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

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Earth Sciences,

#2751

Frank Rickwood

#135177

Overall Influence

1921 - 2009 (88 years)

Frank Kenneth Rickwood OBE was an Australian businessman in the oil industry. He worked for BP from 1956 to 1980, serving as the President of BP Alaska from 1969 to 1980. He later served as the Chairman of Oil Search, focusing on oilfields in Papua New Guinea.

#2752

Robert C. Paehlke

#135223

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Robert C. Paehlke is an American Canadian political scientist, environmentalist, Emeritus Professor of Environmental and Resource Studies and Political Science at Trent University, Canada, and author, best known for his work on environmentalism and progressive politics.

#2753

Bernard Benjamin

#57507

Overall Influence

1910 - 2002 (92 years)

Bernard Benjamin was a noted British health statistician, actuary and demographer. He was author or co-author of at least six books and over 100 papers in learned journals. He was born in London and studied physics part-time at Sir John Cass College while working as an actuary for the London County Council pension fund, later moving to the public health section. Following wartime service as a statistician in the RAF he returned to the same civilian job and studied part-time for a PhD on the analysis of tuberculosis mortality. He was appointed Chief Statistician at the General Register Office ...

#2754

Elisabeth Schmid

#74993

Overall Influence

1912 - 1994 (82 years)

Elisabeth Schmid was a German archaeologist and osteologist. She is best known for her work concerning the prehistoric statue, the lion-man, and for her book, Atlas of Animal Bones. Early life and career Schmid was born in Freiburg im Breisgau in 1912 and graduated with a PhD from the University of Freiburg.

#2755

Francesca Verones

Francesca Verones

#174304

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (42 years)

Francesca Verones is a Swiss-Italian environmental engineer and Professor at the Industrial ecology programme at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Her areas of research are life cycle analysis, life cycle impact assessment and biodiversity analysis, and she is especially interested in aquatic and marine areas.

#2756

Frances Gamble

#148605

Overall Influence

1949 - 1997 (48 years)

Frances Gamble was a South African climatologist and speleologist. Her work on cave conservation was extensive and pioneering. She evaluated cave ecosystems and conservation policies which were necessary to protect them. Gamble was one of the founders of the Cave Research Organisation of South Africa, which aimed at improving the scientific and professional development of speleology in South Africa. She was president of the Environmental Education Association of South Africa from 1986 to 1989 and of the South African Geographical Society from 1989 to 1991. At a time when Apartheid limited col...

#2757

Hendratta Ali

#179833

Overall Influence

Hendratta Ali is a geoscientist who does work in hydrology, aqueous geochemistry, exploration geology and equity geoscience. Her home institution is the Department of Geosciences at Fort Hays State University. She was awarded the 2021 Geological Society of America Randolph Bromery award and Fort Hays State University President’s Distinguished Scholar Award. Ali is a native of Cameroon.

#2758

Richard Smith

#121586

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Richard Michael Smith, FBA, FRHistS is a historical geographer and demographer. He was professor of historical geography and demography at the University of Cambridge from 2003 to 2011, where he is now an emeritus professor, and served as director of the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure . He was also a fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, from 1994 to 2010.

#2759

John Milliman

#185104

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

John D. Milliman is a retired American Emeritus Professor of marine geology. He is a professor emeritus in the department of physical sciences and in the Virginia Institute of Marine Science at the College of William & Mary.

#2760

David Martin

#187342

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

#2761

Lidia Selkregg

#71601

Overall Influence

1920 - 1999 (79 years)

Lidia Lippi Selkregg was an Italian geologist and professor of regional planning at the University of Alaska Anchorage. In the days following the 1964 Alaska earthquake, Selkregg helped organize a group of local geologists to gather important data about earthquake damage to inform future recommendations about building stability. She also helped promote earthquake safety, land preservation, and economic development in the Anchorage area.

#2762

June Sheppard

#185581

Overall Influence

1928 - 2016 (88 years)

June Alice Sheppard was a British historical geographer. Life June Sheppard was born in Purley, Surrey on 24 June 1928. She was educated at Whyteleafe County School for Girls and studied geography at University College, Hull, graduating with an external University of London degree in 1949. Sheppard continued at Hull, gaining her PhD from the University of London in 1956. In May 1953 she was appointed assistant lecturer in geography at Queen Mary College, In 1972 she was made Reader in Geography, and she remained at Queen Mary College until her retirement in 1991. She died in 2016.

#2763

Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick

#184915

Overall Influence

Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick is an Australian climate scientist and expert in heatwave research. She was awarded a NSW Young Tall Poppy in 2013 and received the Dorothy Hill award in 2021. She has extensive science communication experience.

