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,
#11601
Annibale Giordano
1769 - 1835 (66 years)
Annibale Giuseppe Nicolò Giordano was an Italian-French mathematician and revolutionary. Life Annibale Giordano was born 20 September 1769 in Ottaviano - San Giuseppe Vesuviano, to an educated middle-class family. His father Michele was a doctor who served both the king Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies, and the Medici princes of Ottaviano. As a teenager, Annibale Giordano attended the school of Nicolò Fergola, a brilliant mathematician from Naples. In 1789, the year of the French Revolution, he was appointed professor at the Nunziatella Military School, thus becoming a colleague of the chemist , a freemason.
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Graves Gladney
1907 - 1976 (69 years)
James Francis Graves Gladney was an illustrator known for his cover paintings for Street & Smith pulp magazines, especially The Shadow. He was the son of Katherine Lewis Graves and Franklin Young Gladney, a successful lawyer and author of several articles and books on patent law. After graduating from high school, Gladney attended Amherst College, from which he graduated in 1928. After the end of World War II, he accepted a job as a teacher at the Washington University in St. Louis School of Fine Arts.
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Henry Ford II
1917 - 1987 (70 years)
Henry Ford II , sometimes known as "Hank the Deuce" or simply "the Deuce", was an American businessman in the automotive industry. He was the oldest son of Edsel Ford I and oldest grandson of Henry Ford. He was president of the Ford Motor Company from 1945 to 1960, Chief executive officer from 1947 to 1979, and chairman of the board of directors from 1960 to 1980. Under his leadership, Ford Motor Company became a publicly traded corporation in 1956. From 1943 to 1950, he also served as president of the Ford Foundation.
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Kannadasan
1927 - 1981 (54 years)
Kannadasan was an Indian philosopher, poet, film song lyricist, producer, actor, script-writer, editor, philanthropist, and is heralded as one of the greatest and most important lyricists in India. Frequently called Kaviarasu, With over 5000 lyrics, 6000 poems and 232 books, Kannadasan is widely known by the sobriquet Kaviarasu and he is also considered to be the greatest modern Tamil poet after Subramania Bharati. including novels, epics, plays, essays, his most popular being the 10-part religious book on Hinduism, Arthamulla Indhu Matham . He won the Sahitya Akademi Award for his novel Che...
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John Rowning
1701 - 1771 (70 years)
John Rowning was an English mathematician, clergyman, and philosopher. He wrote on natural philosophy, designed measuring and calculating instruments. In his book he rejected the idea of Newtonian ether and explained gravitational forces as being the action of God.
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Hamilton Hume
1797 - 1873 (76 years)
Hamilton Hume was an early explorer of the present-day Australian states of New South Wales and Victoria. In 1824, along with William Hovell, Hume participated in an expedition that first took an overland route from Sydney to Port Phillip . Along with Sturt in 1828, he was part of an expedition of the first Europeans to find the Darling River.
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Jakob Philipp Kulik
1793 - 1863 (70 years)
Jakob Philipp Kulik was an Austrian mathematician known for his construction of a massive factor tables. Biography Kulik was born in Lemberg, which was part of the Austrian empire, and is now Lviv located in Ukraine.
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Ovidio Montalbani
1601 - 1671 (70 years)
Ovidio Montalbani , also known by his pseudonym Giovanni Antonio Bumaldi, was an Italian polymath. He was a professor of logic, mathematics, astronomy, and medicine at the University of Bologna. Life Ovidio Montalbani studied philosophy with Vincenzo Montecalvi and medicine with the famous physician Bartolomeo Ambrosini. In 1625 at a very young age he became a lector at the University of Bologna, teaching first logic, then the theoretic medicine, mathematics and astronomy and later moral philosophy. In 1657, he became custodian of the Aldrovandi Museum - succeeding Bartolomeo Ambrosini, who had been custodian since 1642.
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Thomas Allen
1540 - 1632 (92 years)
Thomas Allen was an English mathematician and astrologer. Highly reputed in his lifetime, he published little, but was an active private teacher of mathematics. He was also well connected in the English intellectual networks of the period.
