The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
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List of the most influential people in Mathematics,
#9651
John Strong Newberry
1822 - 1892 (70 years)
John Strong Newberry was an American physician, geologist and paleontologist. He participated as a naturalist and surgeon on three expeditions to explore and survey the western United States. During the Civil War he served in the US Sanitary Commission and was appointed secretary of the western department of the commission. After the war he became professor of geology and paleontology at Columbia University School of Mines and chief geologist of the Geological Survey of Ohio.
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John McDouall Stuart
1815 - 1866 (51 years)
John McDouall Stuart , often referred to as simply "McDouall Stuart", was a Scottish explorer and one of the most accomplished of all Australia's inland explorers. Stuart led the first successful expedition to traverse the Australian mainland from south to north and return, through the centre of the continent. His experience and the care he showed for his team ensured he never lost a man, despite the harshness of the country he encountered.
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George M. Cohan
1878 - 1942 (64 years)
George Michael Cohan was an American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer and theatrical producer. Cohan began his career as a child, performing with his parents and sister in a vaudeville act known as "The Four Cohans". Beginning with Little Johnny Jones in 1904, he wrote, composed, produced, and appeared in more than three dozen Broadway musicals. Cohan wrote more than 50 shows and published more than 300 songs during his lifetime, including the standards "Over There", "Give My Regards to Broadway", "The Yankee Doodle Boy" and "You're a Grand Old Flag". As a co...
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Paul Yu Pin
1901 - 1978 (77 years)
Paul Yu Pin was a Chinese cardinal of the Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Nanking from 1946 until his death, having previously served as its Apostolic Vicar, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1969.
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Eileen Brooke
1905 - 1989 (84 years)
Eileen Minnie Brooke was a British statistician and health policy professional. Education Eileen Minnie Brooke attended East London College, earning a B.Sc. in mathematics in 1926, and an M.Sc. in mathematics in 1929. She completed doctoral studies in 1952.
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Abu Said Gorgani
850 - 845 (-5 years)
Abu Sa'id al-Dharir al-Jurjani , also Gurgani, was a 9th-century Persian mathematician and astronomer from Gurgan, Iran. He wrote a treatise on geometrical problems and another on the drawing of the meridian. George Sarton considers him a pupil of Ibn al-A'rabi, but Carl Brockelmann rejects this opinion.
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Konstantinos M. Mitsopoulos
1844 - 1911 (67 years)
Konstantinos M. Mitsopoulos was a writer, geologist, mineralogist, chemist, and professor. His uncle Iraklis Mitsopoulos was the father of modern natural sciences in Greece. He followed in his uncle's footsteps, and was the first student to receive a doctorate degree in the natural sciences at the University of Athens in 1868. He was one of the first scientists in Greece to publicly promote Darwin's theory of evolution. He edited and published the periodical known as Prometheus in 1890, promoting Darwinist views. The publication was shut down by the church two years later.
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George Henry Bolsover
1910 - 1990 (80 years)
George Henry Bolsover CBE was the director of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at the University of London from 1947 to 1976. The school, now known as UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, is part of University College, London.
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Yang Zhuoxin
1890 - 1963 (73 years)
Yang Zhuoxin was a Chinese educator and mathematician who served as president of Hunan University from August 1930 to March 1931. Biography Yang was born and raised in Xinhua County, Hunan. He attended Zijiang School. He graduated from Hunan High College in 1908. He was sent abroad to study at the expense of the government in 1903. He studied at Harvard University and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He received his master's degree from the University of Illinois and doctor's degree from Syracuse University. He then studied at Cambridge University , the University of London , the Univers...
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Abu al-Abbas Iranshahri
900 - Present (1125 years)
Abu al-Abbas Iranshahri was a 9th-century Persian philosopher, mathematician, natural scientist, historian of religion, astronomer and author. According to traditional sources, he is the first figure in the wider Muslim world to be associated with philosophy after the advent of Islam.
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Sebastián Vizcaíno
1548 - 1623 (75 years)
Sebastián Vizcaíno was a Spanish soldier, entrepreneur, explorer, and diplomat whose varied roles took him to New Spain, the Baja California peninsula, the California coast and Asia. Early career Vizcaíno was born in 1548, in Extremadura, Crown of Castile . He saw military service in the Spanish invasion of Portugal during 1580–1583. Coming to New Spain in 1583, he sailed as a merchant on a Manila galleon to the Spanish East Indies in 1586–1589. In 1587, he was on board the Santa Ana as one of the merchants when Thomas Cavendish captured it, robbing him and others of their personal cargoes of...
