Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most important people in 24 academic disciplines from 4000 BCE to today

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our proprietary AI program, we have ranked everyone in Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef based on the number of citations, publications, and academically relevant web presence.

Students and researchers now have the easiest and fastest way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you ever wanted to find famous medieval biologists, or influential engineers during the industrial revolution, now you can!

We’ve also put together our own custom rankings of people by discipline. And speaking of influential people, don’t forget to check out the interviews we do with the influential people of today!

Use the power of AI for your research! Simply select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) most relevant to your research, and the time periods of interest, and get enlightening results.

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List of the most influential people in Earth Sciences,

#1

Arthur Newell Strahler

#2531

Overall Influence

1918 - 2002 (84 years)

Arthur Newell Strahler was a geoscience professor at Columbia University who in 1952 developed the Strahler Stream Order system for classifying streams according to the power of their tributaries. Strahler was largely responsible for the shift from qualitative to quantitative geomorphology during the mid 20th century.

#2

Edward Norton Lorenz

Edward Norton Lorenz

#1300

Overall Influence

1917 - 2008 (91 years)

Edward Norton Lorenz 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.

#3

Jared Diamond

#159

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (86 years)

Jared Mason Diamond is an American geographer, historian, ornithologist, and author best known for his popular science books The Third Chimpanzee ; Guns, Germs, and Steel ; Collapse , The World Until Yesterday , and Upheaval . Originally trained in biochemistry and physiology, Diamond is known for drawing from a variety of fields, including anthropology, ecology, geography, and evolutionary biology. He is a professor of geography at UCLA.

#4

Celâl Şengör

#4945

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (68 years)

Ali Mehmet Celâl Şengör is a Turkish geologist. He is retired from the faculty at Istanbul Technical University, Department of Geological Engineering. Şengör is a member of the American Philosophical Society, the United States National Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. He is a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Science. He is a recipient of Gustav-Steinmann-Medaille — the highest distinction of the Geologische Vereinigung e.V.

#5

Richard Chorley

Richard Chorley

#6754

Overall Influence

1927 - 2002 (75 years)

Richard John Chorley was an English geographer, and Professor of Geography at Cambridge University, known as leading figure in quantitative geography in the late 20th century, who played an instrumental role in bringing in the use of systems theory to geography.

#6

David Harvey

#253

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (88 years)

David W. Harvey is a British-born Marxist economic geographer, podcaster, and Distinguished Professor of anthropology and geography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York , though he often claims to prefer the term Marxian. He received his PhD in geography from the University of Cambridge in 1961. Harvey has authored many books and essays that have been prominent in the development of modern geography as a discipline. He is a proponent of the idea of the right to the city.

#7

Robert M. Schoch

Robert M. Schoch

#4141

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (74 years)

Robert Milton Schoch is an American associate professor of Natural Sciences at the College of General Studies, Boston University. Schoch co-authored and expanded the fringe Sphinx water erosion hypothesis since 1990, and is the author of several pseudohistorical and pseudoscientific books.

#8

Marie Tharp

#6917

Overall Influence

1920 - 2006 (86 years)

Marie Tharp was an American geologist and oceanographic cartographer. In the 1950s, she collaborated with geologist Bruce Heezen to produce the first scientific map of the Atlantic Ocean floor. Her cartography revealed a more detailed topography and multi-dimensional geographical landscape of the ocean bottom.

#9

Yi-Fu Tuan

#4131

Overall Influence

1930 - 2022 (92 years)

Yi-Fu Tuan was a Chinese-born American geographer and writer. He was one of the key figures in human geography and arguably the most important originator of humanistic geography. Early life and education Born in 1930 in Tianjin, China to an upper-class family, he was educated in China, Australia, the Philippines and the United Kingdom. He attended University College London, but graduated from the University of Oxford with a B.A. and M.A. in 1951 and 1955 respectively. From there he went to California to continue his geographic education. He received his Ph.D. in 1957 from the University of Ca...

#10

Drummond Matthews

#11846

Overall Influence

1931 - 1997 (66 years)

Drummond Hoyle Matthews FRS , known as "Drum", was a British marine geologist and geophysicist and a key contributor to the theory of plate tectonics. His work, along with that of fellow Briton Fred Vine and Canadian Lawrence Morley, showed how variations in the magnetic properties of rocks forming the ocean floor could be consistent with, and ultimately help confirm, Harry Hammond Hess's 1962 theory of seafloor spreading. In 1989 he was awarded the Geological Society of London's highest honour, the Wollaston Medal.

