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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Person Name

School

Gender

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Earth Sciences,

#1201

Ceri Peach

#72858

Overall Influence

1939 - 2018 (79 years)

Guthlac Ceri Klaus Peach was a geographer from Bridgend, Wales. He was an undergraduate , graduate student , and lecturer at Merton College, Oxford before being appointed to a lectureship in geography at St Catherine's College, Oxford in 1965 at the age of 26. He held this post jointly with a lectureship at Keble College, Oxford and a Faculty Lectureship at the University of Oxford.

#1202

Richard A. Anthes

#127017

Overall Influence

#1203

Daniel E. Karig

#127029

Overall Influence

#1204

Ka-ming William Lau

#127051

Overall Influence

#1205

Klaus Butterbach‐bahl

#127070

Overall Influence

#1206

Surendra Kumar Saxena

#127084

Overall Influence

#1207

Pascal Lee

#32767

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Pascal Lee is co-founder and chairman of the Mars Institute, a planetary scientist at the SETI Institute, and the Principal Investigator of the Haughton-Mars Project at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. He holds an ME in geology and geophysics from the University of Paris, and a PhD in astronomy and space sciences from Cornell University.

#1208

James Burton Gill

#127232

Overall Influence

#1209

David L. Bish

#127245

Overall Influence

#1210

Phil Gibbard

#95448

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Philip Leonard Gibbard is a Quaternary geologist and has been Professor of Quaternary Palaeoenvironments in the University of Cambridge, Department of Geography since 2005. A PhD student of Professor Richard Gilbert West in the Subdepartment of Quaternary Research, University of Cambridge , he investigated the diversion of the River Thames from its course through Hertfordshire to its present course through London. Later he established the stratigraphy and palaeogeography of the Thames in the Middle and Lower Thames Valley . He has since undertaken many collaborative, palaeoenvironmental investigations.

#1211

Thomas Foken

#127272

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

#1212

Joy Tivy

#95478

Overall Influence

1924 - 1995 (71 years)

Joy Tivy FRSE FRSGS FIB was a 20th century Irish physical geographer at the University of Glasgow. She specialised in biogeography and has been credited for having helped raise the profile of biogeography as a distinct sub-discipline of geography. She published over 40 papers, books and reports and she was often asked to advise government agencies and other organisations. She was a strong advocate of the importance of field studies for providing essential skills for geography graduates. Her capacity as a teacher was as highly regarded as her research — she was known to be enthusiastic and eng...

#1213

William R. Normark

#127312

Overall Influence

#1214

Norman Myers

#15132

Overall Influence

1934 - 2019 (85 years)

Norman Myers was a British environmentalist specialising in biodiversity and also noted for his work on environmental refugees. Biography Myers was born in Whitewell and was raised until the age of 11 on the family farm, without electricity, gas or an internal toilet. He lived in Kenya for over 30 years and later settled in Headington, Oxford, England. He attended grammar school and then the University of Oxford and became a District Officer in the last few years of the Kenya Administration from 1958 to 1961. He then worked as a high school teacher in Nairobi from 1961 to 1966 and a freelance writer and broadcaster until 1969.

#1215

George A. Thompson

#103614

Overall Influence

1919 - 2017 (98 years)

George A. Thompson was an American geologist. Biography Thompson was born in Swissvale, Pennsylvania. In 1964, Thompson and used gravity data where they demonstrated how the thin crust underlying the western United States during which he proved that the Basin and Range Province should be balanced by influx of mass. During the 1980s he and his students studied exposed parts of deep crust and upper mantle which explained that by combining interlayered mafic and ultramafic rocks can cause laminated and laterally discontinuous reflection of the Moho Province on deep seismic-reflections.

#1216

Helen Fricker

#94151

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Helen Amanda Fricker is a glaciologist and professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego where she is a director of the Scripps Polar Center. She won the 2010 Martha T. Muse Prize for Science and Policy in Antarctica.

#1217

Anthony John Irving

#127656

Overall Influence

#1218

Ed Hawkins

#67839

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Edward Hawkins is a British climate scientist who is Professor of climate science at the University of Reading, principal research scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science , editor of Climate Lab Book blog and lead scientist for the Weather Rescue citizen science project. He is known for his data visualizations of climate change for the general public such as warming stripes and climate spirals.

#1219

Anthony Leiserowitz

#54413

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Anthony Leiserowitz is a human geographer at Yale University who studies public perceptions of climate change. He has particularly examined perceptions within the United States, where people are considerably less aware of climate change than in other countries. In the U.S., awareness of information about climate change is heavily influenced by emotion, imagery, associations, and values. Their public discourse reflects a lack of understanding of the science involved in climate change and little awareness of the potential for effective responses to it.

