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,
#7501
Joseph Arkin
#155761
Overall Influence
1923 - 2002 (79 years)
Joseph Arkin was a mathematician, lecturer and professor at the West Point military academy. Originally from Brooklyn, New York, Professor Joseph "Joe" Arkin was married for 48 years to Judith Lobel Arkin. They had four daughters, Helen, Aviva, Jessica and Sarah.
Go to Profile#7502
Hamparsum Bozdogan
#165589
Overall Influence
#7503
Pekka Koskela
#165598
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (65 years)
#7504
Tommaso A. Dragani
#154893
Overall Influence
Tommaso A. Dragani is an Italian genetic epidemiologist whose research is focused on understanding the genetic control of complex phenotypes. Results from his studies allowed the chromosomal mapping of quantitative trait loci modulating the genetic predisposition to liver, lung and skin tumorigenesis, in animal models. His population-based studies resulted in the identification of genetic polymorphisms associated with the risk and prognosis of lung cancer. He contributed to discovering the mechanism underlying the association between polymorphisms in nicotinic acetylcholine receptor subunit genes on chromosome 15 and the risks of lung cancer and nicotine dependence.
Go to Profile#7505
Phil Ineson
#115870
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
Phil Ineson is a chair in Global Change Ecology at the University of York. Ineson is particularly noted for his work with stable isotopes . Ineson received his BSc from Manchester Polytechnic in 1982, receiving a Ph.D. from the University of Liverpool in 1986. He was then a NERC Post-Doctoral Research Assistant at the University of Exeter until 1989. NERC Research Fellow at ITE Merlewood and later Senior Scientific Officer . Between 1996 and 1999 he was at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Merlewood. Between 1998 and 2000 he was visiting professor at Lancaster University. He was mad...
Go to Profile#7506
Richard S. Ellis
#114814
Overall Influence
1947 - 2018 (71 years)
Richard Steven Ellis was an American mathematician. He was born on May 15, 1947, in Brookline, Massachusetts, to parents Murray and Helen. Ellis graduated from Boston Latin School and attended Harvard University, where he studied German literature and mathematics. He pursued graduate study at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. In 1972, he received his PhD from the New York University for his thesis Chapman-Eskog-Hilbert Expansion for Models of the Boltzman Equation under the supervision of Henry McKean. He began teaching at Northwestern University and left for the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1975.
Go to Profile#7507
Anatoly V. Kotikov
#165659
Overall Influence
#7508
William Branham Jones
#165729
Overall Influence
#7509
Johannes Kemperman
#147819
Overall Influence
1924 - 2011 (87 years)
Johannes Henricus Bernardus Kemperman was a Dutch mathematician. He taught at the University of Rochester for 25 years, and also worked at Purdue University and Rutgers University for ten years, each.
Go to Profile#7510
Luigi Preziosi
#165763
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (64 years)
#7511
Marcus Tullius. Cicero
#165770
Overall Influence
#7512
Anupam Sen Gupta
#165785
Overall Influence
#7513
Daniel S. Hirschberg
#165819
Overall Influence
#7514
Joseph Lawson Hodges Jr.
#80910
Overall Influence
1922 - 2000 (78 years)
Joseph Lawson Hodges Jr. was a statistician. He obtained a Ph.D. in 1949 at the University of California, Berkeley, and joined the statistics faculty there. Born in 1922 in Shreveport, Louisiana, Hodges grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. He received his B.A. from the University of California in 1942. In the summer of 1944 he joined an Operations analysis group and after some training served in that capacity with the Twentieth Air Force on Harmon Air Force Base, Guam. After the war he continued this work for another year in Washington, D.C. There he met Theodora Jane Long, and they married in 1947.
Go to Profile#7515
Boualem Khouider
#45705
Overall Influence
Boualem Khouider is an Algerian-Canadian applied mathematician, climate scientist, academic, and author. He is a professor, and former Chair of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Victoria.
Go to Profile#7516
Andreas Kirsch
#165936
Overall Influence
#7517
Michael N. Gould
#165938
Overall Influence
#7518
Tuna Altınel
#103350
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
Tuna Altınel is a Turkish mathematician, born February 12, 1966 in Istanbul, who has worked at the University Lyon 1 in France since 1996. He is a specialist in group theory and mathematical logic. With Alexandre Borovik and Gregory Cherlin, he proved a major case of the Cherlin–Zilber conjecture.
