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,
#11001
Jakob Amsler-Laffon
1823 - 1912 (89 years)
Jakob Amsler-Laffon was a mathematician, physicist, engineer and the founder of his own factory. Amsler was born on the Stalden near the village of Schinznach in the district of Brugg, canton Aargau, and died in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. His father was Jakob Amsler-Amsler .
Go to Profile#11002
Arthur Buchheim
1859 - 1888 (29 years)
Arthur Buchheim was a British mathematician. His father Carl Adolf Buchheim was professor of German language at King's College London. After attending the City of London School, Arthur Buchheim obtained an open scholarship at New College, Oxford, where he was the favorite student of Henry John Stephen Smith. He then studied at the University of Leipzig as a student of Felix Klein. Eventually, he became mathematical master at the Manchester Grammar School.
Go to Profile#11003
Paolo Straneo
1874 - 1968 (94 years)
Paolo Pietro Straneo was an Italian mathematical physicist. Biography Straneo studied at ETH Zurich, where he met and was a friend of Einstein. In 1897 he received his Ph.D. in natural philosophy of the University of Zurich. From 1899 he was a libero docente in mathematical physics and for some years he was a docente incaricato in mathematical physics at the University of Turin. After a period of working as a libero professionista , in 1924 he again became a libero docente and was put in charge of mathematical physics at the University of Genoa. There, from 1925 he was a professor ordinari...
Go to Profile#11004
Francesco Barozzi
1537 - 1604 (67 years)
Francesco Barozzi was an Italian mathematician, astronomer and humanist. Life Barozzi was born on the island of Crete, at Candia , at the time a Venetian possession. He was the son of Iacopo Barozzi, a Venetian nobleman, and Fiordiligi Dorro. Barozzi was educated at Padua, and studied mathematics at the University of Padua. The estate on Crete, inherited from his father, yielded him an income of 4,000 ducats, though he seems to have lived in Venice for most of his life. He was thus able to function as an independent scholar, and does not appear to have held any academic posts, although h...
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Amédée Mannheim
1831 - 1906 (75 years)
Victor Mayer Amédée Mannheim was the inventor of the modern slide rule. Around 1850, he introduced a new scale system that used a runner to perform calculations. This type of slide rule became known under the name of its inventor: the Mannheim.
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Mary Emily Sinclair
1878 - 1955 (77 years)
Mary Emily Sinclair was an American mathematician whose research concerned algebraic surfaces and the calculus of variations. She was the first woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics at the University of Chicago, and became Clark Professor of Mathematics at Oberlin College.
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Giuseppe Biancani
1566 - 1624 (58 years)
Giuseppe Biancani, SJ was an Italian Jesuit astronomer, mathematician, and selenographer, after whom the crater Blancanus on the Moon is named. Biography Giuseppe Biancani was born in Bologna in 1566, entered the Jesuit Order in 1592, and studied at the College of Brescia with Marco Antonio De Dominis, and at the Academy of Mathematics in the Roman College with Clavius. Between 1596 and 1599 he lived in Padua, where he completed his studies and befriended Galileo, who had been appointed professor of mathematics at the local university in 1592. When the Jesuits were expelled from the Republic...
Go to Profile#11008
James Williamson
1725 - Present (301 years)
James Williamson FRSE was a Scottish minister and mathematician, and joint founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Life He was born in Dumfriesshire in 1725 the son of James Williamson of Tynron.
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Alexander Witting
1861 - 1946 (85 years)
Carl Johann Adolf Alexander Witting was a German mathematician. Family Witting was born in Dresden as the first child of the musician Carl Witting and the painter Minna Witting, née Japha . Alexander Witting married the pianist Sophie Sebass in 1889. They had two daughters and a son: Tillyta , Lotte and the physicist Rudolf Witting . In view of the artistically affected family environment – father musician, mother painter, aunt Louise Japha pianist, sister Agnes Witting singer, brother Walther Witting painter – it does not surprise that Alexander Witting also painted sometimes and regula...
