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,
#901
Marie Morisawa
#84591
Overall Influence
1919 - 1994 (75 years)
Marie Morisawa was an American geomorphologist. Morisawa was an integral part of the revolution in the field that began in the 1950s. She studied the geomorphology of rivers, active fault zones, plate tectonics, coastal geomorphology, geological hazards, and environmental geomorphology.
Go to Profile#902
Ian Cook
#72383
Overall Influence
Ian Cook is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Exeter in the UK, and formerly senior lecturer in geography at the University of Birmingham, and lecturer at the University of Wales, Lampeter.
Go to Profile#903
Irena Creed
#53666
Overall Influence
Irena Creed is a Canadian hydrologist. She is currently the vice-principal for research and innovation at University of Toronto Scarborough. She was the associate vice-president for research at the University of Saskatchewan, and the executive director of and a professor at the School of Environment and Sustainability. Creed continues to study the impacts of global climate change on ecosystem functions and services, specifically focusing on the hydrology of freshwater catchments.
Go to Profile#904
Walter D. Mooney
#101781
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Walter D. Mooney is a research seismologist and geophysicist at the United States Geological Survey , Menlo Park, California . He was Chief of the USGS Branch of Seismology from 1994 to 1997. Early life and education Mooney was born in Floral Park, New York and is the sixth of seven children. He attended Cornell University from 1969 to 1973 for his B.S in physics. In 1976, he spent 6 months as a Graduate Fellow in Karlsruhe University, Germany. He went on to complete his Ph.D. on the Deep Structure of the South American Andes in 1979 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Go to Profile#905
Carlos Nobre
#43712
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Carlos Afonso Nobre is a Brazilian scientist and meteorologist who is mainly highlighted in global warming-related studies. Nobre spearheaded the multi-disciplinary, multinational Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia, a program noted to have “revolutionized understanding of the Amazon rainforest and its role in the Earth system.”
Go to Profile#906
Michael N. G. James
#112068
Overall Influence
#907
Shigenori Maruyama
#112156
Overall Influence
#908
Gabriel T. Csanady
#112202
Overall Influence
#909
Peter C. Burns
#112293
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
#910
Michael James Gaffey
#80779
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (80 years)
Michael James Gaffey is a planetary scientist who specializes in deriving the mineralogies of asteroids from their reflectance spectra. Biography He received his bachelor's and master's degrees in geology from the University of Iowa and his PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in planetary science graduating in 1974. From 1974 to 1977, he worked as a Post-doc in the Planetary Astronomy Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After leaving Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he worked as a researcher at the Institute for Astronomy of the University of Hawaiʻi from 1977 to 1979 and the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics from 1979 to 1984.
Go to Profile#911
Larry Joe Mahrt
#112410
Overall Influence
#912
Warwick F. Vincent
#112440
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
#913
Manik Talwani
#112442
Overall Influence
#914
Mei-Fu Zhou
#112609
Overall Influence
Mei-Fu Zhou is a Chinese geologist. He graduated from Nanjing University in 1983, and pursued graduate study in Canada, where he earned a master's degree from the University of Saskatchewan in 1992, followed by a doctorate from Dalhousie University in 1995. Zhou began teaching at the University of Hong Kong in 1996. Zhou is a fellow of the Geological Society of America and the chief editor of the Journal of Asian Earth Sciences.
Go to Profile#915
Geoffrey Boulton
#57170
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (85 years)
Geoffrey Stewart Boulton is a British geoscientist, and Regius Professor Emeritus of the University of Edinburgh. He was awarded the 2006 Lyell Medal, by the Geological Society. He was awarded the 2011 James Croll Medal. He was awarded the Seligman Crystal by the International Glaciological Society in 2001. Between 2007 and 2011 he was General Secretary of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, of which he has been a Fellow since 1989. He was elected to membership of the Academia Europaea in 2022
Go to Profile#916
Kamrun Nahar
#90152
Overall Influence
Kamrun Nahar is a Bangladeshi soil scientist and environmentalist. A prominent biofuels researcher of Bangladesh, her research and publications also aimed to lower dependence on petroleum based foreign oil by producing low carbon and sulphur emitting biofuels from the second generation energy crops cultivated in the unused wastelands of Bangladesh for use in home generators to supplement power.
Go to Profile#917
Rein Ahas
#70415
Overall Influence
1966 - 2018 (52 years)
Rein Ahas was an Estonian geographer and a professor at the University of Tartu. Education In 1991 he received his undergraduate degree in Physical Geography and Nature Conservation from the University of Tartu, in 1994 he completed his MSc and in 1999 his PhD, with the thesis "Spatial and Temporal Variability of Phenological Phases in Estonia", supervised by Prof. Ülo Mander and Jaan Eilart.
