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).

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List of the most influential people in Earth Sciences,

#1001

Martine Rebetez

#51105
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Martine Rebetez is a Swiss climatologist. She is a professor at the University of Neuchâtel and a senior scientist at Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL. Biography Rebetez studied geography and climatology at the University of Lausanne, Zurich and Salford from 1979 to 1985. She received her doctorate from 1987 to 1992 at the University of Lausanne and was subsequently a. a. employed at the University of Freiburg and the University of Neuchâtel. From 1996 to 2006, she was a research fellow at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL before being appointed as a senior scientist at the same institute.
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#1002

Warren Jackman Wiscombe

#116510
Overall Influence
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#1003

Oene Oenema

#116568
Overall Influence
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#1004

Michel Campillo

Michel Campillo
#77442
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Michel Campillo is a French seismologist and geophysicist who is currently a professor at Grenoble Alpes University. Early life and education Michel Campillo was born in 1957 in Chambon sur Lignon. He studied physics at university, receiving a Master's degree in 1979.  Postgraduate thesis: Calculation of near-field radiation from a dynamic seismic source.  Thèse d'État: Synthetic seismograms in heterogeneous elastic media: methodological development and applications.Specialising in geophysics, Campillo subsequently obtained his PhD in 1982 and his Doctorat d'État in 1986 at Joseph Fourier Univ...
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#1005

William Petersen

#55519
Overall Influence
1912 - Present (114 years)
William Petersen was an American sociologist and demographer. Life Petersen was born in Jersey City, New Jersey on August 3, 1912. He gained a PhD from Columbia University in 1954. He taught in the Sociology Department at the University of California at Berkeley from 1953 to 1956 and 1959 to 1966. He created the term "model minority" to describe his thesis that Japanese American success posed challenges to simple discrimination-based accounts of group socioeconomic differences. From 1966 to 1967, Petersen was professor of sociology at Boston College, and from 1967 to 1978 he was the Robert Lazarus Professor of Social Demography at Ohio State University.
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#1006

Abdi Ismail Samatar

#32822
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Abdi Ismail Samatar is a Somali scholar, writer and professor of geography. Personal life Samatar was born in 1956 in Gabiley in Somaliland. He is the brother of scholar and politician Ahmed Ismail Samatar.
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#1007

Ian Dalziel

#103912
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Ian Dalziel is a Scottish geologist who pioneered the study of pre-Pangaea plate tectonics and the theory of supercontinent cycles on Earth. In particular, he is known for geologic fieldwork in the southern Andes, the Scotia Arc, South Georgia and Antarctica. His discoveries include evidence for the timing of the separation of South America from Antarctica and the beginning of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current.
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#1008

Yvette Richardson

#104975
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Yvette Richardson is an American meteorologist with substantial contributions on tornado dynamics, tornadogenesis, the environments of tornadoes, supercells, and severe convection, and radar observations of these. She was a principal investigator of VORTEX2.
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#1009

Jack G. Calvert

#117025
Overall Influence
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#1010

Robert Millner Shackleton

#88304
Overall Influence
1909 - 2001 (92 years)
Robert Millner Shackleton FRS was a British field geologist who developed an interest in the geology of East Africa. He initiated structural studies across orogenic belts in Tanzania-Zambia-Malawi , major studies across the Limpopo Belt and adjacent Archaean greenstone belts of Zimbabwe-Botswana-South Africa and projects across the orogenic systems of Egypt, Sudan and Kenya . Just prior to his death he was working on a detailed compilation of the Precambrian geology of East Africa. At the age of 75 he led a Royal Society geological traverse across Tibet, in collaboration with the Academica ...
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#1011

Melanie Leng

Melanie Leng
#96492
Overall Influence
Melanie Jane Leng is a Professor of Isotope Geosciences at the University of Nottingham working on isotopes, palaeoclimate and geochemistry. She also serves as the Chief Scientist for Environmental Change Adaptation and Resilience at the British Geological Survey and Director of the Centre for Environmental Geochemistry, a collaboration between the University of Nottingham and the British Geological Survey. For many years she has been the UK convenor and representative of the UK geoscience community on the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program.
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#1012

Hunter Lovins

Hunter Lovins
#8051
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
L. Hunter Lovins is an American environmentalist, author, sustainable development proponent, co-founder of Rocky Mountain Institute, and president of the nonprofit organization Natural Capitalism Solutions.
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#1013

