Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

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 influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Earth Sciences,

#601

Jenni L. Evans

#68501

Overall Influence

Jenni L. Evans is a Professor of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science at Pennsylvania State University, Director of the Institute for CyberScience and President of the American Meteorological Society. She was elected a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society in 2010 and the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2019.

#602

Václav Vítek

#96649

Overall Influence

#603

Thomas Knutson

#64283

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (72 years)

Thomas R. Knutson is a climate modeller at the US Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration . His research covers hurricane activity, the link between climate change and hurricane incidence and intensity, and climate change detection and attribution.

#604

Margaret G. Kivelson

Margaret G. Kivelson

#45792

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (97 years)

Margaret Galland Kivelson is an American space physicist, planetary scientist, and distinguished professor emerita of space physics at the University of California, Los Angeles. From 2010 to the present, concurrent with her appointment at UCLA, Kivelson has been a research scientist and scholar at the University of Michigan. Her primary research interests include the magnetospheres of Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn.

#605

Eric Lambin

#64841

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (63 years)

Eric Lambin is a Belgian geographer. He is a professor at the Université catholique de Louvain and Stanford University. From 1999 to 2005, he was Chair of the Land Use and Land Cover Change project .

#606

Gordon P. Eaton

Gordon P. Eaton

#54520

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (96 years)

Gordon Pryor Eaton was an American geologist. Eaton was born in Dayton, Ohio. Life and career Dr. Eaton graduated from Wesleyan University, with high Honors, High Distinction and Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi recognition, with a B.A. in Geology in 1951; received an M.S. in Geology from the California Institute of Technology in 1953; and a Ph.D. in Geology and Geophysics in 1957 from the California Institute of Technology. At Wesleyan he was a member of Delta Upsilon fraternity.

#607

Martin Brasier

#42348

Overall Influence

1947 - 2014 (67 years)

Martin David Brasier FGS, FLS was an English palaeobiologist and astrobiologist known for his conceptual analysis of microfossils and evolution in the Precambrian and Cambrian. He was Professor of Palaeobiology at the University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of St Edmund Hall. His research critically examined the context and character of the early fossil record, making use of field mapping, logging, optical petrography, stable isotope geochemistry, confocal microscopy, NanoSims microprobes, and lasers for high resolution 3D scanning and laser Raman spectroscopy.

#608

Frank Pasquill

#70487

Overall Influence

1914 - 1994 (80 years)

Frank Pasquill FRS was an English meteorologist at the Meteorological Office who worked throughout his career in the field of atmospheric diffusion and micrometeorology. He retired as Deputy Chief Scientific Officer. He was a fellow of the Royal Society.

#609

Gregory Retallack

Gregory Retallack

#62069

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (74 years)

Gregory John Retallack is an Australian paleontologist, geologist, and author who specializes in the study of fossil soils . His research has examined the fossil record of soils though major events in Earth history, extending back some 4.6 billion years. Among his publications he has written two standard paleopedology textbooks, said N. Jones in Nature Geoscience "Retallack has literally written the book on ancient soils."

#610

Andrés Ruzo

#60970

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (25 years)

Andrés Ruzo is a geoscientist, conservationist, author, science communicator and educator, who became the first scientist that was granted permission to study the Boiling River of the Amazon in 2011.

#611

Kuo-Nan Liou

#91540

Overall Influence

1944 - 2021 (77 years)

Kuo-Nan Liou was a Taiwanese American meteorologist. Biography Liou was born in Taiwan on November 16, 1944. After graduating from National Taiwan University in 1965, he pursued advanced studies in the United States, earning his doctor's degree in physics from New York University. He did post-doctoral research at National Aeronautics and Space Administration . He was a professor at University of Utah since 1975. He joined the faculty of University of California, Los Angeles in 1997 and was promoted to director of Department of Atmospheric and Marine Sciences in 2000. He was elected a fellow of the National Academy of Engineering in 1999 and a fellow of the Academia Sinica in 2004.

#612

Sandrine Bony

#97233

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Sandrine Bony-Léna, née Bony, is a French-born climatologist who is currently Director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique at Sorbonne University, Paris. Bony was notably a lead author of the Nobel Prize-winning Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

#613

Tamsin Mather

#64143

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (49 years)

Tamsin Alice Mather is a British Professor of Earth Sciences at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford and a Fellow of University College, Oxford. She studies volcanic processes and their impacts on the Earth's environment and has appeared on the television and radio.

