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,
#6401
Joseph Lehner
#127741
Overall Influence
1912 - 2013 (101 years)
Joseph Lehner was a mathematician at Michigan State University , the University of Maryland , and the University of Pittsburgh . He worked on automorphic functions and introduced Atkin–Lehner theory.
Go to Profile#6402
Peter Mcmullen
#134499
Overall Influence
#6403
Michael D. Fried
#92332
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Michael David Fried is an American mathematician working in the geometry and arithmetic of families of nonsingular projective curve covers. Career Fried received his undergraduate degree from Michigan State University in electrical engineering and then worked for three years as an aerospace electrical engineer. He then received his PhD from University of Michigan in Mathematics in 1967 under Donald John Lewis.
Go to Profile#6404
James O. C. Ezeilo
#91053
Overall Influence
1930 - 2013 (83 years)
James Okoye Chukuka Ezeilo was the first professor of mathematics in Nigeria. He was often regarded as the father of modern mathematics in the country and was the fifth vice chancellor of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He was Vice Chancellor of Bayero University Kano from 1977 to 1978. He was an alumnus of Cambridge University and died in 2013.
Go to Profile#6405
Zhou-ping Xin
#134549
Overall Influence
#6406
W. H. Clatworthy
#107395
Overall Influence
1915 - 2010 (95 years)
Willard H. Clatworthy was a professor emeritus from University at Buffalo and a World War II veteran from Williamsville, New York. He is known for his work in BIBD designs and combinatorial mathematics. Clatworthy received his Ph.D. in the year 1952 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill under the direction of R. C. Bose; Clatworthy authored papers with S. S. Shrikhande, and J. M. Cameron on BIBD designs.
Go to Profile#6407
Edward Patrick Riley
#134623
Overall Influence
#6408
Jennifer Scott
#117416
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Jennifer Ann Scott is a British mathematician specialising in numerical analysis, sparse matrix computations, and parallel computing. She is a professor of applied mathematics at the University of Reading, where she directs the Centre for the Mathematics of Planet Earth, and a Group Leader and Individual Merit Research Fellow for the Science and Technology Facilities Council at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.
Go to Profile#6409
Clive Selwyn Davis
#109599
Overall Influence
1916 - 2009 (93 years)
Clive Selwyn Davis was a Professor in Mathematics at the University of Queensland and veteran of World War II. He took his PhD in mathematics at the University of Cambridge, and upon his return to Australia worked to improve the study of mathematics at the University of Queensland over the next 30 years.
Go to Profile#6410
Daniel Biss
#101516
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Daniel Kálmán Biss is an American mathematician and politician serving as mayor of Evanston, Illinois. He previously served as a member of both the Illinois House of Representatives and Illinois Senate.
Go to Profile#6411
Romanas Januškevičius
#112322
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Romanas Januškevičius is a Lithuanian mathematician who worked in probability theory and characterization of probability distributions and its stability. He was a professor at the Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences, head of the Department of Mathematics, Informatics and Physics since 2001 until 2017.
Go to Profile#6412
R. W. Jr. Gilmer
#134701
Overall Influence
#6413
Annie Qu
#86080
Overall Influence
Peiyong "Annie" Qu is a Chinese-American statistician known for her work on estimating equations and semiparametric models. Her research interests also include longitudinal analysis, nonparametric statistics and robust statistics, missing data, and biostatistics.
Go to Profile#6414
Alain Krief
#134804
Overall Influence
#6415
Luc C. Tartar
#134852
Overall Influence
#6416
Alberto Dou Mas de Xaxàs
#130791
Overall Influence
1915 - 2009 (94 years)
Alberto Dou Mas de Xaxàs was a Spanish Jesuit and mathematician. He fought on the Nationalist side in the Spanish Civil War. In 1960, he was elected president of the Royal Spanish Mathematical Society.
Go to Profile#6417
Michael Eastwood
#134864
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Michael G. Eastwood is a mathematician at the University of Adelaide, known for his work in twistor theory, conformal differential geometry and invariant differential operators. In 1976 he received a PhD at Princeton University in several complex variables under Robert C. Gunning. He was a member of the twistor research group of Roger Penrose at the University of Oxford and he coauthored the monograph The Penrose Transform: Its Interaction with Representation Theory with Robert Baston. After moving to South Australia in 1985 he was the 1992 recipient of the Australian Mathematical Society Medal and made a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2005.
