Mathematics · Curated list
Isaac Newton, Galileo Galilei, René Descartes and 37 more, ranked by how much of the world has written about each one.
Most written-about first. Each description summarises the mathematician's Wikipedia article, which its name links to.
1
English polymath (1642–1727)
An English polymath whose work spanned mathematics, physics and astronomy as well as alchemy and theology; he was also an author and an inventor. He played a central part in the Scientific Revolution and in the Enlightenment that came after it.
Wikidata · Photo: Godfrey Kneller, Public domain
2
Italian physicist and astronomer (1564–1642)
An Italian astronomer, physicist, engineer and polymath whose full name was Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei, usually shortened to Galileo Galilei or simply Galileo. He was born in Pisa, which then belonged to the Duchy of Florence.
Wikidata · Photo: Justus Sustermans, Public domain
3
French philosopher and mathematician (1596–1650)
A French mathematician, scientist and philosopher whose work underpins both mathematics and modern philosophy. He joined geometry and algebra, until then separate, into analytic geometry, and set out a systematic method of inquiry that shaped early modern philosophy.
Wikidata · Photo: After Frans Hals, Public domain
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4
Greek mathematician and physicist (c. 287 – 212 BC)
A mathematician, physicist, engineer, astronomer and inventor of Ancient Greece, from Syracuse in Sicily. Little is known of his life, but his surviving work places him among the foremost scientists of classical antiquity and the greatest mathematicians ever.
Wikidata · Photo: Domenico Fetti, Public domain
5
Mathematician and astronomer (1473–1543)
A Renaissance polymath who proposed a model of the universe with the Sun, not the Earth, at its centre. He published it in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium shortly before he died in 1543; the book was a landmark in the history of science, setting off the Copernican Revolution and helping to open the Scientific Revolution.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
6
Greek philosopher (c. 570 – c. 495 BC)
An Ionian Greek philosopher and polymath from Samos who founded Pythagoreanism, the school named after him. His political and religious teachings were widely known in Magna Graecia, and they shaped the thought of Plato and Aristotle and, through them, Western philosophy.
Wikidata · Photo: The original uploader was Galilea at German Wikipedia ., CC BY-SA 3.0
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7
German polymath (1646–1716)
A German polymath who worked as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is generally credited, together with Isaac Newton, with inventing calculus.
Wikidata · Photo: Christoph Bernhard Francke, Public domain
8
Ancient Greek mathematician (fl. 300 BC)
A mathematician of ancient Greece who worked as a geometer and logician. Known as the "father of geometry", he is remembered above all for the Elements, the treatise that laid down foundations of geometry which, for the most part, held sway over the subject until the early 19th century.
Wikidata · Photo: Justus van Gent, Public domain
9
German polymath and scholar (1777–1855)
A German scientist who worked as a physicist, geodesist and astronomer as well as a mathematician, contributing across mathematics and science. In mathematics alone his work reached into number theory, algebra and analysis, geometry, probability and statistics.
Wikidata · Photo: Gottlieb Biermann / After Christian Albrecht Jensen, Public domain
10
French polymath (1623–1662)
A French mathematician, physicist, inventor and philosopher, and a Catholic writer.
Wikidata · Photo: unknown; a copy of the painting of François II Quesnel, which was made for Gérard Edelinck en 1691 [réf. nécessaire] ., Public domain
11
Swiss mathematician (1707–1783)
A Swiss polymath who worked as an astronomer, physicist, engineer, logician, geographer and music theorist, and as a mathematician. Graph theory and topology began with him, and he made important discoveries across mathematics, among them in infinitesimal calculus, complex analysis and analytic number theory.
Wikidata · Photo: Jakob Emanuel Handmann, Public domain
12
German astronomer and mathematician (1571–1630)
A German polymath: astronomer, astrologer, mathematician, music theorist and natural philosopher. A leading figure of the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century, he is remembered chiefly for the laws of planetary motion that bear his name, and for three books: Harmonice Mundi, Astronomia nova and Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae.
Wikidata · Photo: Hans von Aachen, Public domain
13
English philosopher and logician (1872–1970)
An English logician, philosopher and social reformer whose full name and title were Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell. He helped found analytic philosophy, is counted among the 20th century's most influential philosophers, and wrote more than 70 books along with thousands of essays, articles, lectures and letters.
