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.
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List of the most influential people in Mathematics,
#11301
Kazimierz Abramowicz
1889 - 1936 (47 years)
Kazimierz Abramowicz was a Polish mathematician and professor at the University of Poznan.
Go to Profile#11302
Hugh Robson
1917 - 1977 (60 years)
Sir Hugh Norwood Robson was a Scottish physician noted as a university administrator in several countries, including Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield from 1966 to 1974 and Principal of the University of Edinburgh from 1974 to 1977. The Hugh Robson Building in George Square is named after him, as is the Hugh Robson Computer Laboratory.
Go to Profile#11303
Andreas Schato
1539 - 1603 (64 years)
Andreas Schato was a 16th-century German physician, mathematician, astronomer and scientist. Life He was born in Torgau in central Germany on 19 August 1539, the son of N. N. Schato . His mother is not known.
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Salomon Gessner
1730 - 1788 (58 years)
Salomon Gessner was a Swiss painter, graphic artist, government official, newspaper publisher and poet; best known in the latter instance for his Idylls. Biography His father, Hans Konrad Gessner , was a printer, publisher, bookseller and member of the High Council of Zürich. From the age of six until his death, he lived in a home his father bought, at Münstergasse 9. He began an apprenticeship in 1749, at a bookshop in Berlin, but stayed for only a year, having decided to devote himself to landscape painting and etching. After a short stay in Hamburg, where he encountered the poetic works of...
Go to Profile#11305
William Henry Whitfeld
1856 - 1915 (59 years)
William Henry Whitfeld was an English mathematician, leading expert on bridge and whist, and card editor for The Field. He is known as the poser of the Whitfeld Six problem in double dummy bridge. After graduating from Chatham House Grammar School, Whitfeld matriculated in 1876 at Trinity College, Cambridge. He graduated there in 1880 with B.A. as twelfth wrangler in the Mathematical Tripos and in 1884 with M.A. For several years he was a tutor and lecturer at Cavendish College, Cambridge. In 1880 he published some double-dummy problems in whist in The Cambridge Review: A Journal of University Life and Thought .
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Christopher Smart
1722 - 1771 (49 years)
Christopher Smart was an English poet. He was a major contributor to two popular magazines, The Midwife and The Student, and a friend to influential cultural icons like Samuel Johnson and Henry Fielding. Smart, a high church Anglican, was widely known throughout London.
Go to Profile#11307
Andrew Young
1891 - 1968 (77 years)
Andrew White Young was a Scottish mathematician, natural scientist, and lawyer. He conducted research on Temperature Seiches in Loch Earn and presented papers on Mathieu function and Lagrange polynomials. He was elected a Fellow of Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1937.
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Andreas Stöberl
1470 - 1515 (45 years)
Andreas Stöberl , better known by his latinised name Andreas Stiborius , was a German humanist astronomer, mathematician, and theologian working mainly at the University of Vienna. Life Stöberl studied from 1479 on at the University of Ingolstadt, where he became a magister in 1484, and subsequently a member of the Faculty of Arts. At Ingolstadt, he met and became a friend of Conrad Celtis, an eminent advocate of humanism who lectured there between 1492 and 1497. When Celtis moved to Vienna in 1497, Stöberl followed his mentor. Stiborius was a member of the Sodalitas Litterarum Danubiana, a circle of humanists founded by Celtis.
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Charles Xavier Thomas
1785 - 1870 (85 years)
Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar was a French inventor and entrepreneur best known for designing, patenting and manufacturing the first commercially successful mechanical calculator, the Arithmometer, and for founding the insurance companies Le Soleil and L'aigle which, under his leadership, became the number one insurance group in France at the beginning of the Second Empire.
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John Robinson Airey
1868 - 1937 (69 years)
John Robinson Airey was a British schoolteacher, mathematician and astrophysicist. Early life Airey was the eldest child of William Airey, a stone mason, and Elizabeth Airey, who were both born in Preston under Scar, North Yorkshire. He was the oldest from four siblings, the other three being Elizabeth Ann , Edwin , and Maud . The 1871 census showed the family was living at Hunslet, Leeds; by 1881 they had moved to 28 Grosvenor Street, West Leeds.