#614

Anthony Bebbington

#26604

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (63 years)

Anthony Bebbington is a geographer, International Director for Natural Resources and Climate Change at the Ford Foundation and Higgins Professor of Environment and Society in the Graduate School of Geography, Clark University, USA . He was previously ARC Laureate Professor at the School of Geography, University of Melbourne, Australia .

#615

Urs von Gunten

#94260

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (66 years)

Urs von Gunten is a Swiss environmental chemist and a professor at EPFL . He is known for his research in the fields of drinking water quality and water treatment. Career Urs von Gunten obtained a diploma in chemistry in 1983 and a PhD in inorganic chemistry in 1989 from ETH Zurich. He then performed post-doctoral work at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science , where he became head of the chemistry department and of the Water Resources and Drinking Water department . He then took the lead of the cross-disciplinary project 'Drinking Water for the 21st century' until 2008, was the hea...

#616

Peter H. Verburg

#97603

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (53 years)

#617

Jules N. Pretty

#97694

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (67 years)

#618

Lily Kong

#26477

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (60 years)

Lily L.L. Kong is a Singaporean geographer currently serving as president of the Singapore Management University . She is the first female and Singaporean academic to helm a Singapore university. Prior joining SMU, she was a faculty member at the Department of Geography of the National University of Singapore and had held various senior managerial positions at NUS.

#619

Michael Meadows

#81470

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (70 years)

Michael Edward Meadows FAAS FRSSAf is a British-South African Emeritus Professor of physical geography at the Department of Environmental and Geographical Sciences, University of Cape Town. Early life and education Michael Edward Meadows was born on 25 July 1955 in Liverpool, UK. He attended the University of Sussex between 1973 and 1976. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Geography and Biological Science, before obtaining a Doctor of Philosophy from the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge in 1979.

#620

Hugh P. Jr. Taylor

#97834

Overall Influence

#621

Dawn Wright

#43557

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (64 years)

Dawn Jeannine Wright is an American geographer and oceanographer. She is a leading authority in the application of geographic information system technology to the field of ocean and coastal science, and played a key role in creating the first GIS data model for the oceans. Wright is Chief Scientist of the Environmental Systems Research Institute . She has also been a professor of geography and oceanography at Oregon State University since 1995 and is a former Oregon Professor of the Year as named by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

#622

Harry McSween

#82651

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (80 years)

Harry "Hap" Y. McSween Jr. is Chancellor's Professor Emeritus of Planetary Geoscience at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. He has published papers and popular books about meteorites and planetary exploration, and textbooks on geochemistry and cosmochemistry.

#623

Petra Gastmeier

#98002

Overall Influence

#624

William Wooster

#98189

Overall Influence

#625

Cecilie Mauritzen

Cecilie Mauritzen

#77543

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (64 years)

Cecilie Mauritzen is a Norwegian physical oceanographer who studies connections between ocean currents and climate change. Education and career Mauritzen works as a researcher in the Norwegian Meteorological Institute. She graduated from the University of Bergen in 1987, and earned a PhD in 1994 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After working for NASA at the Goddard Space Flight Center and for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, she joined the Norwegian Meteorological Institute in 2002, and eventually became director of the climate division there. She was also the director of the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research from 2012 to 2013.

#626

Cynthia Brewer

#64412

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (65 years)

Cynthia A. Brewer is an American cartographer, author, and professor of geography at Pennsylvania State University. Brewer's specialism relates to visibility and color theory in cartography and, in 2023, she was awarded the International Cartographic Society's highest honor, the Carl Mannerfelt Gold Medal, for her distinguished contribution to the field.

#627

J. Stewart Marshall

#54840

Overall Influence

1911 - 1992 (81 years)

John Stewart Marshall was a Canadian physicist and meteorologist. Researcher for the Canadian government during the Second World war and then professor at McGill University from 1945 until his retirement in 1979, he was renowned for his research in cloud physics and precipitation, but especially for being a pioneer of weather radar.

