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,
#9401
Roxana Vivian
1871 - 1961 (90 years)
Roxana Hayward Vivian was an American mathematics professor. She was the first female recipient of a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania. Early life and education Roxana Hayward Vivian was born to Roxana Nott and Robert Hayward Vivian on December 9, 1871, in Hyde Park, Boston, Massachusetts. She went to Hyde Park High School and then, from 1890 to 1894, to Wellesley College where she graduated in Greek and mathematics.
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Abu Ja'far al-Khazin
900 - 960 (60 years)
Abu Jafar Muhammad ibn Husayn Khazin , also called Al-Khazin, was an Iranian Muslim astronomer and mathematician from Khorasan. He worked on both astronomy and number theory. Al-Khazin was one of the scientists brought to the court in Ray, Iran by the ruler of the Buyid dynasty, Adhad ad-Dowleh, who ruled from 949 to 983. In 959/960, Khazin was required by the vizier of Ray, who was appointed by ad-Dowleh, to measure the obliquity of the ecliptic.
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Alessandro Marchetti
1633 - 1714 (81 years)
Alessandro Marchetti was an Italian mathematician, noted for criticizing some conclusions of Guido Grandi, a student of Giovanni Alfonso Borelli who was influenced by Galileo and Aristotle. In 1669 Marchetti completed the first known Italian vernacular translation of Lucretius' Epicurean epic poem De Rerum Natura. He was denied permission to publish his translation, entitled Della Natura delle Cose, but it circulated widely in manuscript form before its first printing in 1717.
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Júlio César de Mello e Souza
1895 - 1974 (79 years)
Júlio César de Mello e Souza , was a Brazilian writer and mathematics teacher. He was well known in Brazil and abroad for his books on recreational mathematics, most of them published under the pen names of Malba Tahan and Breno de Alencar Bianco.
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Verner Emil Hoggatt Jr.
1921 - 1980 (59 years)
Verner Emil Hoggatt Jr. was an American mathematician, known mostly for his work in Fibonacci numbers and number theory. Hoggatt received a Ph.D. from Oregon State University in 1955 for his dissertation on The Inverse Weierstrass P-Function. Besides his contributions in Fibonacci numbers and number theory it is as the co-founder of the Fibonacci association and publisher of the associated journal Fibonacci Quarterly for which he is best remembered.
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Christian Juel
1855 - 1935 (80 years)
Christian Sophus Juel was a Danish mathematician, specializing in geometry. Education and career Juel went to school in Svendborg and from 1871 studied at the Technical University of Denmark. From 1876 he studied mathematics at the University of Copenhagen; there he received In 1879 his undergraduate degree in mathematics and in 1885 his Ph.D. with thesis Inledning i de imaginaer linies og den imaginaer plans geometrie. From 1894 he was a docent at the Technical University of Denmark, where he became in 1897 a full professor; during this time he also sometimes lectured at the University of C...
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Paul Dienes
1882 - 1952 (70 years)
Paul Dienes was a Hungarian mathematician, philosopher, linguist and poet. Born in to a wealthy and aristocratic Protestant family, he married Valéria Geiger in December 1905. They had two sons, Gedeon Dienes and Zoltan Paul Dienes . Following their divorce, he married Sari Dienes in 1922. He was an active member of the Galileo Circle.
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William Esson
1838 - 1916 (78 years)
William Esson, FRS was a British mathematician. Early life He was born in Carnoustie, Scotland. Esson attended St John's College, Oxford. Career He then became a Fellow of Merton College. In 1892, he became the Savilian Professor of Geometry at the University of Oxford, based at New College. He worked on problems in chemistry with Augustus George Vernon Harcourt.
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Richard Sorge
1895 - 1944 (49 years)
Richard Sorge was a German journalist and Soviet military intelligence officer who was active before and during World War II and worked undercover as a German journalist in both Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan. His codename was "Ramsay" . A number of famous personalities considered him one of the most accomplished spies.
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Martin van den Hove
1605 - 1639 (34 years)
Martin van den Hove was a Dutch astronomer and mathematician. His adopted Latin name is a translation of the Dutch hof , in Latin horta. Early life Born in Delft, he studied at Leiden University under Snellius and Isaac Beeckman from 1625 to 1627. He received further instruction from Snellius from 1628 to 1630 at Leiden and at Ghent.
