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.
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List of the most influential people in Mathematics,
#9051
Cristoforo Alasia de Quesada
1869 - 1918 (49 years)
Cristoforo Alasia de Quesada was an Italian mathematician. Life and work Alasia studied at the universities of Turin and Rome . In 1893 began his academic career as mathematics professor in different high schools at Sassari, Tempio Pausania, Oristano, Ozieri, Brindisi and, finally, at Albenga.
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Leone Levi
1821 - 1888 (67 years)
Leone Levi was an English jurist and statistician. Born to a Jewish family in Ancona, Italy, he worked in commerce there before emigrating to Liverpool in 1844. There he obtained British citizenship and joined the Presbyterian church.
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Marius Lacombe
1862 - 1938 (76 years)
Marius Lacombe was a Swiss mathematician. Life and work Lacombe studied mathematics at Engineers Department of the ETH Zurich. From 1890 to 1894 he was teaching descriptive geometry in the university of Lausanne. In 1894 he was appointed professor at ETH Zurich to fill a newly created chair of descriptive geometry in French language. After fourteen years in Zurich, in 1908 he returned to university of Lausane, where he retired in 1927.
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Pierre-Dominique Bazaine
1786 - 1838 (52 years)
Pierre-Dominique Bazaine was a French scientist and engineer. Early life He was born 13 January 1786, in the town of Scy-sur-Moselle, son of Pierre Bazaine and Francoise Gilbert. Educated in Paris, graduate of the Paris engineering schools, Paris' Polytechnic University and Paris' University of Bridges . Initially he practised as an Engineer in Italy and Southern France.
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George Gibson
1858 - 1930 (72 years)
George Alexander Gibson FRSE LLD was a Scottish mathematician and academic writer. Life He was born on 19 April 1858 in Greenlaw in Berwickshire the third son of Robert Gibson JP . He attended the free church school in the parish, and showing great promise, went to the University of Glasgow where he graduated with an MA in 1882 and immediately joined the University staff.
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Andor Kertész
1929 - 1974 (45 years)
Andor Kertész was a Hungarian mathematician and professor of mathematics at the Lajos Kossuth University , Debrecen. He is the father of linguist András Kertész. Biography and career Kertész was born on 19 February 1929 in Gyula, Békés County, Hungary.
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Antonio del Pollaiuolo
1429 - 1498 (69 years)
Antonio del Pollaiuolo , also known as Antonio di Jacopo Pollaiuolo or Antonio Pollaiuolo , was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, engraver, and goldsmith, who made important works in all these media, as well as designing works in others, for example vestments, metal embroidery being a medium he worked in at the start of his career.
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Wolcott Gibbs
1902 - 1958 (56 years)
Wolcott Gibbs was an American editor, humorist, theatre critic, playwright and writer of short stories, who worked for The New Yorker magazine from 1927 until his death. He is notable for his 1936 parody of Time magazine, which skewered the magazine's inverted narrative structure. Gibbs wrote, "Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind"; he concluded the piece, "Where it all will end, knows God!" He also wrote a comedy, Season in the Sun, which ran on Broadway for 10 months in 1950–51 and was based on a series of stories that originally appeared in The New Yorker.
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Lawrence Crawford
1867 - 1951 (84 years)
Lawrence Crawford FRSE LLD was a Scottish-born mathematician. He was a co-founder of the re-established Royal Society of South Africa in 1908 and served as its President from 1936 to 1941. He was an expert on the Lame function, Mathieu function and proved Klein's theorem.
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Ernests Fogels
1910 - 1985 (75 years)
Ernests Fogels was a Latvian mathematician who specialized in number theory. Fogels discovered new proofs of the Gauss-Dirichlet formula on the number of classes of positively definite quadratic forms and of the de la Vallée-Poussin formula for the asymptotic location of prime numbers in an arithmetic progression.
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Thomas Mitchell
1792 - 1855 (63 years)
Sir Thomas Livingstone Mitchell , often called Major Mitchell, was a surveyor and explorer of Southeastern Australia. He was born in Scotland and served in the British Army during the Peninsular War. In 1827 he took up an appointment as Assistant Surveyor General of New South Wales. The following year he became Surveyor General and remained in this position until his death. Mitchell was knighted in 1839 for his contribution to the surveying of Australia.
