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,
#9451
Sylwester Kaliski
1925 - 1978 (53 years)
Sylwester Kaliski was a Polish engineer, professor and military general. He was a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences . Born in Toruń, Kaliski was a specialist in the field of applied physics. He developed the theory of continuous amplification of ultra and hyper-sounds in semiconductive crystals and obtained plasma temperature of tens of millions of kelvins using laser impulse. He died in Warsaw, Poland in car crash. It has been speculated that Kaliski was killed by the Soviet KGB, as he headed the Polish clandestine program of developing thermonuclear devices intended for military use....
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Thomas H. Mudge
1815 - 1862 (47 years)
Thomas Hicks Mudge was an American Methodist Episcopal clergyman, born at Orrington, Me., the nephew of Enoch Mudge. He graduated from Wesleyan University in 1840 and from Union Theological Seminary in 1843; he then entered the ministry, joining the New England conference. After several pastorates in New England, he became professor of sacred literature in McKendree University, Lebanon, Illinois, serving from 1857 to 1859. Later, he held pastorates in Saint Louis, Missouri, and Baldwin, Kansas
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Francis Howell
1625 - 1679 (54 years)
Francis Howell was Principal of Jesus College, Oxford, from 1657 to 1660. Life Howell was born in Gwinear in Cornwall. He was White's Professor of Moral Philosophy between 1654 and 1657. He was a Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford and was appointed to the position of Principal of Jesus College by Oliver Cromwell, in preference to Seth Ward, who was the choice of the fellows of the college. The college has had strong links to Wales since its foundation. In contrast, Howell was originally from Cornwall and was the first principal not to be either Welsh or of Welsh descent . Howell remained in p...
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Enid Russell-Smith
1903 - 1989 (86 years)
Dame Enid Mary Russell Russell-Smith, DBE was a British civil servant. Career Born in Esher, Surrey to Arthur Russell-Smith and Constance Mary , she attended Saint Felix School, Southwold, and Newnham College, Cambridge, graduating in 1925.
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Frank Heath
1863 - 1946 (83 years)
Sir Henry Frank Heath was a British educationist and civil servant. He was the eldest son of Henry Charles Heath, miniature pointer to Queen Victoria. He was educated at Westminster School and University College, London, after which he spent a year at the University of Strasbourg. When he came back to England he was appointed Professor of English at Bedford College, London , and lecturer in English language and literature at King's College, London.
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William Dawson
1704 - 1752 (48 years)
William Dawson was an Anglican clergyman, poet and member of the Governor's Council of Virginia who became the second president of The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia . Early life and education Dawson was born in Cumberland, England in 1704. He began studies at Queen's College of Oxford University when he was 15 years old, graduated with a M.A. in 1728, and was admitted as a fellow of the college in 1733 . His younger brother Thomas Dawson also emigrated to the colony to become rector of Bruton Parish in Williamburg by 1743, and would become the fourth president of Willia...
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Hassan al-Jabarti
1698 - 1774 (76 years)
Hassan al-Jabarti was a Somali mathematician, theologian, astronomer and philosopher who lived in Cairo, Egypt during the 18th century. Biography Al-Jabarti was the father of the historian Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti, and originated from the Somali city of Zeila. Hassan is considered one of the great scholars of the 18th century. He frequently conducted experiments in his own house, which was visited and observed by Western students.
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William Greenfield
1755 - 1827 (72 years)
William Greenfield FRSE was a Scottish minister, professor of rhetoric and belles lettres, literary critic, reviewer, and author whose clerical career ended in scandal, resulting in him being excommunicated from the Church of Scotland, having his university degrees withdrawn, and his family assuming his wife's patronymic Rutherfurd.
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N. C. Wyeth
1882 - 1945 (63 years)
Newell Convers Wyeth , known as N. C. Wyeth, was an American painter and illustrator. He was a student of Howard Pyle and became one of America's most well-known illustrators. Wyeth created more than 3,000 paintings and illustrated 112 books — 25 of them for Scribner's, the Scribner Classics, which is the body of work for which he is best known. The first of these, Treasure Island, was one of his masterpieces and the proceeds paid for his studio. Wyeth was a realist painter at a time when the camera and photography began to compete with his craft. Sometimes seen as melodramatic, his illustrations were designed to be understood quickly.
