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,
#10501
Charles Newton Little
1858 - 1923 (65 years)
Charles Newton Little was an American mathematician and civil engineer. He was known for his expertise in knot theory, including the construction of a table of knots with ten or fewer crossings. Little's father was a missionary to Madurai, in India, where Little was born in 1858; his family returned with him to America in 1859. He earned an A.B. from the University of Nebraska in 1879, and continued at Nebraska's Institute of Mathematics and Civil Engineering, where he earned an M.A. in 1884. After this, he entered graduate study at Yale University, and completed his Ph.D. in 1885 under the s...
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Michele Cipolla
1880 - 1947 (67 years)
Michele Cipolla was an Italian mathematician, mainly specializing in number theory. He was a professor of Algebraic Analysis at the University of Catania and, later, the University of Palermo. He developed a theory for sequences of sets and Cipolla's algorithm for finding square roots modulo a prime number. He also solved the problem of binomial congruence.
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Jacques Marquette
1637 - 1675 (38 years)
Jacques Marquette, S.J. , sometimes known as Père Marquette or James Marquette, was a French Jesuit missionary who founded Michigan's first European settlement, Sault Sainte Marie, and later founded Saint Ignace. In 1673, Marquette, with Louis Jolliet, an explorer born near Quebec City, was the first European to explore and map the northern portion of the Mississippi River Valley.
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Vera Šnajder
1904 - 1976 (72 years)
Vera Šnajder was a Bosnian mathematician known for being the first Bosnian to publish a mathematical research paper and the first female dean in Yugoslavia. Šnajder was born on 2 February 1904, in Reljevo, one of the neighborhoods of Sarajevo; her father directed an Orthodox seminary. She began her university studies at the University of Belgrade in 1922, and graduated in 1928. She took a position as a schoolteacher at a girl's gymnasium in Sarajevo, and married , a Jewish philosopher who at that time was working at the same school.
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Claiborne Latimer
1893 - 1960 (67 years)
Claiborne Green Latimer was an American mathematician, known for the Latimer–MacDuffee theorem. Career Latimer earned his PhD in 1924 from the University of Chicago under Leonard Dickson with thesis Arithmetic of Generalized Quaternion Algebras. He was an assistant professor at Tulane University for 2 years, before becoming a mathematics professor at the University of Kentucky in 1927. After 20 years at the University of Kentucky, he resigned in 1947 and became a professor at Emory University. Latimer was an amateur photographer; some of his photographs are preserved in the archives of the Un...
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John Howard
1726 - 1790 (64 years)
John Howard FRS was a philanthropist and early English prison reformer. Birth and early life Howard was born in North London, either in Hackney or Enfield. His father, also John, was a wealthy upholsterer at Smithfield Market in the city. His mother Ann Pettitt, or Cholmley, died when he was five years old, and, described as a "sickly child", he was sent to live at Cardington, Bedfordshire, some fifty miles from London, where his father owned property. His father, a strict disciplinarian with strong religious beliefs, sent the young John to a school in Hertford run by John Worsley. He went...
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Tsuruichi Hayashi
1873 - 1935 (62 years)
Tsuruichi Hayashi was a Japanese mathematician and historian of Japanese mathematics. He was born in Tokushima, Japan. He was the founder of the Tohoku Mathematical Journal. Further reading External links The Extremal Chords of an Oval, by TSURUICHI HAYASHI, Sendai.A Remark on the integral Equation solved by Mr. Hirakawa, by TSURUICHI HAYASHI in Sendai.
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Carlotta Longo
1895 - Present (131 years)
Carlotta Longo born Carlotta Bresolin, was an Italian mathematical physicist who wrote a doctoral dissertation in 1918 related to general relativity, and then became a high school teacher in Rome. Longo's thesis, advised by Tullio Levi-Civita, presented what Ludwik Silberstein called a "geometrically elegant investigation" of electrostatics in general relativity.
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Yurii Sokolov
1896 - 1971 (75 years)
Yurii Dmitrievich Sokolov was a Soviet Ukrainian mathematician. Biography Sokolov was born on May 26, 1896, in Labinskaya Stanitsa , Russia. He studied at Kiev Institute of Peoples Education and graduated in 1921. He taught at the Applied Mathematics Division of the Academy. He completed his PhD from Kiev University. His doctorate advisor was Dmitry Grave. His doctorate thesis was in the area of mechanics of particles.
