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 …
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List of the most influential people in Mathematics,
#5251
Jonathan Katz
#37061
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (51 years)
Jonathan Katz is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland who conducts research on cryptography and cybersecurity. In 2019–2020 he was a faculty member in the Volgenau School of Engineering at George Mason University, where he held the title of Eminent Scholar in Cybersecurity. In 2013–2019 he was director of the Maryland Cybersecurity Center at the University of Maryland.
Go to Profile#5252
Clara Deser
#71208
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (64 years)
Clara Deser is an American climate scientist. She is a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research where she leads the Climate Analysis Section. Deser was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 2021.
Go to Profile#5253
Daniel J. Schaid
#107085
Overall Influence
#5254
Reviewreview Team
#107087
Overall Influence
#5255
Donald Dines Wall
#91043
Overall Influence
1921 - 2000 (79 years)
Donald Dines Wall was an American mathematician working primarily on number theory. He obtained his Ph.D. on normal numbers from University of California, Berkeley in 1949, where his adviser was Derrick Henry Lehmer. His better known papers include the first modern analysis of Fibonacci sequence modulo a positive integer.
Go to Profile#5256
Robert Glen Hart
#107088
Overall Influence
#5257
Mary-Elizabeth Hamstrom
#93797
Overall Influence
1927 - 2009 (82 years)
Mary-Elizabeth Hamstrom was an American mathematician known for her contributions to topology, and particularly to point-set topology and the theory of homeomorphism groups of manifolds. She was for many years a professor of mathematics at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.
Go to Profile#5258
Chen-Bo Zhu
#96796
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (61 years)
Chen-Bo Zhu, also known as Zhu Chengbo , is a Chinese-born Singaporean mathematician working in representation theory of Lie groups. He was Head of the Department of Mathematics at the National University of Singapore from 2014 to 2020. Zhu served as President of the Singapore Mathematical Society from 2009 to 2012 and Vice President of the Southeast Asian Mathematical Society from 2012 to 2013.
Go to Profile#5259
Helena Chmura Kraemer
#38358
Overall Influence
Helena Chmura Kraemer is an American professor emerita of biostatistics at Stanford University. She is a fellow of the American Statistical Association. Education Helena Chmura Kraemer completed a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics with Phi Beta Kappa honors from Smith College in 1957. In 1958, Kraemer attended University of Manchester as a Fulbright fellow. Kraemer earned a Doctor of Philosophy in statistics from Stanford University in 1963. Her dissertation was titled Point Estimation in Learning Models. Her doctoral advisor was Patrick Suppes.
Go to Profile#5260
Jamshed R. (jamshed Rustom) Tata
#107182
Overall Influence
#5261
Olivier Pironneau
#74338
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (80 years)
Olivier Pironneau is a French mathematician who is a professor at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie and member of the French Academy of Sciences. Pironneau is a worldwide recognized expert in computational fluid dynamics, scientific computing, computational engineering, optimal design, numerical analysis and partial differential equations. He is a highly cited author, having written 8 books and 693 papers. He is a member of French Academy of Sciences since 2002. He was awarded the Marcel Dassault Prize by the French Academy of Sciences in 2000. He is also the recipient of the Blaise Pasca...
Go to Profile#5262
Thomas H. Leonard
#71690
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
Thomas Hoskyns Leonard is a British statistician. He obtained a doctorate in Statistics at the University of London and worked at the University of Warwick and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, before taking up the Chair of Statistics at the University of Edinburgh.
Go to Profile#5263
Dennis Trewin
#80797
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
Dennis John Trewin is an Australian former public servant, who was the Australian Statistician, the head of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, between July 2000 and January 2007. Trewin joined the ABS in 1966 as a statistics cadet. Between 1992 and 1995 he was the Deputy Government Statistician in Statistics New Zealand and a Deputy Australian Statistician from 1995 to 2000, when he was appointed as the Australian Statistician.
Go to Profile#5264
Laila Soueif
#36702
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Laila Soueif is an Egyptian human and women's rights activist, a mathematician and professor at Cairo University. Al Jazeera has called her "an Egyptian revolutionary". She is the widow of fellow activist Ahmed Seif El-Islam, and all three of their children are noted activists: Alaa Abd El-Fattah, Sanaa Seif, and Mona Seif. Her sister is the novelist Ahdaf Soueif.