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Muzio Oddi
1569 - 1639 (70 years)
Muzio or Mutio Oddi was an Italian mathematician and Gnomonist. Biography He was born to Lisabetta Genga and Lattanzio Oddi. His initial training was in eloquence and philosophy, but he later trained under the painter Federico Barocci. He moved to Pesaro to work under Guidobaldo del Monte, one of the main disciples of Federico Commandino. He was hired to work in Spain and France as a military engineer, which required him also to help train in the use of artillery. He returned to the Duchy of Urbino to work as an engineer under the Duke Francesco Maria II della Rovere.
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Ivan Mitford-Barberton
1896 - 1976 (80 years)
Ivan Mitford-Barberton was a sculptor, writer and authority on heraldry. Early life and education Mitford-Barberton was born in Somerset East, in Cape Colony, in 1896. He was a descendant of several 1820 Settler families. His grandmother was the naturalist, Mary Elizabeth Barber. He did his schooling at St. Andrew's College, Grahamstown. In 1912 his family moved to Kenya, where he encountered African and Arab subjects that later formed an important theme in his work. From 1915 to 1918 he served as a soldier in East Africa. From 1919 to 1922 he studied at the Grahamstown School of Art, and from 1923 at the Royal College of Art in London, under Henry Moore and Derwent Wood.
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George Frampton
1860 - 1928 (68 years)
Sir George James Frampton, was a British sculptor. He was a leading member of the New Sculpture movement in his early career when he created sculptures with elements of Art Nouveau and Symbolism, often combining various materials such as marble and bronze in a single piece. While his later works were more traditional in style, Frampton had a prolific career in which he created many notable public monuments, including several statues of Queen Victoria and later, after World War I, a number of war memorials. These included the Edith Cavell Memorial in London, which, along with the Peter Pan st...
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Chester Snow
1881 - 1970 (89 years)
Chester Snow was an American applied mathematician and physicist, known for his work on formulas for computing capacitance and inductance. Snow was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. After attending Ogden High School and Utah Agricultural College, Snow matriculated at Harvard University in 1903 and graduated there with an A.B. in 1906. At Brigham Young University he was a professor of physics from 1906 to 1911 and a professor of mathematics from 1911 to 1912. From 1912 to 1914 he was a fellow in physics at the University of Wisconsin, where he received his Ph.D. in 1914. At the University of Idaho mathematics department he was an associate professor from 1914.
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Edward Sang
1805 - 1890 (85 years)
Edward Sang FRSE FRSSA LLD was a Scottish mathematician and civil engineer, best known for having computed large tables of logarithms, with the help of two of his daughters. These tables went beyond the tables of Henry Briggs, Adriaan Vlacq, and Gaspard de Prony.
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Santiago Antúnez de Mayolo
1887 - 1967 (80 years)
Santiago Antúnez de Mayolo was born on 10 January 1887 in the country estate of Vista Bella, province of Aija, Peru, department of Áncash. He was an engineer, physicist and mathematician. Early years He studied at Colegio Nacional de la Libertad and later Colegio Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe , where he met Peruvian writer Abraham Valdelomar. In 1905 he was admitted into the Mathematical Sciences faculty of the San Marcos National University in Lima. At the end of the 1906 academic year , he received a distinction from President José Pardo, receiving a gold medal. After this, he traveled to France to get his degree in Electrical Engineering in the University of Grenoble.
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Alexander of Villedieu
1175 - 1240 (65 years)
Alexander of Villedieu was a French author, teacher and poet, who wrote text books on Latin grammar and arithmetic, everything in verse. He was born around 1175 in Villedieu-les-Poêles in Normandy, studied in Paris, and later taught at Dol in Brittany. His greatest fame stems from his versified Latin grammar book, the Doctrinale Puerorum. He died in 1240, or perhaps in 1250. He was a Franciscan and a Master of the University of Paris.
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Augustus William Smith
1802 - 1866 (64 years)
Augustus William Smith was an American educator, astronomer and mathematician in the mid-19th century. Smith was born in Newport, Herkimer County, New York, May 12, 1802. He attended Hamilton College, and graduated in 1825. After college, he began teaching in the Methodist Oneida conference seminary, in Cazenovia, New York. He became head of Oneida in 1827, the same year in which he married his wife, Catherine R. Childs. While at Oneida, he earned a master's degree from Hamilton.
