The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
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List of the most influential people in Mathematics,
#10751
Stanisława Nikodym
1897 - 1988 (91 years)
Stanisława Nikodym was a Polish mathematician and artist. She is known for her results in continuum theory, especially on Jordanian continuums. Life Stanisława Dorota Liliental was born in Warsaw to Regina Lilientalowa, an ethnographer, and Nathan Liliental. Stanisława had a younger brother, Antoni . She attended Helena Skłodowska-Szalay's primary school, and went to Warsaw's private school for women for 7 years. She joined the Warsaw University in 1916, reading mathematics under Stefan Mazurkiewicz, Zygmunt Janiszewski, and Wacław Sierpiński
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Igor Dmitrievich Ado
1910 - 1983 (73 years)
Igor Dmitrievich Ado was a Soviet mathematician. He was born into the family of a state employee and he lived in Kazan till the end of his life. After leaving school Igor Ado entered the faculty of mathematics and physics at Kazan State University, named after V. I. Lenin, from which he graduated successfully in 1931. He was admitted to the PhD study at the Chair of Mathematics under the supervision of Nikolai Chebotaryov. Igor Ado finished successfully his PhD study by preparing a scientific qualifying work for the degree of a Candidate of physical and mathematical sciences. The University board awarded him for this work the degree of Doctor nauk of physic-mathematical sciences.
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Alfred Barnard Basset
1854 - 1930 (76 years)
Alfred Barnard Basset FRS was a British mathematician working on algebraic geometry, electrodynamics and hydrodynamics. In fluid dynamics, the Basset force—also known as the Boussinesq–Basset force—describes history effects on the force experienced by a body in unsteady motion . He also worked on Bessel functions: the term Basset function was at one time used for modified Bessel functions of the second kind but is now obsolete.
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Victor Puiseux
1820 - 1883 (63 years)
Victor Alexandre Puiseux was a French mathematician and astronomer. Puiseux series are named after him, as is in part the Bertrand–Diquet–Puiseux theorem. His work on algebraic functions and uniformization makes him a direct precursor of Bernhard Riemann, for what concerns the latter's work on this subject and his introduction of Riemann surfaces. He was also an accomplished amateur mountaineer. A peak in the French alps, which he climbed in 1848, is named after him.
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Wealthy Babcock
1895 - 1990 (95 years)
Wealthy Consuelo Babcock was an American mathematician. She was awarded a Ph.D. from the University of Kansas and had a long teaching career at that institution. Early life and education Wealthy Consuelo Babcock was born in Washington County, Kansas, the second child of Ella Babcock and Cassius Lincoln Babcock. She graduated in 1913 from Washington County High School and taught for two years in one-room country schools in Washington County. The following year, she matriculated at the University of Kansas where she was a member of the women's basketball team. After receiving her Bachelor of Arts in 1919, she taught for a year at Neodesha High School in southeastern Kansas.
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Ronald DiPerna
1947 - 1989 (42 years)
Ronald J. DiPerna was an American mathematician, who worked on nonlinear partial differential equations. Ronald Diperna did his undergraduate studies at Tufts University before being advised to attend graduate school by Professor George Leger. In 1972 DiPerna received from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences his Ph.D. under James Glimm with thesis Global solutions to a class of nonlinear hyperbolic systems. He held academic positions at Brown University, the University of Michigan, the University of Wisconsin, and Duke University, before he became in 1985 a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
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John Robison
1739 - 1805 (66 years)
John Robison FRSE was a British physicist and mathematician. He was a professor of natural philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. A member of the Edinburgh Philosophical Society when it received its royal warrant, he was appointed as the first general secretary to the Royal Society of Edinburgh . Robison invented the siren and also worked with James Watt on an early steam car. Following the French Revolution, Robison became disenchanted with elements of the Enlightenment. He authored Proofs of a Conspiracy in 1797—a polemic accusing Freemasonry of being infiltrated by Weishaupt's Order of the Illuminati.
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Eduard Weyr
1852 - 1903 (51 years)
Eduard Weyr was a Czech mathematician now chiefly remembered as the discoverer of a certain canonical form for square matrices over algebraically closed fields. Weyr presented this form briefly in a paper published in 1885. He followed it up with a more elaborate treatment in a paper published in 1890. This particular canonical form has been named as the Weyr canonical form in a paper by Shapiro published in The American Mathematical Monthly in 1999. Previously, this form has been variously called as modified Jordan form, reordered Jordan form, second Jordan form, and H-form.
