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.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Mathematics,
#10101
David Bierens de Haan
1822 - 1895 (73 years)
David Bierens de Haan was a Dutch mathematician and historian of science. Biography Bierens de Haan was a son of the rich merchant Abraham Pieterszoon de Haan and Catharina Jacoba Bierens . In 1843 he completed a study in the exact sciences and received his PhD from the University of Leiden in 1847 under Gideon Janus Verdam for the work . After this he became a teacher of physics and mathematics at a gymnasium in Deventer. In 1852 he married Johanna Catharina Justina de Schepper in Deventer.
Go to Profile#10102
Stanley Skewes
1899 - 1988 (89 years)
Stanley Skewes was a South African mathematician, best known for his discovery of the Skewes's number in 1933. He was one of John Edensor Littlewood's students at Cambridge University. Skewes's numbers contributed to the refinement of the theory of prime numbers.
Go to Profile#10103
Charles Jasper Joly
1864 - 1906 (42 years)
Charles Jasper Joly was an Irish mathematician and astronomer who became Royal Astronomer of Ireland. Life He was born at St Catherine's Rectory, Hop Hill, Tullamore, County Offaly, the eldest of six children of Rev. John Swift Joly and Elizabeth Slator .
Go to Profile#10104
Henri Dulac
1870 - 1955 (85 years)
Henri Claudius Rosarius Dulac was a French mathematician. Life Born in Fayence, France, Dulac graduated from École Polytechnique and obtained a Doctorate in Mathematics. He started to teach a class of mathematic analysis at University, in Grenoble , Algiers and Poitiers . Holder of a pulpit in pure mathematics in the Sciences University of Lyon in 1911, his teaching was suspended during the first world war and he had to serve as officer in the French army. After the war, he became holder of a pulpit of differential and integral calculus and also taught in École Centrale Lyon. He became examiner at École Polytechnique and President of the admission jury.
Go to Profile#10105
Sergey Chaplygin
1869 - 1942 (73 years)
Sergey Alexeyevich Chaplygin was a Russian and Soviet physicist, mathematician, and mechanical engineer. He is known for mathematical formulas such as Chaplygin's equation and for a hypothetical substance in cosmology called Chaplygin gas, named after him.
Go to Profile#10106
Eugen Netto
1848 - 1919 (71 years)
Eugen Otto Erwin Netto was a German mathematician. He was born in Halle and died in Giessen. Netto's theorem, on the dimension-preserving properties of continuous bijections, is named for Netto. Netto published this theorem in 1878, in response to Georg Cantor's proof of the existence of discontinuous bijections between the unit interval and unit square. His proof was not fully rigorous, but its errors were later repaired.
Go to Profile#10107
Gyula Vályi
1855 - 1913 (58 years)
Gyula Vályi was a Hungarian mathematician and theoretical physicist, a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, known for his work on mathematical analysis, geometry, and number theory. Life and work Vályi was born in Marosvásárhely, the town of the famous mathematicians Farkas Bolyai and János Bolyai. He attended the Reformed College in Marosvásárhely . After graduating from school, he went to Kolozsvár, the capital of Transylvania, where he attended the Franz Joseph University.
Go to Profile#10108
Raymond Clare Archibald
1875 - 1955 (80 years)
Raymond Clare Archibald was a prominent Canadian-American mathematician. He is known for his work as a historian of mathematics, his editorships of mathematical journals and his contributions to the teaching of mathematics.
Go to Profile#10109
Yasuo Akizuki
1902 - 1984 (82 years)
Yasuo Akizuki was a Japanese mathematician. He was a professor at Kyoto University. Alongside Wolfgang Krull, Oscar Zariski, and Masayoshi Nagata, he is famous for his early work in commutative algebra. In particular, he is most well known in helping to demonstrate Akizuki–Hopkins–Levitzki theorem.
Go to Profile#10110
Carl Ferdinand Degen
1766 - 1825 (59 years)
Carl Ferdinand Degen was a Danish mathematician. His most important contributions were within number theory and he advised the young, aspiring Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel in a decisive way. Degen has received much of the credit for the introduction of more modern and advanced mathematics in the Danish-Norwegian school system.
Go to Profile#10111
Iris Runge
1888 - 1966 (78 years)
Iris Anna Runge was a German applied mathematician and physicist. Life and work Iris Runge was the eldest of six children of mathematician Carl Runge. She started studying physics, mathematics, and geography at the University of Göttingen in 1907, with the aim of becoming a teacher. At that time, she only attended the lectures, since women were not allowed to formally study at Prussian universities until 1908–1909. She attended lectures given by her father and spent a semester at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich working with Arnold Sommerfeld, which led to her first publication, Anwendungen der Vektorrechnung auf die Grundlagen der Geometrischen Optik in Annalen der Physik .
