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,
#10451
William Wentworth
1790 - 1872 (82 years)
William Charles Wentworth was an Australian statesman, pastoralist, explorer, newspaper editor, lawyer, politician and author, who became one of the wealthiest and most powerful figures in colonial New South Wales.
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Antanas Baranauskas
1835 - 1902 (67 years)
Antanas Baranauskas was a Lithuanian poet, mathematician and Catholic bishop of Sejny. Baranauskas is best known as the author of the Lithuanian poem Anykščių šilelis. He used various pseudonyms, including A.B., Bangputys, Jurksztas Smalaūsis, Jurkštas Smalaūsis, and Baronas. He also wrote poetry in Polish.
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Jean-Charles della Faille
1597 - 1652 (55 years)
Jean-Charles della Faille , born in Antwerp, 1 March 1597 and died in Barcelona, 4 November 1652, was a Flemish Jesuit priest from Brabant, and a mathematician of repute. He was born in Antwerp, part of the Spanish Empire at that time. He was educated at the Jesuit school founded by François d'Aguilon, and joined the Jesuit order in 1613. He then went to a Jesuit college in Mechelen for two years. Afterwards, he came back to Antwerp where, as one of the best Mathematics' students of Grégoire de Saint-Vincent, he became also his disciple. In 1620, he went to Dole, also part of the Spanish Empire, to teach mathematics and learn theology in view of being ordained to the priesthood.
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William Farrar Smith
1824 - 1903 (79 years)
William Farrar Smith , known as "Baldy" Smith, was a Union general in the American Civil War, notable for attracting the extremes of glory and blame. He was praised for his gallantry in the Seven Days Battles and the Battle of Antietam, but was demoted for professional and political reasons after the disastrous defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg. As chief engineer of the Army of the Cumberland, he achieved recognition by restoring a supply line that saved that army from starvation and surrender, known as the "Cracker Line", that helped Union troops to success in the Chattanooga Campaign in the autumn of 1863.
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Franz Ignatz Cassian Hallaschka
1780 - 1847 (67 years)
Franz Ignatz Cassian Hallaschka; Czech: František Ignác Kassián Halaška was a Moravian physicist. In 1799 he became a member of the Piarists. He studied mathematics, physics, philosophy and theology at schools in Strassnitz, Nikolsburg and Kremsier, receiving his ordination in April 1804. In 1806 he taught classes in mathematics and physics at the Ordenscollegium in Nikolsburg, and during the following year, obtained his PhD at the University of Vienna. In 1808 he became a professor of physics in Brünn, where he established an observatory. From 1814 to 1833 he was a professor of physics at the University of Prague.
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George Minchin
1845 - 1914 (69 years)
George Minchin Minchin was an Irish mathematician and experimental physicist. He was a pioneer in the development of astronomical photometry: the first-ever celestial photometric measurements were made using photovoltaic cells that he developed for the purpose. He invented the absolute sine-electrometer and was a prolific author of mathematical and scientific textbooks and papers.
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František Nušl
1867 - 1951 (84 years)
František Nušl was a Czech astronomer and mathematician. Life After high school in Jindřichův Hradec, he studied physics and astronomy in Prague, where he met among others the future president of Czechoslovakia, T. G. Masaryk, the linguist Jan Gebauer and the historian Josef Goll, with whom he collaborated on Otto's encyclopedia. After 1893 he taught maths on various high schools and met with J. J. Frič, a manufacturer of precision instruments. In 1898 Frič bought a large piece of land in Ondřejov, 50 km south-east from Prague, where they established an astronomical observatory. Since 1904 Nu...
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Saul I. Gass
#10459
Maurice Gevrey
1884 - 1957 (73 years)
Maurice-Joseph Gevrey was a French mathematician working on partial differential equations. From 1919, he worked at the University of Burgundy, becoming a professor there in 1920. In 1918, he introduced what is now called Gevrey classes.
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Vincenzo Mollame
1848 - 1911 (63 years)
Vincenzo Mollame was an Italian mathematician. Mollame was privately tutored by Achille Sanni and then studied Mathematics at the University of Naples Federico II. After obtaining his degree, he became a high-school teacher, first at Benevento and after that at Naples, starting in 1878. He became a professor at the University of Catania in 1880 and remained there for the rest of his career, having retired in 1911, a few months before his death.