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Georg Landsberg
1865 - 1912 (47 years)
Georg Landsberg was a German mathematician, known for his work in the theory of algebraic functions and on the Riemann–Roch theorem. The Takagi–Landsberg curve, a fractal that is the graph of a nowhere-differentiable but uniformly continuous function, is named after Teiji Takagi and him.
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Gustav de Vries
1866 - 1934 (68 years)
Gustav de Vries was a Dutch mathematician, who is best remembered for his work on the Korteweg–de Vries equation with Diederik Korteweg. He was born on 22 January 1866 in Amsterdam, and studied at the University of Amsterdam with the distinguished physical chemist Johannes van der Waals and with Korteweg. While doing his doctoral research De Vries supported himself by teaching at the Royal Military Academy in Breda and at the "cadettenschool" in Alkmaar . Under Korteweg's supervision De Vries completed his doctoral dissertation: Bijdrage tot de kennis der lange golven, Acad. proefschrift, Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1894, 95 pp, Loosjes, Haarlem.
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Tirukkannapuram Vijayaraghavan
1902 - 1955 (53 years)
Tirukkannapuram Vijayaraghavan was an Indian mathematician from the Madras region. He worked with G. H. Hardy when he went to Oxford in mid-1920s on Pisot–Vijayaraghavan numbers. He was a fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences elected in the year 1934. His father was a pandit.
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John Flinders Petrie
1907 - 1972 (65 years)
John Flinders Petrie was an English mathematician. He met the geometer Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter as a student, beginning a lifelong friendship. They collaborated in discovering infinite warped polyhedra and warped polyhedra in the fourth dimension, analogous to the previous ones. In addition to being the first to realize the importance of the warped polygon that now bears his name, his skills as a draftsperson are still appreciated.
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Isaac Greenwood
1702 - 1745 (43 years)
Isaac Greenwood was an American mathematician. He was the first Hollisian Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Harvard College. Biography He graduated at Harvard in 1721, and was instrumental in the smallpox inoculation controversy of that year, speaking out in favour of inoculation. He travelled to London, where he lodged with John Theophilus Desaguliers and attended his lectures on Newtonian Experimental Philosophy. He later introduced the subject in the American Colonies and his book An Experimental Course of Mechanical Philosophy, published in Boston in 1726, owed much to Desaguliers.
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William Francis Pohl
1937 - 1988 (51 years)
William Francis Pohl was an American mathematician, specializing in differential geometry and known for the Clifton–Pohl torus. Pohl received from the University of Chicago his B.A in 1957 and his M.A.1958. He completed his Ph.D. at Berkeley in 1961 under the direction of Shiing-Shen Chern with dissertation Differential Geometry of Higher Order. His dissertation was published in 1962 in the journal Topology and has received over 120 citations in the mathematical literature. He was a member of the mathematics faculty at the University of Minnesota from September 1964 until his untimely death.
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Alexander McAulay
1863 - 1931 (68 years)
Alexander McAulay was the first professor of mathematics and physics at the University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania. He was also a proponent of dual quaternions, which he termed "octonions" or "Clifford biquaternions".
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Giuseppe Bruno
1828 - 1893 (65 years)
Giuseppe Bruno was an Italian mathematician, professor of geometry in the university of Turin. Life and work Bruno has born in a very poor family, but he won a stipend to study in the University of Turin, where he graduated in philosophy in 1846. The following years he was professor at secondary level, while he studied to graduate in engineering and to doctorate in mathematics .
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Yvon Villarceau
1813 - 1883 (70 years)
Antoine-Joseph Yvon Villarceau was a French astronomer, mathematician, and engineer. He constructed an equatorial meridian-instrument and an isochronometric regulator for the Paris Observatory. He wrote Mécanique Céleste. Expose des Méthodes de Wronski et Composantes des Forces Perturbatrices suivant les Axes Mobiles and Sur l'établissement des arches de pont, envisagé au point de vue de la plus grande stabilité .