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Maikki Friberg
1861 - 1927 (66 years)
Maria Elisabeth Friberg was a Finnish educator, journal editor, suffragist and peace activist. She is remembered for her involvement in the Finnish women's movement, especially as chair of the Finnish women's rights organisation Suomen Naisyhdistys and as the founder and editor of the women's journal Naisten Ääni . She travelled widely, promoting understanding of Finland abroad while participating in international conferences and contributing to the foreign press.
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Edward Jan Habich
1835 - 1909 (74 years)
Edward Jan Habich was a Polish engineer and mathematician. In 1876, he founded the National University of Engineering , a renowned engineering school in Lima, Peru. He was a member of the Peruvian Geographic Society and an Honorary Citizen of Peru. In his native Poland he took part in the January Uprising against the Russian Empire in 1863.
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Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca
1485 - 1556 (71 years)
Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was a Spanish explorer of the New World, and one of four survivors of the 1527 Narváez expedition. During eight years of traveling across what is now the US Southwest, he became a trader and faith healer to various Native American tribes before reconnecting with Spanish civilization in Mexico in 1536. After returning to Spain in 1537, he wrote an account, first published in 1542 as La relación y comentarios , which in later editions was retitled Naufragios y comentarios . Cabeza de Vaca is sometimes considered a proto-anthropologist for his detailed accounts of the ...
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Francis John Welsh Whipple
1876 - 1943 (67 years)
Francis John Welsh Whipple ScD FInstP was an English mathematician, meteorologist and seismologist. From 1925 to 1939, he was superintendent of the Kew Observatory. Biography Whipple was the son of Kew Observatory employees George Mathews Whipple and Elizabeth Beckley, an astronomical photographer.
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Otto von Fürth
1867 - 1938 (71 years)
Otto von Fürth was an Austrian physician, physiologist and biochemist. Fürth studied at the University of Prague, the University of Heidelberg and the University of Berlin. He worked at the University of Vienna, the University of Prague and the University of Straßburg where received his habilitation in medical chemistry in 1899. From that point on he worked in Vienna focusing on biochemistry. In 1898 he announced the discovery of "suprerenin." He received the Lieben Prize in 1923.
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Fredrik Lange-Nielsen
1891 - 1980 (89 years)
Fredrik Lange-Nielsen was a Norwegian mathematician and insurance company manager. He chaired the Norwegian Students' Society, edited Norsk matematisk Tidsskrift, and lectured at the University of Oslo. He was chief executive of the insurance company Norske Liv for nearly twenty years, was elected member of several governmental commissions, and a member of the Norwegian Academy for Language and Literature from its establishment in 1953.
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Franciscus van den Enden
1602 - 1674 (72 years)
Franciscus van den Enden, in later life also known as 'Affinius' was a Flemish former Jesuit, Neo-Latin poet, physician, art dealer, philosopher, and plotter against Louis XIV of France. Born in Antwerp, where he had a truncated career as a Jesuit and an art dealer, he moved later to the Dutch Republic where he became part of a group of radical thinkers sometimes referred to as the Amsterdam Circle who challenged prevailing views on politics and religion. He was a Utopian planning to set up an ideal society in the Dutch colonies in America and a proponent of democracy in the administration of states.
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Alexander Ritchie Scott
1874 - 1962 (88 years)
Dr Alexander Ritchie Scott FRSE was a 20th-century Scottish mathematician and statistician. Life He was born in Edinburgh and educated at George Heriot's School. He studied mathematics and science at the University of Edinburgh graduating with a BSc in 1894. He then spent some time in the Challenger Expedition Office in Edinburgh, doing statistical analysis. In 1896 he became a Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, and taught mathematics for 11 years. He then spent a year as Assistant Registrar at the University of the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. Returning to the UK in 1909 he became Principal of the Beaufoy Institute in London where he remained for 30 years.
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Judson B. Coit
1849 - 1921 (72 years)
Judson Boardman Coit was an American mathematician and astronomer who published in numerous journals, including The Astrophysical Journal and the of the British Astronomical Association. The largest part of his professional career was spent as a professor at Boston University, where he established the Department of Astronomy and developed a teaching and research observatory. The teaching observatory at Boston University is named in his memory.
