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).

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Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Earth Sciences,

#701

Bernard Elgey Leake

Bernard Elgey Leake

#76744

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (93 years)

Bernard Elgey Leake is an English geologist. He is Emeritus Professor of Geology at the University of Glasgow, was Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow at Cardiff University 2000-2002 and has been an Honorary Research Fellow at Cardiff University since 1997.

#702

Dennis L. Hartmann

#94963

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (25 years)

Dennis L Hartmann is an American atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington. He has done research on ozone depletion and climate change. In 2016 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

#703

George V. Chilingar

George V. Chilingar

#11638

Overall Influence

1929 - 2023 (94 years)

George V. Chilingarian is an American-Armenian Professor of Civil and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Southern California . He is one of the best-known petroleum geologists in the world and the founder of several prestigious journals in the oil and gas industry.

#704

Wolfgang Zech

#102766

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (88 years)

#705

Trond Helge Torsvik

Trond Helge Torsvik

#94820

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (68 years)

Trond Helge Torsvik is a Norwegian professor of geophysics at the University of Oslo. He directs the Centre for Earth Evolution and Dynamics. In 2015 Torsvik received the Leopold von Buch award for his outstanding contributions to the understanding of geodynamics. The prize is awarded by the . In 2016 he also received the Arthur Holmes Medal & Honorary Membership from the European Geosciences Union.

#706

George Burba

#93307

Overall Influence

George Burba is an American bio-atmospheric scientist, author, and inventor. Burba is a Science & Strategy Fellow at LI-COR Biosciences of the Battery Ventures Group, a Global Fellow at Robert B. Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute, and a Graduate Adjunct Professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is a co-founder of CarbonDew, a non-profit Community of Practice developing novel climate solutions across economic sectors.

#707

Peter A. Cawood

#102856

Overall Influence

#708

Kathryn Whaler

#88498

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (69 years)

Kathryn Anne "Kathy" Whaler OBE FRSE FAGU is a professor of geophysics at the University of Edinburgh School of GeoSciences, in the Research Institute of Earth and Planetary Science and is a member of the Solid Earth Geophysics and Natural Hazards Research Group.

#709

Gerald Haug

#34016

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (57 years)

Gerald H. Haug is a German geologic climatologist, prize winner of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize and since 2007 he has a professorship at the ETH Zürich in Switzerland. In 2015 he became director of the Climate Geochemistry Department and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz and since March 2020, he became the new President of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

#710

Phil Rees

#78867

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (81 years)

Phillip Howell Rees is a British population geographer and demographer. He is currently Emeritus Professor of Population Geography at the University of Leeds. Biography Born in Wales, he was educated at St. Catharine's College, University of Cambridge where he graduated with a double first in Geography in 1966 . He went on to the University of Chicago where he gained an MA in Geography in 1968 and a Ph.D. in 1973 under the supervision of Brian Berry.

#711

Peter J. Wagner

#65467

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (61 years)

Peter J. Wagner is a paleontologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He received his Ph.D. in Geophysical Sciences from The University of Chicago in 1995, conducted postdoctoral research at the Smithsonian Institution, served as a curator at the Field Museum of Natural History from 1996 through 2007, and was at the Smithsonian Institution from 2007 through 2017. He was given the Charles Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society in 2004. His research focuses on macroevolution and paleoecology, especially as regards the systematics, evolutionary dynamics, morphology, and distribution of Paleozoic Molluscs.

#712

Alfred Colpaert

#92037

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (68 years)

Alfred Colpaert is professor in physical geography at the Department of Geographical and Historical Studies of the University of Eastern Finland. Education He studied physical geography at the University of Utrecht and geography at the University of Oulu, Finland. He has a PhD in Geography and a Docentship in Geoinformatics .

#713

Kenji Satake

#75376

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (67 years)

Kenji Satake is a Japanese seismologist who has made significant contributions to subduction and tsunami research. Along with Brian Atwater and David Yamaguchi, Satake assembled disparate pieces of information regarding a Japanese tsunami that had no known origin. The three scientists worked together to pinpoint a date, time, and location for the 1700 Cascadia earthquake – 9p.m. on January 26, 1700 – on the Cascadia Subduction Zone off the Pacific Northwest coast of North America.

