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).
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List of the most influential people in Mathematics,
#5801
Cathryn Lewis
#102651
Overall Influence
Cathryn Lewis is Professor of Genetic Epidemiology and Statistics at King's College London. She is Head of Department at the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience.
Go to Profile#5802
Anders Szepessy
#108957
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (65 years)
Anders Szepessy is a Swedish mathematician. Szepessy received his PhD in 1989 from Chalmers University of Technology with thesis Convergence of the streamline diffusion finite element method for conservation laws under the supervision of Claes Johnson. Szepessy is now a professor of mathematics and numerical analysis at KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#5803
Christine Riedtmann
#108765
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Christine Riedtmann is a Swiss mathematician specializing in abstract algebra. She earned her PhD in 1978 from the University of Zurich under the supervision of Pierre Gabriel, and is a professor emeritus at the University of Bern.
Go to Profile#5804
Sylvia de Neymet
#106456
Overall Influence
1938 - 2002 (64 years)
Sylvia de Neymet Urbina was a Mexican mathematician, the first woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics in Mexico, and the first female professor in the faculty of sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico .
Go to Profile#5805
Colette Moeglin
#102176
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Colette Moeglin is a French mathematician, working in the field of automorphic forms, a topic at the intersection of number theory and representation theory. Career and distinctions Moeglin is a Directeur de recherche at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique and is currently working at the Institut de mathématiques de Jussieu. She was a speaker at the 1990 International Congress of Mathematicians, on decomposition into distinguished subspaces of certain spaces of square-integral automorphic forms.
Go to Profile#5806
Jan Hendrik Bruinier
#119064
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (54 years)
Jan Hendrik Bruinier is a German mathematician, whose work focuses on number theory. Work In 2011, together with Ken Ono, he developed a finite algebraic formula for the values of the partition function.
Go to Profile#5807
Amir Ali Ahmadi
#69710
Overall Influence
Amir Ali Ahmadi is a professor in the Department of Operations Research and Financial Engineering at Princeton University. He is primarily known for his work on mathematical optimization. Biography Ahmadi obtained a B.S. in both mathematics and electrical engineering at the University of Maryland in 2006. He then received his M.S. and PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2008 and 2011 respectively, where he was supervised by Pablo Parrilo. After this, he spent a year in the Robot Locomotion Group at MIT as a postdoctoral fellow before joining the IBM Watson Research Center in 2012 as a Herman Goldstine Fellow.
Go to Profile#5808
Gerhard Bringmann
#119638
Overall Influence
#5809
I. Martin Isaacs
#119640
Overall Influence
#5810
Thomas R. Kane
#48084
Overall Influence
1924 - 2019 (95 years)
Thomas Reif Kane was a professor emeritus of applied mechanics at Stanford University. Early life Kane was born in Vienna, Austria. He immigrated to the United States with his parents in 1938 after Austria fell to Nazi Germany. In 1943, he enlisted in the United States Army and was stationed in the South Pacific as a combat photographer. From 1946 to 1953 he attended Columbia University during which he earned two BS degrees in mathematics and civil engineering, as well as an MS in civil engineering and a PhD in applied mechanics.
Go to Profile#5811
Jane Kister
#102469
Overall Influence
1942 - 2019 (77 years)
Jane Elizabeth Kister was a British and American mathematical logician and mathematics editor who served for many years as an editor of Mathematical Reviews. Early life and education Jane Bridge was originally from Weybridge, England, where she was born on 18 October 1944; her father was a lawyer and later a judge. Her family moved to London when she was four, and she studied at St Paul's Girls' School in London. She matriculated at Somerville College, Oxford in 1963, but her studies were interrupted by a diagnosis of lupus; she resumed reading mathematics there in 1964, tutored by Anne Cobbe.
Go to Profile#5812
Omayra Ortega
#102502
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (47 years)
Omayra Ortega is an American mathematician, specializing in mathematical epidemiology. Ortega is an associate professor of mathematics & statistics at Sonoma State University in Sonoma County, California, and the president of the National Association of Mathematicians .
Go to Profile#5813
Janet L. Norwood
#53467
Overall Influence
1923 - 2015 (92 years)
Janet Lippe Norwood was an American statistician and the first female Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics when she was appointed in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter. She was reappointed twice by President Reagan. She left the Bureau in 1991 and joined the Urban Institute as a Senior Fellow, a position she held until 1999. She was also appointed as the Chair of the Advisory Council on Unemployment Compensation, first by President George H. W. Bush in 1993 and then re-elected by President Bill Clinton. She stepped down from that position in 1996. She received numerous awards inc...
Go to Profile#5814
Nicholas Bellamy
#119778
Overall Influence
#5815
Tanja Stadler
#91201
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (44 years)
Tanja Stadler is a mathematician and professor of computational evolution at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology . She’s the current president of the Swiss Scientific Advisory Panel COVID-19.