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Theodore Clarke Smith
1870 - 1960 (90 years)
Theodore Clarke Smith was professor of American history at Williams College from 1903 to 1938. Smith was an educationalist and curriculum reformer who served on the Committee on Curriculum of 1911-1927 and the Advisory Committee of 1911-1935.
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George E. Nicholson Jr.
1918 - 1971 (53 years)
George E. Nicholson Jr. was an American professor, mathematician, academic, researcher, Chairman of the UNC Department of Statistics, and Medal of Freedom recipient. Biography Nicholson was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1918. He began his education at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill in 1936, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1940 and a master's degree in 1941. From 1941 to 1943 he served as an instructor of mathematics at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and in 1944 he began teaching at UNC.
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Antonio Ferri
1912 - 1975 (63 years)
Antonio Ferri was an Italian scientist, prominent in the field of aerodynamics, with a specialization in hypersonic and supersonic flight. Born in 1912 in Norcia, Italy, from 1937 he conducted research in Guidonia Montecelio, where the most prominent and advanced research on high-speed aerodynamics was taking place. In 1938, at the age of 26, he received Italy's highest prize for science, the Premio dell'Accademia d'Italia for science. Among the work he conducted there were spectacular experiments in 1939–1940 with supersonic wind tunnels.
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John Irwin Hutchinson
1867 - 1935 (68 years)
John Irwin Hutchinson was an American mathematician born in Bangor, Maine. He was educated at Bates College, , Clark University , and the University of Chicago . With Virgil Snyder he was coauthor of Differential and Integral Calculus and Elementary Treatise on the Calculus .
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Benjamin Williamson
1827 - 1916 (89 years)
Benjamin Williamson was an Irish mathematician who was a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin for over 60 years and was Professor of Natural Philosophy there from 1884 to 1890. Life and career Williamson was born in Mallow, County Cork, son of the Rev Benjamin Williamson. He attended Kilkenny College. At TCD he was awarded BA and MA , having become a Fellow in 1852. He was Donegall Lecturer in Mathematics , and then Professor of Natural Philosophy . TCD awarded him a DSc and Oxford a DCL . He later became vice provost of TCD , and died in Dublin.
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Edward Wells
1667 - 1727 (60 years)
Edward Wells was an English mathematician, geographer, and controversial theologian. Life He was the son of Edward Wells, vicar of Corsham, Wiltshire. He was admitted to Westminster School in 1680, and elected to a scholarship at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1686. He graduated B.A. in 1690 and M.A. in 1693.
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Pierre Edmond Boissier
1810 - 1885 (75 years)
Pierre Edmond Boissier was a Swiss prominent botanist, explorer and mathematician. He was the son of Jacques Boissier and Caroline Butini , daughter of Pierre Butini a well-known physician and naturalist from Geneva. With his sister, Valérie Boissier , he received a strict education with lessons delivered in Italian and Latin. Edmond's interest in natural history stemmed from holidays in the company of his mother and his grandfather, Pierre Butini at Valeyres-sous-Rances. His hikes in the Jura and the Alps laid the foundation of his zest for later exploration and adventure. He attended a ...
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Constanze Mozart
1762 - 1842 (80 years)
Maria Constanze Cäcilia Josepha Johanna Aloysia Mozart was a trained Austrian singer. She was married twice, first to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; then to Georg Nikolaus von Nissen. She and Mozart had six children: Karl Thomas Mozart, Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart, and four others who died in infancy. She became Mozart's biographer jointly with her second husband.
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William Dickie Niven
1879 - 1965 (86 years)
William Dickie Niven , of Fyvie, Aberdeenshire, was a Scottish academic. Family Niven was the son of Charles Niven and Jane M. Mackay. In 1908, he married Isabella Cumming and they had two daughters.
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Michael Roberts
1817 - 1882 (65 years)
Michael Roberts , was an Irish mathematician and academic of Trinity College, Dublin , who served as Erasmus Smith's Professor of Mathematics there 1862-1879. Life Roberts was born into a well-established landed gentry family in County Cork, whose ancestors had settled there from Kent about 1630. His mother was of Scottish origins, descended from the Colonel Stewart who was governor of Edinburgh Castle and took part in the Jacobite rising of 1715.
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Annibale Giordano
1769 - 1835 (66 years)
Annibale Giuseppe Nicolò Giordano was an Italian-French mathematician and revolutionary. Life Annibale Giordano was born 20 September 1769 in Ottaviano - San Giuseppe Vesuviano, to an educated middle-class family. His father Michele was a doctor who served both the king Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies, and the Medici princes of Ottaviano. As a teenager, Annibale Giordano attended the school of Nicolò Fergola, a brilliant mathematician from Naples. In 1789, the year of the French Revolution, he was appointed professor at the Nunziatella Military School, thus becoming a colleague of the chemist , a freemason.
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Graves Gladney
1907 - 1976 (69 years)
James Francis Graves Gladney was an illustrator known for his cover paintings for Street & Smith pulp magazines, especially The Shadow. He was the son of Katherine Lewis Graves and Franklin Young Gladney, a successful lawyer and author of several articles and books on patent law. After graduating from high school, Gladney attended Amherst College, from which he graduated in 1928. After the end of World War II, he accepted a job as a teacher at the Washington University in St. Louis School of Fine Arts.
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Henry Ford II
1917 - 1987 (70 years)
Henry Ford II , sometimes known as "Hank the Deuce" or simply "the Deuce", was an American businessman in the automotive industry. He was the oldest son of Edsel Ford I and oldest grandson of Henry Ford. He was president of the Ford Motor Company from 1945 to 1960, Chief executive officer from 1947 to 1979, and chairman of the board of directors from 1960 to 1980. Under his leadership, Ford Motor Company became a publicly traded corporation in 1956. From 1943 to 1950, he also served as president of the Ford Foundation.
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Kannadasan
1927 - 1981 (54 years)
Kannadasan was an Indian philosopher, poet, film song lyricist, producer, actor, script-writer, editor, philanthropist, and is heralded as one of the greatest and most important lyricists in India. Frequently called Kaviarasu, With over 5000 lyrics, 6000 poems and 232 books, Kannadasan is widely known by the sobriquet Kaviarasu and he is also considered to be the greatest modern Tamil poet after Subramania Bharati. including novels, epics, plays, essays, his most popular being the 10-part religious book on Hinduism, Arthamulla Indhu Matham . He won the Sahitya Akademi Award for his novel Che...
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John Rowning
1701 - 1771 (70 years)
John Rowning was an English mathematician, clergyman, and philosopher. He wrote on natural philosophy, designed measuring and calculating instruments. In his book he rejected the idea of Newtonian ether and explained gravitational forces as being the action of God.
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Hamilton Hume
1797 - 1873 (76 years)
Hamilton Hume was an early explorer of the present-day Australian states of New South Wales and Victoria. In 1824, along with William Hovell, Hume participated in an expedition that first took an overland route from Sydney to Port Phillip . Along with Sturt in 1828, he was part of an expedition of the first Europeans to find the Darling River.
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Jakob Philipp Kulik
1793 - 1863 (70 years)
Jakob Philipp Kulik was an Austrian mathematician known for his construction of a massive factor tables. Biography Kulik was born in Lemberg, which was part of the Austrian empire, and is now Lviv located in Ukraine.
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Ovidio Montalbani
1601 - 1671 (70 years)
Ovidio Montalbani , also known by his pseudonym Giovanni Antonio Bumaldi, was an Italian polymath. He was a professor of logic, mathematics, astronomy, and medicine at the University of Bologna. Life Ovidio Montalbani studied philosophy with Vincenzo Montecalvi and medicine with the famous physician Bartolomeo Ambrosini. In 1625 at a very young age he became a lector at the University of Bologna, teaching first logic, then the theoretic medicine, mathematics and astronomy and later moral philosophy. In 1657, he became custodian of the Aldrovandi Museum - succeeding Bartolomeo Ambrosini, who had been custodian since 1642.
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Thomas Allen
1540 - 1632 (92 years)
Thomas Allen was an English mathematician and astrologer. Highly reputed in his lifetime, he published little, but was an active private teacher of mathematics. He was also well connected in the English intellectual networks of the period.
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Hermann Ernst Freund
1786 - 1840 (54 years)
Hermann Ernst Freund was a German-born Danish sculptor. He is remembered in particular for his figures from Nordic mythology and for the Ragnarok Frieze. Biography Born near Bremen, Germany, Freund was trained as a smith before studying at the Art Academy in Copenhagen where he was awarded all four silver and gold medals. After graduating, he spent 10 years in Rome where he became Bertel Thorvaldsen's closest assistant as can be seen in his marble bust of Bernhard Severin Ingemann . An early proponent of romantic nationalism, Freund was the first Danish sculptor to work with Nordic mythology...
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Paul Vincensini
1896 - 1978 (82 years)
Paul Félix Vincensini was a French mathematician. In 1927, he wrote his dissertation Sur trois types de congruences rectilignes at the University of Toulouse. In 1945, working as a Professor at the University of Besançon, he was awarded the Charles Dupin Prize of the French Academy of Sciences, for his work in higher geometry. In 1949, he got the Prix de la Pensée Française. In the same year, he went to Marseille University. He retired in 1967, but still accepted presidency of a symposium of the Florence Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematical Sciences in 1978.
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Semyon Belozyorov
1904 - 1987 (83 years)
Semyon Yefimovich Belozyorov was a Soviet and Russian mathematician and a specialist in the field of history of mathematics. Professor, Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Director of Rostov State University in 1938–1954.
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Robert Bellamy Clifton
1836 - 1921 (85 years)
Robert Bellamy Clifton FRS was a British scientist. Academic career Clifton was educated at University College, London and St John's College, Cambridge where he studied under Sir George Stokes. In 1860 he went to Owens College, Manchester as Professor of Natural Philosophy. In 1865 he was appointed Professor of experimental Natural Philosophy at Oxford University. While at Oxford he designed Clarendon Laboratory and gave research space to Charles Vernon Boys. On 4 June 1868 he became a fellow of the Royal Society. He was president of the Physical Society from 1882 until 1884. From 1868 un...
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Carleton W. Angell
1887 - 1962 (75 years)
Carleton Watson Angell was an American sculptor. He was born in Belding, Michigan and died in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He is buried in Washtenong Memorial Gardens near the World War I Veterans Memorial, under a plaque designed by artist Stanley Kellogg.
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Raymond A. Spruance
1886 - 1969 (83 years)
Raymond Ames Spruance was a United States Navy admiral during World War II. He commanded U.S. naval forces during the Battle of the Philippine Sea, one of the most significant naval battles of the Pacific Theatre. He also commanded Task Force 16 at the Battle of Midway, comprising the carriers and . At Midway, dive bombers from Enterprise sank four larger carriers of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Most historians consider Midway the turning point of the Pacific War.
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Hubert Mack Thaxton
1909 - 1974 (65 years)
Hubert Mack Thaxton was an American nuclear physicist, mathematician, engineer, and the fourth African American person to earn a PhD in physics in the United States. Thaxton's research focused on proton scattering, which at the time was a largely unexplored area of study.
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Samuel Arthur Saunder
1852 - 1912 (60 years)
Samuel Arthur Saunder was a British mathematician and selenographer who taught at Wellington College, Berkshire. In 1894 he became a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and in 1908 he was made Gresham Professor of Astronomy giving public lectures on the subject.
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Fritz Eichenberg
1901 - 1990 (89 years)
Fritz Eichenberg was a German-American illustrator and arts educator who worked primarily in wood engraving. His best-known works were concerned with religion, social justice and nonviolence. Biography Eichenberg was born to a Jewish family in Cologne, Germany, where the destruction of World War I helped to shape his anti-war sentiments. He worked as a printer's apprentice, and studied at the Municipal School of Applied Arts in Cologne and the Academy of Graphic Arts in Leipzig, where he studied under Hugo Steiner-Prag. In 1923 he moved to Berlin to begin his career as an artist, producing illustrations for books and newspapers.
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Horatio Pollock
1868 - 1950 (82 years)
Horatio Milo Pollock was an American statistician. He was born in the village of Patria, New York, in Schoharie County on 2 September 1868, and attended a rural school. Pollock started teaching during the winter at the age of 17. He continued working on the family farm until the age of 20. That year, he completed a high school curriculum in 31 weeks, and subsequently enrolled at Union College from which he graduated in 1895. While in college, Pollock competed in wrestling and sprinting. He went to the University of Leipzig for doctoral degree in biology, graduating in 1897. That same year, Pollock also finished a master's degree from Union College.
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Johannes Scheubel
1494 - 1570 (76 years)
Johannes Scheubel was a German mathematician. His books include De Numeris et Diversis Rationibus and Algebrae Compendiosa .
