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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.

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List of the most influential female people in Mathematics,

#2151

Émilie du Châtelet

Émilie du Châtelet

1706 - 1749 (43 years)

Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet was a French natural philosopher and mathematician from the early 1730s until her death due to complications during childbirth in 1749.

#2152

Hilda Phoebe Hudson

Hilda Phoebe Hudson

1881 - 1965 (84 years)

Hilda Phoebe Hudson was an English mathematician who worked on algebraic geometry, in particular on Cremona transformations. Hudson was interested in the link between mathematics and her religious beliefs.

#2153

Ruth Teitelbaum

Ruth Teitelbaum

1924 - 1986 (62 years)

Ruth Teitelbaum was one of the first computer programmers in the world. Teitelbaum was one of the original programmers for the ENIAC computer. The other five ENIAC programmers were Jean Bartik, Betty Holberton, Kathleen Antonelli, Marlyn Meltzer, and Frances Spence.

#2154

Marie Johanna Weiss

1903 - 1952 (49 years)

Marie Johanna Weiss was an American mathematician, university professor and textbook author. In 1927, she became the first woman to earn a PhD in mathematics from Stanford University. Life and work Weiss was born in Eugene, California, the youngest of three surviving children of Alice Hedwig and Frederick Weiss, both German emigrants. She attended public high schools in Stockton, California, before enrolling at Stanford University in 1921. In the summer of 1924, after her junior year, she was an assistant instructor in a mathematics class there. She was accepted into the honorary society Phi Beta Kappa and graduated in 1925 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics with distinction.

#2155

Hel Braun

1914 - 1986 (72 years)

Helene Braun was a German mathematician who specialized in number theory and modular forms. Her autobiography, The Beginning of A Scientific Career, described her experience as a female scientist working in a male-dominated field at the time, in the Third Reich.

#2156

Agnes Meyer Driscoll

Agnes Meyer Driscoll

1889 - 1971 (82 years)

Agnes Meyer Driscoll , known as "Miss Aggie" or "Madame X'", was an American cryptanalyst during both World War I and World War II and was known as "the first lady of naval cryptology." Early years Born Agnes May Meyer in Geneseo, Illinois, in 1889, Driscoll moved with her family to Westerville, Ohio, in 1895 where her father, Gustav Meyer, had taken a job teaching music at Otterbein College. In 1909, he donated the family home to the Anti-Saloon League, which had recently moved its headquarters to Westerville. The home was later donated to the Westerville Public Library and is now home to the...

#2157

Philippa Fawcett

Philippa Fawcett

1868 - 1948 (80 years)

Philippa Garrett Fawcett was an English mathematician and educationalist. She was the first woman to obtain the top score in the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos exams. She taught at Newnham College, Cambridge, and at the normal school in Johannesburg, and she became an administrator for the London County Council.

#2158

Galina Tyurina

1938 - 1970 (32 years)

Galina Nikolaevna Tyurina was a Soviet mathematician specializing in algebraic geometry. Despite dying young, she was known for "a series of brilliant papers" on the classification of complex or algebraic structures on topological spaces, on K3 surfaces, on singular points of algebraic varieties, and on the rigidity of complex structures. She was the only woman among a group of "exceptionally brilliant" Soviet mathematicians who became active in the 1960s and "quickly became the leaders and the driving forces of Soviet mathematics".

#2159

Saly Ruth Ramler

Saly Ruth Ramler

1894 - 1993 (99 years)

Saly Ruth Ramler , also known as Saly Ruth Struik, was the first woman to receive a mathematics PhD from the German University in Prague, now known as Charles University. Her 1919 dissertation, on the axioms of affine geometry, was supervised by Gerhard Kowalewski and Georg Alexander Pick. She married the Dutch mathematician and historian of mathematics Dirk Jan Struik in 1923. Between 1924 and 1926, the pair traveled Europe and met many prominent mathematicians, using Dirk Struik's Rockefeller fellowship. In 1926, they emigrated to the United States, and Dirk Struik accepted a position at MI...

