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,
#8051
John Stuart Wilson
#174416
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (81 years)
John Stuart Wilson is a British mathematician and former professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford. He is a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge and an Honorary Professor of the University of Leipzig. He specialises in algebra and group theory. He also composes music for choirs and for vocal and instrumental ensembles.
Go to Profile#8052
David Gauld
#98488
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
David Barry Gauld is a New Zealand mathematician. He is a professor of mathematics at the University of Auckland. Biography Within mathematics, Gauld works in set-theoretic topology, with emphasis on applications to non-metrisable manifolds and topological properties of manifolds close to metrisability. Gauld has authored two monographs and over 70 research papers.
Go to Profile#8053
Peter Agostini
#82393
Overall Influence
1913 - 1993 (80 years)
Peter Agostini was an American sculptor. Life Agostini studied at the Leonardo da Vinci Art School in 1935 and 1936. He taught sculpture and painting at the New York Studio School, Columbia University, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and the Parsons School of Design.
Go to Profile#8054
Marcel Guénin
#152749
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (88 years)
Marcel André Guénin is a theoretical physicist and mathematician, and Professor Emeritus of the University of Geneva. He obtained his PhD in 1962 at the University of Geneva under the supervision of Ernst Stueckelberg with a thesis titled "Opérateurs de champ antilinéaires, T- et CP-covariance".
Go to Profile#8055
John Brian Helliwell
#156457
Overall Influence
1924 - 1992 (68 years)
John Brian Helliwell FRSE FIMA was a British mathematician and astrophysicist. He was Professor of Engineering Mathematics at Bradford University 1968 to 1985. He is remembered for his work on the behaviour of gases at transonic speeds and upon the action of conductive gases within magnetic fields.
Go to Profile#8056
Vanessa Peterson
#173983
Overall Influence
Vanessa K. Peterson is a Neutron Instrument Scientist, at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation . She established an independent research program at ANSTO which specialised on improving understanding of energy systems and how they work. She manages the Echidna program, a high-resolution powder diffractometer, as well as Wombat - a high-intensity powder diffractometer. Peterson's expertise includes synchtron and laboratory x-ray techniques, as well as neutron powder diffraction, as well as single crystal x-ray diffraction.
Go to Profile#8057
Sarah Lucas
#6369
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
Sarah Lucas is an English artist. She is part of the generation of Young British Artists who emerged in 1988. Her works frequently employ visual puns and bawdy humour by incorporating photography, sculpture, collage and found objects.
Go to Profile#8058
Jonathan E. Taylor
#179033
Overall Influence
#8059
Ethel Gilbert
#64862
Overall Influence
Ethel S. Gilbert is an American biostatistician and an expert in the risks of radiation-induced cancer, including cancers in nuclear workers and second cancers in radiation therapy patients. Education and career Gilbert is a graduate of Oberlin College, and completed a Ph.D. in biostatistics at the University of Michigan.
Go to Profile#8060
Aryness Joy Wickens
#139543
Overall Influence
1901 - 1991 (90 years)
Aryness Joy Wickens was an American economist and statistician who served as acting commissioner of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and as president of the American Statistical Association, and who helped develop the United States Consumer Price Index.
Go to Profile#8061
Ashish Sen
#122801
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
Ashish Sen is an American professor and transportation statistician based in Chicago. Early life and education Sen was born in Delhi in 1942. His father Ashoka Sen was in broadcasting and retired as Director General of broadcasting in India. His mother, Arati Sen, was an eminent writer and columnist. His grandfather Nishikanta Sen collaborated with C.F. Andrews in translating some of Rabindranath Tagore's work into English. Sen was raised in Dacca , New Delhi and Calcutta. He went to Loretto House, St. Columba's School, and St. Xavier's College and later completed his bachelor's degree in Mathematics from the University of Calcutta.
Go to Profile#8062
Joseph Fairweather Lamb
#59949
Overall Influence
1928 - 2015 (87 years)
Joseph Fairweather Lamb FRSE was a 20th-century Scottish physician, who was emeritus Professor of the Chandos Chair of Physiology at the University of St Andrews. Life He was born at Balnacake Farm near Brechin on 18 July 1928 the son of Joseph Lamb, a tenant farmer, and his wife, Agnes Fairweather.
Go to Profile#8063
Judy Zeh
#113096
Overall Influence
Judith E. Zeh is an American statistician. She retired from the University of Washington, where she spent her entire career, and is a research professor emerita of statistics at Washington. She is known for her research on bowhead whale populations.
Go to Profile#8064
Roy Gussow
#53685
Overall Influence
1918 - 2011 (93 years)
Roy Gussow was an American abstract sculptor known for his public pieces often crafted from polished stainless steel. Examples of his work can be founded outside the Xerox building in Rochester, NY, City Hall in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the New York City Family Court building in Manhattan, and the Tulsa Convention Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Go to Profile#8065
Ian Falconer
#38508
Overall Influence
1959 - 2023 (64 years)
Ian Woodward Falconer was an American author and illustrator of children's books, and a designer of sets and costumes for the theater. He created 30 covers for The New Yorker as well as other publications. Falconer wrote and illustrated the Olivia series of children's books, chronicling the adventures of a young pig, a series initially conceived as a Christmas gift for his young niece.
Go to Profile#8066
Ingrid Kristine Glad
#109553
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (60 years)
Ingrid Kristine Glad is a Norwegian statistician whose research topics have included nonparametric regression, DNA microarray data, and image processing. She is a professor of statistics and data science at the University of Oslo.
Go to Profile#8067
Susan Paddock
#167829
Overall Influence
Susan Mary Paddock is an American statistician whose publications have included work on nonparametric Bayesian inference, substance abuse, and the safety of autonomous vehicles. Paddock is a graduate of the University of Minnesota and has a Ph.D. from Duke University. Her 1999 doctoral dissertation, Randomized Polya Trees: Bayesian Nonparametrics for Multivariate Data Analysis, was supervised by Mike West. Formerly head of the RAND Statistics Group at the RAND Corporation, she moved to NORC at the University of Chicago in 2019 as chief statistician and executive vice president.
Go to Profile#8068
Garnik Asatrian
#44302
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Garnik Serobi Asatrian is an Iranian-born Armenian professor who studies and teaches Kurdish culture at Yerevan State University in Yerevan, Armenia. Asatrian became well-known for his extensive research in the field of the study of Kurdish tribal and linguistic tradition and also for the establishment of the Center of Contemporary Kurdish Studies.
Go to Profile#8069
Brenda Strassfeld
#169005
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Brenda Carol Strassfeld is a mathematics educator and the chair of the Mathematics Education Program in the Graduate School of Education at Touro College. Much of her research concerns teachers’ and students’ attitudes and beliefs regarding teaching and learning mathematics, specifically geometry. Strassfeld has presented her research and worked to improve teacher education at the local, national and international level for over thirty years.
Go to Profile#8070
Walter Wilson Stothers
#170235
Overall Influence
1946 - 2009 (63 years)
Walter Wilson Stothers was a British mathematician who proved the Stothers-Mason Theorem in the early 1980s. He was the third and youngest son of a family doctor in Glasgow and a mother, who herself had graduated in mathematics in 1927. He attended Allan Glen's School, a secondary school in Glasgow that specialised in science education, and where he was Dux of the School in 1964. From 1964 to 1968 he was a student in the Science Faculty of the University of Glasgow graduating with a First Class Honours degree.
Go to Profile#8071
Cyntha Struthers
#168653
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Cyntha Anne Struthers is a Canadian mathematical statistician whose research topics include missing data in longitudinal studies and proportional hazards models. She is an associate professor of statistics and actuarial science at the University of Waterloo, and the former president of the Caucus for Women in Statistics.
Go to Profile#8072
Edwin Charles Tubb
#32121
Overall Influence
1919 - 2010 (91 years)
Edwin Charles Tubb was a British writer of science fiction, fantasy and western novels. The author of over 140 novels and 230 short stories and novellas, Tubb is best known for The Dumarest Saga , an epic science-fiction saga set in the far future. Michael Moorcock wrote, "His reputation for fast-moving and colourful SF writing is unmatched by anyone in Britain."
Go to Profile#8073
Francys Johnson
#79053
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (46 years)
Francys Johnson is an American civil rights attorney, pastor and educator. He is in private practice as an attorney in Statesboro, Georgia. He has lectured on constitutional and criminal law, civil rights and race and politics at Savannah State University and Georgia Southern University.
Go to Profile#8074
Felix Tarasenko
#173563
Overall Influence
1932 - 2021 (89 years)
Felix Petrovich Tarasenko was a Russian mathematician. He attended Tomsk State University and was one of the founders of the theory of systems analysis. Distinctions Jubilee Medal "In Commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin"
Go to Profile#8075
Cathryn S. Dippo
#134686
Overall Influence
Cathryn S. Dippo is an American statistician. She became a fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1989. Education She obtained a Ph.D. in mathematical statistics from George Washington University.
Go to Profile#8076
Murugesapillai Maheswaran
#111886
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (86 years)
Murugesapillai Maheswaran is a mathematician, astrophysicist and educator. He was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and emigrated to the United States of America in 1985. Maheswaran has lived in Wausau, Wisconsin since 1986.
Go to Profile#8077
Ayse Bilgin
#139759
Overall Influence
Ayşe Ayşin Bombaci Bilgin is an Australian statistician and statistics educator. She is an associate professor of mathematics and statistics at Macquarie University and the president of the International Association for Statistical Education. Bilgin’s research explores applications of statistics in health sciences and learning and teaching in statistics.
Go to Profile#8078
Toshio Odate
#57550
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (95 years)
Toshio Odate is a Japanese-born American sculptor, woodworker, craftsmen, author, and educator. He specializes in Japanese woodworking and is a noted shoji maker. He is the author of, Japanese Woodworking Tools: Their Tradition, Spirit and Use .
Go to Profile#8079
Ying Hung
#141562
Overall Influence
Ying Hung is a Taiwanese-American statistician whose research centers on computer experiments, the use of the design of experiments to plan scientific and engineering simulations, and includes work on kriging, metamodeling, and the use of computer optimization techniques in the design of experiments. She is a professor of statistics at Rutgers University.
Go to Profile#8080
Tena Katsaounis
#163342
Overall Influence
Parthena Ipsilantis Katsaounis is a Greek-American statistician interested in the factorial design of physical experiments. She is a lecturer in mathematics at The Ohio State University at Mansfield, and the former president of the Caucus for Women in Statistics.
Go to Profile#8081
James John Smith
#78141
Overall Influence
James John Smith was an Irish applied mathematician and electrical engineer whose career was mostly spent at General Electric in . His father Christopher Smith was an inspector of schools, so the family moved a lot, and James grew up in part in Cork city. He earned a diploma in engineering from the Royal College of Science in Dublin, and then two master's from University College Dublin , first in maths and then in maths physics and experimental physics . After a brief period at Siemens Brothers Dynamo Works in Stafford, England, he relocated to the USA, and started work at General Electric in Schenectady.
Go to Profile#8082
Michael A. Padlipsky
#137756
Overall Influence
1939 - 2011 (72 years)
Michael A. Padlipsky, , known as MAP or Mike, was an early member of the working group that developed the ARPANET networking protocols that underpin today's Internet, and an internetworking polemicist.
Go to Profile#8083
Bubacarr Bah
#140083
Overall Influence
Bubacarr Bah is a Gambian mathematician and chair of Data Science at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences . He is an assistant professor at Stellenbosch University and a member of the Google advanced technology external advisory council.
Go to Profile#8084
Jan Denef
#179457
Overall Influence
#8085
Adegoke Olubummo
#148145
Overall Influence
1923 - 1992 (69 years)
Adegoke Olubummo was a Nigerian academic and mathematician. He is known for being the first Nigerian professor in Mathematics. Early life and education Adegoke attended Ifaki Methodist school and finished in 1937. In 1938, he continued to Wesley College in Ibadan. He got his a B.A. from Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone.
Go to Profile#8086
Michael Reiss
#179490
Overall Influence
#8087
Mike Tildesley
#176290
Overall Influence
Michael J. Tildesley is Professor in Infectious disease modelling at the University of Warwick. He is a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Modelling group of SAGE. Education Born in Keighley, West Yorkshire, Tildesley went to school in the city of York and studied mathematics at Clare College, Cambridge. He read for his Ph.D. in 2003 with a thesis on Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics under the supervision of Nigel Weiss. He later moved to the University of Warwick and transitioned into the field of infectious disease modeling, a field he has worked in ever since.
Go to Profile#8088
John Loder
#21907
Overall Influence
1946 - 2005 (59 years)
John F. Loder was an English sound engineer, record producer and founder of Southern Studios, as well as a former member of EXIT and co-founder of the Southern Records distribution company with his wife Sue. He was also the studio engineer of choice for Crass and Crass Records, and was often considered to be the band's "ninth member".
Go to Profile#8089
Ellen Hamaker
#173777
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (51 years)
Ellen Louise "E.L." Hamaker is a Dutch-American psychologist, and statistician. Since 2018 she has been a full professor at Utrecht University, holding the chair Longitudinal Data Analysis at the Department of Methodology and Statistics. Her work focuses on the development of statistical models for the analysis of intensive longitudinal data in psychology, mainly within the frameworks of structural equation modeling and time series analysis.
Go to Profile#8090
Andrew Denton
#49622
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (65 years)
Andrew Christopher Denton is an Australian television producer, comedian, Gold Logie–nominated television presenter and former radio host, and was the host of the ABC's weekly television interview program Enough Rope and the ABC game show Randling. He is known for his comedy and interviewing technique. He is also responsible for introducing the troupe of The Chaser to Australian audiences.
Go to Profile#8091
Malwina Luczak
#168565
Overall Influence
Malwina J. Luczak is a mathematician specializing in probability theory and the theory of random graphs. She is Professor of Applied Probability and Leverhulme International Professor at the Department of Mathematics at the University of Manchester.
Go to Profile#8092
Jean Van Heijenoort
#179612
Overall Influence
#8093
Sheldon Cohen
#57755
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (76 years)
Sheldon Cohen is a Montreal-based animator and children's book illustrator. Career His film animation works includes the National Film Board of Canada productions The Sweater, a 1980 film adaptation of Roch Carrier's classic short story, Pies, the 2004 adaptation of the Wilma Riley short story, I Want a Dog, the 2003 adaptation based on the children's book of the same title by Dayal Kaur Khalsa and My Heart Attack .
Go to Profile#8094
Robin Williams
#67295
Overall Influence
1919 - 2013 (94 years)
Robert Martin Williams , generally known as Robin Williams, was a New Zealand mathematician, academic administrator and public servant. He served as vice chancellor of the University of Otago from 1967 to 1972, and of the Australian National University from 1973 to 1975. Between 1975 and 1981, he was chair of the State Services Commission.
Go to Profile#8095
Karl Gerald van den Boogaart
#169959
Overall Influence
Karl Gerald van den Boogaart is currently working as a Professor, TU Bergakademie Freiberg, Germany. Boogart was a recipient of the Andrei Borisovich Vistelius Research Award in 2003, and in 2014 he was selected to receive Georges Matheron Lectureship Award from the International Association for Mathematical Geosciences.
Go to Profile#8096
Dennis Gillings
#151081
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (81 years)
Sir Dennis Barry Gillings is an American-based British billionaire statistician and entrepreneur, the founder and former chairman of Quintiles Transnational, a clinical research company, headquartered in Durham, North Carolina.
Go to Profile#8097
Alfonso Nieto-Castanon
#173539
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (53 years)
Alfonso Nieto-Castanon is a Spanish computational neuroscientist and developer of computational neuroimaging analysis methods and tools. He is a visiting researcher at the Boston University College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, and research affiliate at MIT McGovern Institute for Brain Research. His research focuses on the understanding and characterization of human brain dynamics underlying mental function.
Go to Profile#8098
John Hempel
#130460
Overall Influence
1935 - 2022 (87 years)
John Paul Hempel was an American mathematician specialising in geometric topology, in particular the topology of 3-manifolds and associated algebraic problems, mainly in group theory. Early life and career Hempel was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. In 1957 he graduated from the University of Utah with a degree in mathematics. In 1962, he defended his thesis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, under the supervision of R. H. Bing. He was a professor at Rice University until the time of his death.
Go to Profile#8099
Lori E. Dodd
#140794
Overall Influence
Lori Elizabeth Dodd is an American mathematical statistician specializing in clinical trials methodology, statistical analysis of genomic data, design of clinical trials using biomarkers and imaging modalities, and statistical methods for analyzing biomarkers. She is a statistician in the biostatistics research branch at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Go to Profile#8100
Amitava Datta
#103190
Overall Influence
Amitava Datta is an Indian scientist working in the area of high energy physics, especially in context of new physics through direct and indirect . Career He obtained his Bachelor of Science degree in 1969 from the Scottish Church College under the University of Calcutta, and MSc and PhD degrees in physics from Visva Bharati in 1971 and 1977, respectively. He joined Jadavpur University as a lecturer in 1981 and was subsequently promoted to professor in 1998. In 2008, he moved to the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata as a professor. He held Visiting Positions at Fermi...
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