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,
#11651
Agnes Sime Baxter
1870 - 1917 (47 years)
Agnes Sime Baxter was a Canadian-born mathematician. She studied at Dalhousie University, receiving her BA in 1891, and her MA in 1892. She received her Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1895; her dissertation was "On Abelian integrals", a resume of Neumann's Abelian integral with comments and applications."
Go to Profile#11652
Ziauddin Ahmad
1878 - 1947 (69 years)
Sir Ziauddin Ahmad was an Indian mathematician, parliamentarian, logician, natural philosopher, politician, political theorist, educationist and a scholar. He was a member of the Aligarh Movement and was a professor, principal of MAO College, first pro vice-chancellor, vice chancellor and rector of Aligarh Muslim University, India.
Go to Profile#11653
Yoshida Mitsuyoshi
1598 - 1672 (74 years)
Yoshida Mitsuyoshi, also known as Yoshida Kōyū, was a Japanese mathematician in the Edo period. His popular and widely disseminated published work made him the most well known writer about mathematics in his lifetime.
Go to Profile#11654
Léopold Leau
1868 - 1943 (75 years)
Léopold Leau was a French mathematician, primarily known for his ties to international auxiliary languages. The Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language was founded on 7 January 1901 on Leau's initiative. He co-wrote with Prof. Louis Couturat the monumental Histoire de la Langue Universelle and its supplement Les Nouvelles Langues Internationales .
Go to Profile#11655
Victor Vâlcovici
1885 - 1970 (85 years)
Victor Vâlcovici was a Romanian mechanician and mathematician. Biography Born into a modest family in Galați, he graduated first in his class in 1904 from Nicolae Bălcescu High School in Brăila. Entering the University of Bucharest on a scholarship, he attended its faculty of sciences, where he had as teachers Spiru Haret and Gheorghe Țițeica. After graduating in 1907 with a degree in mathematics, he taught high school for two years before leaving for University of Göttingen on another scholarship to pursue a doctorate in mathematics. He wrote his thesis under the direction of Ludwig Prandtl...
Go to Profile#11656
Henry Forder
1889 - 1981 (92 years)
Henry George Forder was a New Zealand mathematician. Academic career Born in Shotesham All Saints, near Norwich, he won a scholarships first to a Grammar school and then to University of Cambridge. After teaching mathematics at a number of schools, he was appointed to the chair of mathematics at Auckland University College in New Zealand in 1933. He was very critical of the state of the New Zealand curriculum and set about writing a series of well received textbooks.
Go to Profile#11657
Rudolf Fueter
1880 - 1950 (70 years)
Karl Rudolf Fueter was a Swiss mathematician, known for his work on number theory. Biography After a year of graduate study of mathematics in Basel, Fueter began study in 1899 at the University of Göttingen and completed his Promotion in 1903 with dissertation Der Klassenkörper der quadratischen Körper und die komplexe Multiplikation under David Hilbert. After his Promotion, Fueter studied for 1 year in Paris, 3 months in Vienna, and 6 months in London. In 1905 he completed his Habilitierung at the University of Marburg. Fueter worked as a docent in 1907/1908 at Marburg and in the winter of 1907/1908 at the Bergakademie Clausthal.
Go to Profile#11658
Edward Mann Langley
1851 - 1933 (82 years)
Edward Mann Langley was a British mathematician, author of mathematical textbooks and founder of the Mathematical Gazette. He created the mathematical problem known as Langley’s Adventitious Angles.
Go to Profile#11659
Axel Sophus Guldberg
1838 - 1913 (75 years)
Axel Sophus Guldberg was a Norwegian mathematician. Biography Born in Christiania , Guldberg was the second oldest out of 11 siblings. He and his siblings were initially homeschooled, but he and his older brother, Cato Maximilian Guldberg, later began going to school in Fredrikstad, where they lived together with relatives. He completed his examen artium in 1856, cand.real. in 1863 and dr.philos. in 1867.
