The Most Influential People Across History
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 …
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List of the most influential people in Earth Sciences,
#651
David N. Livingstone
#51432
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
David Noel Livingstone is a Northern Ireland-born geographer, historian, and academic. He is Professor of Geography and Intellectual History at Queen's University Belfast. Personal background David Livingstone was born in Northern Ireland, and educated at Banbridge Academy and Queen's University Belfast . Following graduation, he continued at Queen's as a Research Officer and Lecturer, becoming Reader and then full Professor. He has held visiting professorships at Calvin College, Michigan, University of British Columbia, University of Notre Dame, and Baylor University. He is married to Frances Livingstone, has two children , and lives in Belfast.
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Michael E. Wysession
#57677
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (64 years)
Michael E. Wysession is a professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and author of numerous science textbooks published by Pearson Education, Prentice Hall and the Savvas Learning Corporation. Wysession has made many contributions to geoscience education and literacy, including chairing the inclusion of Earth and space science in the U.S. National Academy of Science report A Framework for K-12 Science Education and the U.S. K-12 Next Generation Science Standards
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Christophe Neff
#36741
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (61 years)
Christophe Neff is a Franco-German geographer, working on Mediterranean ecosystemss, the geography of the Mediterranean Basin and fire ecology at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. He is considered as one of the rare German experts on the Mediterranean ecosystem and fire ecology. Furthermore, he is an expert on the geography of Francophone Africa and Lusophone Africa and the Azores. Since 2009, Neff regularly contributes to a blog called 'Paysages' at le Monde.fr, which is mostly written in French, sometimes in German, and very occasionally in English. On the 23 of April 2019 Neff ann...
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Braden Allenby
#21061
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Braden R. Allenby is an American environmental scientist, environmental attorney and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and of Law, at Arizona State University. Biography Allenby was born in Highland Park, Illinois on December 29, 1950, to Dr. Richard J. Allenby, Jr. and Julia T. Allenby. He is the oldest of three brothers, Dr. Kent Allenby and Peter Allenby.
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Charles G. Groat
#56537
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (85 years)
Charles G. "Chip" Groat is an American geologist. He is a professional in the earth science community with involvement in geological studies, energy and minerals resource assessment, ground-water occurrence and protection, geomorphic processes and landform evolution in desert areas, and coastal studies.
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Richard S. Scorer
#91612
Overall Influence
1919 - 2011 (92 years)
Richard Segar Scorer was a British meteorologist. He was a contributor to the theory on mountain waves. Scorer also worked on the cloud physics and his exchanges with the American meteorologist Joanne Simpson helped to better understand the formation of cumulus clouds.
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Pinhas Alpert
#92883
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (76 years)
Pinhas Alpert is a professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Tel Aviv University. Biography Alpert was born in Jerusalem in 1949. On his father's side he is the fourth generation in Jerusalem – his great-grandfather came to Israel from Slonim-Russia in 1867 and was a teacher in the Hurva Synagogue in the Old city. Alpert studied until the age of 6 in his grandfather's "Cheder", then in the "Etz-Haim" Talmud-Torah in the Zichron-Moshe neighborhood of Jerusalem. Then, he moved in 1957 to the ”Moriah" school in the Bucharim neighborhood in Jerusalem. His high school was ”Dugma. After finishing high...
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David A. Yuen
#100053
Overall Influence
#659
Yoram J. Kaufman
#100154
Overall Influence
#660
Edward M. Stolper
#100224
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
#661
Jerry Harris
#80466
Overall Influence
Jerry M. Harris is an American geophysicist and the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Geophysics at Stanford University. Harris established the Stanford Wave Physics Lab, which investigate the physics of seismic and electromagnetic waves in complex media. He was co-founder of the Stanford Global Climate and Energy Project and the Center for Computational Earth and Environmental Science.
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Stefan Gössling
#48683
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (55 years)
Stefan Gössling is a Swedish academic who studied geography and biology at the University of Münster in Germany. He is a professor at the Linnaeus University School of Business and Economics and Lund University's Department of Service Management. He is also the research coordinator at the Western Norway Research Institute's Research Centre for Sustainable Tourism. Gössling is on the editorial board of the Journal of Sustainable Tourism.
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Ralph von Frese
#52395
Overall Influence
Ralph R. B. von Frese is an American geophysicist at the Ohio State University who identified the Wilkes Land mass concentration in Antarctica in collaboration with Laramie Potts. In 1969, Frese graduated B.A. cum laude from Park College in physics, mathematics, and German. He earned M.Sc. degrees in physics and geophysics and a Ph.D. in geophysics from Purdue University. He has taught at OSU since 1982.
