The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Mathematics,
#11151
John Harrison
1693 - 1776 (83 years)
John Harrison was an English carpenter and clockmaker who invented the marine chronometer, a long-sought-after device for solving the problem of calculating longitude while at sea. Harrison's solution revolutionized navigation and greatly increased the safety of long-distance sea travel. The problem he solved had been considered so important following the Scilly naval disaster of 1707 that the British Parliament was offering financial rewards of up to £20,000 under the 1714 Longitude Act, though Harrison was never fully able to receive these rewards due to political rivalries.
Go to Profile#11152
Gerrit Bol
1906 - 1989 (83 years)
Gerrit Bol was a Dutch mathematician who specialized in geometry. He is known for introducing Bol loops in 1937, and Bol’s conjecture on sextactic points. Life Bol earned his PhD in 1928 at Leiden University under Willem van der Woude. In the 1930s, he worked at the University of Hamburg on the geometry of webs under Wilhelm Blaschke and later projective differential geometry. In 1931 he earned a habilitation.
Go to Profile#11153
Ernst Christian Julius Schering
1833 - 1897 (64 years)
Ernst Christian Julius Schering was a German mathematician. Early life and career Born in 1833 near Bleckede at the Elbe as the son of a forester, he attended Realschule in Lüneburg from 1845 to 1850, where he already showed a certain talent for mathematics. With the intention to engage in architectural engineering, he attended the Polytechnicum in Hannover from 1850 to 1852.
Go to Profile#11154
Kurt Hirsch
1906 - 1986 (80 years)
Kurt August Hirsch was a German mathematician who moved to England to escape the Nazi persecution of Jews. His research was in group theory. He also worked to reform mathematics education and became a county chess champion. The Hirsch length and Hirsch–Plotkin radical are named after him.
Go to Profile#11155
Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī
1265 - 1319 (54 years)
Kamal al-Din Hasan ibn Ali ibn Hasan al-Farisi or Abu Hasan Muhammad ibn Hasan According to Encyclopædia Iranica, Kamal al-Din was the most prominent Persian author on optics. Optics His work on optics was prompted by a question put to him concerning the refraction of light. Shirazi advised him to consult the Book of Optics of Ibn al-Haytham , and Farisi made such a deep study of this treatise that Shirazi suggested that he write what is essentially a revision of that major work, which came to be called the Tanqih. Qutb al-Din Al-Shirazi himself was writing a commentary on works of Avicenn...
Go to Profile#11156
Josef Finger
1841 - 1925 (84 years)
Josef Finger was an Austrian physicist and mathematician. Biography Joseph Finger was born the son of a baker in Pilsen. He attended high school in Pilsen. He studied mathematics and physics at Charles University in Prague from 1859 to 1862. In 1865 and for financial reason he acquired the qualification to teach mathematics and physics at secondary schools and went into the teaching profession. On 17 March 1875 Finger received his doctorate at the University of Vienna, in 1876 he was qualified for the subject of analytical mechanics. 1897 Finger publishes "On the internal virial of an elastic body".
Go to Profile#11157
August Leopold Crelle
1780 - 1855 (75 years)
August Leopold Crelle was a German mathematician. He was born in Eichwerder near Wriezen, Brandenburg, and died in Berlin. He is the founder of Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik . He befriended Niels Henrik Abel and published seven of Abel's papers in the first volume of his journal.
Go to Profile#11158
Wilhelm Süss
1895 - 1958 (63 years)
Wilhelm Süss was a German mathematician. He was founder and first director of the Oberwolfach Research Institute for Mathematics. Biography He was born in Frankfurt, Germany, and died in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany.
Go to Profile#11159
Johann Friedrich Schultz
1739 - 1805 (66 years)
Johann Friedrich Schultz, also known as Johann Schultz , was a German Enlightenment Protestant theologian, mathematician and philosopher. He is best known as a close personal friend and trusted expositor of Immanuel Kant. Johann Schultz was a Hofprediger and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Königsberg.
Go to Profile#11160
James MacCullagh
1809 - 1847 (38 years)
James MacCullagh was an Irish mathematician. Early life MacCullagh was born in Landahaussy, near Plumbridge, County Tyrone, Ireland, but the family moved to Curly Hill, Strabane when James was about 10. He was the eldest of twelve children and demonstrated mathematical talent at an early age. He entered Trinity College Dublin as a student in 1824, winning a scholarship in 1827 and graduating in 1829.