Go to Profile#11660
William Garnett
1850 - 1932 (82 years)
Dr. William Garnett was a British professor and educational adviser, specialising in physics and mechanics and taking a special interest in electric street lighting. Early years Garnett was born in Portsea, Portsmouth, England in 1850, the son of William Garnett. In January 1863 he entered the City of London School, where he was a pupil of Thomas Hall. In the May 1866 examination, he obtained the first Royal Exhibition, tenable at the Royal School of Mines and College of Chemistry, and during the winter session, he studied under Dr. Edward Frankland and Professor John Tyndall, but in the following year, resigned the Exhibition and returned to the City of London School.
Go to Profile#11661
Ernest Shackleton
1874 - 1922 (48 years)
Ernest Henry Shackleton was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic. He was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
Go to Profile#11662
John Howard Van Amringe
1836 - 1915 (79 years)
John Howard Van Amringe was an American educator and mathematician. Life and career Van Amringe was born in Philadelphia on April 3, 1835. He was a son of William Frederick Van Amringe and Susan Budd Van Amringe . Among his siblings was brother, Thomas Budd Van Amringe.
Go to Profile#11663
Théophile Pépin
1826 - 1905 (79 years)
Jean François Théophile Pépin was a French mathematician. Born in Cluses, Haute-Savoie, he became a Jesuit in 1846, and from 1850 to 1856 and from 1862 to 1871 he was Professor of Mathematics at various Jesuit colleges. He was appointed Professor of Canon Law in 1873, moving to Rome in 1880. He died in Lyon at the age of 77.
Go to Profile#11664
Florence Eliza Allen
1876 - 1960 (84 years)
Florence Eliza Allen was an American mathematician and women's suffrage activist. In 1907 she became the second woman to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and the fourth Ph.D. overall from that department.
Go to Profile#11665
James Harkness
1864 - 1923 (59 years)
James Harkness was a Canadian mathematician, born in Derby, England, and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge with a B.A. in 1885 and an M.A. in 1889. Coming early to the United States, he was connected with Bryn Mawr College from 1888 to 1903, for the last seven years as professor of mathematics. Harkness complemented Scott with a course on "Abelian Integrals and Functions" that also drew on the latest literature in German — the work of Alfred Clebsch and Paul Gordan, Bernhard Riemann, Hermann Amandus Schwarz and others — and "aimed to prepare the students for the recent Memoirs of Felix...
Go to Profile#11666
Jekuthiel Ginsburg
1889 - 1957 (68 years)
Jekuthiel Ginsburg was a professor of mathematics at Yeshiva University. He established the journal Scripta Mathematica. He also was honored as a fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#11667
Dmitry Morduhai-Boltovskoi
1876 - 1952 (76 years)
Dmitry Dmitrievich Morduhai-Boltovskoi was a Russian mathematician, best known for his work in analysis, differential Galois theory, number theory, hyperbolic geometry, and history of mathematics. His annotated translation of Euclid's Elements in Russian is also well-regarded.
Go to Profile#11668
Adolf Piltz
1855 - 1940 (85 years)
Adolf Piltz was a German mathematician who contributed to number theory. Piltz was arguably the first to formulate a generalized Riemann hypothesis, in 1884. Notes Further reading External links
Go to Profile#11669
Paul Guldin
1577 - 1643 (66 years)
Paul Guldin was a Swiss Jesuit mathematician and astronomer. He discovered the Guldinus theorem to determine the surface and the volume of a solid of revolution. Guldin was noted for his association with the German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler. Guldin composed a critique of Cavalieri's method of Indivisibles.
Go to Profile#11670
Ervand Kogbetliantz
1888 - 1974 (86 years)
Ervand George Kogbetliantz was an Armenian-American mathematician and the first president of the Yerevan State University. He left Russia in 1918. He received a Doctorate in mathematics from the University of Paris in 1923. His mathematical work was mainly on infinite series, on the theory of orthogonal polynomials, on an algorithm for singular value decomposition which bears his name, on algorithms for the evaluation of elementary functions in computers, and the enumeration of prime elements of the Gaussian integers. He also invented a three-dimensional version of chess. He was working at his death with Bobby Fischer on a game of chess for three people.
