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,
#11251
William Clark
1770 - 1838 (68 years)
William Clark was an American explorer, soldier, Indian agent, and territorial governor. A native of Virginia, he grew up in pre-statehood Kentucky before later settling in what became the state of Missouri.
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Eric Gill
1882 - 1940 (58 years)
Arthur Eric Rowton Gill was an English sculptor, letter cutter, typeface designer, and printmaker. Although the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes Gill as "the greatest artist-craftsman of the twentieth century: a letter-cutter and type designer of genius", he is also a figure of considerable controversy following the revelations of his sexual abuse of two of his daughters and of his pet dog.
Go to Profile#11253
Karl Bobek
1855 - 1899 (44 years)
Karl Joseph Bobek was a German mathematician working on elliptic functions and geometry. External links
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Mellen Woodman Haskell
1863 - 1948 (85 years)
Mellen Woodman Haskell was an American mathematician, specializing in geometry, group theory, and applications of group theory to geometry. Education and career After secondary education at Roxbury Latin School, he received in 1883 his bachelor's degree and in 1885 his M.A. and a Parker Traveling Fellowship from Harvard University. From 1885 to 1889 he studied mathematics at the University of Leipzig and the University of Göttingen, where in 1889 he received, under Felix Klein, his Dr. phil.. In 1889 Haskell became an instructor at the University of Michigan. At the University of California, ...
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Śrīpati
1019 - 1066 (47 years)
Śrīpati , also transliterated as Shri-pati, was an Indian astronomer, astrologer and mathematician. His major works include Dhīkotida-karana , a work of twenty verses on solar and lunar eclipses; Dhruva-mānasa , a work of 105 verses on calculating planetary longitudes, eclipses and planetary transits; Siddhānta-śekhara a major work on astronomy in 19 chapters; and Gaṇita-tilaka, an incomplete arithmetical treatise in 125 verses based on a work by Shridhara.
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Paul Jean Joseph Barbarin
1855 - 1931 (76 years)
Paul Jean Joseph Barbarin was a French mathematician, specializing in geometry. Education and career Barbarin studied mathematics for a brief time at the École Polytechnique, but changed, at the age of 19, to the École Normale Supérieure, where he studied mathematics under Briot, Bouquet, Tannery, and Darboux. After graduation, Barbarin became a professor of mathematics at the Lyceum of Nice and then at the School of St.-Cyr of the Lyceum of Toulon. In 1891 he became a professor at the Lyceum of Bordeaux, where he taught for many years. At the time of his death he was a professor at the École...
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Orson Spencer
1802 - 1855 (53 years)
Orson Spencer was a prolific writer and prominent member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He served in several highly visible positions within the church and left an extensive legacy of theological writings. Orson Spencer is one of the examples William Mulder cites of highly educated people becoming Mormons during the time of Joseph Smith
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David Christiani
1610 - 1688 (78 years)
David Christiani was a German mathematician, philosopher and Lutheran theologian. He became an ordinary professor of mathematics at the University of Marburg in 1643, ordinary professor of theology at the University of Giessen in 1681, and rector of the University of Giessen in 1686.
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Al-Samawal al-Maghribi
1130 - 1180 (50 years)
Al-Samawʾal ibn Yaḥyā al-Maghribī , commonly known as Samau'al al-Maghribi, was a mathematician, astronomer and physician. Born to a Jewish family, he concealed his conversion to Islam for many years for fear of offending his father, then openly embraced Islam in 1163 after he had a dream telling him to do so. His father was a Rabbi from Morocco.
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Norman Robert Campbell
1880 - 1949 (69 years)
Norman Robert Campbell was an English physicist and philosopher of science. Early life Norman Robert Campbell was born in 1880. He was the son of William Middleton Campbell, Governor of the Bank of England, and his wife Edith Agneta Bevan. He was educated at Eton College and at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1902.
