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

Gender

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Earth Sciences,

#2851

Elaine Ingham

#6781

Overall Influence

Elaine Ingham is an American microbiologist and soil biology researcher and founder of Soil Foodweb Inc. She is known as a leader in soil microbiology and research of the soil food web, She is an author of the USDA's Soil Biology Primer.

#2852

Robert D. Van Der Hilst

#189752

Overall Influence

#2853

W. D. Borrie

#91696

Overall Influence

1913 - 2000 (87 years)

Wilfred David "Mick" Borrie was a New Zealand-born Australian demographer and academic. Education Borrie was educated at Waitaki Boys' High School, Oamaru, completing his education at the University of Otago and University of Cambridge.His Master's thesis The military defence of New Zealand, 1850–1914, was completed at Otago in 1936. Borrie was president of the Otago University Students' Association in 1936.

#2854

Svein B. Manum

#164372

Overall Influence

1926 - 2015 (89 years)

Svein Bendik Manum was a Norwegian botanist. He took his education at the University of Oslo, and was hired there in 1954. From 1975 to 1995 he served as a professor of paleobotany, being a specialist on fossil land flora and fossil microalgae. He had a spell as university professor in Uganda from 1967 to 1970. He was a fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

#2855

Blair Aldridge Ruble

#179895

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Blair Aldridge Ruble is a non-fiction writer and academic administrator whose work has focused on comparative urban studies as well as Russian and Ukrainian affairs. Early life and education A native of Beacon, New York, Ruble grew up in Dobbs Ferry, New York, where he attended public schools.

#2856

Bambang Hero Saharjo

Bambang Hero Saharjo

#122075

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Dr. Bambang Hero Saharjo is an Indonesian fire forensics specialist and Professor of the Environment and Forest Fires at Bogor Agricultural University. In 2019, he won the Sense About Science John Maddox award for his work to prevent companies, particularly those of the palm oil industry, from using illegal methods of land clearance in Indonesia.

#2857

Rafael Mas Hernández

#174384

Overall Influence

1950 - 2003 (53 years)

Rafael Mas Hernández was a Spanish geographer.

#2858

Claudia Sheinbaum

#62186

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo is a Mexican politician, scientist, and academic. Sheinbaum served as Head of Government of Mexico City, a position equivalent to that of a state governor, from 2018 to 2023. Elected as the candidate of the leftist Juntos Haremos Historia coalition, she was both the first woman and first Jewish person to be elected to the position. She is a candidate for President of Mexico in the 2024 Mexican general election.

#2859

Ursula Bettina Göhlich

#188961

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

#2860

Dorothy Helen Rayner

#75871

Overall Influence

1912 - 2003 (91 years)

Dorothy Helen Rayner was a British geologist who became an authority on the stratigraphy of the British Isles while working at University of Leeds. In 1975 she was awarded the prestigious Lyell Medal from the Geological Society of London for her contributions to the field.

#2861

Darryl B. Hood

#188665

Overall Influence

Darryl B. Hood is an environmental neuroscientist at Ohio State University and the author of Multigenerational Effects of Inhaled BP on Development. Hood led the most successful Minority S11 NIEHS-sponsored initiative, known as Advanced Research Cooperation in Environmental Health Program. Additionally, Dr. Hood is currently a Dean's Fellow in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion research . He has also done work included in several articles on recalibrating reference concentrations for inhaled BP exposures in reproductive and neurotoxicity. As a co-architect, Darryl B. Hood has continued to work ...

#2862

David S. Powars

#190042

Overall Influence

David S. Powars is a Research Geologist with the United States Geological Survey at the Geology and Paleoclimate Science Center, in Reston, Virginia. He is credited as a principal discoverer of the Chesapeake Bay impact crater. He is the task leader of geological investigation of Coastal Plain deposits in Chesapeake Bay Region .

#2863

Bronwyn Harch

#147427

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Bronwyn Harch is an Australian data scientist. Early life and education Harch comes from a farming family in the rural Lockyer Valley, west of Brisbane. Career She has worked with initiatives with government and industry, predominantly in the environmental and agricultural sectors. These large-scale projects combined statistical expertise with the expertise of scientists from other parts of CSIRO as well as universities, government and industry. The projects were initiated to address environmental issues, for example monitoring the ecological health of waterways in one of Australia's most populous regions, south-east Queensland.