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Lucy Toulmin Smith
1838 - 1911 (73 years)
Lucy Toulmin Smith was an Anglo-American antiquarian and librarian, known for her first publication of the York Mystery Plays and other early works. Life Toulmin Smith was born at Boston, Massachusetts, USA, on 21 November 1838, of English parents, Joshua Toulmin Smith and his wife Martha. She was the eldest child of a family of three daughters and two sons. In 1842 the Toulmin Smiths returned to England and settled in Highgate, Middlesex. She was educated at home, and went on to assist her father in editing his journal the Parliamentary Remembrancer . After his death she completed his volume...
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Joseph-Alfred Serret
1819 - 1885 (66 years)
Joseph-Alfred Serret was a French mathematician who was born in Paris, France, and died in Versailles, France. See also Frenet–Serret formulas Books by J.-A. Serret Traité de trigonométrie Cours de calcul differentiel et integral t. 1 Cours de calcul differentiel et integral t. 2 Cours d'algèbre supérieure. Tome I Cours d'algèbre supérieure. Tome II
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Ethel Hurlbatt
1866 - 1934 (68 years)
Ethel Hurlbatt was Principal of Bedford College, University of London, and later Warden of Royal Victoria College, the women's college of McGill University, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, which had opened in 1899.
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Howard Lindsay
1889 - 1968 (79 years)
Howard Lindsay, born Herman Nelke, was an American playwright, librettist, director, actor and theatrical producer. He is best known for his writing work as part of the collaboration of Lindsay and Crouse, and for his performance, with his wife Dorothy Stickney, in the long-running play Life with Father.
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Henry Erle Richards
1861 - 1922 (61 years)
Sir Henry Erle Richards, , also Erle Richards or H. Erle Richards, was the Chichele Professor of International Law and Diplomacy at Oxford University, the Legal Member of Council in British India. He was a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.
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Mary Annette Anderson
1874 - 1922 (48 years)
Mary Annette Anderson was an American professor of grammar and history and the first African American woman elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Anderson was born in Shoreham, Vermont, to William and Philomine Anderson. Her father, a farmer, was a freed slave originally from Virginia, and her mother was a Canadian immigrant of French and Native American ancestry. Her younger brother, William John Anderson Jr., became the second African American to serve in the Vermont General Assembly. Anderson attended the Northfield School for Young Ladies in Northfield, Massachusetts, and entered Middlebury College in 1895.
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Olive Wheeler
1886 - 1963 (77 years)
Dame Olive Annie Wheeler, DBE was a Welsh educationist and psychologist, and Professor of Education at University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, now Cardiff University. Early life Born at the High Street in Brecon, Olive Wheeler was the younger daughter of Annie Wheeler, Poole, and her husband, Henry Burford Wheeler. Henry Wheeler was a master printer and publisher. She attended Brecon County School for Girls. She received an Honours Central Welsh Board Certificate in 1904. She attended University College of Wales, Aberystwyth and graduated with a BSc in Chemistry in 1907, and a MSc in 1911.
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Stanley Anderson
1884 - 1966 (82 years)
Alfred Charles Stanley Anderson was a British engraver, etcher and watercolour painter. Anderson was principally known for the series of highly detailed engravings of traditional British crafts that he completed over a twenty-year period beginning in 1933.
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Frederic Leighton
1830 - 1896 (66 years)
Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton, , known as Sir Frederic Leighton between 1878 and 1896, was a British Victorian painter, draughtsman, and sculptor. His works depicted historical, biblical, and classical subject matter in an academic style. His paintings were enormously popular and expensive, during his lifetime, but fell out of critical favour for many decades in the early 20th century.
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Con Conrad
1891 - 1938 (47 years)
Con Conrad was an American songwriter and producer. Biography Conrad was born in Manhattan, New York, and published his first song, "Down in Dear Old New Orleans", in 1912. Conrad produced the Broadway show The Honeymoon Express, starring Al Jolson, in 1913. By 1918, Conrad was writing and publishing with Henry Waterson . He co-composed "Margie" in 1920 with J. Russel Robinson and lyricist Benny Davis, which became his first major hit. He went on to compose hits that became standards, including:"Palesteena" with co-composer and co-lyricist J. Russel Robinson "Singin' the Blues" with co-composer J.
