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,
#9001
Wilhelm Fiedler
1832 - 1912 (80 years)
Otto Wilhelm Fiedler was a German-Swiss mathematician, known for his textbooks of geometry and his contributions to descriptive geometry. Life Fiedler was the son of a shoemaker. He went to the Royal Mercantile College in Chemnitz and in 1849 to the Bergakademie Freiberg as an external student. In 1852 he became a mathematics teacher at the "Werkmeisterschule" in Freiberg and 1853 at the "Gewerbeschule" in Chemnitz. He had to take care of his widowed mother and his siblings, and educated himself without directly attending a university. In 1858 he obtained the doctorate in mathematics at the U...
Go to Profile#9002
Georg Aumann
1906 - 1980 (74 years)
Georg Aumann , was a German mathematician. He was known for his work in general topology and regulated functions. During World War II, he worked as part of a group of five mathematicians, recruited by Wilhelm Fenner, and which included Ernst Witt, Alexander Aigner, Oswald Teichmueller and Johann Friedrich Schultze, and led by Wolfgang Franz, to form the backbone of the new mathematical research department in the late 1930s, which would eventually be called: Section IVc of Cipher Department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht . He also worked as a cryptanalyst, on the initial breaking of the most difficult cypherss.
Go to Profile#9003
Aida Yasuaki
1747 - 1817 (70 years)
Aida Yasuaki also known as Aida Ammei, was a Japanese mathematician in the Edo period. He made significant contributions to the fields of number theory and geometry, and furthered methods for simplifying continued fractions.
Go to Profile#9004
Leo August Pochhammer
1841 - 1920 (79 years)
Leo August Pochhammer was a Prussian mathematician who was known for his work on special functions and introduced the Pochhammer symbol, now generally used for expressing hypergeometric functions in a compact notation.
Go to Profile#9005
Forest Ray Moulton
1872 - 1952 (80 years)
Forest Ray Moulton was an American astronomer. Biography He was born in Le Roy, Michigan, and was educated at Albion College. After graduating in 1894 , he performed his graduate studies at the University of Chicago and gained a Ph.D. in 1899. At the University of Chicago he was associate in astronomy , instructor , assistant professor , associate professor , and professor after 1912.
Go to Profile#9006
Emanuel Czuber
1851 - 1925 (74 years)
Emanuel Czuber was an Austrian mathematician. Biography He graduated from a German secondary school in 1869 and continued his studies at the German Technical University in Prague, where he played an active part in the Association for Free Lectures on Mathematics - a student association and the predecessor of the Union of Czech Mathematicians and Physicists. From 1872 to 1874, while he was still a student, he acted as an assistant to Karel Koristka. He submitted his habilitation thesis on practical geometry to the Technical University at Prague in 1876 and obtained the right to lecture. From 1875 to 1886 he taught at the Second German Realschule in Prague.
Go to Profile#9007
Yehoshua Bar-Hillel
1915 - 1975 (60 years)
Yehoshua Bar-Hillel was an Israeli philosopher, mathematician, and linguist. He was a pioneer in the fields of machine translation and formal linguistics. Biography Born Oscar Westreich in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, he was raised in Berlin. In 1933 he emigrated to Palestine with the Bnei Akiva youth movement, and briefly joined the kibbutz Tirat Zvi before settling in Jerusalem and marrying Shulamith.
Go to Profile#9008
Zu Gengzhi
480 - 525 (45 years)
Zu Geng or Zu Gengzhi was a Chinese mathematician, politician, and writer. His courtesy name was Jingshuo . He was the son of the famous mathematician Zu Chongzhi. He is known principally for deriving and proving the formula for the volume of a sphere. He additionally measured the angular distance between Polaris and the celestial north pole.
Go to Profile#9009
Bernt Michael Holmboe
1795 - 1850 (55 years)
Bernt Michael Holmboe was a Norwegian mathematician. He was home-tutored from an early age, and was not enrolled in school until 1810. Following a short period at the Royal Frederick University, which included a stint as assistant to Christopher Hansteen, Holmboe was hired as a mathematics teacher at the Christiania Cathedral School in 1818, where he met the future renowned mathematician Niels Henrik Abel. Holmboe's lasting impact on mathematics worldwide has been said to be his tutoring of Abel, both in school and privately. The two became friends and remained so until Abel's early death. Ho...
Go to Profile#9010
Édouard Le Roy
1870 - 1954 (84 years)
Édouard Louis Emmanuel Julien Le Roy was a French philosopher and mathematician. Life Le Roy entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1892, and received the agrégation in mathematics in 1895. He became Doctor in Sciences in 1898, taught in several high schools, and became in 1909 professor of mathematics at the Lycée Saint-Louis in Paris.