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Vilhelm Bissen
1836 - 1913 (77 years)
Christian Gottlieb Vilhelm Bissen was a Danish sculptor. He was also a professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts with great influence on the next generation of Danish sculptors and for a while served as its director. Bissen was trained in the Neoclassical tradition from Bertel Thorvaldsen but after a stay in Paris around 1880, he was influenced by Naturalism. With the equestrian statue of Absalon he turned to Neo-romanticism.
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Milton W. Humphreys
1844 - 1928 (84 years)
Milton W. Humphreys was an American Confederate sergeant during the American Civil War of 1861-1865 and an early scholar of Ancient Greek and Latin in the United States. He was the first professor to introduce the Roman pronunciation of Latin in the United States while teaching at Washington and Lee University. Additionally, he was the first Professor of Latin and Greek at Vanderbilt University and the University of Texas at Austin. He spent the rest of his career at the University of Virginia. He also served as the President of the American Philological Association in 1882–1883.
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William Gilham
1818 - 1872 (54 years)
William Henry Gilham was an American soldier, teacher, chemist, and author. A member of the faculty at Virginia Military Institute, in 1860, he wrote a military manual which was still in modern use 145 years later. He served in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War, and became president of Southern Fertilizing Company in Richmond after the War.
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Louis Awad
1915 - 1990 (75 years)
Louis Awad was an Egyptian intellectual and a writer. Born in the upper Egypt, in Sharuna village, in Minya, Egypt, Awad studied at the literature department of Cairo University before setting off to England for further studies before the Second World War. He returned to Egypt in 1941, after which he lived in the Cairo district of Dokki for much of his adult life.
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Percy John Harding
1845 - 1943 (98 years)
Percy John Harding was an English mathematician, noteworthy as an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1912. The elder son of William Harding, a surgeon in London, Percy J. Harding received his B.A. in 1869 and his M.A. in 1874 from Cambridge University. He became a lecturer at University College, London and Bedford College, London. On 1 March 1906 at Bedford College, London, he gave a talk The History and Human Side of Mathematics with lantern illustrations. Using lantern slides, he gave a talk The history and evolution of arithmetic division at the ICM at 9 PM ...
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Rudolph Goclenius the Younger
1572 - 1621 (49 years)
Rudolph Goclenius the Younger was a German physician and professor at Philipps University of Marburg. Goclenius was born in Wittenberg, the oldest son of Rudolph Goclenius, who was also professor of physics, logic, mathematics and ethics at Marburg. He enrolled at the University of Marburg at the age of 15. As a student, Goclenius was a respondent to his father in a physical disputation and received his master's degree in 1591. After obtaining his medical degree in 1601, Goclenius became the first rector of the newly founded gymnasium in Büdingen and a personal physician to Wolfgang Ernst I, Count of Isenburg-Büdingen.
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Hannes Leitgeb
#9086
Peter Laird McKinlay
1901 - 1972 (71 years)
Dr Peter Laird McKinlay FRSE FSS was a Scottish medical statistician. His report on the effects of milk on schoolchildren brought about the introduction of Free School Milk in British Schools from the Education Act 1944.
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Henricus Brucaeus
1530 - 1593 (63 years)
Heinrich Brucaeus, also Heinrich van den Brock, sometimes falsely Heinrich Brucaeus of Aalst was a German physician, astronomer and mathematician. Life Heinrich Brucaeus was born in Aalst, Flanders as the son of the patron Gerhard van den Brock. He was educated at schools and universities in Ghent, Paris, and Bologna, studied medicine and philosophy, and became a doctor of both disciplines at University of Paris. After that, he worked as a lecturer at the University of Leuven
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Karl von den Steinen
1855 - 1929 (74 years)
Karl von den Steinen was a German physician , ethnologist, explorer, and author of important anthropological work, which is particularly to the study of Indian cultures of Central Brazil, and the art of the Marquesas. He laid the permanent foundations for Brazilian ethnology.
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Rita Hayworth
1918 - 1987 (69 years)
Rita Hayworth was an American actress. She achieved fame during the 1940s as one of the era's top stars, appearing in 61 films over 37 years. The press coined the term "The Love Goddess" to describe Hayworth after she had become the most glamorous screen idol of the 1940s. She was the top pin-up girl for GIs during World War II.
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John Cruickshank
1787 - 1875 (88 years)
John Cruickshank was a Scottish mathematician. Life He was born at Barnhills farm near Rothiemay on 5 July 1787, the son of James Cruickshank , a weaver living on the farm. In 1794, on the death of his father, the family moved to be with an aunt at Knowehead farm in Marnoch. His early years were spent as a shepherd boy and he had little education.