Rosemary Hutton

#25280
Overall Influence
1925 - 2004 (79 years)
Violet Rosemary Strachan Hutton FInstP FRSE FRAS , known to her peers as Rosemary, was a Scottish geophysicist and pioneer of magnetotellurics. Her research focused on the use of electromagnetic methods to determine the electrical conductivity and structure of the Earth's crust, lithosphere and upper mantle, with a particular focus on the African continent and Scotland. She spent over two decades at the University of Edinburgh School of GeoSciences as a researcher and lecturer and was a Fellow of many societies including the American Geophysical Union and The Royal Society of Edinburgh.
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#1014

John Ross Mackay

#91993
Overall Influence
1915 - 2014 (99 years)
John Ross Mackay, was a Canadian geographer. He is most noted for his explorations of permafrost phenomena in the western Canadian Arctic. His 40 plus years of study has enabled the building of pipeline operations and petroleum explorations in areas of frozen ground. The Royal Society of Canada stated the following when Mackay was awarded the Willet G. Miller Medal in 1975:As a research worker with a superb talent of combining three elements – theory, design of simple but effective instruments, and skilled and careful field observations – he has met the challenges of applied science. In the ...
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#1015

Tim Li

#117318
Overall Influence
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#1016

Eric W. Mountjoy

#97292
Overall Influence
1931 - 2010 (79 years)
Eric Walter Mountjoy was a Canadian geologist, who spent much of his career as a professor at McGill University. He was a foremost expert on sedimentology, Devonian reefs, carbonate diagenesis, porosity development and the structure of the Rocky Mountains. His research has provided useful applications to the petroleum industry.
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#1017

Gerrit Lohmann

#117505
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
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#1018

Samuel Bowring

#117565
Overall Influence
1953 - 2019 (66 years)
Samuel A. Bowring was the Robert R. Schrock Professor Emeritus of Geology in the Dept. of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was expert in the field of U-Pb zircon geochronology, pushing the limits of geochronologic techniques to unprecedented analytical precision and accuracy and was expert in constraining rates of geologic processes and the timing of significant events in the geologic record. He investigated the explosion of multi-cellular life in the Early Cambrian as well as the end-Permian and the end-Cretaceous mass extinctions. He is also high...
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#1019

Gösta Hjalmar Liljequist

#93261
Overall Influence
1914 - 1995 (81 years)
Gösta Hjalmar Liljequist was a Swedish meteorologist. In Sweden, radio broadcast weather forecasts begun in 1926, and, starting in 1941, Liljequist was one of the recurrent meteorologists appearing in Swedish radio for many years. Following his debut, his peculiar dialect caused mass protests which, together with an attack published by the humorist Kar de Mumma in the paper Svenska Dagbladet, caused broadcast forecasts to be taken over by Swedish public service radio during the war.
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#1020

Harry F. Lins

#113258
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Harry F. Lins is a retired hydrologist whose career was spent with the U.S. Geological Survey from 1971 to 2012. During his years at USGS, his work spanned several Earth science disciplines, including coastal processes, surface water hydrology, and hydroclimatology. Although most of his career was spent conducting research, he managed the USGS Global Change Hydrology Program from 1989 to 1997, and served as co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Hydrology and Water Resources Working Group for the IPCC First Assessment Report. As a result of his IPCC work, he shared in award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the IPCC in 2007.
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#1021

Jeremy Bloxham

#80962
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Jeremy Bloxham FRS is a British geophysicist, and Mallinckrodt Professor of Geophysics, at Harvard University. He was Dean of Science. Education He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 1986.
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#1022

Michael Williams

#52837
Overall Influence
1935 - 2009 (74 years)
Michael Williams, FBA was a Welsh historical geographer, known particularly for his work on deforestation. He had a personal chair at the University of Oxford from 1996. Life He was the second son of Benjamin Williams and his wife, Ethel Mary Marshell of Swansea, born in Rheanfa House Maternity Hospital. He studied at University College, Swansea from 1953, and fell under the influence of the geographer Frank Emery. He graduated B.A. in 1956, and Ph.D. in 1960 with a thesis on the Somerset Levels. By that time married, he moved on to St Catharine's College, Cambridge, working for an education ...
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#1023

