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,

#7401

Albín Brunovský

#25037
Overall Influence
1935 - 1997 (62 years)
Albín Brunovský was a Slovak painter, graphic artist, lithographer, illustrator and pedagogue, considered one of the greatest Slovak painters of the 20th century. Biography Albín Brunovský was born in Zohor, Czechoslovakia on Christmas Day, 25 December 1935. Brunovský started his early career in art by working on stage set and poster design. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava under Prof. Vincent Hložník from 1955 to 1961. The Hloznik School was well known for its high artistic and technical preparation in graphic arts and its humanist perspective. For the founder, as for many of his students, Goya's great graphic cycle "The Horrors of War" served as a pattern or model.
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#7402

Louis Baker Rall

#162524
Overall Influence
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#7403

Klaus Peter Jantke

Klaus Peter Jantke
#85157
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Klaus Peter Jantke is a German mathematician, computer scientist, university teacher and academic researcher focusing on Artificial intelligence, Educational technology, Game studies and gamification.
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#7404

Richard A. Bilonick

#162533
Overall Influence
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#7405

Robert Churchhouse

#120948
Overall Influence
1927 - 2018 (91 years)
Robert Francis Churchhouse CBE KSG, also known as Bob Churchhouse was Professor of Computing Mathematics at Cardiff University and President of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications. Early life and education Churchhouse was born on 30 December 1927 in Higher Blackley, Manchester. The son of Robert Francis, a laboratory assistant, and Agnes Churchhouse , a cotton mill worker. Churchhouse grew up into a Roman Catholic family. He attended St Clare's RC Primary School, and then St Bede's College, Manchester from 1939 to 1946. He pursued an undergraduate education in mathematics at Man...
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#7406

Laurent Younes

#162546
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (62 years)
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#7407

Matteo Bottai

#162555
Overall Influence
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#7408

Stef H. Tijs

#162608
Overall Influence
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#7409

Claudianor Oliveira Alves

#162620
Overall Influence
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#7410

James R. Jackson

James R. Jackson
#96543
Overall Influence
1924 - 2011 (87 years)
James Richard "Jim" Jackson was an American mathematician, well known for his contribution to queueing theory. Jackson was born in Denver and raised in Beverly Hills. He served in the United States Air Force during World War II. After his service, he earned an A.B. in 1946, an M.A. in 1950 and a Ph.D. in 1952, with a thesis titled Abstract Function Spaces and Their Homotopy Theory. All of these degrees were from UCLA where Jackson remained in the School of Management for his career until his retirement in 1985.
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#7411

Mikhail A. Shubin

#162653
Overall Influence
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#7412

Max Shiffman

#161152
Overall Influence
1914 - 2000 (86 years)
Max Shiffman was an American mathematician, specializing in the calculus of variations, partial differential equations, and hydrodynamics. He was a Guggenheim Fellow for the academic year 1951–1952.
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#7413

Ladislav Dušek

#162713
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (58 years)
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#7414

Tom Cross

#42800
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
Tom Cross is an American television and film editor. He is known for his collaborations with Damien Chazelle including Whiplash for which he won the Academy Award for Best Film Editing as well as La La Land , and First Man .
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#7415

Göran Gb Berglund

#162768
Overall Influence
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#7416

Christophe Andrieu

#162812
Overall Influence
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#7417

Luyi Sun

#162830
Overall Influence
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#7418

Franciszek Indan Pykna

#116994
Overall Influence
1913 - 1992 (79 years)
Franciszek Indan Pykna was a Polish mathematician, philosopher, and linguist. Early life Pykna was born in Riga, Russian Empire, to Polish parents Kazimierz Indan Pykno and Benigna Norwillo. He spent his early childhood travelling with his parents through Russia; they returned to Poland . They finally settled in Kovel, where he went to Juliusz Slowacki High School. After graduating he moved to Vilnius in order to study at Vilnius University.
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#7419

Maurice G. Cox

#162887
Overall Influence
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#7420

John S. Oakland

#162939
Overall Influence
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#7421

Charles W. Groetsch

#161895
Overall Influence
Charles William Groetsch is an American applied mathematician and numerical analyst. Education and career Groetsch graduated from the University of New Orleans with B.S. in 1966 and M.S. in 1968. He was from 1966 to 1968 an engineer and applied mathematician in Boeing's Space Division, Launch Systems Branch. In 1971 he received his PhD in mathematics from Louisiana State University in 1971. At the University of Cincinnati he was an assistant professor from 1971 to 1975, an associate professor from 1976 to 1981, and a full professor from 1981 to 2006. There he was head of the department of mathematical sciences from 1985 to 1990.
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#7422

Lindsay Stringer

#101446
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (46 years)
Lindsay C. Stringer is a Professor in Environment and Development at the University of York. Stringer's research is interdisciplinary and uses theories and methods from both the natural and social sciences to understand human-environment relationships, feedbacks and trade-offs, examining the impacts for human wellbeing, equity and the environment
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#7423

Michael Willem

#162987
Overall Influence
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#7424

Martine Labbé

#94516
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (67 years)
Martine Labbé is a Belgian operations researcher known for her work on mathematical optimization, facility location, and road pricing. She is an honorary professor of graphs and mathematical optimization in the department of computer science at the Université libre de Bruxelles, editor-in-chief of the EURO Journal on Computational Optimization, and a former president of the Association of European Operational Research Societies .
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#7425

Stephen W. Freiman

#163017
Overall Influence
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#7426