Go to Profile#918
Dorthe Dahl-Jensen
#83903
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (67 years)
Dorthe Dahl-Jensen is a Danish palaeoclimatology professor and researcher at the Centre for Ice and Climate at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Her primary field is the study of ice and climate, specifically the reconstruction of climate records from ice cores and borehole data; ice flow models to date ice cores; continuum mechanical properties of anisotropic ice; ice in the solar system; and the history and evolution of the Greenland Ice Sheet.
Go to Profile#919
Kenneth Farley
#52306
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (61 years)
Kenneth A. Farley is a noble gas isotope geochemist and Professor of Geochemistry at the California Institute of Technology. He holds the W. M. Keck Foundation professorship and was the chairman of the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences at Caltech from 2004 to 2014. Farley specializes in the study of the accumulation of cosmic dust in seafloor sedimentss through analysis of the presence of Helium-3, and in the isotopic composition of mid-oceanic and volcanic island basalts. Farley earned a B.S. in chemistry at Yale University in 1986 and his Ph.D. in geochemistry at the University...
Go to Profile#920
Miles Ogborn
#74647
Overall Influence
Miles Ogborn is a human geographer at Queen Mary, University of London. Honors In 2012 Ogborn was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy. In 2009, Professor Miles Ogborn was selected as a Distinguished Historical Geographer by the Historical Geography Specialty Group of the AAG. With this award, he was also given the opportunity to give a lecture at the Las Vegas AAG which was published in the journal Historical Geography. He was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2001 for outstanding contribution to his discipline.
Go to Profile#921
Lai-yung Ruby Leung
#108315
Overall Influence
Lai-yung Ruby Leung is an atmospheric scientist internationally recognized in the field of Earth Systems modeling and hydrologic processes. She is known for her contributions to the development of local climate models, and for her understanding of the consequences of climate change. Her interests are diverse across mountain hydrometeorology, aerosol-cloud interactions, orographic precipitation and climate extremes.
Go to Profile#922
Raymond Desjardins
#38378
Overall Influence
Raymond L. Desjardins is a senior research scientist at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in the Agrienvironment Division of the Ottawa Research and Development Centre. His areas of expertise include agricultural meteorology, micrometeorology, air quality, and climate change. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, was co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007, and in 2018 was appointed as Member of the Order of Canada for his research in agrometeorology and for his innovative devices to quantify greenhouse gas emissions.
Go to Profile#923
Susan Hanson
#91067
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (82 years)
Susan E. Hanson is an American geographer. She is a Distinguished University Professor Emerita in the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University. Her research has focused on gender and work, travel patterns, and feminist scholarly approaches.
Go to Profile#924
Ren Mei'e
#43428
Overall Influence
1913 - 2008 (95 years)
Ren Mei'e was a Chinese geomorphologist, geologist, marine and coastal scientist, educator and professor, who was the main founder for the study of many related subjects in modern China. Biography Ren was born in Zhenhai, Ningbo, Zhejiang, China on 8 September 1913. In 1934 Ren graduated from the Department of Geology of National Central University . In 1939 Ren received his doctorate from the University of Glasgow, Scotland.
Go to Profile#925
Donella Meadows
#3455
Overall Influence
1941 - 2001 (60 years)
Donella Hager "Dana" Meadows was an American environmental scientist, educator, and writer. She is best known as lead author of the books The Limits to Growth and Thinking In Systems: A Primer. Early life and education Born in Elgin, Illinois, Meadows was educated in science, receiving a B.A. in chemistry from Carleton College in 1963 and a PhD in biophysics from Harvard in 1968. After a yearlong trip from England to Sri Lanka and back, she became a research fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a member of a team in the department created by Jay Forrester, the inventor of sy...
Go to Profile#926
Ralph Keeling
#29675
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
Ralph Franklin Keeling is a professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He is the Principal Investigator for the Atmospheric Oxygen Research Group at Scripps and is the director of the Scripps Program, the measurement program behind the Keeling curve, which was started by his father Charles David Keeling in 1958. Ralph Keeling has developed precise instruments and techniques for the measurement of atmospheric oxygen and anthropogenic in the ocean, and for the analysis of land and ocean carbon sinks.
