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,
#1401
S. George Pemberton
#134802
Overall Influence
#1402
Donald J. Weidner
#134842
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
#1403
Syun–iti Akimoto
#134850
Overall Influence
#1404
George A. Kuczera
#134877
Overall Influence
#1405
Wulf Amelung
#134886
Overall Influence
#1406
Carolyn Relf
#71941
Overall Influence
Carolyn Relf is a Canadian geologist. She has served as director of the Yukon Geological Survey , project geologist with the Government of the Northwest Territories, chief geologist with Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, federal co-manager of the Northwest Territories' Geoscience Office, director of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources for Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, as well as adjunct professor at the University of Alberta.
Go to Profile#1407
Gidon Eshel
#90581
Overall Influence
#1408
Dawn Sumner
#116405
Overall Influence
Dawn Yvonne Sumner is an American geologist, planetary scientist, and astrobiologist. She is a professor at the University of California, Davis. Sumner's research includes evaluating microbial communities in Antarctic lakes, exploration of Mars via the Curiosity rover, and characterization of microbial communities in the lab and from ancient geologic samples. She is an investigator on the NASA Mars Science Laboratory and was Chair of the UC Davis Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences from 2014 to 2016. She is Fellow of the Geological Society of America.
Go to Profile#1409
Adolphe Nicolas
#135233
Overall Influence
#1410
Mary Fowler
#85740
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Christine Mary Rutherford Fowler, is a British geologist and academic. From 2012 to 2020, she served as the Master of Darwin College, Cambridge. She was previously a lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London, rising to become Dean of its Faculty of Science.
Go to Profile#1411
James L. Powell
#47069
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
James Lawrence Powell is an American geologist, writer, former college president and museum director. He chaired the geology department at Oberlin College later serving as its provost and president. Powell also served as president of Franklin & Marshall College as well as Reed College. Following his positions in higher education, Powell presided over the Franklin Institute and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles.
Go to Profile#1412
Peter Vilhelm Nielsen
#135340
Overall Influence
#1413
Keith Barber
#120108
Overall Influence
1944 - 2017 (73 years)
Keith Edward Barber was a professor of physical geography at the University of Southampton. Barber specialized in palaeoecology, landscape and climate change, and human impact throughout the Quaternary. He retired in 2009.
Go to Profile#1414
Max J. Suárez
#135405
Overall Influence
#1415
Bradford H. Hager
#135481
Overall Influence
#1416
Dallen J. Timothy
#135489
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
#1417
Peter A. Ziegler
#135490
Overall Influence
#1418
Helen McGregor
#66506
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Helen McGregor is an Australian geologist and climate change researcher. She is currently a Fellow with the Research School of Earth Sciences at the Australian National University. Her areas of expertise include isotope geochemistry, palaeoclimatology, climate change processes, marine geology and Quaternary environments.
Go to Profile#1419
Tilman Spohn
#135552
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
#1420
Guust Nolet
#135561
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
#1421
Jane K. Willenbring
#109145
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Jane Kathryn Willenbring is an American geomorphologist and professor at Stanford University. She is best known for using cosmogenic nuclides to investigate landscape changes and dynamics. She has won multiple awards including the Antarctica Service Medal and the National Science Foundation CAREER Award.
Go to Profile#1422
Francis Harold Brown
#94693
Overall Influence
1943 - 2017 (74 years)
Francis Harold Brown was an American geologist and geochemist who mapped the sedimentary sequence and geology of most of the Turkana Basin in Kenya, east Africa. Brown introduced single-crystal argon-argon and potassium-argon dating into the Turkana Basin, resolving disputes over the age of Kenyanthropus platyops and other fossils.
Go to Profile#1423
Robert P. Haining
#135644
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
#1424
Peter Alan Burrough
#135669
Overall Influence
#1425
Rex E. Britter
#135859
Overall Influence
#1426
Anders Levermann
#50095
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Anders Levermann is a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Columbia University. He is a Professor of the Dynamics of the Climate System at Institute for Physics and Astrophysics of the Potsdam University, Germany. He has been involved in the assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since 2004 . Levermann advises political and economic stakeholders on the issue of climate change.
Go to Profile#1427
Paul Michael Schenk
#135896
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
#1428
Justin Sheffield
#135921
Overall Influence
#1429
David Stewart Mckay
#136024
Overall Influence
#1430
Hans Ramberg
#136070
Overall Influence
#1431
Catherine McCammon
#113405
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Catherine Ann McCammon is a Canadian geoscientist who is employed by the University of Bayreuth. Her research focuses on surface and mantle processes, as well as the physics and chemistry of minerals. She is a Fellow of the European Association of Geochemistry and American Geophysical Union. In 2013, she was awarded the European Geosciences Union Robert Wilhelm Bunsen medal. She is the editor of the journal Physics and Chemistry of Minerals.
