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,
#6551
Katrin Leschke
#124103
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (57 years)
Katrin Leschke is a German mathematician specialising in differential geometry and known for her work on quaternionic analysis and Willmore surfaces. She works in England as a reader in mathematics at the University of Leicester, where she also heads the "Maths Meets Arts Tiger Team", an interdisciplinary group for the popularisation of mathematics, and led the "m:iv" project of international collaboration on minimal surfaces.
Go to Profile#6552
Horst R. Thieme
#138105
Overall Influence
#6553
De N.g. Bruijn
#138142
Overall Influence
#6554
James Mac Hyman
#138168
Overall Influence
#6555
Maamar Bettayeb
#77094
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Maamar Bettayeb is a control theorist, educator and inventor. He is the author of publications on understanding the singular value decomposition and model order reduction. Bettayeb is also a promoter of scientific research.
Go to Profile#6556
Francis J. Yammarino
#138232
Overall Influence
#6557
Jaqueline Mesquita
#109690
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (40 years)
Jaqueline Godoy Mesquita is a Brazilian mathematician specializing in differential equations and functional differential equations. She is a professor of mathematics at the University of Brasília. Education and career Mesquita was born on 20 September 1985. After graduating from the University of Brasília in 2007, she earned a Ph.D. at the University of São Paulo in 2012, with the dissertation Measure functional differential equations and impulsive functional dynamic equations on time scales, jointly supervised by Marcia Cristina Anderson Braz Federson and Antonín Slavík, based in part on wor...
Go to Profile#6558
David Ben-Zvi
#138306
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (51 years)
David Dror Ben-Zvi is an American mathematician, currently the Joe B. and Louise Cook Professor of Mathematics at University of Texas at Austin. Ben-Zvi was born in the San Francisco Bay Area, and grew up in Rehovot, Israel, and Setauket New York. He graduated a Valedictorian from Ward Melville High School and was a finalist in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search. Ben-Zvi attended college at Princeton University.
Go to Profile#6559
Tony Brooker
#5002
Overall Influence
1925 - 2019 (94 years)
Ralph Anthony Brooker , was a British computer scientist known for developing the Mark 1 Autocode. He was educated at Emanuel School and graduated in Mathematics from Imperial College in 1945 and returned there in 1947 as assistant lecturer. His first computer project was the construction of a fast multiplier unit from electro-mechanical relays. This was taken over by Sid Michaelson and K. D. Tocher and incorporated into ICCE, the Imperial College Computing Engine based on the same technology. By then Brooker had moved to the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory to work for Maurice Wilk...
Go to Profile#6560
Jean‐françois Cordeau
#138367
Overall Influence
#6561
Padam Chand Jain
#110672
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (95 years)
Padam Chand Jain is an Indian mathematician who specialised in numerical solutions of partial differential equations. He was awarded in 1975 the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, the highest science award in India, in the mathematical sciences category. Jain has done important work on the development of algorithms for solving non-linear problems involving irregular boundaries. Algorithms based on finite difference technique, finite element technique and quasilinearization and invariant embedding have been developed and applied to various problems in fluid dynamics. Th...
Go to Profile#6562
A. C. D. Van Fröhlich
#138380
Overall Influence
#6563
Klaas Sijtsma
#138392
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
#6564
Stephen John Maybank
#138441
Overall Influence
#6565
Stefaan Poedts
#138443
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
#6566
Willi Sauerbrei
#138474
Overall Influence
#6567
Ivan J. Singer
#138480
Overall Influence
#6568
Frauke Kreuter
#108840
Overall Influence
Frauke Kreuter is a German sociologist and statistician. She is a professor of the Joint Program in Survey Methodology of the University of Maryland, College Park and a professor in statistics and data science at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany. Her research in survey methodology includes work on sampling error and observational error.
Go to Profile#6569
Matthew Stephens
#36467
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (55 years)
Matthew Stephens is a Bayesian statistician and professor in the departments of human genetics and statistics at the University of Chicago. He is known for the Li and Stephens model as an efficient coalescent.
Go to Profile#6570
Mariano Giaquinta
#138574
Overall Influence
#6571
Andrei Gabrielov
#111405
Overall Influence
Andrei Gabrielov is a mathematician who is a professor at Purdue University. He is a fellow of the American Mathematical Society since 2016, for "contributions to real algebraic and analytic geometry, and the theory of singularities, and for contributions to geophysics."