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Major Greenwood
1880 - 1949 (69 years)
Major Greenwood FRS was an English epidemiologist and statistician. Biography Major Greenwood junior was born in Shoreditch in London's East End, the only child of Major Greenwood, a physician in general practice there and his wife Annie, daughter of Peter Lodwick Burchell, F.R.C.S., M.B., L.S.A. The Greenwood family is recorded back to the twelfth century in the person of Wyomarus Greenwode, of Greenwode Leghe, near Heptonstall, Yorkshire, caterer to the Empress Maude in 1154. Greenwood was educated on the classical side at Merchant Taylors' School and went on to study medicine at University College London and the London Hospital.
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Federico Amodeo
1859 - 1946 (87 years)
Federico Amodeo was an Italian mathematician, specializing in projective geometry, and a historian of mathematics. He received in 1883 his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Naples, where he became an instructor and from 1885 to 1923 taught projective geometry. He also taught as a professor in Naples at the Istituto Tecnico "Gianbattista Della Porta" from 1890 to 1923, when he retired. In 1890–1891 he visited the geometers at the University of Turin.
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Agnes Sime Baxter
1870 - 1917 (47 years)
Agnes Sime Baxter was a Canadian-born mathematician. She studied at Dalhousie University, receiving her BA in 1891, and her MA in 1892. She received her Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1895; her dissertation was "On Abelian integrals", a resume of Neumann's Abelian integral with comments and applications."
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Ziauddin Ahmad
1878 - 1947 (69 years)
Sir Ziauddin Ahmad was an Indian mathematician, parliamentarian, logician, natural philosopher, politician, political theorist, educationist and a scholar. He was a member of the Aligarh Movement and was a professor, principal of MAO College, first pro vice-chancellor, vice chancellor and rector of Aligarh Muslim University, India.
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Yoshida Mitsuyoshi
1598 - 1672 (74 years)
Yoshida Mitsuyoshi, also known as Yoshida Kōyū, was a Japanese mathematician in the Edo period. His popular and widely disseminated published work made him the most well known writer about mathematics in his lifetime.
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Léopold Leau
1868 - 1943 (75 years)
Léopold Leau was a French mathematician, primarily known for his ties to international auxiliary languages. The Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language was founded on 7 January 1901 on Leau's initiative. He co-wrote with Prof. Louis Couturat the monumental Histoire de la Langue Universelle and its supplement Les Nouvelles Langues Internationales .
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Victor Vâlcovici
1885 - 1970 (85 years)
Victor Vâlcovici was a Romanian mechanician and mathematician. Biography Born into a modest family in Galați, he graduated first in his class in 1904 from Nicolae Bălcescu High School in Brăila. Entering the University of Bucharest on a scholarship, he attended its faculty of sciences, where he had as teachers Spiru Haret and Gheorghe Țițeica. After graduating in 1907 with a degree in mathematics, he taught high school for two years before leaving for University of Göttingen on another scholarship to pursue a doctorate in mathematics. He wrote his thesis under the direction of Ludwig Prandtl...
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Henry Forder
1889 - 1981 (92 years)
Henry George Forder was a New Zealand mathematician. Academic career Born in Shotesham All Saints, near Norwich, he won a scholarships first to a Grammar school and then to University of Cambridge. After teaching mathematics at a number of schools, he was appointed to the chair of mathematics at Auckland University College in New Zealand in 1933. He was very critical of the state of the New Zealand curriculum and set about writing a series of well received textbooks.
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Rudolf Fueter
1880 - 1950 (70 years)
Karl Rudolf Fueter was a Swiss mathematician, known for his work on number theory. Biography After a year of graduate study of mathematics in Basel, Fueter began study in 1899 at the University of Göttingen and completed his Promotion in 1903 with dissertation Der Klassenkörper der quadratischen Körper und die komplexe Multiplikation under David Hilbert. After his Promotion, Fueter studied for 1 year in Paris, 3 months in Vienna, and 6 months in London. In 1905 he completed his Habilitierung at the University of Marburg. Fueter worked as a docent in 1907/1908 at Marburg and in the winter of 1907/1908 at the Bergakademie Clausthal.
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Edward Mann Langley
1851 - 1933 (82 years)
Edward Mann Langley was a British mathematician, author of mathematical textbooks and founder of the Mathematical Gazette. He created the mathematical problem known as Langley’s Adventitious Angles.
