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,
#11601
James McMahon
1856 - 1922 (66 years)
James McMahon was an Irish mathematician whose career was spent at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He was a committed educator, and an early proponent of professionalization in the teaching of advanced mathematics in America. A professor and Chairman of the Mathematics Department in Cornell University's College of Arts & Sciences, McMahon was one of the earliest members of the American Mathematical Society in 1891. For seven years he served as associate editor of the Annals of Mathematics. He was also the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Secretary , Section A ; General Secretary , and Vice-President .
Go to Profile#11602
Serge Elisséeff
1889 - 1975 (86 years)
Serge Elisséeff was a Russian-French scholar, Japanologist, and professor at Harvard University. He was one of the first Westerners to study Japanese at a university in Japan. He began studying Japanese at the University of Berlin, then transferred to Tokyo Imperial University in 1912, becoming the first Westerner to graduate from Tokyo Imperial University in Japanese as well as its first Western graduate student.
Go to Profile#11603
William Thomson
1856 - 1947 (91 years)
Sir William Thomson FRSE LLD was a 19th/20th century Scottish mathematician and physicist primarily working as a university administrator in South Africa. Life He was born on New Year's Eve, 31 December 1856, in the village of Kirkton of Mailler in Perthshire. He was educated at Perth Academy then studied mathematics and physics at the University of Edinburgh. He graduated with a BSc and MA in 1878 and began assisting in lectures at the University.
Go to Profile#11604
Émile Merlin
1875 - 1938 (63 years)
Émile Alphonse Louis Merlin was a Belgian mathematician and astronomer. Merlin attended the secondary school Athénée royal de Bruxelles. He then studied at the University of Liège and the University of Ghent, where in 1900 he received his doctorate in mathematics. This was followed by a stay abroad between 1901 and 1903 in Paris at the Sorbonne, at the Collège de France and in Göttingen. In 1904 he became an assistant at the observatory in Uccle. In 1909 he was promoted to astronomer adjoint. From 1912 he was a lecturer on astronomy and geodesy at the University of Ghent and in 1919 he became...
Go to Profile#11605
Henry Moseley
1801 - 1872 (71 years)
Henry Moseley was an English churchman, mathematician, and scientist. Biography The son of Dr. William Willis Moseley, who kept a school at Newcastle-under-Lyme, and his wife Margaret , he was born on 9 July 1801. He was sent at an early age to the grammar school there, and when fifteen or sixteen to a school at Abbeville. Later he attended, for a short time, a naval school in Portsmouth.
Go to Profile#11606
Albert Pighius
1490 - 1542 (52 years)
Albert Pighius was a Dutch Roman Catholic theologian, mathematician, and astronomer. Life He studied philosophy and began the study of theology at the Catholic University of Leuven, where Adrian of Utrecht, later Pope Adrian VI, was one of his teachers. Pighius completed his studies at Cologne, but it is not clear whether he received the degree of Doctor of Theology. When his teacher Adrian became pope, he went to Rome, where he also remained during the reigns of Pope Clement VII and Pope Paul III, and was repeatedly employed in ecclesiastical-political embassies. He had taught mathematics to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, afterward Paul III.
Go to Profile#11607
Tadeusz Błotnicki
1858 - 1928 (70 years)
Tadeusz Błotnicki was a Polish sculptor, active mainly in Kraków. He was a disciple of Parys Filippi, , and Kaspar von Zumbusch, from Vienna, and created many sculptures and busts in Cracow and throughout Galicia. He was also a known figure in the artistic spheres of pre-war Cracow and was friends with Gabriela Zapolska, Teofil Lenartowicz and Jacek Malczewski, who painted his portrait.
Go to Profile#11608
Pietro Montana
1890 - 1978 (88 years)
Pietro Montana was a 20th-century Italian-American sculptor, painter and teacher, noted for his war memorials and religious works. Biography He was born in Alcamo, Sicily, the third of six children of Ignazio and Marianna Montana. The family emigrated to the United States in 1904, and settled in Brooklyn, New York City. As a teen, he apprenticed under a photographer, then started his own photography studio in the family home. He attended night classes for six years at the School of Art, Cooper Union, studying under George Thomas Brewster and graduating in 1915. He also studied at the Mechani...
Go to Profile#11609
Hugh Segar
1868 - 1954 (86 years)
Hugh William Segar was a New Zealand mathematician and university professor. He was born in Liverpool, Lancashire, England in 1868. He was educated at Liverpool College and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was 2nd Wrangler and a Yeats Prizeman. He was Professor of Mathematics at University College, Auckland.
