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.

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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,

#2501

Andres Tarand

#92057

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Andres Tarand is an Estonian geographer, climatologist and politician who served as the Prime Minister of Estonia from 1994 to 1995. He was also a Member of the European Parliament for the Social Democratic Party, part of the Party of European Socialists, between 2004 and 2009.

#2502

Marta Camps

#176444

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Marta Camps-Arbestain, usually known as Marta Camps, is a New Zealand soil science academic, and a full professor at Massey University. Academic career Born in Barcelona in 1964, she studied at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. She received her phd in soil science at the University of California, Davis in 1995. It was titled 'Selenium partitioning in the soil-plant-atmosphere system' at the University of California, Davis. Afterwards Camps Arbestain moved to University of Santiago de Compostela and then Massey University, rising to full professor.

#2503

Gilberto Câmara

#61262

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Gilberto Câmara is a Brazilian computer scientist and is currently serving as the Secretariat Director for the Group on Earth Observations . He is a former director of Brazil's National Institute for Space Research . He was head of INPE's Image Processing Division from 1991 to 1996 and Director for Earth Observation from 2001 to 2005.

#2504

Nora Noffke

#171965

Overall Influence

Nora Noffke is an American geologist who is a professor in the Department of Ocean and Earth Sciences, Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, USA. Noffke's research focuses on the sedimentology of biofilm forming sedimentary structures in modern aquatic environments, where clastic deposits dominate. Such structures occur in the fossil record as well. Her studies are interdisciplinary combining sedimentology with microbiology, geochemistry, and mineralogy.

#2505

Chen Jining

#97604

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Chen Jining is a Chinese environmental scientist and politician who has been serving as Chinese Communist Party Committee Secretary of Shanghai since October 2022. Chen is a member of the 20th Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party.

#2506

Eric J. Essene

#109312

Overall Influence

1939 - 2010 (71 years)

Eric J. Essene was a professor emeritus of geosciences and a metamorphic petrologist at the University of Michigan. In 2010, Essene was awarded the Penrose Medal by the Geological Society of America. He was a leader in the development of geothermobarometry as a tool in understanding the rock assemblages of high grade metamorphic suites and the evolution of continental crust.

#2507

Maurits Lindström

#117538

Overall Influence

1932 - 2009 (77 years)

Maurits Lindström was a Swedish geologist and paleontologist. Lindström's initial work was divided among two topics conodont paleontology and the structural geology of the Scandinavian Caledonides in Lappland.

#2508

Ida Valeton

#171569

Overall Influence

1922 - 2016 (94 years)

Ida Valeton was a German scientist. She was head of the sediment petrographic lab at the geological and paleontological institute of the University of Hamburg. Additionally, she was visiting professor at several sites.

#2509

René Tavernier

#120250

Overall Influence

1914 - 1992 (78 years)

René Tavernier was a Belgian geologist and stratigrapher. He was a professor at the State University of Ghent, a corresponding member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts, and one of the founders of the Belgian Society for Soil Science.

#2510

Jean Lynch-Stieglitz

#177765

Overall Influence

Jean Lynch-Stieglitz is a paleoceanographer known for her research on reconstructing changes in ocean circulation over the last 100,000 years. Education and career An interest in the natural world, combined with the logic of science and math, attracted Lynch-Stieglitz to science and after a summer at the Duke University Marine Laboratory she decided on a career in physical oceanography. In 1986, she earned B.S. degrees in physics and geology from Duke University and for two years she worked as an oceanographer at the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory. From 1988 until 1989 she worked at t...

#2511

Deborah McGregor

#88416

Overall Influence

Deborah B. McGregor is a Canadian environmentalist. She is an associate professor and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Environmental Justice at Osgoode Hall Law School. Early life and education An Ojibway person from Whitefish River First Nation, McGregor was born in Birch Island, Ontario, to Elder Marion McGregor. She earned her PhD in Forestry from the University of Toronto.

#2512

Susannah M. Porter

#144187

Overall Influence

Susannah M. Porter is an American paleontologist and geobiologist who studies the early evolution of eukaryotes, the early Cambrian fossil record of animals, and the evolution of skeletal biomineralization. She is currently a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Porter is a Fellow of the Paleontological Society. She has received national recognition awards from the Geological Society of America.

#2513

Douglas A. Wiens

#174713

Overall Influence

Douglas A. Wiens is an American geophysicist, focusing in seismology and geophysics, currently the Robert S. Brookings Distinguished Professor at Washington University in St. Louis. Career Wiens received his bachelor's degree in physics from Wheaton College in 1980, followed by an M.A. in 1982 and a Ph.D. in geosciences from Northwestern University in 1985 under the supervision of Seth Stein. He became a faculty member at Washington University in 1984, and has held visiting positions at Australian National University, the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and the University of Tokyo. He is a...