Go to Profile#6572
Keith R. Thompson
#57804
Overall Influence
Keith Thompson was a professor at Dalhousie University with a joint appointment in the Department of Oceanography and the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. Thompson was trained in the UK and obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Liverpool in 1979. His research interests focused on ocean and shelf circulation, 4D data assimilation, extremal analysis and applied time series analysis.
Go to Profile#6573
Johanna Wanka
#80555
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Johanna Wanka is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union who served as Federal Minister for Education and Research in the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2013 until 2018. From 2000 to 2009, she served as Minister for Science, Research and Culture of the state of Brandenburg, then from 2010 to 2013 she served as Minister of Science and Culture of the state of Lower Saxony, in the Cabinet McAllister.
Go to Profile#6574
Florentina Bunea
#110813
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
Florentina Bunea is a Romanian-American statistician, interested in machine learning, the theory of empirical processes, and high-dimensional statistics. She is a professor at Cornell University. Education and Career Bunea earned Bachelor's and Master's degrees at the University of Bucharest in 1989 and 1991. After working as an assistant professor at the Politehnica University of Bucharest from 1991 to 1995, she returned to graduate study at the University of Washington. She earned her Ph.D. there in 2000; her dissertation, A Model Selection Approach to Partially Linear Regression, was supervised by Jon A.
Go to Profile#6575
T. Thrivikraman
#127332
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (82 years)
T. Thrivikraman is an Indian mathematician who has made important contributions to topology, fuzzy mathematics, history of mathematics and to several other areas of mathematics. He actively promoted the culture of mathematical research in Kerala, himself guiding as many as 29 students in their doctoral research. He was also actively involved in the activities of the science popularization movement known as Kerala Sasthra Sahithya Parishad.
Go to Profile#6576
Colin Atkinson
#138745
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
#6577
Samuel Verblunsky
#138750
Overall Influence
1906 - 1996 (90 years)
Samuel Verblunsky was a British mathematician who introduced Verblunsky's theorem and Verblunsky coefficients. His early work on orthogonal polynomials and harmonic functions was neglected for many years, until publicized by Barry Simon.
Go to Profile#6578
Keith Alan Shore
#138765
Overall Influence
#6579
Marius Crainic
#118006
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (52 years)
Marius Nicolae Crainic is a Romanian mathematician working in the Netherlands. Education and career Born in Aiud, Romania, Crainic obtained a bachelor's degree at Babeș-Bolyai University in 1995. He then moved to the Netherlands and obtained a master's degree in 1996 at Nijmegen University. He received his Ph.D. in 2000 from Utrecht University under the supervision of Ieke Moerdijk. His Ph.D. thesis is titled "Cyclic cohomology and characteristic classes for foliations".
Go to Profile#6580
Hideya Matsumoto
#130162
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Hideya Matsumoto is a Japanese mathematician who works on algebraic groups, who proved Matsumoto's theorem about Coxeter groups and Matsumoto's theorem calculating the second K-group of a field. Publications
Go to Profile#6581
Bhramar Mukherjee
#105274
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (52 years)
Bhramar Mukherjee is an Indian-American biostatistician, data scientist, professor and researcher. She is the John D. Kalbfleisch Distinguished University Professor, John D. Kalbfleisch Collegiate Professor and the Chair of Department of Biostatistics, a professor of epidemiology and global public health at the University of Michigan. She serves as the associate director for Quantitative Data Sciences at University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center. Mukherjee holds a Senior Honorary Visiting Fellow position at the Biostatistics Unit of the Medical Research Council, working on the theme of population health at the University of Cambridge, UK.
Go to Profile#6582
Bettina Eick
#122981
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (57 years)
Bettina Eick is a German mathematician specializing in computational group theory. She is Professor of Mathematics at the Technische Universität Braunschweig. Life and education Eick was born on May 16, 1968, in Bremervörde, Germany, to Hans and Eva Eick. She attended the Rheinische-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen from 1987 to 1993. During that time she spent a year at the Queen Mary and Westfield College doing mathematical work under the direction of Charles Leedham-Green. In 1993 she completed her Diplom thesis under the supervision of Joachim Neubüser.
Go to Profile#6583
Pierre Goovaerts
#138788
Overall Influence
#6584
Myles Hollander
#138791
Overall Influence
#6585
Nicholas I. Fisher
#138807
Overall Influence
#6586
Itay Neeman
#123730
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (53 years)
Itay Neeman is a set theorist working as a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has made major contributions to the theory of inner models, determinacy and forcing.