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Mary Graustein
1884 - 1972 (88 years)
Mary Graustein was a mathematician and university professor, and was the first woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics at Radcliffe College. Life and research Mary Florence Curtis was the oldest of five children born to Jennie Esther and Frank Abbott Curtis in Westminster, Massachusetts. She attended Fitchburg High School in Massachusetts and in 1902 she began her undergraduate studies at Wellesley College. She was a Wellesley Honors Scholar throughout her college years and received her Bachelor of Art's degree in 1906.
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Harold Thayer Davis
1892 - 1974 (82 years)
Harold Thayer Davis was a mathematician, statistician, and econometrician, known for the Davis distribution. Davis received in 1915 his A.B. from Colorado College, in 1919 his A.M. from Harvard University, and in 1926 his PhD under Edward Burr Van Vleck from the University of Wisconsin, after working there as a mathematics instructor from 1920 to 1923. From 1923 to 1937 he taught mathematics at the Indiana University Bloomington, becoming a professor there. From February to August 1937 he was acting research director of the Cowles Commission. Davis became a professor in 1937 at Northwestern University in the mathematics department and the chair of the department in 1942.
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Jakub Kresa
1648 - 1715 (67 years)
Jakub Kresa was a Czech mathematician. He was one of the most important Czech mathematicians of the Baroque era. Biography Early life Jakub Kresa was born into a smallholder's family at Smržice, not far from Prostějov. He studied at the Jesuit gymnasium in Brno. There he proved to be an extraordinary student. He not only displayed rare skills in mathematics, but he also became a polyglot, able to speak fluently Hebrew, German, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French and Portuguese, in addition to his Czech mother-tongue.
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William Davidson Niven
1842 - 1917 (75 years)
Sir William Davidson Niven was a Scottish mathematician and electrical engineer. After an early teaching career at Cambridge, Niven was Director of Studies at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, for thirty years.
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Harry Clinton Gossard
1884 - 1954 (70 years)
Harry Clinton Gossard was an American educator and geometer. He is credited with the discovery of a then unknown triangle center in 1916 to which John Conway assigned the name Gossard perspector in 1998.
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Benjamin Osgood Peirce
1854 - 1914 (60 years)
Benjamin Osgood Peirce was an American mathematician and a holder of the Hollis Chair of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Harvard from 1888 until his death in 1914. Early life Benjamin Osgood Peirce was born to M. and Benjamin Osgood Peirce on February 11, 1854, in Beverly, Massachusetts. In 1876, he graduated from Harvard College. He then received a PhD from the Leipzig University in 1879. He then studied in Berlin, Germany for another year.
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Susan Miller Rambo
1883 - 1977 (94 years)
Susan Miller Rambo was the second woman awarded a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and had a long teaching career at Smith College. Biography Born in Easton, Pennsylvania, Susan Rambo was the eldest child of George and Annie Rambo. Her father was a wholesale grocer. She graduated high school in Easton, then entered Smith College, located in Northampton, Massachusetts. After graduating from Smith, she taught high school mathematics in Hoosick Falls, New York until 1908.
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Mór Réthy
1846 - 1925 (79 years)
Mór Réthy was a Hungarian mathematician. Life and work Réthy attended the Technical Universities of Vienna and Budapest; he graduated in Budapest in 1870. After two years teaching in the Modern Technical School of Körmöcbánya, he obtained a grant to follow huis studies in Göttingen and Heidelberg, where he studied under Clebsch, Kirchhoff, Schering and Königsberger, obtaining his doctoral degree in Heidelberg in 1874.
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Joseph Valentin Boussinesq
1842 - 1929 (87 years)
Joseph Valentin Boussinesq was a French mathematician and physicist who made significant contributions to the theory of hydrodynamics, vibration, light, and heat. Biography From 1872 to 1886, he was appointed professor at Faculty of Sciences of Lille, lecturing differential and integral calculus at Institut industriel du Nord . From 1896 to his retirement in 1918, he was professor of mechanics at Faculty of Sciences of Paris.
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Elizabeth Williams
1895 - 1986 (91 years)
Elizabeth Williams was a British mathematician and educationist. Life Williams was born on 29 January 1895 in Pimlico, London. She studied in Chelsea and Forest Gate during her childhood, and at the age of 16 began attending Bedford College, University of London for a college degree. At Bedford, one of her mentors was Alfred North Whitehead. She became a grammar school teacher, but had to stop teaching when she became married in 1922. Because of this situation, she founded her own school in North London with her husband, and then in 1930 she took a position in education at King's College Lo...