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Daniel Kammen
#44192
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
Daniel Merson Kammen is an American scientist, renewable energy expert, and former government figure. He currently serves as Distinguished Professor of Energy in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley, and holds a dual appointment at the university's Energy and Resources Group and the Goldman School of Public Policy.
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Bill McKibben
#1602
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (65 years)
William Ernest McKibben is an American environmentalist, author, and journalist who has written extensively on the impact of global warming. He is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College and leader of the climate campaign group 350.org. He has authored a dozen books about the environment, including his first, The End of Nature , about climate change, and Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? , about the state of the environmental challenges facing humanity and future prospects.
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Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen
#23380
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen is an Emeritus Reader in the Department of Geography at the University of Hull in Kingston upon Hull England, where she taught environmental policy, management and politics. She was editor of the journal Energy & Environment from 1998 to 2017.
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John Francis Lovering
#83338
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (95 years)
John Francis Lovering was an Australian geologist. He was Professor of Geology at the University of Melbourne from 1969 to 1987 and Vice-Chancellor of Flinders University from 1987 to 1995. Background Lovering attended the selective state Canterbury Boys' High School in south-west Sydney. He reported his family could not afford to send him to university and he received support from a 'cadetship' in mineralogy and petrology awarded by the Australian Museum. He held a BSc and MSc in geology from the University of Sydney , and a PhD from the Division of Geological Sciences, California Institute of Technology .
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Julian Goldsmith
#77586
Overall Influence
1918 - 1999 (81 years)
Julian Royce Goldsmith was a mineralogist and geochemist at the University of Chicago . Goldsmith, along with colleague Fritz Laves, first defined the crystallographic polymorphism of alkali feldspar . Goldsmith also experimented on the temperature dependence of the solid solution between calcite and dolomite . Goldsmith's research also led him to experiment with the determination of the stability of intermediate structural states of albite . For his outstanding contributions to the study of mineralogy and geochemistry, Goldsmith was awarded the prestigious Roebling Medal by the Mineralogical Society of America in 1988 .
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Graham Ryder
#56209
Overall Influence
1949 - 2002 (53 years)
Graham Ryder was an English geologist and lunar scientist. He was educated at the University of Wales, Swansea, receiving his BSc in 1970. He then earned a PhD in geology from Michigan State University in 1974. His post-doctoral work was performed at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.
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Eman Ghoneim
#25802
Overall Influence
Eman Ghoneim is an Egyptian/American geomorphologist. In March 2006, Dr. Ghoneim, together with Farouk El-Baz, discovered the Kebira Crater, a possible impact crater in the Sahara. In 2007, while processing microwave space data , she discovered an ancient Mega-Lake buried beneath the sand of the Great Sahara in Northern Darfur, Sudan.
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Roger Everett Summons
#67891
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
Roger Everett Summons is the Schlumberger Professor of Geobiology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Professor of Geobiology in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences.
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Marie Sanderson
#74758
Overall Influence
1921 - 2010 (89 years)
Marie Elizabeth Sanderson was a Canadian geographer and climatologist. Early life and education Marie Lustig was born on 16 November 1921 in Chesley, Ontario, Canada. She was one of the earliest graduates in geography from the University of Toronto, and then gained an MA from the University of Maryland and a PhD from the University of Michigan. At Toronto she began a course in Social and Philosophical Studies but after enjoying the geography element, taught by Griffith Taylor, she enrolled for honours in geography, and was one of only three students to graduate in that subject in 1944. Taylor...
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Hans-Rudolf Wenk
#100025
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (84 years)
Hans-Rudolf Wenk is a Swiss mountaineer, vintner, mineralogist, crystallographer and geologist. Education and career Wenk was born in Zürich, Switzerland in 1941 and grew up in Basel. He studied crystallography at the University of Zürich under the direction of Prof. Fritz Laves and obtained a PhD in 1965. In 1966, he went to California, first on a postdoctoral position in experimental rock deformation at UCLA with David Griggs and John Christie and then, in the fall of 1967, assuming a faculty position in mineralogy at the University of California in Berkeley.
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Cinna Lomnitz
#24132
Overall Influence
1925 - 2016 (91 years)
Cinna Lomnitz Aronsfrau was a Chilean-Mexican geophysicist known for his contributions in the fields of rock mechanics and seismology. Early life and education Lomnitz was born to a Jewish family in Cologne, Germany. He graduated as engineer from the University of Chile in 1948. He then studied with Karl von Terzaghi in Harvard University and obtained a Master's degree in soil mechanics.
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Jacqueline Beaujeu-Garnier
#51242
Overall Influence
1917 - 1995 (78 years)
Jacqueline Beaujeu-Garnier was a French geographer. She was president of the Société de Géographie from 1983 to 1995 and led the scientific publication L'Information géographique. With Philippe Pinchemel she founded the geographical periodical Hommes et Terres du Nord in 1963.
