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,
#6951
Joe N. Perry
#149781
Overall Influence
#6952
Joseph Pierre Lasalle
#149837
Overall Influence
#6953
Michael Walker
#75784
Overall Influence
1947 - 2018 (71 years)
Michael Walker was an English mathematician who was instrumental in developing the standards that apply to mobile telecommunications and particularly in respect of the SIM card.
Go to Profile#6954
David Michael Levine
#149930
Overall Influence
#6955
Zhou Yulin
#119620
Overall Influence
1923 - 2021 (98 years)
Zhou Yulin was a Chinese mathematician and academic of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Biography Zhou was born in Shanghai, on 12 February 1923, while his ancestral home was in Zhenhai, Zhejiang. In 1941, he was admitted to Utopia University, where he majored in mathematics. After graduating in October 1945, he became an assistant at Nanjing Temporary University and one year later was transferred to the Institute of Mathematics, Academia Sinica as an assistant. In October 1949, he joined the faculty of Peking University. After studying Russian in Beijing Russian College for several months, he was sent to study at Moscow State University on government scholarships.
Go to Profile#6956
Zhen-zhou Lu
#150000
Overall Influence
#6957
Franklin Diederich
#150177
Overall Influence
#6958
Jacques Tilouine
#146061
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (67 years)
Jacques Tilouine is a professor of mathematics at Université Sorbonne Paris Nord working in number theory and automorphic forms, particularly Iwasawa theory. Career Tilouine received his PhD in mathematics from Paris-Sud University in 1989 under the supervision of John H. Coates. He is a professor of mathematics at Université Sorbonne Paris Nord.
Go to Profile#6959
Amir Beck
#150237
Overall Influence
#6960
Basile Grammaticos
#150298
Overall Influence
#6961
Dominique Guyomard
#150299
Overall Influence
#6962
Jessica Fuerst
#150316
Overall Influence
#6963
Damla Şentürk
#53356
Overall Influence
Damla Şentürk is a Turkish-American biostatistician and professor of biostatistics in the University of California, Los Angeles Fielding School of Public Health whose interests include longitudinal studies, functional data analysis, and applications of biostatistics in the study of autism and of dialysis outcomes.
Go to Profile#6964
Ferdinand Verhulst
#150353
Overall Influence
#6965
Yvonne Freeh
#150420
Overall Influence
#6966
Roman Vershynin
#150440
Overall Influence
#6967
Jianwen Cai
#150453
Overall Influence
#6968
Randolph W. Hall
#150494
Overall Influence
#6969
Elisabeth Larsson
#129021
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (54 years)
Elisabeth Larsson is a Swedish applied mathematician and numerical analyst. She is a professor in the Department of Information Technology of Uppsala University, and the director of the Uppsala Multidisciplinary Centre for Advanced Computational Science.
Go to Profile#6970
Jennifer Rogers
#80967
Overall Influence
Jennifer Kaye Rogers is a British statistician. She was the Director of Statistical Consultancy Services at the University of Oxford and an associate professor at Oxford before joining contract research organisation PHASTAR in August 2019.
Go to Profile#6971
Phillip Kott
#111036
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Phillip S. Kott is an American statistician. He has worked in the field of survey statistics since 1984, and is regarded as a leader in this field. His areas of expertise include survey sampling design, analysis of survey data, and calibration weighting, among other areas. He revolutionized sampling design and estimation strategies with the Agricultural Resource Management Survey, which uses survey information more efficiently. He has taught at George Mason University, and USDA Graduate School. He is currently an Associate Editor for the Journal of Official Statistics and the scientific journ...
Go to Profile#6972
Wendy L. Martinez
#60309
Overall Influence
Wendy L. Martinez is an American statistician. She directs the Mathematical Statistics Research Center of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and is the coordinating editor of the journal Statistics Surveys . In 2018, Martinez was elected president of the American Statistical Association for the 2020 term.
Go to Profile#6973
Bruce Cooil
#87449
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Bruce Cooil is The Dean Samuel B. and Evelyn R. Richmond Professor of Management at Vanderbilt University in the Owen Graduate School of Management. His main areas of research are statistical modelling and its application to decrease mortality and morbidity rates due to coronary heart disease and what can be done to improve the healthcare of impoverished regions like Mozambique.
Go to Profile#6974
Nyla A. Heerema
#150588
Overall Influence
#6975
Mikko Kaasalainen
#28686
Overall Influence
1965 - 2020 (55 years)
Mikko K.J. Kaasalainen was a Finnish applied mathematician and mathematical physicist. He was professor of mathematics at the department of mathematics at Tampere University of Technology. Kaasalainen mostly worked on inverse problems and their applications especially in astrophysics, as well as on dynamical systems.