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Carol Karp
1926 - 1972 (46 years)
Carol Karp, born Carol Ruth Vander Velde , was an American mathematician of Dutch ancestry, best known for her work on infinitary logic. She also played viola in an all-women orchestra. Life Born in Michigan to a farming supply store manager and a housewife, Carol and her siblings graduated from high school in Ohio. After that, she graduated from Manchester University, Indiana and went back to Michigan to study at Michigan State University , where she earned a master's degree in 1950.
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Mabel Minerva Young
1872 - 1963 (91 years)
Mabel Minerva Young was an American mathematician active at Wellesley College. Life Young was born July 18, 1872, in Worcester, Massachusetts. She began study at Wellesley College in 1894. Going to graduate study at Columbia University, she graduated with a master's degree in 1899. First she taught English at Northfield Seminary. In 1904 she began her long service at Wellesley College, beginning as an assistant in mathematics and becoming a full professor.
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Samuel Beatty
1881 - 1970 (89 years)
Samuel Beatty was dean of the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Toronto, taking the position in 1934. Early life Beatty was born in 1881. In 1915, he graduated from the University of Toronto with a PhD and a dissertation entitled Extensions of Results Concerning the Derivatives of an Algebraic Function of a Complex Variable, with the help of his adviser, John Charles Fields. He was the first person to receive a PhD in mathematics from a Canadian university. In 1925 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In 1926, he published a problem in the American Mathematical M...
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Gustav Elfving
1908 - 1984 (76 years)
Erik Gustav Elfving was a Finnish mathematician and statistician. He wrote pioneering works in mathematical statistics, especially on the design of experiments. Early life Erik Gustav Elfving was son of Fredrik Elfving , a professor of botany at the University of Helsinki, and Thyra Elfving . He was the youngest of four children. Gustav Elfving earned excellent grades at the Svenska normallyceum i Helsingfors, a Helsinki gymnasium for Swedish-speaking boys, from which he graduated in 1926. In the same year he enrolled at the University of Helsinki, planning to major in astronomy. He switched to mathematics, graduating in 1930 in mathematics, with astronomy and physics as minor subjects.
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Marcus Claudius Marcellus
270 BC - 208 BC (62 years)
Marcus Claudius Marcellus , five times elected as consul of the Roman Republic, was an important Roman military leader during the Gallic War of 225 BC and the Second Punic War. Marcellus gained the most prestigious award a Roman general could earn, the spolia opima, for killing the Gallic military leader and king Viridomarus in single combat in 222 BC at the Battle of Clastidium. Furthermore, he is noted for having conquered the fortified city of Syracuse in a protracted siege during which Archimedes, the famous mathematician, scientist, and inventor, was killed, despite Marcellus ordering the soldiers under his command not to harm him.
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John Henry Michell
1863 - 1940 (77 years)
John Henry Michell, FRS was an Australian mathematician and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Melbourne. Early life Michell was the son of John Michell , a miner, and his wife Grace, née Rowse, and was born in Maldon, Victoria. His parents had migrated from Devonshire in 1854. Educated first at Maldon, he went to Wesley College, Melbourne, in 1877, where he won the Draper and Walter Powell scholarships. In 1881 he began the arts course at the University of Melbourne, and qualified for the B.A. degree at the end of 1883. He had an outstanding course, heading the list with first-cl...
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Julio Garavito Armero
1865 - 1920 (55 years)
Julio Garavito Armero was a Colombian astronomer. Life Born in Bogotá, he was a child prodigy in science and mathematics. He obtained his degrees as mathematician and civil engineer in the Universidad Nacional de Colombia . In 1892, he worked as the director of the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional . His investigative works had been published in Los Anales de Ingeniería since 1890, seven years before he took over editing the publication.
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Percey F. Smith
1867 - 1956 (89 years)
Percey Franklyn Smith was an American mathematician and professor of mathematics at Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University. Smith was born in Nyack, New York. He studied mathematics at Sheffield Scientific School of Yale college, finishing the regular course in 1888 and receiving the Doctor of Philosophy in 1891. Starting in 1888 he was instructor for mathematics in Yale until 1894, followed by academic studies in Germany and France at the universities of Göttingen, Berlin, Paris. After returning to Yale in 1896 he was assistant professor of mathematics until 1900, then professor unt...
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Friedrich Schilling
1868 - 1950 (82 years)
Friedrich Georg Schilling was a German mathematician. Biography From 1887 Schilling studied mathematics at the University of Freiburg and the University of Göttingen, where he received his doctorate in 1893. His doctoral thesis Beiträge zur geometrischen Theorie der Schwarzschen s-Funktion was supervised by Felix Klein. At the University of Göttingen, Schilling was from 1891 to 1893 an assistant for the physical model and instrument collection. He habilitated in 1896 in Aachen and was, from August 1897 to April 1899, an adjunct professor at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. From 1899 h...