Go to Profile#10112
Georgy Pfeiffer
1872 - 1946 (74 years)
Georgy Pfeiffer also Yurii or Yury Pfeiffer was a Russian Empire and Soviet mathematician of German descent. Pfeiffer was known as a specialist in the field of integration of differential equations and systems of partial differential equations. He was also interested in algebraic geometry.
Go to Profile#10113
Erhard Weigel
1625 - 1699 (74 years)
Erhard Weigel was a German mathematician, astronomer and philosopher. Biography Weigel earned his M.A. and his habilitation from the University of Leipzig. From 1653 until his death he was professor of mathematics at Jena University. He was the teacher of Leibniz in summer 1663, and other notable students. He also worked to make science more widely accessible to the public, and what would today be considered a populariser of science.
Go to Profile#10114
Vincenzo Riccati
1707 - 1775 (68 years)
Vincenzo Riccati was a Venetian Catholic priest, mathematician, and physicist. Life Vincenzo Riccati was born in 1707 in Castelfranco Veneto, a small town about 30 km north of Padua. He was the brother of Giordano Riccati, and the second son of Jacopo Riccati. He began his studies at the College of St. Francis Xavier in Bologna, under the guidance of Luigi Marchenti, a pupil of the French mathematician Pierre Varignon. He entered the Society of Jesus on December 20, 1726. He taught belles lettres in the colleges of the Order in Piacenza , Padua , and Parma . He then went to Rome to study theology.
Go to Profile#10115
Volodymyr Levytsky
1872 - 1956 (84 years)
Volodymyr Levytsky was a Ukrainian mathematician who taught mathematics and studied functions of a complex variable. Biography and education Volodymyr Levytsky finished his doctorate at the University of Lviv in 1901 and went on to teach mathematics and physics at high schools. After the First World War Ukrainian students were not allowed to enrol at the University and in 1920 Ukrainian professors were also banned leaving only Polish lecturers. As a result, the Ukrainian students set up an underground university at the University in July 1921. From the beginning Levytsky taught mathematics at this new underground university for a few years until it was forced to close in 1925.
Go to Profile#10116
Jean-Étienne Montucla
1725 - 1799 (74 years)
Jean-Étienne Montucla was a French mathematician and historian. Montucla was born at Lyon, France. Career In 1754 he published an anonymous treatise on quadrature, Histoire des recherches sur la quadrature du cercle. Montucla's deep interest in history of mathematics became apparent with his publication of Histoire des Mathématiques, the first part appearing in 1758. According to George Sarton, the Histoire isa history of the mathematical sciences, and might almost be called a history of science from the mathematical angle, even as many histories of medicine are to some extent histories of sc...
Go to Profile#10117
Matsusaburo Fujiwara
1881 - 1946 (65 years)
Matsusaburo Fujiwara was a Japanese mathematician and historian of mathematics. Education and career Fujiwara graduated in June 1902 from secondary school at the Third Higher School in Kyoto and then studied mathematics at the University of Tokyo, where he graduated in 1905. His most important teacher was Rikitaro Fujisawa . In 1906 he became a secondary school teacher at the First Higher School Daiichi Kōtō Gakkō in Tokyo. In 1908 Fujiwara and Tsuruichi Hayashi were appointed professors at Tohoku University in Sendai. To prepare for his professorial duties, Fujiwara was sent to study from 1908 to 1911 in Göttingen, Paris and Berlin.
Go to Profile#10118
Conny Palm
1907 - 1951 (44 years)
Conrad "Conny" Rudolf Agaton Palm was a Swedish electrical engineer and statistician, known for several contributions to teletraffic engineering and queueing theory. Education and career Palm enrolled at the School of Electrical Engineering at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm in 1925, being awarded his M.Sc. and Ph.D on a dissertation entitled Intensitätsschwankungen im Fernsprechverkehr . Palm's work was also joint with L. M. Ericsson, cooperating with Christian Jacobæus. He attended Harald Cramér's queueing theory group, met William Feller . Later, Palm was in the Swedish Bo...
Go to Profile#10119
Ferdinand Karl Schweikart
1780 - 1857 (77 years)
Ferdinand Karl Schweikart was a German jurist and amateur mathematician who developed an astral geometry before the discovery of non-Euclidean geometry. Life and work Schweikart, son of an attorney in Hesse, was educated in the school of his town. He went to the high school in Hanau and Waldeck before entering in 1796 to study law in the university of Marburg, where he attended lectures of the mathematics professor J.K.F. Hauff. He was awarded a doctorate in law at the university of Jena in 1798.