Go to Profile#6976
Mitsuhiro T. Nakao
#150638
Overall Influence
#6977
Simon Tett
#63649
Overall Influence
Simon Tett is a climatologist at the University of Edinburgh who was formerly with the Hadley Centre. His most-cited paper is Of it he says:All attempts at detecting and attributing climate change signals need a reliable observed data set and simulations with mechanisms that drive climate change included. In a nutshell, this paper is important because it was the first study to investigate the effect of sulphate aerosols in a general circulation model of the climate system. The experiments simulate the climate back to 1860 ... After 1970 our model with greenhouse gases alone begins to depart significantly from the observations.
Go to Profile#6978
Dimitris Rizopoulos
#150679
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (46 years)
#6979
Liberty Vittert
#93729
Overall Influence
1989 - Present (36 years)
Liberty Vittert is an American statistician, political commentator, and host of Liberty’s Great American Cookbook, a cooking show on Scottish Television. Vittert is a Professor of the Practice of Data Science at the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Data Science Initiative and the feature editor of the Harvard Data Science Review. She is the host of MIT's Data Science Podcast, "Data Nation" hosted by the MIT Institute for Data Systems and Society. Vittert is a Senior Data Scientist at Decision Desk HQ and their public facing representative for election calls and analysis.
Go to Profile#6980
Simon Sheather
#64765
Overall Influence
Simon J. Sheather is an Australian-American academic. He became the 8th dean of the University of Kentucky’s Gatton College of Business and Economics on July 1st, 2018. A Fellow of the American Statistical Association, Sheather is known for the Sheather-Jones bandwidth selection method for kernel density estimation.
Go to Profile#6981
Friedrich Wilhelm Schäfke
#133690
Overall Influence
1922 - 2010 (88 years)
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Schäfke was a German mathematician and professor of geometry. Writings Mathieusche Funktionen und Sphäroidfunktionen mit Anwendungen auf physikalische und technische Probleme, Springer 1954, with Josef MeixnerEinführung in die Theorie der speziellen Funktionen der mathematischen Physik, Springer 1963Differenzierbare Abbildungen, Köln 1967, with Dietrich Krekel und Dieter SchmditQuasimetrische Räume und quasinormierte Gruppen, Birlinghoven St. Augustin 1971Gewöhnliche Differentialgleichungen. Die Grundlagen die Theorie im Reellen und Komplexen, Springer 1973, , with ...
Go to Profile#6982
Johann Schröder
#139225
Overall Influence
1925 - 2007 (82 years)
Johann Wiards Albert Schröder was a German mathematician. Schröder studied mathematics and physics at Leibniz University Hannover and the University of Göttingen. In 1952 at Leibniz University Hannover he received his Promotion under Lothar Collatz for his thesis Fehlerabschätzungen zur Störungsrechnung bei linearen Eigenwertproblemen.
Go to Profile#6983
Michel André
#104093
Overall Influence
1936 - 2009 (73 years)
Michel André was a Swiss mathematician, specializing in non-commutative algebra and its applications to topology. He is known for André–Quillen cohomology. Biography André received in 1958 his Diplom from ETH Zurich and in 1962 his doctorate from the University of Paris with thesis advisor Claude Chevalley and thesis Cohomology of the algèbres différentielles où opère and algèbre de Lie. André became a full professor in 1971 at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.
Go to Profile#6984
Mariza de Andrade
#116995
Overall Influence
Mariza de Andrade is a Brazilian-American biostatistician who works as a professor of biostatistics at the Mayo Clinic, and is known for her work on statistical genetics and precision medicine. Early life De Andrade earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto in São Paulo and a master's degree in statistics at the Instituto Nacional de Matemática Pura e Aplicada in Rio de Janeiro. She moved to the University of Washington for additional graduate study, earning a second master's degree and Ph.D. in biostatistics there. Her 1990 ...
Go to Profile#6985
Douglas Quadling
#122403
Overall Influence
1926 - 2015 (89 years)
Douglas Arthur Quadling was an English mathematician, school master and educationalist who was one of the four drivers behind the School Mathematics Project in the 1960s and 70s. Life Quadling was educated at the City of London School. In 1939 the school was moved out of London, at the start of World War II, with most of the pupils attending Marlborough College though not accommodated there. Quadling had use of the College library at weekends, was influenced by Gordon Nobbs, one of the masters, and decided on a teaching career. In 1943 he won a scholarship to Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
Go to Profile#6986
Stanisław Horno-Popławski
#64403
Overall Influence
1902 - 1997 (95 years)
Stanisław Horno-Popławski was a Russian-Polish painter, sculptor and pedagogue. Life Stanisław's mother was Maria-Natalie-Agripina Popłavskaya , née Czeczott . In March 1891, she married Bartłomiej Józef Popławski a Russian-Polish railway engineer who later became president of the Warsaw Shipping and Trade Society. Bartłomiej had just been transferred the same year to Crimea , due to poor health and was involved in the construction of the Feodosia-Dzhankoy railway line . A year later in Feodosia, they had a daughter Maria Yadviga . Stanisław was born on July 14, 1902, in Kutaisi, Georgia, t...