Go to Profile#6587
Jon G. Rokne
#138822
Overall Influence
#6588
Matthias Ehrgott
#138897
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
#6589
Stephen T. Smale
#138902
Overall Influence
#6590
Sreenivasa Rao Jammalamadaka
#133307
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (81 years)
Sreenivasa Rao Jammalamadaka, also known as J.S. Rao, is a statistician specializing in directional statistics, Goodness of fit tests, Spacings, and aspects of large sample efficiencies and inference. He was born in Munipalle, Andhra Pradesh, India, and currently is a naturalized US citizen. He now resides and works at the University of California, Santa Barbara as a Distinguished Professor in Statistics. He is known for his important contributions to circular statistics and to tests and estimation based on spacings.
Go to Profile#6591
Ambar Sengupta
#128809
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (62 years)
Ambar Niel Sengupta is an Indian-American mathematician. He is a professor of mathematics at the University of Connecticut. Education and career Ambar Sengupta attended Presidency College, Calcutta and stood first class first in the BSc examination of the University of Calcutta in 1984. He then joined Cornell University, where he obtained an MS and then a PhD under the supervision of Leonard Gross in 1990.
Go to Profile#6592
Cheng Qiuming
#128906
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (65 years)
Cheng Qiuming is a Chinese mathematical geoscientist. He is a professor and founding director of the State Key Lab of Geological Processes and Mineral Resources, China University of Geosciences . He received the William Christian Krumbein Medal in 2008 from the International Association for Mathematical Geosciences. He was the President of the International Association for Mathematical Geosciences . He is currently the President of the International Union of Geological Sciences .
Go to Profile#6593
Sonia Natale
#125387
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (53 years)
Sonia Luján Natale is an Argentine mathematician specializing in abstract algebra. She works as a professor of mathematics at the National University of Córdoba, where she earned her Ph.D. in 1999, and as a researcher for the National Scientific and Technical Research Council.
Go to Profile#6594
Robert Vallée
#62634
Overall Influence
1922 - 2017 (95 years)
Robert Vallée was a French cyberneticist and mathematician. He was Professor at the Paris 13 University and president of the World Organization of Systems and Cybernetics . At the beginning of the 1950s, Vallée wrote his first publications on what he named "opérateur d'observation" . The latter, in the simplest case, allows a cybernetic system to observe the state of its environment and itself. Thereafter, on the basis of these results, a decisional operator will be able to indicate the action to be taken. The two stages of perception and decision are distinguished by "intellectual convenience", but it is interesting to gather them in a unique operator, known as "pragmatic".
Go to Profile#6595
Tatyana Krivobokova
#106729
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
Tatyana Krivobokova is a Kazakh statistician known for her work on spline estimators, with applications in biophysics and econometrics. She is University Professor for Statistics with Applications in Economics at the University of Vienna.
Go to Profile#6596
Emily Simonoff
#45983
Overall Influence
Emily Simonoff is Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services Neuropsychiatry Service, head of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry department at the Institute of Psychiatry and lead for the CAMHS Clinical Academic Group at King's Health Partners, King's College London.
Go to Profile#6597
Qing Nie
#98263
Overall Influence
Qing Nie is a mathematician and systems biology researcher. He is a Chancellor's Professor of Mathematics, Developmental and Cell Biology, and Biomedical Engineering at University of California, Irvine. He is also the director of the Center for Mathematical and Computational Biology and the NSF-Simons Center for Multiscale Cell Fate Research at the University.
Go to Profile#6598
Weiwen Miao
#122914
Overall Influence
Weiwen Miao is a Chinese-American statistician, statistics educator, and scholar of legal statistics and nonparametric statistics. She is a professor of mathematics and statistics at Haverford College.
Go to Profile#6599
Siva Athreya
#84874
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (54 years)
Siva Ramachandran Athreya is an Indian probability theorist specialising in statistical physics and population biology. He graduated in mathematics from St Stephen's College, Delhi, went to ISI in Kolkata and Bangalore where he completed his master's, obtained his PhD degree from University of Washington in 1998 under the supervision of Krzysztof Burdzy. He was awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology in 2012, the highest science award in India, in the mathematical sciences category.
Go to Profile#6600
Eric Walter
#93206
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Eric Walter is a researcher of statistics and parameter estimation in the French laboratory Laboratoire des Signaux et Systèmes . Early life Eric Walter was born in Saint-Mandé, France, in 1950. He received the Doctorat d’État degree in Control Theory from the University of Paris Sud, France, in 1980. Between 1973 and 1976, he was assistant professor at the Pierre et Marie Curie University, Paris. Then he entered the CNRS institute as a researcher.
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