The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential female people in Mathematics,
#2051
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#2052
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#2053
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#2054
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#2055
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#2056
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#2057
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#2058
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#2059
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#2060
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#2061
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#2062
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#2063
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#2064
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#2065
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#2066
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#2067
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#2068
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#2069
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#2070
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#2071
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#2072
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#2073
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#2074
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...
Go to Profile#2075
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#2076
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#2077
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#2078
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#2079
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#2080
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#2081
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#2082
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#2083
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#2084
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#2085
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#2086
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#2087
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#2088
Concetta Scaravaglione
1900 - 1975 (75 years)
Concetta Scaravaglione was an American sculptor. Her parents immigrated from Calabria, Italy, and Concetta was the youngest of nine children. She is known for her monumental figurative sculpture, her work for the Federal Art Project , and her teaching career.
Go to Profile#2089
Gertrude Lawrence
1898 - 1952 (54 years)
Gertrude Lawrence was an English actress, singer, dancer and musical comedy performer known for her stage appearances in the West End of London and on Broadway in New York. Early life Lawrence was born Gertrude Alice Dagmar Klasen, Alexandra Dagmar Lawrence-Klasen, Gertrude Alexandra Dagmar Klasen or some variant , of English and Danish extraction, in Newington, London. Her father was a basso profondo who performed under the name Arthur Lawrence. His heavy drinking led her mother Alice to leave him soon after Gertrude's birth.
Go to Profile#2090
Jessie Matthews
1907 - 1981 (74 years)
Jessie Margaret Matthews was an English actress, dancer and singer of the 1920s and 1930s, whose career continued into the post-war period. After a string of hit stage musicals and films in the mid-1930s, Matthews developed a following in the USA, where she was dubbed "The Dancing Divinity". Her British studio was reluctant to let go of its biggest name, however, which resulted in offers for her to work in Hollywood being repeatedly rejected.
Go to Profile#2091
Enid Russell-Smith
1903 - 1989 (86 years)
Dame Enid Mary Russell Russell-Smith, DBE was a British civil servant. Career Born in Esher, Surrey to Arthur Russell-Smith and Constance Mary , she attended Saint Felix School, Southwold, and Newnham College, Cambridge, graduating in 1925.
Go to Profile#2092
Lucy Toulmin Smith
1838 - 1911 (73 years)
Lucy Toulmin Smith was an Anglo-American antiquarian and librarian, known for her first publication of the York Mystery Plays and other early works. Life Toulmin Smith was born at Boston, Massachusetts, USA, on 21 November 1838, of English parents, Joshua Toulmin Smith and his wife Martha. She was the eldest child of a family of three daughters and two sons. In 1842 the Toulmin Smiths returned to England and settled in Highgate, Middlesex. She was educated at home, and went on to assist her father in editing his journal the Parliamentary Remembrancer . After his death she completed his volume...
Go to Profile#2093
Ethel Hurlbatt
1866 - 1934 (68 years)
Ethel Hurlbatt was Principal of Bedford College, University of London, and later Warden of Royal Victoria College, the women's college of McGill University, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, which had opened in 1899.
Go to Profile#2094
Mary Annette Anderson
1874 - 1922 (48 years)
Mary Annette Anderson was an American professor of grammar and history and the first African American woman elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Anderson was born in Shoreham, Vermont, to William and Philomine Anderson. Her father, a farmer, was a freed slave originally from Virginia, and her mother was a Canadian immigrant of French and Native American ancestry. Her younger brother, William John Anderson Jr., became the second African American to serve in the Vermont General Assembly. Anderson attended the Northfield School for Young Ladies in Northfield, Massachusetts, and entered Middlebury College in 1895.
Go to Profile#2095
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#2096
Beryl May Dent
1900 - 1977 (77 years)
Beryl May Dent was an English mathematical physicist, technical librarian, and a programmer of early analogue and digital computers to solve electrical engineering problems. She was born in Chippenham, Wiltshire, the eldest daughter of schoolteachers. The family left Chippenham in 1901, after her father became head teacher of the then recently established Warminster County School. In 1923, she graduated from the University of Bristol with First Class Honours in applied mathematics. She was awarded the Ashworth Hallett scholarship by the university and was accepted as a postgraduate student a...
Go to Profile#2097
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#2098
Dorothy Lewis Bernstein
1914 - 1988 (74 years)
Dorothy Lewis Bernstein was an American mathematician known for her work in applied mathematics, statistics, computer programming, and her research on the Laplace transform. She was the first woman to be elected president of the Mathematics Association of America.
Go to Profile#2099
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#2100
Yoshie Katsurada
1911 - 1980 (69 years)
Yoshie Katsurada was a Japanese mathematician specializing in differential geometry. She became the first Japanese woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics, in 1950, and the first to obtain an imperial university professorship in mathematics, in 1967.
Go to Profile