Go to Profile#5816
Nicolas Bourbaki
#119848
Overall Influence
#5817
Alexander Brudno
#36217
Overall Influence
1918 - 2009 (91 years)
Alexander L'vovich Brudno was a Russian computer scientist, best known for fully describing the alpha-beta pruning algorithm. From 1991 until his death he lived in Israel. Biography Brudno developed the "mathematics/machine interface" for the M-2 computer constructed in 1952 at the Krzhizhanovskii laboratory of the Institute of Energy of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the Soviet Union. He was a great friend of Alexander Kronrod.
Go to Profile#5818
Christof Schütte
#99814
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
Christof Schütte is a German mathematician, working in applied and computational mathematics at the Freie Universität Berlin and the Zuse Institute Berlin. Education and career Christof Schütte was born in Warburg. He graduated in physics from Paderborn University in 1991 and then obtained his PhD in mathematics under the supervision of Peter Deuflhard in 1994. He is currently a Professor in Numerical Mathematics and Scientific Computing at Freie Universität Berlin, and the president of the Zuse Institute Berlin.
Go to Profile#5819
Mingyao Li
#110317
Overall Influence
Mingyao Li is a Chinese-American biostatistician and statistical geneticist known for her research on genetic factors related to heart disease, and as one of the creators of the ANNOVAR bioinformatics software tool. She is a professor of biostatistics in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#5820
John Henry Waddell
#25221
Overall Influence
1921 - 2019 (98 years)
John Henry Waddell was an American sculptor, painter and educator. He had a long career in art education and has many sculptures on public display, but he may be best known for That Which Might Have Been—his memorial to the four girls killed in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.
Go to Profile#5821
Aharon Ben‐tal
#120007
Overall Influence
#5822
Alan G. Hawkes
#120010
Overall Influence
#5823
Pierre Pinson
#116250
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (45 years)
Pierre Pinson is a French applied mathematician known for his work on forecasting, optimisation and management science for energy systems, e.g., including probabilistic forecasting, participation of renewable energy generation in electricity markets, market-based coordination of energy systems, peer-to-peer energy markets, as well as data markets. He is a professor at the Technical University of Denmark and has been Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Forecasting from 2019 onwards.
Go to Profile#5824
Montserrat Fuentes
#70614
Overall Influence
Montserrat Fuentes is a Spanish statistician and academic administrator, the president of St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas. She is also the Coordinating Editor and Applications and Case Studies Editor for the Journal of the American Statistical Association. In her research, she applies spatial analysis to atmospheric science.
Go to Profile#5825
George A. Marcoulides
#120052
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
#5826
Bijan Davvaz
#120103
Overall Influence
Bijan Davvaz is an Iranian mathematician and Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at Yazd University. He is known for his works on group theory, ring theory and module theory. Books Groups and Symmetry: Theory and ApplicationsA First Course in Group TheoryExamples and Problems in Advanced Calculus: Real-Valued FunctionsHypergroup TheoryWalk Through Weak Hyperstructures, A: Hv-structuresSemihypergroup TheoryPolygroup Theory And Related SystemsFuzzy Algebraic Hyperstructures: An Introduction
Go to Profile#5827
Bengt Fornberg
#120119
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
#5828
Linda B. Hayden
#56671
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (76 years)
Linda Bailey Hayden is an American mathematician. She specializes in mathematics education and applications of mathematics in geoscience, and is known for her mentorship of minorities and women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. She is a professor and associate dean of mathematics and computer science at Elizabeth City State University.
Go to Profile#5829
Hans G. Kaper
#83083
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (89 years)
Hans Gerard Kaper is a Dutch-American mathematician who worked for many years at Argonne National Laboratory until his retirement in 2008. He continues to hold adjunct professorships in mathematics and statistics at Georgetown University and in music at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he has been a long-term collaborator on the UIUC Computer Music Project.
Go to Profile#5830
Khandkar Manwar Hossain
#53012
Overall Influence
1930 - 1999 (69 years)
Khandkar Manwar Hossain was a Bangladeshi statistician. In 1950, he was among the students graduating from the first statistics course at the University of Dhaka. He was the founder of the Department of Statistics of Rajshahi University.
Go to Profile#5831
Timothy Law Snyder
#81167
Overall Influence
Timothy Law Snyder is an American educator, mathematician, academic administrator, and musician. He serves as the 16th president of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. Snyder is well known for his academic research, publications and speeches on computational mathematics, data structures, combinatorial optimization, geometric probability, computer music, HIV diagnosis and prevention, and airline flight safety.
Go to Profile#5832
Sara Del Valle
#44614
Overall Influence
Sara Yemimah Del Valle is a senior scientist and mathematical epidemiologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory . At the LANL, Del Valle leads the Fusion Team, where she combines internet data with satellite imagery to forecast disease outbreaks. During the COVID-19 pandemic Del Valle created a computational model that could predict the spread of COVID-19 around the United States.
Go to Profile#5833
Antonella Cupillari
#106899
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Antonella Cupillari is an Italian-American mathematician interested in the history of mathematics and mathematics education. She is an associate professor of mathematics at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College.
