The Most Famous

MATHEMATICIANS from Japan

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This page contains a list of the greatest Japanese Mathematicians. The pantheon dataset contains 1,004 Mathematicians, 11 of which were born in Japan. This makes Japan the birth place of the 20th most number of Mathematicians behind Turkey, and Greece.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary Japanese Mathematicians of all time. This list of famous Japanese 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 Japanese Mathematicians.

Photo of Seki Takakazu

1. Seki Takakazu (1642 - 1708)

With an HPI of 58.48, Seki Takakazu is the most famous Japanese Mathematician.  His biography has been translated into 36 different languages on wikipedia.

Seki Takakazu (関 孝和, c. March 1642 – December 5, 1708), also known as Seki Kōwa (関 孝和), was a Japanese mathematician and author of the Edo period. Seki laid foundations for the subsequent development of Japanese mathematics, known as wasan. He has been described as "Japan's Newton". He created a new algebraic notation system and, motivated by astronomical computations, did work on infinitesimal calculus and Diophantine equations. Although he was a contemporary of German polymath mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Leibniz and British polymath physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton, Seki's work was independent. His successors later developed a school dominant in Japanese mathematics until the end of the Edo period. While it is not clear how much of the achievements of wasan are Seki's, since many of them appear only in writings of his pupils, some of the results parallel or anticipate those discovered in Europe. For example, he is credited with the discovery of Bernoulli numbers. The resultant and determinant (the first in 1683, the complete version no later than 1710) are attributed to him. Seki also calculated the value of pi correct to the 10th decimal place, having used what is now called the Aitken's delta-squared process, rediscovered later by Alexander Aitken. Seki was influenced by Japanese mathematics books such as the Jinkōki.

Photo of Kunihiko Kodaira

2. Kunihiko Kodaira (1915 - 1997)

With an HPI of 56.99, Kunihiko Kodaira is the 2nd most famous Japanese Mathematician.  His biography has been translated into 35 different languages.

Kunihiko Kodaira (小平 邦彦, Kodaira Kunihiko, Japanese pronunciation: [kodaꜜiɾa kɯɲiꜜçi̥ko], 16 March 1915 – 26 July 1997) was a Japanese mathematician known for distinguished work in algebraic geometry and the theory of complex manifolds, and as the founder of the Japanese school of algebraic geometers. He was awarded a Fields Medal in 1954, being the first Japanese national to receive this honour.

Photo of Kiyosi Itô

3. Kiyosi Itô (1915 - 2008)

With an HPI of 56.76, Kiyosi Itô is the 3rd most famous Japanese Mathematician.  His biography has been translated into 29 different languages.

Kiyosi Itô (伊藤 清, Itō Kiyoshi, Japanese pronunciation: [itoː kiꜜjoɕi], 7 September 1915 – 10 November 2008) was a Japanese mathematician who made fundamental contributions to probability theory, in particular, the theory of stochastic processes. He invented the concept of stochastic integral and stochastic differential equation, and is known as the founder of so-called Itô calculus. He also pioneered the world connections between stochastic calculus and differential geometry, known as stochastic differential geometry. He was invited for the International Congress of Mathematicians in Stockholm in 1962. So much were Itô's results useful to financial mathematics that he was sometimes called "the most famous Japanese in Wall Street". Itô was a member of the faculty at University of Kyoto for most of his career and eventually became the director of their Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences. But he also spent multi-year stints at several foreign institutions, the longest of which took place at Cornell University.

Photo of Heisuke Hironaka

4. Heisuke Hironaka (b. 1931)

With an HPI of 55.19, Heisuke Hironaka is the 4th most famous Japanese Mathematician.  His biography has been translated into 30 different languages.

Heisuke Hironaka (広中 平祐, Hironaka Heisuke, born April 9, 1931) is a Japanese mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1970 for his contributions to algebraic geometry.