Go to Profile#10120
Johann Rahn
1622 - 1676 (54 years)
Johann Rahn was a Swiss mathematician who is credited with the first use of the division sign, ÷ and the therefore sign, ∴. The symbols were used in Teutsche Algebra, published in 1659. John Pell collaborated with Rahn in this book, which contains an example of the Pell equation. It is uncertain whether Rahn or Pell was responsible for introducing the symbols.
Go to Profile#10121
Bruno Finzi
1899 - 1974 (75 years)
Bruno Finzi was an Italian mathematician, engineer and physicist. Biography Born at Gardone Val Trompia, Finzi received in 1920 his Laurea as an engineer and in 1921 as a mathematician at the University of Pavia. In 1922 he became an assistant of Umberto Cisotti at the Polytecnico di Milano. In 1931 he became a professor of rational mechanics at the University of Milan, but returned in 1947 to the Polytecnico di Milano as the successor to Cisotti and became there director of the Mathematical Institute. From 1949 he was the head of the newly founded Institute of Aeronautics and in 1967 he bec...
Go to Profile#10122
William Playfair
1759 - 1823 (64 years)
William Playfair , a Scottish engineer and political economist, served as a secret agent on behalf of Great Britain during its war with France. The founder of graphical methods of statistics, Playfair invented several types of diagrams: in 1786 the line, area and bar chart of economic data, and in 1801 the pie chart and circle graph, used to show part-whole relations. As a secret agent, Playfair reported on the French Revolution and organized a clandestine counterfeiting operation in 1793 to collapse the French currency.
Go to Profile#10123
Heinrich Burkhardt
1861 - 1914 (53 years)
Heinrich Friedrich Karl Ludwig Burkhardt was a German mathematician. He famously was one of the two examiners of Albert Einstein's PhD thesis Eine neue Bestimmung der Moleküldimensionen. Of Einstein's thesis he stated: "The mode of treatment demonstrates fundamental mastery of the relevant mathematical methods" and "What I checked, I found to be correct without exception."
Go to Profile#10124
Michio Kuga
1928 - 1990 (62 years)
was a mathematician who received his Ph.D. from University of Tokyo in 1960. His work helped lead to a proof of the Ramanujan conjecture which partly follows from the proof of the Weil conjectures by .
Go to Profile#10125
Émilie du Châtelet
1706 - 1749 (43 years)
Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet was a French natural philosopher and mathematician from the early 1730s until her death due to complications during childbirth in 1749.
Go to Profile#10126
Gabrio Piola
1791 - 1850 (59 years)
Gabrio Piola was an Italian mathematician and physicist, member of the Lombardo Institute of Science, Letters and Arts. He studied in particular the mechanics of the continuous, linking his name to the tensors called Piola–Kirchhoff.
Go to Profile#10127
Christian Heinrich von Nagel
1803 - 1882 (79 years)
Christian Heinrich von Nagel was a German geometer. After attending the gymnasium, Nagel went in 1817 to Evangelical Seminaries of Maulbronn and Blaubeuren. From 1821 to 1825, he took a four-year course of theology at the Tübinger Stift. Soon after his graduation, he became interested in mathematics. He became mathematics and science teacher at the Lyceum and at the Secondary school in Tübingen. Already in 1826, he earned doctorate at the local Faculty of Philosophy on a theme De triangulis rectangulis ex algebraica aequatione construendis . Until 1830, he held post of a private lecturer in Tübingen.
Go to Profile#10128
Victor Gustave Robin
1855 - 1897 (42 years)
Victor Gustave Robin was a French mathematical analyst and applied mathematician who lectured in mathematical physics at the Sorbonne in Paris and also worked in the area of thermodynamics. He is known especially for the Robin boundary condition. The French Academy of Sciences awarded him the Prix Francœur for 1893 and again for 1897 and the Prix Poncelet for 1895.
Go to Profile#10129
Mehmet Nadir
1856 - 1927 (71 years)
Mehmet Nadir was a Turkish mathematician and educator. Early life He was born in Sakız island then a part of the Ottoman Empire, to a poor family. He was adopted by a sea captain, who would be his father-in-law in the future. He studied in the military high school in Bursa. Then, he went to Istanbul to study in the military college and then the naval academy. After completing his education with honours, he was appointed teacher of mathematics at the naval academy, and later at Darüşşafaka High School, one of the most prominent schools in Istanbul. In 1879, together with one of his friends, he travelled to England for advanced studies.