Go to Profile#9011
Andreas von Ettingshausen
1796 - 1878 (82 years)
Andreas Freiherr von Ettingshausen was an Austrian mathematician and physicist. Ettingshausen studied philosophy and jurisprudence at the University of Vienna. In 1817, he joined the University of Vienna and taught mathematics and physics as an adjunct professor. In 1819, he became professor of physics at the University of Innsbruck and 1821 professor of higher mathematics at the University of Vienna. His lectures of that time marked a new era for the University of Vienna, and they were published in 1827 in two volumes. In 1834 Ettingshausen became the chair of physics.
Go to Profile#9012
Guido Stampacchia
1922 - 1978 (56 years)
Guido Stampacchia was an Italian mathematician, known for his work on the theory of variational inequalities, the calculus of variation and the theory of elliptic partial differential equations. Life and academic career Stampacchia was born in Naples, Italy, to Emanuele Stampacchia and Giulia Campagnano. He obtained his high school certification from the Liceo-Ginnasio Giambattista Vico in Naples in classical subjects, although he showed a stronger aptitude for mathematics and physics.
Go to Profile#9013
Johannes Hjelmslev
1873 - 1950 (77 years)
Johannes Trolle Hjelmslev was a mathematician from Hørning, Denmark. Hjelmslev worked in geometry and history of geometry. He was the discoverer and eponym of the Hjelmslev transformation, a method for mapping an entire hyperbolic plane into a circle with a finite radius. He was the father of Louis Hjelmslev.
Go to Profile#9014
Tatyana Afanasyeva
1876 - 1964 (88 years)
Tatyana Alexeyevna Afanasyeva was a Russian-Dutch mathematician and physicist who made contributions to the fields of statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics. On 21 December 1904, she married Austrian physicist Paul Ehrenfest . They had two daughters and two sons; one daughter, Tatyana Ehrenfest, also became a mathematician.
Go to Profile#9015
Jules Hoüel
1823 - 1886 (63 years)
Guillaume-Jules Hoüel was a French mathematician. He entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1843 and received his doctoral degree in 1855 from the Sorbonne. He was sought by Urbain Le Verrier at the Paris Observatory, but chose instead to return to Thaon to study there. In 1859 he began to teach at Bordeaux.
Go to Profile#9016
Hans Heinrich Bürmann
1750 - 1817 (67 years)
Hans Heinrich Bürmann was a German mathematician and teacher. He ran an "academy of commerce" in Mannheim since 1795 where he used to teach mathematics. He also served as a censor in Mannheim. He was nominated Headmaster of the Commerce Academy of the Grand Duchy of Baden in 1811. He did scientific research in the area of combinatorics and he contributed to the development of the symbolic language of mathematics. He discovered the generalized form of the Lagrange inversion theorem. He corresponded and published with Joseph Louis Lagrange and Carl Hindenburg.
Go to Profile#9017
Jean Claude Bouquet
1819 - 1885 (66 years)
Jean-Claude Bouquet was a French mathematician who worked with Charles Briot on doubly periodic functions. Bouquet became friends with Briot at the Lycée and wanted to become a mathematics teacher.
Go to Profile#9018
Charlotte Scott
1858 - 1931 (73 years)
Charlotte Angas Scott was a British mathematician who made her career in the United States and was influential in the development of American mathematics, including the mathematical education of women. Scott played an important role in Cambridge changing the rules for its famous Mathematical Tripos exam.
Go to Profile#9019
Ellen Hayes
1851 - 1930 (79 years)
Ellen Amanda Hayes was an American mathematician and astronomer. She was a controversial figure, not only because of being a female college professor, but also for embracing many radical causes. Early life Hayes was born in Granville, Ohio, the first of six children to Ruth Rebecca Hayes and Charles Coleman Hayes. At the age of seven she studied at the Centerville school, a one-room ungraded public school and, in 1867, at sixteen, was employed to teach at a country school. In 1872, she entered the preparatory department at Oberlin College and was admitted as a freshman in 1875, where her mai...
Go to Profile#9020
George Peacock
1791 - 1858 (67 years)
George Peacock FRS was an English mathematician and Anglican cleric. He founded what has been called the British algebra of logic. Early life Peacock was born on 9 April 1791 at Thornton Hall, Denton, near Darlington, County Durham. His father, Thomas Peacock, was a priest of the Church of England, incumbent and for 50 years curate of the parish of Denton, where he also kept a school. In early life Peacock did not show any precocity of genius, and was more remarkable for daring feats of climbing than for any special attachment to study. Initially, he received his elementary education from his...