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William Jack
1834 - 1924 (90 years)
William Jack FRSE was a Scottish mathematician and journalist. He was Editor of the Glasgow Herald newspaper from 1870 to 1876, and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Glasgow from 1879 until 1909.
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Andrea Argoli
1570 - 1657 (87 years)
Andrea Argoli , born in Tagliacozzo, was an Italian mathematician, astronomer and astrologer. He was one of the most important 17th-century makers of ephemerides, which gave the positions of astronomical objects in the sky at a given time or times.
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Ludwig Leichhardt
1813 - 1848 (35 years)
Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Leichhardt , known as Ludwig Leichhardt, was a German explorer and naturalist, most famous for his exploration of northern and central Australia. Early life Leichhardt was born on 23 October 1813 in the hamlet of Sabrodt near the village of Trebatsch, today part of Tauche, in the Prussian Province of Brandenburg . He was the fourth son and sixth of the eight children of Christian Hieronymus Matthias Leichhardt, farmer and royal inspector and his wife Charlotte Sophie, née Strählow. Between 1831 and 1836 Leichhardt studied philosophy, language, and natural sciences at the Universities of Göttingen and Berlin but never received a university degree.
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Vittorio Grünwald
1855 - 1943 (88 years)
Vittorio Grünwald was an Italian professor of mathematics and German language. His father Guglielmo Grünwald was Hungarian, his mother Fortuna Marini was Italian. In 1861 he moved to Hungary with his family, then came back in 1877 to Verona, later in November 1885 they moved to Brescia, and then to Venice. He studied at the Technische Universität Wien, where he graduated in mathematics. After coming back to Italy, he taught mathematics and German language in several schools , and then he settled in Florence.
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Gabriel Oltramare
1816 - 1906 (90 years)
Gabriel Oltramare was a Swiss mathematician, known for his book "Essai sur le Calcul de Généralisation". Oltramare studied mathematics and natural sciences in Geneva from 1836 to 1839 and then studied higher mathematics at the Sorbonne, receiving there his licence ès sciences mathématiques in 1840. He was a teacher in Aarau. He was in Egypt from 1843 to 1844 as a tutor for Isma'il, son of Ibrahim Pasha of the Muhammad Ali dynasty. At the Collège de Genève. Oltramare was privat-docent of mechanics from 1845 to 1870 and simultaneously of mathematics from 1848 to 1850. In 1848 he was appointed professor ordinarius of higher mathematics at the University of Geneva.
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Gerard of Brussels
1187 - 1260 (73 years)
Gerard of Brussels was an early thirteenth-century geometer and philosopher known primarily for his Latin book Liber de motu , which was a pioneering study in kinematics, probably written between 1187 and 1260. It has been described as "the first Latin treatise that was to take the fundamental approach to kinematics that was to characterize modern kinematics." He brought the works of Euclid and Archimedes back into popularity and was a direct influence on the Oxford Calculators in the next century. Gerard is cited by Thomas Bradwardine in his Tractatus de proportionibus velocitatum . His chi...
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Frederick A. P. Barnard
1809 - 1889 (80 years)
Frederick Augustus Porter Barnard was an American academic and educator who served as the 10th President of Columbia University. Born in Sheffield, Massachusetts, he graduated from Yale University in 1828 and served in a succession of academic appointments, including as Chancellor of the University of Mississippi from 1856 to 1861. He assumed office as President of Columbia University in 1864, where he presided over a series of improvements to the university until his death in 1889. He was also known as an author of academic texts.
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Werner Boy
1879 - 1914 (35 years)
Werner Boy was a German mathematician. He was the discoverer and eponym of Boy's surface—a three-dimensional projection of the real projective plane without singularities, the first of its kind. He discovered it in 1901 after his thesis adviser, David Hilbert, asked him to prove that it was not possible to immerse the real projective plane in three-dimensional space. Boy sketched several models of the surface, and discovered that it could have 3-fold rotational symmetry, but was unable to find a parametric model for the surface. It was not until 1978 that Bernard Morin found the first paramet...