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Henry Farquharson
1674 - 1739 (65 years)
Henry Farquharson was a teacher who pioneered the study of mathematics in Russia. He was recruited by Peter the Great, who sought to introduce Western ideas and technology into Russia. He moved to Moscow where he established a school and later established a naval academy in Saint Petersburg. Farquharson had a profound effect on the intellectual life of Russia, not only by introducing mathematical ideas but by helping to create the first generation of explorers, surveyors, cartographers and astronomers.
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Isaac Barrow
1613 - 1680 (67 years)
Isaac Barrow was an English clergyman and Bishop, consecutively, of Sodor and Man and St Asaph, and also served as Governor of the Isle of Man. He was the founder of the Bishop Barrow Trust. During his time as Bishop of Sodor and Man and Governor of the Isle of Man, he enacted significant social, political, and ecclesiastical reforms. He is sometimes confused with his more famous namesake and nephew, Isaac Barrow , the mathematician and theologian.
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John M. Blatt
1921 - 1990 (69 years)
John Markus Blatt was an Austrian-born American theoretical physicist. Life Blatt was the son of a successful physician in Vienna. In 1938 the family immigrated to the US as Jews fleeing the Anschluss. Blatt studied physics at the University of Cincinnati with bachelor's degree in 1942 and received in 1946 two doctorates in physics, one from Cornell University and the other from Princeton University. He then went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he wrote, with Victor Weisskopf, the textbook Theoretical Nuclear Physics, which became a standard introduction to the subject. From 1948 to 1953 Blatt was at the University of Illinois, where the Illiac computer was being built.
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Eduard Selling
1834 - 1920 (86 years)
Eduard Selling was a German mathematician and inventor of calculating machines. Selling studied mathematics at the Universities of Göttingen and Munich . He obtained the doctorate in Munich in 1859, under the supervision of Bernhard Riemann. On recommendation of Leopold Kronecker he became professor extraordinarius of mathematics at the University of Würzburg in 1860 – against the will of the philosophical faculty and the mathematics professor Aloys Mayr. There, he also taught astronomy and became conservator-restorer at the astronomical department in 1879. In 1873 he wrote an important paper...
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Holbrook Mann MacNeille
1907 - 1973 (66 years)
Holbrook Mann MacNeille was an American mathematician who worked for the United States Atomic Energy Commission before becoming the first Executive Director of the American Mathematical Society. Personal life MacNeille was born May 11, 1907, in New York City and was raised in Summit, New Jersey, the first of two brothers. His father was Perry Robinson MacNeille, an architect and urban planner and his mother Clausine Mann MacNeille who was active on the Summit Board of Education. His aunt was the Jungian analyst Kristine Mann.
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William Charles Brenke
1874 - 1964 (90 years)
William Charles Brenke was an American mathematician who introduced Brenke polynomials and wrote several undergraduate textbooks. He received his PhD in mathematics at Harvard under Maxime Bôcher. Brenke taught at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln mathematics department from 1908 to 1944 and was chair of the department from 1934 to 1944. He retired in 1943 but his successor, Ralph Hull, was put on official leave to do war work and returned from leave in 1945.
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Theophilos Corydalleus
1570 - 1646 (76 years)
Theophilos Corydalleus was a Greek Neo-Aristotelian philosopher who initiated the philosophical movement known as Korydalism or Corydalism. He was also an Eastern Orthodox cleric , physician, physicist, astronomer, mathematician, author, educator and geographer. His philosophical thought kept influencing Greek education for two hundred years after its inception.
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Robert Smithson
1938 - 1973 (35 years)
Robert Smithson was an American artist known for sculpture and land art who often used drawing and photography in relation to the spatial arts. His work has been internationally exhibited in galleries and museums and is held in public collections. He was one of the founders of the land art movement whose best known work is the Spiral Jetty .
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Hermann Boerner
1906 - 1982 (76 years)
Hermann Boerner, also written "Börner" was a German mathematician who worked on variation calculus, complex analysis, and group representation theory. Publications Boerner Eingang zur VariationsrechnungJahresbericht DMV 1953Boerner aus dem Stokesschen SatzMathematische Zeitschrift volume 46, 1940, page 709Boerner die Legendreschen Bedingungen und die Feldtheorie in der Variationsrechnung der mehrfachen IntegraleMathem.Zeitschrift 1940, page 720Boerner die Extremalen und geodätischen Felder in der Variationsrechnung der mehrfachen IntegraleMathematische Annalen volume 112, 1936, page 187Boerne...
