The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
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List of the most influential people in Mathematics,
#9201
Jekuthiel Ginsburg
1889 - 1957 (68 years)
Jekuthiel Ginsburg was a professor of mathematics at Yeshiva University. He established the journal Scripta Mathematica. He also was honored as a fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#9202
Dmitry Morduhai-Boltovskoi
1876 - 1952 (76 years)
Dmitry Dmitrievich Morduhai-Boltovskoi was a Russian mathematician, best known for his work in analysis, differential Galois theory, number theory, hyperbolic geometry, and history of mathematics. His annotated translation of Euclid's Elements in Russian is also well-regarded.
Go to Profile#9203
Adolf Piltz
1855 - 1940 (85 years)
Adolf Piltz was a German mathematician who contributed to number theory. Piltz was arguably the first to formulate a generalized Riemann hypothesis, in 1884. Notes Further reading External links
Go to Profile#9204
Paul Guldin
1577 - 1643 (66 years)
Paul Guldin was a Swiss Jesuit mathematician and astronomer. He discovered the Guldinus theorem to determine the surface and the volume of a solid of revolution. Guldin was noted for his association with the German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler. Guldin composed a critique of Cavalieri's method of Indivisibles.
Go to Profile#9205
Ervand Kogbetliantz
1888 - 1974 (86 years)
Ervand George Kogbetliantz was an Armenian-American mathematician and the first president of the Yerevan State University. He left Russia in 1918. He received a Doctorate in mathematics from the University of Paris in 1923. His mathematical work was mainly on infinite series, on the theory of orthogonal polynomials, on an algorithm for singular value decomposition which bears his name, on algorithms for the evaluation of elementary functions in computers, and the enumeration of prime elements of the Gaussian integers. He also invented a three-dimensional version of chess. He was working at his death with Bobby Fischer on a game of chess for three people.
Go to Profile#9206
Jan Jansz de Jonge Stampioen
1610 - 1653 (43 years)
Jan Jansz de Jonge Stampioen was a Dutch mathematician famous for his published work on spherical trigonometry. In 1638 he moved to The Hague to become tutor of William II, Prince of Orange. In 1644 he was employed to tutor Christiaan Huygens in mathematics.
Go to Profile#9207
Gury Kolosov
1867 - 1936 (69 years)
Gury Vasilievich Kolosov was a Russian and Soviet mathematician and engineer. He is best known for his contributions to the theory of elasticity. In 1907 Kolosov derived the solution for stresses around an elliptical hole in a solid material governed by the mathematical theory of elasticity. He showed that the concentration of stress could become far greater, as the radius of curvature at an end of the hole becomes small compared with the overall length of the hole.
Go to Profile#9208
Géza Grünwald
1910 - 1943 (33 years)
Géza Grünwald was a Hungarian mathematician of Jewish heritage who worked on analysis. He died in the Holocaust. See also Grunwald–Wang theorem
Go to Profile#9209
Artemas Martin
1835 - 1918 (83 years)
Artemas Martin was a self-educated American mathematician. Biography Martin was born on August 3, 1835, in Steuben County, New York, grew up in Venango County, Pennsylvania, and spent most of his life in Erie County, Pennsylvania. He was home-schooled until the age of 14, when he began studying mathematics at the local school, later moving to the Franklin Select School a few miles away and then to the Franklin Academy, finishing his formal education at age approximately 20. He worked as a farmer, oil driller, and schoolteacher. In 1881, he declined an invitation to become a professor of mathematics at the Normal School in Missouri.
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Johann Friedrich Hennert
1733 - 1813 (80 years)
Johann Friedrich Hennert was German-born and lectured in mathematics and physics at the University of Utrecht. He was a significant student of Leonhard Euler. He was known for his inclination towards the British school of philosophy.
Go to Profile#9211
Charles Étienne Louis Camus
1699 - 1768 (69 years)
Charles Étienne Louis Camus , was a French mathematician and mechanician who was born at Crécy-en-Brie, near Meaux. He studied mathematics, civil and military architecture, and astronomy after leaving Collège de Navarre in Paris. In 1730 he was appointed professor of architecture and, in 1733, associate of the Académie des Sciences. He also became a professor of geometry, secretary to the Academy of Architecture and fellow of the Royal Society of London. In 1727 he presented a memoir to the academy on masting ships, in consequence of which he was named the same year joint mechanician to that body.