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John Adams
1857 - 1934 (77 years)
Sir John Adams was a Scottish education scholar who was the first Principal of UCL Institute of Education. Adams was born in Glasgow, the third son of Charles Adams, a blacksmith. He was educated at St David's School and Old Wynd School before entering the Glasgow Free Church Training College and the University of Glasgow , where he studied for six years. He graduated MA in Mental Philosophy in 1884 and BSc. in 1888.
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Angus MacFarlane-Grieve
1891 - 1970 (79 years)
Alexander Angus MacFarlane-Grieve, was a British academic, mathematician, rower, and decorated British Army officer. He served with the Highland Light Infantry during World War I. He was Master of University College, Durham from 1939 to 1954, and additionally Master of Hatfield College, Durham from 1940 to 1949.
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Lupe Vélez
1908 - 1944 (36 years)
María Guadalupe Villalobos Vélez , known professionally as Lupe Vélez, was a Mexican actress, singer, and dancer during the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema. Vélez began her career as a performer in Mexican vaudeville in the early 1920s. After moving to the United States, she made her first film appearance in a short in 1927. By the end of the decade, she was acting in full-length silent films and had progressed to leading roles in The Gaucho , Lady of the Pavements and Wolf Song , among others. Vélez made the transition to sound films without difficulty. She was one of the first successful Mexican actresses in Hollywood.
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William Colenso
1811 - 1899 (88 years)
William Colenso FRS was a Cornish Christian missionary to New Zealand, and also a printer, botanist, explorer and politician. He attended the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi and later wrote an account of the events at Waitangi.
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Rudolf Weyrich
1894 - 1971 (77 years)
Rudolf Weyrich was a German mathematician, physicist, and inventor. Biography Weyrich studied at the University of Rostock and at the University of Breslau, where he received in 1922 his Promotion under Adolf Kneser. From 1923 to 1925 Weyrich was a Privatdocent at the University of Marburg. In 1925 he became a professor extraordinarius at the Deutsche Technische Hochschule Brünn. He worked there until 1945 when it was abolished as part of the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia. From 1948 to 1950 Weyrich was a lecturer at the Braunschweig University of Technology. In 1950 he was ...
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George Pirie
1843 - 1904 (61 years)
George Pirie was a Scottish mathematician, mathematical scientist, and Reverend in the Church of Scotland. He was an expert in the field of dynamics and the approximation of . Early life and education Pirie was the son of Very Rev William Robinson Pirie and his wife, Margaret Chalmers Forbes, daughter of Very Rev Lewis William Forbes. He was born in the manse at Dyce near Aberdeen on 19 July 1843.
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Obed Crosby Haycock
1901 - 1983 (82 years)
Obed Crosby Haycock was a scientist and educator. He was born in Panguitch, Utah on October 5, 1901. He received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Utah in 1925. He also had studied at Utah State University. He received a master of Science from Purdue University in 1931. He was a research Engineer at Rutgers University from 1944-1945. He became the Director of Upper Air Research labs at the University of Utah in 1957. He started a radio station KLGN in Logan, Utah in 1954 which he later sold.
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Enrico Volterra
1905 - 1973 (68 years)
Enrico Volterra was an Italian engineer. Biography A son of the famous mathematician Vito Volterra, Enrico Volterra received in 1928 his degree in civil engineering from the Sapienza University of Rome and, in the same year, his professional qualification in bridges and roads from the Polytechnic School of Engineering in Naples. He became in Rome an academic assistant to the Chair of Marine Construction and then in Paris a researcher in photoelastic methods at the École Nationale des Ponts et Chausées, before returning in Rome to start work as a civil engineer.
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John Macdonald Aiken
1880 - 1961 (81 years)
John Macdonald Aiken was born in Aberdeen. He was a painter in oil and watercolour, an etcher and stained glass artist. After serving a six-year apprenticeship as a draughtsman with the lithographer Robert Gibb RSA , he studied at Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen, at the Royal College of Art in London under Gerald Moira and in Florence.