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John Speidell
1600 - 1634 (34 years)
John Speidell was an English mathematician. He is known for his early work on the calculation of logarithms. Speidell was a mathematics teacher in London and one of the early followers of the work John Napier had previously done on natural logarithms. In 1619 Speidell published a table entitled "New Logarithmes" in which he calculated the natural logarithms of sines, tangents, and secants.
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Louis Antoine de Saint-Just
1767 - 1794 (27 years)
Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just , sometimes nicknamed the Archangel of Terror, was a French revolutionary, political philosopher, member and president of the French National Convention, a Jacobin club leader, and a major figure of the French Revolution. He was a close friend of Maximilien Robespierre and served as his most trusted ally during the period of Jacobin rule in the French First Republic. Saint-Just worked as a legislator and a military commissar, but he achieved a lasting reputation as the face of the Reign of Terror. He publicly delivered the condemnatory reports that emanated fr...
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Marie Gernet
1865 - 1924 (59 years)
Marie Gernet was a German mathematician who in 1895 became the second woman to obtain a doctorate at Heidelberg University. The first was Käthe Windscheid, who earned a doctorate for her work on English pastoral poetry in the previous year. Gernet was also the first native German woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics, 13 years earlier than Emmy Noether. She was the only German among the first eight women to earn a mathematics Ph.D. in Germany.
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George James Lidstone
1870 - 1952 (82 years)
George James Lidstone FIA FSA FRSE was a British actuary who made several contributions to the field of statistics. He is known for Lidstone smoothing and Lidstone series. He served as President of the Faculty of Actuaries from 1924 to 1926.
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Mikhail Subbotin
1893 - 1966 (73 years)
Mikhail Fedorovich Subbotin was a Soviet mathematician and astronomer who calculated orbits of planets and comets. He worked on general properties of motion in the n-body problem. Biography and education Subbotin was born on 29 June 1893 in Ostrolenka, Russian Empire .
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Peter Dembowski
1928 - 1971 (43 years)
Heinz Peter Dembowski was a German mathematician, specializing in combinatorics. He is known for the and for Dembowski-Ostrom polynomials. Education and career Dembowski studied from 1948 to 1953 at Goethe University Frankfurt. He then spent three years in the USA first at Brown University and then at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. At Illinois he met Reinhold Baer, with whom he returned to Frankfurt in 1956 and received in 1957 his doctorate with thesis Verallgemeinerungen von Transitivitätsklassen endlicher projektiver Ebenen . In 1964 Dembowski was habilitated in Frankfurt.
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Isaak Bacharach
1854 - 1942 (88 years)
Isaak Bacharach was a German mathematics professor in Erlangen who proved the Cayley–Bacharach theorem on intersections of cubic curves. He was murdered at the Theresienstadt concentration camp during The Holocaust.
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Lucjan Böttcher
1872 - 1937 (65 years)
Lucjan Emil Böttcher was a Polish mathematician who worked in Lvov in the beginning of the 20th century. Early life Böttcher was born on January 21, 1872, in Warsaw, Poland. He attended private schools in Warsaw and graduated from the classical gymnasium in Łomża in 1893, after which he entered the Imperial University of Warsaw in the Division of Mathematics and Physics. At the time, Russian was the language of instruction at the university, as Warsaw was under Russian rule.
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Wade Ellis
1909 - 1989 (80 years)
Wade Ellis was an American mathematician and educator. He taught at Fort Valley State University in Georgia and Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee and earned his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Michigan in 1944. He carried out classified research on radar antennas at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory and taught at Boston University and Oberlin College, where he became Full Professor in 1953. The same year, he was elected to the Board of Governors of the Mathematical Association of America.
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Ladislav Rieger
1916 - 1963 (47 years)
Ladislav Svante Rieger was a Czechoslovak mathematician who worked in the areas of algebra, mathematical logic, and axiomatic set theory. He is considered to be the founder of mathematical logic in Czechoslovakia, having begun his work around 1957.