Christina Hulbe

Christina Hulbe
#47213
Overall Influence
Christina Hulbe is an American Antarctic researcher, and serves as professor and Dean of Surveying at the University of Otago in New Zealand. She was previously Chair of the Geology Department at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. She leads the NZARI project to drill through the Ross Ice Shelf and is the namesake of the Hulbe glacier.
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#1024

Kip V. Hodges

#117904
Overall Influence
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#1025

Fouad Ibrahim

#40956
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Fouad N. Ibrahim is professor emeritus at the Institute of Geography at the University of Bayreuth in Bavaria, Germany. Ibrahim has introduced the term desertification from French & English African geography into German-language geography. He is considered as one of the few German experts on Darfur, a region on which he wrote his Habilitation-Thesis "Desertification in Nord-Darfur" - and which is considered to this day as one of the milestone works of the geography of northern Sudan. Ibrahim was also engaged in calling worldwide attention to the humanitarian crisis in Darfur.
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#1026

Efi Foufoula-Georgiou

#73431
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Efi Foufoula-Georgiou is a Distinguished Professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering department at the University of California, Irvine. She is well known for her research on the applications of wavelet analysis in the fields of hydrology and geophysics and her many contributions to academic journals and national committees.
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#1027

Carolyn Merchant

#2675
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Carolyn Merchant is an American ecofeminist philosopher and historian of science most famous for her theory on The Death of Nature, whereby she identifies the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century as the period when science began to atomize, objectify, and dissect nature, foretelling its eventual conception as composed of inert atomic particles. Her works are important in the development of environmental history and the history of science. She is Distinguished Professor Emerita of Environmental History, Philosophy, and Ethics at UC Berkeley.
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#1028

Gideon Henderson

#62411
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Gideon Mark Henderson FRS is a British geochemist whose research focuses on low-temperature geochemistry, the carbon cycle, the oceans, and on understanding the mechanisms driving climate change. Henderson is presently the Chief Scientific Advisor and Director General for Science and Analysis at the UK Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs.
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#1029

Tim P. Barnett

#118397
Overall Influence
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#1030

Timothy Mark Harrison

#118423
Overall Influence
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#1031

Fei–fei Jin

#118467
Overall Influence
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#1032

Lisa Tauxe

#111013
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Lisa Tauxe is a geophysicist, professor and former department chair at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. Tauxe is a researcher and international authority on the behavior of the ancient geomagnetic field and applications of paleomagnetism to geological problems.
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#1033

Ron Martin

#118687
Overall Influence
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#1034

Rhoads Murphey

#52152
Overall Influence
1919 - 2012 (93 years)
W. Rhoads Murphey was a geographer and historian of Asia who taught at University of Washington, Seattle, and University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He served for many years as executive director of the Association for Asian Studies, and in 1987-88 as its president. He was editor of the Journal of Asian Studies.
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#1035

Oleg Anisimov

#113052
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Oleg Aleksandrovich Anisimov is a Russian climate scientist. Doctor of Science in Geography and Professor of Physical Geography at the State Hydrological Institute , part of the Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring of Russia in Saint Petersburg. An expert on the impact of climate change on the Arctic region, he has acted as a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , which received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
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#1036

Robert Coleman

#108541
Overall Influence
1923 - 2020 (97 years)
Robert G. Coleman was an American geologist. Career He was a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences. His primary field of expertise was the formation and plate tectonic setting of ophiolites and ultramafic rocks. He was a retired professor of Geology from Stanford University and retired from the U.S. Geological Survey. He continued to conduct research and publish scientific books and articles.
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#1037

Peter Hague Nye

#118933
Overall Influence
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#1038

John M. Sharp

#75912
Overall Influence
John M. Sharp, Jr. is Dave P. Carlton Professor of Geology at The University of Texas at Austin. He was the president of the Geological Society of America from June 2007 to June 2008. He received a B. Geol. E. with distinction from the University of Minnesota in 1967, a M.S. in geology from Midwestern State University, and a PhD in geology from the University of Illinois in 1974. After teaching at the University of Missouri from 1974 to 1982, he joined the University of Texas faculty, where he was Gulf Foundation Centennial Professor of Geology and C. E. Yager Professor of Geology from 1989 to 1993, Centennial Professor of Geology from 1993 to 2002, and Dave P.
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#1039

Nina Buchmann

#117379
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Nina Buchmann is a German ecologist known for her research on the physiology of plants and the impact of plants on biogeochemical cycling. She is a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and an elected fellow of the American Geophysical Union.
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#1040

