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,
#251
Stephen L. Brusatte
#33714
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (40 years)
Stephen Louis Brusatte is an American paleontologist and evolutionary biologist who specializes in the anatomy and evolution of dinosaurs. He was educated at the University of Chicago for his Bachelors degree, at the University of Bristol for his Master's of Science on a Marshall Scholarship, and finally at the Columbia University for Master's in Philosophy and Doctorate. He is currently a Reader in Vertebrate Palaeontology at the University of Edinburgh.
Go to Profile#252
Janet Franklin
#36507
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Janet Franklin is an American geographer, botanist, and landscape ecologist. Her work is centered on the use of remote sensing to model and understand vegetated landscapes. She is currently a Distinguished Professor of Biogeography in the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences at the University of California Riverside.
Go to Profile#253
Mei-Po Kwan
#34354
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Mei-Po Kwan is a Hong Kong geographer and academic. Her contributions to the field include environmental health, human mobility, transport and health issues in cities, and geographic information science .
Go to Profile#254
Georges Calas
#40408
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Georges Calas is professor of mineralogy at Sorbonne Université and an honorary Senior Member of University Institute of France. Education Calas was educated at the École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud where he graduated in natural sciences and at Pierre-and-Marie-Curie University where he received his doctorate.
Go to Profile#255
John Christy
#22055
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
#256
Tavi Murray
#17136
Overall Influence
Tavi Murray, FLSW is a glaciologist, the eighth woman to be awarded the Polar Medal. Education After school in Twickenham Murray gained a BSc degree with first class honours in Physics and Computer Science from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. In 1990 she was awarded a PhD in geophysics from the University of Cambridge's Scott Polar Research Institute.
Go to Profile#257
Stefan Rahmstorf
#18277
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Stefan Rahmstorf is a German oceanographer and climatologist. Since 2000, he has been a Professor of Physics of the Oceans at Potsdam University. He studied physical oceanography at Bangor University and received his Ph.D. in oceanography from Victoria University of Wellington . His work focuses on the role of ocean currents in climate change. He was one of the lead authors of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.
Go to Profile#258
H. Jay Melosh
#56609
Overall Influence
1947 - 2020 (73 years)
H. Jay Melosh was an American geophysicist specialising in impact cratering. He earned a degree in physics from Princeton University and a doctoral degree in physics and geology from Caltech in 1972. His PhD thesis concerned quarks. Melosh's research interests include impact craters, planetary tectonics, and the physics of earthquakes and landslides. His recent research includes studies of the giant impact origin of the Moon, the Chicxulub impact that is thought to have extinguished most dinosaurs, and studies of ejection of rocks from their parent bodies. He was active in astrobiological st...
Go to Profile#259
Eiju Yatsu
#56455
Overall Influence
1920 - 2016 (96 years)
Eiju Yatsu was a Japanese geomorphologist who taught in Japan, US and Canada. He is best known for his contributions to weathering and 'rock control' in geomorphology. Career Eiju Yatsu was born in Mito City, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan in 1920. In 1940, he entered the Tokyo Higher Normal School and studied literature and geography but then changed his interests to science. He graduated from the Tokyo University of Literature and Science in 1945 with a BSc, having studied physical geography, geology and geophysics. He then went on to do a wide range of postgraduate studies and was awarded a DSc from Tokyo University of Education[?] in 1957.
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Jere H. Lipps
#21648
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Jere Henry Lipps is Professor of the Graduate School, University of California, Berkeley, and Curator of Paleontology at the University of California Museum of Paleontology. Lipps was the ninth Director of the museum and chair of the department of Integrative Biology at Berkeley . He served as president of the Paleontological Society in 1997, and the Cushman Foundation for Foraminiferal Research Inc. three times
Go to Profile#261
Brent Dalrymple
#42804
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
G. Brent Dalrymple is an American geologist, author of The Age of the Earth and Ancient Earth, Ancient Skies, and National Medal of Science winner. He was born in Alhambra, California. After receiving a Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley, Dalrymple went to work at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California. In 1994 he left the USGS to accept a position at Oregon State University, where he served on the faculty until retiring in 2001. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#262
Luca Bindi
#36022
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Luca Bindi is an Italian geologist. He holds the Chair of Mineralogy and Crystallography and is the Head of the Department of Earth Sciences of the University of Florence. He is also a research associate at the Istituto di Geoscienze e Georisorse of the National Research Council . He has received national and international scientific awards that include the President of the Republic Prize 2015 in the category of Physical, Mathematical and Natural Sciences. Since 2019 is a Member of the National Academy of Lincei.
