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,
#7051
Virginie Bonnaillie-Noël
#131687
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (49 years)
Virginie Bonnaillie-Noël is a French mathematician and research director specializing in numerical analysis. Her research topics concern partial differential equations, asymptotic, spectral and numerical analysis of problems arising from physics or mechanics.
Go to Profile#7052
Muhammad Baqir Yazdi
#108274
Overall Influence
Muhammad Baqir Yazdi was an Iranian mathematician who lived in the 16th century. He gave the pair of amicable numbers 9,363,584 and 9,437,056 many years before Euler's contribution to amicable numbers. He was the last notable Islamic mathematician. His major book is Oyoun Alhesab .
Go to Profile#7053
Barry Edward Johnson
#96851
Overall Influence
1937 - 2002 (65 years)
Barry Edward Johnson was an English mathematician who worked on operator algebras. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1978.
Go to Profile#7054
Leonie Moench
#152578
Overall Influence
#7055
Marc J. Goovaerts
#152611
Overall Influence
#7056
Horst D. Simon
#152640
Overall Influence
#7057
Mathias Winterhalter
#152726
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
#7058
Zhi-wei Sun
#152739
Overall Influence
#7059
M. Cuturi
#152763
Overall Influence
#7060
Zvi Artstein
#152774
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (82 years)
#7061
Alessandra Celletti
#137132
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
Alessandra Celletti is an Italian mathematician. She earned a master's degree in mathematics in 1984 at the University of Rome La Sapienza, and a PhD in 1989 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich under the supervision of Jürgen Moser and Jörg Waldvogel. Her research activity concerns dynamical systems, Kolmogorov–Arnold–Moser theory, and celestial mechanics.
Go to Profile#7062
Christophe M. Courtin
#152806
Overall Influence
#7063
Nicholas Horton
#136506
Overall Influence
Nicholas Horton is an American statistics professor and author. He is the Beitzel Professor in Technology and Society at Amherst College. In 2022, he began a 3-year term as the vice president of the American Statistical Association.
Go to Profile#7064
R. F. G. Griffin
#152869
Overall Influence
#7065
Jean A. Larson
#98231
Overall Influence
Jean Ann Larson is an American mathematician. She is a set theorist, a historian of mathematical logic, and a professor at the University of Florida. She was the first woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics from Dartmouth College, and is known for her research in infinitary combinatorics and the theory of linear spaces.
Go to Profile#7066
Daniel Rittschof
#152876
Overall Influence
#7067
Ajit Tamhane
#89955
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
Ajit C. Tamhane is a professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences at Northwestern University and also holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Statistics. Tamhane has published over 100 research articles in refereed journals and has authored four books and co-edited two volumes of collected research papers. His research primarily focuses on multiple testing in clinical trials. He has also worked extensively in other areas of statistics including design of experiments, ranking and selection procedures, chemometrics, clustering methods and statistical i...
Go to Profile#7068
Rainer Kolisch
#152979
Overall Influence
#7069
Dominique de Caen
#147301
Overall Influence
1956 - 2002 (46 years)
Dominique de Caen was a mathematician, Doctor of Mathematics, and professor of Mathematics, who specialized in graph theory, probability, and information theory. He is renowned for his research on Turán's extremal problem for hypergraphs.
Go to Profile#7070
Ray Ison
#93125
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Raymond L. Ison is an Australian-British cybernetician, systems scholar/scientist, and Professor of Systems at the Open University in the UK. He is currently President of the International Federation for Systems Research . He was also Professor Systems for Sustainability at Monash University, and fellow at the Centre for Policy Development, and President of the International Society for the Systems Sciences in the year 2014-15. He is known for his work on systems praxeology within rural development, sustainable management, systemic governance and the design and enactment of learning systems.
Go to Profile#7071
Edward James
#16898
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
Edward Frederick James is a British scholar of medieval history and science fiction. He is Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at University College, Dublin. James received the Hugo Award for his non-fiction book The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction , and the Pilgrim Award for lifetime contribution to SF and fantasy scholarship.
Go to Profile#7072
A. Edward Nussbaum
#136480
Overall Influence
1925 - 2009 (84 years)
Adolf Edward Nussbaum was a German-born American theoretical mathematician who was a professor of mathematics at Washington University in St. Louis for nearly 40 years. He worked with others in 20th-century theoretical physics and mathematics such as J. Robert Oppenheimer and John von Neumann, and was acquainted with Albert Einstein.
Go to Profile#7073
Mohan Munasinghe
#13200
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (80 years)
Mohan Munasinghe is a Sri Lankan physicist, engineer and economist with a focus on energy, water resources, sustainable development and climate change. He was the 2021 Blue Planet Prize Laureate, and Vice-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice-President of the United States Al Gore. Munasinghe is the Founder Chairman of the Munasinghe Institute for Development. He has also served as an honorary senior advisor to the government of Sri Lanka since 1980.
Go to Profile#7074
Charles Lawrence
#101919
Overall Influence
Charles "Chip" Lawrence is an American bioinformatician and mathematician, who is the pioneer in developing novel statistical approaches to biological sequence analysis. After his PhD graduation, Lawrence became the assistant professor in Systems Engineering and Operations Research and Statistics, in Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In the same time period of time , Lawrence worked as the consultant to the Ministry of Maternal and Child Health in Dominican Republic. From 1975 to 1981, he worked in the New York State Department of Health as the Director of Operations Research and Statistics, i...