Go to Profile#9212
Sophie Piccard
1904 - 1990 (86 years)
Sophie Piccard was a Russian-Swiss mathematician who became the first female full professor in Switzerland. Her research concerned set theory, group theory, linear algebra, and the history of mathematics.
Go to Profile#9213
John Daniel Runkle
1822 - 1902 (80 years)
John Daniel Runkle was a U.S. educator and mathematician. He served as acting president of MIT from 1868 to 1870 and president between 1870 and 1878. Biography Professor Runkle was born at Root, New York State. He worked on his father's farm until he was of age, and then studied and taught until he entered the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University, where he graduated in 1851. His ability as a mathematician led in 1849 to his appointment as assistant in the preparation of the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac, in which he continued to engage until 1884. He was professor of mathematics in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1865 until his retirement in 1902.
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Franz Aepinus
1724 - 1802 (78 years)
Franz Ulrich Theodor Aepinus was a German mathematician, scientist, and natural philosopher residing in the Russian Empire. Aepinus is best known for his researches, theoretical and experimental, in electricity and magnetism.
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Johann Jakob Balmer
1825 - 1898 (73 years)
Johann Jakob Balmer was a Swiss mathematician best known for his work in physics, the Balmer series of hydrogen atom. Biography Balmer was born in Lausen, Switzerland, the son of a chief justice also named Johann Jakob Balmer. His mother was Elizabeth Rolle Balmer, and he was the oldest son. During his schooling he excelled in mathematics, and so decided to focus on that field when he attended university.
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Arnold S. Shapiro
1921 - 1962 (41 years)
Arnold Samuel Shapiro was an American mathematician known for his eversion of the sphere and Shapiro's lemma. He also was the author of an article on Clifford algebras and periodicity with Raoul Bott, later redone by Michael Atiyah and Bott.
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Kambei Mori
1600 - 1700 (100 years)
Kambei Mori or Mōri Kambei, also known as Mōri Kambei Shigeyoshi Mōri Shigeyoshi, was a Japanese mathematician in the Edo period. Life and work Some 16th-century sources suggest that Mori studied in China, but such claims are inconclusive or rejected by historians. What is known with certainty is that he started a school in Kyoto and he wrote several influential and widely discussed books which dealt with arithmetic and the use of the abacus.
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John Hilton Grace
1873 - 1958 (85 years)
John Hilton Grace FRS was a British mathematician. The Grace–Walsh–Szegő theorem is named in part after him. Early life He was born in Halewood, near Liverpool, the eldest of the six children of farmer William Grace and Elizabeth Hilton. He was educated at the village school and the Liverpool Institute. From there in 1892 he went up to Peterhouse, Cambridge to study mathematics. His nephew, his younger sister's son, was the animal geneticist, Alan Robertson FRS.
Go to Profile#9219
François Peyrard
1759 - 1822 (63 years)
François Peyrard was a French mathematician, educator and librarian. During the French Revolution, he was involved in the committee that reformed the French educational system. He was one of the founders of the École Polytechnique and its first librarian.
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Hector Munro Macdonald
1865 - 1935 (70 years)
Prof Hector Munro Macdonald FRAS FRSE LLD was a Scottish mathematician, born in Edinburgh in 1865. He researched pure mathematics at Cambridge University after graduating from Aberdeen University with an honours degree.
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Franz Harress
1885 - Present (141 years)
Franz Harress was a mathematician and contemporary of Albert Einstein and is best known for his experiment on the propagation of light in a rotating glass device. This experiment sparked an argument between Albert Einstein and Paul Harzer related to the theory of Special Relativity. Harress was a student of Professor Otto Julius Heinrich Knopf at Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena in 1912. His dissertation was "Die Geschwindigkeit des Lichtes in bewegten Körpern" . His work on the Sagnac effect was analyzed by Max von Laue in his 1920 paper "On the Experiment of F. Harress."