#2160

Jessie MacWilliams

1917 - 1990 (73 years)

Florence Jessie Collinson MacWilliams was an English mathematician who contributed to the field of coding theory, and was one of the first women to publish in the field. MacWilliams' thesis "Combinatorial Problems of Elementary Group Theory" contains one of the most important combinatorial results in coding theory, and is now known as the MacWilliams Identity.

#2161

Agnes Sime Baxter

Agnes Sime Baxter

1870 - 1917 (47 years)

Agnes Sime Baxter was a Canadian-born mathematician. She studied at Dalhousie University, receiving her BA in 1891, and her MA in 1892. She received her Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1895; her dissertation was "On Abelian integrals", a resume of Neumann's Abelian integral with comments and applications."

#2162

Florence Eliza Allen

1876 - 1960 (84 years)

Florence Eliza Allen was an American mathematician and women's suffrage activist. In 1907 she became the second woman to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and the fourth Ph.D. overall from that department.

#2163

Sophie Piccard

1904 - 1990 (86 years)

Sophie Piccard was a Russian-Swiss mathematician who became the first female full professor in Switzerland. Her research concerned set theory, group theory, linear algebra, and the history of mathematics.

#2164

Marguerite Lehr

1898 - 1987 (89 years)

Marguerite Lehr was an American mathematician who studied algebraic geometry, humanism in mathematics, and mathematics education. Early life and education Born on October 22, 1898, to Margaret Kreuter and George Lehr in Baltimore, Marguerite Lehr attended Goucher College for her undergraduate education and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1919. After her undergraduate education, Lehr moved to Rome to study at the University of Rome for the 1923–1924 academic year, funded by the American Association of University Women and the M. Carey Thomas University Fellowship. In 1925, Lehr earned her Ph.D.

#2165

Marie Litzinger

1899 - 1952 (53 years)

Marie Litzinger was an American mathematician known for her research in number theory, homogeneous polynomials, and modular arithmetic. Early life and education Marie Litzinger was born in Bedford, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Rush Litzinger and Katherine O'Connell Litzinger. Her father owned a marble works, and was an accountant for the Pennsylvania Railroad.

#2166

Mary Shore Walker

1882 - 1952 (70 years)

Mary Shore Walker was the first woman faculty member at the University of Missouri, and taught in the department of Mathematics. She was born in 1882. She earned her B.A. and M.A. at the University of Missouri in 1903 and 1904, respectively. The thesis she wrote for her M.A. was titled, "On finite groups with special reference to Klein’s ikosaeder.” While at the University of Missouri, she studied with Earle Hedrick, Oliver Dimon Kellogg, and W. D. A. Westfall.

#2167

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...

#2168

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.

#2169

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.

#2170

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...

#2171

Elizabeth Stephansen

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.

#2172

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.

#2173

Nadeschda Gernet

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.

#2174

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...

#2175

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.

#2176

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.

#2177

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.

#2178

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.

#2179

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.

#2180

Sheila Scott Macintyre

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.

#2181

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.

#2182

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 .

#2183

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.

#2184

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.

#2185

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.

#2186

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...

#2187

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.

#2188

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.

#2189

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.

#2190

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...

#2191

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.

#2192

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...

#2193

Louise Nevelson

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.

#2194

Gertrude Jekyll

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.

#2195

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.

#2196

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.

#2197

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.

#2198

Ida Martha Metcalf

1857 - 1952 (95 years)

Ida Martha Metcalf was the second American woman to receive a PhD in mathematics. Early life Ida Metcalf was born in Texas to Charles A. and Martha C. Metcalf. During her youth, her family moved about the south. After her father’s death, she moved to New England with her mother and siblings. By 1870, she was living in Massachusetts, where she taught school for many years.

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