Go to Profile#7519
Yin-nian He
#165980
Overall Influence
#7520
Sam Weerahandi
#85444
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
Samaradasa Weerahandi, is the first Sri Lankan American statistician to be honored as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. Also known as Sam Weerahandi, he is a former professor last employed in Corporate America by Pfizer, Inc. as a Senior Director until December 2016.
Go to Profile#7521
Kazuo Iwama
#123366
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Kazuo Iwama is a Japanese computer scientist who works at Kyoto University. Topics in his research include stable marriage, quantum circuits, the Boolean satisfiability problem, and algorithms on graphs.
Go to Profile#7522
Pascale Barberger‐gateau
#166162
Overall Influence
#7523
James Eric Huff
#166182
Overall Influence
#7524
William Edward Strawderman
#166193
Overall Influence
#7525
Angelika van der Linde
#121327
Overall Influence
Angelika van der Linde-Ploumbidis is a statistician. She earned a Ph.D in 1982 or 1983 at the Freie Universität Berlin with the dissertation Zur numerischen Behandlung von Versuchsplanungsproblemen für lineare Regressionsmodelle mit korrelierten Beobachtungen .
Go to Profile#7526
Erling Bredal Andersen
#166358
Overall Influence
#7527
James H. Ware
#73193
Overall Influence
1941 - 2016 (75 years)
James Hutchinson Ware was an American biostatistician and the Frederick Mosteller Professor of Biostatistics and Associate Dean for Clinical and Translational Science at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He had been Academic Dean for 19 years under Deans Harvey Fineberg and Barry Bloom and served as Acting Dean from 1997 to 1998, as Harvey Fineberg assumed the position of Provost of Harvard University. During Ware's 19-year tenure as academic dean , the student the School's student body doubled in size and its research budget grew at an annual rate of eight percent. Ware was a...
Go to Profile#7528
Annibale Volpe
#166389
Overall Influence
#7529
Claude Chastang
#166395
Overall Influence
#7530
Matteo Fischetti
#166401
Overall Influence
#7531
Frank Wannemaker
#166514
Overall Influence
#7532
David A Cox
#166528
Overall Influence
#7533
Laurent Véron
#166538
Overall Influence
#7534
Michael Van Den Bergh
#166575
Overall Influence
#7535
Vincent Pilloni
#124202
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (43 years)
Vincent Pilloni is a French mathematician, specializing in arithmetic geometry and the Langlands program. Career Pilloni studied at the École Normale Supérieure and received his doctorate in 2009 from Université Sorbonne Paris Nord with thesis advisor Jacques Tilouine and thesis Arithmétique des variétés de Siegel.
Go to Profile#7536
Francis Y. L. Chin
#63235
Overall Influence
Francis Yuk Lun Chin Academic career Chin graduated from the University of Toronto in 1972 and received a doctorate from Princeton University in 1976. Before his appointment in Hong Kong, he held a variety of teaching positions in a number of universities in the US and Canada.
Go to Profile#7537
Marko Wagner
#166612
Overall Influence
#7538
Yvonne Choquet–bruhat
#166614
Overall Influence
#7539
L. P. D. Van Den Dries
#166644
Overall Influence
#7540
Robert J. Ph. D. Hudson
#166716
Overall Influence
#7541
Aline Gouget
#128609
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (48 years)
Aline Gouget Morin is a French mathematician and cryptographer whose works include contributions to the design of the SOSEMANUK stream cipher and Shabal hash algorithm, and methods for anonymized digital currency. She is a researcher for Gemalto, an international digital security company.
Go to Profile#7542
Nicolai Felix Meinshausen
#166829
Overall Influence
#7543
Friedrich Karl Bangerth
#166869
Overall Influence
#7544
Richard M. Aspden
#166893
Overall Influence
#7545
Stanislav Molchanov
#118003
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (85 years)
Stanislav Alexeyevich Molchanov is a Soviet and American mathematician. From 1958 to 1963 he was a student at the Mathematical and Mechanical faculty, Moscow State University , where he graduated in 1963 with a master's thesis On one problem from the diffusion process theory supervised by Eugene Dynkin. At MSU Molchanov graduated in 1967 with Russian Candidate degree with thesis Some problems in the Martin boundary theory and in 1983 with Russian Doctor of Sciences degree with thesis Spectral theory of random operators. At MSU he was from 1966 to 1971 an assistant professor, from 1971 to 1...
Go to Profile#7546
Bille Chandler Carlson
#167013
Overall Influence
#7547
Joachim Piprek
#167016
Overall Influence
#7548
Pierre Sokoloff
#167048
Overall Influence
#7549
Mao’an Han
#167125
Overall Influence
#7550
Anthony Joseph
#167134
Overall Influence