Go to Profile#9021
Adolf Ferdinand Wenceslaus Brix
1798 - 1870 (72 years)
Adolf Ferdinand Wenceslaus Brix was a German mathematician and engineer. The unit for specific gravity of liquids, degree Brix , is named after him. Brix made a career as a civil servant in professions related to civil engineering, measurements and manufacture and retired in 1866 . He was director of the Royal Prussian Commission for Measurements, member of a technical committee in the Ministry of Trade, and the technical building committee. He was also a teacher of applied mathematics at Gewerbeinstitut zu Berlin , as well as in higher analysis and applied mathematics at the Bauakademie, b...
Go to Profile#9022
Michael Stifel
1487 - 1567 (80 years)
Michael Stifel or Styfel was a German monk, Protestant reformer and mathematician. He was an Augustinian who became an early supporter of Martin Luther. He was later appointed professor of mathematics at Jena University.
Go to Profile#9023
Yoshio Mikami
1875 - 1950 (75 years)
Yoshio Mikami was a Japanese mathematician and historian of Japanese mathematics. He was born February 16, 1875, in Kotachi, Hiroshima prefecture. He attended the High School of Tohoku University, and in 1911 was admitted to the Imperial University of Tokyo. He studied history of Japanese and Chinese mathematics. In 1913, he published "The Development of Mathematics in China and Japan" in Leipzig. This book consisted of two parts with 47 chapters. Part one has 21 chapters that describe in depth several important Chinese mathematicians and mathematical classics including Liu Hui, Shen Kuo, Qi...
Go to Profile#9024
Carlo Alberto Castigliano
1847 - 1884 (37 years)
Carlo Alberto Castigliano was an Italian mathematician and physicist known for Castigliano's method for determining displacements in a linear-elastic system based on the partial derivatives of strain energy.
Go to Profile#9025
Rodion Kuzmin
1891 - 1949 (58 years)
Rodion Osievich Kuzmin was a Soviet mathematician, known for his works in number theory and analysis. His name is sometimes transliterated as Kusmin. He was an Invited Speaker of the ICM in 1928 in Bologna.
Go to Profile#9026
Jules Tannery
1848 - 1910 (62 years)
Jules Tannery was a French mathematician, who notably studied under Charles Hermite and was the PhD advisor of Jacques Hadamard. Tannery's theorem on interchange of limits and series is named after him. He was a brother of the mathematician and historian of science Paul Tannery.
Go to Profile#9027
Ernst Lebrecht Henneberg
1850 - 1933 (83 years)
Ernst Lebrecht Henneberg was a German professor of mechanics and mathematics. Life Ernst Lebrecht Henneberg was born in Wolfenbüttel in 1850 to Heinrich Henneberg and Sophie Rimpau. From 1870 until 1876 he studied mathematics in Zürich, Heidelberg, and Berlin, receiving his doctorate in 1875 from Hermann Schwarz while in Zürich. After living in Zürich from 1876 until 1878, he became an associate professor for descriptive and synthetic geometry and graphic statics at TU Darmstat. Not soon after in 1879, he became a professor of mechanics at the university.
Go to Profile#9028
Moritz Wilhelm Drobisch
1802 - 1896 (94 years)
Moritz Wilhelm Drobisch was a German mathematician, logician, psychologist and philosopher. His brother was the composer Karl Ludwig Drobisch . Life Drobisch studied mathematics and philosophy at the University of Leipzig, where he subsequently became a professor. He wrote his habilitation in 1824. From 1826 to 1868 he served as ordinarius in mathematics, and from 1842 on as ordinarius in philosophy. He was rector of the university of Leipzig in 1840–41 and served as dean of the philosophical faculty several times. Drobisch made contributions to philosophical and mathematical logic, set theory, quantitative linguistics and empirical psychology.
Go to Profile#9029
Olga Hahn-Neurath
1882 - 1937 (55 years)
Olga Hahn-Neurath was an Austrian mathematician and philosopher. She is best known for being a member of the Vienna Circle. She was sister of the mathematician Hans Hahn. Biography Born in Vienna, Hahn enrolled as a student for math and philosophy studies at the University of Vienna in 1902. She became blind in 1904, when she was 22. In 1911, she became the third ever female graduate in philosophy at Vienna University. Her doctoral thesis, published in 1911, received great compliments from her instructor, Adolf Stöhr, the successor to the chair of Ludwig Boltzmann. Her main interest in math w...