#628

Henry Bakis

#55324

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (76 years)

Henry Bakis is professor emeritus of geography at the University of Montpellier. His research has mainly focused on industry, firms and ICT geography . One of his primary interests has been considering the articulation and the effects of electronic communication networks on territories and social networks.

#629

Susan Kieffer

#38129

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (83 years)

Susan Elizabeth Werner Kieffer is an American physical geologist and planetary scientist. Kieffer is known for her work on the fluid dynamics of volcanoes, geysers, and rivers, and for her model of the thermodynamic properties of complex minerals. She has also contributed to the scientific understanding of meteorite impacts.

#630

Xavier de Planhol

#55307

Overall Influence

1926 - 2016 (90 years)

Xavier de Planhol was a Professor of Geography at the University of Paris-Sorbonne and a widely acknowledged authority on political geography. From 1958, when he began to publish monographs and articles during his first fieldwork in Azerbaijan, and later in the Alborz region of Iran, to his monumental and highly acclaimed, Les Nations du Prophète and Minorités en Islam , he has maintained his deep interest in Persia and the Iranian civilization. He was also a contributor to Encyclopædia Iranica, submitting articles ranging from "Abadan" to "Boundaries", "Cholera", "Darya?", "Earthquakes", "Famines", and a series of forthcoming articles on "Geography".

#631

Patsy Healey

#62490

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (85 years)

Patsy Healey is a British urban planner. She is professor emeritus at Global Urban Research Unit in the School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape, at Newcastle University. She is a specialist in planning theory and practice, with a particular focus on strategic spatial planning for city regions and in urban regeneration policies. She is Senior Editor of Planning Theory and Practice journal, jointly published by TandF and the RTPI.

#632

Peter Ziegler

#61385

Overall Influence

1928 - 2013 (85 years)

Peter Alfred Ziegler was a Swiss geologist, who made contributions to the understanding of the geological evolution of Europe and the North Atlantic borderlands, of intraplate tectonics and of plate tectonic controls on the evolution and hydrocarbon potential of sedimentary basins. Ziegler's career consists of 33 years as exploration geologist with the petroleum industry, 30 of which with Shell, and 20 years of university teaching and research.

#633

John P. Grotzinger

John P. Grotzinger

#50989

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (68 years)

John P. Grotzinger is the Fletcher Jones Professor of Geology at California Institute of Technology and chair of the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences. His works primarily focus on chemical and physical interactions between life and the environment. In addition to biogeological studies done on Earth, Grotzinger is also active in research into the geology of Mars and has made contributions to NASA's Mars Exploration Program.

#634

T. N. Krishnamurti

#80769

Overall Influence

1932 - 2018 (86 years)

Tiruvalam Natarajan Krishnamurti was an Indian meteorologist. He was a Professor emeritus at Florida State University, where prior to his retirement he was the Lawton Distinguished Professor of Meteorology.

#635

Martin A. Uman

#41541

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (89 years)

Martin Allan Uman is an American engineer. He has been acknowledged by the American Geophysical Union as one of the world's leading authorities on lightning. Uman is probably best known for his work in lightning modeling, which is the application of electromagnetic field theory to the description of various lightning processes. This provides a better understanding of lightning in general and has had a number of important practical spinoffs, the most notable has been a lightning locating system and the redefinition of several important lightning characteristics relative to hazard protection. ...

#636

David Brower

#4312

Overall Influence

1912 - 2000 (88 years)

David Ross Brower was a prominent environmentalist and the founder of many environmental organizations, including the John Muir Institute for Environmental Studies , Friends of the Earth , Earth Island Institute , North Cascades Conservation Council, and Fate of the Earth Conferences. From 1952 to 1969, he served as the first Executive Director of the Sierra Club, and served on its board three times: from 1941–1953; 1983–1988; and 1995–2000 as a petition candidate enlisted by reform-activists known as the John Muir Sierrans. As a younger man, he was a prominent mountaineer.

#637

Eric Wolff

#97565

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (68 years)

Eric William Wolff, FRS is a British climatologist, glaciologist, and academic. Since 2013, he has been Royal Society Research Professor of Earth Sciences in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge.

#638

John T. Andrews

#90431

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (88 years)

John Thomas Andrews is a British-American geologist and professor emeritus of geological and atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research , in Boulder, Colorado, USA.