Go to Profile#11161
Jabir ibn Aflah
1100 - 1150 (50 years)
Abū Muḥammad Jābir ibn Aflaḥ was an Arab Muslim astronomer and mathematician from Seville, who was active in 12th century al-Andalus. His work Iṣlāḥ al-Majisṭi influenced Islamic, Jewish, and Christian astronomers.
Go to Profile#11162
Giulio Vivanti
1859 - 1949 (90 years)
Giulio Benedetto Isacco Vivanti was an Italian mathematician. He was a mentor of Bruno de Finetti and he spent most of his academic career at the University of Pavia and University of Milan. See also Vivanti–Pringsheim theorem
Go to Profile#11163
Jacopo Riccati
1676 - 1754 (78 years)
Jacopo Francesco Riccati was a Venetian mathematician and jurist from Venice. He is best known for having studied the equation which bears his name. Education Riccati was educated first at the Jesuit school for the nobility in Brescia, and in 1693 he entered the University of Padua to study law. He received a doctorate in law in 1696. Encouraged by Stefano degli Angeli to pursue mathematics, he studied mathematical analysis.
Go to Profile#11164
Benjamin Kagan
1869 - 1953 (84 years)
Veniamin Fyodorovich Kagan was a Russian and Soviet mathematician and expert in geometry. He is the maternal grandfather of mathematicians Yakov Sinai and Grigory Barenblatt. Biography Kagan was born in Shavli, in the Kovno Governorate of the Russian Empire in 1869, to a poor Lithuanian Jewish family. In 1871 his family moved to Yekaterinoslav , where he grew up. Kagan entered the Imperial Novorossiya University in Odesa in 1887, but was expelled for revolutionary activities in 1889. He was put on probation and sent back to Yekaterinoslav. He studied mathematics on his own and in 1892 passed...
Go to Profile#11165
Gaston Floquet
1847 - 1920 (73 years)
Achille Marie Gaston Floquet was a French mathematician, best known for his work in mathematical analysis, especially in theory of differential equations. See also Floquet theory External links
Go to Profile#11166
Zsolt Baranyai
1948 - 1978 (30 years)
Zsolt Baranyai was a Hungarian mathematician known for his work in combinatorics. He graduated from Fazekas High School where he was a classmate of László Lovász, Miklós Laczkovich, and Lajos Pósa. He studied mathematics at Eötvös Loránd University and went on to become a lecturer in the Analysis Department. He earned his Ph.D. in 1975 and was posthumously awarded the Candidate degree of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1978.
Go to Profile#11167
Erik Albert Holmgren
1872 - 1943 (71 years)
Erik Albert Holmgren was a Swedish mathematician known for contributions to partial differential equations. Holmgren's uniqueness theorem is named after him. Torsten Carleman was one of his students. His father was the mathematician Hjalmar Holmgren and his siblings include the forester Anders Holmgren and the zoologist Nils Holmgren.
Go to Profile#11168
August Davidov
1823 - 1885 (62 years)
August Yulevich Davidov was a Russian mathematician and engineer, professor at Moscow University, and author of works on differential equations with partial derivatives, definite integrals, and the application of probability theory to statistics, and textbooks on elementary mathematics which were repeatedly reprinted from the 1860s to the 1920s. He was president of the Moscow Mathematical Society from 1866 to 1885.
Go to Profile#11169
Alexandru Ghika
1902 - 1964 (62 years)
Alexandru Ghika was a Romanian mathematician, founder of the Romanian school of functional analysis. Life He was born in Bucharest, into the Ghica family, the son of Ioan Ghika and Elena Metaxa , and great-great-grandson of Grigore IV Ghica, Prince of Wallachia. He started his secondary studies at the Gheorghe Lazăr High School in Bucharest. In 1917, he left with his family for Paris, completing his secondary studies at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in 1920. He then entered the University of Paris with a major in mathematics, graduating in 1922. In 1929, he obtained a Ph.D. in mathematics from...
Go to Profile#11170
Cato Maximilian Guldberg
1836 - 1902 (66 years)
Cato Maximilian Guldberg was a Norwegian mathematician and chemist. Guldberg is best known as a pioneer in physical chemistry. Background Guldberg was born in Christiania , Norway. He was the eldest son of Carl August Guldberg and Hanna Sophie Theresia Bull . He was the brother of nurse and educator Cathinka Guldberg as well as mathematician Axel Sophus Guldberg. He attended Aug. Holths private latinskole in Christiania. Guldberg studied mathematics and physics at the University of Christiania and took his diploma in 1859. That same year he received the Crown Prince's gold medal for a dissertation in pure mathematics.
