The Most Famous

MATHEMATICIANS from United States

This page contains a list of the greatest American Mathematicians. The pantheon dataset contains 1,004 Mathematicians, 89 of which were born in United States. This makes United States the birth place of the 4th most number of Mathematicians behind France, and Germany.

Top 10

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

1. John Forbes Nash Jr. (1928 - 2015)

With an HPI of 75.17, John Forbes Nash Jr. is the most famous American Mathematician. His biography has been translated into 92 different languages on wikipedia.

John Forbes Nash, Jr. (June 13, 1928 – May 23, 2015), known and published as John Nash, was an American mathematician who made fundamental contributions to game theory, real algebraic geometry, differential geometry, and partial differential equations. Nash and fellow game theorists John Harsanyi and Reinhard Selten were awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics. In 2015, he and Louis Nirenberg were awarded the Abel Prize for their contributions to the field of partial differential equations. As a graduate student in the Princeton University Department of Mathematics, Nash introduced a number of concepts (including Nash equilibrium and the Nash bargaining solution) which are now considered central to game theory and its applications in various sciences. In the 1950s, Nash discovered and proved the Nash embedding theorems by solving a system of nonlinear partial differential equations arising in Riemannian geometry. This work, also introducing a preliminary form of the Nash–Moser theorem, was later recognized by the American Mathematical Society with the Leroy P. Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research. Ennio De Giorgi and Nash found, with separate methods, a body of results paving the way for a systematic understanding of elliptic and parabolic partial differential equations. Their De Giorgi–Nash theorem on the smoothness of solutions of such equations resolved Hilbert's nineteenth problem on regularity in the calculus of variations, which had been a well-known open problem for almost sixty years. In 1959, Nash began showing clear signs of mental illness, and spent several years at psychiatric hospitals being treated for schizophrenia. After 1970, his condition slowly improved, allowing him to return to academic work by the mid-1980s. Nash's life was the subject of Sylvia Nasar's 1998 biographical book A Beautiful Mind, and his struggles with his illness and his recovery became the basis for a film of the same name directed by Ron Howard, in which Nash was portrayed by Russell Crowe.

2. Charles Sanders Peirce (1839 - 1914)

With an HPI of 70.88, Charles Sanders Peirce is the 2nd most famous American Mathematician. His biography has been translated into 63 different languages.

Charles Sanders Peirce ( PURSS; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American scientist, mathematician, logician, and philosopher who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism". According to philosopher Paul Weiss, Peirce was "the most original and versatile of America's philosophers and America's greatest logician". Bertrand Russell wrote "he was one of the most original minds of the later nineteenth century and certainly the greatest American thinker ever". Educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for thirty years, Peirce meanwhile made major contributions to logic, such as theories of relations and quantification. C. I. Lewis wrote, "The contributions of C. S. Peirce to symbolic logic are more numerous and varied than those of any other writer—at least in the nineteenth century." For Peirce, logic also encompassed much of what is now called epistemology and the philosophy of science. He saw logic as the formal branch of semiotics or study of signs, of which he is a founder, which foreshadowed the debate among logical positivists and proponents of philosophy of language that dominated 20th-century Western philosophy. Peirce's study of signs also included a tripartite theory of predication. Additionally, he defined the concept of abductive reasoning, as well as rigorously formulating mathematical induction and deductive reasoning. He was one of the founders of statistics. As early as 1886, he saw that logical operations could be carried out by electrical switching circuits. The same idea was used decades later to produce digital computers. In metaphysics, Peirce was an "objective idealist" in the tradition of German philosopher Immanuel Kant as well as a scholastic realist about universals. He also held a commitment to the ideas of continuity and chance as real features of the universe, views he labeled synechism and tychism respectively. Peirce believed an epistemic fallibilism and anti-skepticism went along with these views.

3. Norbert Wiener (1894 - 1964)

With an HPI of 69.47, Norbert Wiener is the 3rd most famous American Mathematician. His biography has been translated into 62 different languages.