Go to Profile#5834
Philip E. Protter
#120206
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (76 years)
#5835
Svetlozar T. Rachev
#120312
Overall Influence
#5836
Nicholas Polson
#66121
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (62 years)
Nicholas Polson is a British statistician who is a professor of econometrics and statistics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. His works are primarily in Bayesian statistics, Markov chain Monte Carlo and Sequential Monte Carlo, . Polson was educated at Worcester College, Oxford University and the University of Nottingham where his PhD supervisor was Adrian Smith.
Go to Profile#5837
James Wilson Hurrell
#120326
Overall Influence
#5838
Erin Blankenship
#109317
Overall Influence
Erin E. Blankenship is an American statistician interested in nonlinear models and environmental statistics, and known for her work in statistics education. She is a professor of statistics at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
Go to Profile#5839
Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel
#40913
Overall Influence
Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel is a Turkish-American statistician and professor of the practice at Duke University, and a professional educator at RStudio. She is the author of several open source statistics textbooks and is an instructor for Coursera. She is the chair-elect of the Statistical Education Section of the American Statistical Association. Previously, she was a senior lecturer at University of Edinburgh.
Go to Profile#5840
Pierre Boutouyrie
#120413
Overall Influence
#5841
Naomi Altman
#76523
Overall Influence
Naomi Altman is a statistician known for her work on kernel smoothing and kernel regression, and interested in applications of statistics to gene expression and genomics. She is a professor of statistics at Pennsylvania State University, and a regular columnist for the "Points of Significance" column in Nature Methods.
Go to Profile#5842
Gábor Székelyhidi
#112574
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (44 years)
Gábor Székelyhidi is a Hungarian mathematician, specializing in differential geometry. Gábor Székelyhidi, the brother of László Székelyhidi, graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge with a bachelor's degree in 2002 and received from Imperial College London his PhD in 2006 under the supervision of Simon Donaldson with thesis Extremal metrics and K-stability. Székelyhidi was a postdoc at Harvard University and was from 2008 to 2011 Ritt Assistant Professor at Columbia University. At the University of Notre Dame he became an assistant professor in 2011, an associate professor in 2014, and in 2...
Go to Profile#5843
Ana Justel
#101372
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (58 years)
Ana María Justel Eusebio is a Spanish statistician and Antarctic scientist specializing in nonparametric statistics, including work on multivariate versions of the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test and on mixture models, and applications to the limnology and meteorology of Antarctica. She is a professor of statistics at the Autonomous University of Madrid.
Go to Profile#5844
Joy Morris
#100259
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (55 years)
Joy Morris is a Canadian mathematician whose research involves group theory, graph theory, and the connections between the two through Cayley graphs. She is also interested in mathematics education, is the author of two open-access undergraduate mathematics textbooks, and oversees a program in which university mathematics education students provide a drop-in mathematics tutoring service for parents of middle school students. She is a professor of mathematics at the University of Lethbridge.
Go to Profile#5845
M. Roseann Diehl
#120558
Overall Influence
#5846
Pierre Arnaud Raviart
#120587
Overall Influence
#5847
Vladimir Vragov
#120602
Overall Influence
1945 - 2002 (57 years)
Vladimir Vragov — was a Russian/Soviet mathematician and scientist. Biography Vladimir Vragov was born in 1945 in Urgench, Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic in a driver`s family. It was a hard period after war and the family had to emigrate a lot. Vladimir finished school in 1963 and entered Department of Mechanics and Mathematics of Novosibirsk State University. After graduating , he continued his postgraduate studies in the same university.
Go to Profile#5848
Kurt Leichtweiss
#75916
Overall Influence
1927 - 2013 (86 years)
Kurt Leichtweiß was a mathematician specializing in convex and differential geometry. In 1944, while still in high school Leichtweiß traveled to the Oberwolfach Research Institute for Mathematics where his mathematical interests were encouraged. He studied at the University of Freiburg and the ETH Zurich. He was a student of Emanuel Sperner and Wilhelm Süss. He was then a lecturer in Freiburg and in 1963 became a professor at TU Berlin. From 1970 until his retirement in 1995, he was a professor at the University of Stuttgart.
Go to Profile#5849
Emma McCoy
#90566
Overall Influence
Emma Joan McCoy is the Vice President and Pro-Vice Chancellor for Education and a Professor of Statistics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has acted as a mathematics subject expert for discussions on reform of the National Curriculum, and is a member of the Royal Statistical Society council.
Go to Profile#5850
Janusz Grabowski
#107751
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Janusz Roman Grabowski Polish mathematician working in differential geometry and mathematical methods in classical and quantum physics. Scientific career Grabowski earned his MSc degree in mathematics in 1978 at the Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Mechanics of the University of Warsaw. His master thesis was awarded the first degree Marcinkowski Prize of the Polish Mathematical Society. In the period of 1978-2001 he worked at the University of Warsaw earning his PhD in 1982 and habilitation in 1993. He was giving courses in Calculus I, II, III, Functional Analysis, Lie algebras and Lie...
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