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Robert Simpson
#32554
Overall Influence
1912 - 2014 (102 years)
Robert Homer Simpson was an American meteorologist, hurricane specialist, first director of the National Hurricane Research Project from 1955 to 1959, and a former director of the National Hurricane Center . He was the co-developer of the Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Scale with Herbert Saffir. His wife was Joanne Simpson.
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Jack Scott
#56862
Overall Influence
1923 - 2008 (85 years)
John Scott was a British television weatherman who appeared for the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 during a 20-year broadcasting career. Early life He attended Spennymoor Grammar School in Spennymoor. He went to Nottingham Technical College , leaving in 1941. In 1941, aged 17, Scott joined the Met Office, later joining the Royal Air Force and serving in Sullom Voe, Malta and North Africa during and after World War II. In the 1950s and 1960s he worked at RAF Watnall , and in Nairobi, Kenya, and at RAF Uxbridge.
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Ruth Wilson Gilmore
#13757
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Ruth Wilson Gilmore is a prison abolitionist and prison scholar. She is the Director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics and professor of geography in Earth and Environmental Sciences at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She has been credited with "more or less single-handedly" inventing carceral geography, the "study of the interrelationships across space, institutions and political economy that shape and define modern incarceration". She received the 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Association of Geographers.
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Stephen E. Calvert
#45850
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (90 years)
Stephen E. Calvert, PhD, FRSC is a professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia. He has specialized in the study of chemical and geochemical oceanography. His work has shed light on the factors responsible for the wide compositional variability of marine sediments, the controls on organic matter burial and nutrient utilization in the ocean.
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Alfred G. Fischer
#72042
Overall Influence
1920 - 2017 (97 years)
Alfred George Fischer was a German-American geologist. Life and work Fischer comes from a German-American family and was born and partly grew up in Germany. In 1935, at the age of 15, he moved to the US and attended college in Watertown, Wisconsin. He studied geology at the University of Wisconsin, where he was awarded a bachelor's degree in 1939 and a master's degree in 1940.
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Douglas Erwin
#42360
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (67 years)
Douglas Hamilton Erwin is a paleobiologist, Curator of Paleozoic Invertebrates at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and Chair of the Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. He is a member of the Editorial Board for Current Biology.
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Shunlin Liang
#101465
Overall Influence
Shunlin Liang is an aerospace engineer at the University of Hongkong. There he is the chair professor and head of the Department of Geography. He was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2013 for his contributions to remote sensing from satellite observations.
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Matthias Kuhle
#62253
Overall Influence
1948 - 2015 (67 years)
Matthias Kuhle was a German geographer and professor at the University of Göttingen. He edited the book series Geography International published by Shaker Verlag. Kuhle died on 25 April 2015 in a major earthquake in Nepal.
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Yu Lizhong
#13634
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (76 years)
Yu Lizhong was the first Chancellor of New York University Shanghai, having held this position from 2012 to 2020. Yu was awarded the title of Chancellor Emeritus of NYU Shanghai upon his retirement. Yu Lizhong joined NYU Shanghai from East China Normal University , where he served as president from 2006–2012. He also served as president of Shanghai Normal University prior to 2006.
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Huang Jiqing
#61421
Overall Influence
1904 - 1995 (91 years)
Huang Jiqing , also known by his courtesy name Huang Degan , was a Chinese geologist. He was born March 30, 1904, in Renshou, Sichuan to an intellectual family. In 1928 he obtained his bachelor's degree at Peking University, and in 1935 he got his PhD at University of Neuchâtel, Swiss. After returning to China he taught at National Central University and Peking University, and served as director of the National Geological Survey, president of the Geological Society of China, director of the Southwest Geological Bureau, deputy director of the Academic Division of Earth Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, deputy president of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences.
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Maurice Tucker
#60006
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
Maurice Edwin Tucker is a British sedimentologist, specialising in the field of carbonate sedimentology, more commonly known as limestones. From 1993 to 2011 he held the position of Professor of Geological Sciences at the University of Durham, and from 1998 to 2011 was Master of University College, Durham.
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Susan Cutter
#35572
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Susan Lynn Cutter is an American geographer and disaster researcher who is a Carolina Distinguished Professor of Geography and director of the Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute at the University of South Carolina. She is the author or editor of many books on disasters and disaster recovery. Her areas of expertise include the factors that make people and places susceptible to disasters, how people recover from disasters, and how to map disasters and disaster hazards. She chaired a committee of the National Research Council that in 2012 recommended more open data in disaster-monitori...