#11

Keith Runcorn

#11545

Overall Influence

1922 - 1995 (73 years)

Keith Runcorn was a British physicist whose paleomagnetic reconstruction of the relative motions of Europe and America revived the theory of continental drift and was a major contribution to plate tectonics.

#12

Robert S. Dietz

Robert S. Dietz

#10322

Overall Influence

1914 - 1995 (81 years)

Robert Sinclair Dietz was a scientist with the US Coast and Geodetic Survey. Dietz, born in Westfield, New Jersey, was a marine geologist, geophysicist and oceanographer who conducted pioneering research along with Harry Hammond Hess concerning seafloor spreading, published as early as 1960–1961. While at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography he observed the nature of the Emperor chain of seamounts that extended from the northwest end of the Hawaiian Island–Midway chain and speculated over lunch with Robert Fisher in 1953 that something must be carrying these old volcanic mountains northwar...

#13

Rattan Lal

#14829

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (79 years)

Rattan Lal is a soil scientist. His work focuses on regenerative agriculture through which soil can help resolve global issues such as climate change, food security and water quality. He was awarded the 2019 Japan Prize 'for the sustainable soil management for global food security and mitigation of climate change.'

#14

W. Jason Morgan

W. Jason Morgan

#12594

Overall Influence

1935 - 2023 (88 years)

William Jason Morgan is an American geophysicist who has made seminal contributions to the theory of plate tectonics and geodynamics. He retired as the Knox Taylor Professor emeritus of geology and professor of geosciences at Princeton University. He currently serves as a visiting scholar in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University.

#15

Torsten Hägerstrand

Torsten Hägerstrand

#3718

Overall Influence

1916 - 2004 (88 years)

Torsten Hägerstrand was a Swedish geographer. He is known for his work on migration, cultural diffusion and time geography. A native and resident of Sweden, Hägerstrand was a professor of geography at Lund University, where he received his doctorate in 1953. His doctoral research was on cultural diffusion. His research has helped to make Sweden, and particularly Lund, a major center of innovative work in cultural geography. He also influenced the practice of spatial planning in Sweden through his students.

#16

Bert Bolin

#12750

Overall Influence

1925 - 2007 (82 years)

Bert Rickard Johannes Bolin was a Swedish meteorologist who served as the first chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , from 1988 to 1997. He was professor of meteorology at Stockholm University from 1961 until his retirement in 1990.

#17

John Tuzo Wilson

John Tuzo Wilson

#10259

Overall Influence

1908 - 1993 (85 years)

John Tuzo Wilson was a Canadian geophysicist and geologist who achieved worldwide acclaim for his contributions to the theory of plate tectonics. Plate tectonics is the scientific theory that the rigid outer layers of the Earth , the lithosphere, is broken up into around 13 pieces or "plates" that move independently over the weaker asthenosphere. Wilson maintained that the Hawaiian Islands were created as a tectonic plate shifted to the northwest over a fixed hotspot, spawning a long series of volcanoes. He also conceived of the transform fault, a major plate boundary where two plates move ...

#18

John Frederick Dewey

#14087

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (86 years)

John Frederick Dewey FRS is a British structural geologist and a strong proponent of the theory of plate tectonics, building upon the early work undertaken in the 1960s and 1970s. He is widely regarded as an authority on the development and evolution of mountain ranges.

#19

Ahmet Mete Işıkara

#13988

Overall Influence

1941 - 2013 (72 years)

Ahmet Mete Işıkara was a Turkish geophysicist and earthquake scientist, well known for his efforts to create public awareness of the need for protection and safety during earthquakes. Early years Işıkara was born 1941 in Mersin. In 1947 he went to primary school and in 1954 to junior highschool in Mersin. After finishing high school in Mersin, he studied in Istanbul University graduating in 1965. In the same year, he began his academic career as an geophysics assistant at the Faculty of Science. He continued his studies in Imperial College London and University of Göttingen.

#20

Walter Munk

#5042

Overall Influence

1917 - 2019 (102 years)

Walter Heinrich Munk was an American physical oceanographer. He was one of the first scientists to bring statistical methods to the analysis of oceanographic data. His work won awards including the National Medal of Science, the Kyoto Prize, and induction to the French Legion of Honour.