Go to Profile#6418
Bjarni Bragi Jónsson
#134898
Overall Influence
#6419
Donald Aronson
#120072
Overall Influence
Donald Aronson was an American mathematician at the University of Minnesota. He was an Elected Fellow of the American Mathematical Society.
Go to Profile#6420
Carol Schumacher
#79179
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Carol Smith Schumacher is a Bolivian-born American mathematician specializing in real analysis, a mathematics educator, and a textbook author. She is a professor of mathematics at Kenyon College, and vice president of the Mathematical Association of America.
Go to Profile#6421
Sylvie Roelly
#118266
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Sylvie Roelly is a French mathematician specializing in probability theory, including the study of particle systems, Gibbs measure, diffusion, and branching processes. She is a professor of mathematics in the Institute of Mathematics at the University of Potsdam in Germany.
Go to Profile#6422
Andreas Savin
#135002
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
#6423
Michael Hasofer
#97645
Overall Influence
1927 - 2010 (83 years)
Abraham Michael Hasofer was an Australian statistician. Professor Hasofer held the position of the Chair of Statistics within the Mathematics Department in the University of New South Wales in Sydney from 1969 to 1991. He subsequently held a position at the La Trobe University in Melbourne. He authored a number of publications in the field of applied mathematics and civil engineering, including his formulation of the Hasofer-Lind Reliability Index.
Go to Profile#6424
Werner Römisch
#104952
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Werner Römisch is a German mathematician, professor emeritus at the Humboldt University of Berlin, most known for his pioneer work in the field of stochastic programming. Education and early life Römisch was born in Zwickau, Germany in 1947. He earned his diploma degree in Mathematics and doctoral degree in mathematics at the Humboldt University of Berlin . In 1984 he earned his Habilitation degree and after that he was appointed as Privatdozent at the HUB. In 1993 he became full professor of applied mathematics at HUB. He is married to Ute Römisch, lives in Berlin and has two children.
Go to Profile#6425
Kevin J. Sharpe
#41421
Overall Influence
1950 - 2008 (58 years)
Kevin James Sharpe was a mathematician, theologian, archaeologist, Anglican priest and professor at Union Institute & University. He is known for his publications on the relationship between religion and science, on the interpretation of quantum physics by David Bohm, as well as for his investigations with Leslie Van Gelder on finger flutings in the Rouffignac cave.
Go to Profile#6426
Carl Dean Meyer
#135092
Overall Influence
#6427
Jürgen C. Frölich
#135099
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
#6428
William A. Massey
#108576
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
William Alfred Massey is an American mathematician and operations researcher, the Edwin S. Wilsey Professor of Operations Research and Financial Engineering at Princeton University. He is an expert in queueing theory.
Go to Profile#6429
Abraham N. Berman
#135146
Overall Influence
#6430
Martin Kassabov
#120272
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Martin Dimitrov Kassabov is a Bulgarian mathematician who works as a professor of mathematics at Cornell University, specializing in combinatorial group theory. Kassabov earned a master's degree from Sofia University in 1998. He completed his Ph.D. from Yale University in 2003 under the supervision of Efim Zelmanov. After postdoctoral research at the University of Alberta he joined Cornell as an H. C. Wang Assistant Professor in 2004.
Go to Profile#6431
Robert C. Michelson
#16962
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Robert C. Michelson is an American engineer and academic widely known for inventing the entomopter, a biologically inspired flapping-winged aerial robot, and for having established the International Aerial Robotics Competition. He has received degrees in electrical engineering from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and the Georgia Institute of Technology. Michelson's professional career began at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory where he worked on radar-based ocean surveillance systems. He later became a member of the research faculty at the Georgia Institute of Technology. At the Georgi...
Go to Profile#6432
Charles Wells
#108117
Overall Influence
1937 - 2017 (80 years)
Charles Wells was an American mathematician known for his fundamental contributions to category theory. He was Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Case Western Reserve University. Wells taught there for about 35 years, with sabbatical interruptions at ETH Zürich and Oxford University . He had a research career in mathematics in finite fields, group theory and category theory. In the last twenty years of this life he had also been interested in the language of mathematics and related issues concerning teaching and communicating abstract ideas.
Go to Profile#6433
Keith N. Frayn
#135235
Overall Influence
#6434
Gerhard Eisenbrand
#135241
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
#6435
Christine Graffigne
#118452
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Christine Graffigne is a French applied mathematician. She is known for her pioneering research on Markov random fields for image analysis, the topic of her 1986 invited address to the International Congress of Mathematicians.
