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,
#2801
Pablo Clemente-Colon
#101352
Overall Influence
Pablo Clemente-Colón born in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico is the first Puerto Rican to serve as Chief Scientist of the National Ice Center , headquartered in Alexandria Virginia, a position he has held since 2005. As such, he serves the three entities that operate the NIC, the United States Navy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the United States Coast Guard.
Go to Profile#2802
Siân Halcrow
#149122
Overall Influence
Siân Ellen Halcrow is a New Zealand academic in the field of biological anthropology, specialising in infant and child health and disease in the past. She is a professor in the department of anatomy at the University of Otago.
Go to Profile#2803
Alessandro Vaciago
#169404
Overall Influence
1931 - 1993 (62 years)
Alessandro Vaciago was a Professor of Chemical Structure, University of Rome from 1971 to 1993. He also served as a Cultural Counselor for the Italian Embassy. The Accademia dei Lincei awards yearly the Vaciago Prize to distinguished researchers in different fields of science.
Go to Profile#2804
Martin Williams
#171089
Overall Influence
1947 - 2020 (73 years)
Martin Lloyd Williams was a Welsh chemist and environmental scientist who made important contributions to the science of air pollution and its incorporation into public policy in the United Kingdom. Williams was one of the first scientists to recognize the harmful health effects of ground-level ozone, in papers published in Nature in the mid-1970s, and one of the first to study vehicle emissions in the real world . He also established the first systematic programme to produce inventories of UK national air pollution emissions.
Go to Profile#2805
Della Hooke
#119818
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Della Hooke, is a British historical geographer and academic, who specialises in landscape history and Anglo Saxon England. On 5 May 1990, she was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London .
Go to Profile#2806
Roy Bradshaw
#123917
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Dr. Roy Bradshaw is an associate professor of geography at the University of Nottingham. His main areas of research and teaching include: Economic geography; retailing; regional geography . He is currently researching environmental problems in Russia; economic and social impact of borderlands; use of qualitative methods in Geography and Interpreting Geographical Data.
Go to Profile#2807
Richard Levy
#178079
Overall Influence
Richard Levy is a New Zealand glacial stratigrapher and paleoclimatologist with expertise in microfossil analysis. As a principal scientist at GNS Science he has been involved in international and New Zealand environmental research programmes focussing on the evolution of the Earth's climate and building an understanding of the role of greenhouse gases in causing anthropogenic climate changes, in particular those impacting global sea levels. He has had extensive experience in scientific drilling, leading major projects, including the ANtarctic geological DRILLing Program in Antarctica. Since ...
Go to Profile#2808
Elizabeth Trembath-Reichert
#118689
Overall Influence
Elizabeth Trembath-Reichert is a geomicrobiologist and astrobiologist at Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration. Early life and education Trembath-Reichert earned a bachelors degree in environmental science and physics from Barnard College in 2008, graduating Cum Laude. She received a masters degree and a Ph.D. in Geobiology from the California Institute of Technology in 2013 and 2016, respectively. Prior to earning these degrees she worked at NOAA for two years as a physical scientist.
Go to Profile#2809
Raoni Rajão
#183069
Overall Influence
Raoni Guerra Lucas Rajão is a Brazilian environmental scientist and associate professor in environmental management and social studies of science & technology in the Department of Production Engineering at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil. He is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Science and a former fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in the U.S. In March 31st 2023, Raoni Rajão was nominated Director of the Department of Policies to Deforestation and Burning Control of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, in Brazil, becoming responsi...
Go to Profile#2810
Dennis Rumley
#188755
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Dennis Rumley is a political geographer from the ‘Newcastle School’ and a "long time specialist of the Indian Ocean Region and now of the Indo-Pacific Region". He is Emeritus Professor at Curtin University.
Go to Profile#2811
Jiři Balik
#92987
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Jiři Balik is a Czech Agroscientist, University Professor and Rector of the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague . Biography Balik was born in Tábor on November 30, 1953; he is married and has two children. The Professor of Agrochemistry and Plant Nutrition was 2010 until January 2018 Rector of the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague .
Go to Profile#2812
Helga Weisz
#129291
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Helga Weisz is an Austrian industrial ecologist, climate scientist, and professor of industrial ecology and climate change at the Institute for Social Sciences at the Humboldt University of Berlin. She heads the FutureLab "Social Metabolism & Impacts" at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research .
Go to Profile#2813
Michael K. Brett-Surman
#167927
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
#2814
Michael K. Dorsey
#53728
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Dr. Michael K. Dorsey is an environmental scientist, advocate, scholar, and entrepreneur. He is a co-founder and principal of Around the Corner Capital, an energy advisory and impact finance platform. He served on the Sierra Club board of directors for 11 years in three periods, as a petition candidate supported by reform-activists known as the John Muir Sierrans. Dorsey has contributed op-eds to the Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Go to Profile#2815
Attila Ősi
#161706
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
#2816
Abigail Swann
#77464
Overall Influence
Abigail L. S. Swann is an Associate Professor of Atmospheric Sciences and Ecology at the University of Washington. Her research group focuses on questions that examine the interactions between plants and climate.
Go to Profile#2817
Rebecca Willis
#131392
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Rebecca Willis is a professor in energy and climate governance at the University of Lancaster in the UK. She researches on the environment and sustainability policy. Career Willis's career involves the intersection of the environment, especially climate change and energy, with politics and public policy. She has been part of the Green Alliance, advised government bodies and became a professor at University of Lancaster in 2019.
Go to Profile#2818
Hans Holtedahl
#138758
Overall Influence
1917 - 2001 (84 years)
Hans Holtedahl was a Norwegian geologist. He was a professor of geology at the University of Bergen. Biography He was born in Krisitania a son of geologist Olaf Holtedahl and Tora Gurstad . In 1936, Holtedahl began studying chemistry and zoology at the University of Oslo. In 1939, he joined a research expedition to Antarctica. Following the German occupation of Norway during spring 1940, he went to Great Britain. He became part of a Norwegian field unit in support of the Free Norwegian forces. Given six months leave in Edinburgh, he studied geology under geologist Arthur Holmes a...
Go to Profile#2819
Lesley-Ann L. Dupigny-Giroux
#185227
Overall Influence
Lesley-Ann L. Dupigny-Giroux is the Vermont State Climatologist, president of the American Association of State Climatologists, Inc., and a professor of Geography at the University of Vermont. Early life and education Dupigny-Giroux was born in Trinidad. Her exploration of the small island gave her an early appreciation for place and geography, and their connections to history.
Go to Profile#2820
Kate Allstadt
#96339
Overall Influence
Kate E. Allstadt is a geologist and seismologist employed by the U.S. Geological Survey who works out of Golden, Colorado. She is a self-described "present-day geologist" for her interest in connections between geology of the Pacific Northwest and the people in its local communities. She is a published expert on the 2014 Oso landslide.
Go to Profile#2821
Amanda Davies
#188663
Overall Influence
<big>Biography</big> Professor Amanda Davies is a social scientist with expertise in demography, population geography and rural and regional development. She is currently a professor and head of school at the School of Social Sciences, and Adjunct Professor at Curtin University's School of Molecular and Life Sciences.
Go to Profile#2822
Nele Meckler
#184630
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Anna Nele Meckler is a professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Bergen, and is also affiliated with the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research. She specialises in paleoceanography and paleoclimatology, and leads multiple grants to develop new techniques to reconstruct past temperatures, most importantly clumped isotope thermometry. By analysing speleothems Meckler's team can identify how past levels of in the atmosphere correlate with temperature changes, which gives essential knowledge for predicting future climate change.
Go to Profile#2823
Marc Saner
#156396
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Marc Saner is a Full Professor at the University of Ottawa, Canada and Departmental Science Advisor to Natural Resources Canada. Education Saner studied biology at the University of Basel, Switzerland and philosophy at Carleton University, Canada .
Go to Profile#2824
Ian Pool
#100597
Overall Influence
1936 - 2022 (86 years)
David Ian Pool was a New Zealand demographer. He was the inaugural director of the Population Studies Centre at the University of Waikato from 1980 to 2004, and was made a professor emeritus when he retired from the university in 2010.