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Nazım Terzioglu
1912 - 1976 (64 years)
Nazım Terzioğlu was one of the first mathematicians in Turkish academia. Early life Nazım Terzioğlu completed his primary education in his place of birth, Kayseri. He started his secondary education in Istanbul and then continued in Izmir until his graduation from Izmir High School in 1930. At that time, some of Turkey's most qualified mathematics teachers worked at Izmir High School. Alumni of that school included mathematicians such as Cahit Arf and Tevfik Oktay Kabakcıoğlu .
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George Francis Hardy
1855 - 1914 (59 years)
Sir George Francis Hardy was a British actuary, Egyptologist and amateur astronomer. He became a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1877 and was President of the Institute of Actuaries from 1908 to 1910.
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Robert Henderson
1871 - 1942 (71 years)
Robert Henderson was a Canadian-American mathematician and actuary. Education and career Robert Henderson matriculated at age 16 at the University of Toronto and graduated there in 1891 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics. He spent a year as a fellow of the University of Toronto and then in 1892 was employed at the Government Insurance Department in Ottawa until he left Canada in 1897. From 1897 until his retirement in 1936 he worked for the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States. There he was from 1903 to 1911 an assistant actuary, from 1911 to 1920 an actuary, from 1920 t...
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Hugh Jones
1691 - 1760 (69 years)
The Reverend Hugh Jones is the most famous and accomplished of a sometimes confusing array of Anglican clergymen of the same name from the American colonies of Virginia and Maryland. Jones is best known for his authorship of The Present State of Virginia, and a short view of Maryland and North Carolina . For several years he taught mathematics at The College of William and Mary, in Williamsburg, Virginia, where Jones Hall is named for him.
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James Waterman Glover
1868 - 1941 (73 years)
James Waterman Glover was an American mathematician, statistician, and actuary. Biography He received in 1892, his bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan and in 1895 his Ph.D. in mathematics under Maxime Bôcher from Harvard University with thesis Properties of the Partial Differential Equation . He became in 1895 an instructor, in 1903 an assistant professor, in 1906 an associate professor, and in 1911 a full professor at the University of Michigan, retiring as professor emeritus in 1938.
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Patrick Brendan Kennedy
1929 - 1966 (37 years)
Patrick Brendan Kennedy was an Irish chess champion, and an academic in Mathematics, notable for his work in complex analysis. Early life, family, and personal life Kennedy was the third child of Pat Kennedy and Kit O'Sullivan, his father, a master carpenter by trade, decided instead to join the police force in 1923, many on his mother's side were blacksmiths near Castlemaine. His parents moved to Ballylongford in 1936, and secured a transfer for Kennedy to attend the North Monastery secondary school in Cork.
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Homer E. Newell Jr.
1915 - 1983 (68 years)
Homer Edward Newell Jr. was a mathematics professor and author who became a powerful United States government science administrator—eventually rising to the number three position at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration . In the early 1960s, he either controlled or influenced virtually all non-military uncrewed space missions for the free world.
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John Septimus Roe
1797 - 1878 (81 years)
John Septimus Roe was the first Surveyor-General of Western Australia. He was a renowned explorer, a member of Western Australia's legislative and executive councils for nearly 40 years, but also a participant in the Pinjarra massacre on 28 October 1834.
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Johannes Acronius Frisius
1520 - 1564 (44 years)
Johannes Acronius Frisius was a Dutch doctor and mathematician of the 16th century. He was named after his city of birth, Akkrum in Friesland. From 1547 he worked as professor of mathematics in Basel, then after 1549 as professor of logic, and in 1564 of medicine. He died from the plague in the same year. Apart from mathematical and scientific works, he wrote Latin poetry and humanist tracts.
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John Hill
1810 - 1860 (50 years)
John Hill was an English explorer of South Australia and part of the European exploration of Australia. Hill was the first European to see and traverse the Clare Valley. An enigmatic and little-known individual, during the late 1830s John Hill sighted and named several important rivers of South Australia, as well as many lesser streams and creeks. The former unquestionably include the Wakefield and Hutt rivers, plus the Gilbert and Light rivers. He was also the first European to explore the headwaters of the Torrens and Onkaparinga rivers.
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