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John G. Anderson
#82444
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
John G. Anderson is an American seismologist and Professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. Anderson specializes in studies of strong ground motion and seismic hazards. He was Director of the Nevada Seismological Laboratory from 1998 to 2009. He has published more than 150 articles and more than 90 abstracts. He completed a PhD in Geophysics from Columbia University in 1976 and a bachelor of science in physics from Michigan State University in 1970. He received his high school diploma in 1966.
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Lindy Elkins-Tanton
#36425
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (60 years)
Lindy Elkins-Tanton is an American planetary scientist and professor whose research concerns terrestrial planetary evolution. She is the Principal Investigator of NASA's Psyche mission to explore the metallic asteroid 16 Psyche, Arizona State University Vice President of the Interplanetary Initiative, and co-founder of Beagle Learning, a tech company training and measuring collaborative problem-solving and critical thinking.
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John G. Ramsay
#69239
Overall Influence
1931 - 2021 (90 years)
John Graham Ramsay was a British structural geologist who was a professor at Imperial College London, the University of Leeds and the University of Zurich. Career Born in suburban London in 1931, John Graham Ramsay took his bachelor's degree in Geology at the Imperial College of Science and Technology , University of London graduating with first class honours in 1952 with Dr John Sutton as his mentor. He did his doctoral work in the Loch Monar area of the Scottish Highlands working on the strain patterns seen in intensely deformed and repeatedly folded rocks of the Moine Series and the relat...
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Duane Nellis
#45346
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Marvin Duane Nellis is an American educator, university administrator, and 21st president of Ohio University in Athens. He was previously the president of Texas Tech University and the University of Idaho. Nellis previously served as provost and senior vice president at Kansas State University, and dean of the Eberly College of Arts and Science at West Virginia University.
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Steven Schafersman
#15855
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
Steven Dale Schafersman is an American geologist and current president of Texas Citizens for Science, an advocacy group that opposes teaching creationism as science in the public schools. He is also known for his blog BadGeology.com.
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Paul Cloke
#74532
Overall Influence
1953 - 2022 (69 years)
Paul J. Cloke, was an author and emeritus professor of geography. He was known as the founding editor of the international and multidisciplinary academic Journal of Rural Studies, published by Elsevier Science. , he was a faculty member of the Department of Geography at the University of Exeter.
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Abel Idowu Olayinka
#23199
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (67 years)
Abel Idowu Olayinka is a Nigerian professor of applied geophysics. He is a former deputy vice chancellor and former vice chancellor of the University of Ibadan. He is also the president of the West African Research and Innovation Management Association.
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Gregory Beroza
#64667
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
Gregory C. Beroza is a seismologist and the Wayne Loel Professor of Earth Sciences at Stanford University. He is also the Co-Director of the Southern California Earthquake Center. He was elected to the fellow of American Geophysical Union in 2008. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.
Go to Profile#696
Elfatih Eltahir
#40072
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (64 years)
Elfatih Ali Babiker Eltahir is a Sudanese -American Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, H.M. King Bhumibol Professor of Hydrology and Climate, and Director of the MIT-UM6P Research Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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Mohamed Riad
#52812
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (98 years)
Riad Ahmed Riad Mohamed Riad an Egyptian scholar and geographer. Among his books is “Journey in the time of Nubia", His original family name is Qassem Urfally. In 1949 he obtained his B.A in Geography from Fouad I University and in 1951 he earned a Diploma of Sudanese Studies from Fouad I University. In 1956 he obtained his Ph.D. degree From Voelker Kunde Institute, Vienna University. He was soon appointed a staff member at Faculty of Arts Ain Shams University, He taught at Beirut Arab University and Qatar University with the posts of lecturer, assistant professor, and professor in the Department of Geography.
Go to Profile#698
Evelyn Stokes
#71501
Overall Influence
1936 - 2005 (69 years)
Dame Evelyn Mary Stokes was a professor of geography at the University of Waikato in New Zealand and a member of the New Zealand government's Waitangi Tribunal. Throughout her life she worked for recognition of marginalised groups including women and Māori, and she published extensively on New Zealand historical geography and on Māori land issues.
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Gerard C. Bond
#82643
Overall Influence
1940 - 2005 (65 years)
Gerard Clark Bond was an American geologist. Biography Bond received his Bachelor of Science degree at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, where his father Ralph Bond was a Professor of Geology. He worked at the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York as Head of the Deep-Sea Sample Repository, after teaching briefly at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts and the University of California, Davis. Bond theorized that variations in solar activity—the appearance of sunspots and changes in the emission of solar radiation—might be driving 1,500-year-cycles of amplified...
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Pier Vellinga
#30455
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Pier Vellinga is an environmental scientist and one of the Netherlands' experts on the impacts of climate change. Career He was among the first scientists to publish on climate change and its implications regarding water and energy in the eighties. His education and training includes a Fulbright scholarship in the US in 1967–68, an Msc and doctors degree at Delft University of Technology .
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