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Christian Daniel Rauch
1777 - 1857 (80 years)
Christian Daniel Rauch was a German sculptor. He founded the Berlin school of sculpture, and was the foremost German sculptor of the 19th century. Life Rauch was born at Arolsen in the Principality of Waldeck in the Holy Roman Empire. His father was employed at the court of Prince Frederick II of Hesse, and in 1790 the lad was apprenticed to the court sculptor of Arolsen, Friedrich Valentin. In 1795, he became assistant to Johann Christian Ruhl, the court sculptor of Kassel. After the death of his father in 1796 and his older brother in 1797, he moved to Berlin where he was appointed groom of the chamber in the king's household.
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Zoárd Geőcze
1873 - 1916 (43 years)
Zoárd Geőcze de Szendrő was a Hungarian mathematician famous for his theory of surfaces . He was born on 23 August 1873 in Budapest, Hungary and died on 26 November 1916 in Budapest.
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Vicente Ferreira da Silva
1916 - 1963 (47 years)
Vicente Ferreira da Silva was a Brazilian logician, mathematician, and philosopher. He was one of first men in Brazil history to write and have published an academic book in logic and Phenomenology.
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Richard Clayton
Richard Clayton was a Canon, Oxford academic and administrator. He was Master of University College, Oxford, from 1665 until his death in 1676. Clayton was originally from Yorkshire and matriculated at University College in 1618. In 1629, he was elected as a Percy Fellow at University College in Oxford. He was bursar of the college from 1631 to 1634 and 1636–37. He resigned from his Fellowship in 1639 to escape from the Civil War.
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Johann Halbig
1814 - 1882 (68 years)
Johann Halbig was a German sculptor of the Classicism school. Biography He was born at Donnersdorf in Lower Franconia and was educated at the Polytechnical School and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. After the early death of his teacher and employer Ernst Mayer he became his successor as professor of sculpture at the Polytechnic School in Munich, where most of his works can be found. His work is characterized by its decorative quality. Johann Halbig died in Munich and was buried in the Alter Südfriedhof.
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Harold A. Knapp
Harold Anthony Knapp was an American mathematician. He earned a doctorate in mathematics with a minor in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1947. He first worked as an operations analyst within the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. He joined the US Atomic Energy Commission in 1955, where he worked within the newly formed Fallout Studies Branch within the Division of Biology and Medicine from 1960 on ; he resigned from the AEC in 1963. He then worked for the Institute for Defense Analyses "which did highly sensitive studies on nuclear warfare for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the Defense Nuclear Agency".
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Frederick Warren Allen
1888 - 1961 (73 years)
Frederick Warren Allen was an American sculptor of the Boston School. One of the most prominent sculptors in Boston during the early 20th century and a master teacher at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Allen had a career in the arts that spanned more than 50 years.
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William Westley Guth
1871 - 1929 (58 years)
William Westley Guth was an American attorney, Methodist minister, and academic who served as the fourth president of Goucher College. Early life, family, and education Guth was born on October 15, 1871, in Nashville, Tennessee, to Rev. George Guth and Susan Sophie Grandlienard of Perrefitte, Switzerland. Guth was of German, French, and Swiss descent. When he was a teenager, his family moved to San Francisco, California. He enrolled at the University of the Pacific and continued his studies at the then-newly established Stanford University, from which he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1892.
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Robert de Montessus de Ballore
1870 - 1937 (67 years)
Robert Fernand Bernard, Viscount de Montessus de Ballore was a French mathematician, known for his work on continued fractions and Padé approximants. Biography Robert de Montessus was a viscount, born to a noble family originating in the Ancien Régime.
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Johann Bauschinger
1834 - 1893 (59 years)
Johann Bauschinger was a mathematician, builder, and professor of Engineering Mechanics at Munich Polytechnic, from 1868 until his death. The Bauschinger effect in materials science is named after him. He was also the father of astronomer Julius Bauschinger .