John Elliott Nafe

#85844
Overall Influence
1914 - 1996 (82 years)
John Elliott Nafe was an American oceanographer and geophysicist best known for his work on acoustic propagation in the oceans and solid earth. Born in Seattle, Nafe received his bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan in 1938. He then served in the United States Merchant Marine, leaving to begin graduate studies at Washington University in St. Louis. He obtained an MS degree in 1940 and then joined the Navy during World War II, during which he taught physics and engineering at the U.S. Naval Academy.
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#1041

Paul Wignall

#92628
Overall Influence
Paul Barry Wignall is a British palaeontologist and sedimentologist. He is best known for his research on mass extinctions in the marine realm., particularly via the interpretation of black shales. Biography Wignall obtained an undergraduate degree in Geology from Worcester College at the University of Oxford in 1985. He then completed a PhD in Palaeoecology at the University of Birmingham in 1988, supervised by Anthony Hallam. He spent a year as a postdoctoral researcher with John Hudson at the University of Leicester before gaining employment in the School of Earth and Environment at the Uni...
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#1042

Anthony de Souza

#112065
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (39 years)
Anthony R. de Souza is the director of the Board on Earth Sciences and Resources at the National Research Council of the National Academies. Early life and education Anthony R. de Souza was born in London, England in 1943. De Souza holds B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Reading in England.
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#1043

Brian Atwater

#67160
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Brian Franklin Atwater is a geologist who works for the United States Geological Survey and is also a research professor at the University of Washington. Career Atwater has spent much of his career studying the likelihood of large earthquakes and tsunamis in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. In 2005, he published a book with others, "The Orphan Tsunami of 1700," that summarizes the evidence for an 8.7–9.2 megathrust earthquake in the Pacific Northwest on 26 January 1700, known as the 1700 Cascadia earthquake. The earthquake produced a tsunami so large that contemporary reports i...
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#1044

Brian H. Walker

#119168
Overall Influence
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#1045

Erle Ellis

#47572
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Erle Christopher Ellis is an American environmental scientist. Ellis's work investigates the causes and consequences of long-term ecological changes caused by humans at local to global scales, including those related to the Anthropocene. As of 2015 he is a professor of Geography and Environmental Systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County where he directs the Laboratory for Anthroecology.
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#1046

Aleksis Dreimanis

#88475
Overall Influence
1914 - 2011 (97 years)
Aleksis Dreimanis was a Latvian Canadian Quaternary geologist. He was born in Valmiera, Latvia. Biography He first studied geology at the Institute of Palaeontology at the University of Latvia in Riga. In 1939, he worked as a lecturer at the University. As World War II was being fought, he also took on the responsibility of consulting in Quaternary mapping in the Latvian Institute of Mineral Resources. He was conscripted into the Latvian Legion in 1943 or 1944, and later sent by the German Army to work as a military geologist in Italy and Germany. After the war Dreimanis was appointed associa...
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#1047

Curtis E. Woodcock

#119401
Overall Influence
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#1048

Andrew Sluyter

#80198
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Andrew Sluyter is an American social scientist who currently teaches as a professor in the Geography and Anthropology Department of the Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. His interests are the environmental history and historical, cultural, and political ecology of the colonization of the Americas. He has made various contributions to the theorization of colonialism and landscape, the critique of neo-environmental determinism, to understanding pre-colonial and colonial agriculture and environmental change in Mexico, to revealing African contributions to establishing cattle ranching in the Americas, and to the historical geographies of Hispanics and Latinos in New Orleans.
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#1049

Haël Mughrabi

#119419
Overall Influence
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#1050

Pierre Camu

#47831
Overall Influence
1923 - Present (103 years)
Pierre Francis Camu, was a Canadian geographer, civil servant, academic, and transport executive. Biography Born in Montreal, Quebec, Camu received a Master of Arts degree in 1947 and a Ph.D. in Geography in 1951 from the Université de Montréal. From 1947 to 1949, he did his post-graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University. From 1949 to 1956, he worked with the geography branch of the Department of Mines and Technical Surveys in Ottawa. From 1956 to 1960, he was a Professor of Economic Geography at Université Laval. In 1960, he became Vice-President of the St. Lawrence Seaway Authority and was president from 1965 to 1973.
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