#2864

Sylvia Weir

#111909

Overall Influence

1925 - 2018 (93 years)

Sylvia Weir was a paediatrician who worked on artificial intelligence. She pioneered the use of robotics in autism therapy. Early life and education Weir was born in Benoni, Gauteng, South Africa. Her parents, Rachel Smith and Abraham Leiman, ran a shop. Weir studied medicine at the University of the Witwatersrand, graduating with a degree in medicine in 1950. She was a resident in Coronation Hospital, specialising in internal medicine and paediatrics. She worked as a paediatrician in South Africa. She became an activist and protested against apartheid, and left South Africa for the UK.

#2865

Margaret Adebisi Sowunmi

#105110

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Margaret Adebisi Sowunmi is a Nigerian botanist and environmental archaeologist. She was Professor of Palynology and Environmental Archaeology at the University of Ibadan. She pioneered the study of environmental archaeology and palaeoethnobotany in Nigeria and is the founder and president of the Palynological Association of Nigeria.

#2866

Souad Naji Al-Azzawi

Souad Naji Al-Azzawi

#142784

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Souad Naji Al-Azzawi is an Iraqi environmentalist & academic researcher in various engineering disciplines, in addition to having established and assisted in the establishment of multiple research & academic institutions in Iraq. She is the first Arab to receive the Nuclear-Free Future Award, with has more than 50 published scientific papers on topics ranging from water desalination, nuclear waste management, and Depleted Uranium contamination among others and is a distinguished member of the Iraqi scientific community.

#2867

Nyeema Harris

#171475

Overall Influence

Nyeema Charmaine Harris is an American environmental scientist who is Associate Professor and Director of the Applied Wildlife Ecology Laboratory at the University of Michigan. Her research considers mammalian carnivores and conservation.

#2868

Steve Hollenhorst

#180079

Overall Influence

Steven Jon Hollenhorst is an American environmental scholar and former dean in the Huxley College of the Environment at Western Washington University. He is the founder of the West Virginia Land Trust and the McCall Outdoor Science School . His scholarship focuses on protected area policy and management, land trusts and conservation easements, and environmental resource management. He undertook some of the first empirical studies of the extreme/adventure sports phenomenon as it unfolded in the 1980s and 1990s. He is the former editor of the academic journals Society and Natural Resources, and...

#2869

Deirdre Hart

#188512

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Deirdre Hart is a New Zealand geographer, and as of 2022 is a full professor at the University of Canterbury. She uses multidisciplinary approaches to research the physical, human and biological processes and interactions in coastal environments. In 2008 she was awarded the Zonta Science Medal.

#2870

Fjalar Finnäs

#89752

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Fjalar Finnäs is a Finnish professor of demographics at the Åbo Akademi University. He is currently focusing on the demographics of the Swedish-speaking Finns. His recent research was in Ethno-Linguistic Exogamy and Divorce.

#2871

Caroline King-Okumu

#177377

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Caroline King-Okumu is an international development opportunities manager for the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. She was formerly a senior researcher for the International Institute for Environment and Development . Her major areas of research are dryland ecosystems, economic and environmental assessment, and climate change. She is considered an international expert on land and water management, particularly drylands agriculture. King-Okumu is based in Kenya but is involved in research and projects throughout the world.

#2872

Sandra McLaren

#178779

Overall Influence

Sandra McLaren is an Australian geologist. Interested in geology and geothermal energy from a young age, McLaren completed her PhD at Adelaide University in 2001 and is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne. She is a noted science communicator and educator, especially on the topic of sustainable energy through hot rocks in southern Australia.

#2873

Sarah Fawcett

#96108

Overall Influence

Sarah Fawcett is a South African oceanographer and climatologist. A senior lecturer in the Department of Oceanography at the University of Cape Town, she is particularly interested in the role of oceans in regulating biogeochemical cycles and how their dysregulation contributes to climate change. She was honoured in the World Economic Forum Young Scientists Class of 2020, and a P-Rating from the National Research Foundation, which recognizes that the scientist's work will likely have high impact.

#2874

Rick Allmendinger

#189890

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Richard Waldron Allmendinger is a structural geologist and Professor Emeritus of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University. His work is focused on energy and climate change as well as earthquakes and the regional tectonics of South America. Some of his biggest contributions to the field of Structural geology are the creation of the stereonet mobile and GeolMapDataExtractor GMDE mobile apps, as well as many other apps and programs.

#2875

Paul Connett

#34052

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Paul Connett lives in Binghamton, New York. Paul Connett is a prominent water fluoridation critic, executive director of the Binghamton, New York based Fluoride Action Network , one of the largest organizations opposing water fluoridation worldwide. The Fluoride Action Network is funded, at least in part, by Joseph Mercola. Joseph Mercola has been identified by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate as the leading COVID disinformationist.

#2876

Anthony Watts

#171941

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Willard Anthony Watts is an American blogger who runs Watts Up With That?, a climate change denial blog that opposes the scientific consensus on climate change. A former television meteorologist and current radio meteorologist, he is also founder of the Surface Stations project, a volunteer initiative to document the condition of U.S. weather stations. The Heartland Institute helped fund some of Watts' projects, including publishing a report on the Surface Stations project, and invited him to be a paid speaker at its International Conference on Climate Change from 2008 to 2014.

#2877

Natalia Rybczynski

#86959

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Natalia Rybczynski is a Canadian paleobiologist, professor and researcher. She is a research scientist with the Canadian Museum of Nature and holds a professorship at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario. Her doctorate was obtained at Duke University and her main interests are evolutionary functional morphology, particularly at the polar climes.

#2878

Patricia Majluf

#174278

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Patricia Majluf Chiok is a Peruvian biologist, zoologist, researcher and conservationist. She founded the Center for Environmental Sustainability at the Cayetano Heredia University in 2006. She is currently the Vice President in Peru of Oceana, a non-profit organization dedicated to the protection of the oceans.

#2879

William J. Sanders

#84756

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

William J. Sanders is a vertebrate paleontologist and research scientist/preparator at the University of Michigan. He has written a number of papers on fossil elephants. Education Ph.D. Department of Anthropology, New York University. Dissertation Title: "Function, Allometry, and Evolution of the Australopithecine Lower Precaudal Spine." 1995.M.Phil. Department of Anthropology, New York University. 1990.B.A. Department of Anthropology, The University of Chicago. 1979.

#2880

Sophie Lewis

#102251

Overall Influence

Sophie Anne Lewis is a German-British academic and author, known for her radical ideas of family abolition and the use of surrogacy on a societal scale. Lewis has published two books through Verso Books; Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism against the Family, published in 2019, and Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation, published in October 2022.

#2881

Martin Litherland

#180429

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Martin Litherland OBE is a geologist who has travelled and published widely. Life and career Litherland was born in 1945, the son of a Methodist minister. In 1970 he was awarded a PhD by Liverpool University on the stratigraphy and structure of the Dalradian rocks around Loch Creran, Scotland, which resolved the major stratigraphic puzzle. The rocks also contained early forms of animal life.

#2882

Joanne Johnson

#148812

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Joanne S. Johnson is a geologist and Antarctic scientist, who has worked for British Antarctic Survey since 2002. She works in the palaeoenvironments, ice sheets and climate change team and is best known for her work on glacial retreat. The Johnson Mesa in James Ross Island, Antarctica is named in her honour.

#2883

Thomas Lundqvist

#188521

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

Thomas Lundqvist is a Swedish geologist. He is son of Gösta Lundqvist and brother of Jan Lundqvist, both of whom are geologists. Thomas Lundqvist worked at Geological Survey of Sweden from 1962 onwards and was professor at the University of Gothenburg from 1986 to 1989. In 1968 he obtained a Ph.D. degree in geology at Stockholm University with the thesis Precambrian Geology of the Los-Hamra Region, Central Sweden.

#2884

Marian Asantewah Nkansah

Marian Asantewah Nkansah

#90180

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (47 years)

Marian Asantewah Nkansah is a Ghanaian environmental chemist. Her research work focuses on finding solutions to environmental problems associated with levels and fate of toxic substances such as heavy/trace metals, persistent organic pollutants and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in food, water, soil, rocks, sediments and other environmental samples. She also researches on the interaction of these pollutants with each other in the environment. In 2016, together with some scientists from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, she led a research which led to the confirmation that edible white clay poses potential cancer risk.