#2514

Antonio Busalacchi Jr.

#142106

Overall Influence

Antonio Busalacchi Jr. is the eighth president of the Boulder, Colorado-based University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. He began serving as UCAR president in August 2016. Prior to joining UCAR, Busalacchi was a professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science, director of the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center and Chair of the Council on the Environment at the University of Maryland. He has served as chair of the Joint Scientific Committee of the World Climate Research Programme. and co-chair of the National Research Council's Decadal Survey for Earth Science and Applications from Space.

#2515

Tiziana Rossetto

#88488

Overall Influence

Tiziana Rossetto is a British–Italian structural engineer who is Professor of Earthquake Engineering at University College London. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2021.

#2516

Silvia Frisia

#177836

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Silvia Frisia is a professor of Earth Science at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Frisia's work on carbonate crystals as archives of Earth's past environments and climates is recognised internationally. Her recent work has focussed on the role of Antarctic volcanism on the Southern Ocean.

#2517

June Ross

#162033

Overall Influence

1931 - 2012 (81 years)

June Rosa Pitt Ross was an Australian geologist, palaeontologist and biologist. She was amongst the first women to obtain a PhD in Australia, and one of the few women of the time to build a successful career in academia.

#2518

Glenn Albrecht

#18182

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Glenn A. Albrecht, born in 1953, was Professor of Sustainability at Murdoch University in Western Australia until his retirement in 2014. He is an honorary fellow in the School of Geosciences of the University of Sydney.

#2519

Steven M. Holland

Steven M. Holland

#118339

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Steven M. Holland is an American paleontologist and geologist at the University of Georgia. His research focuses on stratigraphic paleobiology, the application of event and sequence stratigraphy to a paleobiological understanding of the fossil record. With Mark Patzkowsky, he coauthored the book Stratigraphic Paleobiology.

#2520

Hong Kum Lee

#131201

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Hong Kum Lee is an Antarctic researcher, best known for work as the Director General of the Korea Polar Research Institute . Early life and education Lee graduated from Seoul National University in microbiology and received her PhD degree at TU Braunschweig, Germany in 1989. She completed a postdoc at the Seoul National University in 1990 and was then made a principal research scientist at Korea Ocean Research Institute from 1991 to 2004. She was head of national research laboratory for marine microbial diversity from 2001 to 2005. Since 2004 she is a principal research scientist at the Korea...

#2521

Shobhakar Dhakal

#121958

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Shobhakar Dhakal is the Vice President for Academic Affairs at the Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand since April 2021. In the past he was Dean of School of Environment, Resources and Development, and Head of Department of Energy Environment and Climate Change of Asian Institute of Technology. His main areas of expertise are in energy policy, climate change mitigation and policies, policy modelling and analysis, and cities and climate change. Dhakal actively contributes to international and scientific arena.

#2522

Wangari Maathai

#22374

Overall Influence

1940 - 2011 (71 years)

Wangarĩ Muta Maathai was a Kenyan social, environmentalal, and political activist who founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on the planting of trees, environmental conservation, and women's rights. In 2004 she became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

#2523

Kumarendra Mallick

#129983

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Kumarendra Mallick is an Indian geophysicist, poet and a former emeritus scientist at the National Geophysical Research Institute, Hyderabad, A former assistant professor of the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, he served as a director-grade scientist at NGRI. He is the author of three books on geophysics, a poem anthology, Letter to an Imaginary Pen-Friend and several articles.

#2524

Heather Graven

#117999

Overall Influence

Heather Dawn Graven is a lecturer in Atmospheric Physics at Imperial College London. She creates mathematical models to predict how climate change will impact the carbon cycle. Education Graven earned a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from California Institute of Technology in 2001. She won the Dean's Cup for contributions to student life. She earned a PhD from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 2008. Her PhD thesis, Advancing the use of radiocarbon in studies of global and regional carbon cycling with high precision measurements of 14C in CO2 from the Scripps CO2 Program, wa...

#2525

Diane Seward

#141464

Overall Influence

Diane Seward is a low temperature thermochronologist. She is currently a Teaching Fellow at Victoria University of Wellington and affiliated with GNS Science. Seward's work has predominantly focused on thermochronology applied to basin analysis and tectonic evolution. Her research has also been instrumental in developing dating of volcanic deposit through fission track analysis.

