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,
#9901
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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Giovanni Boccardi
1859 - 1936 (77 years)
Giovanni Boccardi was an Italian astronomer, mathematician, and priest. As a priest of the Congregazione della Missione, Boccardi was an astronomer in the observatories of Collurania , Catania and Turin . At Turin he served as the director of the observatory and as a docent of astronomy in the local university. He also supervised the creation of the new site Pino Torinese of the Turin observatory . In 1907 he founded the Rivista di astronomia e di scienze affini .
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Ernst Herter
1846 - 1917 (71 years)
Ernst Gustav Herter was a German sculptor. He specialized in creating statues of mythological figures. Life and work Herter studied at the Academy of Arts in Berlin and later also as apprentice of , Gustav Blaeser and Albert Wolff. In 1869 he created his own studio. In 1875, he made a study trip to Italy. Professor Herter was a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts.
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John A. Wilson
1877 - 1954 (77 years)
John Albert Wilson was a Canadian sculptor who produced public art for commissions throughout North America. He was a professor in the School of Architecture at Harvard University for 32 years. He is most famous for his American Civil War Monuments: the statue on the Confederate Student Memorial on the campus of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the Washington Grays Monument in Philadelphia.
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Huldah Bancroft
Huldah Bancroft was an American biostatistician at Tulane University, known for her textbook on biostatistics and for her research on tropical infectious diseases including typhoid fever and leprosy.
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John Jackson
1686 - 1763 (77 years)
John Jackson was an English clergyman and controversial theological writer. Life Jackson was born at Sessay, near Thirsk in the North Riding of Yorkshire on 4 April 1686, eldest son of John Jackson , rector of that parish. His mother's maiden name was Ann Revell.
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Pedro Chacón
1525 - 1581 (56 years)
Pedro Chacón was a Spanish mathematician and theologian. Life He worked as professor of Greek at the University of Salamanca, whose history, consulting ancient documents in the library, he published in 1569. In Salamanca he was part of the School of Salamanca, a notable group of professors which also included Francisco de Salinas and Fray Luis de León.
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Jacob von Sandrart
1630 - 1708 (78 years)
Jacob von Sandrart was a German engraver primarily active in Nuremberg. At age ten Sandrart obtained his artistic training from his better-known uncle Joachim von Sandrart in Amsterdam. After spending time in Danzig and Regensburg, he married Regina Christina Eimart, daughter of the engraver Georg Christoph Eimart the elder, on 10 June 1654. The couple settled in Nuremberg in 1656 and remained there for the rest of their lives. His daughter Susanne Maria von Sandrart was also an artist and engraver.
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Hans Pietsch
1907 - 1967 (60 years)
Hans Karl Georg Heinrich Pietsch was a German mathematician who was most notable for being a director of the Mathematical Referat of the Wehrmacht signals intelligence agency, the General der Nachrichtenaufklärung during World War II.
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Wilhelm von Kobell
1766 - 1853 (87 years)
Wilhelm von Kobell was a German painter, printmaker and teacher. Biography Kobell was born in Mannheim, the son of Ferdinand Kobell, a landscape painter who cited Claude Lorrain as his influence. Wilhelm's initial lessons were supplied by his father and his uncle, Franz Kobell. He received further training under Franz Anton von Leydendorf and Egid Verhelst in the art of engraving at the Zeichnungsakademie in Mannheim. He studied the works in the galleries of Mannheim and Düsseldorf, especially those of Wouvermann, which he copied. During this time he practiced various styles, including 17th-c...
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Rudolf Schauffler
1889 - 1968 (79 years)
Rudolf Schauffler was a German mathematician, who was most notable for being the nominal head of the Linguistics and Cryptanalysis section of Pers Z S, the Signal Intelligence Agency of the German Foreign Office before and during World War II.
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Percy Ewing Matheson
1859 - 1946 (87 years)
Percy Ewing Matheson was a writer and honorary fellow of New College, Oxford. Matheson's wife Elizabeth was a daughter of Henry Bruce, 1st Baron Aberdare, and predeceased her husband in 1935. Selected works A skeleton outline of Roman history The Theory of the State by Johann Caspar Bluntschli National ideals Epictetus. The Discourses and Manual, together with fragments of his writings in 3 vols. Holy Russia and Other Poems The growth of Rome
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James Gray
1876 - 1934 (58 years)
James Gordon Gray was a Scottish mathematician and physicist. Life Grey was born in Glasgow in 1876, the third of eight children of Annie Gordon and Andrew Gray. He was educated at Friars Grammar School, in Bangor, Caernarvonshire, Wales, where his father was employed by the university. He attended the University College of North Wales until 1899, when his father and family moved back to Glasgow.
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Alexander Brown
1877 - 1947 (70 years)
Alexander Brown FRSE FRSSAf was a Scottish-born mathematician and educator in South Africa. He contributed to the study of the ratio of incommensurables in geometry and relations between the distances of a point from three vertices of a regular polygon.