#639

David Lobell

#44206

Overall Influence

David B. Lobell is an agricultural ecologist. He is currently the Gloria and Richard Kushel Director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment and Professor of Earth System Science at Stanford University. He is additionally a William Wrigley Fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and a Senior Fellow at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Lobell was awarded a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship in 2013 for "unearthing richly informative, but often underutilized, sources of data to investigate the impact of climate change on crop production and g...

#640

Jean-Paul Rodrigue

#59034

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (58 years)

Jean-Paul Rodrigue is a Canadian scholar of transportation geography. He has a PhD in transport geography from the Université de Montréal and has been part of the Department of Global Studies and Geography at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, since 1999. His work, , won the PricewaterhouseCoopers "Best Business Book" award in 2000. In 2019, the American Association of Geographers granted Rodrigue the Edward L. Ullman Award for outstanding contribution to the field of transport geography.

#641

Ian Clark

#81841

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (71 years)

Ian D. Clark is a professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Ottawa , who has been publishing research on geoscience, groundwater and geochemistry since 1982, and is currently teaching GEO 1111 with David Schneider. His graduate work in isotope hydrogeology was at the University of Waterloo and the University of Paris.

#642

Colin Wilson

#89680

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (69 years)

Colin James Ness Wilson FRS FRSNZ is Professor of Volcanology at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. Education Wilson was educated at Imperial College London where he was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in Geology in 1977 followed by a PhD in 1981 for research on pyroclastic flows.

#643

William Gilbert Chaloner

#42054

Overall Influence

1928 - 2016 (88 years)

William Gilbert Chaloner FRS was a British palaeobotanist. He was Professor of Botany in the Earth Sciences Department at Royal Holloway, University of London, and Visiting Professor in Earth Sciences at University College, London.

#644

Nick McCave

#92202

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (84 years)

Ian Nicholas McCave is a British geologist, who was the Woodwardian Professor of Geology at the University of Cambridge Department of Earth Sciences from 1985 to 2008 and a fellow of St John's College from 1986 to present . His current research topic is "The Sediment Record of the Deep-Sea Circulation" in the area of "Environmental change and marine geochemistry". He is primarily a marine sedimentologist.

#645

John Verhoogen

#75831

Overall Influence

1912 - 1993 (81 years)

John Verhoogen was a Belgian-American geologist and geophysicist. Verhoogen became ill at age 17 from poliomyelitis, which caused him problems throughout the rest of his life. Nevertheless, he studied mining at the University of Brussels and engineering geology at the University of Liège . He then went to the US, where he studied at the University of California, Berkeley under Howel Williams. In 1936 he received his doctorate in geology from Stanford University, although most of the doctoral work was supervised by Williams at Berkeley. Verhoogen was then at the University of Brussels from 1936 to 1939.

#646

Gerald R. Dickens

#50861

Overall Influence

Gerald R. Dickens is Professor of Earth Science at Trinity College Dublin, and is a researcher into the history of the world’s oceans, with respect to the changing patterns of their geology, chemistry and biology.

#647

Kerry H. Cook

#85902

Overall Influence

Kerry Harrison Cook is an American climate scientist who is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on the analysis of climate variability and change in the tropics using observational analysis and high-resolution numerical modeling. Specialties include the climate of Africa and the dynamics of intense tropical rainfall. She was elected Fellow of the American Meteorological Society in 2009 and was awarded the Joanne Simpson Tropical Meteorology Research Award in 2021. She is the Chair of the American Meteorological Society's Climate Variability and Change Committ...

#648

Louis Moresi

#79754

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (60 years)

Louis-Noël Moresi is a Professor of Computational Mathematics & Geophysics at The Australian National University. He has deeply influenced the understanding of the Geophysics community through his own research as well as providing software for the community to use.

#649

Philip R. Christensen

#99625

Overall Influence

#650

Malcolm K. Hughes

#47427

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (82 years)

Malcolm K. Hughes is a meso-climatologist and Regents' Professor of Dendrochronology in the Laboratory for Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona. Education and early life Hughes was born in Matlock, Derbyshire, England, and earned a Ph.D in ecology from the University of Durham.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions