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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Mathematics,
#8951
Heinrich Schröter
1829 - 1892 (63 years)
Heinrich Eduard Schröter was a German mathematician, who studied geometry in the tradition of Jakob Steiner. Life and work Schröter went to the Altstädtisches Gymnasium in Königsberg, studying mathematics and physics. After graduating from the Gymnasium in 1845, he entered the University of Königsberg to continue the study of mathematics and physics under Jacobi school's Frederick Richelot . After his volunteer year in the military, he went to the Berlin Friedrich-Wilhelms-University, where he was taught by Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet and Jakob Steiner. In 1854 he received his doctorate in Richelot in Königsberg with a paper on elliptic functions.
Go to Profile#8952
Vitold Shmulyan
1914 - 1944 (30 years)
Vitold Lvovich Shmulyan was a Soviet mathematician known for his work in functional analysis. The Eberlein–Šmulian theorem and Krein–Smulian theorem are named after him. Notes
Go to Profile#8953
Lucio Lombardo-Radice
1916 - 1982 (66 years)
Lucio Lombardo-Radice was an Italian mathematician. A student of Gaetano Scorza, Lombardo-Radice contributed to finite geometry and geometric combinatorics together with Guido Zappa and Beniamino Segre, and wrote important works concerning the Non-Desarguesian plane. He was also a leading member of the Italian Communist Party and a member of its central committee.
Go to Profile#8954
Jenő Hunyady
1838 - 1889 (51 years)
Jenő Hunyady was a Hungarian mathematician noted for his work on conic sections and linear algebra, specifically on determinants. He received his Ph.D. in Göttingen . He worked at the University of Technology of Budapest. He was elected a corresponding member , member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. From 1885 he actively participated in the informal meetings of what became later the Mathematical and Physical Society of Hungary.
Go to Profile#8955
Henry Cabourn Pocklington
1870 - 1952 (82 years)
Henry Cabourn Pocklington FRS was an English physicist and mathematician. His primary profession was as a schoolmaster, but he made important contributions to number theory with the discovery of Pocklington's primality test in 1914 and the invention of Pocklington's algorithm. He also derived the first equation for the current in a wire antenna, Pocklington's integral equation.
Go to Profile#8956
Arthur Lee Dixon
1867 - 1955 (88 years)
Arthur Lee Dixon FRS was a British mathematician and holder of the Waynflete Professorship of Pure Mathematics at the University of Oxford. Early life and education Dixon was born on 27 November 1867 in Pickering, North Riding of Yorkshire to G.T. Dixon, and was the younger brother of Alfred Cardew Dixon. From 1879 to 1885 he studied at Kingswood School, before matriculating at Worcester College, Oxford as a scholar to study mathematics.
Go to Profile#8957
Hubert A. Newton
1830 - 1896 (66 years)
Prof Hubert Anson Newton FRS HFRSE , usually cited as H. A. Newton, was an American astronomer and mathematician, noted for his research on meteors. Biography Newton was born at Sherburne, New York, and graduated from Yale in 1850 with a B.A. He continued his studies independently in New Haven and at home, due to the absence of Anthony Stanley, the primary professor of mathematics at Yale who was at the time dying of tuberculosis. Newton took up the position of tutor in January, 1853, a few months before Stanley's death, and served as the principal instructor of mathematics until 1855 when he was appointed professor of mathematics.
Go to Profile#8958
Henry Taber
1860 - 1936 (76 years)
Henry Taber was an American mathematician. Biography Taber studied mechanical engineering at Sheffield Scientific School from 1877 to 1882. Then, he went to Baltimore to study mathematics at Johns Hopkins University, under Charles Sanders Peirce and William Edward Story. He was awarded a doctorate in 1888, with a dissertation probably tutored by Story.
Go to Profile#8959
Vincenzo Flauti
1782 - 1863 (81 years)
Vincenzo Flauti was an Italian mathematician. Life and work Flauti studied at the Liceo del Salvatore, the school led by Nicola Fergola. Although he began medical studies, he changed them to mathematics influenced by his master Fergola. He taught at the University of Naples from 1803 to 1860, succeeding Fergola in his chair in 1812.
Go to Profile#8960
Elizaveta Litvinova
1845 - 1919 (74 years)
Elizaveta Fedorovna Litvinova was a Russian mathematician and pedagogue. She is the author of over 70 articles about mathematics education. Early life and education Born in 1845 in czarist Russia as Elizaveta Fedorovna Ivashkina, she completed her early education at a women's high school in Saint Petersburg. In 1866 Elizaveta married Viktor Litvinov, which, unlike Vladimir Kovalevsky , would not allow her to travel to Europe to study at the universities there. Thus, Litvinova started to study with Strannoliubskii, who had also privately tutored Kovalevskaya.
Go to Profile#8961
Ole Michael Ludvigsen Selberg
1877 - 1950 (73 years)
Ole Michael Ludvigsen Selberg was a Norwegian mathematician and educator. He was born in Flora. He was married to Anna Kristina Brigtsdatter Skeie, and the father of Sigmund, Arne, Henrik and Atle Selberg. His thesis from 1925 treated the theory of algebraic equations. Three of his sons became professors of mathematics, and one was professor of engineering. During the occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany Selberg was a member of the Nazi party Nasjonal Samling. He is also known for his large collection of mathematics literature, which has later been donated to the Norwegian University of Scien...
Go to Profile#8962
Louis Saalschütz
1835 - 1913 (78 years)
Louis Saalschütz was a Prussian-Jewish mathematician, known for his contributions to number theory and mathematical analysis. Biography Louis Saalschütz was born to a Jewish family in Königsberg, Prussia, the son of archaeologist Joseph Levin Saalschütz. From 1854 to 1860 he studied mathematics and physics at the University of Königsberg. In 1861 he received his doctorate under the supervision of Franz Ernst Neumann, with the dissertation Ueber die Wärmeveränderungen in den Höheren Erdschichten Unter dem Einfluss des Nicht-periodischen Temperaturwechsels an der Oberfläche.
Go to Profile#8963
Hugh Marshall
1868 - 1913 (45 years)
Hugh Marshall FRS FRSE FCS was a Scottish chemist who discovered persulphates in 1891. He was the inventor of Marshall's acid. In 1902 he proposed the modified sign of equality which became standard in chemistry to represent dynamic equilibrium.
Go to Profile#8964
Johann Kies
1713 - 1781 (68 years)
Johann Kies was a German astronomer and mathematician. Born in Tübingen, Kies worked in Berlin in 1751 alongside Jérôme Lalande in order to make observations on the lunar parallax in concert with those of Nicolas Louis de Lacaille at the Cape of Good Hope.
Go to Profile#8965
Stephen Arthur Jennings
1915 - 1979 (64 years)
Stephen Arthur Jennings was a mathematician who made contributions to the study of modular representation theory . His advisor was Richard Brauer, and his student Rimhak Ree discovered two infinite series of finite simple groups known as the Ree groups. Jennings was an editor of Mathematics Magazine and an acting president of the University of Victoria.
Go to Profile#8966
Adriaan Metius
1571 - 1635 (64 years)
Adriaan Adriaanszoon, called Metius, , was a Dutch geometer and astronomer born in Alkmaar. The name "Metius" comes from the Dutch word meten , and therefore means something like "measurer" or "surveyor."
Go to Profile#8967
Louis Israel Dublin
1882 - 1969 (87 years)
Louis Israel Dublin was a Jewish American statistician. As vice president and statistician of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, he promoted progressive and socially useful insurance underwriting policies. As a scholar, Dublin was an important figure in the establishment of demography as a social-scientific discipline in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s. Dublin was interested in eugenics but as a Jew of recent immigrant extraction criticized eugenicists for equating biological superiority with Nordic origins.
Go to Profile#8968
Sebastian Finsterwalder
1862 - 1951 (89 years)
Sebastian Finsterwalder was a German mathematician and glaciologist. Acknowledged as the "father of glacier photogrammetry"; he pioneered the use of repeat photography as a temporal surveying instrument in measurement of the geology and structure of the Alps and their glacier flows. The measurement techniques he developed and the data he produced are still in use to discover evidence for climate change.
Go to Profile#8969
Julius Richard Büchi
1924 - 1984 (60 years)
Julius Richard Büchi was a Swiss logician and mathematician. He received his Dr. sc. nat. in 1950 at ETH Zurich under the supervision of Paul Bernays and Ferdinand Gonseth. Shortly afterwards he went to Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana. He and his first student Lawrence Landweber had a major influence on the development of theoretical computer science.
Go to Profile#8970
Giovanni Bordiga
1854 - 1933 (79 years)
Giovanni Bordiga was an Italiann mathematician who worked on algebraic and projective geometry at the university of Padua. He introduced the Bordiga surface. Giovanni as the son of Carlo and Amalia Adami. He matriculated at a young age to Turin University, graduating in 1874 in civil engineering.
Go to Profile#8971
Sydney Samuel Hough
1870 - 1923 (53 years)
Sydney Samuel Hough FRS was a British applied mathematician and astronomer. Hough studied at Christ's Hospital and then obtained a scholarship to Cambridge. He graduated in 1892 B.A. and in 1896 M.A. from St John's College, Cambridge and was a Fellow there from 1895 to 1901. He was an assistant master at Winchester College in 1894.
Go to Profile#8972
Herbert Ellsworth Slaught
1861 - 1937 (76 years)
Herbert Ellsworth Slaught was an American mathematician who was president of the Mathematical Association of America and editor of the journal American Mathematical Monthly. Life and work Slaught, born in the Finger Lakes area, left his place of birth when he was 13 years old, due to the bankruptcy of the family's farm. The family moved to Hamilton, New York, where he studied at Colgate University, graduating in 1883. After teaching some years at the Peddie School , he received in 1892 a fellowship from the University of Chicago, where he was awarded a PhD in 1898. Slaught remained as profess...
Go to Profile#8973
Harry Yandell Benedict
1869 - 1937 (68 years)
Harry Yandell Benedict was an American astronomer and mathematician. He was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Joseph and Adele Benedict on November 14, 1869. In 1877, Benedict's brother, Carl, mother, and maternal grandfather, H. J. Peters, moved to Texas, onto land acquired by his great-grandfather, S. W. Peters. The family library contained one thousand books. Other than eight months of formal schooling in the cities of Graham and Weatherford, H. Y. Benedict was homeschooled by his mother. Benedict studied civil engineering at the University of Texas at Austin from 1889 to 1892, and completed a master's degree in 1893.
Go to Profile#8974
Johann Georg Tralles
1763 - 1822 (59 years)
Johann Georg Tralles was a German mathematician and physicist. Image Bordeaux-Paris 1911 - Jules Masselis.jpg N He was born in Hamburg, Germany and was educated at the University of Göttingen beginning in 1783. He became a professor at the University of Bern in 1785. In 1810, he became a professor of mathematics at the University of Berlin.
Go to Profile#8975
Thomas Clausen
1801 - 1885 (84 years)
Thomas Clausen was a Danish mathematician and astronomer. Clausen learned mathematics at home. In 1820, he became a trainee at the Munich Optical Institute and in 1824, at the Altona Observatory after he showed Heinrich Christian Schumacher his paper on calculating longitude by the occultation of stars by the moon. He eventually returned to Munich, where he conceived and published his best known works on mathematics. In 1842 Clausen was hired by the staff of the Tartu Observatory, becoming its director in 1866-1872.
Go to Profile#8976
Arthur D. Cayley
#8977
Johann Karl Burckhardt
1773 - 1825 (52 years)
Johann Karl Burckhardt was a German-born astronomer and mathematician. He later became a naturalized French citizen and became known as Jean Charles Burckhardt. He is remembered in particular for his work in fundamental astronomy, and for his lunar theory, which was in widespread use for the construction of navigational ephemerides of the Moon for much of the first half of the nineteenth century.
Go to Profile#8978
Jorge Juan y Santacilia
1713 - 1773 (60 years)
Jorge Juan y Santacilia was a Spanish mariner, mathematician, natural scientist, astronomer, engineer, and educator. He is generally regarded as one of the most important scientific figures of the Enlightenment in Spain. As a military officer, he undertook sensitive diplomatic missions for the Spanish crown and contributed to the modernization and professionalization of the Spanish Navy. In his lifetime, he came to be known as el sabio español . His career as a public servant constitutes an important chapter in the Bourbon Reforms of the 18th century.
Go to Profile#8979
Arthur Stanley Ramsey
1867 - 1954 (87 years)
Arthur Stanley Ramsey was a British mathematician and author of mathematics and physics textbooks. He was Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and its President from 1915–52. Biography The son of Rev. Adam Averell Ramsey of Dewsbury, a Congregational minister, and his wife Hephzibah, Ramsey was educated at Batley Grammar School and Magdalene College, Cambridge where he read Mathematics .
Go to Profile#8980
Michelangelo Fardella
1650 - 1718 (68 years)
Michelangelo Fardella was an Italian scientist. Fardella was born at Trapani, Sicily, and died in Naples. He was a member of the Order of Friars Minor. He excelled in physics and mathematics, and was both the chair of philosophy in Modena and of astronomy and philosophy in Padua. He embraced the philosophy of René Descartes, after learning the principles during a voyage which he made to Paris from conversations with Antoine Arnauld, Nicolas Malebranche and Bernard Lamy.
Go to Profile#8981
Wilhelm Gross
1886 - 1918 (32 years)
Wilhelm Gross was an Austrian mathematician, known for the Gross star theorem. Wilhelm Gross graduated from the Gymnasium in Linz and then studied from 1905 to 1910 at the University of Vienna, where he received his Ph.D. on 20 May 1910 with Wilhelm Wirtinger as thesis advisor. In October 1910 Gross passed his teaching qualification examination in mathematics and physics. After a three-semester stay in Göttingen during the years 1910–1912, he became in 1912 an assistant and from 1913 a Privatdozent at the University of Vienna. In the year 1918 he was promoted there to professor extraordinarius.
Go to Profile#8982
Charlotte Barnum
1860 - 1934 (74 years)
Charlotte Cynthia Barnum , mathematician and social activist, was the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale University. Early life and education Charlotte Barnum was born in Phillipston, Massachusetts, the third of four children of the Reverend Samuel Weed Barnum and Charlotte Betts . Education was important in her family: two uncles had received medical degrees from Yale and her father had graduated from there with a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Divinity. Her brothers Samuel and Thomas would both graduate from Yale, and her sister Clara would attend Yale graduate scho...
Go to Profile#8983
Emilie Martin
1869 - 1936 (67 years)
Emilie Norton Martin was an American mathematician and professor of mathematics at Mount Holyoke College. Life Martin earned her bachelor's degree at Bryn Mawr College in 1894 majoring in mathematics and Latin. She continued her graduate studies at Bryn Mawr under the supervision of Charlotte Scott. In 1897-1898 she used a Mary E. Garrett Fellowship from Bryn Mawr to study at the University of Göttingen. In Göttingen, Martin and Virginia Ragsdale attended lectures by Felix Klein and David Hilbert. Although her name and dissertation title were printed in the 1899 commencement program, her Ph.D.
Go to Profile#8984
Albert Christian Ludolph
#8985
Charlotte Wedell
1862 - 1953 (91 years)
Charlotte Bolette Sophie, Baroness Wedell-Wedellsborg was one of four women mathematicians to attend the inaugural International Congress of Mathematicians, held in Zurich in 1897. Wedell was originally from Denmark, the daughter of and Louise Marie Sophie, Countess Schulin, and the granddaughter of . At the time of the Congress, in 1897, she had just completed a doctorate at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, with Adolf Hurwitz as an unofficial mentor. The subject of her dissertation was the application of elliptic functions to the construction of the Malfatti circles.
Go to Profile#8986
Friedrich Wilhelm August Ludwig Kiepert
1846 - 1934 (88 years)
Friedrich Wilhelm August Ludwig Kiepert was a German mathematician who introduced the Kiepert hyperbola. Selected works curvis quarum arcus integralibus ellipticis primi generis exprimuntur, 1870, dissertationTabelle der wichtigsten Formeln aus der Differential-Rechnung, many editionsder Differential- und Integral-Rechnung, Helwing, Hannover, 2 vols., many editionsGrundriss der Integral-Rechnung, 2 vols., many editionsGrundriss der Differential-Rechnung, many editions
Go to Profile#8987
Michele de Franchis
1875 - 1946 (71 years)
Michele de Franchis was an Italian mathematician, specializing in algebraic geometry. He is known for the De Franchis theorem and the Castelnuovo–de Franchis theorem. He received his laurea in 1896 from the University of Palermo, where he was taught by Giovanni Battista Guccia and Francesco Gerbaldi. De Franchis was appointed in 1905 Professor of Algebra and Analytic Geometry at the University of Cagliari and then in 1906 moved to the University of Parma, where he was appointed professor of Projective and Descriptive Geometry and remained until 1909. From 1909 to 1914 he was a professor at the University of Catania.
Go to Profile#8988
Ezra Stiles
1727 - 1795 (68 years)
Ezra Stiles was an American educator, academic, Congregationalist minister, theologian, and author. He is noted as the seventh president of Yale College and one of the founders of Brown University. According to religious historian Timothy L. Hall, Stiles' tenure at Yale distinguishes him as "one of the first great American college presidents."
Go to Profile#8989
Seligmann Kantor
1857 - 1903 (46 years)
Seligmann Kantor was a Bohemian-born, German-speaking mathematician of Jewish origin in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He is known for the Möbius–Kantor configuration and the Möbius-Kantor graph. Kantor studied mathematics and physics at the Technische Hochschule in Vienna, then studied in 1878 in Rome with Luigi Cremona, in Strasbourg, and in 1880 in Paris. In 1881 he received his Habilitation at the K. K. Deutsche Technische Hochschule in Prague. He was appointed there in 1883 a Privatdozent for mathematics and continued in that academic post until 1888. He was considered for a professorship...
Go to Profile#8990
Marcel Légaut
1900 - 1990 (90 years)
Marcel Légaut was a French Christian philosopher and mathematician. Biography Marcel Légaut was born in Paris, where he received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the École Normale Supérieure in 1925. He taught in various faculties until 1943. Under the impact of the Second World War and the rapid French defeat in 1940, Légaut acknowledged the lack of certain fundamental aspects in his life as well as in the lives of other university professors and civil servants. That is why he tried to alternate teaching with farm work. After three years his project was no longer accepted and he left the University to live as a shepherd in the Pré-Alpes .
Go to Profile#8991
Louise Duffield Cummings
1870 - 1947 (77 years)
Louise Duffield Cummings was a Canadian-born American mathematician. She was born in Hamilton, Ontario. Education and career As a young child, Louise Duffield Cummings studied at the public schools and Collegiate Institute at Hamilton.
Go to Profile#8992
Pierre Joseph Étienne Finck
1797 - 1870 (73 years)
Pierre Joseph Étienne Finck was a French mathematician. Life and work Finck, who became orphan at twelve years, was educated by a merchant of Landau . In 1815, he entered in the École Polytechnique, where he graduated in 1817. After some time studying in the Artillery School, he left París for Strasbourg before 1821.