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Ernst Barlach
1870 - 1938 (68 years)
Ernst Heinrich Barlach was a German expressionist sculptor, medallist, printmaker and writer. Although he was a supporter of the war in the years leading to World War I, his participation in the conflict made him change his position, and he is mostly known for his sculptures protesting against the war. This created many conflicts during the rise of the Nazi Party, when most of his works were confiscated as degenerate art. Stylistically, his literary and artistic work would fall between the categories of twentieth-century Realism and Expressionism.
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Gaspar de Portolá
1716 - 1786 (70 years)
Gaspar de Portolá y Rovira was a Spanish military officer, best known for leading the Portolá expedition into California and for serving as the first Governor of the Californias. His expedition laid the foundations of important Californian cities like San Diego and Monterey, and bestowed names to geographic features throughout California, many of which are still in use.
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Martin J. Newell
1910 - 1985 (75 years)
Martin Joseph Newell was an Irish mathematician and educationalist, who served as President of University College Galway from 1960 to 1975. Martin J. Newell was born in 1910, and received his secondary education at St. Joseph's Patrician College, Galway, before entering University College Galway . He was auditor of the college's Literary and Debating Society for the 1928-1929 session, and graduated with a B.Sc. in 1929 and an M.Sc. in 1930, both with first class honours. He then proceeded to St. John's College, Cambridge, where he spent three years, eventually engaging in research on quantum theory with Ralph Fowler.
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Peter Redford Scott Lang
1850 - 1926 (76 years)
Sir Peter Redford Scott Lang VD FRSE was a Scottish mathematician and Regius Professor at the University of St Andrews. In the 1880s he instituted “Common Dinners” to bring the students together for joint meals . This had a major impact upon student social life and was thereafter adopted by several Scottish universities. In memory of this the University of St Andrews holds an annual Scott Lang Dinner.
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Bohuslav Diviš
1942 - 1976 (34 years)
Bohuslav Diviš was a Czech mathematician, who worked in the field of number theory. Bohuslav Diviš won the Czechoslovak and International Mathematical Olympiad in 1959 and then studied mathematics at Charles University in Prague . He wrote his thesis in 1966 and his doctorate in 1969 with a thesis on " superlattice points in multidimensional ellipsoids " at the Heidelberg University under Peter Roquette.
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Josef Anton Gmeiner
1862 - 1927 (65 years)
Josef Anton Gmeiner was an Austrian mathematician working in number theory and mathematical analysis. Gmeiner studied physics and mathematics at the University of Innsbruck from 1885. In 1890 he passed the examination qualifying him to teach at Gymnasien. After two years as an assistant at the University of Innsbruck's physical institute, he worked as an auxiliary teacher at secondary schools in various locations, including Graz, Fiume, Klagenfurt and Vienna. He earned his doctorate at the University of Innsbruck in 1895, under the joint supervision of Leopold Gegenbauer and Otto Stolz. He then found employment at the German-language Gymnasium in Pula.
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Jacob Milich
1501 - 1559 (58 years)
Jacob Milich was a German mathematician, physician and astronomer. He was born in Freiburg im Breisgau, where he received his education starting in 1513. He studied at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg im Breisgau under Desiderius Erasmus. He taught at Wittenberg, where he received an M.D. degree and became a professor of mathematics. His most important student there was Erasmus Reinhold. Among his works was a 1535 commentary on the second book of Pliny the Elder. He became Dean of the Wittenberg university's philosophical and medical branches, then served as Rector of the school on several occasions.
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Wang Zhenyi
1768 - 1797 (29 years)
Wang Zhenyi was a Chinese scientist from the Qing dynasty. She breached the feudal customs of the time, which hindered women's rights, by working to educate herself in subjects such as astronomy, mathematics, geography, and medicine. She was well known for her contributions in astronomy, mathematics, and poetry. She was an acclaimed scholar: "An extraordinary woman of 18th century China."
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Antoine de Laloubère
1600 - 1664 (64 years)
Antoine de Laloubère, also Lalouvère and other forms, , a Jesuit, born in Languedoc , is chiefly known for an incorrect solution of Pascal's problems on the cycloid, which he gave in 1660, but he has a better claim to distinction in having been the first mathematician to study the properties of the helix.
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Paul Poulet
1887 - 1946 (59 years)
Paul Poulet was a self-taught Belgian mathematician who made several important contributions to number theory, including the discovery of sociable numbers in 1918. He is also remembered for calculating the pseudoprimes to base two, first up to 50 million in 1926, then up to 100 million in 1938. These are now often called Poulet numbers in his honour . In 1925, he published forty-three new multiperfect numbers, including the first two known octo-perfect numbers. His achievements are particularly remarkable given that he worked without the aid of modern computers and calculators.