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Jean Piveteau
1899 - 1991 (92 years)
Jean Piveteau was a distinguished French vertebrate paleontologist. He was elected to the French Academy of Sciences in 1956 and served as the institute's president in 1973. Legacy Two genera of Triassic fish, the actinopterygian Piveteaunotus and the actinistian Piveteauia, and a genus of Middle Jurassic theropod dinosaur, Piveteausaurus, are named in his honor.
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Johann Nepomuk Schaller
1777 - 1842 (65 years)
Johann Nepomuk Schaller was an Austrian sculptor. His most famous work is a bust of Ludwig van Beethoven at age 55, created at the request of the composer's secretary Karl Holz in 1825. It was later presented to the Royal Philharmonic Society, London, on the occasion of the Beethoven Centennial.
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Gottfried Baist
1853 - 1920 (67 years)
Gottfried Baist was a German Hispanist and Romance studies scholar. Selected works Die spanische Sprache, in: Grundriss der romanischen Philologie, ed. by Gustav Gröber vol. 1, Strassburg 1888, S. 689–714, 2. Aufl. 1904, S. 878 - 915Die spanische Literatur, in: Grundriss der romanischen Philologie, ed. by Gustav Gröber, 1. volume, 2. Abt., Strassburg 1897, S. 383–466, 2nd edition, Strassburg 1904-06Grammatik der Spanischen Sprache, 2nd edition, Strassburg 1906 Juan Manuel, El libro de la caza, Halle a.S. 1880, Hildesheim 1984 Antonio Muñoz, Aventuras en verso y prossa, Halle a.S. 1907
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Ella Eaton Kellogg
1853 - 1920 (67 years)
Ella Eaton Kellogg was an American dietitian known for her work on home economics and vegetarian cooking. She was educated at Alfred University ; and the American School Household Economics . In 1875, Kellogg visited the Battle Creek Sanitarium, became interested in the subjects of sanitation and hygiene, and a year later enrolled in the Sanitarium School of Hygiene. Later on, she joined the editorial staff of Good Health magazine, and in 1879, married Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, superintendent of the Battle Creek Sanitarium.
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František Josef Studnička
1836 - 1903 (67 years)
František Josef Studnička was a Czech mathematician and popular pedagogue at Charles University in Prague. He was also an active contributor to astronomy and meteorology. He was known as the author of several textbooks and popular articles.
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Robert Smirke
1753 - 1845 (92 years)
Robert Smirke was an English painter and illustrator, specialising in small paintings showing subjects taken from literature. He was a member of the Royal Academy. Life Smirke was born at Wigton near Carlisle, the son of a travelling artist. When he was twelve he was apprenticed to a heraldic painter in London, and at the age of twenty began to study at the Royal Academy Schools. In 1775 he became a member of the Incorporated Society of Artists, with which he began to exhibit by sending five works; he showed works there again in 1777 and 1778. In 1786 he exhibited Narcissus and The Lady and...
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W. R. Scott
1868 - 1940 (72 years)
William Robert Scott was a political economist who was Adam Smith Professor of Political Economy at the University of Glasgow from 1915 to 1940. Career Born in Omagh, County Tyrone, on 31 August 1868, William Robert Scott was the son of Charles Scott, JP, of Lisnamallard in Omagh. He attended Trinity College, Dublin; graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1889, Scott won the Wray Prize and was First Senior Moderator in Logics and Ethics. He proceeded to a Master of Arts degree two years later, and joined the University of St Andrews in 1896 as assistant to the Professor of Moral Philosophy .
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Johannes Bjerg
1886 - 1955 (69 years)
Johannes Clausen Bjerg was a Danish sculptor who worked primarily in the El Greco-style. Early life Born in Ødis near Kolding, Bjerg attended the Latin School in Kolding before serving an apprenticeship with A.L. Johansen & Son in 1907 during which he created an oak bust of his father. Thereafter he spent an extended period in Copenhagen during which he created a silver medal for a bronze bust of his father. In 1911, he went to Paris to associate with progressive artists of the times such as Picasso, leading to his Cubic bronze bust of the Finnish sculptor Bertil Nilsson .