Go to Profile#2825
Karen Hanghøj
#142147
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Karen Hanghøj is a Danish geologist with expertise in the sustainable management of natural mineral resources. In 2019 she was appointed director of the British Geological Survey. She was the first woman to take on this role since the survey was founded in 1835.
Go to Profile#2826
John D. Dunne
#42340
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
John D. Dunne is the Distinguished Chair in Contemplative Humanities through the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also holds a co-appointment in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literature. Until January 2016, he was Associate Professor in the Department of Religion and the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University.
Go to Profile#2827
Josef Svoboda
#181338
Overall Influence
1929 - 2022 (93 years)
Josef Svoboda was a Canadian Arctic tundra scientist and botanist, who was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada for his pioneering scientific contributions regarding the Arctic tundra ecosystems, and his lifelong mentorship of scientists.
Go to Profile#2828
Lauren Birgenheier
#187151
Overall Influence
Lauren Birgenheier is a geologist and associate professor at the University of Utah. Her fields of expertise include sedimentology and stratigraphy, geochemistry, paleoclimate, petroleum geology, reservoir characterization, and unconventional resources.
Go to Profile#2829
Zelma Maine-Jackson
#184461
Overall Influence
Zelma Maine-Jackson, also known as Zelma Jackson-Maine, is an American hydrogeologist at the Washington Department of Ecology known for her long-term role in environmental remediation of nuclear waste at Hanford Site, for which she was covered in the Daughters of Hanford feature of Northwest Public Broadcasting in 2015.
Go to Profile#2830
Eri Saikawa
#184100
Overall Influence
Eri Saikawa is an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University. Her research work is based in environmental and community sciences.
Go to Profile#2831
Miaki Ishii
#181870
Overall Influence
Miaki Ishii is a seismologist and Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. Education and early career Ishii attended secondary school at Midland Secondary School in Ontario, Canada, graduating in 1994. She then studied physics at the University of Toronto, where she received her Bachelor of Science degree with honors in 1998. During her undergraduate career, she conducted research on glacial rebound under the mentorship of Jerry X. Mitrovica.
Go to Profile#2832
Reuben Olembo
#36639
Overall Influence
1937 - 2005 (68 years)
Professor Reuben James Olembo was a prominent Kenyan academic, scientist and environmentalist. He was a deputy executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme , which he played a pivotal role in helping found, and United Nations Assistant Secretary General from 1994 to 1998. He became the Acting Secretary General of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora , after his retirement from UNEP.
Go to Profile#2833
Markvard Sellevoll
#181424
Overall Influence
1923 - 2020 (97 years)
Markvard Armin Sellevoll was a Norwegian geophysicist. He was born in Alversund. He worked as a docent in seismology at the University of Bergen from 1961 to 1975, and professor from 1975 to 1990. He was among the people who established NORSAR. He was a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. He died in 2020.
Go to Profile#2834
Isabelle Thomas
#182826
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Isabelle Thomas is a professor of geography at the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium and research director of the National Fund for Scientific Research. She is member of the Center for Operations Research and Econometrics
Go to Profile#2835
Amelia E. Shevenell
#184914
Overall Influence
#2836
Nana Klutse
#58080
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Nana Ama Browne Klutse is a Ghanian lecturer and Climatologist. Early life and educational background Nana Ama Browne Klutse was born on 23 May 1981 at Nyanfeku Ekroful. She had her primary education at the Anomabo Methodist Primary and JHS.
Go to Profile#2837
Keith Lilley
#189434
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Keith Lilley is Professor at Queen's University Belfast, known as a historical geographer and urban historian. After studying at University of Birmingham as both undergraduate and postgraduate, Lilley had a productive career as one of few exponents of Urban morphology in the known world. His books include Urban Life in the Middle Ages: 1000-1450 , City and Cosmos: The Medieval World in Urban Form , and Mapping Medieval Geographies .
