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,
#7251
Hector O. Fattorini
#157666
Overall Influence
#7252
Thomas F. Golob
#157719
Overall Influence
#7253
Jan O. Korbel
#58924
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (50 years)
Jan O. Korbel is a German scientist working in the fields of Human Genetics, Genomics and Computational Biology. He is a tenured principal investigator and Head of Data Science at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory Heidelberg, Germany, senior scientist in the Genome Biology Unit, is leading a bridging research division at the German Cancer Research Center , and is an honorary professor at Heidelberg University. A particular focus of the Korbel group is on investigating a particular form of mutation, genomic structural variation, which includes deletions, inversions and more complex c...
Go to Profile#7254
L. J. Wei
#157736
Overall Influence
#7255
Dierk Hebbeln
#157756
Overall Influence
#7256
Heinz Bachmann
#111413
Overall Influence
1924 - Present (101 years)
Heinz Bachmann is a mathematician who worked at the Eidgenössische Sternwarte in Zürich. He introduced the Bachmann–Howard ordinal and ordinal collapsing functions.
Go to Profile#7257
James A. Morrow
#151611
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (84 years)
James A. Morrow is an American mathematician and professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. His research interests shifted from several complex variables and differential geometry to discrete inverse problems in the middle of his career.
Go to Profile#7258
Frank den Hollander
#129779
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Frank den Hollander is a Dutch mathematician. Education and career Frank den Hollander studied theoretical physics at Leiden University with undergraduate degree and MSc in 1980 and a PhD in 1985 with thesis advisor Pieter Kasteleyn and thesis Random Walks on Random Lattices. As a postdoc he studied from 1985 to 1989 with Michael Keane at Delft Technical University and from 1989 to 1991 was at TU Delft on a scholarship from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Den Hollander was from 1991 to 1994 an associate professor at Utrecht University and from 1994 to 2000 a professor of probability and statistics at the Radboud University Nijmegen.
Go to Profile#7259
Maurice Alan Brookhart
#157964
Overall Influence
#7260
Alexander D. Ioffe
#157970
Overall Influence
#7261
Daniele Mundici
#157980
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
#7262
Hongzhe Li
#158005
Overall Influence
#7263
Simon Cauchemez
#158089
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (47 years)
#7264
Stanley Zionts
#158123
Overall Influence
#7265
Martin John. Crowder
#158140
Overall Influence
#7266
Ying Wei
#108453
Overall Influence
Ying Wei is a statistician and a professor of biostatistics in the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, working primarily on quantile regression, semiparametric models of longitudinal data, and their applications.
Go to Profile#7267
William Steig
#4954
Overall Influence
1907 - 2003 (96 years)
William Steig was an American cartoonist, illustrator and writer of children's books, best known for the picture book Shrek!, which inspired the film series of the same name, as well as others that included Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, Abel's Island, and Doctor De Soto. He was the U.S. nominee for both of the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Awards, as a children's book illustrator in 1982 and a writer in 1988.
Go to Profile#7268
Colin S. Mcardle
#158261
Overall Influence
#7269
Kevin Jeffery Barnham
#158307
Overall Influence
#7270
Alexander Dranishnikov
#130137
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (67 years)
Alexander Nikolaevich Dranishnikov is a Russian-American mathematician, focusing in geometry and topology, currently a Distinguished Professor at the University of Florida. In 1998 he was an Invited Speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Berlin. In 2012 he became one of the inaugural fellows of the American Mathematical Society.
Go to Profile#7271
Åke Björck
#158322
Overall Influence
#7272
Lu Tian
#158380
Overall Influence
#7273
Georges Feller
#158395
Overall Influence
#7274
Susan Weintraub
#38739
Overall Influence
Susan Weintraub is an American scientist. She is a professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio . She received a BS in chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania in 1967, MS in chemistry from Trinity University in 1970 and a PhD in biochemistry from UTHSCSA in 1979. She was the president of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry for the period of 2012-2014. In 2017 she was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science . She is an associate editor of the Journal of Proteome Research.
