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,
#7101
Donna Brogan
#117759
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (86 years)
Donna Jean Brogan is an American statistician and professor emeritus of statistics at Emory University. Brogan has worked in biostatistical research in the areas of women's health, mental health and psychosocial health statistics, statistics on breast cancer, and analysis of complex survey data.
Go to Profile#7102
Pierre Michel
#9579
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
Pierre Michel , is a professor of literature and a scholar specializing in the French writer Octave Mirbeau. Michel was born in Toulon, the son of the historian Henri Michel. After defending his doctoral dissertation on the works of Octave Mirbeau at the University of Angers in 1992, Michel founded a year later, the "Société Octave Mirbeau", a literary society he is currently presiding. He is also the founder and editor in chief of Cahiers Octave Mirbeau .
Go to Profile#7103
Paola Antonietti
#135902
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (45 years)
Paola F. Antonietti is an Italian applied mathematician and numerical analyst whose research concerns numerical methods for partial differential equations, and particularly domain decomposition methods, with applications in scientific computing and Applied Sciences such as the computational modelling of neurodegenerative disorders and simulating the propagation of seismic waves. She is Professor of Numerical Analysis at the Polytechnic University of Milan.
Go to Profile#7104
A. Geoffrey Lockett
#154076
Overall Influence
#7105
Jim Coykendall
#150378
Overall Influence
James Barker Coykendall IV is an American mathematician. Coykendall earned his bachelor's degree from the California Institute of Technology in 1989 and completed a doctorate at Cornell University in 1995. His thesis, titled Normsets and Rings of Algebraic Integers, was overseen by Shankar Sen. Coykendall's teaching career began the next year at North Dakota State University, where he was named James A. Meier Professor in 2003. Coykendall and Hal Schenck have served as editors of the Journal of Commutative Algebra since the publication's first issue in 2009. Coykendall joined the faculty of Cl...
Go to Profile#7106
Jack Kirby
#7843
Overall Influence
1917 - 1994 (77 years)
Jack Kirby was an American comic book artist, widely regarded as one of the medium's major innovators and one of its most prolific and influential creators. He grew up in New York City and learned to draw cartoon figures by tracing characters from comic strips and editorial cartoons. He entered the nascent comics industry in the 1930s, drawing various comics features under different pen names, including Jack Curtiss, before ultimately settling on Jack Kirby. In 1940, he and writer-editor Joe Simon created the highly successful superhero character Captain America for Timely Comics, predecessor of Marvel Comics.
Go to Profile#7107
Linda M. Field
#62497
Overall Influence
Linda M. Field FRES FRSB is a British scientist noted for her work on the insecticide mode of action and resistance. Biography Field was awarded a PhD on the molecular basis of insecticide resistance at Rothamsted Research in 1989. She became leader of the Insect Molecular Biology Group at Rothamsted in 2002, and then Head of the Department of Biological Chemistry in 2010 .
Go to Profile#7108
Ian F. Blake
#154209
Overall Influence
#7109
Paolo Giommi
#154230
Overall Influence
#7110
Gerhard Geise
#110158
Overall Influence
1930 - 2010 (80 years)
Gerhard Paul Geise was a German mathematician and professor of pure mathematics. He died after a long serious illness in Dresden. Works 1961: Über ähnlich-veränderliche ebene Systeme1976: Senkrechte Projektion1977: Kegelschnitte, Kugel und Kartenentwürfe1979: Grundkurs lineare Algebra1980: Analytische Geometrie für Kristallgitter1991: Berührungskegelschnitte in Bézierdarstellung1994: Darstellende Geometrie1995: Analytische Geometrie
Go to Profile#7111
Michael Sjöström
#154250
Overall Influence
#7112
Béla Krekó
#107726
Overall Influence
1915 - 1994 (79 years)
Béla Krekó was a Hungarian mathematician. His main research interests were linear programming and matrix ring. He was a university professor in Károly Marx University of Economics Biography Krekó's parents were Ferenc Krekó and Terézia Princz. He married his wife Katalin Kovács in 1944. His children are Béla , István , Ágnes , and László . In 1940, he obtained a degree in mathematics at the Pázmány Péter University, then in 1948 he also obtained a qualification in economics and a doctorate from the József Nádor University of Technology and Economics. From 1949 to 1954 he was a college teacher at the Academy of Commerce and then the Academy of Economic Engineering.
Go to Profile#7113
Bo Hedblad
#154339
Overall Influence
#7114
Reihaneh Safavi–naini
#154371
Overall Influence
#7115
Ryan H. Wiser
#154373
Overall Influence
#7116
Nicola Orsini
#154452
Overall Influence
#7117
Alberto Pinto
#119841
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (61 years)
Alberto Adrego Pinto is a full professor at the Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Sciences, University of Porto . He is a researcher of the Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support, Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering LIAAD, INESC TEC. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Dynamics and Games, published by the American Institute of Mathematical Sciences . He is the President of the Portuguese International Center for Mathematics . Currently, he is also a Special Visiting Researcher from CNPq at Instituto Nacional de Matemática Pura e Aplicada ,...
Go to Profile#7118
Mark D. A. Rounsevell
#154480
Overall Influence
#7119
Laurent Papazian
#154515
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
#7120
Hélène Pellissier
#154521
Overall Influence
#7121
Abraham Silvers
#96420
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (91 years)
Abraham Silvers in Bronx, New York He was elected a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1988 for his contributions to clinical trial and health risk assessment methodology, and in 1993, ASA awarded him a Distinguished Medal for his work in environmental statistics.
Go to Profile#7122
Rolf H. Möhring
#154553
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
#7123
Viktor Korolev
#115003
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Viktor Korolev is a Russian scientist in the field of mathematical statistics, Professor, Dr. Sc., a professor at the Faculty of Computer Science at the Moscow State University. He defended the thesis «Limit distributions of random sequences with independent random indices and some of their applications» for the degree of Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences .
Go to Profile#7124
Connie M. Borror
#115659
Overall Influence
1966 - 2016 (50 years)
Connie M. Borror was an American statistician and industrial engineer interested in quality control and forensic toxicology. She was named the winner of the Shewhart Medal of the American Society for Quality shortly before her death, for "outstanding technical leadership in the field of modern quality control, especially through the development to its theory, principles, and techniques", and became the first woman to win the medal.
Go to Profile#7125
Yong–geun Oh
#154556
Overall Influence
#7126
James W. Overstreet
#154589
Overall Influence
#7127
Kathleen Lamborn
#68268
Overall Influence
Kathleen Rundle Lamborn is an American biostatistician, known for her highly-cited publications on glioma. She is an Adjunct Professor Emeritus of Neurological Surgery and former Director of the Cancer Center Biostatistics Core at the University of California, San Francisco, and Senior Scientific Consultant at Quintiles Pacific.
Go to Profile#7128
William Gerard Hunter
#154669
Overall Influence
#7129
Zhong‐zhi Bai
#154752
Overall Influence
#7130
Marek Kuczma
#77686
Overall Influence
1935 - 1991 (56 years)
Marek Kuczma was a Polish mathematician working mostly in the area of functional equations. He wrote several influential monographs in this field. Bibliography External links
Go to Profile#7131
Alexander Lavut
#53865
Overall Influence
1929 - 2013 (84 years)
Alexander Pavlovich Lavut was a mathematician, dissident and a key figure in the civil rights movement in the Soviet Union. Biography Alexander Lavut was born on 4 July 1929, the son of entrepreneur Pavel Ilyich Lavut , an ebullient figure on the cultural scene of the Soviet 1920s, mentioned in the works of Vladimir Mayakovsky .
Go to Profile#7132
Fanny Kassel
#100758
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (41 years)
Fanny Kassel is a French mathematician, specializing in the theory of Lie groups. Career Kassel received her PhD under the direction of Yves Benoist at the University of Paris-Sud in 2009. Her thesis was on "Compact quotients of real or p-adic homogeneous spaces". She then entered the CNRS and worked at the Paul-Painlevé Laboratory of the University of Lille I until 2016, when she joined the IHÉS as detached CNRS researcher.
Go to Profile#7133
Georg Glaeser
#121929
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Georg Glaeser is an Austrian mathematician, a professor for mathematics and geometry at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. He has written books on computer graphics and biology in relation to mathematics and geometry.
Go to Profile#7134
Josée Dupuis
#78257
Overall Influence
Josée Dupuis is a Canadian biostatistician. She is a professor in the Boston University School of Public Health, where she chairs the department of biostatistics. Her research interests include genome-wide association studies, gene–environment interaction, and applications to diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Go to Profile#7135
Alexandra Carpentier
#107996
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (38 years)
Alexandra Carpentier is a French mathematical statistician and machine learning researcher known for her work in stochastic optimization, compressed sensing, and multi-armed bandit problems. She works in Germany as a professor at Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg and head of the Mathematical Statistics & Machine Learning research group.
Go to Profile#7136
Peter Chadwick
#60755
Overall Influence
1931 - 2018 (87 years)
Peter Chadwick was a British applied mathematician and physicist. A Huddersfield native born on 23 March 1931, Chadwick attended the University of Manchester and completed his PhD at Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1957. He was Professor of Mathematics at the University of East Anglia from 1965 to 1991, and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1977. He died on 12 August 2018, aged 87.
Go to Profile#7137
Charles-Michel Marle
#92393
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (91 years)
Charles-Michel Marle is a French engineer and mathematician, currently a Professor Emeritus at Pierre and Marie Curie University. Biography Charles-Michel Marle completed in 1951 his primary and secondary education in Constantine, Algeria. He was a pupil of the preparatory classes for the grandes écoles at the in Algiers: in 1951-1952, then in 1952-1953. He was admitted to the École Polytechnique in 1953. When he left this school in 1955, he opted for the Corps des mines.
Go to Profile#7138
Olga Aleksandrovna Ladyzhenskaya
#154887
Overall Influence
#7139
Corinne Haioun
#154896
Overall Influence
#7140
Anatoliĭ Timofeevich Fomenko
#154910
Overall Influence
#7141
Nicola Santoro
#154926
Overall Influence
#7142
Michael R. Kosorok
#155034
Overall Influence
#7143
Olivier Poch
#155070
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (38 years)
#7144
Ruth Etzioni
#134810
Overall Influence
Ruth D. Etzioni is a biostatistician who develops statistical computer models to research cancer progression. She is the Rosalie and Harold Rea Brown endowed chair at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
Go to Profile#7145
Leonhard Held
#155109
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
#7146
Roslinda Mohd. Nazar
#155113
Overall Influence
#7147
Thierry Burnouf
#155127
Overall Influence
#7148
Greg Ridgeway
#98465
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (52 years)
Gregory Kirk Ridgeway is professor of criminology and statistics at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is also chair of the Department of Criminology. Education Ridgeway received his B.S. from California Polytechnic State University in 1995 and his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1997 and 1999, respectively. All three of his degrees are in statistics. His Ph.D. thesis was entitled "Generalization of boosting algorithms and applications of Bayesian inference for massive datasets".
Go to Profile#7149
George Mavrotas
#155162
Overall Influence
#7150
Nicole Propst
#155166
Overall Influence
