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.
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List of the most influential female people in Mathematics,
#2151
Helen Almira Shafer
1839 - 1894 (55 years)
Helen Almira Shafer was an American educator and president of Wellesley College. Life Helen Almira Shafer was born Newark, New Jersey on the 23 September 1839. Her father was a clergyman of the Congregational Church. She was educated in a seminary in Albion, New York, afterwards attending Oberlin College.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 .
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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 .
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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.
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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.
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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."
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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...
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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.”
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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.
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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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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.
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Priscilla Braislin
1838 - 1888 (50 years)
Priscilla Harris Braislin Merrick was the first mathematics professor at Vassar College. Early life Braislin was originally from Burlington, New Jersey, the eldest of six children. Her father was Catholic and her mother Quaker, but with five of her siblings she became a Baptist; one of her brothers, Edward Braislin , became a Baptist minister.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Constanze Mozart
1762 - 1842 (80 years)
Maria Constanze Cäcilia Josepha Johanna Aloysia Mozart was a trained Austrian singer. She was married twice, first to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; then to Georg Nikolaus von Nissen. She and Mozart had six children: Karl Thomas Mozart, Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart, and four others who died in infancy. She became Mozart's biographer jointly with her second husband.
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Huldah Bancroft
Huldah Bancroft was an American biostatistician at Tulane University, known for her textbook on biostatistics and for her research on tropical infectious diseases including typhoid fever and leprosy.
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Lupe Vélez
1908 - 1944 (36 years)
María Guadalupe Villalobos Vélez , known professionally as Lupe Vélez, was a Mexican actress, singer, and dancer during the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema. Vélez began her career as a performer in Mexican vaudeville in the early 1920s. After moving to the United States, she made her first film appearance in a short in 1927. By the end of the decade, she was acting in full-length silent films and had progressed to leading roles in The Gaucho , Lady of the Pavements and Wolf Song , among others. Vélez made the transition to sound films without difficulty. She was one of the first successful Mexican actresses in Hollywood.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Paola Sebastiani
Paola Sebastiani is a biostatistician and a professor at Boston University working in the field of genetic epidemiology, building prognostic models that can be used for the dissection of complex traits. Her research interests include Bayesian modeling of biomedical data, particularly genetic and genomic data.
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