Mathematician:Mathematicians/Sorted By Nation/Japan

For more comprehensive information on the lives and works of mathematicians through the ages, see the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, created by John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson.

The army of those who have made at least one definite contribution to mathematics as we know it soon becomes a mob as we look back over history; 6,000 or 8,000 names press forward for some word from us to preserve them from oblivion, and once the bolder leaders have been recognised it becomes largely a matter of arbitrary, illogical legislation to judge who of the clamouring multitude shall be permitted to survive and who be condemned to be forgotten.

-- Eric Temple Bell: Men of Mathematics, 1937, Victor Gollancz, London

Japan

Yoshio Mikami $($$\text {1875}$ – $\text {1950}$$)$

Japanese mathematician and historian of Japanese mathematics.
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Takeo Wada $($$\text {1882}$ – $\text {1944}$$)$

Japanese mathematician working in analysis and topology.

Known for introducing his technique of presenting a graphical representation of the result of a differential equation.
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Soichi Kakeya $($$\text {1886}$ – $\text {1947}$$)$

Japanese mathematician who worked mainly in mathematical analysis

Posed the Kakeya Problem.

Solved a version of the desert crossing problem.
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Shizuo Kakutani $($$\text {1911}$ – $\text {2004}$$)$

Japanese-American mathematician, best known for his Kakutani Fixed-Point Theorem.
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Kunihiko Kodaira $($$\text {1915}$ – $\text {1997}$$)$

Japanese mathematician known for distinguished work in algebraic geometry and the theory of complex manifolds.

Founder of the Japanese school of algebraic geometers.
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Jun-iti Nagata $($$\text {1925}$ – $\text {2007}$$)$

Japanese mathematician specializing in topology.
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Nagayoshi Iwahori $($$\text {1926}$ – $\text {2011}$$)$

Japanese mathematician who worked on algebraic groups over local fields.

Introduced Iwahori-Hecke algebras and Iwahori subgroups.
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Gaisi Takeuti $($$\text {1926}$ – $\text {2017}$$)$

Japanese mathematician specialising in logic and set theory.
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Michio Suzuki $($$\text {1926}$ – $\text {1998}$$)$

Japanese mathematician who studied group theory.
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Masayoshi Nagata $($$\text {1927}$ – $\text {2008}$$)$

Japanese mathematician who worked mainly in the field of commutative algebra.
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Hideyuki Matsumura $($$\text {1930}$ – $\text {1995}$$)$

Japanese mathematician particularly known for his textbooks in commutative algebra.
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Nobuo Yoneda $($$\text {1930}$ – $\text {1996}$$)$

Japanese mathematician and computer scientist who worked in category theory and homological algebra.
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Nobuyuki Yoshigahara $($$\text {1936}$ – $\text {2004}$$)$

Japanese inventor, collector, solver, and communicator of puzzles.
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Yasumasa Kanada $($$\text {1949}$ – $\text {2020}$$)$

Japanese mathematician most known for his numerous world records for calculating digits of $\pi$.

He set the record $11$ of the $21$ times up to $2020$.
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Shinichi Mochizuki $($$\text {b. 1969}$$)$

Japanese mathematician working in number theory and arithmetic geometry.

One of the main contributors to anabelian geometry.

Inventor and developer of inter-universal Teichmüller theory.
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