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Niels Simonsen
1807 - 1885 (78 years)
Niels Simonsen was a Danish painter, lithographer and sculptor. Biography Simonsen was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. He was the son of Simnon Rasmusson and Bolette Nielsdatter. His parents were shopkeepers. At the age of fourteen, he was apprenticed to a master decorative painter and began to take drawing lessons at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Later, he took private lessons from Johan Ludwig Lund.
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Moritz Schröter
1851 - 1925 (74 years)
Maximilian Moritz Schröter was a German industrial engineer and university professor of thermodynamics and the theory of machines. Life and career Moritz Schröter was the son of Moritz Schröter, who himself was a university professor. After his father′s death in 1867, Gustav Zeuner became the guardian of 16-year-old Schröter. After finishing the Gymnasium in Zürich, Schröter studied at the Polytechnikum Zürich, where he was awarded a diploma in engineering. From 1873 to 1876 he worked in the locomotive factory Georg Sigl in Wiener Neustadt. He then returned to Zürich, to become the university assistant of Georg Veith.
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Walter Georgi
1871 - 1924 (53 years)
Walter Georgi was a German painter and illustrator; known for his female portraits. Life and work His father, the jurist , was elected Mayor of Leipzig when Walter was five years old. From 1882 to 1888, he attended the . In 1890, he took lessons at the local Academy of Fine Arts, then transferred to the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied with Leon Pohle. Finally, in 1893, he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. His primary instructor there was Paul Hoecker.
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Hans Hartmann-McLean
1862 - 1946 (84 years)
Hans Hartmann-McLean was a German sculptor. He studied from 1879 to 1885 at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, where his tutors included Johannes Schilling.
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Caspar Scheuren
1810 - 1887 (77 years)
Caspar Johann Nepomuk Scheuren was a German painter and illustrator. Biography His father, was also an artist. After receiving his initial training at home, he studied landscape painting at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, from 1829 to 1835. His Romantic tendencies were encouraged by his admiration for the works of Johann Wilhelm Schirmer and Carl Friedrich Lessing. He was also inspired by the writings of Sir Walter Scott.
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Vladimir Markov
1871 - 1897 (26 years)
Vladimir Andreyevich Markov was a mathematician, known for proving the Markov brothers' inequality with his older brother Andrey Markov. He was from the Russian Empire. He died of tuberculosis at the age of 25.
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Truman Lee Kelley
1884 - 1961 (77 years)
Truman Lee Kelley was an American researcher who made seminal contributions to statistics and psychology. Life He was born in Whitehall, Muskegon County, Michigan in 1884. He died in 1961. Career He received his A.M. degree in psychology from the University of Illinois in 1911, where he became one of the four founding students of Kappa Delta Pi. He completed his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1914 under the supervision of Edward Thorndike. After doing so, he worked as an instructor at the University of Texas and at Teachers College, and then in 1920 became a professor at Stanford University.
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David H. Wheeler
1829 - 1902 (73 years)
David Hilton Wheeler was a 19th-century American academic, newspaperman and college president, and also served as the US ambassador to Italy under the Lincoln administration. Active in politics, he was a fierce advocate of public education, which was then a core part of the Republican party platform. In the 1850s, he taught at Cornell College in Iowa and Shimer College in Illinois. He later taught at Northwestern University, where he served as interim president from 1867 to 1869. He subsequently became president of Allegheny College, serving from 1883 to 1888 and again from 1890 to 1893. ...
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Joseph Oscar Irwin
1898 - 1982 (84 years)
Joseph Oscar Irwin was a British statistician who advanced the use of statistical methods in biological assay and other fields of laboratory medicine. Irwin's grasp of modern mathematical statistics distinguished him not only from older medical statisticians like Major Greenwood but contemporaries like Austin Bradford Hill.
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Kurt Reidemeister
1893 - 1971 (78 years)
Kurt Werner Friedrich Reidemeister was a mathematician born in Braunschweig , Germany. Life He was a brother of Marie Neurath. Beginning in 1912, he studied in Freiburg, Munich, Marburg, and Göttingen. In 1920, he got the in mathematics, philosophy, physics, chemistry, and geology. He received his doctorate in 1921 with a thesis in algebraic number theory at the University of Hamburg under the supervision of Erich Hecke.
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James Waddell Alexander II
1888 - 1971 (83 years)
James Waddell Alexander II was a mathematician and topologist of the pre-World War II era and part of an influential Princeton topology elite, which included Oswald Veblen, Solomon Lefschetz, and others. He was one of the first members of the Institute for Advanced Study , and also a professor at Princeton University .
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Donald Mainland
1902 - 1985 (83 years)
Donald Mainland FRSE FRSC was a Scots-born medical statistician who became a Professor at the New York University. He is remembered for his series of Mainland's Notes. Life He was born in Edinburgh in 1902, the son of William Mainland, a confectioner running a shop at 140 St Stephen Street in the Stockbridge area.
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Mark Krein
1907 - 1989 (82 years)
Mark Grigorievich Krein was a Soviet mathematician, one of the major figures of the Soviet school of functional analysis. He is known for works in operator theory , the problem of moments, classical analysis and representation theory.
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John Carlin
John B. Carlin is an Australian statistician. He is Head of Data Science and Director of the Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics Unit at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute and a professor in the Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health at the University of Melbourne. He has also led the Victorian Centre for Biostatistics, a collaboration between the MCRI, the University of Melbourne, and Monash University, since 2012. The economist Wendy Carlin is his sister.
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Raymond Paley
1907 - 1933 (26 years)
Raymond Edward Alan Christopher Paley was an English mathematician who made significant contributions to mathematical analysis before dying young in a skiing accident. Life Paley was born in Bournemouth, England, the son of an artillery officer who died of tuberculosis before Paley was born. He was educated at Eton College as a King's Scholar and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He became a wrangler in 1928, and with J. A. Todd, he was one of two winners of the 1930 Smith's Prize examination.
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Keith Edward Bullen
1906 - 1976 (70 years)
Keith Edward Bullen FAA FRS was a New Zealand-born mathematician and geophysicist. He is noted for his seismological interpretation of the deep structure of the Earth's mantle and core. He was Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Sydney in Australia from 1945 until 1971.
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Sydney Chapman
1888 - 1970 (82 years)
Sydney Chapman was a British mathematician and geophysicist. His work on the kinetic theory of gases, solar-terrestrial physics, and the Earth's ozone layer has inspired a broad range of research over many decades.
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Lev Pontryagin
1908 - 1988 (80 years)
Lev Semenovich Pontryagin was a Soviet mathematician. Completely blind from the age of 14, he made major discoveries in a number of fields of mathematics, including algebraic topology, differential topology and optimal control.
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Max Newman
1897 - 1984 (87 years)
Maxwell Herman Alexander Newman, FRS, , generally known as Max Newman, was a British mathematician and codebreaker. His work in World War II led to the construction of Colossus, the world's first operational, programmable electronic computer, and he established the Royal Society Computing Machine Laboratory at the University of Manchester, which produced the world's first working, stored-program electronic computer in 1948, the Manchester Baby.
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Richard V. Southwell
1888 - 1970 (82 years)
Sir Richard Vynne Southwell, FRS was a British mathematician who specialised in applied mechanics as an engineering science academic. Education and career Richard Southwell was educated at Norwich School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where in 1912 he achieved first class degree results in both the mathematical and mechanical science tripos. In 1914, he became a Fellow of Trinity, and a lecturer in Mechanical Sciences.
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Maurice Quenouille
1924 - 1973 (49 years)
Prof Maurice Henry Quenouille FRSE FRSS was a 20th-century British statistician remembered as the creator of Jackknife resampling. Biography The unusual surname is French in origin, meaning "distaff". The surname has transposed to Kenoly in most English-speaking countries.
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Pál Turán
1910 - 1976 (66 years)
Pál Turán also known as Paul Turán, was a Hungarian mathematician who worked primarily in extremal combinatorics. In 1940, because of his Jewish origins, he was arrested by the Nazis and sent to a labour camp in Transylvania, later being transferred several times to other camps. While imprisoned, Turán came up with some of his best theories, which he was able to publish after the war.
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Edward J. McShane
1904 - 1989 (85 years)
Edward James McShane was an American mathematician noted for his advancements of the calculus of variations, integration theory, stochastic calculus, and exterior ballistics. His name is associated with the McShane–Whitney extension theorem and McShane integral. McShane was professor of mathematics at the University of Virginia, president of the American Mathematical Society, president of the Mathematical Association of America, a member of the National Science Board and a member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.
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