Go to Profile#1432
Kin-Yip Chun
#28779
Overall Influence
Kin-Yip Chun is a Canadian geophysicist at the University of Toronto's Department of Physics. He gained attention when he sued the University of Toronto for alleged racial discrimination. Academic career Chun received a Bachelor of Applied Science degree in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto, an M.A. in Geophysics at Columbia University and a Ph.D. at Berkeley. From 1983 to 1984, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory at UC
Go to Profile#1433
Holly Michael
#55866
Overall Influence
Holly Michael is an American hydrogeologist and Associate Professor of geology at the University of Delaware's College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment. Early life and education Holly earned her BS in Civil Engineering at the University of Notre Dame in 1998 and her Ph.D. in Hydrology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2005. Michael performed her graduate research at MIT on seasonal groundwater exchange in coastal zones in Massachusetts with her Ph.D. advisor Charles F. Harvey.
Go to Profile#1434
Karen Helen Wiltshire
#136296
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Karen Helen Wiltshire is an Irish environmental scientist. She is professor for shelf-ecosystems and one of the vice directors of Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research . Born in Dublin, Wiltshire studied at Trinity College Dublin and graduated with a master's degree in environmental science. She received her Ph.D. and habilitation in hydrobiology at the University of Hamburg. She worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the , the University of St. Andrews, Scotland and was appointed Professor of Geosciences at Jacobs University in 2006.
Go to Profile#1435
David Kenerson Rea
#136308
Overall Influence
#1436
Richard Prof. Dr. Bamler
#136327
Overall Influence
#1437
Bruce C. Murray
#16394
Overall Influence
1931 - 2013 (82 years)
Bruce Churchill Murray was an American planetary scientist. He was a director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and co-founder of The Planetary Society. Education and early life Murray received his Ph.D. in geology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1955 and joined Standard Oil of California as a geologist. He served in the United States Air Force as a geophysicist, and the U.S. Civil Service before joining California Institute of Technology in 1960.
Go to Profile#1438
Fay Gale
#61370
Overall Influence
1932 - 2008 (76 years)
Fay Gale AO was an Australian cultural geographer and an emeritus professor. She was an advocate of equal opportunity for women and for Aboriginal people. Background She was born Gwendoline Fay Gilding in Balaklava, South Australia, to Jasper and Kathleen Gilding. Her father was a Methodist minister. Professor Gale was the first honours graduate in geography of the University of Adelaide. Professor Gale is notable for many academic works including the first-ever PHD to focus on Part Aboriginal people and address issues of assimilation. Her thesis A Study of Assimilation: Part Aborigines in So...
Go to Profile#1439
Roger Kasperson
#76070
Overall Influence
1938 - 2021 (83 years)
Roger Kasperson was an American risk analyst, a distinguished academic and professor at Clark University and was one of the proponents of risk perception studies with his work on The Social Amplification/Attentuation of Risk Framework .
Go to Profile#1440
Dimitri Sverjensky
#104135
Overall Influence
Dimitri Alexander Sverjensky is a professor in Earth and Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins University where his research is focused on geochemistry. Career Dimitri Sverjensky received his B.Sc. from the University of Sydney, Australia in 1974. He went on to Yale University where he received his Masters and Ph.D in Geology in 1977 and 1980. After leaving Yale, Sverjensky worked as a staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, before becoming an assistant professor at SUNY Stony Brook. In 1984, he was appointed an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University, and later promoted to associate professor.
Go to Profile#1441
Fabrice Balanche
#36417
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Fabrice Balanche is a geographer and specialist in the political geography of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and the Middle East in general. Biography In 2000, he defended his thesis The Alaouites, space and power in the Syrian coastal region: an ambiguous national integration, which was taken up and published in 2006 under the title The Alaouite region and the Syrian power.
Go to Profile#1442
Cheng Qiuming
#128906
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Cheng Qiuming is a Chinese mathematical geoscientist. He is a professor and founding director of the State Key Lab of Geological Processes and Mineral Resources, China University of Geosciences . He received the William Christian Krumbein Medal in 2008 from the International Association for Mathematical Geosciences. He was the President of the International Association for Mathematical Geosciences . He is currently the President of the International Union of Geological Sciences .
Go to Profile#1443
John D. Eyles
#116696
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
John David Eyles is a British-Canadian geographer. In 2001, he was elected fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Eyles is currently within the School of Geography and Earth Sciences at McMaster University, but holds appointments in Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Sociology, and the Centre for Health Economics and Policy analysis.
Go to Profile#1444
Hui-Hai Liu
#60875
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Hui-Hai Liu is a reservoir engineer. He specializes in fracture reservoir, coupled hydrological and mechanical processes, physics and properties of subsurface multiphase flow and transport, and their applications in reservoir engineering and nuclear waste management.
Go to Profile#1445
Robert Stewart Anderson
#136646
Overall Influence
#1446
Brian George Gardiner
#136683
Overall Influence
#1447
Edward J. Malecki
#136697
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
#1448
Bruno Glaser
#136772
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
#1449
Brian P. Wernicke
#136999
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Brian Philip Wernicke is an American geologist and a professor of geology. He has been the Chandler Family Professor of Geology at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California since 2001.
Go to Profile#1450
Jean‐pierre Burg
#137054
Overall Influence