#714

John Douglas Milliman

#103399

Overall Influence

#715

Rachel Pain

#60539

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (57 years)

Rachel Pain is Professor of Human Geography at Newcastle University since 2017 and was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2018. She previously served as Deputy Head of Department of Geography at Durham University, and was also the Co-Founder/Director of the Centre for Social Justice and Community Action and the Participatory Research Hub. Per Scopus, Pain has a h-index of 42. In 2022, she was conference chair of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers annual conference.

#716

Mark Bassin

#42974

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (72 years)

Mark Bassin is a geographer and specialist on Russian and German geopolitics. He is currently employed as a professor in historical and contemporary studies at Södertörn University. Life Mark Bassin was born in 1953. Bassin gained his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley in 1983.

#717

Hendrik Tennekes

#68198

Overall Influence

1936 - 2021 (85 years)

Hendrik Tennekes was the director of research at the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute , and was a Professor of Aeronautical Engineering at Pennsylvania State University and Professor of Meteorology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam . He is known for his work in the fields of turbulence and multi-modal forecasting. He authored the textbooks The Simple Science of Flight: From Insects to Jumbo Jets and A First Course in Turbulence with John L. Lumley. The book "A First Course in Turbulence", is a classic that logs more than 12,000 citations on Google Scholar.

#718

Ellen E. Wohl

#99787

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (63 years)

Ellen E. Wohl is an American fluvial geomorphologist. She is professor of geology with the Warner College of Natural Resources at Colorado State University. Education Wohl earned a Bachelor of Science degree in geology from Arizona State University in 1984 and a PhD in geosciences from the University of Arizona in 1988. In 2019, she received a Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.

#719

Herbert Wilhelmy

Herbert Wilhelmy

#98145

Overall Influence

1910 - 2003 (93 years)

Herbert Wilhelmy was a German geographer. Wilhelmy has made significant impact in the area of Latin American regional geography, with a focus on climatic geomorphology and, especially, morphogenetic urban geography.

#720

Lynne Frostick

#61957

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (76 years)

Lynne Elizabeth Frostick, is a chartered British geographer and geologist. She was a professor of Physical Geography at the University of Hull until 2014. Her research interests include sediment and flow dynamics in rivers and estuaries and the interdisciplinary problems associated with waste. The physical modelling facility she has developed at The Deep is part of the EU HYDRALAB project.

#721

Petr Černý

#91883

Overall Influence

1934 - 2018 (84 years)

Petr Černý FRSC was a mineralogy professor at the University of Manitoba. Černý's studies focus on pegmatite. He is best known for his geological mapping of Bernic Lake, Manitoba in the 1970s. The site has since hosted several tantalum-lithium-caesium mines, for example the Tanco Mine.

#722

Andrew Pitman

#72682

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (61 years)

Andrew John Pitman is a British-Australian atmospheric scientist. He was born in Bristol in 1964 and educated at Liverpool University . He holds a Postgraduate Certificate in Educational Leadership from Macquarie University.

#723

Qihao Weng

#102194

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (61 years)

Qihao Weng is an American geographer, urban, environmental sustainability, and remote sensing scientist. He has been a Chair Professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University since July 2021, and was the Director of the Center for Urban and Environmental Change and is a professor of geography in the Department of Earth and Environmental Systems at the Indiana State University.

#724

John Woodhouse

#88984

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (25 years)

John Henry Woodhouse is an English geophysicist, Emeritus Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford . He earned a Ph.D in 1975 in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University. After 2 years at Scripps and Cambridge, he joined the Harvard faculty in 1978 as an assistant professor. He was promoted to full professor 4 years later, returning to England in 1990 to take up the appointment as professor at Oxford University.

#725

Joseph M. Prospero

#103609

Overall Influence

#726

Deborah Ajakaiye

#70003

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (85 years)

Deborah Enilo Ajakaiye was born in 1940 in Plateau State in Northern Nigeria, and is a Nigerian geophysicist. She is the first female physics professor in Africa and her work in geophysics has played an important role in mining in Nigeria.