#2764

Daphne Lee

#186549

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Daphne E. Lee is a New Zealand geologist, palaeontologist and associate professor at the University of Otago. She is best known for her work on Foulden Maar and her research into fossils discovered at that site.

#2765

Frank Field

#100394

Overall Influence

1923 - 2023 (100 years)

Frank Field was an American television meteorologist in New York City for five decades, reporting on the weather and science and health topics. He was instrumental in publicizing the Heimlich Maneuver. Field carried the Seal of Approval of the American Meteorological Society.

#2766

Amy Barr

#156119

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Amy Barr Mlinar is an American planetary geophysicist known for her studies of icy body formation. She is a member of the National Academies Standing Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Science and a co-investigator on NASA's Europa Imaging System and REASON instruments.

#2767

Henk M. Haitjema

#185848

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Hendrik Marten Haitjema is a Dutch and American engineer and hydrologist, and professor emeritus at Indiana University. He is recipient of the 2017 Keith A. Anderson Award of the National Ground Water Association. He is author of the book Analytic Element Modeling of Groundwater Flow and the widely used computational groundwater flow modeling system GFLOW.

#2768

C. Kevin Boyce

#81427

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

C. Kevin Boyce is a paleobotanist. He is best known for winning a MacArthur Award in 2013. Boyce's work deals with the relationship between current and past ecosystems. Prior to his employment at Stanford, Boyce was associated with the University of Chicago.

#2769

David Keith

#99047

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

David W. Keith is a professor in the Department of the Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago. He joined the University of Chicago in April 2023. Keith previously served as the Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics for Harvard University's Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and professor of public policy for the Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University. Early contributions include development of the first atom interferometer and a Fourier-transform spectrometer used by NASA to measure atmospheric temperature and radiation transfer from space. A specialist...

#2770

Julia Schmale

#182620

Overall Influence

Julia Yvonne Schmale is a German environmental scientist. She is a specialist in the micro-physical makeup of the atmosphere, in particular aerosols and their interaction with clouds. She is a professor at EPFL and the head of the Extreme Environments Research Laboratory . She is a participant in the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate expeditions.

#2771

Douglas Bassett

Douglas Bassett

#169280

Overall Influence

1927 - 2009 (82 years)

Douglas Anthony Bassett was a Welsh geologist and a director of the National Museum of Wales from 1977 to 1985. Bassett was born in Llwynhendy, near Llanelli, in industrial Carmarthenshire as the son of a coal miner. He took a degree in Geology at Aberystwyth University in 1952, and after obtaining his doctorate in the same discipline, lectured in Geology at Glasgow University from 1952 to 1959. Having joined the National Museum of Wales as keeper of Geology in 1959, he was appointed in the role of Director in 1977 until 1985, when ill-health forced him to retire.

#2772

Christo Pimpirev

Christo Pimpirev

#82981

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Christo Pimpirev is a Bulgarian scientist and polar explorer. Academic career He was born on Friday, 13 February 1953 in Sofia, Bulgaria. After graduating from Sofia University with a master's degree in geology in 1978 and getting his PhD in 1986, he became an associate professor till 2004 and a full-time professor in 2005 in Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”. In 2017, he defended his dissertation on "Stratigraphy and Geological Evolution of Livingston Island during the Cretaceous Period" and acquired the degree of Doctor of Science.

#2773

Dorrit Jacob

#175397

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Dorrit E. Jacob is a German-born Australian geochemist. She is the first woman to serve as Director of the Research School of Earth Sciences at the Australian National University where she is a full professor.

#2774

Amy Townsend-Small

#156385

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Amy Townsend-Small is the director of the Environmental Studies Program as well as an associate professor in the Department of Geology and Geography at the University of Cincinnati. Early life and education Townsend-Small was born in Seattle, Washington. She grew up in Holliston, Massachusetts, and graduated from Holliston High School. While attending Skidmore College in 1997, Townsend-Small spent a semester at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts as part of the Semester in Environmental Science program. During this semester she produced a research project investigatin...

#2775

Azadeh Tabazadeh

#44229

Overall Influence

Azadeh Tabazadeh is an Iranian geophysicist and author known for her work in atmospheric science, work which has improved our understanding of the reactions that affect ozone depletion and highlighted the impact human activity has on the atmosphere.

#2776

Louise Johnson

#187353

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Louise Clare Johnson, is an Australian geographer and academic. Specializing in gender geography, she is interested in urban and post-colonial developments in Australia. Her theoretical contributions to gender geography, post-colonial geography and city-building in Australia were recognized in 2011 with the Australian International Medal. She is Honorary Fellow of the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, at University of Melbourne.