#21

Paul J. Crutzen

Paul J. Crutzen

#983

Overall Influence

1933 - 2021 (88 years)

Paul Jozef Crutzen was a Dutch meteorologist and atmospheric chemist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995 for his work on atmospheric chemistry and specifically for his efforts in studying the formation and decomposition of atmospheric ozone. In addition to studying the ozone layer and climate change, he popularized the term Anthropocene to describe a proposed new epoch in the Quaternary period when human actions have a drastic effect on the Earth. He was also amongst the first few scientists to introduce the idea of a nuclear winter to describe the potential climatic effects ...

#22

Michael Frank Goodchild

Michael Frank Goodchild

#5342

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (79 years)

Michael Frank Goodchild is a British-American geographer. He is an Emeritus Professor of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara. After nineteen years at the University of Western Ontario, including three years as chair, he moved to Santa Barbara in 1988, as part of the establishment of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis, which he directed for over 20 years. In 2008, he founded the UCSB Center for Spatial Studies.

#23

Ron G. Mason

#18155

Overall Influence

1916 - 2009 (93 years)

Ronald George Mason was one of the oceanographers whose pioneering Cold War geomagnetic survey work lead to the discovery of magnetic striping on the seafloor. First discovering magnetic stripes on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean off the United States West Coast, he later also identified them around the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

#24

Peter Haggett

#9270

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (90 years)

Peter Haggett is a British geographer and academic, Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Fellow in Urban and Regional Geography at the School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol. Haggett was born 1933 in the rural Somerset village of Pawlett, and he was educated at Dr Morgan's Grammar School in Bridgwater. He would later credit the time spent in his childhood walking and cycling around the district for the development of his keen interest in geography.

#25

Syun-Ichi Akasofu

Syun-Ichi Akasofu

#8061

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (93 years)

Syun-Ichi Akasofu is the founding director of the International Arctic Research Center of the University of Alaska Fairbanks , serving in that position from the center's establishment in 1998 until January 2007. Previously he had been director of the university's Geophysical Institute from 1986.

#26

Keiiti Aki

#14848

Overall Influence

1930 - 2005 (75 years)

Keiiti Aki was a Japanese-American professor of Geophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , and then at the University of Southern California , seismologist, author and mentor. He and Paul G. Richards coauthored "Quantitative Seismology: theory and methods".

#27

Waldo R. Tobler

Waldo R. Tobler

#6586

Overall Influence

1930 - 2018 (88 years)

Waldo Rudolph Tobler was an American-Swiss geographer and cartographer. Tobler's idea that "Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things" is referred to as the "first law of geography." He proposed a second law as well: "The phenomenon external to an area of interest affects what goes on inside". Tobler was an active Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara Department of Geography until his death.

#28

Don L. Anderson

Don L. Anderson

#13158

Overall Influence

1933 - 2014 (81 years)

Don Lynn Anderson was an American geophysicist who made significant contributions to the understanding of the origin, evolution, structure, and composition of Earth and other planets. An expert in numerous scientific disciplines, Anderson's work combined seismology, solid state physics, geochemistry and petrology to explain how the Earth works. Anderson was best known for his contributions to the understanding of the Earth's deep interior, and more recently, for the plate theory hypothesis that hotspots are the product of plate tectonics rather than narrow plumes emanating from the deep Earth.

#29

Kerry Emanuel

#10432

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (68 years)

Kerry Andrew Emanuel is an American professor of meteorology currently working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. In particular he has specialized in atmospheric convection and the mechanisms acting to intensify hurricaness.

#30

William Bunge

#7151

Overall Influence

1928 - 2013 (85 years)

William Wheeler Bunge Jr. was an American geographer active mainly as a quantitative geographer and spatial theorist. He also became a radical geographer and anti-war activist in the US and Canada. Personal life Bunge served in the American Fifth Army during the height of the Korean War, November 1950 to November 1952. He completed a master's degree at the University of Wisconsin in 1955. He studied under Richard Hartshorne, the first professional geographer he had ever met. He gained a PhD in quantitative geography from the Department of Geography, University of Washington in 1960.

#31

Kenneth Carpenter

#3835

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (74 years)

Kenneth Carpenter is a paleontologist. He is the former director of the USU Eastern Prehistoric Museum and author or co-author of books on dinosaurs and Mesozoic life. His main research interests are armored dinosaurs , as well as the Early Cretaceous dinosaurs from the Cedar Mountain Formation in eastern Utah.