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Nicolas-François Canard
1754 - 1833 (79 years)
Nicolas-François Canard was a French mathematician, philosopher and economist. He was one of the pioneers of applying mathematics to economic problems, foreshadowing the works of Antoine Augustin Cournot, William Stanley Jevons, and others.
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Antonio Pigafetta
1492 - 1531 (39 years)
Antonio Pigafetta was a Venetian scholar and explorer. He joined the Spanish expedition to the Spice Islands led by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, the world's first circumnavigation, and is best known for being the chronicler of the voyage. During the expedition, he served as Magellan's assistant until Magellan's death in the Philippine Islands, and kept an accurate journal, which later assisted him in translating the Cebuano language. It is the first recorded document concerning the language.
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Choi Seok-jeong
1646 - 1715 (69 years)
Choi Seok-jeong was a Korean politician and mathematician in the Joseon period of Korea. He published the Gusuryak in 1700, the first known literature on Latin squares, predating Leonhard Euler by at least 67 years. He also invented the hexagonal tortoise problem. Choi was a member of the Jeonju Choe clan.
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Eugenio Giuseppe Togliatti
1890 - 1977 (87 years)
Eugenio Giuseppe Togliatti was an Italian mathematician, the brother of politician Palmiro Togliatti. He was a researcher at the ETH Zurich from 1924 to 1926. He discovered Togliatti surfaces.
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Robert M. Balzer
#11274
Evgeny Yakovlevich Remez
1896 - 1975 (79 years)
Evgeny Yakovlevich Remez His doctoral students include Boris Korenblum. External links Remez at MacTutor
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Claude Gaspar Bachet de Méziriac
1581 - 1638 (57 years)
Claude Gaspar Bachet Sieur de Méziriac was a French mathematician and poet born in Bourg-en-Bresse, at that time belonging to Duchy of Savoy. He wrote , , and a Latin translation of the Arithmetica of Diophantus . He also discovered means of solving indeterminate equations using continued fractions, a method of constructing magic squares, and a proof of Bézout's identity.
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Immanuel Bonfils
1300 - 1377 (77 years)
Immanuel ben Jacob Bonfils was a French-Jewish mathematician and astronomer in medieval times who flourished from 1340 to 1377, a rabbi who was a pioneer of exponential calculus and is credited with inventing the system of decimal fractions. He taught astronomy and mathematics in Orange and later lived in Tarascon, both towns in the Holy Roman Empire that are now part of modern-day France. Bonfils studied the works of Gersonides , the father of modern trigonometry, and Al-Battani and even taught at the academy founded by Gersonides in Orange.
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William James Cody
#11278
Roger Abramino Levy
#11279
Richard Johnson
1756 - 1827 (71 years)
Richard Johnson was the first Christian cleric in Australia. Early life Johnson was the son of John and Mary Johnson. He was born in Welton, Yorkshire and educated at Hull Grammar School under Joseph Milner. In 1780 he entered Magdalene College, Cambridge as a sizar and graduated in 1784. His first post was as curate of Boldre, where William Gilpin was vicar. After about a year in Boldre, Johnson moved to London to work as assistant to Henry Foster, an itinerant evangelical preacher.
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Carl Jensen Burrau
1867 - 1944 (77 years)
Carl Jensen Burrau was a Danish mathematician who worked on problems relating to physics and astronomy while also working as an actuary. Burrau was born in Helsingör , Denmark and was educated at Copenhagen University. He worked as an astronomy assistant at the university observatory from 1893 to 1898. He is known for his work on a three-body problem, examining the orbits of two equal masses revolving about each other. His collaborations with Törvald Thiele led to the so-called Thiele–Burrau method. His dissertation of 1895 examines methods of identifying constants from photographs of star positions using Bessel's classic method.