Go to Profile#927
Kathleen Crane
#44594
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Kathleen Crane is an American marine geologist, best known for her contributions to the discovery of hydrothermal vents on the Galápagos Rift along the East Pacific Rise in the mid-1970s. Education Crane received a Bachelors of Arts in Geology, with a minor in German, from Oregon State University in 1973. In 1977, she received a doctorate from Scripps Institution of Oceanography with a dissertation entitled "Hydrothermal Activity and Near Axis Structure at Mid-Ocean Spreading Centers". From 1977-1979, she studied mid-ocean ridges as a postdoctoral fellow with Robert Ballard at the Woods Hol...
Go to Profile#928
Konrad Steffen
#87055
Overall Influence
1952 - 2020 (68 years)
Konrad "Koni" Steffen was a Swiss glaciologist, known for his research into the impact of global warming on the Arctic. Early life and education Konrad Steffen was born on January 2, 1952, in Zurich, Switzerland to Ernst and Maria Steffen, née Kurzinski. His father was a fashion designer and his mother ran an accounting firm. As a child, Steffen aspired to become an actor, but his father insisted he pursue a profession first.
Go to Profile#929
Vijay Prasad Dimri
#77001
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
Vijay Prasad Dimri is an Indian geophysical scientist, known for his contributions in opening up a new research area in Earth sciences by establishing a parallelism between deconvolution and inversion, the two vital geophysical signal processing tools deployed in minerals and oil and gas exploration. In 2010, the Government of India awarded him with the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian award, for his contributions to the fields of science and technology.
Go to Profile#930
Akio Arakawa
#70981
Overall Influence
1927 - 2021 (94 years)
Akio Arakawa was a Japanese-born American climate scientist. He was an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles. Early life and achievements Arakawa was the youngest of three sons. Living through World War II in Japan, he recalled his two older brothers served in the Japanese military without incident, while he was drafted to work as a fireman part-time while finishing high school. He entered the University of Tokyo in 1947, and spent three years majoring in physics. After graduating in 1950, he applied for one of the few jobs available for physics graduates, with the Japan Meteorological Agency.
Go to Profile#931
Xiao Wenjiao
#108842
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (58 years)
Xiao Wenjiao is a Chinese geologist and researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences's Institute of Geology and Geophysics and Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography. Education Xiao was born in Lianyuan, Hunan in December 1967. In 1989 he graduated from Changchun Institute of Geology . He received his master's degree in structural geology from China University of Geosciences in 1992 and doctor's degree in sedimentology from the Institute of geology, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1995, respectively.
Go to Profile#932
Tullis Onstott
#70173
Overall Influence
1955 - 2021 (66 years)
Tullis Onstott was a professor of geosciences at Princeton University who has done research into endolithic life deep under the Earth's surface. In 2011 he co-discovered Halicephalobus mephisto, a nematode worm living under the ground, the deepest multicellular organism known to science. He won a LExEN Award for his work "A Window Into the Extreme Environment of Deep Subsurface Microbial Communities: Witwatersrand Deep Microbiology Project". In 2007, Onstott was listed among Time Magazine's 100 most influential people in the world.
Go to Profile#933
Lloyd D. Keigwin
#113341
Overall Influence
#934
Frederick Stewart
#52988
Overall Influence
1916 - 2001 (85 years)
Sir Frederick Henry Stewart was a Scottish geologist and academic who was a professor at the University of Edinburgh. Background Stewart was born in Aberdeen on 16 January 1916, the son of Frederick Robert Stewart, a lecturer in engineering at Aberdeen University, and his wife, Hester Alexander.
Go to Profile#935
Richard Arthur Reyment
#113368
Overall Influence
#936
George A. Mcmechan
#113376
Overall Influence
#937
Michael Dear
#77668
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (81 years)
Michael James Dear is an urban geographer and educator. He has written several books, including Why Walls Won't Work: Repairing the US-Mexico Divide, which was published by Oxford University Press in 2013. He teaches City and Regional Planning at the College of Environmental Design of the University of California, Berkeley.
Go to Profile#938
Henry C. Gunning
#44340
Overall Influence
1901 - 1991 (90 years)
Henry Cecil Gunning, FRSC was a Canadian geologist and academic. A mineral, gunningite, was named in his honour. Early life Gunning was born in Belfast, Ireland. At the age of six his family moved to Vancouver, British Columbia. His father established a hardware business there.
Go to Profile#939
Kenzō Yagi
#113238
Overall Influence
1914 - 2008 (94 years)
Kenzō Yagi was a Japanese mineralogist and petrologist who specialized in experimental mineralogy and petrology. Yagiite, a new mineral found in the Colomera meteorite, was named after him for its contribution to the petrology.