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Edwin Bailey Elliott
1851 - 1937 (86 years)
Edwin Bailey Elliott FRS was a mathematician who worked on invariant theory. In 1892 he was appointed Waynflete Professor of Pure Mathematics at Oxford. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1891. He wrote the book An introduction to the algebra of quantics, on invariant theory .
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Marguerite Lehr
1898 - 1987 (89 years)
Marguerite Lehr was an American mathematician who studied algebraic geometry, humanism in mathematics, and mathematics education. Early life and education Born on October 22, 1898, to Margaret Kreuter and George Lehr in Baltimore, Marguerite Lehr attended Goucher College for her undergraduate education and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1919. After her undergraduate education, Lehr moved to Rome to study at the University of Rome for the 1923–1924 academic year, funded by the American Association of University Women and the M. Carey Thomas University Fellowship. In 1925, Lehr earned her Ph.D.
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Alfred Klose
1895 - 1953 (58 years)
Wilhelm Rudolf Alfred Klose was a German applied mathematician and astronomer. Education and career Klose studied at University of Breslau and University of Göttingen from 1916 and was an assistant at the observatory in Breslau from 1917. He received his doctorate in astronomy in 1921 in Breslau under Alexander Wilkens . After that he was at the University of Greifswald and its observatory, where he habilitated in 1922 and became a privatdozent. In 1923 he habilitated at the Humboldt University of Berlin. In 1924 he became an associate professor of mechanics and theoretical astronomy at University of Latvia in Riga.
Go to Profile#9225
Emanuel Lodewijk Elte
1881 - 1943 (62 years)
Emanuel Lodewijk Elte was a Dutch mathematician. He is noted for discovering and classifying semiregular polytopes in dimensions four and higher. Elte's father Hartog Elte was headmaster of a school in Amsterdam. Emanuel Elte married Rebecca Stork in 1912 in Amsterdam, when he was a teacher at a high school in that city. By 1943 the family lived in Haarlem. When on January 30 of that year a German officer was shot in that town, in reprisal a hundred inhabitants of Haarlem were transported to the Camp Vught, including Elte and his family. As Jews, he and his wife were further deported to Sobib...
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Adolf Krazer
1858 - 1926 (68 years)
Adolf Carl Josef Krazer was a German mathematician. Publications
Go to Profile#9227
Albrecht von Wallenstein
1583 - 1634 (51 years)
Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von Wallenstein , also von Waldstein , was a Bohemian military leader and statesman who fought on the Catholic side during the Thirty Years' War . His successful martial career made him one of the richest and most influential men in the Holy Roman Empire by the time of his death. Wallenstein became the supreme commander of the armies of the Imperial Army of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II and was a major figure of the Thirty Years' War.
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Marie Litzinger
1899 - 1952 (53 years)
Marie Litzinger was an American mathematician known for her research in number theory, homogeneous polynomials, and modular arithmetic. Early life and education Marie Litzinger was born in Bedford, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Rush Litzinger and Katherine O'Connell Litzinger. Her father owned a marble works, and was an accountant for the Pennsylvania Railroad.
Go to Profile#9229
Mary Shore Walker
1882 - 1952 (70 years)
Mary Shore Walker was the first woman faculty member at the University of Missouri, and taught in the department of Mathematics. She was born in 1882. She earned her B.A. and M.A. at the University of Missouri in 1903 and 1904, respectively. The thesis she wrote for her M.A. was titled, "On finite groups with special reference to Klein’s ikosaeder.” While at the University of Missouri, she studied with Earle Hedrick, Oliver Dimon Kellogg, and W. D. A. Westfall.
Go to Profile#9230
Charles S. Venable
1827 - 1900 (73 years)
Charles Scott Venable was a mathematician, astronomer, and military officer. In mathematics, he is noted for authoring a series of publications as a University of Virginia professor. Early life He was born at Longwood House in Farmville, Virginia and graduated from Hampden-Sydney College, founded by his Patriot ancestor Nathaniel Venable, at the age of 15. He was a member of Beta Theta Pi fraternity while at Hampden-Sydney College.
Go to Profile#9231
Lowell Reed
1886 - 1966 (80 years)
Lowell Jacob Reed was 7th president of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. He was born in Berlin, New Hampshire, the son of Jason Reed, a millwright and farmer, and Louella Coffin Reed.