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Hermann Ernst Freund
1786 - 1840 (54 years)
Hermann Ernst Freund was a German-born Danish sculptor. He is remembered in particular for his figures from Nordic mythology and for the Ragnarok Frieze. Biography Born near Bremen, Germany, Freund was trained as a smith before studying at the Art Academy in Copenhagen where he was awarded all four silver and gold medals. After graduating, he spent 10 years in Rome where he became Bertel Thorvaldsen's closest assistant as can be seen in his marble bust of Bernhard Severin Ingemann . An early proponent of romantic nationalism, Freund was the first Danish sculptor to work with Nordic mythology...
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Paul Vincensini
1896 - 1978 (82 years)
Paul Félix Vincensini was a French mathematician. In 1927, he wrote his dissertation Sur trois types de congruences rectilignes at the University of Toulouse. In 1945, working as a Professor at the University of Besançon, he was awarded the Charles Dupin Prize of the French Academy of Sciences, for his work in higher geometry. In 1949, he got the Prix de la Pensée Française. In the same year, he went to Marseille University. He retired in 1967, but still accepted presidency of a symposium of the Florence Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematical Sciences in 1978.
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Semyon Belozyorov
1904 - 1987 (83 years)
Semyon Yefimovich Belozyorov was a Soviet and Russian mathematician and a specialist in the field of history of mathematics. Professor, Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Director of Rostov State University in 1938–1954.
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Robert Bellamy Clifton
1836 - 1921 (85 years)
Robert Bellamy Clifton FRS was a British scientist. Academic career Clifton was educated at University College, London and St John's College, Cambridge where he studied under Sir George Stokes. In 1860 he went to Owens College, Manchester as Professor of Natural Philosophy. In 1865 he was appointed Professor of experimental Natural Philosophy at Oxford University. While at Oxford he designed Clarendon Laboratory and gave research space to Charles Vernon Boys. On 4 June 1868 he became a fellow of the Royal Society. He was president of the Physical Society from 1882 until 1884. From 1868 un...
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Carleton W. Angell
1887 - 1962 (75 years)
Carleton Watson Angell was an American sculptor. He was born in Belding, Michigan and died in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He is buried in Washtenong Memorial Gardens near the World War I Veterans Memorial, under a plaque designed by artist Stanley Kellogg.
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Raymond A. Spruance
1886 - 1969 (83 years)
Raymond Ames Spruance was a United States Navy admiral during World War II. He commanded U.S. naval forces during the Battle of the Philippine Sea, one of the most significant naval battles of the Pacific Theatre. He also commanded Task Force 16 at the Battle of Midway, comprising the carriers and . At Midway, dive bombers from Enterprise sank four larger carriers of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Most historians consider Midway the turning point of the Pacific War.
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Hubert Mack Thaxton
1909 - 1974 (65 years)
Hubert Mack Thaxton was an American nuclear physicist, mathematician, engineer, and the fourth African American person to earn a PhD in physics in the United States. Thaxton's research focused on proton scattering, which at the time was a largely unexplored area of study.
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Samuel Arthur Saunder
1852 - 1912 (60 years)
Samuel Arthur Saunder was a British mathematician and selenographer who taught at Wellington College, Berkshire. In 1894 he became a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and in 1908 he was made Gresham Professor of Astronomy giving public lectures on the subject.
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Fritz Eichenberg
1901 - 1990 (89 years)
Fritz Eichenberg was a German-American illustrator and arts educator who worked primarily in wood engraving. His best-known works were concerned with religion, social justice and nonviolence. Biography Eichenberg was born to a Jewish family in Cologne, Germany, where the destruction of World War I helped to shape his anti-war sentiments. He worked as a printer's apprentice, and studied at the Municipal School of Applied Arts in Cologne and the Academy of Graphic Arts in Leipzig, where he studied under Hugo Steiner-Prag. In 1923 he moved to Berlin to begin his career as an artist, producing illustrations for books and newspapers.
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Horatio Pollock
1868 - 1950 (82 years)
Horatio Milo Pollock was an American statistician. He was born in the village of Patria, New York, in Schoharie County on 2 September 1868, and attended a rural school. Pollock started teaching during the winter at the age of 17. He continued working on the family farm until the age of 20. That year, he completed a high school curriculum in 31 weeks, and subsequently enrolled at Union College from which he graduated in 1895. While in college, Pollock competed in wrestling and sprinting. He went to the University of Leipzig for doctoral degree in biology, graduating in 1897. That same year, Pollock also finished a master's degree from Union College.