Go to Profile#263
Andrew H. Knoll
#30520
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Andrew Herbert Knoll is the Fisher Research Professor of Natural History and a Research Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. Born in West Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1951, Andrew Knoll graduated from Lehigh University with a Bachelor of Arts in 1973 and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1977 for a dissertation titled "Studies in Archean and Early Proterozoic Paleontology." Knoll taught at Oberlin College for five years before returning to Harvard as a professor in 1982. At Harvard, he serves in the departments of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and...
Go to Profile#264
Barclay Kamb
#20747
Overall Influence
1931 - 2011 (80 years)
Walter Barclay Kamb was a longtime professor and researcher at the California Institute of Technology . Professor Kamb was one of the first scientists to journey to the Antarctic to study how the glacier sheets move and operate. He is listed as a member of the National Academy of Sciences in the Geology department.
Go to Profile#265
Gordon J. F. MacDonald
#26308
Overall Influence
1929 - 2002 (73 years)
Gordon James Fraser MacDonald was an American geophysicist and environmental scientist, best known for his principled skepticism regarding continental drift , involvement in the development of the McNamara Line electronic defense barrier during the Vietnam War, and early research and advocacy on human-made global climate change. MacDonald was admired for his creative mind, and his ability to connect scientific issues and matters of public policy.
Go to Profile#266
Peter Gleick
#9854
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Peter H. Gleick is an American scientist working on issues related to the environment. He works at the Pacific Institute in Oakland, California, which he co-founded in 1987. In 2003 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for his work on water resources. Among the issues he has addressed are conflicts over water resources, water and climate change, development, and human health.
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Eric Rignot
#36613
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Eric J. Rignot is the Donald Bren, Distinguished and Chancellor Professor of Earth system science at the University of California, Irvine, and a Senior Research Scientist for the Radar Science and Engineering Section at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He studies the interaction of the polar ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica with global climate using a combination of satellite remote sensing , airborne remote sensing , understanding of physical processes controlling glacier flow and ice melt in the ocean, field methods , and climate modeling . He was elected at the National_Academy_of_Sc...
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Tim Palmer
#40723
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Timothy Noel Palmer CBE FRS is a mathematical physicist by training. He has spent most of his career working on the dynamics and predictability of weather and climate. Among various research achievements, he pioneered the development of probabilistic ensemble forecasting techniques for weather and climate prediction . These techniques are now standard in operational weather and climate prediction around the world, and are central for reliable decision making for many commercial and humanitarian applications.
Go to Profile#269
Johnson Cann
#44108
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Johnson Robin Cann FRS is a British geologist. Early life and education Cann was educated at St Albans School, Hertfordshire and at St John's College, Cambridge, where he gained a first class BA in 1959 and an MA in 1961. He received a PhD at the Department of Earth Sciences at Cambridge in 1962, where he studied with Cecil Edgar Tilley. He subsequently remained at St John's College as a postdoctoral Research Fellow, but also had periods of study in the United States Office of Naval Research and as a Senior Scientific Officer in the Department of Mineralogy at the Natural History Museum, Lo...
Go to Profile#270
John Giesy
#71040
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
John Paul Giesy Jr. is an American ecotoxicologist. He is a Full Professor and Canada Research Chair in Environmental Toxicology at the University of Saskatchewan. Giesy was credited with being the first scientist to discover toxic per- and poly-fluoroalkyl [PFAS] chemicals in the environment. His discoveries also include the photo-enhanced toxicity and the presence of perfluorinated chemicals in the environment.