Go to Profile#9232
Marcel Bayard
1895 - 1956 (61 years)
Marcel Bayard was a French mathematician and telecommunications engineer. He made pioneering contributions to the telecommunications theory in the 1930s. As Chief Engineer of French telecommunications after World War II, he supervised and modernized the French telecommunications system.
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Gabriele Manfredi
1681 - 1761 (80 years)
Gabriele Manfredi was an Italian mathematician who undertook important work in the field of calculus. Early years Gabriele Manfredi was born in Bologna, then in the Papal States, on 25 March 1681. He was the son of Alfonso Manfredi, a notary from Lugo, Emilia-Romagna, and Anna Maria Fiorini. His elder brother Eustachio studied law, then turned to science. Gabriele and his brother Eraclito studied medicine, while his fourth brother Emilio became a Jesuit preacher. His two sisters Maddalena and Teresa were also well educated, and later collaborated with their brothers in their work. Gabr...
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Alexander Buchstab
1905 - 1990 (85 years)
Aleksandr Adol'fovich Buchstab was a Soviet mathematician who worked in number theory and was "known for his work in sieve methods". He is the namesake of the Buchstab function, which he wrote about in 1937.
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Aurel Voss
1845 - 1931 (86 years)
Aurel Voss was a German mathematician, best known today for his contributions to geometry and mechanics. He served as president of the German Mathematical Society for the 1898 term. He was a professor at the University of Munich during 1902–1923. He became Emeritus in 1923.
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K. C. Sreedharan Pillai
1920 - 1985 (65 years)
K C Sreedharan Pillai was an Indian statistician who was known for his works on multivariate analysis and probability distributions. Pillai studied at the University of Travancore in Trivandrum. He graduated in 1941 and obtained his master's degree in 1945. He was appointed a lecturer at the University of Kerala in 1945 and worked there for six years until he went to the United States in 1951. After studying for one year at Princeton University, he went to the University of North Carolina where he was awarded a doctorate in statistics in 1954.
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Thomas Postlethwaite
1731 - 1798 (67 years)
Thomas Postlethwaite was an English clergyman and Cambridge fellow, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge from 1789 to 1798. Biography Thomas Postlethwaite was the son of Richard Postlethwaite of Crooklands, near Milnthorpe, Westmorland. He attended St Bees School before entering Trinity College, Cambridge as a sizar in 1749. Graduating BA in 1753, he became a fellow of Trinity in 1755. He was Barnaby lecturer in mathematics in 1758. Ordained in 1756, he was from 1774 until his death Rector of Hamerton. He was appointed Master of Trinity in 1789, and in 1791 served as university Vice-Chancellor.
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Albert Ribaucour
1845 - 1893 (48 years)
Albert Ribaucour was a French Civil Engineer and mathematician. Ribaucour began to study in 1865 at the Ecole Polytechnique and in 1867 at the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées. In 1870 he started to work as an engineer at the naval base Rochefort, in 1873 in Draguignan, in 1878 in Aix-en-Provence and in 1886 in Algeria.
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Francesco Maurolico
1494 - 1575 (81 years)
Francesco Maurolico was a mathematician and astronomer from Sicily. He made contributions to the fields of geometry, optics, conics, mechanics, music, and astronomy. He edited the works of classical authors including Archimedes, Apollonius, Autolycus, Theodosius and Serenus. He also composed his own unique treatises on mathematics and mathematical science.
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Ettore Bortolotti
1866 - 1947 (81 years)
Ettore Bortolotti was an Italian mathematician. Biography Bortolotti was born in Bologna. He studied mathematics under Salvatore Pincherle and Cesare Arzelà in Bologna. He graduated in mathematics in 1889 at the University of Bologna, under Pincherle. He was appointed as lecturer to the Lyceum of Modica in Sicily in 1891, then studied one year in Paris as a post-graduate, before lecturing at the University of Rome in 1893.