Norbert Wiener (November 26, 1894 – March 18, 1964) was an American computer scientist, mathematician and philosopher. He became a professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher in stochastic and mathematical noise processes, contributing work relevant to electronic engineering, electronic communication, and control systems. Wiener is considered the originator of cybernetics, the science of communication as it relates to living things and machines, with implications for engineering, systems control, computer science, biology, neuroscience, philosophy, and the organization of society. His work heavily influenced computer pioneer John von Neumann, information theorist Claude Shannon, anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, and others. Wiener is credited as being one of the first to theorize that all intelligent behavior was the result of feedback mechanisms, that could possibly be simulated by machines and was an important early step towards the development of modern artificial intelligence.

4. Claude Shannon (1916 - 2001)

With an HPI of 69.38, Claude Shannon is the 4th most famous American Mathematician. His biography has been translated into 67 different languages.

Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 – February 24, 2001) was an American mathematician, electrical engineer, computer scientist, cryptographer and inventor known as the "father of information theory" and as the "father of the Information Age". Shannon was the first to describe the Boolean gates (electronic circuits) that are essential to all digital electronic circuits, and was one of the founding fathers of artificial intelligence. Shannon is credited with laying the foundations of the Information Age. At the University of Michigan, Shannon dual degreed, graduating with a Bachelor of Science in both electrical engineering and mathematics in 1936. A 21-year-old master's degree student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in electrical engineering, his thesis concerned switching circuit theory, demonstrating that electrical applications of Boolean algebra could construct any logical numerical relationship, thereby establishing the theory behind digital computing and digital circuits. The thesis has been claimed to be the most important master's thesis of all time, having also been called the "birth certificate of the digital revolution", and winning the 1939 Alfred Noble Prize. He then graduated with a PhD in mathematics from MIT in 1940, with his thesis focused on genetics, with it deriving important results, but it went unpublished. Shannon contributed to the field of cryptanalysis for national defense of the United States during World War II, including his fundamental work on codebreaking and secure telecommunications, writing a paper which is considered one of the foundational pieces of modern cryptography, with his work described as "a turning point, and marked the closure of classical cryptography and the beginning of modern cryptography." The work of Shannon is the foundation of secret-key cryptography, including the work of Horst Feistel, the Data Encryption Standard (DES), Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), and more. As a result, Shannon has been called the "founding father of modern cryptography". His mathematical theory of communication laid the foundations for the field of information theory, with his famous paper being called the "Magna Carta of the Information Age" by Scientific American, along with his work being described as being at "the heart of today's digital information technology". Robert G. Gallager referred to the paper as a "blueprint for the digital era". Regarding the influence that Shannon had on the digital age, Solomon W. Golomb remarked "It's like saying how much influence the inventor of the alphabet has had on literature." Shannon's theory is widely used and has been fundamental to the success of many scientific endeavors, such as the invention of the compact disc, the development of the Internet, feasibility of mobile phones, the understanding of black holes, and more, and is at the intersection of numerous important fields. Shannon also formally introduced the term "bit". Shannon made numerous contributions to the field of artificial intelligence, writing papers on programming a computer for chess, which have been immensely influential. His Theseus machine was the first electrical device to learn by trial and error, being one of the first examples of artificial intelligence. He also co-organized and participated in the Dartmouth workshop of 1956, considered the founding event of the field of artificial intelligence. Rodney Brooks declared that Shannon was the 20th century engineer who contributed the most to 21st century technologies, and Solomon W. Golomb described the intellectual achievement of Shannon as "one of the greatest of the twentieth century". His achievements are considered to be on par with those of Albert Einstein, Sir Isaac Newton, and Charles Darwin.

5. Katherine Johnson (1918 - 2020)

With an HPI of 66.69, Katherine Johnson is the 5th most famous American Mathematician. Her biography has been translated into 57 different languages.

Creola Katherine Johnson (née Coleman; August 26, 1918 – February 24, 2020) was an American mathematician whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. crewed spaceflights. During her 33-year career at NASA and its predecessor, she earned a reputation for mastering complex manual calculations and helped pioneer the use of computers to perform the tasks. The space agency noted her "historical role as one of the first African-American women to work as a NASA scientist". Johnson's work included calculating trajectories, launch windows, and emergency return paths for Project Mercury spaceflights, including those for astronauts Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and John Glenn, the first American in orbit, and rendezvous paths for the Apollo Lunar Module and command module on flights to the Moon. Her calculations were also essential to the beginning of the Space Shuttle program, and she worked on plans for a mission to Mars. She was known as a "human computer" for her tremendous mathematical capability and ability to work with space trajectories with such little technology and recognition at the time. In 2015, President Barack Obama awarded Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2016, she was presented with the Silver Snoopy Award by NASA astronaut Leland D. Melvin and a NASA Group Achievement Award. She was portrayed by Taraji P. Henson as a lead character in the 2016 film Hidden Figures. In 2019, Johnson was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress. In 2021, she was inducted posthumously into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

6. Herbert A. Hauptman (1917 - 2011)

With an HPI of 63.30, Herbert A. Hauptman is the 6th most famous American Mathematician. His biography has been translated into 54 different languages.