Go to Profile#271
Peter Dicken
#33877
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Peter Dicken is an economic geographer whose research focuses on processes and patterns in globalisation. He joined the University of Manchester in 1966 after completing an MA there. He is currently an emeritus professor at the same university, to which he has dedicated his academic life, continuing research on global patterns of business and globalisation. His self-described area is "the changing multi-scalar geographies of the global economy and on the structures and dynamics of global production networks, particularly the relationships between transnational corporations and states".
Go to Profile#272
Chris Philo
#38399
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Chris Philo FAcSS is Professor of Geography at the Department of Geographical and Earth Sciences, the University of Glasgow. Philo graduated from the Sidney Sussex College of Cambridge University and became a Research Fellow there. In 1989 he joined the Department of Geography at the University of Wales, Lampeter, holding that post for six years, until 1995. He then joined the University of Glasgow as a Professor, becoming head of the department in 2002. In 2006 Chris was replaced as Head of Department by Professor Trevor Hoey and was enlisted on the Geography and Environmental Studies RAE S...
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Leslie Holdridge
#26647
Overall Influence
1907 - 1999 (92 years)
Leslie Ransselaer Holdridge was an American botanist and climatologist. He was the father of composer Lee Holdridge as well as the father of Leslie A. Holdridge, Lorena Holdridge, Marbella Holdridge, Marly Holdridge, Marisela Holdridge, Thania Holdridge, John Holdridge, Ida Holdridge, Reuseland Holdridge, Leythy J. Holdridge and youngest son Gregory Holdridge whom he fathered with Costa Rican Clara Luz Melendez.
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Rodolfo Coria
#18748
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Rodolfo Aníbal Coria , is an Argentine paleontologist. He is best known for having directed the field study and co-naming of Argentinosaurus in 1993, and Giganotosaurus , in 1996 among other landmark South American dinosaurs, including Mapusaurus, Aucasaurus, and Quilmesaurus. He is a member of the Argentine Paleontological Association, Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, Paleontological Society and The Explorers Club.
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Martin J. S. Rudwick
#43451
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (92 years)
Martin John Spencer Rudwick is a British geologist, historian, and academic. Rudwick is an emeritus professor of History at the University of California, San Diego and an affiliated research scholar at Cambridge University's Department of History and Philosophy of Science. His principal field of study is the history of the earth sciences; his work has been described as the "definitive histories of the pre-Darwinian earth sciences". Rudwick was an early scholar to critique the conflict thesis regarding religion and science.
Go to Profile#276
André Berger
#46534
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
André Léon Georges Chevalier Berger is a Belgian climatologist and professor. He is best known for his significant contribution to the renaissance and further development of the astronomical theory of paleoclimates and as a cited pioneer of the interdisciplinary study of climate dynamics and history.
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Paul Goodloe
#52527
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Paul Goodloe is an American television meteorologist, currently working for The Weather Channel . Goodloe has been with TWC since 1999. He currently co-anchors Weekend Recharge with Dr. Greg Postel and is a field reporter.
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Kingsley Dunham
#46599
Overall Influence
1910 - 2001 (91 years)
Sir Kingsley Charles Dunham was one of the leading British geologists and mineralogists of the 20th century. He was a Professor of Geology at the University of Durham from 1950–71. He was later Professor Emeritus from 1967–2001. He was director of the British Geological Survey from 1967–75.
Go to Profile#279
Stan Openshaw
#30515
Overall Influence
1946 - 2022 (76 years)
Stan Openshaw was a British geographer. His last post was professor of human geography based in the School of Geography at the University of Leeds. After eighteen years at Newcastle University, including three years as professor of quantitative geography, he moved to work in Leeds in 1992. Openshaw was a researcher in computer-based/computational geography and his work aimed to automate aspects of geographical research and reduce subjectivity in geographical analyses. He worked on geographical information systems, analysis technology and models. He debated the direction geography should take ...