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Fazio Cardano
1444 - 1524 (80 years)
Fazio Cardano was an Italian jurist and mathematician. He was a student of perspective. Cardano was also a professor at the University of Pavia, and was devoted to hermetical science and the world of the occult. He was a friend of Leonardo da Vinci.
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Jose de Creeft
1884 - 1982 (98 years)
José Mariano de Creeft was a Spanish-born American artist, sculptor, and teacher known for modern sculpture in stone, metal, and wood, particularly figural works of women. His bronze Alice in Wonderland sculpture climbing sculpture in Central Park is well known to both adults and children in New York City. He was an early adopter, and prominent exponent of the direct carving approach to sculpture. He also developed the technique of lead chasing, and was among the first to create modern sculpture from found objects. He taught at Black Mountain College, the Art Students League of New York, and the New School for Social Research.
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John Kemp
1763 - 1812 (49 years)
Prof John Kemp FRSE LLD was a Scottish mathematician, who settled in the U.S. state of New York for most of his life. Life He was born on 10 April 1763 at Achlossan near Aboyne in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, the son of a farmer. He studied Mathematics at Aberdeen University and graduated in 1783. In the same year he emigrated to the United States of America, settling first in Virginia then moving to New York] in 1785.
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Pedro Menéndez de Avilés
1519 - 1574 (55 years)
Pedro Menéndez de Avilés was a Spanish admiral, explorer and conquistador from Avilés, in Asturias, Spain. He is notable for planning the first regular trans-oceanic convoys, which became known as the Spanish treasure fleet, and for founding St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565. This was the first successful European settlement in La Florida and the most significant city in the region for nearly three centuries.
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Wilhelm Weiss
1859 - 1904 (45 years)
Wilhelm Weiss was an Austro-Hungarian mathematician. Weiss received his early education from his father, who was a teacher at Řitka; and from 1881 to 1887 he studied successively at the universities of Prague, Leipsic, and Erlangen, from where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1887. From 1887 to 1894 he was instructor in mathematics at the , becoming lecturer in 1894, deputy professor in 1896, assistant professor in 1897, and professor in 1900. From 1901 to 1902 he was dean of the school of engineers at the same institution. He taught there until his death in June 1904.
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Lazarus Bendavid
1762 - 1832 (70 years)
Lazarus Bendavid was a German mathematician and philosopher known for his exposition of Kantian philosophy. Biography Bendavid was a Jewish Kantian philosopher. After his graduation from the University of Berlin he lectured for some years on the philosophy of Kant in Vienna. His lectures being discouraged by the Austrian government during a general purge of foreigners, Bendavid returned to Berlin, where he found government employment and continued to lecture and write.
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Ed Emshwiller
1925 - 1990 (65 years)
Edmund Alexander Emshwiller was an American visual artist notable for his science fiction illustrations and his pioneering experimental films. He usually signed his illustrations as Emsh but sometimes used Ed Emsh, Ed Emsler, Willer and others.
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Humphrey Gilbert
1539 - 1583 (44 years)
Sir Humphrey Gilbert was an English adventurer, explorer, member of parliament and soldier who served during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and was a pioneer of the English colonial empire in North America and the Plantations of Ireland. He was a maternal half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh and a cousin of Sir Richard Grenville.
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Louis Crelier
1873 - 1935 (62 years)
Louis Jacques Crelier was a Swiss mathematician. In 1886 he enrolled at l'Ecole normale in Porrentruy and then studied at the University of Berne, where he received his doctorate in 1895. He began his teaching career at the secondary school in Saint-Imier and then taught at the technical school in Biel/Bienne. He became in 1912 professor extraordinarius and in 1918 professor ordinarius at the University of Berne.
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Paolo Dagomari di Prato
1281 - 1374 (93 years)
Paolo Dagomari da Prato , known in Latin as Paulus Geometrus , was a noted Florentine mathematician and astronomer, such a maestro dell'abbaco that he gained the epithet Paolo dell'Abbaco. Franco Sacchetti called him Paolo Arismetra e Astrologo and Giorgio Vasari Paulo Strolago or Paolo Astrologo . He reputedly had 6,000–10,000 pupils over the course of his life, being praised by contemporaries like Giovanni Gherardi da Prato, Filippo Villani, and Giovanni Villani in his Cronica.
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Jan Stussy
1921 - 1990 (69 years)
Jan Stussy was an American artist, film producer, and professor. He was a professor emeritus from the University of California, Los Angeles , he taught there for 42 years. He was awarded an Academy Award for the documentary film, Gravity Is My Enemy . Stussy was a prolific painter and printmaker.
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Kazimierz Abramowicz
1889 - 1936 (47 years)
Kazimierz Abramowicz was a Polish mathematician and professor at the University of Poznan.
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Hugh Robson
1917 - 1977 (60 years)
Sir Hugh Norwood Robson was a Scottish physician noted as a university administrator in several countries, including Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield from 1966 to 1974 and Principal of the University of Edinburgh from 1974 to 1977. The Hugh Robson Building in George Square is named after him, as is the Hugh Robson Computer Laboratory.