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Ostilio Ricci
1540 - 1603 (63 years)
Ostilio Ricci da Fermo was an Italian mathematician. Biography He was a university professor in Florence at the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno, founded in 1560 by Giorgio Vasari. Ricci is also known for being Galileo Galilei's teacher.
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Pietro Paoli
1759 - 1839 (80 years)
Pietro Paoli was an Italian mathematician. Life and work Paoli studied in the Jesuit college of his birthplace. In 1774 he went to University of Pisa to study Law. In Pisa he graduated in 1778, but he was more interested in physical and mathematical issues.
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Jules Andrade
1857 - 1933 (76 years)
Jules Frédéric Charles Andrade was a French physicist, mathematician and horologist. He won the Poncelet Prize for 1917. Career After graduation from l’École polytechnique and military service in the artillery, he became a professor at the University of Rennes and later at the University of Montpellier. On 3 June 1899 he was an expert witness for Alfred Dreyfus in the famous trial during the Dreyfus Affair. He was a professor for 26 years at the Institut de Chronométrie at the University of Besançon. Andrade did research related to mechanical clocks.
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John Cayo Evans
1879 - 1958 (79 years)
John Cayo Evans was a Welsh mathematician and academic. Life Evans was born on 1 March 1879 and educated at St David's College School, Lampeter, Wales. He then studied at University College, Aberystwyth and Jesus College, Oxford. At Oxford, he obtained first-class degrees in mathematics and Natural Science . He was a member of the Indian Educational Service from 1905 to 1922 before being appointed Professor of Mathematics at St David's College, Lampeter . He was High Sheriff of Cardiganshire for the year 1941 to 1942. He died on 8 March 1958. Evans was an early member of Plaid Cymru; ...
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Ida Martha Metcalf
1857 - 1952 (95 years)
Ida Martha Metcalf was the second American woman to receive a PhD in mathematics. Early life Ida Metcalf was born in Texas to Charles A. and Martha C. Metcalf. During her youth, her family moved about the south. After her father’s death, she moved to New England with her mother and siblings. By 1870, she was living in Massachusetts, where she taught school for many years.
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Giuseppe Bagnera
1865 - 1927 (62 years)
Giuseppe Bagnera was an Italian mathematician. Biography At the University of Palermo, Bagnera received his laurea in civil engineering in 1890 and then his laurea in mathematics in 1895. His teachers included Giovanni Battista Guccia, Francesco Gerbaldi ed Ernesto Cesàro. In 1899 he was appointed libero docente in algebraic analysis at the University of Palermo. He was appointed professor extraordinarius of infinitesimal calculus in 1901, then professor ordinarius in 1905, at the University of Messina, where he remained until the 1908 earthquake. He then taught at the University of Palermo ...
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Morris Birkbeck Pell
1827 - 1879 (52 years)
Morris Birkbeck Pell was an American-Australian mathematician, professor, lawyer and actuary. He became the inaugural Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at the University of Sydney in 1852, and continued in the role until ill health enforced his retirement in 1877. He was for many years a member of the University Senate, and councillor and secretary of the Royal Society of New South Wales.
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Winifred Sargent
1905 - 1979 (74 years)
Winifred Lydia Caunden Sargent was an English mathematician. She studied at Newnham College, Cambridge and carried out research into Lebesgue integration, fractional integration and differentiation and the properties of BK-spaces.
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Rudolph Snellius
1546 - 1613 (67 years)
Rudolph Snel van Royen , Latinized as Rudolphus Snellius, was a Dutch linguist and mathematician who held appointments at the University of Marburg and the University of Leiden. Snellius was an influence on some of the leading political and intellectual forces of the Dutch Golden Age.
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Earnshaw Cook
1900 - 1987 (87 years)
Earnshaw Cook was an early researcher and proponent of sabermetrics, the analysis of baseball through statistical means. Engineering A member of the Princeton University class of 1921, Cook was an engineer specializing in metallurgy. He spent most of his working life at the American Brake Shoe Co. in Mahwah, New Jersey, later consulting on the Manhattan Project before retiring from the industry in 1945. In the 1950s and 1960s, Cook worked as a mechanical engineering professor at Johns Hopkins University, where he published several academic papers.