Go to Profile#5265
Christina Pagel
#70541
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (50 years)
Christina Pagel is a German-British mathematician and professor of operational research at University College London within UCL's Clinical Operational Research Unit , which applies operational research, data analysis and mathematical modelling to topics in healthcare. She was Director of UCL CORU from 2017 to 2022 and is currently Vice President of the UK Operational Research Society. She also co-leads, alongside Rebecca Shipley, UCL's CHIMERA research hub which analyses data from critically ill hospital patients.
Go to Profile#5266
Rom Varshamov
#77758
Overall Influence
1927 - 1999 (72 years)
Rom Rubenovich Varshamov was a Soviet Armenian mathematician who worked in Coding theory, especially on error-correcting codes and Number theory. Varshamov studied in Tbilisi with Arnold Walfisz , as well as in Tomsk. After that, he was a researcher in Moscow at the Steklov Institute of Mathematics with Ivan Matveyevich Vinogradov, especially on Number theory and Coding theory, and the Ministry of Radio Engineering . In 1957 he proved the Gilbert-Varshamov bound for linear codes . From 1968 he worked in Yerevan and was director of the Computer Centre of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR.
Go to Profile#5267
Rebecca A. Herb
#95570
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
Rebecca A. Herb is an American mathematician, a professor emerita at the University of Maryland. Her research involves abstract algebra and Lie groups. In 2012, Herb became one of the inaugural fellows of the American Mathematical Society. In 2013, she was one of ten recipients of the first Service Awards of the Association for Women in Mathematics “for her service as AWM Treasurer , and her help during AWM’s transition from its headquarters at the University of Maryland to the management company STAT.”
Go to Profile#5268
Thomas F. Coleman
#71282
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Thomas F. Coleman is a Canadian mathematician and computer scientist who is a Professor in the Department of Combinatorics and Optimization at the University of Waterloo, where he holds the Ophelia Lazaridis University Research Chair. In addition, Coleman is the director of WatRISQ, an institute composed of quantitative and computational finance researchers spanning several Faculties at the University of Waterloo.
Go to Profile#5269
Gert Jäger
#23955
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (90 years)
Gert Jäger is a German translation scholar and a specialist in the Polish and Czech languages. After obtaining his Abitur in 1952, Jäger studied Czech studies, Polish studies, Russian studies, Serbo-Croatian and Lithuanian at Leipzig University, obtaining his degree in 1956. While holding several posts at the University, he obtained his PhD in 1963 and another doctorate in 1973.
Go to Profile#5270
María Teresa Lozano Imízcoz
#96702
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
María Teresa Lozano Imízcoz is a Spanish emeritus professor and mathematician. She studies topology principally in three dimensions. She has been given a Real Sociedad Matemática Española medal for her career and as a trailblazer for women to be involved in mathematical research.
Go to Profile#5271
Midhat J. Gazalé
#72911
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (96 years)
Midhat Gazalé was an international telecommunications and space consultant and a visiting Professor of Telecommunications and Computer Management at the University of Paris IX. He served as President of AT&T-France, as chairman of the board for Sperry-France and for International Computers-France, and as an executive and research scientist for other major companies. He was made Chevalier dans l'Ordre national du Mérite in 1981. He was born in Alexandria and was a special advisor to the Egyptian prime minister for science and technology.
Go to Profile#5272
Robert McNaughton
#82182
Overall Influence
1924 - 2014 (90 years)
Robert Forbes McNaughton, Jr. was an American mathematician, logician, and computer scientist with several key contributions in formal languages, grammars and rewriting systems, and word combinatorics.
Go to Profile#5273
Robert Dautray
#48534
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (97 years)
Ignace Robert Dautray, born Kouchelevitz on 1 February 1928 in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, is a French engineer, former scientific director of the French Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique and former High Commissioner for Atomic Energy. He is a member of the French Academy of Sciences, section mechanical and computer sciences, and of the French Academy of Technology.
Go to Profile#5274
Alberto Collino
#106283
Overall Influence
1947 - 2020 (73 years)
Alberto Collino was an Italian mathematician best known for his contributions in the field of algebraic geometry. Collino was born in Verzuolo, earned a laurea in mathematics in 1970 from the University of Turin, and completed a Ph.D. in 1974 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His dissertation, The Rational Equivalence Ring of Symmetric Products of Curves, was supervised by Arthur Mattuck. He spent his professional career at the University of Turin, beginning as an assistant in 1970 and becoming a full professor in 1984.