Go to Profile#2838
Piotr Parasiewicz
#108257
Overall Influence
Piotr Parasiewicz is an Austrian-American river professor, Director of Rushing Rivers Institute, and the creator of the Mesohabitat Simulation Model . He holds a Ph.D in Natural resource management and Water Engineering. He has been working to restore rivers to their natural state and conserve water for human use, including the Quinebaug River, Fort River, Saugatuck River & Aspetuck River, Eightmile River , and Delaware River.
Go to Profile#2839
Roseanne Diab
#112854
Overall Influence
Roseanne Diab is a researcher, the Director of Gender in science, innovation, technology and engineering , a UNESCO's programme unit hosted by The World Academy of Sciences and former CEO of the Academy of Science of South Africa. She is Fellow of the University of KwaZulu-Natal and Emeritus Professor in the School of Environmental Sciences at the same university.
Go to Profile#2840
Sarah Das
#189486
Overall Influence
Sarah Das is an American glaciologist and climate scientist. She works at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Education Das holds a Ph.D. in Geosciences from Pennsylvania State University and a Bachelor of Arts in Geological Sciences from Cornell University.
Go to Profile#2841
Wolfgang Lutz
#38083
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Wolfgang Lutz is an Austrian demographer specializing in demographic analysis, population projections, as well as population and sustainable development. He is the current Interim Deputy Director General for Science of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis , as well as the Founding Director of the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital – a collaboration between IIASA, the Vienna Institute of Demography of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and the University of Vienna. In the latter, he also established the new Department of Demography.
Go to Profile#2842
Angel Hsu
#63972
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Angel Hsu is an American climatologist and environmental scientist. She is the founder and head of the Data-Driven EnviroLab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Education Hsu's parents immigrated to South Carolina from Taiwan. Hsu holds bachelor's degrees in biology and political science from Wake Forest University, a master's degree in environmental policy from the University of Cambridge, and a doctorate degree in forestry and environmental studies from Yale University. Her interest shifted from biology to public policy after researching insect-plant interactions in the Cost...
Go to Profile#2843
Tara Hudiburg
#94620
Overall Influence
Tara W. Hudiburg is an American forest scientist who specializes in ecosystem modeling. She is an associate professor at the University of Idaho in the department of Forest, Rangeland and Fire Sciences. Hudiburg was honored with the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2019.
Go to Profile#2844
Timothy M. Shanahan
#189525
Overall Influence
Timothy M. Shanahan is an American geologist and Associate Professor of Geological Sciences at Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas-Austin. He is known for his works on paleoclimatology and environmental change. Shanahan is a Kavli Fellow of National Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#2845
Li Shucai
#113901
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Li Shucai is a Chinese petrologist who is a professor, doctoral supervisor and vice-president of Shandong University. He is a member of the Chinese Society for Rock Mechanics & Engineering . He is one of the Editors-in-Chief for Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology.
Go to Profile#2846
Madhusudan Katti
#107174
Overall Influence
Madhusudan Katti is an Indian American environmental scientist who is an Associate Professor of Ecology at the North Carolina State University. His research studies the evolutionary ecology of vertebrate response to human modifications of habitats.
Go to Profile#2847
Jason James Head
#183934
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#2848
Irasema Alcántara-Ayala
#180852
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Irasema Alcántara-Ayala is a professor of Natural hazards and Risk at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She combines natural science with social sciences, and in particular studies the occurrences of landslides, natural hazards and vulnerability. She was awarded the 2016 European Geosciences Union Sergey Soloviev Medal.
Go to Profile#2849
James D. Hays
#172660
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (100 years)
James D. Hays is a professor of Earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University's Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory. Hays founded and led the CLIMAP project, which collected sea floor sediment data to study surface sea temperatures and paleoclimatological conditions 18,000 years ago.
Go to Profile#2850
Emily CoBabe-Ammann
#129117
Overall Influence
Emily CoBabe-Ammann is an earth scientist who specializes in strategies for science and education initiatives. She is currently the director of strategic projects at the University of Colorado, at Boulder. In addition, she is a partner at the Climate Strategies Group. Previously, she served as the director of the UCAR Community Programs at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.
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