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Dmitrii Sintsov
1867 - 1946 (79 years)
Dmitrii Matveevich Sintsov was a Russian mathematician known for his work in the theory of conic sections and non-holonomic geometry. He took a leading role in the development of mathematics at the University of Kharkiv, serving as chairman of the Kharkov Mathematical Society for forty years, from 1906 until his death at the age of 78.
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D. M. Smith
1884 - 1962 (78 years)
David Melville "Doc" Smith was an American professor and mathematician at the Georgia Institute of Technology . During his more than forty years at the school, he was particularly known for his teaching style and personality. Georgia Tech's D. M. Smith Building, which has housed numerous academic departments, is named in his honor.
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Daniel da Silva
1814 - 1878 (64 years)
Daniel da Silva was a Portuguese mathematician and marine officer. Born in Lisbon, he completed his first studies at the Portuguese Royal Naval Academy, and then proceeded his education in Mathematics at the University of Coimbra where he became a doctor.
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Richard Pendlebury
1847 - 1902 (55 years)
Richard Pendlebury was a British mathematician, musician, bibliophile and mountaineer. Educated at Liverpool College, he went up to St John's College, Cambridge in 1866 and graduated senior wrangler in 1870: he was then elected to a college fellowship. He was appointed University Lecturer in Mathematics in 1888. He collected early mathematical books and printed music, donating his collections to his college and university. His presentation of a collection of music books and manuscripts to the Fitzwilliam Museum stimulated the formation of the Music Faculty at Cambridge University.
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Arthur Sherburne Hardy
1847 - 1930 (83 years)
Arthur Sherburne Hardy was an American engineer, educator, editor, diplomat, novelist, and poet. Early life and education Hardy was born in 1847 in Andover, Massachusetts, the son of Alpheus and Susan W. Hardy. He received his elementary school education abroad and thus gained an exposure to languages. He attended Phillips Academy and completed one year at Amherst College before becoming a cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1865, where he excelled in languages. He graduated tenth in the class of 1869 and was commissioned a second lieutenant of artillery. His first d...
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Aleksandr Nekrasov
1883 - 1957 (74 years)
Aleksandr Ivanovich Nekrasov was a Soviet and Russian mathematician known for his mathematical contributions to hydromechanics and aeromechanics. The Nekrasov integral equation describing surface waves is named for him.
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Tommy Bonnesen
1873 - 1935 (62 years)
Tommy Bonnesen was a Danish mathematician, known for Bonnesen's inequality. Bonnesen studied at the University of Copenhagen, where in 1902 he received his Ph.D. with thesis Analytiske studier over ikke-euklidisk geometri . He was the Professor for Descriptive Geometry at the Polytekniske Læreanstalt.
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Elizur Wright
1804 - 1885 (81 years)
Elizur Wright III was an American mathematician and abolitionist. He is sometimes described in the United States as "the father of life insurance", or "the father of insurance regulation", as he campaigned that life insurance companies must keep reserves and provide surrender values. Wright served as an insurance commissioner for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
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Alfred Lodge
1854 - 1937 (83 years)
Professor Alfred Lodge MA , was an English mathematician, author, and the first president of The Mathematical Association. Alfred Lodge was born in 1854 at Penkhull, Staffordshire, one of nine children to Oliver Lodge and Grace, née Heath . His siblings included physicist Sir Oliver Lodge, and historians Sir Richard Lodge and Eleanor Constance Lodge. He attended Horncastle Grammar School, afterwards studying at Magdalen College, Oxford. In 1876 he became a fellow of St John's College, Oxford, and in 1884 joined the Royal Indian Engineering College at Egham, there becoming a professor of pure mathematics, succeeding Joseph Wolstenholme in 1889.
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Vassilios Lakon
1830 - 1900 (70 years)
Vassilios Lakon was an astronomer, mathematician, experimental physicist, philologist, author, and professor. He was a pioneer in 19th-century Greek geometry. He did research in the fields of physics and mathematics. His professors were world-renowned physicist Dimitrios Stroumpos and astronomer Georgios Konstantinos Vouris. He also studied in France with Joseph Bertrand. He was exposed to the works of Joseph Liouville, Augustin-Louis Cauchy, Bernard Lamy, and Jacques Charles François Sturm. Lakon's math textbooks were used in high schools across Greece during the second half of the 19t...