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Axel Sophus Guldberg
1838 - 1913 (75 years)
Axel Sophus Guldberg was a Norwegian mathematician. Biography Born in Christiania , Guldberg was the second oldest out of 11 siblings. He and his siblings were initially homeschooled, but he and his older brother, Cato Maximilian Guldberg, later began going to school in Fredrikstad, where they lived together with relatives. He completed his examen artium in 1856, cand.real. in 1863 and dr.philos. in 1867.
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William Garnett
1850 - 1932 (82 years)
Dr. William Garnett was a British professor and educational adviser, specialising in physics and mechanics and taking a special interest in electric street lighting. Early years Garnett was born in Portsea, Portsmouth, England in 1850, the son of William Garnett. In January 1863 he entered the City of London School, where he was a pupil of Thomas Hall. In the May 1866 examination, he obtained the first Royal Exhibition, tenable at the Royal School of Mines and College of Chemistry, and during the winter session, he studied under Dr. Edward Frankland and Professor John Tyndall, but in the following year, resigned the Exhibition and returned to the City of London School.
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Ernest Shackleton
1874 - 1922 (48 years)
Ernest Henry Shackleton was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic. He was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
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John Howard Van Amringe
1836 - 1915 (79 years)
John Howard Van Amringe was an American educator and mathematician. Life and career Van Amringe was born in Philadelphia on April 3, 1835. He was a son of William Frederick Van Amringe and Susan Budd Van Amringe . Among his siblings was brother, Thomas Budd Van Amringe.
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Théophile Pépin
1826 - 1905 (79 years)
Jean François Théophile Pépin was a French mathematician. Born in Cluses, Haute-Savoie, he became a Jesuit in 1846, and from 1850 to 1856 and from 1862 to 1871 he was Professor of Mathematics at various Jesuit colleges. He was appointed Professor of Canon Law in 1873, moving to Rome in 1880. He died in Lyon at the age of 77.
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Florence Eliza Allen
1876 - 1960 (84 years)
Florence Eliza Allen was an American mathematician and women's suffrage activist. In 1907 she became the second woman to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and the fourth Ph.D. overall from that department.
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James Harkness
1864 - 1923 (59 years)
James Harkness was a Canadian mathematician, born in Derby, England, and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge with a B.A. in 1885 and an M.A. in 1889. Coming early to the United States, he was connected with Bryn Mawr College from 1888 to 1903, for the last seven years as professor of mathematics. Harkness complemented Scott with a course on "Abelian Integrals and Functions" that also drew on the latest literature in German — the work of Alfred Clebsch and Paul Gordan, Bernhard Riemann, Hermann Amandus Schwarz and others — and "aimed to prepare the students for the recent Memoirs of Felix...
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Jekuthiel Ginsburg
1889 - 1957 (68 years)
Jekuthiel Ginsburg was a professor of mathematics at Yeshiva University. He established the journal Scripta Mathematica. He also was honored as a fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences.
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Dmitry Morduhai-Boltovskoi
1876 - 1952 (76 years)
Dmitry Dmitrievich Morduhai-Boltovskoi was a Russian mathematician, best known for his work in analysis, differential Galois theory, number theory, hyperbolic geometry, and history of mathematics. His annotated translation of Euclid's Elements in Russian is also well-regarded.
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Adolf Piltz
1855 - 1940 (85 years)
Adolf Piltz was a German mathematician who contributed to number theory. Piltz was arguably the first to formulate a generalized Riemann hypothesis, in 1884. Notes Further reading External links
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Paul Guldin
1577 - 1643 (66 years)
Paul Guldin was a Swiss Jesuit mathematician and astronomer. He discovered the Guldinus theorem to determine the surface and the volume of a solid of revolution. Guldin was noted for his association with the German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler. Guldin composed a critique of Cavalieri's method of Indivisibles.
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Ervand Kogbetliantz
1888 - 1974 (86 years)
Ervand George Kogbetliantz was an Armenian-American mathematician and the first president of the Yerevan State University. He left Russia in 1918. He received a Doctorate in mathematics from the University of Paris in 1923. His mathematical work was mainly on infinite series, on the theory of orthogonal polynomials, on an algorithm for singular value decomposition which bears his name, on algorithms for the evaluation of elementary functions in computers, and the enumeration of prime elements of the Gaussian integers. He also invented a three-dimensional version of chess. He was working at his death with Bobby Fischer on a game of chess for three people.