Go to Profile#7075
Boris Shapiro
#153336
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (68 years)
Boris Shapiro is a Russian-Swedish mathematician, whose research concerns differential equations, commutative algebra and Schubert calculus. The Shapiro–Shapiro conjecture was named after Michael Shapiro and him .
Go to Profile#7076
Richard Ehrenborg
#147291
Overall Influence
Richard Ehrenborg is a Swedish mathematician working in algebraic combinatorics. He is known for developing the quasisymmetric function of a poset. He currently holds the Ralph E. and Norma L. Edwards Research Professorship at the University of Kentucky and is the first recipient of the Royster Research Professor at University of Kentucky.
Go to Profile#7077
Melvin Currie
#122701
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
Melvin Robert Currie is an American mathematician and cryptographer. He is a former Chief of the Cryptographic Research and Design Division at the National Security Agency. His recognitions include a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Mathematicians, the 2007 Crypto-Mathematics Institute's Leadership Award, the NSA Director's Distinguished Service Medal, and recognition as a Black History Month 2019 Honoree by Mathematically Gifted & Black. He is the author of the 2018 popular mathematics book Mathematics: Rhyme and Reason, published jointly by the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute.
Go to Profile#7078
Michael Robert Osborne
#153386
Overall Influence
#7079
Luis Nunes Vicente
#132482
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (58 years)
Luis Nunes Vicente is an applied mathematician and optimizer who is known for his research work in Continuous Optimization and particularly in Derivative-Free Optimization. He is the Timothy J. Wilmott '80 Endowed Chair Professor and Department Chair of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering of Lehigh University.
Go to Profile#7080
Karl-heinrich Hofmann
#153456
Overall Influence
#7081
Nana Klutse
#58080
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (44 years)
Nana Ama Browne Klutse is a Ghanian lecturer and Climatologist. Early life and educational background Nana Ama Browne Klutse was born on 23 May 1981 at Nyanfeku Ekroful. She had her primary education at the Anomabo Methodist Primary and JHS.
Go to Profile#7082
M. Zuhair Nashed
#153544
Overall Influence
#7083
Thomas Mikosch
#153565
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
#7084
Jan Sokołowski
#153607
Overall Influence
#7085
Emile Van Schaftingen
#153610
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
#7086
Jeffrey S. Simonoff
#153614
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
#7087
Kasia Rejzner
#136417
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (40 years)
Katarzyna Anna Rejzner is a Polish mathematical physicist specializing in algebraic quantum field theory and the theory of renormalization, including the Batalin–Vilkovisky formalism. She works as a reader in mathematics at the University of York.
Go to Profile#7088
Martin Burger
#153638
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (49 years)
#7089
Amy Ellis
#132145
Overall Influence
Amy Burns Ellis is a Full Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Science Education at the University of Georgia. She was formerly an associate professor in mathematics education in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Go to Profile#7090
A. Sreekar Prasad
#27264
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Akkineni Sreekar Prasad is an Indian film editor known for his works across Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu language films. In a career spanning more than 35 years, he has edited over 600 films. He is a recipient of nine National Film Awards including seven wins for Best Editing which is a record in that category. He also won five Kerala State Film Awards, two Andhra Pradesh state Nandi Awards, and two Filmfare Awards among others.
Go to Profile#7091
Marek Kimmel
#153774
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
#7092
Geert-jan Olsder
#153790
Overall Influence
#7093
Laurent Fauchier
#153797
Overall Influence
#7094
Wei Biao Wu
#144282
Overall Influence
Wei Biao Wu is a Chinese-born statistician. He is a professor of statistics at the University of Chicago. Education and career Wu attended Fudan University, receiving his bachelor's degree in 1997. He went on to the University of Michigan for graduate studies, receiving his PhD in 2001 under the supervision of Michael Woodroofe and Sándor Csörgő. He was hired at the University of Chicago shortly after completing his PhD, and has remained there since.
Go to Profile#7095
Robert J. Cody
#153822
Overall Influence
#7096
Craig L. Russell
#107250
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (76 years)
Craig L. Russell is an American software architect and author. He contributed to the book 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know. Biography Early life and education Craig L. Russell was born January 6, 1949, in New York City. He attended Glen Rock High School and graduated in 1966. He graduated from Harvard University in 1971 with a BA in Applied Mathematics.
Go to Profile#7097
Aurore Delaigle
#128008
Overall Influence
Aurore Delaigle is a Professor and ARC Future Fellow in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests include nonparametric statistics, deconvolution and functional data analysis.
Go to Profile#7098
Kevin Anderson
#57008
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
Kevin Anderson is a British climate scientist. Anderson has a decade of industrial experience, principally as an engineer in the petrochemical industry. He regularly provides advice on issues of climate change across different tiers of governance, from local and regional through to national and the European Commission.
Go to Profile#7099
January Gerstoft
#153990
Overall Influence
#7100
Michael J. Alexander
#16943
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (84 years)
Michael Joseph Alexander was a British translator, poet, academic and broadcaster. He held the Berry Chair of English Literature at the University of St Andrews until his retirement in 2003. He is best known for his translations of Beowulf and other Anglo-Saxon poems into modern English verse.
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