Go to Profile#7275
Zeev Schuss
#158484
Overall Influence
#7276
Bruno Giraudeau
#158486
Overall Influence
#7277
Franz Josef Natterer
#158500
Overall Influence
#7278
Li-hong Huang
#158515
Overall Influence
#7279
Katerina Kechris
#106847
Overall Influence
Katerina Joanna Kechris is an American statistician, a professor of biostatistics and informatics in the Colorado School of Public Health, and a regional president of the International Biometric Society. Her research focuses on the use of omics data to study relations between genetics and disease.
Go to Profile#7280
Daniel F. Heitjan
#158536
Overall Influence
#7281
Shu‐fen Zhang
#158584
Overall Influence
#7282
Tihomir Zlatev Asparouhov
#158587
Overall Influence
#7283
Greta M. Ljung
#93193
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (84 years)
Greta Marianne Ljung is a Finnish American statistician. The Ljung–Box test for time series data is named after her and her graduate school advisor, George E. P. Box. She has written textbooks on time series analysis and her work has been published in several top statistical journals, including Biometrika and the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society.
Go to Profile#7284
Joel L. Moake
#158688
Overall Influence
#7285
Naoki Masuda
#158689
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (49 years)
#7286
Mark H. Holmes
#140069
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Mark H. Holmes is an American applied mathematician and Professor of Mathematics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he served as Chair of the Department of Mathematical Sciences, and was the founding Director of the Center for Modeling, Optimization and Computational Analysis .
Go to Profile#7287
Siegfried M. Rump
#158806
Overall Influence
#7288
John Rigby
#100359
Overall Influence
1933 - 2014 (81 years)
John Frankland Rigby was an English mathematician and academic of the University College of South Wales, Cardiff, when it was part of the University of Wales, and of its successor Cardiff University.
Go to Profile#7289
Irène Waldspurger
#122345
Overall Influence
1989 - Present (36 years)
Irène Waldspurger is a French mathematician and a researcher at the Research Centre in Mathematics of Decision where her research focuses on algorithm to solve phase problems, a class of problem relevant for a large number of imaging techniques used in science and medicine. She is also a professor at Paris Sciences et Lettres University.
Go to Profile#7290
David A. Elashoff
#158908
Overall Influence
#7291
Reinhard Blickhan
#158953
Overall Influence
#7292
J. (johannes) Sjöstrand
#158965
Overall Influence
#7293
Olaf Gefeller
#159035
Overall Influence
#7294
Patrice Abry
#138386
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
Patrice Abry from the CNRS & Ecole Normale Suprieure de Lyon, Lyon Cedex 07, France was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2012 "for contributions to the theory and applications of fractal analysis and multifractal analysis in signal and image processing".
Go to Profile#7295
Mark Edward Payton
#159051
Overall Influence
#7296
Jon Lee
#107071
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (65 years)
Jon Lee is an American mathematician and operations researcher, the G. Lawton and Louise G. Johnson Professor of Engineering at the University of Michigan. He is known for his research in nonlinear discrete optimization and combinatorial optimization.
Go to Profile#7297
Aderemi Kuku
#124145
Overall Influence
1941 - 2022 (81 years)
Aderemi Oluyomi Kuku , popularly known as Kuku, was a Nigerian professor of mathematics and a former president of the African Mathematical Union and the African Academy of Sciences Kenya. Life Aderemi Kuku was born in Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State, on March 20, 1941, as the third child of the family of Busari Adeoye Kuku and Abusatu Oriaran Baruwa who were Photographer and trader respectively.
Go to Profile#7298
Werner Kirsch
#159188
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
#7299
Sergei Stepanov
#159257
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (84 years)
Sergei Aleksandrovich Stepanov is a Russian mathematician, specializing in number theory. He is known for his 1969 proof using elementary methods of the Riemann hypothesis for zeta-functions of hyperelliptic curves over finite fields, first proved by André Weil in 1940–1941 using sophisticated, deep methods in algebraic geometry.
Go to Profile#7300
Mary Beth Terry
#159339
Overall Influence