Go to Profile#280
Gillian Foulger
#55413
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Gillian Rose Foulger is a British geologist and academic born in 1952 in Ipswich. Foulger plays a major role in coordinating the global debate in the category of Earth Science, on whether or not deep mantle thermal plumes exist and create “hot spot” volcanism.
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Geoff Fox
#37975
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Geoff Fox is an Emmy Award-winning American television broadcast meteorologist, with his career and expertise the industry covering 4 decades. For 27 years of his career he was at the television station WTNH in New Haven, Connecticut, where he started in 1984 and was senior meteorologist until 2011, and later with WTIC-TV in Hartford, Connecticut, where he was the weeknight 5:00 and 11:00 p.m. meteorologist, reported science and technology stories for the 4:00 p.m. newscast and was host for a garden segment titled "Geoff's Garden".
Go to Profile#282
Herbert Huppert
#43258
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Herbert Eric Huppert is a British geophysicist. He has been Professor of Theoretical Geophysics and Foundation Director, Institute of Theoretical Geophysics, at the University of Cambridge, since 1989 and Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, since 1970.
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J. Lamar Worzel
#37208
Overall Influence
1919 - 2008 (89 years)
J. Lamar Worzel was an American geophysicist known for his important contributions to underwater acoustics, underwater photography, and gravity measurements at sea. Life Worzel was born on February 21, 1919, in Staten Island, New York. His father was a real-estate lawyer.
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David William Rhind
#14026
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
David William Rhind is a British geographer and expert on geographic information systems . He was Vice-Chancellor of City University, London, until July 2007. Rhind graduated in geography and geology from the University of Bristol in 1965 and received a PhD in geomorphology from the University of Edinburgh in 1969.
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Owen Toon
#31444
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Owen Brian Toon is a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences. He is a fellow at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder. He received an A.B. in physics at the University of California, Berkeley in 1969 and a Ph.D. in physics at Cornell University in 1975 under Carl Sagan. His research interests are in cloud physics, atmospheric chemistry, and radiative transfer. He also works on comparing Earth and other planets such as Venus.
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Ian Plimer
#18476
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Ian Rutherford Plimer is an Australian geologist and professor emeritus at the University of Melbourne. He rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. He has been criticised by climate scientists for misinterpreting data and spreading misinformation.
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Eric Franklin Wood
#66301
Overall Influence
1947 - 2021 (74 years)
Eric Franklin Wood was a Canadian-American hydrologist. Wood was born in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1947. He earned a bachelor's degree in civil engineering at the University of British Columbia in 1970, and completed a doctor of science degree in the subject at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1974. He joined the Princeton University faculty in 1976, was later named Susan Dod Brown Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and retired in 2019 with emeritus status. He was a fellow and 2010 awardee of the American Meteorological Society's Jule G. Charney Award. The Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering also granted Wood fellowship in 2010.
Go to Profile#288
Jacob Bear
#73899
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (95 years)
#289
Daniel Hillel
#43391
Overall Influence
1930 - 2021 (91 years)
Daniel Hillel was an Israeli–American agronomist, researcher and author. Hillel was the World Food Prize laureate for 2012. Life Hillel was born in Los Angeles, United States. He was raised in Palestine and later Israel. He lived on a kibbutz, traditional agriculture based communities in Israel. On returning to the States he completed his high school, and went on to study agronomy from University of Georgia and earth sciences from Rutgers University. In 1957 he completed his doctorate in soil physics and ecology at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, followed by two years as a postdoctoral researcher at University of California.
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Vladimir Keilis-Borok
#26472
Overall Influence
1921 - 2013 (92 years)
Vladimir Isaacovich Keilis-Borok was a Russian mathematical geophysicist and seismologist. Biography Keilis-Borok was born in Moscow, Russia. His father, Isaak Moiseevich Keilis, was a jeweler. His mother, Ksenia Ruvimovna Borok, was from Lithuania. Both were Jewish.
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Peter A. Stott
#33518
Overall Influence
Peter A. Stott is a climate scientist who leads the Climate Monitoring and Attribution team of the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research at the Met Office in Exeter, UK. He is an expert on anthropogenic and natural causes of climate change.