#2526

Tjeerd Hendrik Van Andel

#180360

Overall Influence

#2527

Sarah B. Henderson

#169896

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Sarah B. Henderson is a senior environmental health scientist at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control and a public health professor at the University of British Columbia. Early life and education Henderson was born in Toronto, Ontario, and excelled in math and science classes which led to pursue scientific fields later in life. Henderson earned a bachelor of applied science from the University of British Columbia in 2000, focusing on environmental engineering. She worked in the field of pollution control and reduction. She also worked in Uganda developing gravity fed water systems before earning her Ph.D.

#2528

Stuart White

#134425

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Stuart White is an Australian educator and sustainability advocate. He is a professor and the Director of the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology, Sydney. White has researched sustainability for more than twenty years, specialising in least cost planning for utilities and resource use efficiency. In 1998, White was a member of the NSW Task Force on Water Conservation, and in 2001 was a member of the Expert Panel on Environmental Flows for the Hawkesbury Nepean. He has written widely on sustainable futures and is often quoted in the media. White has criticised the...

#2529

Emanuela Casti

#46179

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Emanuela Casti is an Italian geographer and a cartography theorist. Considered an innovator, she has formalized a semiotic theory for the interpretation of maps in their various forms: from historical maps to cybercartography systems. She was full professor from 2001 to 2020 at the University of Bergamo and is currently Professor Emeritus. In 2004 Casti founded the Diathesis Cartographic Lab, a permanent laboratory devoted to territorial analysis, cartographic innovation and experimentation and, in 2019, designed and activated the interclass master's degree, in Geourbanistica. Analisi e pian...

#2530

Eva J. Pell

#73013

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Eva J. Pell is a biologist, plant pathologist, and science administrator. Pell's research focused on the physiological and biochemical impacts of air pollutants on vegetation. As a science administrator at Pennsylvania State University and the Smithsonian Institution, Dr. Pell initiated several pan-institutional science institutes. Since leaving the Smithsonian, she is developing a series of adventure stories for elementary school children with the theme rescuing endangered species.

#2531

Elizabeth Cottrell

#107172

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Elizabeth Anna Stevenson is a geologist and museum curator for the National Museum of Natural History. She is a fellow of both the Geochemical Society and the Mineralogical Society of America. Personal life Cottrell grew up in northern Vermont. Her father was an engineer.

#2532

Jeanne Hardebeck

#174947

Overall Influence

Jeanne L. Hardebeck is an American research geophysicist studying earthquakes and seismology who has worked at the United States Geological Survey since 2004. Hardebeck studies the state of stress and the strength of faults.

#2533

Paul Palmer

#76808

Overall Influence

1926 - 2011 (85 years)

E. Paul Palmer was a Brigham Young University physicist who specialized in geophysics. He coined the term "cold fusion". However he was an early critic of Fleischmann and Pons's claims to have developed a useful method of cold fusion.

#2534

Edwin Meader

#174293

Overall Influence

1909 - 2007 (98 years)

Edwin Meader was a geography professor at Western Michigan University and philanthropist. Born in Benton Harbor, Michigan, Meader moved to Kalamazoo in 1925. He studied at Western Michigan University and the University of Michigan, from which he graduated in 1933. While serving in World War II, Meader visited a University of Michigan excavation area in Egypt, fueling his interest in geography and archaeology.

#2535

Oded Aharonson

#92525

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Oded Aharonson is Israeli planetary scientist, professor at Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Weizmann Institute. Aharonson was a professor of planetary science at the California Institute of Technology, until he moved in 2012 to the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel. He has participated in many NASA flight missions, including Mars Global Surveyor, Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous, the Mars Exploration Rovers, and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

#2536

Caroline C. Ummenhofer

#155713

Overall Influence

Caroline C. Ummenhofer is a physical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution where she studies extreme weather events with a particular focus on the Indian Ocean. Ummenhofer makes an effort to connect her discoveries about predicting extreme weather events and precipitation to helping the nations affected.

#2537

Jane Soons

#125801

Overall Influence

1931 - 2020 (89 years)

Jane Margaret Soons was a New Zealand geomorphologist and pioneering role model for female students. In 1971, she was the first woman professor at the University of Canterbury, and possibly the first in New Zealand.

#2538

Anne Sheehan

#180510

Overall Influence

Anne Sheehan is a geologist known for her research using seismometer data to examine changes in the Earth's crust and mantle. Education and career Sheehan has a B.S. from the University of Kansas and earned her Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1991. Following her Ph.D, she was a postdoc at Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory and the University of Nevada, Reno. In 1993 she moved to the University of Colorado Boulder, where she was promoted to professor in 2006.

