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,
#1751
Steven R. Manchesters.r. Manchester
#149858
Overall Influence
#1752
Constantine Herbert Fernando
#149869
Overall Influence
#1753
William David Hibler
#150078
Overall Influence
#1754
Brian John Alloway
#150130
Overall Influence
#1755
François Doumenge
#85430
Overall Influence
1926 - 2008 (82 years)
François André Jean Marie Doumenge was a French geographer who specialized in marine and island geography. His work focused on oceanography, the socio-economics of tuna fisheries, fisheries and Japanese aquaculture, and the evolution of the archipelagos of Melanesia, Polynesia and Micronesia.
Go to Profile#1756
Jens Christian Refsgaard
#150254
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
#1757
Helmut A. Mayer
#150270
Overall Influence
#1758
Ying‐hwa Kuo
#150278
Overall Influence
#1759
Christophe Sotin
#150289
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
#1760
Robert V. Ed Whitman
#150543
Overall Influence
#1761
Stefanie Hellweg
#150564
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
#1762
Michael Heffernan
#121566
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Michael John Heffernan is a historical geographer and academic. Since 1999, he has been Professor of Historical Geography at the University of Nottingham. Career Michael Heffernan was awarded a PhD at St John's College, Cambridge in 1987 for his thesis on The Politics of Literacy: Cultural Change and Political Responses in Nineteenth-Century Provincial France. Heffernan joined Loughborough University as a lecturer in 1985, and was promoted to senior lecturer five years later, then to a readership in 1995. In 1999, he was appointed Professor of Historical Geography at the University of Notting...
Go to Profile#1763
Albert W. Bally
#109495
Overall Influence
1925 - 2019 (94 years)
Albert Walter Bally was an American geologist, previously the Harry Carothers Wiess Professor of Emeritus at Rice University. He died in July 2019. Career Bally started his career at Shell Oil Company, retiring as Chief Geologist after 27 years in 1981. After retirement, he joined Rice University as chair of the Department of Geology and Geophysics. He remained active in the department until his death in 2019.
Go to Profile#1764
Kunihiko Nishiizumi
#150835
Overall Influence
#1765
Steven B. Shirey
#150884
Overall Influence
#1766
Fariborz Goodarzi
#150983
Overall Influence
#1767
Hajo Eicken
#151017
Overall Influence
#1768
William Denevan
#73973
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
William Maxfield Denevan is an American geographer. He is professor emeritus of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is a prominent member of the Berkeley School of cultural-historical geography. He also worked in the Latin American Center and the Institute for Environmental Studies at Wisconsin. His research interests are in the historical ecology of the Americas, especially Amazonia and the Andes.
Go to Profile#1769
Thorsten Mauritsen
#66127
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Thorsten Mauritsen is a Danish climate scientist. He is currently a professor at the Department of Meteorology at Stockholm University. His research interests include climate dynamics and global circulation, climate sensitivity and cloud feedbacks and ocean-atmosphere coupled problems. He is best known for his research on Earth's equilibrium climate sensitivity and his research uses the climate of the past to determine climate sensitivity more precisely.
Go to Profile#1770
Devis Tuia
#151191
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
#1771
Gianreto Manatschal
#151196
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
#1772
Ronald F. Follett
#151300
Overall Influence
#1773
Ximing Cai
#151371
Overall Influence
#1774
Göran I. Ågren
#151379
Overall Influence
#1775
Mark Southwick Robinson
#151552
Overall Influence
#1776
Richard Austin Armstrong
#151645
Overall Influence
#1777
Daniel Sperling
#151662
Overall Influence
#1778
Guo Zhengtang
#136221
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Guo Zhengtang is a Chinese geologist specialized in the Cenozoic. Education and early life Guo was born in Shuozhou, Shanxi Province in 1964. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Geology from Peking University in 1983, and earned Ph.D. of soil science from the Pierre and Marie Curie University, France in 1990.