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Marcus Meibomius
1630 - 1710 (80 years)
Marcus Meibomius was a Danish scholar. He is best known as a historian of music, as an antiquarian, and as the first librarian at the Denmark's Royal Library. He was also a philologist and mathematician.
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Max von Widnmann
1812 - 1895 (83 years)
Max von Widnmann was a German sculptor and professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Many of his works were commissioned by King Ludwig I of Bavaria. Life and career Max von Widnmann was born in Eichstätt, the youngest of three sons of Franz Amand Widnmann, who held the positions of court, town and regional physician, and his wife Maximiliana née Pöckhel, who also served as a town and local physician. After attending the gymnasium in Eichstätt, he entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich in 1825. There he studied with Ludwig Michael Schwanthaler among others. His teachers made it pos...
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Charles Dana Gibson
1867 - 1944 (77 years)
Charles Dana Gibson was an American illustrator who created the Gibson Girl, an iconic representation of the beautiful and independent Euro-American woman at the turn of the 20th century. He published his illustrations in Life magazine and other major national publications for more than 30 years, becoming editor in 1918 and later owner of the general interest magazine.
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Charles Macdonald
1828 - 1901 (73 years)
Charles Macdonald was a Scottish-Canadian mathematician and educator. Born in Aberdeen, Scotland, Macdonald studied at King's College, Aberdeen, earning degrees in the arts and divinity. The Church of Scotland named Macdonald the chair in mathematics at Dalhousie College in Halifax, Nova Scotia, which he held until his death in 1901. He was an advocate for education reform in Nova Scotia, and was a significant presence for Dalhousie in Halifax. Dalhousie's first library, Macdonald Memorial Library, was named in his honour by former students who raised money to build it.
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Ferdinand Franz Wallraf
1748 - 1824 (76 years)
Ferdinand Franz Wallraf was a German botanist, mathematician, theologian, art collector and Roman Catholic priest. His collection formed the founding nucleus of the Wallraf–Richartz Museum. Biography He was the son of a Master tailor. After 1760, he attended the and, from 1765, studied at the Art Faculty; graduating in 1767 with a master's degree. He had no money to continue his higher education so, having received minor orders in 1763, he became a teacher. In 1772, he was ordained a priest by Auxiliary Bishop . Beginning in 1776 his friend, the Professor and physician, Johann Georg Menn , helped him study medicine.
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Chen Wen-chen
1950 - 1981 (31 years)
Chen Wen-chen was a Taiwanese assistant professor of mathematics at Carnegie Mellon University who died on under mysterious circumstances. After the conclusion of his third year of teaching, he returned to his native Taiwan for a vacation. He was instructed not to leave Taiwan on his scheduled departure date. Members of Taiwan's secret police, the Garrison Command, detained and interrogated him for twelve hours on 2 July 1981, and his body was found on the campus of National Taiwan University the next day. The subsequent autopsy reported his death was due to a fall. Chen's death and the ear...
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Harold Lawton
1899 - 2005 (106 years)
Harold Walter Lawton was an English scholar of French literature and, prior to his death, one of the last surviving veterans and the last prisoner of war of World War I in Britain. Born in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, he volunteered for military service in 1916, enlisting with the Royal Welch Fusiliers before being transferred to the Cheshire Regiment. Upon completing training, in 1917 he was posted to the Western Front where he was transferred again, to The East Yorkshire Regiment. During the German spring offensive of 1918 his unit, the 1/4th Battalion the East Yorkshires, was sent to reinforce...
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Horace Lyman
1815 - 1887 (72 years)
Horace Lyman was a reverend and professor of mathematics in the U.S. state of Oregon. He was born in Massachusetts, and came to Oregon by way of New York and Cape Horn in October 1848. He married Mary Dennison the next month. He established a school in Portland in 1849, and helped establish the Hillsboro School District in Hillsboro in 1851. He was a founder of Portland's First Congregational Church in June 1851. He was founding secretary of LaCreole Academic Institutue near Dallas, Oregon in 1856.
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William Arnon Henry
1850 - 1932 (82 years)
William Arnon Henry was an American academic and agriculturist from Ohio. Henry studied at the National Normal University and Ohio Wesleyan University before becoming a principal of two high schools. After continuing his education at Cornell University from 1876 to 1880, Henry was appointed a professor at the University of Wisconsin. There, he led the growth of the College of Agriculture, becoming its first dean in 1891. He remained at the university until 1907, when he was named a professor emeritus.
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