Go to Profile#11171
Jean Ville
1910 - 1989 (79 years)
Jean Ville, also known under the names Jean-André Ville et André Ville, born 24 June 1910 in Marseille, died 22 January 1989 in Blois, was a French mathematician. He is known for having proved an extension of von Neumman's minimax theorem, as well as contributions in the fields of statistics and economics. He was one of the pioneers of the theory of martingaless.
Go to Profile#11172
Qin Jiushao
1208 - 1261 (53 years)
Qin Jiushao , courtesy name Daogu , was a Chinese mathematician, meteorologist, inventor, politician, and writer. He is credited for discovering Horner's method as well as inventing Tianchi basins, a type of rain gauge instrument used to gather meteorological data.
Go to Profile#11173
George Heriot
1563 - 1624 (61 years)
George Heriot was a Scottish goldsmith and philanthropist. He is chiefly remembered today as the founder of George Heriot's School, a large independent school in Edinburgh; his name has also been given to Heriot-Watt University, as well as several streets in the same city.
Go to Profile#11174
Gheorghe Vrănceanu
1900 - 1979 (79 years)
Gheorghe Vrănceanu was a Romanian mathematician, best known for his work in differential geometry and topology. He was titular member of the Romanian Academy and vice-president of the International Mathematical Union.
Go to Profile#11175
Nicolai A. Vasiliev
1880 - 1940 (60 years)
Nicolai Alexandrovich Vasiliev , also Vasil'ev, Vassilieff, Wassilieff , was a Russian logician, philosopher, psychologist, poet. He was a forerunner of paraconsistent and multi-valued logics. Early years Vasiliev was born on June 29 O.S., 1880 in Kazan, Russia. His father, Professor Alexander V. Vasiliev, was a fairly well known mathematician, his grandfather was the outstanding sinologist Professor Vassily P. Vasiliev, and his great grandfather was the prominent astronomer Ivan M. Simonov, who was a close colleague of Nikolai Lobachevsky.
Go to Profile#11176
Fritz Joachim Weyl
1915 - 1977 (62 years)
Fritz Joachim Weyl was a mathematician born in Zurich, Switzerland. He significantly contributed to research in mathematics. He taught mathematics at many universities, most notably at the George Washington University , in Washington, D.C.
Go to Profile#11177
Francis Bashforth
1819 - 1912 (93 years)
Francis Bashforth was an English Anglican priest and mathematician, who is known for his use of applied mathematics on ballistics. Early life and education Bashforth was born on 8 January 1819 in Thurnscoe, Yorkshire, England. Bashforth was the eldest son of John Bashforth, a farmer. He was educated at Doncaster Grammar School. In 1839, he matriculated into St John's College, Cambridge as a sizar. Having studied the Mathematical Tripos at the University of Cambridge, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1843 and was the Second Wrangler. Bashforth later returned to his alma-mater to...
Go to Profile#11178
Eugenio Elia Levi
1883 - 1917 (34 years)
Eugenio Elia Levi was an Italian mathematician, known for his fundamental contributions in group theory, in the theory of partial differential operators and in the theory of functions of several complex variables. He was a younger brother of Beppo Levi and was killed in action during First World War.
Go to Profile#11179
Leonhard Sohncke
1842 - 1897 (55 years)
Leonhard Sohncke was a German mathematician who classified the 65 space groups in which chiral crystal structures form, called Sohncke groups. He was a professor of physics at the Technische Hochschule Karlsruhe from 1871 to 1883, at Jena from 1883 to 1886, and at the Technical University of Munich from 1886 to 1897.
Go to Profile#11180
Louis Bertrand Castel
1688 - 1757 (69 years)
Louis Bertrand Castel was a French mathematician born in Montpellier, who entered the order of the Jesuits in 1703. Having studied literature, he afterwards devoted himself entirely to mathematics and natural philosophy. After moving from Toulouse to Paris in 1720, at the behest of Bernard de Fontenelle, Castel acted as the science editor of the Jesuit Journal de Trévoux.
Go to Profile#11181
Konrad Jörgens
1926 - 1974 (48 years)
Konrad Jörgens was a German mathematician. He made important contributions to mathematical physics, in particular to the foundations of quantum mechanics, and to the theory of partial differential equations and integral operators.