Go to Profile#8993
Tatsujiro Shimizu
1897 - 1992 (95 years)
Tatsujiro Shimizu was a Japanese mathematician working in the field of complex analysis. He was the founder of the Japanese Association of Mathematical Sciences. Life and career Shimizu graduated from the Department of Mathematics, School of Science, Tokyo Imperial University in 1924, and stayed there working as a staff member. In 1932 he moved to Osaka Imperial University and became a professor. He made contributions to the establishment of the Department of Mathematics there. In 1949, Shimizu left Osaka and took up a professorship at Kobe University. After two years, he moved again to Osaka Prefectural University.
Go to Profile#8994
James Booth
1806 - 1878 (72 years)
The Revd Dr James Booth, was an Anglo-Irish clergyman, notable as a mathematician and educationalist. Life Born at Lavagh, County Leitrim on 26 August 1806, the son of John Booth , he entered Trinity College, Dublin in 1825 and was elected scholar in 1829, graduating B.A. in 1832, M.A. in 1840, and LL.D. in 1842.
Go to Profile#8995
Charles Newton Little
1858 - 1923 (65 years)
Charles Newton Little was an American mathematician and civil engineer. He was known for his expertise in knot theory, including the construction of a table of knots with ten or fewer crossings. Little's father was a missionary to Madurai, in India, where Little was born in 1858; his family returned with him to America in 1859. He earned an A.B. from the University of Nebraska in 1879, and continued at Nebraska's Institute of Mathematics and Civil Engineering, where he earned an M.A. in 1884. After this, he entered graduate study at Yale University, and completed his Ph.D. in 1885 under the s...
Go to Profile#8996
Michele Cipolla
1880 - 1947 (67 years)
Michele Cipolla was an Italian mathematician, mainly specializing in number theory. He was a professor of Algebraic Analysis at the University of Catania and, later, the University of Palermo. He developed a theory for sequences of sets and Cipolla's algorithm for finding square roots modulo a prime number. He also solved the problem of binomial congruence.
Go to Profile#8997
Jacques Marquette
1637 - 1675 (38 years)
Jacques Marquette, S.J. , sometimes known as Père Marquette or James Marquette, was a French Jesuit missionary who founded Michigan's first European settlement, Sault Sainte Marie, and later founded Saint Ignace. In 1673, Marquette, with Louis Jolliet, an explorer born near Quebec City, was the first European to explore and map the northern portion of the Mississippi River Valley.
Go to Profile#8998
Vera Šnajder
1904 - 1976 (72 years)
Vera Šnajder was a Bosnian mathematician known for being the first Bosnian to publish a mathematical research paper and the first female dean in Yugoslavia. Šnajder was born on 2 February 1904, in Reljevo, one of the neighborhoods of Sarajevo; her father directed an Orthodox seminary. She began her university studies at the University of Belgrade in 1922, and graduated in 1928. She took a position as a schoolteacher at a girl's gymnasium in Sarajevo, and married , a Jewish philosopher who at that time was working at the same school.
Go to Profile#8999
Claiborne Latimer
1893 - 1960 (67 years)
Claiborne Green Latimer was an American mathematician, known for the Latimer–MacDuffee theorem. Career Latimer earned his PhD in 1924 from the University of Chicago under Leonard Dickson with thesis Arithmetic of Generalized Quaternion Algebras. He was an assistant professor at Tulane University for 2 years, before becoming a mathematics professor at the University of Kentucky in 1927. After 20 years at the University of Kentucky, he resigned in 1947 and became a professor at Emory University. Latimer was an amateur photographer; some of his photographs are preserved in the archives of the Un...
Go to Profile#9000
John Howard
1726 - 1790 (64 years)
John Howard FRS was a philanthropist and early English prison reformer. Birth and early life Howard was born in North London, either in Hackney or Enfield. His father, also John, was a wealthy upholsterer at Smithfield Market in the city. His mother Ann Pettitt, or Cholmley, died when he was five years old, and, described as a "sickly child", he was sent to live at Cardington, Bedfordshire, some fifty miles from London, where his father owned property. His father, a strict disciplinarian with strong religious beliefs, sent the young John to a school in Hertford run by John Worsley. He went...
Go to Profile