Wikidata · Photo: Bassano Ltd, Public domain
14
Persian polymath and poet (1048–1131)
A Persian poet and polymath (1048–1131) remembered for his work in mathematics, astronomy, philosophy and Persian literature. Born in Nishapur, Iran, he lived under the Seljuks, in the years of the First Crusade.
Wikidata · Photo: The original uploader was Atilin at French Wikipedia ., CC BY-SA 3.0
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15
Islamic mathematician (c. 780 – c. 850)
Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, a mathematician of the Islamic Golden Age who wrote works in Arabic on mathematics, astronomy and geography. Around 820 he was working at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, then the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate.
16
German mathematician (1862–1943)
A German mathematician who was also a philosopher of mathematics, and who ranks with the most influential mathematicians ever to have lived.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
17
Scottish physicist and mathematician (1831–1879)
A Scottish physicist and mathematician who produced the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, the first to treat electricity, magnetism and light as forms of one phenomenon. His equations for electromagnetism were the second great unification in physics, after the first, which Isaac Newton had achieved.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
18
Greco-Roman astronomer and geographer (c. 100–170)
Claudius Ptolemy, usually called just Ptolemy, a Greco-Roman writer of some twelve scientific treatises. Three of them went on to matter greatly to science in Western Europe, Byzantium and the Islamic world, first among them the astronomical treatise now called the Almagest, whose original title was Mathēmatikḗ Syntaxis.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
19
English mathematician (1815–1852)
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, an English mathematician and writer best known for her work on the analytical engine, the mechanical general-purpose computer Charles Babbage proposed. She was the first to see that the machine could do more than pure calculation.
Wikidata · Photo: Antoine Claudet, Public domain
20
French mathematician and physicist (1768–1830)
Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier, a physicist and mathematician from France, born in Auxerre, Burgundy. He is best known for starting the study of Fourier series, which grew into Fourier analysis and harmonic analysis, and for applying them to heat transfer and vibration; Fourier's law of conduction and the Fourier transform are named in his honour too.
Wikidata · Photo: Julien-Léopold Boilly, Public domain
21
French mathematician, physicist and engineer (1854–1912)
Jules Henri Poincaré, a French philosopher of science, engineer, theoretical physicist and mathematician. Often called a polymath, he is known in mathematics as "The Last Universalist" because he excelled in every branch of the subject as it stood in his time.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
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22
French polymath (1749–1827)
Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace, a French polymath whose work was key to physics, astronomy, mathematics, engineering, statistics and philosophy. His five-volume Mécanique céleste (1799–1825) summed up and extended the work of those before him.
Wikidata · Photo: Jean-Baptiste Paulin Guérin, Public domain
23
24
Indian mathematician and astronomer (598–668)
An Indian mathematician and astronomer credited as the first to understand zero as a number standing for nothing and to set out the concept formally. He wrote two early books on astronomy and mathematics: the theoretical Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta and the more practical Khandakhadyaka.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
25
British physicist (1902–1984)
Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, an English theoretical physicist regarded as one of the founders of quantum mechanics. He laid the groundwork for quantum field theory and for quantum electrodynamics, a name he coined himself.
Wikidata · Photo: Nobel Foundation, Public domain
26
Hungarian and American mathematician and physicist (1903–1957)
A mathematician of Hungarian and American nationality who was also a physicist, an engineer and a computer scientist. He may have covered more ground than any other mathematician of his day, bringing pure and applied science together and contributing greatly to mathematics, physics, economics, computing and statistics.
27
Dutch mathematician and physicist (1629–1695)
Christiaan Huygens, Lord of Zeelhem, a Dutch inventor, astronomer, engineer, physicist and mathematician seen as a key figure of the Scientific Revolution. He made seminal contributions to optics and mechanics, and as an astronomer he studied Saturn's rings and discovered Titan, its largest moon.