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Andreas Schato
1539 - 1603 (64 years)
Andreas Schato was a 16th-century German physician, mathematician, astronomer and scientist. Life He was born in Torgau in central Germany on 19 August 1539, the son of N. N. Schato . His mother is not known.
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Salomon Gessner
1730 - 1788 (58 years)
Salomon Gessner was a Swiss painter, graphic artist, government official, newspaper publisher and poet; best known in the latter instance for his Idylls. Biography His father, Hans Konrad Gessner , was a printer, publisher, bookseller and member of the High Council of Zürich. From the age of six until his death, he lived in a home his father bought, at Münstergasse 9. He began an apprenticeship in 1749, at a bookshop in Berlin, but stayed for only a year, having decided to devote himself to landscape painting and etching. After a short stay in Hamburg, where he encountered the poetic works of...
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William Henry Whitfeld
1856 - 1915 (59 years)
William Henry Whitfeld was an English mathematician, leading expert on bridge and whist, and card editor for The Field. He is known as the poser of the Whitfeld Six problem in double dummy bridge. After graduating from Chatham House Grammar School, Whitfeld matriculated in 1876 at Trinity College, Cambridge. He graduated there in 1880 with B.A. as twelfth wrangler in the Mathematical Tripos and in 1884 with M.A. For several years he was a tutor and lecturer at Cavendish College, Cambridge. In 1880 he published some double-dummy problems in whist in The Cambridge Review: A Journal of University Life and Thought .
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Christopher Smart
1722 - 1771 (49 years)
Christopher Smart was an English poet. He was a major contributor to two popular magazines, The Midwife and The Student, and a friend to influential cultural icons like Samuel Johnson and Henry Fielding. Smart, a high church Anglican, was widely known throughout London.
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Andrew Young
1891 - 1968 (77 years)
Andrew White Young was a Scottish mathematician, natural scientist, and lawyer. He conducted research on Temperature Seiches in Loch Earn and presented papers on Mathieu function and Lagrange polynomials. He was elected a Fellow of Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1937.
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Andreas Stöberl
1470 - 1515 (45 years)
Andreas Stöberl , better known by his latinised name Andreas Stiborius , was a German humanist astronomer, mathematician, and theologian working mainly at the University of Vienna. Life Stöberl studied from 1479 on at the University of Ingolstadt, where he became a magister in 1484, and subsequently a member of the Faculty of Arts. At Ingolstadt, he met and became a friend of Conrad Celtis, an eminent advocate of humanism who lectured there between 1492 and 1497. When Celtis moved to Vienna in 1497, Stöberl followed his mentor. Stiborius was a member of the Sodalitas Litterarum Danubiana, a circle of humanists founded by Celtis.
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Charles Xavier Thomas
1785 - 1870 (85 years)
Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar was a French inventor and entrepreneur best known for designing, patenting and manufacturing the first commercially successful mechanical calculator, the Arithmometer, and for founding the insurance companies Le Soleil and L'aigle which, under his leadership, became the number one insurance group in France at the beginning of the Second Empire.
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John Robinson Airey
1868 - 1937 (69 years)
John Robinson Airey was a British schoolteacher, mathematician and astrophysicist. Early life Airey was the eldest child of William Airey, a stone mason, and Elizabeth Airey, who were both born in Preston under Scar, North Yorkshire. He was the oldest from four siblings, the other three being Elizabeth Ann , Edwin , and Maud . The 1871 census showed the family was living at Hunslet, Leeds; by 1881 they had moved to 28 Grosvenor Street, West Leeds.
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John Adams
1857 - 1934 (77 years)
Sir John Adams was a Scottish education scholar who was the first Principal of UCL Institute of Education. Adams was born in Glasgow, the third son of Charles Adams, a blacksmith. He was educated at St David's School and Old Wynd School before entering the Glasgow Free Church Training College and the University of Glasgow , where he studied for six years. He graduated MA in Mental Philosophy in 1884 and BSc. in 1888.
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Angus MacFarlane-Grieve
1891 - 1970 (79 years)
Alexander Angus MacFarlane-Grieve, was a British academic, mathematician, rower, and decorated British Army officer. He served with the Highland Light Infantry during World War I. He was Master of University College, Durham from 1939 to 1954, and additionally Master of Hatfield College, Durham from 1940 to 1949.
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Lupe Vélez
1908 - 1944 (36 years)
María Guadalupe Villalobos Vélez , known professionally as Lupe Vélez, was a Mexican actress, singer, and dancer during the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema. Vélez began her career as a performer in Mexican vaudeville in the early 1920s. After moving to the United States, she made her first film appearance in a short in 1927. By the end of the decade, she was acting in full-length silent films and had progressed to leading roles in The Gaucho , Lady of the Pavements and Wolf Song , among others. Vélez made the transition to sound films without difficulty. She was one of the first successful Mexican actresses in Hollywood.
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William Colenso
1811 - 1899 (88 years)
William Colenso FRS was a Cornish Christian missionary to New Zealand, and also a printer, botanist, explorer and politician. He attended the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi and later wrote an account of the events at Waitangi.
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