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Wilhelm Specht
1907 - 1985 (78 years)
Wilhelm Otto Ludwig Specht was a German mathematician who introduced Specht modules. He also proved the Specht criterion for unitary equivalence of matrices. Works Gruppentheorie. Grundlehren der mathematischen Wissenschaften. Springer, 1956.Elementare Beweise der Primzahlsätze. Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1956.Algebraische Gleichungen mit reellen oder komplexen Koeffizienten. Enzyklopädie der mathematischen Wissenschaften. 1958.
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Abu Sahl al-Quhi
940 - 1000 (60 years)
was a Persian mathematician, physicist and astronomer. He was from Kuh , an area in Tabaristan, Amol, and flourished in Baghdad in the 10th century. He is considered one of the greatest geometers, with many mathematical and astronomical writings ascribed to him.
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Howard Hawks Mitchell
1885 - 1943 (58 years)
Howard Hawks Mitchell was an American mathematician who worked on group theory and number theory and who introduced Mitchell's group. In 1910 he received a PhD from Princeton University as Oswald Veblen's first doctoral student. During the academic year 1910/1911 Mitchell was an instructor at Yale University. At the University of Pennsylvania he was an instructor from 1911 to 1914 and then a professor until his death in 1943 at age 58 from coronary thrombosis.
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Benjamin of Tudela
1130 - 1173 (43 years)
Benjamin of Tudela was a medieval Jewish traveler who visited Europe, Asia, and Africa in the twelfth century. His vivid descriptions of western Asia preceded those of Marco Polo by a hundred years. With his broad education and vast knowledge of languages, Benjamin of Tudela is a major figure in medieval geography and Jewish history.
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Dmitry Fyodorovich Selivanov
1855 - 1932 (77 years)
Dmitry Fyodorovich Selivanov, was a Russian mathematician, known for his work on differential calculus and finite difference calculus. Biography The son of a district marshal and justice of the peace, Selivanov was born into a noble family in Penza Oblast, where he attended secondary school. He then studied mathematics and physics at the University of St. Petersburg, where he was taught by, among others, Pafnuty Chebyshev. In 1878 Selivanov graduated and in 1880–1881 studied in Paris under Charles Hermite and in Berlin under Karl Weierstraß and Leopold Kronecker. In Berlin he became friends w...
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Antonio Schinella Conti
1677 - 1749 (72 years)
Antonio Schinella Conti , also known by his religious title as Abate Conti, was an Italian writer, translator, mathematician, philosopher and physicist. He was born in Padua on 22 January 1677 and died there on 6 April 1749.
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Yves Marie André
1675 - 1764 (89 years)
Yves Marie André , also known as le Père André, was a French Jesuit mathematician, philosopher, and essayist. André entered the Society of Jesus in 1693. Although distinguished in his scholastic studies, he adhered to Gallicanism and Jansenism and was thus considered unsuitable for responsible office by Church authorities. He therefore pursued scientific studies and became royal professor of mathematics at Caen.
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Andrew Gray
1847 - 1925 (78 years)
Andrew Gray was a Scottish physicist and mathematician. Life Born in Lochgelly, Fife, the son of John Gray, he was educated at Lochgelly School and then studied at the University of Glasgow , where he was appointed the Eglinton Fellow in Mathematics in 1876. Perhaps more significantly, however, in 1875 he became the assistant and private secretary of Professor William Thomson . He held this post – an official University one after 1880 – until 1884, when he was appointed Professor of Physics at the newly founded University College of North Wales.
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Edward Lindsay Ince
1891 - 1941 (50 years)
Prof Edward Lindsay Ince FRSE was a British mathematician who worked on differential equations, especially those with periodic coefficients such as the Mathieu equation and the Lamé equation. He introduced the Ince equation, a generalization of the Mathieu equation.
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Sigmund Gundelfinger
1846 - 1910 (64 years)
Sigmund Gundelfinger was a German-Jewish mathematician who introduced the Gundelfinger quartic and proved the completeness of the invariants of a ternary cubic. Gundelfinger quartic In mathematics, the Gundelfinger quartic is a quartic surface in projective space studied by .
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René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle
1643 - 1687 (44 years)
René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle , was a 17th-century French explorer and fur trader in North America. He explored the Great Lakes region of the United States and Canada, and the Mississippi River. He is best known for an early 1682 expedition in which he canoed the lower Mississippi River from the mouth of the Illinois River to the Gulf of Mexico; there, on 9 April 1682, he claimed the Mississippi River basin for France after giving it the name La Louisiane. One source states that "he acquired for France the most fertile half of the North American continent". A later ill-fated expediti...
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