Go to Profile#11671
Jan Jansz de Jonge Stampioen
1610 - 1653 (43 years)
Jan Jansz de Jonge Stampioen was a Dutch mathematician famous for his published work on spherical trigonometry. In 1638 he moved to The Hague to become tutor of William II, Prince of Orange. In 1644 he was employed to tutor Christiaan Huygens in mathematics.
Go to Profile#11672
Gury Kolosov
1867 - 1936 (69 years)
Gury Vasilievich Kolosov was a Russian and Soviet mathematician and engineer. He is best known for his contributions to the theory of elasticity. In 1907 Kolosov derived the solution for stresses around an elliptical hole in a solid material governed by the mathematical theory of elasticity. He showed that the concentration of stress could become far greater, as the radius of curvature at an end of the hole becomes small compared with the overall length of the hole.
Go to Profile#11673
Géza Grünwald
1910 - 1943 (33 years)
Géza Grünwald was a Hungarian mathematician of Jewish heritage who worked on analysis. He died in the Holocaust. See also Grunwald–Wang theorem
Go to Profile#11674
Artemas Martin
1835 - 1918 (83 years)
Artemas Martin was a self-educated American mathematician. Biography Martin was born on August 3, 1835, in Steuben County, New York, grew up in Venango County, Pennsylvania, and spent most of his life in Erie County, Pennsylvania. He was home-schooled until the age of 14, when he began studying mathematics at the local school, later moving to the Franklin Select School a few miles away and then to the Franklin Academy, finishing his formal education at age approximately 20. He worked as a farmer, oil driller, and schoolteacher. In 1881, he declined an invitation to become a professor of mathematics at the Normal School in Missouri.
Go to Profile#11675
Johann Friedrich Hennert
1733 - 1813 (80 years)
Johann Friedrich Hennert was German-born and lectured in mathematics and physics at the University of Utrecht. He was a significant student of Leonhard Euler. He was known for his inclination towards the British school of philosophy.
Go to Profile#11676
Charles Étienne Louis Camus
1699 - 1768 (69 years)
Charles Étienne Louis Camus , was a French mathematician and mechanician who was born at Crécy-en-Brie, near Meaux. He studied mathematics, civil and military architecture, and astronomy after leaving Collège de Navarre in Paris. In 1730 he was appointed professor of architecture and, in 1733, associate of the Académie des Sciences. He also became a professor of geometry, secretary to the Academy of Architecture and fellow of the Royal Society of London. In 1727 he presented a memoir to the academy on masting ships, in consequence of which he was named the same year joint mechanician to that body.
Go to Profile#11677
Sophie Piccard
1904 - 1990 (86 years)
Sophie Piccard was a Russian-Swiss mathematician who became the first female full professor in Switzerland. Her research concerned set theory, group theory, linear algebra, and the history of mathematics.
Go to Profile#11678
John Daniel Runkle
1822 - 1902 (80 years)
John Daniel Runkle was a U.S. educator and mathematician. He served as acting president of MIT from 1868 to 1870 and president between 1870 and 1878. Biography Professor Runkle was born at Root, New York State. He worked on his father's farm until he was of age, and then studied and taught until he entered the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University, where he graduated in 1851. His ability as a mathematician led in 1849 to his appointment as assistant in the preparation of the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac, in which he continued to engage until 1884. He was professor of mathematics in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1865 until his retirement in 1902.
Go to Profile#11679
Franz Aepinus
1724 - 1802 (78 years)
Franz Ulrich Theodor Aepinus was a German mathematician, scientist, and natural philosopher residing in the Russian Empire. Aepinus is best known for his researches, theoretical and experimental, in electricity and magnetism.
Go to Profile#11680
Johann Jakob Balmer
1825 - 1898 (73 years)
Johann Jakob Balmer was a Swiss mathematician best known for his work in physics, the Balmer series of hydrogen atom. Biography Balmer was born in Lausen, Switzerland, the son of a chief justice also named Johann Jakob Balmer. His mother was Elizabeth Rolle Balmer, and he was the oldest son. During his schooling he excelled in mathematics, and so decided to focus on that field when he attended university.
Go to Profile#11681
Arnold S. Shapiro
1921 - 1962 (41 years)
Arnold Samuel Shapiro was an American mathematician known for his eversion of the sphere and Shapiro's lemma. He also was the author of an article on Clifford algebras and periodicity with Raoul Bott, later redone by Michael Atiyah and Bott.