#1220

Anya Reading

#63365

Overall Influence

Anya Marie Reading is a professor of Geophysics and Associate Head of Research in the School of Natural Sciences, University of Tasmania. Early life and education Reading completed her undergraduate education at the University of Edinburgh, UK, receiving a BSc in geophysics in 1991. She earned a PhD from the University of Leeds, UK, which was conferred in 1997. Her thesis developed seismological methods to study the subduction zone beneath New Zealand. Reading continues to focus on Southern Hemisphere continental lithosphere, with emphasis on Australia and Antarctica, and technique developmen...

#1221

Neil Cherry

#90303

Overall Influence

1946 - 2003 (57 years)

Neil James Cherry was a New Zealand environmental scientist. Biography Early life and family Cherry was born in Christchurch on 29 September 1946. His parents were James Conrad Cherry and Mona Hartley, who had married in 1940. Cherry could trace his ancestry back to the Cressy, one of the First Four Ships that started the settlement of Canterbury.

#1222

A.J. Timothy Jull

#107866

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

A.J. Timothy Jull is a radiocarbon scientist at the University of Arizona's Accelerator Mass Spectrometer Laboratory, as well as Editor in Chief of Meteoritics & Planetary Science and Radiocarbon: An International Journal of Cosmogenic Isotope Research. Dr. Jull's work spans numerous disciplines, from radiocarbon dating the Shroud of Turin, to looking for signs of life in Martian meteorites.

#1223

Francisco Hervé

#100309

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Francisco Hervé Allamand is a Chilean geologist known for his contributions to the paleogeography and tectonics of Chile and Antarctica. Together with I. Fuenzalida, E. Araya and A. Solano he named the Liquiñe-Ofqui Fault in 1979.

#1224

Michael H. Depledge

#127783

Overall Influence

#1225

William C. Clark

#33169

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

William Cummin Clark is the Harvey Brooks Professor of International Science, Public Policy and Human Development at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. William Clark known for his long-term efforts to promote sustainability science. He co-chaired the US National Research Council report on Sustainability ‘Our Common Journey,” and in 2016 co-authored a textbook on Sustainability Science. He is also established and is now co-editor of its sustainability science section of the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He co-leads the Sustaina...

#1226

Jingyun Fangj. Fang

#128024

Overall Influence

#1227

Ray Hudson

#102660

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Ray Hudson, FBA, FAcSS is a British academic. He holds the degrees of PhD and DSc from Bristol University and. DLitt from Durham University. He was Professor of Geography and Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Durham University. From 2014–2015 he was acting Vice-Chancellor and Warden of Durham University. Currently he remains as Emeritus Professor of Geography.

#1228

Tami Bond

#44384

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Tami Bond holds the Walter Scott, Jr. Presidential Chair in Energy, Environment and Health at Colorado State University since 2019. For many years she was a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois, and an affiliate professor of Atmospheric Science. Bond has focused research on the effective study of black carbon or soot in the atmosphere. She is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union. A MacArthur Fellowship was awarded to her in 2014.

#1229

A. Stewart Fotheringham

#128160

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

#1230

Walter David Keller

#128192

Overall Influence

#1231

Alexandria Boehm

#86015

Overall Influence

Alexandria Boehm is an American scientist whose field of study is civil and environmental engineering. She studies sources, fate and transport of pathogens outside the human body, and coastal water quality. Boehm is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Woods Institute for the Environment, faculty fellow at Stanford University's Center for Innovation in Global Health, and an associate professor in Stanford University's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

#1232

Kim Cobb

#53175

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Kim M. Cobb is an American climate scientist. She is Professor of Environment and Society and Professor of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences at Brown University, where she directs the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society. Cobb was previously a professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is particularly interested in oceanography, geochemistry and paleoclimate modeling.

#1233

Terry G. Jordan-Bychkov

#72736

Overall Influence

1938 - 2003 (65 years)

Terry G. Jordan-Bychkov was a professor at the Department of Geography and the Environment at University of Texas at Austin and a specialist in the cultural and historical geography of the United States. He authored several influential scholarly books and articles and a widely adopted introductory textbook. Jordan-Bychkov served as president of the American Association of Geographers in 1987 and 1988.

#1234

Brenda Yeoh

#102125

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Brenda Yeoh Saw Ai is a Singaporean academic and geographer, currently serving as Raffles Professor of Social Sciences at the National University of Singapore. Biography In 1985, Yeoh received a Bachelor of Arts in geography from the University of Cambridge, earning a first class honours degree. She went on to read a Diploma in Education from the Institute of Education before completing a stint as a teacher at Victoria Junior College. After leaving the teaching service, she read a DPhil in geography from the University of Oxford, and joined the National University of Singapore as an academic.