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Elisha Scott Loomis
1852 - 1940 (88 years)
Elisha Scott Loomis was an American teacher, mathematician, genealogist, writer and engineer. Ancestry and early life Elisha Scott Loomis, of English–Scottish and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry, was born in a log-cabin in Wadsworth, Ohio, which at that time was a village in Medina County. He was the eldest son of Charles W. Loomis, a descendant of the pioneer Joseph Loomis of Windsor, Connecticut.
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C. L. Lehmus
1780 - 1863 (83 years)
Daniel Christian Ludolph Lehmus was a German mathematician, who today is best remembered for the Steiner–Lehmus theorem, that was named after him. Lehmus was the grandson of the German poet Johann Adam Lehmus and the Berlin-based physician Emilie Lehmus was his grandniece. His father Christian Balthasar Lehmus was a science teacher and director of a gymnasium in Soest, as such he took it upon himself to school his son. From 1799 to 1802 Lehmus studied at universities of Erlangen and Jena. In 1803 he went to Berlin, where he was giving private lectures in mathematics and pursued further studies at the university, which awarded him a PhD in 1811.
Go to Profile#9243
Giacinto Morera
1856 - 1909 (53 years)
Giacinto Morera , was an Italian engineer and mathematician. He is known for Morera's theorem in the theory of functions of a complex variable and for his work in the theory of linear elasticity. Biography
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François Châtelet
1912 - 1987 (75 years)
François Châtelet was a mathematician at the Université de Besançon who introduced the Weil–Châtelet group and Châtelet surfaces. His father was the mathematician Albert Châtelet.
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Giuseppe Pompilj
1913 - 1968 (55 years)
Giuseppe Pompilj was an Italian statistician. Biography He graduated in mathematics in 1935 and immediately undertook a university career. In 1942 he was lecturer in geometry . After an interruption for military service and a long period of imprisonment, in 1948 Pompilj won the competition for the chair in geometry. He taught geometry and probability theory at the Faculty of Statistical Sciences, University of Rome. Probability theory became the main topic of his interests and he taught this discipline until his premature death.
Go to Profile#9246
Ernest de Jonquières
1820 - 1901 (81 years)
Ernest Jean Philippe Fauque de Jonquières was a French mathematician and naval officer who made several contributions in geometry. Jonquières attended the naval school at Brest, and later joined the French Navy. in 1841 he became a lieutenant, and from 1849 to 1850 he served on the staff of the Admiral in Paris. During this time, Jonquières became a close associate of Michel Chasles, whose works he had studied. During his subsequent time at sea, he continued his mathematical studies, and won a part of the Grand Prix of the French Academy of Sciences in 1862.
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Friedrich Prym
1841 - 1915 (74 years)
Friedrich Emil Fritz Prym was a German mathematician who introduced Prym varieties and Prym differentials. Prym completed his Ph.D. at the University of Berlin in 1863 with a thesis written under the direction of Ernst Kummer and Martin Ohm. In 1867 he started a Professor at the University of Würzburg, where he later became Dean, and then Rector in 1897–98.
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Charles Davies
1798 - 1876 (78 years)
Charles Davies was a professor of mathematics at the United States Military Academy, notable for writing a series of mathematical textbooks. Biography Davies was born in Washington, Connecticut. His father was a County Sheriff or County Judge. During Davies' early years, the family moved to St Lawrence County, New York, where he was educated in local schools. He entered the US Military Academy at West Point in December 1813, through the influence of General Joseph Swift, who had met Davies' father during the War of 1812. Davies had earned praise for the services rendered to General James Wilkinson's army in the Descent of the St.
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Théodore Olivier
1793 - 1853 (60 years)
Théodore Olivier was a French mathematician. Life and work Olivier studied in the Licée Imperial of Lyon where he obtained in 1811 a degree in mathematics with high honours. After this, he went to the École Polytechnique. Olivier looked like Napoleon, but nobody could prove that Olivier was an illegitimate son of the Emperor.
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Ramiro Rampinelli
1697 - 1759 (62 years)
Ramiro Rampinelli, born Lodovico Rampinelli , was an Italian mathematician and physicist. He was a monk in the Olivetan Order. He had a decisive influence on the spread of mathematical analysis, algebra and mathematical physics in the best universities of Italy. He is one of the best known Italian scholars in the field of infinitesimal mathematics of the first half of the 18th century.
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