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Laura Guggenbühl
1901 - 1985 (84 years)
Laura Guggenbühl was an American mathematician, one of the earliest women in the U.S. to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics, known for her work in triangle geometry and the history of mathematics. Life Guggenbühl was born in New York City, to a family of Swiss immigrants; her father, a butcher and baker, died by 1920. She graduated from Hunter College in 1922 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics, after also taking some classes at Columbia University and New York University. She became an instructor at Hunter College while earning a master's degree and Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr College in 1924 and 1926 respectively.
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Charles Riquier
1853 - 1929 (76 years)
Charles Edmond Alfred Riquier was a French mathematician. Riquier matriculated in 1873 at the École Normale Supérieure where he received his agrégé in mathematics in 1876. He taught from 1876 to 1878 at the Lycée de Brest and then from 1878 to 1886 at the Lycée de Caen and from 1886 to 1924 at the Université de Caen, where he retired as a professor emeritus.
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Marion Elizabeth Stark
1894 - 1982 (88 years)
Marion Elizabeth Stark was an American mathematician. She was one of the first women to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics. Education and career She got her A.B. in 1916, and her A.M. in 1917, both from Brown University. In 1917, she became the professor of mathematics Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina. In autumn 1919, she started teaching in Wellesley College as a part-time instructor, while attending courses of Helen Abbot Merrill and Mabel M. Young. In the 1923 summer quarter, and, supported by a fellowship, in autumn 1924 through summer 1925, she studied at the University of Chicago where she received her Ph.D.
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Alice Roth
1905 - 1977 (72 years)
Alice Roth was a Swiss mathematician who invented the Swiss cheese set and made significant contributions to approximation theory. She was born, lived and died in Bern, Switzerland. Life Alice attended the Höhere Töchterschule of Zürich, a municipal school for higher education for girls. After graduation in 1924 she studied mathematics, physics and astronomy at ETH Zurich under George Pólya. She graduated with a diploma in 1930. Her Master's thesis was titled "Extension of Weierstrass's Approximation Theorem to the complex plane and to an infinite interval". After that, she was a teacher at multiple high schools for girls in the Zurich area while continuing working with Pólya at ETH.
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Nora Calderwood
1896 - 1985 (89 years)
Nora Isobel Calderwood was a Scottish professor and mathematician. Early life and education Calderwood was born in 1896 in Blairgowrie, Perthshire, in Scotland. Her father Daniel Scott Calderwood was the headmaster of the Blairgowrie Public School. Her family then moved to Edinburgh when she was still young, after her father was appointed as the headmaster of the Church of Scotland Normal School.
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Robert Pollock Gillespie
1903 - 1977 (74 years)
Robert Pollock Gillespie FRSE was a Scottish mathematician. He was twice President of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society . He published several important books on mathematics. Life He was born on 21 November 1903 in Johnstone, Renfrewshire the son of Thomas Gillespie a butcher and his wife, Jane Pollock. He was raised at Ashcot on Kilbarchan Road in Johnstone. He was educated locally then at Paisley Grammar School where he was dux. He then won a bursary to study Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Glasgow University graduating MA BSc in 1924. He did further postgraduate studies under E. W....
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Mary Clem
1905 - 1979 (74 years)
Mary A. Clem was an American mathematician, and a human computer. She was a staff member at Iowa State University, and was recognized for inventing the “zero check” technique for detecting errors.
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Louise Hay
1935 - 1989 (54 years)
Louise Hay was a French-born American mathematician. Her work focused on recursively enumerable sets and computational complexity theory, which was influential with both Soviet and US mathematicians in the 1970s. When she was appointed head of the mathematics department at the University of Illinois at Chicago, she was the only woman to head a math department at a major research university in her era.
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Johann Ernst Fabri
1755 - 1825 (70 years)
Johann Ernst Fabri was a German geographer and statistician. Fabri was born in Oels, Silesia. In 1776, he began his studies in theology at the University of Halle, but his focus soon turned to geography and history. Later, he served as privat-docent at the University of Göttingen, where he was influenced by distinguished scholars that included Johann Christoph Gatterer, August Ludwig von Schlözer and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach.
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Bruno Abakanowicz
1852 - 1900 (48 years)
Bruno Abdank-Abakanowicz was a Polish mathematician, inventor, and electrical engineer. Life Abakanowicz was born in 1852 in the Russian Empire . After graduating from the Riga Technical University, Abakanowicz passed his habilitation and began an assistantship at the Technical University of Lwów. In 1881, he moved to France where he purchased a villa in Parc St. Maur on the outskirts of Paris.
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José Anastácio da Cunha
1744 - 1787 (43 years)
José Anastácio da Cunha was a Portuguese mathematician. He is best known for his work on the theory of equations, algebraic analysis, plain and spherical trigonometry, analytical geometry, and differential calculus.
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Konstantinos Tzechanis
1740 - 1800 (60 years)
Konstantinos Tzechanis was a philosopher, mathematician and poet from the 18th century Aromanian center of Moscopole. Life Tzechanis was born in Moscopole , an 18th-century cultural and commercial metropolis of the Balkans and center of Greek culture. His ethnicity is disputed, with various sources claiming that he is of Albanian, Aromanian or Greek origin.
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Emil Hilb
1882 - 1929 (47 years)
Emil Hilb was a German-Jewish mathematician who worked in the fields of special functions, differential equations, and difference equations. He was one of the authors of the Enzyklopädie der mathematischen Wissenschaften , contributing on the topics of trigonometric series and differential equations. He wrote a book on Lamé functions.
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Eduardo Torroja Caballe
1847 - 1918 (71 years)
Eduardo Torroja Caballé was a Spanish mathematician born in the city of Tarragona, Catalonia, Spain. Biography His father was Juan Torroja, a professor of Geography and History. He continued his studies at Complutense University, where he obtained the degrees of Bachelor of Science , Masters of Science , Architect and Doctor of Science in Mathematics.
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Tony Smith
1912 - 1980 (68 years)
Anthony Peter Smith was an American sculptor, visual artist, architectural designer, and a noted theorist on art. He is often cited as a pioneering figure in American Minimalist sculpture. Education and early life Smith was born in South Orange, New Jersey, to a waterworks manufacturing family started by his grandfather and namesake, A. P. Smith. Tony contracted tuberculosis around 1916, which lasted through much of elementary school. In an effort to speed his recovery, protect his immune system, and protect his siblings, his family constructed a one-room prefabricated house in the backyard. ...
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W. S. Gilbert
1836 - 1911 (75 years)
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his collaboration with composer Arthur Sullivan, which produced fourteen comic operas. The most famous of these include H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and one of the most frequently performed works in the history of musical theatre, The Mikado. The popularity of these works was supported for over a century by year-round performances of them, in Britain and abroad, by the repertory company that Gilbert, Sullivan and their producer Richard D'Oyly Carte founded, the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.
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Kim Philby
1912 - 1988 (76 years)
Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby was a British intelligence officer and a spy for the Soviet Union. In 1963, he was revealed to be a member of the Cambridge Five, a spy ring which had divulged British secrets to the Soviets during World War II and in the early stages of the Cold War. Of the five, Philby is believed to have been the most successful in providing secret information to the Soviets.
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Michelangelo Ricci
1619 - 1682 (63 years)
Michelangelo Ricci was an Italian mathematician and a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. Biography Michelangelo Ricci was born on 30 January 1619 in Rome, then capital of the Papal States, to a family of low social standing that originated in Bergamo.
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Richard of Wallingford
1292 - 1336 (44 years)
Richard of Wallingford was an English mathematician, astronomer, horologist, and cleric who made major contributions to astronomy and horology while serving as abbot of St Albans Abbey in Hertfordshire.
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Grace Marie Bareis
1875 - 1962 (87 years)
Grace Marie Bareis was an American mathematician and educator who became the first person to receive a doctorate degree in mathematics from Ohio State University. Bareis was an assistant professor at Ohio State University where she taught for 40 years until her eventual retirement in 1946.
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Adolph Göpel
1812 - 1847 (35 years)
Adolph Göpel was a German mathematician who wrote the first paper on hyperelliptic functions and who introduced Göpel tetrads. Life and work His uncle was a diplomat so he attended his first mathematical lectures in Italy when he was 13. He entered the Friedrich Wilhelm University in 1829 and received his doctorate in 1835. He did not correspond with many mathematicians, excepting August Leopold Crelle. After his death some of his works were published in Crelle's Journal.
