The Most Famous

Mathematicians from Germany

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This page contains a list of the greatest Germans Mathematicians. The pantheon dataset contains 1,004 Mathematicians, 107 of which were born in Germany. This makes Germany the birth place of the 3rd most number of Mathematicians behind United Kingdom and France.

Top 10 Mathematicians

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary Germans Mathematicians of all time. This list of famous Germans Mathematicians is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography's online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of Germans Mathematicians.

  1. #1
    Photo of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

    Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

    1646 - 1716

    HPI 92.00156 langs

    Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is most famous for his work on calculus and the binary system.

  2. #2
    Photo of Carl Friedrich Gauss

    Carl Friedrich Gauss

    1777 - 1855

    HPI 91.44160 langs
    Carl Friedrich Gauss is most famous for his contributions to mathematics, specifically in the fields of number theory and geometry. He also...Read moreShow less

    Carl Friedrich Gauss is most famous for his contributions to mathematics, specifically in the fields of number theory and geometry. He also made contributions to astronomy, statistics, and geodesy.

  3. #3
    Photo of Bernhard Riemann

    Bernhard Riemann

    1826 - 1866

    HPI 85.32101 langs
    Bernhard Riemann is most famous for his contributions to mathematics, including the Riemann integral, the Riemann-Roch theorem, and the...Read moreShow less

    Bernhard Riemann is most famous for his contributions to mathematics, including the Riemann integral, the Riemann-Roch theorem, and the Riemann hypothesis.

  4. #4
    Photo of Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet

    Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet

    1805 - 1859

    HPI 80.7763 langs
    Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet was a German mathematician who is most famous for his work in number theory. He is responsible for the first...Read moreShow less

    Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet was a German mathematician who is most famous for his work in number theory. He is responsible for the first rigorous proof of the Prime Number Theorem, which states that the number of primes less than or equal to a given number is asymptotic to the form n/ln(n).

  5. #5
    Photo of Gottlob Frege

    Gottlob Frege

    1848 - 1925

    HPI 76.8175 langs

    Gottlob Frege was a German mathematician and philosopher. He is most famous for his work in logic and the philosophy of language.

  6. #6
    Photo of Emmy Noether

    Emmy Noether

    1882 - 1935

    HPI 76.3884 langs
    Emmy Noether is most famous for her contributions to abstract algebra and theoretical physics. She was the first woman to be awarded a full...Read moreShow less

    Emmy Noether is most famous for her contributions to abstract algebra and theoretical physics. She was the first woman to be awarded a full professorship at the University of Göttingen in Germany.

  7. #7
    Photo of August Ferdinand Möbius

    August Ferdinand Möbius

    1790 - 1868

    HPI 75.8155 langs
    August Ferdinand Möbius (1790-1868) was a German mathematician and astronomer. He is most famous for his discovery of the Möbius strip, a...Read moreShow less

    August Ferdinand Möbius (1790-1868) was a German mathematician and astronomer. He is most famous for his discovery of the Möbius strip, a two-dimensional surface with only one side and one boundary.

  8. #8
    Photo of Friedrich Bessel

    Friedrich Bessel

    1784 - 1846

    HPI 75.6364 langs

    Friedrich Bessel is most famous for determining the orbit of the star 61 Cygni and the distance from Earth to the Sun.

  9. #9
    Photo of Karl Weierstrass

    Karl Weierstrass

    1815 - 1897

    HPI 75.4171 langs

    Karl Weierstrass is most famous for proving that every continuous function on the real line can be uniformly approximated by polynomials.

  10. #10
    Photo of Ludolph van Ceulen

    Ludolph van Ceulen

    1540 - 1610

    HPI 74.7942 langs

    Ludolph van Ceulen is most famous for calculating the value of Pi to over 31 digits.

People by Birth Decade

Browse notable Germans Mathematicians grouped by birth decade. Each decade shows the top 10 by HPI; expand to see everyone.

1730s(1)

Overlapping Lives

Which Mathematicians were alive at the same time? This visualization shows the lifespans of the 25 most globally memorable Mathematicians since 1700.

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