Go to Profile#6436
Christine Anderson-Cook
#114231
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Christine Michaela Anderson-Cook is a U.S. and Canadian statistician known for her work on the design of experiments, response surface methodology, reliability analysis in quality engineering, multiple objective optimization and decision-making, and the applications of statistics in nuclear forensics. She has published over 200 research articles in statistical, engineering and interdisciplinary journals. She also written on misunderstandings caused by "hidden jargon": technical terms in statistics that are difficult to distinguish from colloquial English.
Go to Profile#6437
Richard Neapolitan
#70114
Overall Influence
Richard Eugene Neapolitan was an American scientist. Neapolitan is most well-known for his role in establishing the use of probability theory in artificial intelligence and in the development of the field Bayesian networks.
Go to Profile#6438
Charles Brenner
#42418
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Charles Hallam Brenner is an American mathematician who is the originator of forensic mathematics. His father Joel Lee Brenner was a professor of mathematics and his mother Frances Hallam Brenner was a city councilor and briefly mayor of Palo Alto, California. His uncle Charles Brenner, MD was a psychiatrist.
Go to Profile#6439
Henning Haahr Andersen
#134671
Overall Influence
Henning Haahr Andersen is a mathematician specializing in Algebraic groups, Lie algebras, Quantum groups and Representation theory. Andersen received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977 under the supervision of Steven Lawrence Kleiman.
Go to Profile#6440
Colin Eden
#82639
Overall Influence
Colin Eden was a professor in management science and operations research at Strathclyde University. Academic career Eden worked as an operational researcher in engineering upon bagging a doctorate. He then proceeded to academia, first working at the University of Bath Management School as a senior lecturer, then, as a reader.
Go to Profile#6441
Denis Guedj
#68864
Overall Influence
1940 - 2010 (70 years)
Denis Guedj was a French novelist and a professor of the History of Science at Paris VIII University. He was born in Setif. He spent many years devising courses and games to teach adults and children math. He is the author of Numbers: The Universal Language and of the novel The Parrot's Theorem. He died in Paris.
Go to Profile#6442
Ann Zauber
#117899
Overall Influence
Ann Graham Zauber is an epidemiologist and biostatistician at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, primarily interested in colorectal cancer. Her research has demonstrated the effectiveness of colonoscopy and polyp removal at reducing the incidence of this kind of cancer.
Go to Profile#6443
Dmitrii Treschev
#112347
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Dmitrii Valerevich Treschev is a Russian mathematician and mathematical physicist, specializing in dynamical systems of classical mechanics. Education and career Treschev completed his secondary study in 1981 with degree from the Специализированный учебно-научный центр МГУ имени А.Н. Колмогорова . Treschev completed his undergraduate study in 1986 with degree from the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics, Moscow State University. There in 1988 he received his Candidate of Sciences degree with thesis Геометрические методы исследования периодических траекторий динамических систем under the supervision of Valerii Vasilievich Kozlov.
Go to Profile#6444
Christophe Lacroix
#135511
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
#6445
Janet Stocks
#135520
Overall Influence
#6446
Mary D. Sammel
#115983
Overall Influence
Mary Dupuis Sammel is a biostatistician, who works as a professor in the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. As well as doing research on theoretical statistics and reproductive health, she also raises guide dogs and has published research on their upbringing.
Go to Profile#6447
Steven Brust
#9548
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Steven Karl Zoltán Brust is an American fantasy and science fiction author of Hungarian descent. He is best known for his series of novels about the assassin Vlad Taltos, one of a disdained minority group of humans living on a world called Dragaera. His recent novels also include The Incrementalists and its sequel The Skill of Our Hands , with co-author Skyler White.
Go to Profile#6448
Murray Aitkin
#134593
Overall Influence
Murray Aitkin is an Australian statistician who specialises in statistical models. He attained his BSc, PhD, and DSc in Sydney University for mathematical statistics in 1961, 1966 and 1997, respectively.
Go to Profile#6449
Ronald Does
#110736
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Ronaldus Joannes Michael Maria "Ronald" Does is a Dutch mathematician, known for several contributions to statistics and Lean Six Sigma. His research interests include control charts, Lean Six Sigma, and the integration of industrial statistics in services and healthcare.
Go to Profile#6450
Philippe Mathurin
#135568
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