#727

Jeff Dozier

#57451

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (81 years)

Jeff Dozier is an American snow hydrologist, environmental scientist, researcher and academic. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Founding Dean of the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

#728

Paul Longley

#26639

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (66 years)

Paul A. Longley is a British geographer. He is Professor of Geographic Information Science at University College London , UK, where he also directs the ESRC Consumer Data Research Centre. Prior to joining UCL in July 2000, he was the Professor of Geography at the University of Bristol.

#729

Larry Mayer

#78462

Overall Influence

Larry Mayer is a distinguished professor of the University of New Hampshire and a former member of the President's Panel on Ocean Exploration. He has a broad background in marine geology and geophysics, reflecting his current contributions in the Ocean Engineering and Earth Science Department at UNH.

#730

Terry McGee

#97391

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (89 years)

Terence Gary McGee, usually called Terry McGee is an urban geographer and social scientist. Key themes McGees' major academic work has mainly been in the following areas:the geography of Southeast Asian citiesthe informal economy in developing countries;systems of food distribution in developing countries' cities;the emergence of extended metropolitan regions.rural-urban migration

#731

Henry Schwarcz

#103931

Overall Influence

Henry Schwarcz is a Canadian geochemist, having been a University Distinguished Professor at McMaster University. Using methods like stable isotope analysis and x-ray scattering, his research spans from paleoclimatology to paleoanthropology, including work on stalagmites from Vancouver Island and skeletal remains from the Roman settlement of Leptiminus.

#732

Johannes Geiss

#47678

Overall Influence

1926 - 2020 (94 years)

Johannes Geiss was a German physicist. Biography Geiss was born in 1926 in modern-day Poland, the son of farmers Hans Geiss and Irene Wilk. In 1955, he married Carmen Bach. Geiss studied physics in Göttingen from 1947 to 1950. He published his doctoral thesis in 1953, titled Isotopenanalysen an „gewöhnlichem Blei“. He then conducted research on geochronology at the University of Bern and University of Chicago. From 1958 to 1959, Geiss was an associate professor at the University of Miami before returning to Bern, working there until 1991. From 1995 to 2002, he was co-director of the International Space Science Institute.

#733

Wann Langston Jr.

#59625

Overall Influence

1921 - 2013 (92 years)

Wann Langston Jr. was an American paleontologist and professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Langston worked on a number of different reptiles and amphibians in his long career, beginning with the 1950 description of the theropod dinosaur Acrocanthosaurus. Langston was hired by the National Museum of Canada in 1954 to replace Charles M. Sternberg, and worked in western Canada and on Prince Edward Island until 1962. One of his major finds, with Loris Russell, was the rediscovery of Sternberg's Scabby Butte Pachyrhinosaurus bonebed. Langston, along with a small team of fieldworkers,...

#734

Thomas Edvard Krogh

#63795

Overall Influence

1936 - 2008 (72 years)

Thomas Edvard "Tom" Krogh, FRSC was a geochronologist and a former curator for the Royal Ontario Museum. He revolutionized the technique of radiometric uranium-lead dating with the development of new laboratory procedures and analytical methodologies. His discoveries have yielded an unprecedented level of precision in the dating of Precambrian rocks. Krogh's techniques have become the international de facto standard. The application of these techniques has provided a detailed understanding of the evolution of the Earth's Precambrian shield areas.

#735

Marjorie Wilson

#89273

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (74 years)

#736

Diana Liverman

#58587

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (71 years)

Diana Liverman is a retired Regents Professor of Geography and Development and past Director of the University of Arizona School of Geography, Development and Environment in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences in Tucson, Arizona.

#737

Sarah Harper

#25397

Overall Influence

Sarah Harper FRAI CBE is a British gerontologist, who established Oxford's Institute of Population Ageing, and became the University of Oxford's first Professor of Gerontology. She served on the Prime Minister's Council for Science and Technology between 2014 and 2017 and in 2017 was appointed Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Sarah was appointed a CBE in 2018 for services to the Science of Demography.