#32

Dan McKenzie

#19982

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (81 years)

Dan Peter McKenzie is a Professor of Geophysics at the University of Cambridge, and one-time head of the Bullard Laboratories of the Cambridge Department of Earth Sciences. He wrote the first paper defining the mathematical principles of plate tectonics on a sphere, and his early work on mantle convection created the modern discussion of planetary interiors.

#33

Xavier Le Pichon

#16993

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (86 years)

Xavier Le Pichon Biography Le Pichon holds a doctorate in physics. Professional career:1963: He began his scientific career as a scientific assistant at Columbia University, New York, United States.In 1969, he became head of the marine geology department of the oceanologic center of Brittany in Brest, France.In 1978, he became professor at Université P. et M. Curie .In 1984, he was head of the geology department at the École Normale Supérieure.In 1986, he became a professor at the Collège de France.

#34

Willi Dansgaard

#11382

Overall Influence

1922 - 2011 (89 years)

Willi Dansgaard was a Danish paleoclimatologist. He was Professor Emeritus of Geophysics at the University of Copenhagen and a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Science and Letters, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Icelandic Academy of Sciences, and the Danish Geophysical Society.

#35

Dale Russell

#6536

Overall Influence

1937 - 2019 (82 years)

Dale Alan Russell was an American-Canadian geologist and palaeontologist. Throughout his career Russell worked as the Curator of Fossil Vertebrates at the Canadian Museum of Nature, Research Professor at the Department of Marine Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at North Carolina State University, and Senior Paleontologist at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. Dinosaurs he has described include Daspletosaurus and Dromiceiomimus, and he was amongst the first paleontologists to consider an extraterrestrial cause for the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. Russell also helped lead ...

#36

Wallace Smith Broecker

Wallace Smith Broecker

#8894

Overall Influence

1931 - 2019 (88 years)

Wallace "Wally" Smith Broecker was an American geochemist. He was the Newberry Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University, a scientist at Columbia's Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory and a sustainability fellow at Arizona State University. He developed the idea of a global "conveyor belt" linking the circulation of the global ocean and made major contributions to the science of the carbon cycle and the use of chemical tracers and isotope dating in oceanography. Broecker popularized the term "global warming". He received the Crafoord Prize and the Vet...

#37

Michael E. Mann

Michael E. Mann

#3327

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (58 years)

Areas of Specialization: Climatology, Atmospheric Sciences Michael E. Mann is the director of the Earth System Science Center for Pennsylvania State University, a climatologist, and geophysicist. He has earned an A.B. in applied mathematics and an A.B. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, before earning an M.S. and M.Phil in physics, an M.Phil in geology, and a Ph.D in geology & geophysics from Yale University. His work has resulted in new techniques for recording and evaluating past climate data and how to distinguish between useful climate data and statistical noise. Mann is a prolific writer with more than 200 peer-reviewed publications to his credit.

#38

Nicholas Shackleton

#13188

Overall Influence

1937 - 2006 (69 years)

Sir Nicholas John Shackleton was an English geologist and paleoclimatologist who specialised in the Quaternary Period. He was the son of the distinguished field geologist Robert Millner Shackleton and great-nephew of the explorer Ernest Shackleton.

#39

Frank Press

#3740

Overall Influence

1924 - 2020 (96 years)

Frank Press was an American geophysicist. He was an advisor to four U.S. presidents, and later served two consecutive terms as president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences . He was the author of 160 scientific papers and co-author of the textbooks Earth and Understanding Earth.

#40

Robert Stephen John Sparks

Robert Stephen John Sparks

#21624

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (74 years)

Areas of Specialization: Volcanology, Fluid Mechanics, Sedimentology Sir Robert Stephen John Sparks is the Changing Wills Professor of Geology for the University of Bristol’s Department of Earth Sciences (where he has been since 1989) and one of the leading volcanologists in the world. Sparks earned a B.Sc and a Ph.D from Imperial College London. His work on igneous petrology and volcanology has been cited more than 10,000 times, making him among the ISI’s Most Highly Cited Researchers. His research has included fluid mechanics, sedimentology, and geophysics and included risk assessment for environmental hazards such as seismic disturbances and volcanic flows, deposits, and eruptions.

