in the field of mathematics.
Go to Profile#2035
Aphra Behn
1640 - 1689 (49 years)
Aphra Behn was an English playwright, poet, prose writer and translator from the Restoration era. As one of the first English women to earn her living by her writing, she broke cultural barriers and served as a literary role model for later generations of women authors. Rising from obscurity, she came to the notice of Charles II, who employed her as a spy in Antwerp. Upon her return to London and a probable brief stay in debtors' prison, she began writing for the stage. She belonged to a coterie of poets and famous libertines such as John Wilmot, Lord Rochester. Behn wrote under the pastoral pseudonym Astrea.
Go to Profile#2036
Margaret Millington
1944 - 1973 (29 years)
Margaret Hilary Millington was an English-born mathematician. She was born Margaret Hilary Ashworth in Halifax, Yorkshire, the daughter of the local assistant head postmaster, and was educated there. She continued her studies at St Mary's College, Durham and went on to Oxford University, where she earned a PhD in 1968 with A. O. L. Atkin as her advisor. Also, in 1968, she married Lieutenant A.H. Millington, who was part of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. She was awarded a two-year Science Research Council Fellowship which allowed her to pursue research at any university. During...
Go to Profile#2037
Stevie Smith
1902 - 1971 (69 years)
Florence Margaret Smith, known as Stevie Smith , was an English poet and novelist. She won the Cholmondeley Award and was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. A play, Stevie by Hugh Whitemore, based on her life, was adapted into a film starring Glenda Jackson.
Go to Profile#2038
Liouba Bortniker
1860 - 1900 (40 years)
Liouba Bortniker was a mathematician from the Russian Empire who became a naturalized French citizen, was the first woman to earn an agrégation in mathematics, the inaugural winner of the Peccot–Vimont prize of the Collège de France, and the first woman to publish in the Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Sciences. She was known for her work on cyclides.
Go to Profile#2039
Sarah D. Allen Oren Haynes
1836 - 1907 (71 years)
Sarah D. Allen Oren Haynes was an American librarian, mathematician, and botanist who became the first woman to become state librarian of Indiana and the first woman on the faculty of Purdue University.
Go to Profile#2040
Mildred Sanderson
1889 - 1914 (25 years)
Mildred Leonora Sanderson was an American mathematician, best known for her mathematical theorem concerning modular invariants. Life Sanderson was born in Waltham, Massachusetts, in 1889 and was the valedictorian of her class at the Waltham High School. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1910, winning Senior Honors in Mathematics. She obtained her Ph.D degree from the University of Chicago in 1913, publishing the thesis in which she set forth her mathematical theorem. She was Leonard Eugene Dickson's first female doctoral student.
Go to Profile#2041
Anne Bosworth Focke
1868 - 1907 (39 years)
Anne Lucy Bosworth Focke was an American mathematician who became the first mathematics professor at what is now the University of Rhode Island, and later became the first female doctoral student of David Hilbert.
Go to Profile#2042
Charlotte Elvira Pengra
1875 - 1916 (41 years)
Charlotte Elvira Pengra was an American mathematician. In 1901, she became the third person to receive a Ph.D. in math at the University of Wisconsin, and the sixth American woman to receive a doctorate in mathematics.
Go to Profile#2043
Maikki Friberg
1861 - 1927 (66 years)
Maria Elisabeth Friberg was a Finnish educator, journal editor, suffragist and peace activist. She is remembered for her involvement in the Finnish women's movement, especially as chair of the Finnish women's rights organisation Suomen Naisyhdistys and as the founder and editor of the women's journal Naisten Ääni . She travelled widely, promoting understanding of Finland abroad while participating in international conferences and contributing to the foreign press.
Go to Profile#2044
Rita Hayworth
1918 - 1987 (69 years)
Rita Hayworth was an American actress. She achieved fame during the 1940s as one of the era's top stars, appearing in 61 films over 37 years. The press coined the term "The Love Goddess" to describe Hayworth after she had become the most glamorous screen idol of the 1940s. She was the top pin-up girl for GIs during World War II.
Go to Profile#2045
Nancy Elizabeth Prophet
1890 - 1960 (70 years)
Nancy Elizabeth Prophet was an American artist of African-American and Native American ancestry, known for her sculpture. She was the first African-American graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1918 and later studied at L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris during the early 1920s. She became noted for her work in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1934, Prophet began teaching at Spelman College, expanding the curriculum to include modeling and history of art and architecture. Prophet died in 1960 at the age of 70.
Go to Profile#2046
Adele Astaire
1896 - 1981 (85 years)
Adele Astaire Douglass , was an American dancer, stage actress, and singer. After beginning work as a dancer and vaudeville performer at the age of nine, Astaire built a successful performance career with her younger brother, Fred Astaire.
Go to Profile#2047
Pelageya Polubarinova-Kochina
1899 - 1999 (100 years)
Pelageya Yakovlevna Polubarinova-Kochina was a Soviet and Russian applied mathematician, known for her work on fluid mechanics and hydrodynamics, particularly, the application of Fuchsian equations, as well in the history of mathematics. She was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union in 1946 and full member in 1958.
Go to Profile#2048
Eileen Brooke
1905 - 1989 (84 years)
Eileen Minnie Brooke was a British statistician and health policy professional. Education Eileen Minnie Brooke attended East London College, earning a B.Sc. in mathematics in 1926, and an M.Sc. in mathematics in 1929. She completed doctoral studies in 1952.
Go to Profile#2049
Valerie Myerscough
1942 - 1980 (38 years)
Valerie Patricia Myerscough was a British mathematician and astrophysicist remembered for her precocious talent and great contributions to a range of astrophysical applications, as well as to the evolution of the Royal Astronomical Society, in a very short life.
Go to Profile#2050
Pia Nalli
1886 - 1964 (78 years)
Pia Maria Nalli was an Italian mathematician known for her work on the summability of Fourier series, on Morera's theorem for analytic functions of several variables and for finding the solution to the Fredholm integral equation of the third kind for the first time. Her research interests ranged from algebraic geometry to functional analysis and tensor analysis; she was a speaker at the 1928 International Congress of Mathematicians.
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