Go to Profile#11182
Yom Tov Lipman Lipkin
1846 - 1876 (30 years)
Yom Tov Lipman Lipkin was a Lithuanian Jewish mathematician and inventor. He was the youngest son of Rabbi Yisroel Salanter, the father of the Musar movement. Lipkin is best known for the Peaucellier–Lipkin linkage which was partly named after him. The device is also known as the "Lipkin parallelogram". Lipkin discovered the linkage independent from Peaucellier in 1871. A model of Lipkin's invention was exhibited at the exposition at Vienna in 1873, and was later secured from the inventor by the Museum of the Institute of Engineers of Ways of Communication, St. Petersburg.
Go to Profile#11183
Henri Villat
1879 - 1972 (93 years)
Henri René Pierre Villat was a French mathematician. He was professor of fluid mechanics at the University of Paris from 1927 until his death. Villat became a member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1932, and its president in 1948.
Go to Profile#11184
Gunnar Kangro
1913 - 1975 (62 years)
Gunnar Kangro was an Estonian mathematician. He worked mainly on summation theory. He taught various courses on mathematical analysis, functional analysis and algebra in University of Tartu and he has written several university textbooks.
Go to Profile#11185
Léon Motchane
1900 - 1990 (90 years)
Léon Motchane was a French industrialist and mathematician and the founder of the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in Bures-sur-Yvette. Biography Léon Motchane was of mixed Russian and Swiss parentage, of Jewish descent. He left Russia after the Russian revolution in 1918, emigrated to Switzerland and then to France in 1924. Encouraged by the French mathematician Paul Montel, Motchane eventually received a doctorate in mathematics at age 54 under the direction of Gustave Choquet. In 1958 Cécile DeWitt-Morette invited Léon Motchane to see the Institute for Advanced Study in the USA wh...
Go to Profile#11186
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
1828 - 1882 (54 years)
Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti , generally known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti , was an English poet, illustrator, painter, translator, and member of the Rossetti family. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. Rossetti inspired the next generation of artists and writers, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones in particular. His work also influenced the European Symbolistss and was a major precursor of the Aesthetic movement.
Go to Profile#11187
Enrico Bompiani
1889 - 1975 (86 years)
Enrico Bompiani was an Italian mathematician, specializing in differential geometry. Education and career Bompiani received his Ph.D. in 1910 under Guido Castelnuovo at the Sapienza University of Rome with thesis Spazio rigato a quattro dimensioni e spazio cerchiato ordinario. Until 1913 he remained in Rome as an assistant to Guido Castelnuovo and then, from 16 October 1913 to 30 October 1915, he was at the University of Pavia as an assistant to Francesco Gerbaldi. In December 1915 he became a docent lecturing on analytic geometry at the Sapienza University of Rome, where in 1922 he became an assistant professor .
Go to Profile#11188
Arthur Byron Coble
1878 - 1966 (88 years)
Arthur Byron Coble was an American mathematician. He did research on finite geometries and the group theory related to them, Cremona transformations associated with the Galois theory of equations, and the relations between hyperelliptic theta functions, irrational binary invariants, the Weddle surface and the Kummer surface. He was President of the American Mathematical Society from 1933 to 1934.
Go to Profile#11189
C. N. S. Iyengar
C. N. S. Iyengar was an Indian professor of mathematics and the founder head of the department of mathematics, Karnatak University, Dharwar. The department was started in the year 1956 under the leadership of Iyengar.
Go to Profile#11190
Wilhelm Schickard
1592 - 1635 (43 years)
Wilhelm Schickard was a German professor of Hebrew and astronomy who became famous in the second part of the 20th century after Franz Hammer, a biographer of Johannes Kepler, claimed that the drawings of a calculating clock, predating the public release of Pascal's calculator by twenty years, had been discovered in two unknown letters written by Schickard to Johannes Kepler in 1623 and 1624.
Go to Profile#11191
Federico Commandino
1509 - 1575 (66 years)
Federico Commandino was an Italian humanist and mathematician. Born in Urbino, he studied at Padua and at Ferrara, where he received his doctorate in medicine. He was most famous for his central role as translator of works of ancient mathematicians. In this, his sources were primarily written in Greek and secondarily in Arabic, while his translations were primarily in Latin and secondarily in Italian. He was responsible for the publication of many treatises of Archimedes. He also translated the works of Aristarchus of Samos , Pappus of Alexandria , Hero of Alexandria , Ptolemy of Alexandria , Apollonius of Perga and Euclid of Alexandria .