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Kenneth E. Batcher
#11282
James Tissot
1836 - 1902 (66 years)
Jacques Joseph Tissot , better known as James Tissot , was a French painter, illustrator, and caricaturist. He was born to a drapery merchant and a milliner and decided to pursue a career in art at a young age, coming to incorporate elements of realism, early Impressionism, and academic art into his work. He is best known for a variety of genre paintings of contemporary European high society produced during the peak of his career, which focused on the people and women's fashion of the Belle Époque and Victorian England, but he would also explore many medieval, biblical, and Japoniste subjects throughout his life.
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Leonardo Ximenes
1716 - 1786 (70 years)
Leonardo Ximenes was a famous Italian Jesuit, mathematician, engineer, astronomer and geographer from Sicily. After having attended a Jesuit school, he became a mathematician, a hydraulic and civil engineer, and was an eminently respected astronomer in his day. The astronomical observatory, Osservatorio Ximeniano in Florence, is named after him in recognition of his services to the field.
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Gaspar Lax
1487 - 1560 (73 years)
Gaspar Lax was a Spanish mathematician, logician, and philosopher who spent much of his career in Paris. Biography Lax was born in Sariñena, the son of Leonor de la Cueva and Gaspar Lax, a physician, and had two brothers and four sisters. He studied the Seven Liberal Arts and theology at the University of Saragossa, where he acquired a master's degree. Also during this period of time, all along with another friend, Lax fatally wounded another student by hitting his head. He later moved to Paris, and there he taught in 1507–1508 at the Collège de Calvi and then at the Collège de Montaigu, where he was a student of John Mair and simultaneously was a teacher himself.
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Henry Martyn Taylor
1842 - 1927 (85 years)
Henry Martyn Taylor, FRS, FRAS , was an English mathematician and barrister. Henry Martyn Taylor was the second son of the Rev. James Taylor and Eliza Johnson. He was educated in Wakefield and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. as 3rd Wrangler in 1865.
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Mathias Metternich
1747 - 1825 (78 years)
Mathias Metternich was a German mathematician and professor at the University of Mainz. As a revolutionary, he was active in the Republic of Mainz. Early life and education Metternich was born on 8 May 1747 in Steinefrenz, a village in the Electorate of Trier close to Montabaur. He was born into a family of farmers who had lived in the area since the 17th century. Supported by a nobleman, the count of Waldersdorff, Metternich was able to study at the Jesuit gymnasium in Hadamar. In 1770, he went to Mainz, where he was educated as an elementary school teacher at the normal school. He became a teacher at the school of the and in 1780 at the normal school.
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David Masson
1822 - 1907 (85 years)
David Mather Masson , was a Scottish academic, supporter of women's suffrage, literary critic and historian. Biography Masson was born in Aberdeen, the son of Sarah Mather and William Masson, a stone-cutter.
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Eugène Fabry
1856 - 1944 (88 years)
Charles Eugène Fabry was a French mathematician. Fabry is best known for studying the singularities of analytic functions. Biography Eugène Fabry, born in Marseille, was the second of five sons in his family.
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Nathaniel Palmer
1799 - 1877 (78 years)
Nathaniel Brown Palmer was an American seal hunter, explorer, sailing captain, and ship designer. He gave his name to Palmer Land, Antarctica, which he explored in 1820 on his sloop Hero. He was born in Stonington, Connecticut, and was a descendant of Walter Palmer, one of the town's founders.
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Daniel Buchanan
1880 - 1950 (70 years)
Daniel Buchanan was a Canadian mathematics and astronomy professor and academic administrator. Biography Buchanan received from McMaster University B.A. in 1906, from Hamilton College B.A. in 1906 and M.A. in 1908, and from the University of Chicago Ph.D. in 1911. He was a professor of astronomy and mathematics from 1911 to 1920 at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. He was elected in 1921 a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. At the University of British Columbia he became in 1920 professor and head of the department of mathematics and astronomy and in 1928 dean of the faculty of arts...