Go to Profile#11682
Kambei Mori
1600 - 1700 (100 years)
Kambei Mori or Mōri Kambei, also known as Mōri Kambei Shigeyoshi Mōri Shigeyoshi, was a Japanese mathematician in the Edo period. Life and work Some 16th-century sources suggest that Mori studied in China, but such claims are inconclusive or rejected by historians. What is known with certainty is that he started a school in Kyoto and he wrote several influential and widely discussed books which dealt with arithmetic and the use of the abacus.
Go to Profile#11683
John Hilton Grace
1873 - 1958 (85 years)
John Hilton Grace FRS was a British mathematician. The Grace–Walsh–Szegő theorem is named in part after him. Early life He was born in Halewood, near Liverpool, the eldest of the six children of farmer William Grace and Elizabeth Hilton. He was educated at the village school and the Liverpool Institute. From there in 1892 he went up to Peterhouse, Cambridge to study mathematics. His nephew, his younger sister's son, was the animal geneticist, Alan Robertson FRS.
Go to Profile#11684
François Peyrard
1759 - 1822 (63 years)
François Peyrard was a French mathematician, educator and librarian. During the French Revolution, he was involved in the committee that reformed the French educational system. He was one of the founders of the École Polytechnique and its first librarian.
Go to Profile#11685
Hector Munro Macdonald
1865 - 1935 (70 years)
Prof Hector Munro Macdonald FRAS FRSE LLD was a Scottish mathematician, born in Edinburgh in 1865. He researched pure mathematics at Cambridge University after graduating from Aberdeen University with an honours degree.
Go to Profile#11686
Franz Harress
1885 - Present (141 years)
Franz Harress was a mathematician and contemporary of Albert Einstein and is best known for his experiment on the propagation of light in a rotating glass device. This experiment sparked an argument between Albert Einstein and Paul Harzer related to the theory of Special Relativity. Harress was a student of Professor Otto Julius Heinrich Knopf at Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena in 1912. His dissertation was "Die Geschwindigkeit des Lichtes in bewegten Körpern" . His work on the Sagnac effect was analyzed by Max von Laue in his 1920 paper "On the Experiment of F. Harress."
Go to Profile#11687
Edwin Bailey Elliott
1851 - 1937 (86 years)
Edwin Bailey Elliott FRS was a mathematician who worked on invariant theory. In 1892 he was appointed Waynflete Professor of Pure Mathematics at Oxford. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1891. He wrote the book An introduction to the algebra of quantics, on invariant theory .
Go to Profile#11688
Marguerite Lehr
1898 - 1987 (89 years)
Marguerite Lehr was an American mathematician who studied algebraic geometry, humanism in mathematics, and mathematics education. Early life and education Born on October 22, 1898, to Margaret Kreuter and George Lehr in Baltimore, Marguerite Lehr attended Goucher College for her undergraduate education and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1919. After her undergraduate education, Lehr moved to Rome to study at the University of Rome for the 1923–1924 academic year, funded by the American Association of University Women and the M. Carey Thomas University Fellowship. In 1925, Lehr earned her Ph.D.
Go to Profile#11689
Alfred Klose
1895 - 1953 (58 years)
Wilhelm Rudolf Alfred Klose was a German applied mathematician and astronomer. Education and career Klose studied at University of Breslau and University of Göttingen from 1916 and was an assistant at the observatory in Breslau from 1917. He received his doctorate in astronomy in 1921 in Breslau under Alexander Wilkens . After that he was at the University of Greifswald and its observatory, where he habilitated in 1922 and became a privatdozent. In 1923 he habilitated at the Humboldt University of Berlin. In 1924 he became an associate professor of mechanics and theoretical astronomy at University of Latvia in Riga.