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Ernst Chladni
1756 - 1827 (71 years)
Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni was a German physicist and musician. His most important work, for which he is sometimes labeled as the father of acoustics, included research on vibrating plates and the calculation of the speed of sound for different gases. He also undertook pioneering work in the study of meteorites and is regarded by some as the father of meteoritics.
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Kunizo Yoneyama
1877 - 1968 (91 years)
was a Japanese mathematician at Kyoto University working in topology. In 1917, he published the construction of the Lakes of Wada, which he named after his teacher Takeo Wada, to whom he credited the discovery.
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Takeo Wada
1882 - 1944 (62 years)
Takeo Wada was a Japanese mathematician at Kyoto University working in analysis and topology. He suggested the Lakes of Wada to Kunizo Yoneyama, who wrote about them and named them after Wada. Publications
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Konstantin Adolfovic Semendyayev
1908 - 1988 (80 years)
Konstantin Adolfovic Semendyayev or Semendyaev ; born 9 December 1908 in Simferopol, died 15 November 1988 Work and life Semendyayev studied at the Lomonosov University with the degree in 1929 and was then at various higher schools. From 1931 to 1936 he was in the Faculty of Mathematics and Mechanics at Lomonosov University. He habilitated in 1940 . From 1936 he headed the Department of Mathematical Instruments of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He was evacuated to Kazan with the institute during World War II. After World War II, he headed a department for numerical calculations at the Steklov I...
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Al-Isfizari
Abū Ḥātim al-Muẓaffar al-Isfazārī was an Islamic mathematician, astronomer and engineer from Khurasan. According to the historian and geographer Ibn al-Athir and the polymath Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi, he worked in the Seljuq observatory of Isfahan. The Persian writer Nezami Aruzi met him in Balkh in in 1112 or 1113.
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John Craig
1663 - 1731 (68 years)
John Craig was a Scottish mathematician and theologian. Biography Born in Dumfries and educated at the University of Edinburgh, Craig moved to England and became a vicar in the Church of England. A friend of Isaac Newton, he wrote several minor works about the new calculus.
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A. Harry Wheeler
1873 - 1950 (77 years)
Albert Harry Wheeler was an American mathematician, inventor, and mathematics teacher, known for physical construction of polyhedral models and teaching this art to students. Education and career A. Harry Wheeler received in 1894 his Bachelor of Science degree from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He taught high school in Worcester, Massachusetts from 1894 to 1896 and then was a graduate student in mathematics from 1896 to 1899 at Clark University, but left without a degree. He taught high school mathematics in Worcester from 1899 to 1920. His textbooks are First Course in Algebra and Examp...
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Sergei Chetverikov
1880 - 1959 (79 years)
Sergei Sergeevich Chetverikov was a Russian biologist and one of the early contributors to the development of the field of genetics. His research showed how early genetic theories applied to natural populations, and has therefore contributed towards the modern synthesis of evolutionary theory.
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Daniel Schwenter
1585 - 1636 (51 years)
Daniel Schwenter was a German Orientalist, mathematician, inventor, poet, and librarian. Biography Schwenter was born in Nuremberg. He was professor of oriental languages and mathematics at the University of Altdorf. This is achieved by a preface written by Schwenter in the book Kurtzer, gründtlicher, warhaffter, gebesserter und vermehrter Underricht, Zuberaitung und Gebrauch deß Circkels, Schregmeß und Linial from George Galgemair and by an old chronicle of the University of Altdorf.
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István Fenyő
1917 - 1987 (70 years)
István Fenyő was a Hungarian mathematician, whose first name was also known as "Étienne, Stefan, Stephan or Stephen". He was best known for his publications of applied mathematics. He made significant contributions to analysis, algebra, geometry, integral equations and many other fields that pertain to his interests.
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Menyhért Palágyi
1859 - 1924 (65 years)
Menyhért Palágyi, in German Melchior or Meinhert Palagyi was a Hungarian philosopher, mathematician, and physicist of Jewish descent . He was the elder brother of the Hungarian poet Ludwig Palágyi.
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Émile Jouguet
1871 - 1943 (72 years)
Jacques Charles Émile Jouguet was a French engineer and scientist, whose name is attached to the Chapman–Jouguet condition. He was the son of Félix Jouguet , mining engineer and mayor of Bessèges.