#2539

Ruth Shaffrey

#120345

Overall Influence

Dr Ruth Shaffrey is an archaeologist. Biography Shaffrey was awarded her PhD in Archaeology and Geology from the University of Reading in 1998. She specialises in the study of quern-stones and millstones and is a worked stone specialist for Oxford Archaeology. Her thesis formed the basis of her 2006 BAR volume on Romano-British quern-stones. In February 2021 she reported on the discovery of a quern-stone decorated with a phallus from excavations on the A14 road in Cambridgeshire.

#2540

Ezekiel Kalipeni

#169593

Overall Influence

1954 - 2020 (66 years)

Ezekiel Kalipeni was a Malawian geographer who specialized in population and environmental studies, medical geography, and Third World development issues. His research focused on sub-saharan Africa and the spread of pandemics in developing countries. He is most well known for his work in mapping and spatial analysis of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa. In 2014 he was recognized as the Kwado-Konadu-Agyemang Distinguished Scholar in African Geography by the American Association of Geographers.

#2541

Gwenn Flowers

#165009

Overall Influence

Gwenn Elizabeth Flowers is a Canadian/American glaciologist. She is a professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at Simon Fraser University and an adjunct professor at the University of Iceland. As a Canada Research Chair from 2005–2014, she established a research program dedicated to the geophysical study of glaciers.

#2542

Daniela Schmidt

#173969

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Daniela N. Schmidt is a German earth scientist and professor at the University of Bristol. Her research investigates the impact of climate change on marine ecosystems. She is the lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability for Europe.

#2543

Arthur J. Krim

#100869

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Arthur J. Krim is a geographer and architectural historian. He was a founding member of the Society for Commercial Archeology, a preservationist group. Krim has taught at the Boston Architectural Center, Clark University, and Salve Regina University, and has consulted for the Cambridge Historical Commission, Massachusetts Historical Commission and others. He has published in Landscape, the Journal of Cultural Geography, and the Journal of Historical Geography. In 2016, he was an advocate for designating the Boston Citgo sign, which The Atlantic called "one of the hub's best known pieces of technology" but was threatened with dismantling, as a historic landmark.

#2544

Harlan Parker Banks

#88301

Overall Influence

1913 - 1998 (85 years)

Harlan Parker Banks was an American paleobotanist and Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor Emeritus in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University, known for his studies of Devonian plants. A Fulbright Research Scholar and Guggenheim Fellow, he was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and president of the Botanical Society of America.

#2545

Federico Venturi

#169003

Overall Influence

1940 - 2020 (80 years)

Federico Venturi was an Italian paleontologist. He is internationally known as a specialist of Early Jurassic ammonites. Professional life Federico Venturi graduated in Natural Sciences at the University of Perugia in 1969. From 1970 he studied geology and paleontology, and dealt with by Jurassic ammonites of the Central Apennines . From 1975 he was a lecturer of paleontology at the University of Perugia. In 1982 he was appointed Associate Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences, and held the position until 2010. He published more than 60 research papers and two books.

#2546

Opha Pauline Dube

#168911

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Opha Pauline Dube or Pauline Dube is a Botswanan environmental scientist and Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Science at the University of Botswana. She co-authored the IPCC's Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C. She is one of fifteen scientists creating the 2023 Global Sustainable Development Report for the United Nations.

#2547

Robert E. Davis

#117886

Overall Influence

Robert E. Davis is a Professor of Climatology at the University of Virginia's Department of Environmental Sciences. Davis received his Ph.D. in 1988 from the University of Delaware. His research contributions include the development of a system for measuring the power of Nor'easters. In his studies of global warming, he has suggested that it may manifest more by milder winters than by hotter summers, and predicted that its effects on human population will not be severe.

#2548

Crystal A. Kolden

#179812

Overall Influence

Crystal A. Kolden is an Associate Professor of Forest, Rangeland, and Fire Sciences at the University of Idaho. She received her Ph.D. in Geography from Clark University. She is an expert in fire sciences. She started her career as a wildfire fighter, but has since become a professor specializing in wildfire behavior.

#2549

Sabine Fuss

#132875

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Sabine Fuss is a German climate scientist. She heads the "Sustainable Resource Management and Global Change" working group at the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change . She is a professor at Humboldt University of Berlin.

#2550

Kshitindramohan Naha

#149578

Overall Influence

1932 - 1996 (64 years)

Kshitindramohan Naha was an Indian geologist and a professor and CSIR Emeritus scientist at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. He was known for his studies on structural geology of Precambrian era and was an elected fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, and the Indian Academy of Sciences. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards for his contributions to Earth, Atmosphere, Ocean and ...

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