Go to Profile#1779
Gunnar Hoppe
#106322
Overall Influence
1914 - 2005 (91 years)
Ernst Gunnar Hoppe was a Swedish geographer and Quaternary geologist. He became a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1964. At Stockholms högskola he succeeded Hans Wilhelmsson Ahlmann as professor of geography in 1954, holding that position until 1980. He was rector of Stockholm University from 1974 to 1978. In 2004, he obtained an honorary doctorate from the University of Iceland. Hoppe also was a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, Academia Europaea and the Polish Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#1780
Caixian Caixian Tang
#151725
Overall Influence
#1781
Susan L. Beck
#151737
Overall Influence
Susan L. Beck is a geophysicist and professor of geosciences at the University of Arizona specializing in seismology and tectonics of the American Cordillera. Beck earned first a B.S. in geology in 1979 and then an M.S. in structural geology in 1982 from the University of Utah before obtaining her Ph.D. in seismology from the University of Michigan in 1987. She did postdoctoral research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory before joining the faculty in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Arizona. She became a full professor in 2001 and served as head of the department from 2000 to 2007.
Go to Profile#1782
William Andrew Thomas
#151742
Overall Influence
#1783
John D. Tenhunen
#151760
Overall Influence
#1784
Conrad C. Labandeira
#151816
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
#1785
Emmanuel Todd
#10113
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Emmanuel Todd is a French historian, anthropologist, demographer, sociologist and political scientist at the National Institute of Demographic Studies in Paris. His research examines the different family structures around the world and their relationship with beliefs, ideologies, political systems, and historical events. He has also published a number of political essays, which have received broad coverage in France.
Go to Profile#1786
Martin Schoell
#151869
Overall Influence
#1787
Zheng‐xiang Li
#151878
Overall Influence
#1788
David J. Wald
#102425
Overall Influence
David Jay Wald is a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey at the National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado. He is an affiliated faculty member at the Colorado School of Mines, and served as the editor-in-chief of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute's journal, Earthquake Spectra, from 2018–2022. He also served on the Southern California Earthquake Center Science Planning Committee, 2014–2020.
Go to Profile#1789
Vladimír Čermák
#152030
Overall Influence
#1790
Michael Lehning
#152054
Overall Influence
#1791
Leonie Sandercock
#36628
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Leonie Sandercock is an urban planner and academic focusing on community planning and multiculturalism. Her work spans the interdisciplinary fields of urban studies, urban policy and planning and elucidates issues of difference, social justice and possibility. She has been teaching at the School of Community & Regional Planning at University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, since 2001.
Go to Profile#1792
Alberto Montanari
#152059
Overall Influence
#1793
Christine Siddoway
#94669
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Christine Siddoway is an American Antarctic researcher, best known for her work on the geology and tectonics of the Ford Ranges in western Marie Byrd Land. Other discoveries relate to preserved records of continental-interior sedimentation during the Sturtian glaciation, Cryogenian Period, in Rodinia, and evidence of a reduced Pliocene extent of the West Antarctic ice sheet, based upon investigation of clasts transported to/deposited in deep water by Ice rafting in the Amundsen Sea.
Go to Profile#1794
Gregg H. Marland
#152091
Overall Influence
#1795
Katharyne Mitchell
#84121
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Katharyne Mitchell is an American geographer who is currently a Distinguished Professor of Sociology and the Dean of the Social Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Background Mitchell grew up in Boston, Massachusetts and graduated from Princeton University with a B.A. in Art and Archaeology. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley under the direction of Allan Pred. Mitchell was previously Professor of Geography at the University of Washington, and held the inaugural position as Simpson Professor of the Public Humanities from 2004 to 2007.
Go to Profile#1796
Freek D. Van Der Meer
#152152
Overall Influence
#1797
Karl E. Karlstrom
#152174
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
#1798
Pierre Gentine
#152316
Overall Influence
#1799
Ken Carslaw
#136628
Overall Influence
Kenneth S. Carslaw is Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Leeds. He was educated at the University of Birmingham and the University of East Anglia . He was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2001, a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award in 2011 and the American Geophysical Union Ascent Award in 2014. He is a Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Scientist.
Go to Profile#1800
Manfred Buchroithner
#25956
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Manfred Ferdinand Buchroithner is an Austrian cartographer, developer of autostereoscopic cartographic visualisationss, geologist, mountain researcher and mountaineer. Biography After finishing college in Linz an der Donau, Austria, in 1969, he did his military service before studying geology and palaeontology as well as mineralogy and petrography at the University of Graz, Austria. In 1976 and 1977 he underwent professional training to become a certified UIAGM mountain guide. The same year he received his PhD in Graz and became research fellow there. In 1979 and 1980 he carried out postdoctoral studies in remote sensing and cartography at the ITC Enschede in the Netherlands.
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