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Johannes Scheubel
1494 - 1570 (76 years)
Johannes Scheubel was a German mathematician. His books include De Numeris et Diversis Rationibus and Algebrae Compendiosa .
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Marcus Meibomius
1630 - 1710 (80 years)
Marcus Meibomius was a Danish scholar. He is best known as a historian of music, as an antiquarian, and as the first librarian at the Denmark's Royal Library. He was also a philologist and mathematician.
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Max von Widnmann
1812 - 1895 (83 years)
Max von Widnmann was a German sculptor and professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Many of his works were commissioned by King Ludwig I of Bavaria. Life and career Max von Widnmann was born in Eichstätt, the youngest of three sons of Franz Amand Widnmann, who held the positions of court, town and regional physician, and his wife Maximiliana née Pöckhel, who also served as a town and local physician. After attending the gymnasium in Eichstätt, he entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich in 1825. There he studied with Ludwig Michael Schwanthaler among others. His teachers made it pos...
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Charles Dana Gibson
1867 - 1944 (77 years)
Charles Dana Gibson was an American illustrator who created the Gibson Girl, an iconic representation of the beautiful and independent Euro-American woman at the turn of the 20th century. He published his illustrations in Life magazine and other major national publications for more than 30 years, becoming editor in 1918 and later owner of the general interest magazine.
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Charles Macdonald
1828 - 1901 (73 years)
Charles Macdonald was a Scottish-Canadian mathematician and educator. Born in Aberdeen, Scotland, Macdonald studied at King's College, Aberdeen, earning degrees in the arts and divinity. The Church of Scotland named Macdonald the chair in mathematics at Dalhousie College in Halifax, Nova Scotia, which he held until his death in 1901. He was an advocate for education reform in Nova Scotia, and was a significant presence for Dalhousie in Halifax. Dalhousie's first library, Macdonald Memorial Library, was named in his honour by former students who raised money to build it.
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Ferdinand Franz Wallraf
1748 - 1824 (76 years)
Ferdinand Franz Wallraf was a German botanist, mathematician, theologian, art collector and Roman Catholic priest. His collection formed the founding nucleus of the Wallraf–Richartz Museum. Biography He was the son of a Master tailor. After 1760, he attended the and, from 1765, studied at the Art Faculty; graduating in 1767 with a master's degree. He had no money to continue his higher education so, having received minor orders in 1763, he became a teacher. In 1772, he was ordained a priest by Auxiliary Bishop . Beginning in 1776 his friend, the Professor and physician, Johann Georg Menn , helped him study medicine.
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Chen Wen-chen
1950 - 1981 (31 years)
Chen Wen-chen was a Taiwanese assistant professor of mathematics at Carnegie Mellon University who died on under mysterious circumstances. After the conclusion of his third year of teaching, he returned to his native Taiwan for a vacation. He was instructed not to leave Taiwan on his scheduled departure date. Members of Taiwan's secret police, the Garrison Command, detained and interrogated him for twelve hours on 2 July 1981, and his body was found on the campus of National Taiwan University the next day. The subsequent autopsy reported his death was due to a fall. Chen's death and the ear...
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Harold Lawton
1899 - 2005 (106 years)
Harold Walter Lawton was an English scholar of French literature and, prior to his death, one of the last surviving veterans and the last prisoner of war of World War I in Britain. Born in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, he volunteered for military service in 1916, enlisting with the Royal Welch Fusiliers before being transferred to the Cheshire Regiment. Upon completing training, in 1917 he was posted to the Western Front where he was transferred again, to The East Yorkshire Regiment. During the German spring offensive of 1918 his unit, the 1/4th Battalion the East Yorkshires, was sent to reinforce...
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Horace Lyman
1815 - 1887 (72 years)
Horace Lyman was a reverend and professor of mathematics in the U.S. state of Oregon. He was born in Massachusetts, and came to Oregon by way of New York and Cape Horn in October 1848. He married Mary Dennison the next month. He established a school in Portland in 1849, and helped establish the Hillsboro School District in Hillsboro in 1851. He was a founder of Portland's First Congregational Church in June 1851. He was founding secretary of LaCreole Academic Institutue near Dallas, Oregon in 1856.
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William Arnon Henry
1850 - 1932 (82 years)
William Arnon Henry was an American academic and agriculturist from Ohio. Henry studied at the National Normal University and Ohio Wesleyan University before becoming a principal of two high schools. After continuing his education at Cornell University from 1876 to 1880, Henry was appointed a professor at the University of Wisconsin. There, he led the growth of the College of Agriculture, becoming its first dean in 1891. He remained at the university until 1907, when he was named a professor emeritus.
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Giovanni Boccardi
1859 - 1936 (77 years)
Giovanni Boccardi was an Italian astronomer, mathematician, and priest. As a priest of the Congregazione della Missione, Boccardi was an astronomer in the observatories of Collurania , Catania and Turin . At Turin he served as the director of the observatory and as a docent of astronomy in the local university. He also supervised the creation of the new site Pino Torinese of the Turin observatory . In 1907 he founded the Rivista di astronomia e di scienze affini .
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Ernst Herter
1846 - 1917 (71 years)
Ernst Gustav Herter was a German sculptor. He specialized in creating statues of mythological figures. Life and work Herter studied at the Academy of Arts in Berlin and later also as apprentice of , Gustav Blaeser and Albert Wolff. In 1869 he created his own studio. In 1875, he made a study trip to Italy. Professor Herter was a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts.
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John A. Wilson
1877 - 1954 (77 years)
John Albert Wilson was a Canadian sculptor who produced public art for commissions throughout North America. He was a professor in the School of Architecture at Harvard University for 32 years. He is most famous for his American Civil War Monuments: the statue on the Confederate Student Memorial on the campus of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the Washington Grays Monument in Philadelphia.
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Huldah Bancroft
Huldah Bancroft was an American biostatistician at Tulane University, known for her textbook on biostatistics and for her research on tropical infectious diseases including typhoid fever and leprosy.
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John Jackson
1686 - 1763 (77 years)
John Jackson was an English clergyman and controversial theological writer. Life Jackson was born at Sessay, near Thirsk in the North Riding of Yorkshire on 4 April 1686, eldest son of John Jackson , rector of that parish. His mother's maiden name was Ann Revell.
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Pedro Chacón
1525 - 1581 (56 years)
Pedro Chacón was a Spanish mathematician and theologian. Life He worked as professor of Greek at the University of Salamanca, whose history, consulting ancient documents in the library, he published in 1569. In Salamanca he was part of the School of Salamanca, a notable group of professors which also included Francisco de Salinas and Fray Luis de León.
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Jacob von Sandrart
1630 - 1708 (78 years)
Jacob von Sandrart was a German engraver primarily active in Nuremberg. At age ten Sandrart obtained his artistic training from his better-known uncle Joachim von Sandrart in Amsterdam. After spending time in Danzig and Regensburg, he married Regina Christina Eimart, daughter of the engraver Georg Christoph Eimart the elder, on 10 June 1654. The couple settled in Nuremberg in 1656 and remained there for the rest of their lives. His daughter Susanne Maria von Sandrart was also an artist and engraver.
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Hans Pietsch
1907 - 1967 (60 years)
Hans Karl Georg Heinrich Pietsch was a German mathematician who was most notable for being a director of the Mathematical Referat of the Wehrmacht signals intelligence agency, the General der Nachrichtenaufklärung during World War II.
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Wilhelm von Kobell
1766 - 1853 (87 years)
Wilhelm von Kobell was a German painter, printmaker and teacher. Biography Kobell was born in Mannheim, the son of Ferdinand Kobell, a landscape painter who cited Claude Lorrain as his influence. Wilhelm's initial lessons were supplied by his father and his uncle, Franz Kobell. He received further training under Franz Anton von Leydendorf and Egid Verhelst in the art of engraving at the Zeichnungsakademie in Mannheim. He studied the works in the galleries of Mannheim and Düsseldorf, especially those of Wouvermann, which he copied. During this time he practiced various styles, including 17th-c...
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Rudolf Schauffler
1889 - 1968 (79 years)
Rudolf Schauffler was a German mathematician, who was most notable for being the nominal head of the Linguistics and Cryptanalysis section of Pers Z S, the Signal Intelligence Agency of the German Foreign Office before and during World War II.
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Percy Ewing Matheson
1859 - 1946 (87 years)
Percy Ewing Matheson was a writer and honorary fellow of New College, Oxford. Matheson's wife Elizabeth was a daughter of Henry Bruce, 1st Baron Aberdare, and predeceased her husband in 1935. Selected works A skeleton outline of Roman history The Theory of the State by Johann Caspar Bluntschli National ideals Epictetus. The Discourses and Manual, together with fragments of his writings in 3 vols. Holy Russia and Other Poems The growth of Rome
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James Gray
1876 - 1934 (58 years)
James Gordon Gray was a Scottish mathematician and physicist. Life Grey was born in Glasgow in 1876, the third of eight children of Annie Gordon and Andrew Gray. He was educated at Friars Grammar School, in Bangor, Caernarvonshire, Wales, where his father was employed by the university. He attended the University College of North Wales until 1899, when his father and family moved back to Glasgow.
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Alexander Brown
1877 - 1947 (70 years)
Alexander Brown FRSE FRSSAf was a Scottish-born mathematician and educator in South Africa. He contributed to the study of the ratio of incommensurables in geometry and relations between the distances of a point from three vertices of a regular polygon.
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Fazio Cardano
1444 - 1524 (80 years)
Fazio Cardano was an Italian jurist and mathematician. He was a student of perspective. Cardano was also a professor at the University of Pavia, and was devoted to hermetical science and the world of the occult. He was a friend of Leonardo da Vinci.
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Jose de Creeft
1884 - 1982 (98 years)
José Mariano de Creeft was a Spanish-born American artist, sculptor, and teacher known for modern sculpture in stone, metal, and wood, particularly figural works of women. His bronze Alice in Wonderland sculpture climbing sculpture in Central Park is well known to both adults and children in New York City. He was an early adopter, and prominent exponent of the direct carving approach to sculpture. He also developed the technique of lead chasing, and was among the first to create modern sculpture from found objects. He taught at Black Mountain College, the Art Students League of New York, and the New School for Social Research.
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John Kemp
1763 - 1812 (49 years)
Prof John Kemp FRSE LLD was a Scottish mathematician, who settled in the U.S. state of New York for most of his life. Life He was born on 10 April 1763 at Achlossan near Aboyne in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, the son of a farmer. He studied Mathematics at Aberdeen University and graduated in 1783. In the same year he emigrated to the United States of America, settling first in Virginia then moving to New York] in 1785.
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Pedro Menéndez de Avilés
1519 - 1574 (55 years)
Pedro Menéndez de Avilés was a Spanish admiral, explorer and conquistador from Avilés, in Asturias, Spain. He is notable for planning the first regular trans-oceanic convoys, which became known as the Spanish treasure fleet, and for founding St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565. This was the first successful European settlement in La Florida and the most significant city in the region for nearly three centuries.
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Wilhelm Weiss
1859 - 1904 (45 years)
Wilhelm Weiss was an Austro-Hungarian mathematician. Weiss received his early education from his father, who was a teacher at Řitka; and from 1881 to 1887 he studied successively at the universities of Prague, Leipsic, and Erlangen, from where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1887. From 1887 to 1894 he was instructor in mathematics at the , becoming lecturer in 1894, deputy professor in 1896, assistant professor in 1897, and professor in 1900. From 1901 to 1902 he was dean of the school of engineers at the same institution. He taught there until his death in June 1904.
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Lazarus Bendavid
1762 - 1832 (70 years)
Lazarus Bendavid was a German mathematician and philosopher known for his exposition of Kantian philosophy. Biography Bendavid was a Jewish Kantian philosopher. After his graduation from the University of Berlin he lectured for some years on the philosophy of Kant in Vienna. His lectures being discouraged by the Austrian government during a general purge of foreigners, Bendavid returned to Berlin, where he found government employment and continued to lecture and write.
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Ed Emshwiller
1925 - 1990 (65 years)
Edmund Alexander Emshwiller was an American visual artist notable for his science fiction illustrations and his pioneering experimental films. He usually signed his illustrations as Emsh but sometimes used Ed Emsh, Ed Emsler, Willer and others.
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Humphrey Gilbert
1539 - 1583 (44 years)
Sir Humphrey Gilbert was an English adventurer, explorer, member of parliament and soldier who served during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and was a pioneer of the English colonial empire in North America and the Plantations of Ireland. He was a maternal half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh and a cousin of Sir Richard Grenville.
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