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Jørgen Dybvad
1545 - 1612 (67 years)
Jørgen Dybvad , was a Danish theologian and mathematician of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Jørgen was born to prosperous Yeoman stock in Dybvad in Gosmer Parish, Aarhus, and took the name of his place of birth.
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Johannes de Muris
1300 - 1350 (50 years)
Johannes de Muris , or John of Murs, was a French mathematician, astronomer, and music theorist best known for treatises on the ars nova musical style, titled Ars nove musice. Life and career For a medieval person primarily known through his scholarly writing, it is highly unusual that Johannes de Muris’ life can be traced enough to form a decently consistent biography. Born in Normandy, he is believed to have been related to Julian des Murs who was secretary to Charles V of France. The suggested birth year for Muris is based on a murder of a cleric on September 7, 1310, which Muris was allegedly a part of.
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John Price Durbin
1800 - 1876 (76 years)
John Price Durbin was an American Methodist clergyman and educator who served as Chaplain of the United States Senate from 1831 to 1832 and president of Dickinson College from 1833 to 1844. Early life Durbin was born on October 10, 1800, in Paris, Kentucky, to Elizabeth "Betsy" Nunn and Hozier Durbin; he was the oldest of their five sons. While he was still young, his father died and he went to work for a cabinetmaker. He continued in this trade until his religious conversion at age 18. Durbin studied Latin, Greek and English grammar with tutors.
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Francesco Ciusa
1883 - 1949 (66 years)
Francesco Ciusa was an Italian sculptor. Biography Born in the town of Nuoro, on the island of Sardinia in Italy, his father was an Ébéniste, or cabinet maker. He attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence from 1899 to 1903, where he had as teachers affirmed artists such as Adolfo De Carolis, the sculptor Domenico Trentacoste and the master of the Macchiaioli's movement Giovanni Fattori. He moved to Sassari Sardinia in 1904, where he knew famous artists like Giuseppe Biasi then returned to his hometown Nuoro in 1905.
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Jakob Horn
1867 - 1946 (79 years)
Jakob Horn was a German mathematician who introduced Horn functions. Works External links Jahrbuch für Mathematik
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Hal Foster
1892 - 1982 (90 years)
Harold Rudolf Foster, FRSA was a Canadian-American comic strip artist and writer best known as the creator of the comic strip Prince Valiant. His drawing style is noted for its high level of draftsmanship and attention to detail.
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William Mollison
1851 - 1929 (78 years)
William Loudon Mollison was a Scottish mathematician and academic. From 1915 to 1929, he was Master of Clare College, Cambridge. Early life and education Mollison was born on 19 September 1851 in Aberdeen, Scotland. He was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School, then an all-boys grammar school. He studied mathematics and natural philosophy at the University of Aberdeen, graduating in 1872 with a first class degree. That year, he was awarded the Ferguson Scholarship by Aberdeen and matriculated into Clare College, Cambridge to continue his mathematical studies. He became a Foundation Scholar in 1873.
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Louis Companyo
1781 - 1871 (90 years)
Louis Companyo was a French physician and naturalist. Louis Companyo was a founder and director of the Musée d'Histoire Naturelle de Perpignan and wrote Histoire Naturelle du département des Pyrénées-Orientales. Perpignan, 1861–1864, the first book on the natural history of the Pyrenees when over eighty years old. The 3 volumes cover geography, geology, and paleontology , botany , zoology and entomology .
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Keith Edward Bullen
1906 - 1976 (70 years)
Keith Edward Bullen FAA FRS was a New Zealand-born mathematician and geophysicist. He is noted for his seismological interpretation of the deep structure of the Earth's mantle and core. He was Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Sydney in Australia from 1945 until 1971.
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Vladimir Soldatov
1875 - 1941 (66 years)
Vladimir Konstantinovich Soldatov was a Russian and Soviet ichthyologist, zoologist, Doctor of Biological Sciences, professor of the Department of Ichthyology of the Moscow Technical Institute for the Fishery Industry.