Go to Profile#6987
Lawrence M. Seiford
#150909
Overall Influence
#6988
Alain Cariou
#150920
Overall Influence
#6989
Katherine E. Wolski
#150935
Overall Influence
#6990
Noah Dana-Picard
#59988
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Noah Dana-Picard is an Israeli mathematician, professor and Talmudic scholar who has been the president of the Jerusalem College of Technology since 2009. Life Born in France, Dana-Picard holds two PhDs; the first from Nice University, France and the second from Bar Ilan University in Israel . He is also a Talmudic scholar and speaks four languages.
Go to Profile#6991
Giovanni Russo
#150995
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (41 years)
#6992
Matthias Schonlau
#140296
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (58 years)
Matthias Schonlau is a German Professor of statistics and actuarial science at the University of Waterloo. Early life and career Matthias Schonlau was born in Höxter, Germany. He attended University of Ulm for an undergrad degree but never obtained it because he became enrolled into a master's program at the Queen's University from which he graduated in 1993. In 1997 Matthias got his Ph.D. from the University of Waterloo.
Go to Profile#6993
Garnet Anderson
#134076
Overall Influence
Garnet Larae Anderson is an American biostatistician, known for her research on the health risks caused by side effects of postmenopausal hormone therapy, and more generally as one of the leading researchers in the Women's Health Initiative. She is a senior vice president at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, where she directs the Public Health Sciences Division and holds the Fred Hutch 40th Anniversary Endowed Chair; she is also an affiliate professor of biostatistics at the University of Washington.
Go to Profile#6994
Frank Nielsen
#151080
Overall Influence
#6995
Cyril Smith
#100968
Overall Influence
1929 - 2008 (79 years)
Cyril Smith was a British lecturer of statistics at the London School of Economics, socialist, and revolutionary humanist. Political beginnings Smith began attending Communist Party meetings at University College London in 1947. By his own admission, he was attracted to the "systematic way [of] understand[ing] the world" that Stalinism provided. He quickly became disillusioned, however, during the Lysenko affair, which led to him turning his attention towards the works of Leon Trotsky.
Go to Profile#6996
Owen Saunders
#58467
Overall Influence
1904 - 1993 (89 years)
Sir Owen Alfred Saunders, FREng, FRS was an English applied mathematician, engineering science academic, and university administrator. Early life Owen Saunders was born in Streatham, London, the only son of Alfred George Saunders, an engineer, and Margaret Ellen Saunders . Saunders was educated at Emanuel School in south London . He attained a general science degree from Birkbeck College, London and went on to study at Trinity College, Cambridge.
Go to Profile#6997
Philip Hougaard
#151119
Overall Influence
#6998
H. K. Kesavan
#95176
Overall Influence
1926 - 2014 (88 years)
Hiremagalur Krishnaswamy Kesavan, known as H. K. Kesavan , was an Indian professor in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Early life and education H.K. Kesavan was born on 14 June 1926 in Bangalore, India. He received his undergraduate degrees in science and engineering from the Central College and the Government Engineering College in Bangalore. He received his M.S. degree from the University of Illinois in 1956 and his Ph.D. from Michigan State University in 1959, both in electrical engineering. He was an instructor at Michigan State from 1956 to 195...
Go to Profile#6999
Aizik Volpert
#136695
Overall Influence
1923 - 2006 (83 years)
Aizik Isaakovich Vol'pert was a Soviet and Israeli mathematician and chemical engineer working in partial differential equations, functions of bounded variation and chemical kinetics. Life and academic career Vol'pert graduated from Lviv University in 1951, earning the candidate of science degree and the docent title respectively in 1954 and 1956 from the same university: from 1951 on he worked at the Lviv Industrial Forestry Institute. In 1961 he became senior research fellow while 1962 he earned the "doktor nauk" degree from Moscow State University. In the 1970s–1980s A. I. Volpert became one of the leaders of the Russian Mathematical Chemistry scientific community.
Go to Profile#7000
Annick Alpérovitch
#151230
Overall Influence