John Nelson Mordeson

#163019
Overall Influence
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#7427

Patrizia Pucci

#163054
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
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#7428

Volkert Dirk Siersma

#163102
Overall Influence
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#7429

László Erdős

#163257
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
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#7430

Marc Voorhoeve

#115011
Overall Influence
1950 - 2011 (61 years)
Marc Voorhoeve was a Dutch mathematician who introduced the Voorhoeve index of a complex function in 1976. Career Marc studied at the University of Leiden where he wrote a thesis on exponential polynomials. The Voorhoeve index is a result from this work.
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#7431

Antoni Malet

Antoni Malet
#122721
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Antoni Malet is a Catalan historian of mathematics. He is a professor of history of science at Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona. His research interests are mostly in the history of mathematics and optics in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
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#7432

Thomas Erneux

#163320
Overall Influence
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#7433

Spyros Magliveras

#102171
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (87 years)
Spyros Simos Magliveras is a Greek-born American mathematician and computer scientist. Biography Magliveras graduated from the University of Florida with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1961 and a master's degree in mathematics in 1963. He was from 1963 to 1964 an instructor of mathematics at Florida Presbyterian College and from 1964 to 1968 a teaching fellow in mathematics at the University of Michigan, as well as from 1965 to 1968 a programming analyst and a systems analyst at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. He received his PhD in mathematics from...
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#7434

Terry Friesz

#103859
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (76 years)
Terry L. Friesz is the first Harold and Inge Marcus Professor of Industrial Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. He is responsible for developing the basic theory of dynamic user equilibrium, which is the class of dynamic games studied in transportation planning and logistics. As of 2019, he is the editor-in-chief of the journal Networks and Spatial Economics.
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#7435

Ulisse Stefanelli

#159716
Overall Influence
Ulisse Stefanelli is an Italian mathematician. He is currently professor at the Faculty of Mathematics of the University of Vienna. His research focuses on calculus of variations, partial differential equations, and materials science.
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#7436

Ramdas L. Bhirud

#126532
Overall Influence
1937 - 1997 (60 years)
Ramdas L. Bhirud , was an Indian mathematician from Maharashtra region of India worked in the field of numerical analysis, special functions and number theory. Early life and education Ramdas was born on 7 April 1937, in Chinawal, Maharashtra, India. He was one of six children. He did his elementary school education in Chinawal. After that moved to Mumbai for middle school and high school education. He attended Elphinstone College in Mumbai for his bachelor's degree in mathematics.
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#7437

Timothy Holland

Timothy Holland
#68165
Overall Influence
Timothy John Barrington Holland is a petrologist and Emeritus Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge. Education Holland was educated at the University of Oxford where he was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1977 for research on eclogites in the Tauern region of the Alps supervised by Stephen W. Richardson.
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#7438

Lynn Harry Erbe

#163594
Overall Influence
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#7439

Philip G. Drazin

#163607
Overall Influence
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#7440

Stewart Robinson

#163697
Overall Influence
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#7441

Man‐duen Choi

#163706
Overall Influence
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#7442

Deborah Street

#115820
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (68 years)
Deborah Street is an Australian statistician known for her research in the design of experiments. She is a professor at the University of Technology Sydney, where she is a core member of the Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation .
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#7443

Youcef Saad

#163715
Overall Influence
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#7444

Sebastian Reich

#163730
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (62 years)
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#7445

Enok Palm

#163413
Overall Influence
1924 - 2012 (88 years)
Enok Johannes Palm was a Norwegian mathematician. He was born in Kristiansand. He took the cand.real. degree in 1950 and the dr.philos. degree at the University of Oslo in 1954. He was a professor in mechanics at the Norwegian Institute of Technology from 1960 to 1963 and professor of applied mathematics at the University of Oslo until 1963 to 1994. He was a fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters from 1959 and the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters from 1961. He was decorated as a Knight, First Class of the Order of St. Olav in 1993.
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#7446

Antonietta Mira

#115337
Overall Influence
Antonietta Mira is an Italian computational statistician whose research involves the application of Markov chain Monte Carlo methods to Bayesian inference. She is a professor of statistics in the Faculty of Economics and Institute of Computational Science at the Università della Svizzera italiana in Lugano, Switzerland, and professor of statistics in the University of Insubria in Italy.
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#7447

Vladimir N. Temlyakov

#163892
Overall Influence
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#7448

Kathryn Chaloner

#133498
Overall Influence
1954 - 2014 (60 years)
Kathryn Mary Chaloner was a British-born American statistician. Chaloner was a statistics researcher who developed methods in Bayesian experimental design, and well known for her work on HIV/AIDS, infectious diseases, and women's health. She was a board member of the National Alliance for Doctoral Studies in the Mathematical Sciences, a group of faculty working towards inclusion and diversity in the doctoral-level mathematical sciences. She led an initiative in statistical sciences to broaden participation in doctoral-level studies in statistics and biostatistics.
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#7449

Louis Anthony (tony) Cox

#163947
Overall Influence
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#7450

Wilbur Davenport

#47455
Overall Influence
1920 - 2003 (83 years)
Wilbur B. Davenport Jr. was a professor emeritus of communication science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Early life and education Davenport earned his bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from Alabama Polytechnic Institute, Auburn University in 1941 where he was a member of Sigma Pi fraternity. He received his master's degree in 1943 from MIT and then served from 1943 to 1946 in the U.S. Naval Reserve as a lieutenant . He returned to MIT and earned his Ph.D. in 1950, just after being named an assistant professor at the...
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