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Giacomo della Porta
1532 - 1602 (70 years)
Giacomo della Porta was an Italian architect and sculptor, who worked on many important buildings in Rome, including St. Peter's Basilica. He was born at Porlezza, Lombardy and died in Rome. Biography Giacomo Della Porta was born in the Duchy of Genoa into a family of sculptors. He was influenced by and collaborated with Michelangelo, and Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola, his teacher of architecture. With these two great masters, he became one of the most important architects in the history of the Roman Renaissance. In fact, after 1563 he carried out Michelangelo's plans for the rebuilding of the C...
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E. C. Rhodes
1892 - 1964 (72 years)
Edmund Cecil Rhodes , a statistician, was born in Yorkshire and named after Cecil Rhodes. He went to Bradford Grammar School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated as Wrangler in 1914. In 1924 he became reader at the London School of Economics, where he remained until he retired in 1958. He wrote for Biometrika and the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, and Edgeworth called him a "pathbreaker" .
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Karl Egil Aubert
1924 - 1990 (66 years)
Karl Egil Aubert was a Norwegian mathematician. Karl Aubert was born in Christiania , Norway. He was the brother of sociologist Vilhelm Aubert. He studied at the University of Oslo and took his Doctor of Science degree at the University of Paris in 1957. He stayed at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton from 1958 to 1960. From 1962 to 1990 he was a professor at the University of Oslo. He was also a visiting professor at the University of Washington in Seattle and Tufts University. He chaired the Norwegian Mathematics Society from 1960 to 1967.
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Mario Pascal
1896 - 1949 (53 years)
Mario Pascal was an Italian applied mathematician, specializing in fluid mechanics and aerodynamics. Pascal was born in Pavia into a family with origins in the French district of Tarascon, Mario Pascal was the son of the mathematician Ernesto Pascal, brother of the mathematician Alberto Pascal, and nephew of the Latinist Carlo Pascal. Mario Pascal studied mathematics at the University of Naples, where he received his laurea in 1919.
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Sotero Prieto Rodríguez
1884 - 1935 (51 years)
Sotero Prieto Rodríguez was a Mexican mathematician who taught at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Among his students were physicist Manuel Sandoval Vallarta, physicist and mathematician Carlos Graef Fernández, and engineer and Rector of UNAM Nabor Carrillo Flores.
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George Crabbe
1754 - 1832 (78 years)
George Crabbe was an English poet, surgeon and clergyman. He is best known for his early use of the realistic narrative form and his descriptions of middle and working-class life and people. In the 1770s, Crabbe began his career as a doctor's apprentice, later becoming a surgeon. In 1780, he travelled to London to make a living as a poet. After encountering serious financial difficulty and being unable to have his work published, he wrote to the statesman and author Edmund Burke for assistance. Burke was impressed enough by Crabbe's poems to promise to help him in any way he could. The two be...
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Jay Lovestone
1897 - 1990 (93 years)
Jay Lovestone was an American activist. He was at various times a member of the Socialist Party of America, a leader of the Communist Party USA, leader of a small oppositionist party, an anti-Communist and Central Intelligence Agency helper, and foreign policy advisor to the leadership of the AFL–CIO and various unions within it.
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Tilman Riemenschneider
1460 - 1531 (71 years)
Tilman Riemenschneider was a German sculptor and woodcarver active in Würzburg from 1483. He was one of the most prolific and versatile sculptors of the transition period between late Gothic and Renaissance, a master in stone and limewood.
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Friedrich Dingeldey
1859 - 1939 (80 years)
Friedrich Dingeldey was a German mathematician. Education and career After secondary education at Ludwig Georgs Gymnasium in Darmstadt, Dingeldey studied at the universities of Giessen, Leipzig and Munich.
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Hermann Karsten
1809 - 1877 (68 years)
Hermann Karsten was a German physicist and mineralogist. He was the son of mineralogist Karl Johann Bernhard Karsten and a cousin to botanist Gustav Karl Wilhelm Hermann Karsten . He initially studied law at the University of Bonn, then switched to mathematics and sciences, receiving his doctorate from the University of Berlin with the dissertation De crystallographiae mathematicae problematibus nonnullis . Afterwards, he continued his education at the Königsberg Observatory as a student of astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel. In 1830 he obtained his habilitation in mathematics and mineralogy from the University of Rostock, where in 1836 he became a full professor of mathematics.
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Howard G. Funkhouser
1898 - 1984 (86 years)
Howard Gray Funkhouser was an American mathematician, historian and associate professor of mathematics at the Washington and Lee University, and later at the Phillips Exeter Academy, particularly known for his early work on the history of graphical methods.