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Sai Baba of Shirdi
1836 - 1918 (82 years)
Sai Baba of Shirdi , also known as Shirdi Sai Baba, was an Indian spiritual master and fakir, considered to be a saint, revered by both Hindu and Muslim devotees during and after his lifetime. According to accounts from his life, Sai Baba preached the importance of "realisation of the self" and criticised "love towards perishable things". His teachings concentrated on a moral code of love, forgiveness, helping others, charity, contentment, inner peace, and devotion to God and Guru.
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Robert Leroy Mercer
#11293
Ezechiel de Decker
1603 - 1643 (40 years)
Ezechiel de Decker was a Dutch surveyor and teacher of mathematics. Tables of logarithms In 1625, De Decker entered a contract with Adriaan Vlacq for the publication of several translations of books by John Napier, Edmund Gunter and Henry Briggs. A first book was published in 1626, with several translations done by Vlacq. A second book was made of the logarithms of the first 10000 numbers from Briggs' Arithmetica logarithmica published in 1624. The logarithms were shortened to 10 places. In 1627, De Decker's "Tweede deel" was published and it contained the logarithms of all numbers from 1 to 100000, to 10 places.
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Phillips Brooks
1835 - 1893 (58 years)
Phillips Brooks was an American Episcopal clergyman and author, long the Rector of Boston's Trinity Church and briefly Bishop of Massachusetts. He wrote the lyrics of the Christmas hymn, "O Little Town of Bethlehem".
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Donald Sadler
1908 - 1987 (79 years)
Donald Harry Sadler was an English astronomer and mathematician who developed an international reputation for his work in preparing astronomical and navigational almanacs. He worked as the Superintendent of His Majesty's Nautical Almanac Office from 1937 to 1971.
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Heinrich Schotten
1856 - 1939 (83 years)
Heinrich Georg Leonhard Schotten was a German mathematician and mathematical pedagogue, known for his work on reforms in the teaching of geometry. Schotten was a Gymnasium student in Marburg and in Leipzig and studied from 1876 to 1882 in Leipzig, Breslau, Berlin and Marburg with teaching qualification via state examination in Marburg in 1882 and with doctorate in 1883. His dissertation has the title Über einige bemerkenswerte Gattungen der Hypocycloiden. After completing his doctorate, he spent a probationary year in Kassel as a Gymnasium teacher. He was employed as a Gymnasium teacher in Bad Hersfeld, Schmalkalden and Kassel .
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William John Greenstreet
1861 - 1930 (69 years)
William John Greenstreet was an English mathematician who was editor of The Mathematical Gazette for more than thirty years. Life and work Greenstreet was son of a Royal Artillery's Sergeant. He was educated at Southwark and he entered St John's College, Cambridge in 1879, graduating there in 1883. Then he was mathematics professor in different schools in Framlingham, East Riding and Cardiff before he became Head Master at Marling School in 1891. In 1910 he retired to Burghfield Common with the intention of devoting to literary work.
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Dario Graffi
1905 - 1990 (85 years)
Dario Graffi was an influential Italian mathematical physicist, known for his researches on the electromagnetic field, particularly for a mathematical explanation of the Luxemburg effect, for proving an important uniqueness theorem for the solutions of a class of fluid dynamics equations including the Navier-Stokes equation, for his researches in continuum mechanics and for his contribution to oscillation theory.
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Friedrich Otto Rudolf Sturm
1841 - 1919 (78 years)
Friedrich Otto Rudolf Sturm was a German mathematician. His Ph.D. advisor was Heinrich Eduard Schroeter, and Otto Toeplitz was one of his Ph.D. students. His best ever proposal type claim is commonly known as "Sturm's Theorem" based on finding the complex imaginary roots of an infinite arbitrary-integer series.
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Enoch Beery Seitz
1846 - 1883 (37 years)
Enoch Beery Seitz was an American mathematician who was Chair of Mathematics at North Missouri State Normal School Seitz was elected to the London Mathematical Society on 11 March 1880, only the fifth American to be so honored. Over 500 of his solutions were published in the Analyst, the Mathematical Visitor, the Mathematical Magazine, the School Visitor and the Educational Times of London, England.
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