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20th-century American mathematicians

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Pope Leo XIV thumbnail
Pope Leo XIV
Pope Leo XIV is the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City since May 2025. He is the first pope to have been born in the United States, the first to hold either U.S. or Peruvian citizenship, the first from the Order of Saint Augustine, and the second from the Americas.
Kurt Gödel thumbnail
Kurt Gödel
Austrian-American logician, mathematician, and philosopher of mathematics (1906-1978)
Donald Knuth thumbnail
Donald Knuth
American computer scientist and mathematician (born 1938)
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar thumbnail
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Indian-American astrophysicist
Grace Hopper thumbnail
Grace Hopper
American computer scientist and United States Navy officer (1906–1992)
Benoit Mandelbrot thumbnail
Benoit Mandelbrot
Polish-born, French and American mathematician (1924–2010)
Katherine Johnson thumbnail
Katherine Johnson
African-American mathematician
Ted Kaczynski thumbnail
Ted Kaczynski
Theodore John Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, was an American mathematician and domestic terrorist. A mathematics prodigy, he abandoned his academic career in 1969 to pursue a reclusive primitive lifestyle and lone wolf terrorism campaign.
Freeman Dyson thumbnail
Freeman Dyson
theoretical physicist and mathematician (1923–2020)
Norbert Wiener thumbnail
Norbert Wiener
American mathematician, scientist in cybernetics and artificial intelligence (1894–1964)
Claude Shannon thumbnail
Claude Shannon
American mathematician and information theorist (1916–2001)
John Hasbrouck Van Vleck thumbnail
John Hasbrouck Van Vleck
American physicist (1899–1980)
Herbert A. Hauptman thumbnail
Herbert A. Hauptman
American mathematician (1917–2011)
Karen Uhlenbeck thumbnail
Karen Uhlenbeck
American mathematician (born 1942)
John Backus thumbnail
John Backus
American computer scientist (1924–2007)
Alonzo Church thumbnail
Alonzo Church
American mathematician and logician (1903–1995)
Alfred Tarski thumbnail
Alfred Tarski
Polish-American logician (1901-1983)
Hilary Putnam thumbnail
Hilary Putnam
American philosopher
Martin Gardner thumbnail
Martin Gardner
American mathematics and science writer (1914–2010)
Theodore von Kármán thumbnail
Theodore von Kármán
Hungarian-American mathematician, aerospace engineer and physicist (1881–1963)
Atle Selberg thumbnail
Atle Selberg
Norwegian mathematician (1917–2007)
Simon Newcomb thumbnail
Simon Newcomb
American astronomer (1835–1909)
William James Sidis thumbnail
William James Sidis
American child prodigy (1898-1944)
John Milnor thumbnail
John Milnor
American mathematician
Edward Norton Lorenz thumbnail
Edward Norton Lorenz
American mathematician and meteorologist (1917–2008)
Leslie Lamport thumbnail
Leslie Lamport
American computer scientist
Lawrence M. Krauss thumbnail
Lawrence M. Krauss
American particle physicist and cosmologist
Fred Brooks thumbnail
Fred Brooks
American computer scientist (1931–2022); author of The Mythical Man-Month and 'No Silver Bullet' (1986), which distinguished essential from accidental complexity in software engineering
Paul Cohen thumbnail
Paul Cohen
American mathematician
Shafrira Goldwasser thumbnail
Shafrira Goldwasser
American computer scientist
Stephen Wolfram thumbnail
Stephen Wolfram
British-American scientist and businessman (born 1959)
John G. Thompson thumbnail
John G. Thompson
American mathematician
Shing-Tung Yau
American mathematician from Hong Kong
Israel Gelfand thumbnail
Israel Gelfand
Soviet-American mathematician
Richard Hamming thumbnail
Richard Hamming
American mathematician and information theorist (1915–1998)
Jesse Douglas thumbnail
Jesse Douglas
American mathematician (1897–1965)
William Thurston thumbnail
William Thurston
American mathematician (1946–2012)
David Mumford thumbnail
David Mumford
British/American mathematician
Ingrid Daubechies
Belgian physicist and mathematician
Peter Lax thumbnail
Peter Lax
American mathematician of Hungarian origin (1926–2025)
Shiing-Shen Chern
Chinese-American mathematician and poet (1911-2004)
Jim Simons thumbnail
Jim Simons
American mathematician and hedge fund manager (1938–2024)
Emil Artin thumbnail
Emil Artin
Austrian-Armenian mathematician (1898–1962)
Michael Freedman thumbnail
Michael Freedman
Mathematician and Fields Medalist at Microsoft Station Q
John George Kemeny thumbnail
John George Kemeny
Jewish-Hungarian American mathematician, computer scientist, educator, and President of Dartmouth College
Tom Lehrer thumbnail
Tom Lehrer
American musician and mathematician (1928–2025)
Charles Fefferman
American mathematician
Richard M. Karp
American theoretical computer scientist (b.1935)
Gladys West thumbnail
Gladys West
American mathematician (1930–2026)
László Lovász
Hungarian mathematician
Dana Scott thumbnail
Dana Scott
American mathematician and computer scientist
Dennis Sullivan thumbnail
Dennis Sullivan
American mathematician
Hugh Everett III thumbnail
Hugh Everett III
US physicist and discoverer of the relative-state interpretation of quantum mechanics
Yakov Sinai thumbnail
Yakov Sinai
Russian-American mathematician
Julia Hall Bowman Robinson
American mathematician (1919–1985)
Isadore Singer thumbnail
Isadore Singer
American mathematician (1924–2021)
Stephen Cole Kleene thumbnail
Stephen Cole Kleene
American mathematician and theoretical computer scientist (1909–1994)
Rudolf E. Kálmán thumbnail
Rudolf E. Kálmán
Hungarian-born American electrical engineer
John Tate thumbnail
John Tate
American mathematician (1925-2019)
Curtis T. McMullen thumbnail
Curtis T. McMullen
American mathematician and Fields medallist