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Jonas Moore
1627 - 1679 (52 years)
Sir Jonas Moore, FRS was an English mathematician, surveyor, ordnance officer, and patron of astronomy. He took part in two of the most ambitious English civil engineering projects of the 17th century: draining the Great Level of the Fens and building the Mole at Tangier. In later life, his wealth and influence as Surveyor-General of the Ordnance enabled him to become a patron and driving force behind the establishment of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich.
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James Broun-Ramsay, 1st Marquess of Dalhousie
1812 - 1860 (48 years)
James Andrew Broun-Ramsay, 1st Marquess of Dalhousie , known as the Earl of Dalhousie between 1838 and 1849, was a Scottish statesman and colonial administrator in British India. He served as Governor-General of India from 1848 to 1856.
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Siegfried Heinrich Aronhold
1819 - 1884 (65 years)
Siegfried Heinrich Aronhold was a German mathematician who worked on invariant theory and introduced the symbolic method. He was born in Angerburg, East Prussia, and died, aged 64, in Berlin, Germany.
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Mary Esther Trueblood
1879 - 1939 (60 years)
Mary Esther Trueblood Paine was an American mathematician and sociologist who taught mathematics at Mount Holyoke College and the University of California, Berkeley. Early life and education Mary Trueblood was born on May 6, 1872, near Richmond, Indiana, the daughter of Rev. Alpheus Trueblood of the Society of Friends, and the niece of pacifist Benjamin Franklin Trueblood. She did her undergraduate studies at Earlham College in Richmond, graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1893, and became a mathematics and Latin teacher there. Her cousin, Thomas Trueblood, taught at the University of Mich...
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John Nelson Stockwell
1832 - 1920 (88 years)
John Nelson Robin Stockwell was an American astronomer and mathematician. Life and Work John Nelson Stockwell grew up with an uncle and aunt on a farm in Brecksville, Ohio. He showed early mathematical talent and became interested in astronomy at the age of 12, when he experienced his first lunar eclipse. Largely self-taught, he acquired outstanding mathematical knowledge and skill. From 1854 he worked as a human computer for the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey under Benjamin Apthorp Gould, with whom he had been friends for decades. In 1861 he was appointed to a similar position at the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C.
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Giulio Bisconcini
1880 - 1969 (89 years)
Giulio Ugo Bisconcini was an Italian mathematician, known for his work on the three-body problem. Education and career Biscocini received his laurea in mathematics in 1901 at the University of Padua. In 1906 he was appointed an academic assistant in analytic and projective geometry at the University of Rome. He was also a professor ordinarius at the commercial institute "Luigi di Savoia - Duca degli Abruzzi" in Rome. At the University of Rome he became a libero docente on rational mechanics, i.e. classical mechanics as a mathematical system based on axioms. At the beginning of his career he did research on number theory, but he soon began to specialize in rational mechanics.
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Rudolf Kochendörffer
1911 - 1980 (69 years)
Rudolf Paul Joachim Kochendörffer was a German mathematician who was a Professor of mathematics in the University of Rostock specialising in algebra, Group theory and theory of finite groups and their representation. During World War II, Kochendörffer worked as a mathematical cryptanalyst in the mathematical referat of Inspectorate 7/IV, that would later become part of Referat I of Group IV of the General der Nachrichtenaufklärung , the signals intelligence agency of the Wehrmacht and was known as a cryptographic tester of the Enigma cipher machine. Kochendörffer was a Member of the Scientif...
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Seth Ward
1617 - 1689 (72 years)
Seth Ward was an English mathematician, astronomer, and bishop. Early life He was born in Hertfordshire, and educated at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1636 and M.A. in 1640, becoming a Fellow in that year. In 1643 he was chosen university mathematical lecturer, but he was deprived of his fellowship next year for opposing the Solemn League and Covenant .
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Jan Śniadecki
1756 - 1830 (74 years)
Jan Śniadecki was a Polish mathematician, philosopher, and astronomer at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. Life Born in Żnin, Śniadecki studied at Kraków Jagellonian University and in Paris. He was rector of the Imperial University of Vilnius, a member of the Commission of National Education, and director of astronomical observatories at Kraków and Vilnius. He died at Jašiūnai Manor near Vilnius.