Go to Profile#940
David A. Jones
#60460
Overall Influence
David Arfon Jones is a senior climatologist at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. He initially studied mathematics and chemistry at university but changed to atmospheric studies. Jones obtained his PhD in Earth Science from the University of Melbourne, Australia in 1995. He subsequently completed the postgraduate diploma in weather forecasting in 1995 at the Bureau of Meteorology. In 1995 Jones commenced work in the Climate Analysis Section of the Australian National Climate Centre, focusing on the automation of climate monitoring using objective analysis techniques. Subsequently he moved ...
Go to Profile#941
Ellen Mosley-Thompson
#101778
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Ellen Mosley-Thompson is a glaciologist and climatologist. She is a Distinguished University Professor at The Ohio State University and director of their Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center. She is known as a pioneer in the use of ice cores from the Polar Regions for paleoclimatic research and is an influential figure in climate science. She is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#942
William E. Doolittle
#76772
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
William E. Doolittle is an American geographer who is prominent among the fourth generation of the Berkeley School of Latin Americanist Geography. He is currently the Erich W. Zimmermann Regents Professor in Geography at the Department of Geography and the Environment at University of Texas at Austin. He specializes in landscapes and agricultural technology in the American Southwest and Mexico.
Go to Profile#943
Neal Menzies
#87847
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
Neal Menzies is an Australian professor of soil science at Griffith University. In his early adult years, he completed a bachelor of agricultural science in 1985, a master of agricultural studies in 1987, and a PhD in 1992. Menzies has worked for the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Cameroon, the Newcastle University in England, the University of Queensland, and Griffith University in Australia
Go to Profile#944
Reece Jones
#56528
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (49 years)
Reece Jones is an American political geographer and Guggenheim Fellow. Jones was educated at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Life and career Jones is currently a professor of geography and environment at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. He was the president of the Political Geography Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers from 2014–15. He is the editor-in-chief at the journal Geopolitics. He is also the co-editor of the Routledge Geopolitics Book Series with Klaus Dodds. He was named a Fellow of the American Asso...
Go to Profile#945
Arthur Getis
#97278
Overall Influence
1934 - 2022 (88 years)
Arthur Getis was an American geographer known for his significant contributions to spatial statistics and geographic information science . With a career spanning over four decades, Getis authored more than one hundred peer-reviewed papers and book chapters, greatly influencing GIScience and geography as a whole. The Getis-Ord family of statistics, one of the most commonly used in spatial analysis, is based on his and J. Keith Ord's work and is still widely used in the creation of hot spot maps.
Go to Profile#946
Konrad Bates Krauskopf
#68169
Overall Influence
1910 - 2003 (93 years)
Konrad Bates Krauskopf was an American geologist, a pioneer in geochemistry, noted for his work in radioactive waste disposal. Krauskopf led expeditions to Mexico, Norway, the Sierra and the Pacific Northwest. Krauskopf was a geology professor at Stanford University, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#947
Khadg Singh Valdiya
#49307
Overall Influence
1937 - 2020 (83 years)
Khadg Singh Valdiya was an Indian geologist and a former vice chancellor of Kumaon University, known for his contributions in the field of geodynamics. A 2007 recipient of Padma Shri, he was honoured again by the Government of India in 2015 with Padma Bhushan, the third highest Indian civilian award.
Go to Profile#948
John Hammond
#37831
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
John Michael Hammond is a meteorologist and an English weather forecaster for the BBC. For a long time he could be seen presenting weather forecasts on the BBC News channel, BBC Red Button and BBC World News. He was the main weather presenter on BBC News at One and on the BBC News at Ten, Countryfile and BBC News at Six. At the weekend he also presents the weather on BBC Radio 5 Live. He is currently presenting for the BBC in Birmingham, including the regional news programme Midlands Today.
Go to Profile#949
Reginald Sutcliffe
#99435
Overall Influence
1904 - 1991 (87 years)
Reginald Cockcroft Sutcliffe FRS was a British meteorologist. Born in Wrexham but raised in Yorkshire, where his father was a shop manager, he won a scholarship to the University of Leeds, where he gained first class honours in mathematics. After studying for a PhD with William Berwick he joined the Meteorological Office in 1927.
Go to Profile#950
Paul Spudis
#55850
Overall Influence
1952 - 2018 (66 years)
Paul D. Spudis was an American geologist and lunar scientist. His specialty was the study of volcanism and impact processes on the planets, including Mercury and Mars. Spudis was well known as a leading advocate of a return to the Moon to use its resources to establish and supply a cislunar space transportation system.
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