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Jan Jansz de Jonge Stampioen
1610 - 1653 (43 years)
Jan Jansz de Jonge Stampioen was a Dutch mathematician famous for his published work on spherical trigonometry. In 1638 he moved to The Hague to become tutor of William II, Prince of Orange. In 1644 he was employed to tutor Christiaan Huygens in mathematics.
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Gury Kolosov
1867 - 1936 (69 years)
Gury Vasilievich Kolosov was a Russian and Soviet mathematician and engineer. He is best known for his contributions to the theory of elasticity. In 1907 Kolosov derived the solution for stresses around an elliptical hole in a solid material governed by the mathematical theory of elasticity. He showed that the concentration of stress could become far greater, as the radius of curvature at an end of the hole becomes small compared with the overall length of the hole.
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Géza Grünwald
1910 - 1943 (33 years)
Géza Grünwald was a Hungarian mathematician of Jewish heritage who worked on analysis. He died in the Holocaust. See also Grunwald–Wang theorem
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Artemas Martin
1835 - 1918 (83 years)
Artemas Martin was a self-educated American mathematician. Biography Martin was born on August 3, 1835, in Steuben County, New York, grew up in Venango County, Pennsylvania, and spent most of his life in Erie County, Pennsylvania. He was home-schooled until the age of 14, when he began studying mathematics at the local school, later moving to the Franklin Select School a few miles away and then to the Franklin Academy, finishing his formal education at age approximately 20. He worked as a farmer, oil driller, and schoolteacher. In 1881, he declined an invitation to become a professor of mathematics at the Normal School in Missouri.
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Johann Friedrich Hennert
1733 - 1813 (80 years)
Johann Friedrich Hennert was German-born and lectured in mathematics and physics at the University of Utrecht. He was a significant student of Leonhard Euler. He was known for his inclination towards the British school of philosophy.
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Charles Étienne Louis Camus
1699 - 1768 (69 years)
Charles Étienne Louis Camus , was a French mathematician and mechanician who was born at Crécy-en-Brie, near Meaux. He studied mathematics, civil and military architecture, and astronomy after leaving Collège de Navarre in Paris. In 1730 he was appointed professor of architecture and, in 1733, associate of the Académie des Sciences. He also became a professor of geometry, secretary to the Academy of Architecture and fellow of the Royal Society of London. In 1727 he presented a memoir to the academy on masting ships, in consequence of which he was named the same year joint mechanician to that body.
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Sophie Piccard
1904 - 1990 (86 years)
Sophie Piccard was a Russian-Swiss mathematician who became the first female full professor in Switzerland. Her research concerned set theory, group theory, linear algebra, and the history of mathematics.
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John Daniel Runkle
1822 - 1902 (80 years)
John Daniel Runkle was a U.S. educator and mathematician. He served as acting president of MIT from 1868 to 1870 and president between 1870 and 1878. Biography Professor Runkle was born at Root, New York State. He worked on his father's farm until he was of age, and then studied and taught until he entered the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University, where he graduated in 1851. His ability as a mathematician led in 1849 to his appointment as assistant in the preparation of the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac, in which he continued to engage until 1884. He was professor of mathematics in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1865 until his retirement in 1902.
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Franz Aepinus
1724 - 1802 (78 years)
Franz Ulrich Theodor Aepinus was a German mathematician, scientist, and natural philosopher residing in the Russian Empire. Aepinus is best known for his researches, theoretical and experimental, in electricity and magnetism.
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Johann Jakob Balmer
1825 - 1898 (73 years)
Johann Jakob Balmer was a Swiss mathematician best known for his work in physics, the Balmer series of hydrogen atom. Biography Balmer was born in Lausen, Switzerland, the son of a chief justice also named Johann Jakob Balmer. His mother was Elizabeth Rolle Balmer, and he was the oldest son. During his schooling he excelled in mathematics, and so decided to focus on that field when he attended university.
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Arnold S. Shapiro
1921 - 1962 (41 years)
Arnold Samuel Shapiro was an American mathematician known for his eversion of the sphere and Shapiro's lemma. He also was the author of an article on Clifford algebras and periodicity with Raoul Bott, later redone by Michael Atiyah and Bott.
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