Go to Profile#5275
Nigel Weiss
#70597
Overall Influence
1936 - 2020 (84 years)
Nigel Oscar Weiss FRS was an astronomer and mathematician, and leader in the field of astrophysical and geophysical fluid dynamics. He was Emeritus Professor of Mathematical Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge.
Go to Profile#5276
Robert L. Winkler*
#107456
Overall Influence
#5277
Gloria Olive
#85004
Overall Influence
1923 - 2006 (83 years)
Gloria Olive was a New Zealand academic mathematician. Academic career Olive began her mathematics career in the United States. She graduated with a BA from Brooklyn College in 1944 followed by an MA from the University of Wisconsin in 1946 and a PhD from the University of Oregon in 1950, with the dissertation Generalised Powers.
Go to Profile#5278
Gregory Kriegsmann
#56475
Overall Influence
1946 - 2018 (72 years)
Gregory Anthony Kriegsmann was Distinguished Professor of Mathematics and Foundation Chair at New Jersey Institute of Technology’s department of Mathematical Sciences. Education Gregory received his BS in Electrical Engineering from Marquette University, MS in Electrical Engineering , MA in Mathematics and PhD in Applied Mathematics from University of California at Los Angeles.
Go to Profile#5279
Carmen Batanero
#96225
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
Carmen Batanero is a Spanish statistics educator, and a Senior Lecturer in the Mathematics Department at the University of Granada, Spain. She is known as an advocate for statistics education. Batanero is a lifetime member of the International Association for Statistical Education, and served as the association's president from 2001 to 2003. She has co-authored many scholarly articles in the fields of mathematics and statistics education over the past two decades, and is credited on two statistics textbooks. Her contributions rank her as one of the most influential researchers at her institution.
Go to Profile#5280
Vicenţiu D. Rădulescu
#107575
Overall Influence
#5281
Vinayak Vatsal
#103319
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (56 years)
Vinayak Vatsal is a Canadian mathematician working in number theory and arithmetic geometry. Education Vatsal received his B.Sc. degree in 1992 from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in 1997 from Princeton University under the supervision of Andrew Wiles who had just completed his proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. He then became a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto.
Go to Profile#5282
Kenneth G. Manton
#107639
Overall Influence
#5283
Agnès Sulem
#71490
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
Agnès Sulem is a French applied mathematician whose research topics include stochastic control, jump diffusion, and mathematical finance. Education Sulem earned a Ph.D. in 1983 at Paris Dauphine University, with the dissertation Résolution explicite d'Inéquations Quasi-Variationnelles associées à des problèmes de gestion de stock supervised by Alain Bensoussan.
Go to Profile#5284
Alan M Zaslavsky
#107736
Overall Influence
#5285
Michael Waidner
#26395
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (64 years)
Michael Waidner is a German computer scientist. He is director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology and ATHENE, the largest research institute for IT security in Europe. He is also professor of security in information technology at the department of computer science of the Technische Universität Darmstadt.
Go to Profile#5286
Cajo J. F. Ter Braak
#107747
Overall Influence
#5287
Martin Davis
#107828
Overall Influence
#5288
Martin Feinberg
#55179
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
Martin Feinberg is an American chemical engineer and mathematician known for his work in chemical reaction network theory. Life Born in New York, Feinberg received his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 1962. A year later, he obtained his master's degree from Purdue University. In 1968, he received his PhD degree from Princeton University. The subject of the doctoral thesis is fluid mechanics and the advisor is William Schowalter. After completing the PhD, he went to work at the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, where he was a professor of chemical engineering until 1997.
Go to Profile#5289
Harry Lindgren
#36471
Overall Influence
1912 - 1992 (80 years)
Harry Lindgren was a British-Australian engineer, linguist and amateur mathematician. Early life Lindgren was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in England. In 1935 he emigrated to join his family in Perth, Australia. He received a BSc degree from the University of Western Australia and later became a Commonwealth Patent Officer. He married Eve Spokone, whom he had met at university, on 30 May 1941, the couple went on to have one daughter. Lindgren played violin in the Canberra Symphony Orchestra for a number of years.
Go to Profile#5290
Andreas Ritter
#107848
Overall Influence
#5291
Hugh C. Jenkyns
#107871
Overall Influence
#5292
Robert Thomas Seeley
#73978
Overall Influence
1932 - 2016 (84 years)
Robert Thomas Seeley was a mathematician who worked on pseudo differential operators and the heat equation approach to the Atiyah–Singer index theorem. Seeley did his undergraduate studies at Haverford College, and earned his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1959, under the supervision of Alberto Pedro Calderón. He taught at Harvey Mudd College and then in 1962 joined the faculty of Brandeis University. In 1972 he moved to the University of Massachusetts Boston; he retired as an emeritus professor. In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.