Go to Profile#10130
Alfred George Greenhill
1847 - 1927 (80 years)
Sir Alfred George Greenhill , was a British mathematician. George Greenhill was educated at Christ's Hospital School and from there he went to St John's College, Cambridge in 1866. In 1876, Greenhill was appointed professor of mathematics at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, London, UK. He held this chair until his retirement in 1908, when he was knighted.
Go to Profile#10131
Joseph Jean Baptiste Neuberg
1840 - 1926 (86 years)
Joseph Jean Baptiste Neuberg was a Luxembourger mathematician who worked primarily in geometry. Biography Neuberg was born on 30 October 1840 in Luxembourg City, Luxembourg. He first studied at a local school, the Athénée de Luxembourg, then progressed to Ghent University, studying at the École normale des Sciences of the science faculty. After graduation, Neuberg taught at several institutions. Between 1862 and 1865, he taught at the École Normale de Nivelle. For the next sixteen years, he taught at the Athénée Royal d'Arlon, though he also taught at the École Normale at Bruges from 1868 onw...
Go to Profile#10132
Takeo Nakasawa
1913 - 1946 (33 years)
Takeo Nakasawa was a Japanese mathematician who independently invented the theory of matroids, though his work was forgotten for many years. He published four papers of which the first three introduce the subject of matroid theory during 1935–1938, when he worked as an assistant in the Tokyo University of Arts and Sciences . After his last paper was published, he left for Manchuria at the age of 25 in 1938, then ruled by Japan, and worked as a bureaucrat there. With the defeat of Japan in 1945, the Soviets took control of Manchuria and Nakasawa was carted off to Siberia. He died of dystrophi...
Go to Profile#10133
Julius Weisbach
1806 - 1871 (65 years)
Julius Ludwig Weisbach was a German mathematician and engineer. Life and work Weisbach was born on 10 August 1806 in Mittelschmiedeberg . He studied at the Bergakademie in Freiberg from 1822 to 1826. After that, he studied with Carl Friedrich Gauss in Göttingen and with Friedrich Mohs in Vienna.
Go to Profile#10134
Edward Copson
1901 - 1980 (79 years)
Edward Thomas Copson FRSE was a British mathematician who contributed widely to the development of mathematics at the University of St Andrews, serving as Regius Professor of Mathematics amongst other positions.
Go to Profile#10135
Karl Zsigmondy
1867 - 1925 (58 years)
Karl Zsigmondy was an Austro-Hungarian mathematician. He was a son of Adolf Zsigmondy from Pozsony, Kingdom of Hungary and his mother was Irma von Szakmáry of Martonvásár, Kingdom of Hungary. He studied and worked at the University of Vienna. After his PhD, in 1890, he studied at the University of Berlin, University of Göttingen and at the Sorbonne in Paris, but came back to Vienna in 1894. He discovered Zsigmondy's theorem in 1892.
Go to Profile#10136
William Pitt Durfee
1855 - 1941 (86 years)
William Pitt Durfee was an American mathematician who introduced Durfee squares. He was a student of James Sylvester, and after obtaining his degree in 1883 he became a professor at Hobart college in 1884 and became dean in 1888. Durfee House and Durfee Hall are named in his honor.
Go to Profile#10137
Pavel Nekrasov
1853 - 1924 (71 years)
Pavel Alekseevich Nekrasov was a Russian mathematician and a Rector of the Imperial University of Moscow. Biography Nekrasov studied at the Orthodox theological seminary and from 1874 at the University of Moscow. There he was a pupil of the mathematician Nikolai Vasilievich Bugaev. Several years after his graduation, he became a Privatdozent there in 1885 and, in 1885 or 1886, an associate professor at Moscow University . In 1890 he received a full professorship. In 1893 he became rector. After his term as rector, he actually wanted to retire, but was not allowed to. He also taught 1885–1891 Probability Theory and Higher Mathematics at the Moscow Institute of Land Surveying.
Go to Profile#10138
Arthur Korn
1870 - 1945 (75 years)
Arthur Korn was a German physicist, mathematician and inventor. He was involved in the development of the fax machine, specifically the transmission of photographs or telephotography, known as the Bildtelegraph, related to early attempts at developing a practical mechanical television system.
Go to Profile#10139
Domninus of Larissa
420 - 480 (60 years)
Domninus of Larissa was an ancient Hellenistic Syrian mathematician. Life Domninus of Larissa, Syria was, simultaneously with Proclus, a pupil of Syrianus. Domninus is said to have corrupted the doctrines of Plato by mixing up with them his private opinions. This called forth a treatise from Proclus, intended as a statement of the genuine principles of Platonism. Marinus writes about a rivalry between Domninus and Proclus about how Plato's work should be interpreted, [Syrianus] offered to discourse to them on either the Orphic theories or the oracles; but Domninus wanted Orphism, Proclus the oracles, and they had not agreed when Syrianus died...