Go to Profile#11690
Emanuel Lodewijk Elte
1881 - 1943 (62 years)
Emanuel Lodewijk Elte was a Dutch mathematician. He is noted for discovering and classifying semiregular polytopes in dimensions four and higher. Elte's father Hartog Elte was headmaster of a school in Amsterdam. Emanuel Elte married Rebecca Stork in 1912 in Amsterdam, when he was a teacher at a high school in that city. By 1943 the family lived in Haarlem. When on January 30 of that year a German officer was shot in that town, in reprisal a hundred inhabitants of Haarlem were transported to the Camp Vught, including Elte and his family. As Jews, he and his wife were further deported to Sobib...
Go to Profile#11691
Adolf Krazer
1858 - 1926 (68 years)
Adolf Carl Josef Krazer was a German mathematician. Publications
Go to Profile#11692
Albrecht von Wallenstein
1583 - 1634 (51 years)
Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von Wallenstein , also von Waldstein , was a Bohemian military leader and statesman who fought on the Catholic side during the Thirty Years' War . His successful martial career made him one of the richest and most influential men in the Holy Roman Empire by the time of his death. Wallenstein became the supreme commander of the armies of the Imperial Army of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II and was a major figure of the Thirty Years' War.
Go to Profile#11693
Marie Litzinger
1899 - 1952 (53 years)
Marie Litzinger was an American mathematician known for her research in number theory, homogeneous polynomials, and modular arithmetic. Early life and education Marie Litzinger was born in Bedford, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Rush Litzinger and Katherine O'Connell Litzinger. Her father owned a marble works, and was an accountant for the Pennsylvania Railroad.
Go to Profile#11694
Mary Shore Walker
1882 - 1952 (70 years)
Mary Shore Walker was the first woman faculty member at the University of Missouri, and taught in the department of Mathematics. She was born in 1882. She earned her B.A. and M.A. at the University of Missouri in 1903 and 1904, respectively. The thesis she wrote for her M.A. was titled, "On finite groups with special reference to Klein’s ikosaeder.” While at the University of Missouri, she studied with Earle Hedrick, Oliver Dimon Kellogg, and W. D. A. Westfall.
Go to Profile#11695
Charles S. Venable
1827 - 1900 (73 years)
Charles Scott Venable was a mathematician, astronomer, and military officer. In mathematics, he is noted for authoring a series of publications as a University of Virginia professor. Early life He was born at Longwood House in Farmville, Virginia and graduated from Hampden-Sydney College, founded by his Patriot ancestor Nathaniel Venable, at the age of 15. He was a member of Beta Theta Pi fraternity while at Hampden-Sydney College.
Go to Profile#11696
Lowell Reed
1886 - 1966 (80 years)
Lowell Jacob Reed was 7th president of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. He was born in Berlin, New Hampshire, the son of Jason Reed, a millwright and farmer, and Louella Coffin Reed.
Go to Profile#11697
Marcel Bayard
1895 - 1956 (61 years)
Marcel Bayard was a French mathematician and telecommunications engineer. He made pioneering contributions to the telecommunications theory in the 1930s. As Chief Engineer of French telecommunications after World War II, he supervised and modernized the French telecommunications system.
Go to Profile#11698
Gabriele Manfredi
1681 - 1761 (80 years)
Gabriele Manfredi was an Italian mathematician who undertook important work in the field of calculus. Early years Gabriele Manfredi was born in Bologna, then in the Papal States, on 25 March 1681. He was the son of Alfonso Manfredi, a notary from Lugo, Emilia-Romagna, and Anna Maria Fiorini. His elder brother Eustachio studied law, then turned to science. Gabriele and his brother Eraclito studied medicine, while his fourth brother Emilio became a Jesuit preacher. His two sisters Maddalena and Teresa were also well educated, and later collaborated with their brothers in their work. Gabr...
Go to Profile#11699
Alexander Buchstab
1905 - 1990 (85 years)
Aleksandr Adol'fovich Buchstab was a Soviet mathematician who worked in number theory and was "known for his work in sieve methods". He is the namesake of the Buchstab function, which he wrote about in 1937.
Go to Profile#11700
Aurel Voss
1845 - 1931 (86 years)
Aurel Voss was a German mathematician, best known today for his contributions to geometry and mechanics. He served as president of the German Mathematical Society for the 1898 term. He was a professor at the University of Munich during 1902–1923. He became Emeritus in 1923.
Go to Profile