#2777

Carmen Domínguez

Carmen Domínguez

#121551

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Maria del Carmen Domínguez Álvarez, also Karmenka, is a Spanish glaciologist, polar explorer and mathematician. She is a co-founder of the Glackma Project which since 2001 has networked the measurement of glacier discharge in the polar regions. She has undertaken over 60 polar expeditions in Antarctica, Patagonia, Iceland, Svalbard and Siberia. Her work is considered to have contributed significantly to the understanding of global warming.

#2778

Giovanni Leone

#177894

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Giovanni Leone is an Italian geophysicist and volcanologist. His main activity is the study of planetary geology and volcanology of the solar system. In 2014 Leone proposed that the Valles Marineris on Mars was formed by lava and not water. In the same year, he published the results of his 3D computer simulations showing that the Martian dichotomy was formed by the Great South Polar Impact as an alternative hypothesis to the Great North Polar Impact. Some 2D models of the Large South Polar Impact were already developed by other authors since 2006.

#2779

Ying Fan Reinfelder

#184924

Overall Influence

Ying Fan Reinfelder is a Chinese–American earth scientist who is a professor and researcher in the Rutgers University Institute of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. She is interested in climate dynamics and the global water cycle. She was named a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 2022.

#2780

Mariana Meerhoff

#145743

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Mariana Meerhoff is a Uruguayan researcher and Full Professor at the of the University of the Republic . She is also honorary associate researcher at Aarhus University and a member of the Advisory Board of the South American Institute for Research and Education in the Sustainability and Resilience Sciences . Likewise, she works as a Level 5 Full Professor of the , and is a Level 3 Researcher of the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores of the National Research and Innovation Agency of Uruguay. She currently has more than 90 publications of scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals. In 201...

#2781

Victoria Metcalf

Victoria Metcalf

#136898

Overall Influence

Victoria Metcalf is an Antarctic researcher based in New Zealand, best known for her work on Antarctic fishes and invertebrates. She was awarded the 2006 Zonta Science Award. She is also a science communicator, with experience in public and citizen science, and an advocate for equity, diversity and inclusion in STEM.

#2782

Daniel Deocampo

#147642

Overall Influence

Daniel Michael Deocampo is an American geologist, geochemist, and academic administrator. He was an associate dean and professor of geosciences at Georgia State University. Deocampo pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography on November 3, 2021.

#2783

Lisa White

#150720

Overall Influence

Lisa D. White is an American geologist and director of Education and Outreach at the University of California Museum of Paleontology. White is a former professor of geosciences and associate dean of the College of Science and Engineering at San Francisco State University. She was elected to the California Academy of Sciences in 2000 and as a Fellow of the Geological Society of America in 2009. White was awarded her PhD in 1989 from the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 2022 the National Center for Science Education presented White with the 2022 "Friend of Darwin" award.

#2784

Marie Huchzermeyer

#96839

Overall Influence

Marie Huchzermeyer is an academic and public intellectual at the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Books Huchzermeyer, M., . Unlawful Occupation: Informal Settlements and Urban Policy in South Africa and Brazil. Africa World Press/The Red Sea Press, Trenton New Jersey.Huchzermeyer, M., . Tenement Cities: From 19th Century Berlin to 21st Century Nairobi. Africa World Press/The Red Sea Press, Trenton New Jersey.Huchzermeyer, M., .with ‘Slums’: From Informal Settlement Eradication to a Right To The City In Africa University ...

#2785

Andreas Malm

#44649

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Andreas Malm is a Swedish author and an associate professor of human ecology at Lund University. He is on the editorial board of the academic journal Historical Materialism, and has been described as a Marxist. Naomi Klein, who quoted Malm in her book This Changes Everything, describes him as "one of the most original thinkers on the subject" of climate change.

#2786

Sonia Hirt

#139965

Overall Influence

Sonia Anguelova Hirt is a professor of Landscape Architecture and Planning and dean in the College of Environment + Design at the University of Georgia. Academic career After training as an architect at the University of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geodesy in her hometown of Sofia, Hirt earned masters and doctoral degrees from the Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In 2003 she became an assistant professor at the University of Toledo College of Languages, Literature and Social Sciences, and moved the next year to another assistant professorship at Virginia Tech's College of Architecture and Urban Studies.

#2787

Alfred Augustus Levi Caesar

#123112

Overall Influence

1914 - 1995 (81 years)

Alfred Augustus Levi Caesar , also known as Gus Caesar was an English geographer noted particularly as a teacher. He spent most of his life based in St Catharine's College, Cambridge. Life and career Caesar was born in Southampton, and educated at Taunton's College, at that time a grammar school in that town. He studied geography at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, gaining a double first. He was elected to a postgraduate scholarship in 1936. He then taught for a year at the University of Durham .

#2788

Aleksandr Popov

#93935

Overall Influence

1913 - 1993 (80 years)

Aleksandr Iosifovich Popov was a Soviet permafrost researcher at the Moscow State University. He served as head of the Department of Cryolithology and Glaciology. Popov was a member of the International Commission on Periglacial Morphology of the International Geographical Union. He organized and led numerous expeditions to investigate permafrost and deep seasonal freezing in the Soviet Union. Popov edited the geocryological map of the Soviet Union that was published in 1986.

#2789

Kumiko Goto-Azuma

#178017

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Kumiko Goto-Azuma is an Antarctic palaeoclimatologist and glaciologist and Director of the Ice Core Research Center at the National Institute of Polar Research, Japan. Early life and education Goto-Azuma obtained her D. Eng in March 1986 from Hokkaido University.

#2790

Jeremy Venditti

#187545

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Jeremy George Venditti is a Canadian geomorphologist. He is the Director of Environmental Science at Simon Fraser University . Early life and education Venditti was born in 1971. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Guelph before travelling to the United States to earn his Master's degree from the University of Southern California. He returned to Canada at the turn of the century to receive his PhD from the University of British Columbia.

#2791

Wen Lianxing

#188270

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Wen Lianxing is a Chinese seismologist and geophysicist. He is a professor at Stony Brook University and the University of Science and Technology of China. He was awarded the James B. Macelwane Medal in 2003 and elected a fellow of the American Geophysical Union.

#2792

Wilfred M. Post

#188373

Overall Influence

#2793

Sally Kuhn Sennert

#177315

Overall Influence

Sally Kuhn Sennert is a volcanologist at the U.S. Geological Survey's Volcano Hazard Program and Smithsonian's Global Volcanism Program at the Department of Mineral Sciences in the National Museum of Natural History. She is a main writer the Weekly Volcanic Activity Report which is a report of notices of volcanic activity around the world, and she is an assistant editor and writer for the monthly Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network.

#2794

Christina Neal

#176872

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Christina A. Neal is an American volcanologist and an honoree for a Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal. Neal was the Scientist-in-Charge at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory from 2015 to 2020. Neal took over as the director of the U.S. Geological Survey Volcano Science Center on May 9, 2021. Neal is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America.

#2795

Ernest Mancini

#188394

Overall Influence

Ernest A. Mancini is an American geologist. He is currently Professor Emeritus and previously Distinguished Research Professor of geology at University of Alabama.

#2796

Chulabhorn

#53456

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Princess Chulabhorn of Thailand, the Princess Srisavangavadhana is a princess of Thailand, the youngest daughter of King Bhumibol Adulyadej and Queen Sirikit, and the younger sister of King Vajiralongkorn. She is officially styled Her Royal Highness Princess Chulabhorn, which corresponds to her full Thai title Somdet Phrachao Nong Nang Thoe Chaofa Chulabhorn Walailak Agrarajakumari . In 2019, she was bestowed the second-highest of royal ranks by appointment – "Krom Phra" by King Vajiralongkorn. She also received a first-class King Rama X Royal Cypher Medal.

#2797

Chidambara Chandrasekaran

#40896

Overall Influence

1911 - 2000 (89 years)

Chidambara Chandrasekaran was noted Indian demographer and statistician, was educated in India, UK and the US. He graduated from Morris College, Nagpur, with a B.Sc. degree, followed by a M.Sc. degree from the Nagpur University, and a PhD degree in Statistics from University College London in 1938. He was also awarded an MPH degree from Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health in 1947. Note that in some publications his name is spelled as "Chandra Sekar". He was related to two Nobel Prize winners: C. V. Raman was his uncle and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was his cousin.

#2798

Martyn Webb

#104112

Overall Influence

1925 - 2016 (91 years)

Martyn Jack Webb was a professor of geography and writer on issues of governance. An Oxford graduate, he was foundation Professor of Geography at the University of Western Australia. As a geographer, he had a long-term interest in metropolitan planning in Perth.

#2799

Kate Trinajstic

#171473

Overall Influence

Professor Kate Trinajstic or Katherine M. Trinajstic is an Australian palaeontologist, evolutionary biologist, and winner of the Dorothy Hill Award. She is the Dean of Research, Faculty of Science and Engineering at Curtin University.

#2800

John C. Swallow

#66549

Overall Influence

1923 - 1994 (71 years)

John Crossley Swallow FRS was an English oceanographer who invented the Swallow float , a scientific drifting bottle based on the messages in bottles that shipwrecked sailors hoped would reach inhabited shores, summoning assistance.

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