Go to Profile#9030
Tatyana Ehrenfest
1905 - 1984 (79 years)
Tatyana Pavlovna Ehrenfest, later van Aardenne-Ehrenfest, was a Dutch mathematician. She was the daughter of Paul Ehrenfest and Tatyana Afanasyeva . Under her married name, Tanja van Aardenne-Ehrenfest, she is known for her contributions to De Bruijn sequences, low-discrepancy sequences, and the BEST theorem.
Go to Profile#9031
Aleksandr Kotelnikov
1865 - 1944 (79 years)
Aleksandr Petrovich Kotelnikov was a Russian and Soviet mathematician specializing in geometry and kinematics. Biography Aleksandr was the son of , a colleague of Nikolai Lobachevsky. The subject of hyperbolic geometry was non-Euclidean geometry, a departure from tradition. The early exposure to Lobachevsky's work eventually led to Aleksandr undertaking the job of editing Lobachevsky's works.
Go to Profile#9032
James Ivory
1765 - 1842 (77 years)
James Ivory, FRS FRSE KH LLD was a British mathematician. He proposed Ivory's theorem. Life Ivory was born in Dundee, son of James Ivory the renowned watchmaker. The family lived and worked on the High Street in Dundee.
Go to Profile#9033
Radhanath Sikdar
1813 - 1870 (57 years)
Radhanath Sikdar was an Indian mathematician who is best known for calculating the height of Mount Everest. He was the first person to calculate the height of Mount Everest, in 1852. Great Trigonometric Survey In 1831, George Everest, the Surveyor General of India, was in the pursuit of a mathematician who had specialised in Spherical Trigonometry, so that they could be a part of the Great Trigonometric Survey. In 1832, under the leadership of Everest, the longitudinal series of the "triangle" survey was completed from Sironj in Central India to Calcutta in Bengal.
Go to Profile#9034
Gerrit Mannoury
1867 - 1956 (89 years)
Gerrit Mannoury was a Dutch philosopher and mathematician, professor at the University of Amsterdam and communist, known as the central figure in the signific circle, a Dutch counterpart of the Vienna circle.
Go to Profile#9035
Isaac Argyros
1300 - 1375 (75 years)
Isaac Argyros was a Byzantine mathematician and monk, born about 1312, who wrote a treatise named Easter Rule, along with books on arithmetic, geometry and astronomy. Works An Easter Rule, a treatise on EasterNew Tables: An Astronomical treatise, based on Ptolemaic astronomy
Go to Profile#9036
Johannes de Sacrobosco
1195 - 1256 (61 years)
Johannes de Sacrobosco, also written Ioannes de Sacro Bosco, later called John of Holywood or John of Holybush , was a scholar, monk, and astronomer who taught at the University of Paris. He wrote a short introduction to the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. Judging from the number of manuscript copies that survive today, for the next 400 years it became the most widely read book on that subject. He also wrote a short textbook which was widely read and influential in Europe during the later medieval centuries as an introduction to astronomy. In his longest book, on the computation of the date of Ea...
Go to Profile#9037
Jan Brożek
1585 - 1652 (67 years)
Jan Brożek was a Polish polymath: a mathematician, astronomer, physician, poet, writer, musician and rector of the Kraków Academy. Life Brożek was born in Kurzelów, Sandomierz Province, and lived in Kraków, Staszów, and Międzyrzec Podlaski.
Go to Profile#9038
Heinrich Bruns
1848 - 1919 (71 years)
Ernst Heinrich Bruns was a German mathematician and astronomer, who also contributed to the development of the field of theoretical geodesy. Early life Heinrich Bruns was born on 4 September 1848 in Berlin to Christian Gerhard Bruns, a landscape painter, and his wife, Caroline Henriette Hasse.
Go to Profile#9039
Jur Hronec
1881 - 1959 (78 years)
Jur Hronec was a Slovak mathematician. Early years Jur Hronec was born in Gočovo, Slovakia . He grew up in modest circumstances in a farmers family. After graduating from high school in Rožňava he studied mathematics and physics at the University of Kolozsvár under supervision of Professor Ludwig Schlesinger. From 1908 to 1914 he studied at Göttingen, Giessen, Berlin, Switzerland and Paris, in the years 1922–1923 in Prague, Göttingen and Giessen. His doctoral dissertation in the field of differential equations was defended in 1912 in Giessen.
Go to Profile#9040
Carl Gustav Axel Harnack
1851 - 1888 (37 years)
Carl Gustav Axel Harnack was a Baltic German mathematician who contributed to potential theory. Harnack's inequality applied to harmonic functions. He also worked on the real algebraic geometry of plane curves, proving Harnack's curve theorem for real plane algebraic curves.