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Anne Cobbe
1920 - 1971 (51 years)
Anne Philippa Cobbe was a mathematician at the University of Oxford. She was an inspirational and supportive pure mathematics tutor at Somerville College which, during her time there, was still a women's college.
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Ibn al-Yasamin
1100 - 1204 (104 years)
Abu Muhammad 'Abdallah ibn Muhammad ibn Hajjaj ibn al-Yasmin al-Adrini al-Fessi more commonly known as ibn al-Yasmin, was a Berber mathematician, born in Morocco and he received his education in Fez and Sevilla. Little is known of his personal life except that he was born into a Berber family. Since some historians have given him the surname al-Ishbili, he may have been born or grown up in Seville. Besides mathematics, he also became famous in literature, law, and particularly in Andalusian poetry.
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Tadeáš Hájek
1525 - 1600 (75 years)
Tadeáš Hájek z Hájku , also known as Tadeáš Hájek of Hájek, Thaddaeus Hagecius ab Hayek or Thaddeus Nemicus, was a Czech naturalist, personal physician of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II and an astronomer in the Kingdom of Bohemia.
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Heinrich Emil Timerding
1873 - 1945 (72 years)
Heinrich Carl Franz Emil Timerding was a German mathematician, professor at the Braunschweig University of Technology, mainly known for his contributions to probability theory. He was awarded the Brunswick and the Prussian War Merit Cross, the Ritterkreuz of the Order of Henry the Lion, and in 1938 the Nazi Civil Service Faithful Service Medal.
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Theodore Strong
1790 - 1869 (79 years)
Theodore Strong was an American mathematician. Early life Strong was born in South Hadley, Massachusetts on July 26, 1790. He was the second son of Rev. Joseph Strong and Sophia Strong. Through his paternal grandfather, also known as Rev. Joseph Strong, he was a direct descendant of Joseph Strong, who settled in Dorchester, Massachusetts in 1630, and through his maternal grandfather, Rev. John Woodbridge of South Hadley, he was a direct descendant of Governor Thomas Dudley, and Rev. John Woodbridge, who came to Massachusetts in 1634.
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Annie Dale Biddle Andrews
1885 - 1940 (55 years)
Annie Dale Biddle Andrews was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley. Early life and career She was born in Hanford, California, the youngest daughter of Samuel Edward Biddle and Achsah Annie Biddle .
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Ágoston Scholtz
1844 - 1916 (72 years)
Ágoston Scholtz was a Hungarian mathematician, one of the founders of the Hungarian Mathematics and Physics Association. Life and work Scholtz attended the schools of Igló , Rosenau and Löcse . After his secondary education he studied in the universities of Vienna and Berlin, graduating in 1865. After teaching several years at secondary level, he obtained the university habilitation in 1879 and began his teaching in the Hungarian Royal University of Budapest .
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Lipót Klug
1854 - 1945 (91 years)
Lipót, or Leopold , Klug was a Jewish-Hungarian mathematician, professor in the Franz Joseph University of Kolozsvár. Life and work Klug attended the gymnasium of his hometown and entered in the university of Budapest in 1872 where he graduated as docent in 1874. Between 1874 and 1893 he taught mathematics in the high school of Pozsony . From 1893 to 1897 he was professor in a secondary school in Budapest and he obtained his habilitation in the university of Budapest. In 1897 he was appointed professor of geometry in the University of Kolozsvár. He retired in 1917 and moved back to Budapest.
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Ugo Broggi
1880 - 1965 (85 years)
Ugo Napoleone Giuseppe Broggi was an Italian actuary, mathematician, philosopher, statistician, and mathematical economist. Education and career Broggi studied in Italy and Germany, graduating in actuarial science in 1902 and in economic science in 1904.
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Albert Taylor Bledsoe
1809 - 1877 (68 years)
Albert Taylor Bledsoe was an American Episcopal priest, attorney, professor of mathematics, and officer in the Confederate army and was best known as a staunch defender of slavery and, after the South lost the American Civil War, an architect of the Lost Cause. He was the author of Liberty and Slavery , "the most extensive philosophical treatment of slavery ever produced by a Southern academic", which defended slavery laws as ensuring proper societal order.
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