The 
Greatest Mathematicians of All Time
 
 

Isaac Newton

Carl Gauss

Archimedes

Leonhard Euler

Euclid

Bernhard Riemann
 

Henri Poincaré

David Hilbert

Alex. Grothendieck

J.-L. Lagrange

G.W. Leibniz

Pierre de Fermat

 

The Greatest Mathematicians of All Time
ranked in approximate order of "greatness."
To qualify, the mathematician's work must have breadth, depth, and historical importance.
 

 
  1. Isaac Newton
  2. Carl F. Gauss
  3. Archimedes
  4. Leonhard Euler
  5. Euclid
 
  1. Bernhard Riemann
  2. Henri Poincaré
  3. David Hilbert
  4. Alexander Grothendieck
  5. Joseph-Louis Lagrange
 
  1. Gottfried W. Leibniz
  2. Pierre de Fermat
  3. Niels Abel
  4. Évariste Galois
  5. John von Neumann

  1. Srinivasa Ramanujan
  2. Karl W. T. Weierstrass
  3. Brahmagupta
  4. René Déscartes
  5. Augustin Cauchy
 
  1. Hermann K. H. Weyl
  2. Leonardo `Fibonacci'
  3. Carl G. J. Jacobi
  4. Peter G. L. Dirichlet
  5. Georg Cantor
 
  1. Arthur Cayley
  2. Emma Noether
  3. Eudoxus of Cnidus
  4. Kurt Gödel
  5. Pythagoras of Samos

At some point a longer list will become a List of Great Mathematicians rather than a List of Greatest Mathematicians. I've expanded the List to Seventy-five, but you may prefer to leave it at Forty or Thirty or even prune it back to just a Top Twenty or Top Fifteen or Top Ten List.

  1. Bháscara Áchárya
  2. Blaise Pascal
  3. Apollonius of Perga
  4. Muhammed al-Khowârizmi
  5. Pierre-Simon Laplace
 
  1. William Rowan Hamilton
  2. Richard Dedekind
  3. Charles Hermite
  4. André Weil
  5. Stefan Banach
 
  1. Felix Christian Klein
  2. Diophantus of Alexandria
  3. George Boole
  4. Ferdinand Eisenstein
  5. François Viète

  1. Girolamo Cardano
  2. Christiaan Huygens
  3. Pappus of Alexandria
  4. Gaspard Monge
  5. Johannes Kepler
 
  1. Andrey N. Kolmogorov
  2. Alhazen ibn al-Haytham
  3. Jacques Hadamard
  4. L.E.J. Brouwer
  5. Hipparchus of Nicaea
 
  1. Liu Hui
  2. Albert Einstein   (*)
  3. Jean-Victor Poncelet
  4. Jacob Bernoulli
  5. John Wallis

  1. Aryabhatta
  2. Jean le Rond d'Alembert
  3. Godfrey H. Hardy
  4. Adrien M. Legendre
  5. Jakob Steiner
 
  1. Joseph Liouville
  2. Joseph Fourier
  3. John E. Littlewood
  4. Simeon-Denis Poisson
  5. Johann Bernoulli
 
  1. Émile Borel
  2. James J. Sylvester
  3. Thales of Miletus
  4. Omar al-Khayyám
  5. Henri Léon Lebesgue

Other contenders:       Archytas   Artin   Atiyah   D.Bernoulli   Bolyai   Bolzano   Cavalieri   Chang   Chasles   Chebyshev   Clairaut   deMoivre   Desargues   Erdös   Galileo   Germain   Heaviside   Heron   Hippocrates   Hypatia   ibnQurra   Jordan   Kowalewski   Kronecker   Kummer   Lambert   Landau   Lie   Lobachevsky   Maclaurin   Madhava   Minkowski   Napier   Nasir at-Tusi   Panini   Perelman   Plato   Polyà   Ptolemy   Regiomontanus   Seki   Serre   Shannon   Sturm   Turing   Zeno   et cetera  

(* - Click for an explanation of why Einstein is on the List.)   Click for a discussion of certain omissions. Please send me e-mail if you believe there's a major flaw in my rankings (or an error in any of the biographies). Obviously the relative ranks of, say Fibonacci and Ramanujan, will never satisfy everyone since the reasons for their "greatness" are different. I'm sure I've overlooked great mathematicians who obviously belong on this list. Please e-mail and tell me!

Biographies of the greatest mathematicians are in separate files by birth year:

(Or you can View the List and Bios as a single page.)



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