Go to Profile#9041
Benedetto Castelli
1577 - 1643 (66 years)
Benedetto Castelli , born Antonio Castelli, was an Italian mathematician. Benedetto was his name in religion on entering the Benedictine Order in 1595. Life Born in Brescia, Castelli studied at the University of Padua and later became an abbot at the Benedictine monastery in Monte Cassino.
Go to Profile#9042
George Chrystal
1851 - 1911 (60 years)
George Chrystal FRSE FRS was a Scottish mathematician. He is primarily known for his books on algebra and his studies of seiches which earned him a Gold Medal from the Royal Society of London that was confirmed shortly after his death.
Go to Profile#9043
Xenocrates
396 BC - 314 BC (82 years)
Xenocrates of Chalcedon was a Greek philosopher, mathematician, and leader of the Platonic Academy from 339/8 to 314/3 BC. His teachings followed those of Plato, which he attempted to define more closely, often with mathematical elements. He distinguished three forms of being: the sensible, the intelligible, and a third compounded of the two, to which correspond respectively, sense, intellect and opinion. He considered unity and duality to be gods which rule the universe, and the soul a self-moving number. God pervades all things, and there are daemonical powers, intermediate between the divine and the mortal, which consist in conditions of the soul.
Go to Profile#9044
Virgil Snyder
1869 - 1950 (81 years)
Virgil Snyder was an American mathematician, specializing in algebraic geometry. In 1886, Snyder matriculated at Iowa State College and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1889. He attended Cornell University as a graduate student from 1890 to 1892, leaving to study mathematics in Germany on an Erastus W. Brooks fellowship. In 1895, he received a doctorate from the University of Göttingen under Felix Klein. In 1895, Snyder returned to Cornell as an instructor, becoming an assistant professor in 1905 and a full professor in 1910. In 1938, he retired as professor emeritus, having supervised 39 doctoral students, 13 of whom were women.
Go to Profile#9045
Joseph Kampé de Fériet
1893 - 1982 (89 years)
Marie-Joseph Kampé de Fériet was a French mathematician at Université Lille Nord de France from 1919 to 1969. Besides his works on mathematics and fluid mechanics, he directed the Institut de mécanique des fluides de Lille and taught fluid dynamics and information theory at École centrale de Lille from 1930 to 1969.
Go to Profile#9046
Jean Paul de Gua de Malves
1710 - 1786 (76 years)
Jean Paul de Gua de Malves was a French mathematician who published in 1740 a work on analytical geometry in which he applied it, without the aid of differential calculus, to find the tangents, asymptotes, and various singular points of an algebraic curve.
Go to Profile#9047
François-Joseph Servois
1767 - 1847 (80 years)
François-Joseph Servois was a French priest, military officer and mathematician. His most notable contribution came in his publication of Essai sur un nouveau mode d’exposition des principes du calcul différentiel in 1814, where he first introduced the mathematical terms for commutative and distributive.
Go to Profile#9048
Georg Bohlmann
1869 - 1928 (59 years)
Georg Bohlmann was a German mathematician who specialized in probability theory and actuarial mathematics. Life and career Georg Bohlmann went to school in Berlin and Leipzig and took his Abitur at the Wilhelms-Gymnasium in Berlin in 1888. After that, he began studying mathematics at the University of Berlin under Leopold Kronecker, Lazarus Fuchs, and Wilhelm Dilthey. As he advanced in his studies, Lie groups became the focus of his interest. Since this area was poorly represented at Berlin, he moved to the University of Halle, where he obtained his doctorate in 1892 under Albert Wangerin wit...
Go to Profile#9049
Giovanni Salvemini
1708 - 1791 (83 years)
Giovanni Francesco Mauro Melchiorre Salvemini di Castiglione FRS was an Italian mathematician and astronomer. Life Salvemini was born on 15 January 1708 in Castiglione del Valdarno in Arezzo. His father, Giuseppe Salvemini of Castiglion Fiorentino, was a diplomat and jurist, and an ambassador for the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. His mother was Maria Maddalena Lucia Braccesi whose family came from Pisa. Salvemini was home schooled by tutors and then attended a seminary in Florence.
Go to Profile#9050
Francis Guthrie
1831 - 1899 (68 years)
Francis Guthrie was a South African mathematician and botanist who first posed the Four Colour Problem in 1852. He studied mathematics under Augustus De Morgan, and botany under John Lindley at University College London. Guthrie obtained his B.A. in 1850, and LL.B. in 1852 with first class honours. While colouring a map of the counties of England, he noticed that at least four colours were required so that no two regions sharing a common border were the same colour. He postulated that four colours would be sufficient to colour any map. This became known as the Four Color Problem, and remaine...
Go to Profile