Go to Profile#10140
Nikolay Gur'yevich Chetaev
1902 - 1959 (57 years)
Nikolay Gur'yevich Chetaev was a Russian Soviet mechanician and mathematician. He was born in Karaduli, Laishevskiy uyezd, Kazan province, Russian Empire and died in Moscow, USSR. He belongs to the Kazan school of mathematics.
Go to Profile#10141
Pál Medgyessy
1919 - 1977 (58 years)
Pál Medgyessy was a mathematician, Doctor of Mathematical Sciences . Biography He graduated at the University of Budapest as a student of Eötvös József Collegium. He started his career as a trainee at the Institute of Medical Physics at the University of Debrecen. Due to his illness, his scientific work was slow to develop.
Go to Profile#10142
André Martineau
1930 - 1972 (42 years)
André Martineau was a French mathematician, specializing in mathematical analysis. Martineau studied at the École Normale Supérieure and received there, with Laurent Schwartz as supervisor, his Ph.D. with a thesis on analytic functionals and then worked for several years with Schwartz. Martineau became a professor at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis. Shortly before his 42nd birthday, he died of cancer.
Go to Profile#10143
Omar Khayyam
1048 - 1131 (83 years)
Ghiyāth al-Dīn Abū al-Fatḥ ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm Nīsābūrī , commonly known as Omar Khayyam , was a polymath, known for his contributions to mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, and poetry. He was born in Nishapur, the initial capital of the Seljuk Empire. He lived during the rule of the Seljuk dynasty, around the time of the First Crusade.
Go to Profile#10144
Hilda Phoebe Hudson
1881 - 1965 (84 years)
Hilda Phoebe Hudson was an English mathematician who worked on algebraic geometry, in particular on Cremona transformations. Hudson was interested in the link between mathematics and her religious beliefs.
Go to Profile#10145
William Brouncker, 2nd Viscount Brouncker
1620 - 1684 (64 years)
William Brouncker, 2nd Viscount Brouncker FRS was an Anglo-Irish peer and mathematician who served as the president of the Royal Society from 1662 to 1677. Best known for introducing Brouncker's formula, he also worked as a civil servant, serving as a commissioner in the Royal Navy. Brouncker was a friend and colleague of Samuel Pepys, and features prominently in the Pepys' diary.
Go to Profile#10146
Lucien Godeaux
1887 - 1975 (88 years)
Lucien Godeaux was a prolific Belgian mathematician. His total of more than 1000 papers and books, 669 of which are found in Mathematical Reviews, made him one of the most published mathematicians. He was the sole author of all but one of his papers.
Go to Profile#10147
Eduard Ritter von Weber
1870 - 1934 (64 years)
Eduard Ritter von Weber was a German mathematician and Bavarian Royal Privy Counselor. He was a member of the noble Bavarian knightly family Ritter von Weber. Von Weber attended the and afterward from 1888-1894 pursued studies in mathematics in Munich, Göttingen, and Paris. In 1893 he was awarded the Ph.D. from the University of Munich . Habilitation followed at the University of Munich in 1895, becoming full professor there in 1903. He moved to the University of Würzburg in 1907.
Go to Profile#10148
Johann II Bernoulli
1710 - 1790 (80 years)
Johann II Bernoulli was the youngest of the three sons of the Swiss mathematician Johann Bernoulli. He studied law and mathematics, and, after travelling in France, was for five years professor of eloquence in the university of his native city. In 1736 he was awarded the prize of the French Academy for his suggestive studies of aether. On the death of his father he succeeded him as professor of mathematics in the University of Basel. He was thrice a successful competitor for the prizes of the Academy of Sciences of Paris. His prize subjects were the capstan, the propagation of light, and the magnet.
Go to Profile#10149
C. P. Ramanujam
1938 - 1974 (36 years)
Chakravarthi Padmanabhan Ramanujam was an Indian mathematician who worked in the fields of number theory and algebraic geometry. He was elected a fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 1973. Like his namesake Srinivasa Ramanujan, Ramanujam also had a very short life.
Go to Profile#10150
Wilhelm Müller
1880 - 1968 (88 years)
Wilhelm Carl Gottlieb Müller was a German physicist, mathematician, and philosopher. He is best known as the successor of Arnold Sommerfeld as Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Munich.
Go to Profile