#1235

Ho-Kwang Mao

#65658

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Ho-Kwang Mao is a Chinese-American geologist. He is the director of the Center for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research in Shanghai, China. He was a staff scientist at Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution for Science for more than 30 years. Mao is a recognized leading scientist in high pressure geosciences and physical science. There are two minerals named after him, Davemaoite and Maohokite.

#1236

Lorence G. Collins

#62720

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (95 years)

Lorence Gene "Larry" Collins is an American petrologist, known for his opposition to creationist geological pseudo-science. Career Collins is a professor emeritus of geological sciences at California State University, Northridge. He studied geology at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1953, a master's degree in 1955, and a Ph.D. in 1959. He joined the faculty of San Fernando Valley State College, which later became CSU Northridge, in 1959.

#1237

Randall Richardson Parrish

#128467

Overall Influence

#1238

Ari Ben-Menahem

#52456

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (98 years)

Ari Ben-Menahem has been professor of mathematics and geophysics at the Weizmann Institute of Science since 1964 and visiting professor at MIT. He is a seismologist, author, polymath, and historian of science. He coauthored with Sarvajit Singh, "Seismic Waves and Sources: the mathematical theory of seismology", a pioneering treatise since the nascent of this discipline at the turn of the 20th century.

#1239

Hal Lister

#105687

Overall Influence

1921 - 2010 (89 years)

Hal Lister was a British geographer and Arctic explorer. Hal was born Harold Lister in Keighley, West Yorkshire, and was educated at Keighley Grammar School and King's College . In 1948, Hal guided a small group of Newcastle University Geography undergraduates on a pioneering overseas expedition to Iceland. Hal joined the Merchant Navy, but transferred to the Royal Navy after learning to fly. He went to Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge in 1950 to do research in the Department of Geography, interrupted by his participation as a glaciologist in the British North Greenland Expedition, 1952–1954.

#1240

Martin Gerzabek

#92804

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Martin Hubert Gerzabek is an Austrian ecologist and soil scientist. He is a professor of ecotoxicology and isotope application and was rector of BOKU, the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna from 2010 to 2018.

#1241

Robert Marc Bustin

#128722

Overall Influence

#1242

Colin Woodroffe

#98407

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Colin D. Woodroffe is an Australasian geographer and coastal geomorphologist currently serving as professorial fellow at the University of Wollongong. He is the coordinator of the GeoQuEST Research Centre. His international research focuses on the morphology, stratigraphy and sedimentary dynamics of tropical and subtropical coasts, and the application of Geographical Information Systems to the study of processes and change in the coastal zone.

#1243

Andreas M. Kääb

#128794

Overall Influence

#1244

Kevin Ward

#92635

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Kevin Ward is a British geographer and academic. Since 2007, he has been Professor of Human Geography at the University of Manchester. Education and career Ward graduated from Middlesex University with a BA in economics and geography in 1991. The following year, he completed an MA in transport economics at the University of Leeds. He was awarded a second MA by the University of Manchester in 1995, where he also carried out doctoral studies supported by an ESRC studentship; his PhD was awarded in 1998.

#1245

Nicholas T. Arndt

#128939

Overall Influence

#1246

Laurent Jolivet

#128973

Overall Influence

#1247

Bruce Runnegar

#114854

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Bruce Norman Runnegar is an Australian-born paleontologist and professor at UCLA. His research centers on using the fossil record to determine how, where, and when life originated and evolved. He has published on a wide variety of topics, including the phylogeny of molluscs, Dickinsonia fossils and oxygen levels, and molecular clock techniques.

#1248

Stefan Wiemer

#129098

Overall Influence

#1249

Audrey Kobayashi

#74317

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Audrey Lynn Kobayashi is a Canadian professor and author, specializing in geography, geopolitics, and racial and gender studies. She was the vice-president of the Canadian Association of Geographers from 1999 to 2000, and the president from 2000 to 2002. Kobayashi was also the vice-president of the American Association of Geographers in 2010, and president in 2011.

#1250

Frits Agterberg

Frits Agterberg

#99353

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Frederik Pieter Agterberg is a Dutch-born Canadian mathematical geologist who served at the Geological Survey of Canada. He attended Utrecht University in The Netherlands from 1954 to 1961. He was instrumental in establishing International Association for Mathematical Geosciences. He received William Christian Krumbein Medal in 1978 from International Association for Mathematical Geosciences. In 1981 Agterberg became a correspondent of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2004, he was named IAMG Distinguished Lecturer. He was the president of International Association for Mathematical Geosciences from 2004 to 2008.

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