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Chauncy Harris
#45723
Overall Influence
1914 - 2003 (89 years)
Chauncy Dennison Harris was a pioneer of modern geography. His seminal works in the field of American urban geography along with his work on the Soviet Union during and after the Cold War era established him as one of the world's foremost urban geographers. He also made significant contributions to the geographical study of ethnicity, specifically with respect to non-Russian minorities living within the Soviet Union. Harris traveled regularly to the Soviet Union and played a key role in establishing a healthy dialog between Soviet and American scholars.
Go to Profile#293
Moshe Brawer
#36191
Overall Influence
1919 - 2020 (101 years)
Moshe Brawer was an Israeli geographer. In 2002, he won the Israel Prize in geography. Brawer was the author of The Atlas of the World, an Israeli textbook published in 67 editions. He also compiled 20 other atlases in different languages.
Go to Profile#294
Gedeon Dagan
#49669
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (92 years)
Gedeon Dagan is a professor emeritus of hydrology, School of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Tel Aviv University, Israel. Biography Gedeon Dagan was born in Galați, Romania. His father, David Drimmer, was a civil engineer who grew up in Chernowitz, studied in Vienna and moved to Romania after marrying Janette Shechter. Romania was allied to Germany during the Second World War and though Jews underwent persecution, they were not sent to extermination camps, unlike those living in countries under German occupation. After the war he was active in a Zionist youth movement, striving to emigrate to Israel, but the borders were closed by the communist regime.
Go to Profile#295
Thomas Dunne
#62299
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Thomas Dunne is a British geomorphologist and hydrologist who is a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara's Bren School of Environmental Science & Management and Department of Earth Science since 1995. From 1973 to 1995 he was a professor at the University of Washington's Department of Geological Sciences where his research focused on landslides.
Go to Profile#296
Oskar Spate
#36508
Overall Influence
1911 - 2000 (89 years)
Oskar Hermann Khristian Spate was a London-born geographer best known for his role in strengthening geography as a discipline in Australia and the Pacific. Early life Spate was born to a German father and an English mother in the Bloomsbury district of London, England. During the First World War, his father was interned as a German national and Spate fled to Iowa in the United States. He returned to England in 1919, where he developed an early interest in geography and history. He went on to study at St Catharine's College, Cambridge University in the 1930s. It was during this period that man...
Go to Profile#297
Johan Bouma
#50304
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Johannes "Johan" Bouma is a Dutch soil scientist. He worked at the Netherlands Soil Survey Institute from 1975 to 1983 and was professor of soil science at Wageningen University and Research Centre between 1983 and 2002.
Go to Profile#298
Kenneth O. Emery
#63079
Overall Influence
1914 - 1998 (84 years)
Kenneth Orris Emery was a Canadian-born American marine geologist. Biography Emery grew up in Texas and studied engineering at North Texas Agricultural College. He then studied geology at the University of Illinois, where he received in 1935 a B.S. and in 1939 an M.S. In 1937 he and another graduate student, Robert S. Dietz, moved with their mentor Francis Parker Shepard from the University of Illinois to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. There Emery pursued doctoral research on the California continental margin. He received in 1941 his Ph.D. in geology from the University of Illinois.
Go to Profile#299
Piers Forster
#27349
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Piers Forster is a Professor of Physical Climate Change and Director of the Priestley International Centre for Climate at the University of Leeds. A physicist by training, his research focuses on quantifying the different human causes of climate change and the way the Earth responds. He is best known for his work on radiative forcing, climate sensitivity, contrails and Climate engineering. He has contributed heavily to the writing of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, including acting as a Lead Author for the Fourth and Fifth Assessment Reports, and a Co-ordinating Lead Author for the Sixth Report.
Go to Profile#300
Marian Holness
#64489
Overall Influence
Marian Barbara Holness is a Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge. Education Holness was educated at state schools in Southampton and the University of Cambridge where she studied the Natural Sciences Tripos and completed a PhD in 1990.
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