Go to Profile#5293
Rabi Bhattacharya
#102890
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (88 years)
Rabindra Nath Bhattacharya is a mathematician/statistician at the University of Arizona. He works in the fields of probability theory and theoretical statistics where he has made fundamental contributions to long-standing problems in both areas. Most notable are his solution to the multidimensional rate of convergence problem for the central limit theorem in his Ph.D. thesis published in the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society and further elaborated in a research monograph written jointly with R. Ranga Rao and the solution of the validity of the formal Edgeworth expansion in collaboration with J.K.
Go to Profile#5294
Kurt Strebel
#96605
Overall Influence
1921 - 2013 (92 years)
Kurt Strebel was a Swiss mathematician, specializing in geometric function theory. Education and career Strebel received in 1953 his PhD from the University of Zurich under Rolf Nevanlinna with thesis Über das Kreisnormierungsproblem der konformen Abbildung . From 1953 to 1955 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study and at Stanford University. He became a professor at the University of Fribourg in 1955 and then successor to Nevanlinna at the University of Zurich in 1963.
Go to Profile#5295
Gleb Nosovsky
#94683
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (67 years)
Gleb Vladimirovich Nosovsky or Nosovskiy is a Russian mathematician. He was born in Moscow, Russia. In Russia, Nosovsky is known for his pseudoscientific publications on the New Chronology. Mathematical work Candidate of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow State University, specialist in theory of probability, mathematical statistics, theory of probabilistic processes, theory of optimization, stochastic differential equations, computer modelling of stochastic processes, computer simulation. Worked as researcher of computer geometry in Russian Space Research Institute, in Moscow Machine Tools and Instruments Institute, in University of Aizu in Japan.
Go to Profile#5296
Yoh Iwasa
#71377
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Yoh Iwasa is a Japanese Mathematical Biologist who is considered the leading mathematical biologist in Japan. His work includes the evolution of costly mate preferences and the evolutionary dynamics of cancer. Notable papers include:"The evolution of costly mate preferences II. The 'handicap' principle" Evolution 1991"Demographic theory for an open marine population with space-limited recruitment" with Joan Roughgarden Ecology 1985"Dynamics of chronic myeloid leukaemia" Nature 2005"Prey distribution as a factor determining the choice of optimal foraging strategy" The American Naturalist 1981...
Go to Profile#5297
Ezra Brown
#98855
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (80 years)
Ezra Abraham "Bud" Brown is an American mathematician active in combinatorics, algebraic number theory, elliptic curves, graph theory, expository mathematics and cryptography. He spent most of his career at Virginia Tech where he is now Alumni Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Mathematics.
Go to Profile#5298
Suresh P. Sethi
#29429
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (80 years)
Suresh P. Sethi is Eugene McDermott Chair of operations management and director of the Center for Intelligent Supply Networks at the University of Texas at Dallas. He has contributed in the fields of manufacturing and operations management, finance and economics, marketing, industrial engineering, operations research, and optimal control. He is known for his developments of the Sethi advertising model and DNSS Points, and for his textbook on optimal control.
Go to Profile#5299
William Kantor
#96410
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (81 years)
William M. Kantor is an American mathematician who works in finite group theory and finite geometries, particularly in computational aspects of these subjects. Education and career Kantor graduated with a bachelor's degree from Brooklyn College in 1964. He went on to graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin, receiving his PhD in 1968 under the supervision of Peter Dembowski and R. H. Bruck. He then worked at the University of Illinois at Chicago from 1968 to 1971 before moving in 1971 to the University of Oregon, where he remained for the rest of his career.
Go to Profile#5300
Michael F. Singer
#96342
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Michael F. Singer is an American mathematician. Singer graduated from New York University with a bachelor's degree in 1970 and from the University of California, Berkeley with a master's degree in 1972 and a doctorate in 1974 under the supervision of Maxwell Rosenlicht with thesis Functions Satisfying Elementary Relations. From 1974 to 1976 Singer was an instructor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook . At North Carolina State University he was from 1974 to 1976 an assistant professor, from 1976 to 1982 an associate professor, and from 1986 to 2016 a full professor, retiring as...
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