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Philipp Apian
1531 - 1589 (58 years)
Philipp Apian was a German mathematician and medic. The son of Petrus Apianus , he is also known as the cartographer of Bavaria. Life He was born in Ingolstadt as Philipp Bienewitz . At age eleven, the son of mathematician, astronomer and cartographer Peter Apian started to study mathematics at the University of Ingolstadt. Later, aged 18, he studied in Burgundy, Paris and Bourges.
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Hermann Wiener
1857 - 1939 (82 years)
Hermann Ludwig Gustav Wiener was a German mathematician. Education and career Hermann Wiener, whose father was the mathematician Christian Wiener, graduated from the Gymnasium in Karlsruhe. From 1876 to 1879 he studied mathematics and natural science at the Polytechnische Schule Karlsruhe . From 1879 to 1882 he studied at the Technical University of Munich under Felix Klein and Alexander von Brill and in 1881 at the University of Leipzig. In 1881 he received his Promotion in Munich in mathematics with a thesis Über Involutionen auf ebenen Curven under the supervision of Ludwig Seidel. In Karlsruhe in 1882 he passed the state examination for secondary school teachers.
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Max Gut
1898 - 1988 (90 years)
Max Gut was a Swiss mathematician, specializing in algebraic number theory and group theory. After completing his secondary education at the canton school in Zürich, Gut spent one semester studying law and business at the University of Geneva, but then followed his inclinations to study mathematics. He studied mathematics at the University of Zürich and ETH Zürich and then spent a year studying theoretical physics in Berlin. He received his promotion in 1924 from the University of Zürich under Rudolf Fueter. Gut received his habilitation qualification in the summer of 1929 from the Universit...
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Karl Hessenberg
1904 - 1959 (55 years)
Karl Adolf Hessenberg was a German mathematician and engineer. The Hessenberg matrix form is named after him. Education From 1925 to 1930 he studied electrical engineering at the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt and graduated with a diploma. From 1931 to 1932 he was an assistant to Alwin Walther at the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt, afterwards he worked at the power station in Worms, Germany. From 1936 he worked as an engineer at AEG, first in Berlin and later in Frankfurt. In 1940 he received his PhD from Alwin Walther at the Technische Hochschule in Darmstadt.
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Johann Jakob Ebert
1737 - 1805 (68 years)
Johann Jakob Ebert was an 18th-century German mathematician, astronomer, poet and author. Life He was born in Breslau in what was then part of Prussia on 20 November 1737. He was educated in Wurzen in western Saxony then returned to his home town to study at the Elisabeth Gymnasium.
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Étienne Halphen
1911 - 1954 (43 years)
Étienne Halphen was a French mathematician. He was known for his work in geometry, on probability distributions and information theory. Biography He was born as son of Germaine and Louis Halphen, a professor of history at Sorbonne, and grandson of Georges Henri Halphen and Mathieu Weill, both renowned mathematicians. He did his studies at École Normale Supérieure, where he received his agrégation in 1933. He worked as a teacher at Lycée de Sens , where he was granted an indefinite leave of absence after a year due to health issues. From 1936 to 1940 he was member of the Research Group on Calculus of Probabilities and Mathematical Statistics.
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Kenneth P. Williams
1887 - 1958 (71 years)
Kenneth Powers Williams was a professor of mathematics at Indiana University, a distinguished soldier, and a Reserve Officers' Training Corps commander. He was known as the "Father of ROTC" at Indiana University.
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Andrea del Verrocchio
1435 - 1488 (53 years)
Andrea del Verrocchio , born Andrea di Michele di Francesco de' Cioni, was a sculptor, Italian painter and goldsmith who was a master of an important workshop in Florence. He apparently became known as Verrocchio after the surname of his master, a goldsmith. Few paintings are attributed to him with certainty, but important painters were trained at his workshop. His pupils included Leonardo da Vinci, Pietro Perugino and Lorenzo di Credi. His greatest importance was as a sculptor and his last work, the Equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni in Venice, is generally accepted as a masterpiece.
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Robert Leroy Mercer
#10500
Ezechiel de Decker
1603 - 1643 (40 years)
Ezechiel de Decker was a Dutch surveyor and teacher of mathematics. Tables of logarithms In 1625, De Decker entered a contract with Adriaan Vlacq for the publication of several translations of books by John Napier, Edmund Gunter and Henry Briggs. A first book was published in 1626, with several translations done by Vlacq. A second book was made of the logarithms of the first 10000 numbers from Briggs' Arithmetica logarithmica published in 1624. The logarithms were shortened to 10 places. In 1627, De Decker's "Tweede deel" was published and it contained the logarithms of all numbers from 1 to 100000, to 10 places.
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