Photo of Goro Shimura

5. Goro Shimura (1930 - 2019)

With an HPI of 53.46, Goro Shimura is the 5th most famous Japanese Mathematician.  His biography has been translated into 26 different languages.

Gorō Shimura (志村 五郎, Shimura Gorō, 23 February 1930 – 3 May 2019) was a Japanese mathematician and Michael Henry Strater Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Princeton University who worked in number theory, automorphic forms, and arithmetic geometry. He was known for developing the theory of complex multiplication of abelian varieties and Shimura varieties, as well as posing the Taniyama–Shimura conjecture which ultimately led to the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.

Photo of Yutaka Taniyama

6. Yutaka Taniyama (1927 - 1958)

With an HPI of 53.05, Yutaka Taniyama is the 6th most famous Japanese Mathematician.  His biography has been translated into 24 different languages.

Yutaka Taniyama (谷山 豊, Taniyama Yutaka, 12 November 1927 – 17 November 1958) was a Japanese mathematician known for the Taniyama–Shimura conjecture.

Photo of Mikio Sato

7. Mikio Sato (1928 - 2023)

With an HPI of 50.88, Mikio Sato is the 7th most famous Japanese Mathematician.  His biography has been translated into 23 different languages.

Mikio Sato (Japanese: 佐藤 幹夫, Hepburn: Satō Mikio, 18 April 1928 – 9 January 2023) was a Japanese mathematician known for founding the fields of algebraic analysis, hyperfunctions, and holonomic quantum fields. He was a professor at the Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Kyoto.

Photo of Shigefumi Mori

8. Shigefumi Mori (b. 1951)

With an HPI of 50.81, Shigefumi Mori is the 8th most famous Japanese Mathematician.  His biography has been translated into 33 different languages.

Shigefumi Mori (森 重文, Mori Shigefumi, born February 23, 1951) is a Japanese mathematician, known for his work in algebraic geometry, particularly in relation to the classification of three-folds.

Photo of Kenkichi Iwasawa

9. Kenkichi Iwasawa (1917 - 1998)

With an HPI of 47.59, Kenkichi Iwasawa is the 9th most famous Japanese Mathematician.  His biography has been translated into 17 different languages.

Kenkichi Iwasawa (岩澤 健吉 Iwasawa Kenkichi, September 11, 1917 – October 26, 1998) was a Japanese mathematician who is known for his influence on algebraic number theory.

Photo of Yasumasa Kanada

10. Yasumasa Kanada (1948 - 2020)

With an HPI of 46.24, Yasumasa Kanada is the 10th most famous Japanese Mathematician.  His biography has been translated into 16 different languages.

Yasumasa Kanada (金田 康正, Kanada Yasumasa, 1949 – 11 February 2020) was a Japanese computer scientist most known for his numerous world records over the past three decades for calculating digits of π. He set the record 11 of the past 21 times. Kanada was a professor in the Department of Information Science at the University of Tokyo in Tokyo, Japan until 2015. From 2002 until 2009, Kanada held the world record calculating the number of digits in the decimal expansion of pi – exactly 1.2411 trillion digits. The calculation took more than 600 hours on 64 nodes of a HITACHI SR8000/MPP supercomputer. Some of his competitors in recent years include Jonathan and Peter Borwein and the Chudnovsky brothers.

People

Pantheon has 12 people classified as Japanese mathematicians born between 1642 and 1969. Of these 12, 3 (25.00%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living Japanese mathematicians include Heisuke Hironaka, Shigefumi Mori, and Shinichi Mochizuki. The most famous deceased Japanese mathematicians include Seki Takakazu, Kunihiko Kodaira, and Kiyosi Itô. As of April 2024, 1 new Japanese mathematicians have been added to Pantheon including Kenkichi Iwasawa.

Living Japanese Mathematicians

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Deceased Japanese Mathematicians

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Newly Added Japanese Mathematicians (2024)

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Overlapping Lives

Which Mathematicians were alive at the same time? This visualization shows the lifespans of the 7 most globally memorable Mathematicians since 1700.