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René Gateaux
1889 - 1914 (25 years)
René Eugène Gateaux was a French mathematician. He is principally known for the Gateaux derivative, used in the calculus of variations and in the theory of optimal control. He died in combat during World War I. Paul Lévy produced a posthumous edition of his works, extending them considerably, in his Leçons d'analyse fonctionnelle of 1922.
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Giovanni Sansone
1888 - 1979 (91 years)
Giovanni Sansone was an Italian mathematician, known for his works on mathematical analysis, on the theory of orthogonal functions and on the theory of ordinary differential equations. He was an Invited Speaker of the ICM in Bologna in 1928.
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Charles Péguy
1873 - 1914 (41 years)
Charles Pierre Péguy was a French poet, essayist, and editor. His two main philosophies were socialism and nationalism; by 1908 at the latest, after years of uneasy agnosticism, he had become a believing Roman Catholic. From that time, Catholicism strongly influenced his works.
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Yaroslav Lopatynskyi
1906 - 1981 (75 years)
Yaroslav Borysovych Lopatynskyi was a Soviet mathematician. Born in Tbilisi, Lopatinskii acquired wide acclaim for his contributions to the theory of differential equations. He is especially known for his condition of stability for boundary-value problems in elliptic equations and for initial boundary-value problems in evolution PDEs.
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Charles L. Bouton
1869 - 1922 (53 years)
Charles Leonard Bouton was an American mathematician. Early life and education Charles L. Bouton was born in St. Louis, Missouri, where his father was an engineer. He studied in the public schools of St. Louis. He later received a Master of Science degree from Washington University in St. Louis. In 1898 he received his doctorate from Leipzig University. His Ph.D. advisor was Sophus Lie.
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Frances Harshbarger
1902 - 1987 (85 years)
Frances Harshbarger was an American mathematician. Education She obtained her B.A. with honors in 1923 at Grinnell College, and went to West Virginia University to serve as a half-time teacher and simultaneously work on her mathematics graduation; in 1925 she finished her M.A. After that she became head of the mathematics department of Potomac State College in Keyser, West Virginia. In 1927 to 1929, she was an assistant, in 1929 to 1930 a fellow, at the University of Illinois. In 1930, she obtained her Ph.D. in mathematics with a thesis in algebraic geometry, advised by A. B. Coble. She was one of the first American women who obtained a mathematics Ph.D.
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Arthur Jolliffe
1871 - 1944 (73 years)
Arthur Ernest Jolliffe was a British mathematician. Life Arthur Ernest Jolliffe was born at 39 Cardigan Street in the Jericho area of Oxford on 23 January 1871, the youngest son of Henry Jolliffe and Anne Speller. His father, who was a house painter, died just after Arthur's fifth birthday, and his mother went out to service: in 1881 when she was aged 50 she was working for a lady at 11 Warnborough Road in north Oxford, and Arthur lived with her there.
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Johann Baptist Cysat
1585 - 1657 (72 years)
Johann Baptist Cysat was a Swiss Jesuit mathematician and astronomer, after whom the lunar crater Cysatus is named. He was born in Lucerne, as the eighth of 14 children, to cartographer, historian and folklorist Renward Cysat .
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Carl Ludvig Godske
1906 - 1970 (64 years)
Carl Ludvig Schreiner Godske was a Norwegian mathematician and meteorologist. He was born in Bindal. He was a member of the Bergen School of Meteorology, working as meteorologist in Bergen from 1938, and appointed professor at the University of Bergen from 1946. Among his publications is Dynamic Meteorology and Weather Forecasting from 1957. He was also a pioneer in the application of electronic computers in Norway. He chaired the Norwegian Geophysical Society from 1956 to 1957 and was a fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters from 1937. He was decorated Knight, First Class of the Order of St.
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Hildegard Rothe-Ille
1899 - 1942 (43 years)
Hildegard Rothe-Ille, born Hildegard Ille, , was a German mathematician. Career She was one of Issai Schur’s doctoral students. According to Alexander Soifer, “Van der Waerden walked away from Ramseyan prehistory. Issai Schur, on the other hand, continued to produce Ramseyan mathematics, and moreover directed and inspired his PhD students Richard Rado, Hildegard Ille and Alfred Brauer to do the same.”
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