#41

Nigel Thrift

#6467

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (74 years)

Areas of Specialization: Human Geography Sir Nigel Thrift is the Executive Director of the Schwarzman Scholars and a noted geographer. Thrift studied geography at the University of Wales, Lampeter and earned a Ph.D from the University of Bristol. He has been influential in the fields of geography and economics, and is even credited with inventing the term soft capitalism. His work has extended beyond geography to the impacts of capitalism and labor markets. He has provided extensive leadership in his field, including as a Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research at University of Oxford and as Vice Chancellor at University of Warwick.

#42

Derek Gregory

#4634

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (72 years)

Derek Gregory is the Peter Wall Distinguished Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia at Vancouver. He earned a Master of Arts and a Ph.D from the University of Cambridge. His area of specialty has been the survey of history and social issues through a geographical lens. He has written extensively about geography, most notably, perhaps, in his book The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, and Iraq, in which he evaluates the geopolitics of actions taken by the United Kingdom, the United States, and Israel within those countries. He has been interested in what he calls...

#43

Harry Glicken

#16688

Overall Influence

1958 - 1991 (33 years)

Harry Glicken was an American volcanologist. He researched Mount St. Helens in the United States before and after its 1980 eruption, and was very distraught about the death of volcanologist David A. Johnston, who was Glicken's mentor and supervisor in Spring 1980 at Mount St. Helens. Glicken was initially assigned to the USGS observation post in the weeks leading up to the eruption but was called away the night before the eruption.

#44

Sean Solomon

#17389

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (78 years)

Sean Carl Solomon is the director of the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, where he is also the William B. Ransford Professor of Earth and Planetary Science. Before moving to Columbia in 2012, he was the director of the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institute in Washington, D.C. His research area is in geophysics, including the fields of planetary geology, seismology, marine geophysics, and geodynamics. Solomon is the principal investigator on the NASA MESSENGER mission to Mercury. He is also a team member on the Gravity Recovery and Interior Labo...

#45

Dana Tomlin

#4287

Overall Influence

Charles Dana Tomlin is an author, professor, and originator of Map Algebra, a vocabulary and conceptual framework for classifying ways to combine map data to produce new maps. Tomlin's teaching and research focus on the development and application of geographic information systems . He is currently a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design and an adjunct professor at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, having also taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Ohio State University School of Natural Resources. His coursework in Landscape Archite...

#46

Kiyoo Wadati

#14380

Overall Influence

1902 - 1995 (93 years)

Kiyoo Wadati was an early seismologist at the Central Meteorological Observatory of Japan , researching deep earthquakes. His name is attached to the Wadati–Benioff zone. It was Wadati's 1928 paper on shallow and deep earthquakes, comparing maximum below surface displacement against distance from the epicentre, which led Charles Richter to develop his earthquake magnitude scale in 1935.

#47

Syukuro Manabe

#1261

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (92 years)

is a Japanese-American meteorologist and climatologist who pioneered the use of computers to simulate global climate change and natural climate variations. He was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi, for his contributions to the physical modeling of earth's climate, quantifying its variability, and predictions of climate change.

#48

Samuel Warren Carey

Samuel Warren Carey

#18450

Overall Influence

1911 - 2002 (91 years)

Samuel Warren Carey AO was an Australian geologist and a professor at the University of Tasmania. He was an early advocate of the theory of continental drift. His work on plate tectonics reconstructions led him to develop the Expanding Earth hypothesis.

#49

Christopher T. Russell

#27229

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (80 years)

Christopher Thomas Russell is head of the Space Physics Center at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at UCLA, professor in UCLA's Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, and Director of the UCLA Branch of the California Space Grant Consortium. He received a B.Sc. from the University of Toronto in 1964 and a Ph.D. from UCLA in 1968. In 1977 he was awarded the James B. Macelwane Medal and in 2003 the John Adam Fleming Medal by the American Geophysical Union . He is also a Fellow of the AGU. Asteroid 21459 Chrisrussell was named after him in 2008. In 2017, he was awarded the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal.

#50

Mohammad Hassan Ganji

Mohammad Hassan Ganji

#13141

Overall Influence

1912 - 2012 (100 years)

Mohammad Hassan Ganji Ph.D , was an Iranian meteorologist and academic. He was born in Birjand. He is credited as being the father of modern geography in Iran. Education He completed his studies in Tehran and continued to study geography in England and the United States. He next began to teach at the University of Tehran and was the first who began to teach modern geography at universities. Ganji established the Iran Meteorological Organization in 1955 and ran the organization for several years. He is often acknowledged as the father of modern geography in Iran.

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