Go to Profile#11192
Robert Woodhouse
1773 - 1827 (54 years)
Robert Woodhouse was a British mathematician and astronomer. Biography Early life and education Robert Woodhouse was born on 28 April 1773 in Norwich, Norfolk, the son of Robert Woodhouse, linen draper, and Judith Alderson, the daughter of a Unitarian minister from Lowestoft. Robert junior was baptised at St George's Church, Colegate, Norwich, on 19 May, 1773. A younger son, John Thomas Woodhouse, was born in 1780. The brothers were educated at the Paston School in North Walsham, north of Norwich.
Go to Profile#11193
Takebe Kenkō
1664 - 1739 (75 years)
Takebe Katahiro, also known as Takebe Kenkō, was a Japanese mathematician and cartographer during the Edo period. Biography Takebe was the favorite student of the Japanese mathematician Seki Takakazu Takebe is considered to have extended and disseminated Seki's work.
Go to Profile#11194
René Magritte
1898 - 1967 (69 years)
René François Ghislain Magritte was a Belgian surrealist artist known for his depictions of familiar objects in unfamiliar, unexpected contexts, which often provoked questions about the nature and boundaries of reality and representation. His imagery has influenced pop art, minimalist art, and conceptual art.
Go to Profile#11195
Chen Jiangong
1893 - 1971 (78 years)
Chen Jiangong , or Jian-gong Chen, was a Chinese mathematician. He was a pioneer of modern Chinese mathematics. He was the dean of the Department of Mathematics, National Chekiang University , and a founding academician the Chinese Academy of Sciences .
Go to Profile#11196
René-François de Sluse
1622 - 1685 (63 years)
René-François Walter de Sluse was a Walloon mathematician and churchman who served as the canon of Liège and abbot of Amay. Biography He was born in Visé, Spanish Netherlands and studied at the University of Leuven before receiving a master's degree in law from the University of Rome, La Sapienza in 1643. There he also studied several languages, mathematics, and astronomy. Aside from mathematics he also produced works on astronomy, physics, natural history, general history, and theological subjects related to his work in the Church.
Go to Profile#11197
Jurij Vega
1754 - 1802 (48 years)
Baron Jurij Bartolomej Vega was a Slovene mathematician, physicist and artillery officer. Early life Born to a farmer's family in the small village of Zagorica east of Ljubljana in Slovenia, Vega was 6 years old when his father Jernej Veha died. Vega was educated first in Moravče and later attended high school for six years in Ljubljana , studying Latin, Greek, religion, German, history, geography, science, and mathematics. At that time there were about 500 students there. He was a schoolfellow of Anton Tomaž Linhart, a Slovenian writer and historian. Vega finished high school when he was 19, in 1773.
Go to Profile#11198
Marie Johanna Weiss
1903 - 1952 (49 years)
Marie Johanna Weiss was an American mathematician, university professor and textbook author. In 1927, she became the first woman to earn a PhD in mathematics from Stanford University. Life and work Weiss was born in Eugene, California, the youngest of three surviving children of Alice Hedwig and Frederick Weiss, both German emigrants. She attended public high schools in Stockton, California, before enrolling at Stanford University in 1921. In the summer of 1924, after her junior year, she was an assistant instructor in a mathematics class there. She was accepted into the honorary society Phi Beta Kappa and graduated in 1925 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics with distinction.
Go to Profile#11199
Henry Briggs
1561 - 1630 (69 years)
Henry Briggs was an English mathematician notable for changing the original logarithms invented by John Napier into common logarithms, which are sometimes known as Briggsian logarithms in his honour. The specific algorithm for long division in modern use was introduced by Briggs 1600 AD.
Go to Profile#11200
Joseph Sauveur
1653 - 1716 (63 years)
Joseph Sauveur was a French mathematician and physicist. He was a professor of mathematics and in 1696 became a member of the French Academy of Sciences. Life Joseph Sauveur was born in La Flèche, the son of a provincial notary. Despite a hearing and speech impairment that kept him totally mute until he was seven, Joseph benefited from a fine education at the Jesuit College of La Flèche. At seventeen, his uncle agreed to finance his studies in philosophy and theology at Paris. Joseph, however, discovered Euclid and turned to anatomy and botany. He soon met Cordemoy, reader to the son of Louis XIV; and Cordemoy soon sang his praises to Bossuet, preceptor to the Dauphin.
Go to Profile