#738

Sarah Curtis

#44725

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (71 years)

Sarah Elizabeth Curtis, is a British geographer and academic, specialising in health geography. From 2006 to 2016, she was Professor of Health and Risk at Durham University; she is now professor emeritus. A graduate of St Hilda's College, Oxford, she was Director of the Institute of Hazard Risk and Resilience at Durham between 2012 and 2016. She previously researched and taught at the University of Kent and at Queen Mary, University of London.

#739

Marland P. Billings

#76664

Overall Influence

1902 - 1996 (94 years)

Marland Pratt Billings was an American structural geologist who was considered one of the greatest authorities on North American geology. Billings was Professor of Geology at Harvard University for almost his entire career, having joined the faculty in 1930 and retired to emeritus status in 1972. He also taught for a brief time at Bryn Mawr College.

#740

John Carrier Weaver

#60821

Overall Influence

1915 - 1995 (80 years)

John Carrier Weaver was an American professor of geography, and college administrator for several major universities in the United States. Early life Weaver was born in Evanston, Illinois. His father, A. T. Weaver, was a professor of speech and theater at the University of Wisconsin–Madison from 1918 to 1961. John Weaver graduated from the University of Wisconsin High School, then received his A.B. , A.M. , and Ph.D. , all in geography, from the University of Wisconsin. He was a member of the Chi Phi Fraternity.

#741

Catherine Nash

#58814

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (58 years)

Catherine Nash is Professor of Human Geography at the University of London. Nash studies Feminist cultural geography, geographies of relatedness, Irish studies. Recently, her work has regarded the meaning of ancestry and origins in the making of ethnic, national and diasporic identities through research on traditional and new forms of genealogical practices.

#742

William Francis Brace

#91514

Overall Influence

1926 - 2012 (86 years)

William Francis Brace was an American geophysicist. Career Education Brace matriculated in 1943 at Massachusetts Institute of Technology , and after 1944–1946 service in the Navy, graduated with bachelor's degrees in 1946 in naval architecture and in 1949 in civil engineering. In 1953 he received his PhD from MIT's department of geology and geophysics. In 1953–1954 he was a Fulbright scholar at Bruno Sander's laboratory in Austria.

#743

Keith Syers

#86380

Overall Influence

1939 - 2011 (72 years)

John Keith Syers was an Anglo-New Zealand academic and academic administrator. Academic career After a PhD at Durham University Syers spend two years working with T.W. Walker at Lincoln University before moving to the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He moved to Massey University in 1972 to head the new Soil Science department. He primary interest was nutrient cycling in farmland. In 1985 Syers moved to Newcastle University.

#744

André P. C. Faaij

#104519

Overall Influence

#745

Thomas H. Heaton

#67845

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (74 years)

Thomas H. Heaton is an American seismologist, known for his influential contributions in earthquake source physics and earthquake early warning. Currently he is the professor of geophysics and civil engineering at Caltech and one of the world’s leading experts on seismology.

#746

Andy Merrifield

#22630

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (65 years)

Andy Merrifield is a Marxist urban theorist. Background He was born in Liverpool, UK. and attended Quarry Bank School until 1976. He left school at 16 and did office jobs and travelled. He graduated in geography, philosophy and sociology from Liverpool Polytechnic in the mid-1980s. Merrifield received his PhD in geography from Oxford University in 1993, supervised by David Harvey. Merrifield spent most of his early career teaching geography at the University of Southampton and King's College London, before moving to Clark University, USA in 2000. He was denied tenure in 2003, on grounds of collegiality, having chosen to live 178 miles away in Manhattan.

#747

John C. Wyngaard

#104672

Overall Influence

#748

Alfred Kröner

#104739

Overall Influence

#749

Jeffrey J. McDonnell

#101452

Overall Influence

Jeffrey John McDonnell is a Canadian watershed hydrologist. He is a professor of hydrology in the School of Environment and Sustainability and the associate director of the Global Institute for Water Security at the University of Saskatchewan.

#750

Matthew England

#68003

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (59 years)

Matthew England is a physical oceanographer and climate scientist. He is currently Scientia Professor of Ocean & Climate Dynamics at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Education In 1987 England completed a B.Sc. at the University of Sydney, Australia, followed by a Doctor of Philosophy in 1992, holding a Fulbright Scholarship at Princeton University in 1990.

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