Wikidata · Photo: Bernard Vaillant, Public domain
28
Mathematician (1845–1918)
Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor, a mathematician central to creating set theory, now a fundamental theory of mathematics. He showed why it matters to pair off the members of two sets one to one, gave definitions of well-ordered and infinite sets, and proved that the real numbers outnumber the natural numbers.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
29
English mathematician, philosopher, and engineer (1791–1871)
An English polymath who worked as a mechanical engineer and inventor as well as a mathematician and philosopher. The idea of a digital programmable computer began with him.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
30
Mathematician and philosopher (1906–1978)
Kurt Friedrich Gödel, a logician, mathematician, cosmologist and philosopher. Ranked with Aristotle and Gottlob Frege among the most important logicians ever, he deeply influenced 20th-century scientific and philosophical thought, taking forward earlier work by Georg Cantor, Richard Dedekind and Frege.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
31
4th-century Alexandrian astronomer and mathematician
A mathematician, astronomer and Neoplatonist philosopher of Alexandria, then a leading city of the Roman Empire in its province of Egypt. A prominent thinker there, she taught philosophy, astronomy and other subjects, and in her lifetime was famous both as a wise counselor and as a great teacher.
Wikidata · Photo: Elbert Hubbard (June 19, 1856 – May 7, 1915), Public domain
32
French mathematician (1717–1783)
A French mathematician who was also a music theorist, philosopher and physicist. Up to 1759 he co-edited the Encyclopédie with Denis Diderot.
Wikidata · Photo: After Maurice Quentin de La Tour, Public domain
33
French mathematician and lawyer (1601–1665)
A French magistrate, polymath and mathematician credited with early developments that led to infinitesimal calculus, among them his technique of adequality. He is known in particular for an original way to find the largest and smallest ordinates of curved lines, similar to differential calculus before it existed, and for his work on number theory.
Wikidata · Photo: Rolland Lefebvre, Public domain
34
5th-century BC Greek philosopher
A Greek philosopher from before Socrates. He was born in Clazomenae while Asia Minor was ruled by the Persian Empire, and moved to Athens.
Wikidata · Photo: Eduard Lebiedzki, after a design by Carl Rahl, Public domain
35
German mathematician (1826–1866)
Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann, a German mathematician whose work in differential geometry, number theory and analysis ran deep. In real analysis he is best known for the Riemann integral, the first rigorous formulation of the integral, and for his work on Fourier series.
36
Khwarazmian-Persian polymath (973–1048)
A polymath of the Islamic Golden Age, Khwarazmian and Iranian, known as Biruni (بیرونی); his full name was Abu Reyhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni. Versed in astronomy, mathematics, physics and the other natural sciences, he stood out too as a linguist, chronologist and historian, and has been called the first anthropologist and a founding figure of Indology, geodesy and comparative religion.
Wikidata · Photo: Michel Bakni, CC BY-SA 4.0
37
American mathematician and Nobel Laureate (1928–2015)
An American mathematician, known and published as John Nash, whose work was fundamental to game theory, to partial differential equations, and to differential and real algebraic geometry. In 1994 he shared the Nobel Prize in Economics with Reinhard Selten and John Harsanyi, who were game theorists like him.
Wikidata · Photo: Peter Badge / Typos1, CC BY-SA 3.0
38
Italian-French scientist (1736–1813)
A mathematician, physicist and astronomer, Italian by birth and French by naturalisation, also recorded as Giuseppe Luigi Lagrange or Lagrangia. He made major contributions to analysis, to number theory, and to classical and celestial mechanics.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
39
Indian mathematician-astronomer (476–550)
Also called Aryabhata I, the first of the great mathematician-astronomers of the classical age of Indian mathematics and astronomy, and an early physicist. Among his works are the Arya-siddhanta and the Āryabhaṭīya.
40
French mathematician (1811–1832)
A mathematician and political activist from France. While still a teenager he worked out exactly when a polynomial can be solved by radicals, giving a condition both necessary and sufficient, and so settled a question that had stood open for 350 years.
Wikidata · Photo: Alfred Galois, Public domain
Every Wikidata item that is a person whose occupation is mathematician and whose field of work is mathematics, and that has its own English Wikipedia article, ranked by the number of Wikimedia sites with a page about it — Wikipedia's language editions, mostly, and sister projects such as Wikiquote. That counts how many communities independently thought it worth describing, and nobody can buy a place on it. The top 40 are shown.
Wikidata files these under this list's query, but they are not what the list is about:
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Fetched from Wikidata on 2026-09-25. Each description is this site's summary of the entry's Wikipedia article, which its name links to: the wording is ours, the facts are Wikipedia's, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. To correct an entry, correct it there; the next refresh carries the change.
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