Herbert Aaron Hauptman (February 14, 1917 – October 23, 2011) was an American mathematician and Nobel laureate. He pioneered and developed a mathematical method that has changed the whole field of chemistry and opened a new era in research in determination of molecular structures of crystallized materials. Today, Hauptman's direct methods, which he continued to improve and refine, are routinely used to solve complicated structures. It was the application of this mathematical method to a wide variety of chemical structures that led the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to name Hauptman and Jerome Karle recipients of the 1985 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

7. Mary Jackson (1921 - 2005)

With an HPI of 62.45, Mary Jackson is the 7th most famous American Mathematician. Her biography has been translated into 38 different languages.

Mary Jackson (née Winston; April 9, 1921 – February 11, 2005) was an American mathematician and aerospace engineer at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which in 1958 was succeeded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). She worked at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, for most of her career. She started as a computer at the segregated West Area Computing division in 1951. In 1958, after taking engineering classes, she became NASA's first black female engineer. After 34 years at NASA, Jackson had earned the most senior engineering title available. She realized she could not earn further promotions without becoming a supervisor. She accepted a demotion to become a manager of both the Federal Women's Program, in the NASA Office of Equal Opportunity Programs and of the Affirmative Action Program. In this role, she worked to influence the hiring and promotion of women in NASA's science, engineering, and mathematics careers. Jackson's story features in the 2016 non-fiction book Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race. She is one of the three protagonists in Hidden Figures, the film adaptation released the same year. In 2019, Jackson was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. In 2021, the Washington, D.C. headquarters of NASA was renamed the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters.

8. Edward Norton Lorenz (1917 - 2008)

With an HPI of 62.33, Edward Norton Lorenz is the 8th most famous American Mathematician. His biography has been translated into 39 different languages.

Edward Norton Lorenz (May 23, 1917 – April 16, 2008) was an American mathematician and meteorologist who established the theoretical basis of weather and climate predictability, as well as the basis for computer-aided atmospheric physics and meteorology. He is best known as the founder of modern chaos theory, a branch of mathematics focusing on the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions. His discovery of deterministic chaos "profoundly influenced a wide range of basic sciences and brought about one of the most dramatic changes in mankind's view of nature since Sir Isaac Newton," according to the committee that awarded him the 1991 Kyoto Prize for basic sciences in the field of earth and planetary sciences.

9. Alonzo Church (1903 - 1995)

With an HPI of 61.60, Alonzo Church is the 9th most famous American Mathematician. His biography has been translated into 51 different languages.

Alonzo Church (June 14, 1903 – August 11, 1995) was an American computer scientist, mathematician, logician, and philosopher who made major contributions to mathematical logic and the foundations of theoretical computer science. He is best known for the lambda calculus, the Church–Turing thesis, proving the unsolvability of the Entscheidungsproblem ("decision problem"), the Frege–Church ontology, and the Church–Rosser theorem. Alongside his doctoral student Alan Turing, Church is considered one of the founders of computer science.

10. Jesse Douglas (1897 - 1965)

With an HPI of 57.54, Jesse Douglas is the 10th most famous American Mathematician. His biography has been translated into 37 different languages.

Jesse Douglas (July 3, 1897 – September 7, 1965) was an American mathematician and Fields Medalist known for his general solution to Plateau's problem.

People

Pantheon has 103 people classified as American mathematicians born between 1773 and 1983. Of these 103, 38 (36.89%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living American mathematicians include Karen Uhlenbeck, John Milnor, and John G. Thompson. The most famous deceased American mathematicians include John Forbes Nash Jr., Charles Sanders Peirce, and Norbert Wiener. As of April 2024, 14 new American mathematicians have been added to Pantheon including David Gale, Morris Kline, and Clifford Truesdell.