Go to Profile#11610
Giuseppe Lauricella
1867 - 1913 (46 years)
Giuseppe Lauricella was an Italian mathematician who contributed to analysis and theory of elasticity. Born in Agrigento , Lauricella studied at the University of Pisa, where his professors included Luigi Bianchi, Ulisse Dini and Vito Volterra. He taught in secondary schools from 1895 to 1898, then became a professor at the University of Catania. In 1907 he became a member of the Accademia dei Lincei. He was an Invited Speaker of the ICM in 1908 in Rome.
Go to Profile#11611
George Frederic Watts
1817 - 1904 (87 years)
George Frederic Watts was a British painter and sculptor associated with the Symbolist movement. He said "I paint ideas, not things." Watts became famous in his lifetime for his allegorical works, such as Hope and Love and Life. These paintings were intended to form part of an epic symbolic cycle called the "House of Life", in which the emotions and aspirations of life would all be represented in a universal symbolic language.
Go to Profile#11612
Matthew Wyatt Joseph Fry
1863 - 1943 (80 years)
Matthew Wyatt Joseph Fry was an Irish mathematician and academic who served as Professor of Natural Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin from 1910 to 1925. Life and career Fry was born in County Clare, where his father was Rev Henry Fry of Kilkeedy parish , the family later moving to Bourney parish, Corbally, Roscrea, Co Tipperary. Matthew attended Galway Grammar school, and then TCD, studying mathematics. He was awarded BA , and MA and Fellowship , being appointed Assistant to the Professor of Natural Philosophy that same year. In 1910 he became the Erasmus Smith's Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy.
Go to Profile#11613
Robert Aldrich
1918 - 1983 (65 years)
Robert Burgess Aldrich was an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. An iconoclastic and maverick auteur working in many genres during the Golden Age of Hollywood, he directed mainly films noir, war movies, westerns and dark melodramas with Gothic overtones. His most notable credits include Vera Cruz , Kiss Me Deadly , The Big Knife , Autumn Leaves , Attack , What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? , Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte , The Flight of the Phoenix , The Dirty Dozen , and The Longest Yard .
Go to Profile#11614
Jacques Deruyts
1862 - 1945 (83 years)
Joseph Gustave Jacques Deruyts was a Belgian mathematician, known as a pioneer of group representation theory. He is the elder brother of the mathematician :fr:François Deruyts Deruyts received his doctorate in 1883 from the University of Liège and was appointed there as assistant to Louis Pérard in experimental physics. Deruyts joined the academic staff in mathematics and was appointed in 1883 a professor of geometry at the University of Liège, where he remained until retirement as professor emeritus.
Go to Profile#11615
Emil Filla
1882 - 1953 (71 years)
Emil Filla was a Czech painter. He was a leader of the avant-garde in Prague between World War I and World War II and was an early Cubist painter. Early life Filla was born in Chropyně, Moravia, and spent his childhood in Brno, but later moved to Prague. Beginning in 1903, he studied at , but he left the school in 1906.
Go to Profile#11616
Boris Kalin
1905 - 1975 (70 years)
Boris Kalin was a Slovene sculptor. He mainly created classical figures, public monuments, and nudes. Some of his sculptures are kept at Brdo Castle as part of its collection of modern Slovene art. Biography Kalin was born in Solkan, which was then a suburb of the Austro-Hungarian town of Gorizia and is now part of Nova Gorica, Slovenia. He attended the technical secondary school in Ljubljana and continued his studies between 1924 and 1929 at the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts with the professors Rudolf Valdec, Frano Kršinić, Ivo Kredić, and Ivan Meštrović. From 1945 to 1970, Kalin taught sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana; he was also its dean for two terms.
Go to Profile#11617
R. W. H. T. Hudson
1875 - 1904 (29 years)
Ronald William Henry Turnbull Hudson was a British mathematician. Ronald W.H.T. Hudson was considered in his day to be the most gifted geometer in all of Cambridge. Hudson's life was cut short when he died in a mountaineering accident at the age of 28, but his posthumously-published book Kummer's Quartic Surface allows mathematicians today access to his work.
Go to Profile#11618
Charles-François-Maximilien Marie
1819 - 1891 (72 years)
Charles-François-Maximilien Marie was a French mathematician, historian of mathematics. He was the author of History of the Mathematics and Theory of the variable imaginary functions , relating to the imaginary unit.
Go to Profile#11619
Nancy Elizabeth Prophet
1890 - 1960 (70 years)
Nancy Elizabeth Prophet was an American artist of African-American and Native American ancestry, known for her sculpture. She was the first African-American graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1918 and later studied at L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris during the early 1920s. She became noted for her work in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1934, Prophet began teaching at Spelman College, expanding the curriculum to include modeling and history of art and architecture. Prophet died in 1960 at the age of 70.
Go to Profile#11620
Zhu Zaiyu
1536 - 1611 (75 years)
Zhu Zaiyu was a Chinese mathematician, physicist, choreographer, and music theorist. He was a prince of the Chinese Ming dynasty. In 1584, Prince Zhu innovatively described the equal temperament via accurate mathematical calculation.
Go to Profile#11621
Adele Astaire
1896 - 1981 (85 years)
Adele Astaire Douglass , was an American dancer, stage actress, and singer. After beginning work as a dancer and vaudeville performer at the age of nine, Astaire built a successful performance career with her younger brother, Fred Astaire.
Go to Profile#11622
William Fox
1812 - 1893 (81 years)
Sir William Fox was the second premier of New Zealand and held that office on four occasions in the 19th century, while New Zealand was still a colony. He was known for his confiscation of Māori land rights, his contributions to the education system , and his work to increase New Zealand's autonomy from Britain. He has been described as determined and intelligent, but also as bitter and "too fond" of personal attacks. Different aspects of his personality are emphasised by different accounts.
Go to Profile#11623
Wang Qiming
1941 - 1989 (48 years)
Wang Qiming was a Chinese mathematician who was known for his work in differential geometry. He was considered as one of the best differential geometers in China of the time. Biography Wang Qiming was born in Yan'an, Shaanxi. In 1960, he graduated from Beijing 101 Middle School and was admitted to the five-year bachelor's degree programme of the Department of Mathematics of the University of Science and Technology of China. In 1965, he entered the Institute of Mathematics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to study under Wu Wenjun. Once Wang pointed out a mistake that Wu made in a lesson and told Wu the German book upon which he based.
Go to Profile#11624
Roland P. Falkner
1866 - 1940 (74 years)
Roland Post Falkner was an American economist and statistician. Biography Robert P. Falkner was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut on April 14, 1866. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1885; studied economics at Berlin, Leipzig and Halle-on-Saale, Germany; studied at the Collège de France; was instructor in accounting and statistics in the University of Pennsylvania in 1888–91, and professor of statistics 1891–1900.
Go to Profile#11625
John Strong Newberry
1822 - 1892 (70 years)
John Strong Newberry was an American physician, geologist and paleontologist. He participated as a naturalist and surgeon on three expeditions to explore and survey the western United States. During the Civil War he served in the US Sanitary Commission and was appointed secretary of the western department of the commission. After the war he became professor of geology and paleontology at Columbia University School of Mines and chief geologist of the Geological Survey of Ohio.
Go to Profile#11626
John McDouall Stuart
1815 - 1866 (51 years)
John McDouall Stuart , often referred to as simply "McDouall Stuart", was a Scottish explorer and one of the most accomplished of all Australia's inland explorers. Stuart led the first successful expedition to traverse the Australian mainland from south to north and return, through the centre of the continent. His experience and the care he showed for his team ensured he never lost a man, despite the harshness of the country he encountered.
Go to Profile#11627
George M. Cohan
1878 - 1942 (64 years)
George Michael Cohan was an American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer and theatrical producer. Cohan began his career as a child, performing with his parents and sister in a vaudeville act known as "The Four Cohans". Beginning with Little Johnny Jones in 1904, he wrote, composed, produced, and appeared in more than three dozen Broadway musicals. Cohan wrote more than 50 shows and published more than 300 songs during his lifetime, including the standards "Over There", "Give My Regards to Broadway", "The Yankee Doodle Boy" and "You're a Grand Old Flag". As a co...
Go to Profile#11628
Paul Yu Pin
1901 - 1978 (77 years)
Paul Yu Pin was a Chinese cardinal of the Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Nanking from 1946 until his death, having previously served as its Apostolic Vicar, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1969.
Go to Profile#11629
Eileen Brooke
1905 - 1989 (84 years)
Eileen Minnie Brooke was a British statistician and health policy professional. Education Eileen Minnie Brooke attended East London College, earning a B.Sc. in mathematics in 1926, and an M.Sc. in mathematics in 1929. She completed doctoral studies in 1952.
Go to Profile#11630
Abu Said Gorgani
850 - 845 (-5 years)
Abu Sa'id al-Dharir al-Jurjani , also Gurgani, was a 9th-century Persian mathematician and astronomer from Gurgan, Iran. He wrote a treatise on geometrical problems and another on the drawing of the meridian. George Sarton considers him a pupil of Ibn al-A'rabi, but Carl Brockelmann rejects this opinion.
Go to Profile#11631
Konstantinos M. Mitsopoulos
1844 - 1911 (67 years)
Konstantinos M. Mitsopoulos was a writer, geologist, mineralogist, chemist, and professor. His uncle Iraklis Mitsopoulos was the father of modern natural sciences in Greece. He followed in his uncle's footsteps, and was the first student to receive a doctorate degree in the natural sciences at the University of Athens in 1868. He was one of the first scientists in Greece to publicly promote Darwin's theory of evolution. He edited and published the periodical known as Prometheus in 1890, promoting Darwinist views. The publication was shut down by the church two years later.
Go to Profile#11632
George Henry Bolsover
1910 - 1990 (80 years)
George Henry Bolsover CBE was the director of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at the University of London from 1947 to 1976. The school, now known as UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, is part of University College, London.
Go to Profile#11633
Yang Zhuoxin
1890 - 1963 (73 years)
Yang Zhuoxin was a Chinese educator and mathematician who served as president of Hunan University from August 1930 to March 1931. Biography Yang was born and raised in Xinhua County, Hunan. He attended Zijiang School. He graduated from Hunan High College in 1908. He was sent abroad to study at the expense of the government in 1903. He studied at Harvard University and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He received his master's degree from the University of Illinois and doctor's degree from Syracuse University. He then studied at Cambridge University , the University of London , the Univers...
Go to Profile#11634
Abu al-Abbas Iranshahri
900 - Present (1125 years)
Abu al-Abbas Iranshahri was a 9th-century Persian philosopher, mathematician, natural scientist, historian of religion, astronomer and author. According to traditional sources, he is the first figure in the wider Muslim world to be associated with philosophy after the advent of Islam.
Go to Profile#11635
Sebastián Vizcaíno
1548 - 1623 (75 years)
Sebastián Vizcaíno was a Spanish soldier, entrepreneur, explorer, and diplomat whose varied roles took him to New Spain, the Baja California peninsula, the California coast and Asia. Early career Vizcaíno was born in 1548, in Extremadura, Crown of Castile . He saw military service in the Spanish invasion of Portugal during 1580–1583. Coming to New Spain in 1583, he sailed as a merchant on a Manila galleon to the Spanish East Indies in 1586–1589. In 1587, he was on board the Santa Ana as one of the merchants when Thomas Cavendish captured it, robbing him and others of their personal cargoes of...
Go to Profile#11636
Paola Sebastiani
Paola Sebastiani is a biostatistician and a professor at Boston University working in the field of genetic epidemiology, building prognostic models that can be used for the dissection of complex traits. Her research interests include Bayesian modeling of biomedical data, particularly genetic and genomic data.
Go to Profile#11637
Theodore Clarke Smith
1870 - 1960 (90 years)
Theodore Clarke Smith was professor of American history at Williams College from 1903 to 1938. Smith was an educationalist and curriculum reformer who served on the Committee on Curriculum of 1911-1927 and the Advisory Committee of 1911-1935.
Go to Profile#11638
Werner Fenchel
1905 - 1988 (83 years)
Moritz Werner Fenchel was a mathematician known for his contributions to geometry and to optimization theory. Fenchel established the basic results of convex analysis and nonlinear optimization theory which would, in time, serve as the foundation for nonlinear programming. A German-born Jew and early refugee from Nazi suppression of intellectuals, Fenchel lived most of his life in Denmark. Fenchel's monographs and lecture notes are considered influential.
Go to Profile#11639
Banesh Hoffmann
1906 - 1986 (80 years)
Banesh Hoffmann was a British mathematician and physicist known for his association with Albert Einstein. Life Banesh Hoffmann was born in Richmond, Surrey, on 6 September 1906. He studied mathematics and theoretical physics at the University of Oxford, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree and went on to earn his doctorate at Princeton University.
Go to Profile#11640
Allen Shields
1927 - 1989 (62 years)
Allen Lowell Shields was an American mathematician who worked on measure theory, complex analysis, functional analysis and operator theory, and was "one of the world's leading authorities on spaces of analytic functions."
Go to Profile#11641
Philip Franklin
1898 - 1965 (67 years)
Philip Franklin was an American mathematician and professor whose work was primarily focused in analysis. Dr. Franklin received a B.S. in 1918 from City College of New York . He received his M.A. in 1920 and Ph.D. in 1921 both from Princeton University. His dissertation, The Four Color Problem, was supervised by Oswald Veblen. After teaching for one year at Princeton and two years at Harvard University , Franklin joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Mathematics, where he stayed until his 1964 retirement.
Go to Profile#11642
E. J. G. Pitman
1897 - 1993 (96 years)
Edwin James George Pitman was an Australian mathematician who made significant contributions to statistics and probability theory. In particular, he is remembered primarily as the originator of the Pitman permutation test, Pitman nearness and Pitman efficiency.
Go to Profile#11643
Jacques Hadamard
1865 - 1963 (98 years)
Jacques Salomon Hadamard was a French mathematician who made major contributions in number theory, complex analysis, differential geometry and partial differential equations. Biography The son of a teacher, Amédée Hadamard, of Jewish descent, and Claire Marie Jeanne Picard, Hadamard was born in Versailles, France and attended the Lycée Charlemagne and Lycée Louis-le-Grand, where his father taught. In 1884 Hadamard entered the École Normale Supérieure, having placed first in the entrance examinations both there and at the École Polytechnique. His teachers included Tannery, Hermite, Darboux, Appell, Goursat and Picard.
Go to Profile#11644
Theodore Motzkin
1908 - 1970 (62 years)
Theodore Samuel Motzkin was an Israeli-American mathematician. Biography Motzkin's father Leo Motzkin, a Ukrainian Jew, went to Berlin at the age of thirteen to study mathematics. He pursued university studies in the topic and was accepted as a graduate student by Leopold Kronecker, but left the field to work for the Zionist movement before finishing a dissertation.
Go to Profile#11645
Felix Hausdorff
1868 - 1942 (74 years)
Felix Hausdorff was a German mathematician, pseudonym Paul Mongré, who is considered to be one of the founders of modern topology and who contributed significantly to set theory, descriptive set theory, measure theory, and functional analysis.
Go to Profile#11646
Jacob Bronowski
1908 - 1974 (66 years)
Jacob Bronowski was a Polish-British mathematician and philosopher. He was known to friends and professional colleagues alike by the nickname Bruno. He is best known for developing a humanistic approach to science, and as the presenter and writer of the thirteen-part 1973 BBC television documentary series, and accompanying book, The Ascent of Man. This endeavour propelled him into the esteemed position of being widely regarded as "one of the most revered intellectuals on the global stage."
Go to Profile#11647
Leopold Vietoris
1891 - 2002 (111 years)
Leopold Vietoris was an Austrian mathematician, World War I veteran and supercentenarian. He was born in Radkersburg and died in Innsbruck. He was known for his contributions to topology—notably the Mayer–Vietoris sequence—and other fields of mathematics, his interest in mathematical history and for being a keen alpinist.
Go to Profile#11648
Eberhard Hopf
1902 - 1983 (81 years)
Eberhard Frederich Ferdinand Hopf was a mathematician and astronomer, one of the founding fathers of ergodic theory and a pioneer of bifurcation theory who also made significant contributions to the subjects of partial differential equations and integral equations, fluid dynamics, and differential geometry. The Hopf maximum principle is an early result of his that is one of the most important techniques in the theory of elliptic partial differential equations.
Go to Profile#11649
James Alexander Shohat
1886 - 1944 (58 years)
James Alexander Shohat was a Russian-American mathematician at the University of Pennsylvania who worked on the moment problem. He studied at the University of Petrograd and married the physicist Nadiascha W. Galli, the couple emigrating from Russia to the United States in 1923.
Go to Profile#11650
Rufus Bowen
1947 - 1978 (31 years)
Robert Edward "Rufus" Bowen was an internationally known professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, who specialized in dynamical systems theory. Bowen's work dealt primarily with axiom A systems, but the methods he used while exploring topological entropy, symbolic dynamics, ergodic theory, Markov partitions, and invariant measures "have application far beyond the axiom A systems for which they were invented." The Bowen Lectures at the University of California, Berkeley, are given in his honor.
Go to Profile