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Sydney Chapman
1888 - 1970 (82 years)
Sydney Chapman was a British mathematician and geophysicist. His work on the kinetic theory of gases, solar-terrestrial physics, and the Earth's ozone layer has inspired a broad range of research over many decades.
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Lev Pontryagin
1908 - 1988 (80 years)
Lev Semenovich Pontryagin was a Soviet mathematician. Completely blind from the age of 14, he made major discoveries in a number of fields of mathematics, including algebraic topology, differential topology and optimal control.
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Max Newman
1897 - 1984 (87 years)
Maxwell Herman Alexander Newman, FRS, , generally known as Max Newman, was a British mathematician and codebreaker. His work in World War II led to the construction of Colossus, the world's first operational, programmable electronic computer, and he established the Royal Society Computing Machine Laboratory at the University of Manchester, which produced the world's first working, stored-program electronic computer in 1948, the Manchester Baby.
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Richard V. Southwell
1888 - 1970 (82 years)
Sir Richard Vynne Southwell, FRS was a British mathematician who specialised in applied mechanics as an engineering science academic. Education and career Richard Southwell was educated at Norwich School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where in 1912 he achieved first class degree results in both the mathematical and mechanical science tripos. In 1914, he became a Fellow of Trinity, and a lecturer in Mechanical Sciences.
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Maurice Quenouille
1924 - 1973 (49 years)
Prof Maurice Henry Quenouille FRSE FRSS was a 20th-century British statistician remembered as the creator of Jackknife resampling. Biography The unusual surname is French in origin, meaning "distaff". The surname has transposed to Kenoly in most English-speaking countries.
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Pál Turán
1910 - 1976 (66 years)
Pál Turán also known as Paul Turán, was a Hungarian mathematician who worked primarily in extremal combinatorics. In 1940, because of his Jewish origins, he was arrested by the Nazis and sent to a labour camp in Transylvania, later being transferred several times to other camps. While imprisoned, Turán came up with some of his best theories, which he was able to publish after the war.
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Emil Julius Gumbel
1891 - 1966 (75 years)
Emil Julius Gumbel was a German mathematician and political writer. Gumbel specialised in mathematical statistics and, along with Leonard Tippett and Ronald Fisher, was instrumental in the development of extreme value theory, which has practical applications in many fields, including engineering and finance. In 1958, Gumbel published a key book, Statistics of Extremes, in which he derived and analyzed the probability distribution that is now known as the Gumbel distribution in his honor.
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Otto E. Neugebauer
1899 - 1990 (91 years)
Otto Eduard Neugebauer was an Austrian-American mathematician and historian of science who became known for his research on the history of astronomy and the other exact sciences as they were practiced in antiquity and the Middle Ages. By studying clay tablets, he discovered that the ancient Babylonians knew much more about mathematics and astronomy than had been previously realized. The National Academy of Sciences has called Neugebauer "the most original and productive scholar of the history of the exact sciences, perhaps of the history of science, of our age."
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Harish-Chandra
1923 - 1983 (60 years)
Harish-Chandra Mehrotra FRS was an Indian-American mathematician and physicist who did fundamental work in representation theory, especially harmonic analysis on semisimple Lie groups. Early life Harish-Chandra Mehrotra was born in Kanpur. He was educated at B.N.S.D. College, Kanpur and at the University of Allahabad. After receiving his master's degree in physics in 1940, he moved to the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore for further studies under Homi J. Bhabha.
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Howard P. Robertson
1903 - 1961 (58 years)
Howard Percy "Bob" Robertson was an American mathematician and physicist known for contributions related to physical cosmology and the uncertainty principle. He was Professor of Mathematical Physics at the California Institute of Technology and Princeton University.
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Norman Steenrod
1910 - 1971 (61 years)
Norman Earl Steenrod was an American mathematician most widely known for his contributions to the field of algebraic topology. Life He was born in Dayton, Ohio, and educated at Miami University and University of Michigan . After receiving a master's degree from Harvard University in 1934, he enrolled at Princeton University. He completed his Ph.D. under the direction of Solomon Lefschetz, with a thesis titled Universal homology groups.
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