#2885

Abderrazak El Albani

#46622

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Abderrazak El Albani is a French-Moroccan sedimentologist, professor at University of Poitiers at the Hydrasa laboratory . He is known for describing the "Francevillian Biota" from the Paleoproterozoic of Gabon, which he suggests represents the oldest known multicellular organisms, though this claim has been questioned by other authors.

#2886

Barbara McMartin

#81204

Overall Influence

1931 - 2005 (74 years)

Barbara McMartin was an American mathematician who became an environmentalist and author of 25 books on the Adirondack Mountains. Life Barbara McMartin was born November 18, 1931, in Boston, Massachusetts. Her father was physician D. Malcolm McMartin, and mother was Barbara McMartin. She grew up with her family in Johnstown, New York, where her father had his practice. She was valedictorian of the Class of 1949 of Johnstown High School. McMartin married young and had three children. She returned to college later, graduating from Vassar College, cum laude in Mathematics in 1964. She earned a ...

#2887

Li Jiancheng

#189960

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Li Jiancheng is a Chinese engineer who is a professor and vice-president of Wuhan University. He is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. He is a member of the Chinese Communist Party.

#2888

Catherine Corrigan

#157259

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Catherine Margaret Corrigan , often known as Cari Corrigan, is an American scientist best known as a curator of the meteorite collection at the Smithsonian Institution. She is a scientist in the Department of Mineral Science at the National Museum of Natural History.

#2889

Anna Michalak

#185892

Overall Influence

Anna Michalak is an American geophysicist who is Director of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution for Science and a professor at Stanford University. Her research considers the cycling and emission of greenhouse gases. She is the lead author of the carbon cycle science plan, a comprehensive analysis of Earth's carbon stocks and flows. She was awarded the 2021 American Geophysical Union Joanne Simpson Medal.

#2890

Joel Myers

#184835

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Joel N. Myers is an American businessman who is the founder and executive chairman of AccuWeather, an American commercial weather service and media company. Background Myers is a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He founded AccuWeather in State College, Pennsylvania, in 1962. Myers served on the faculty of Penn State from 1964 until 1981 as instructor, lecturer, and assistant professor; he estimates that by the time he retired from teaching he had taught weather forecasting to approximately 17% of all practicing meteorologists in the United States. Additionally, he served on the Pennsylva...

#2891

David C. Kopaska-Merkel

#189922

Overall Influence

David C. Kopaska-Merkel is an American geologist, poet, and editor. Education and career Kopaska-Merkel holds a doctorate in geology. He has worked for the Geological Survey of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and has co-authored numerous articles on topics in paleontology and geology published in peer-reviewed journals such as Computers & Geosciences, The AAPG Bulletin, and the International Journal of Coal Geology. He has also co-authored books addressing topics in the same subject areas. Kopaska-Merkel is a member of the National Center for Science Education.

#2892

Lauren Sallan

#135571

Overall Influence

Lauren Sallan is an American academic who is the head of the Macroevolution Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology and was previously the Martin Meyerson Assistant Professor in Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a paleobiologist who uses big data analytics to study macroevolution. She is a TED Senior Fellow and has two TED talks with almost three million views as of 2022.

#2893

Barry R. Bickmore

#50707

Overall Influence

Barry Robert Bickmore is a professor in the department of geological sciences at Brigham Young University . He is also a devout Mormon, having written Restoring the Ancient Church: Joseph Smith and Early Christianity as well as several articles that have been published in the FARMS Review.

#2894

Lynn Scarlett

#97193

Overall Influence

Patricia Lynn Scarlett is a US environmental policy executive and analyst. Until December 2021, she was the Chief External Affairs Officer at the Nature Conservancy. She is a frequent commentator on environmental issues. She was the Chief Operating Officer and Deputy Secretary of the Interior from 2005 to 2009, having previously served as the Assistant Secretary of Policy, Management and Budget from 2001 to 2005. Appointed by President George W. Bush, Scarlett was sworn in as Deputy Secretary of the Interior on November 22, 2005. In 2006 she served as acting Secretary of the Interior between the administrations of Gale Norton and Dirk Kempthorne.

#2895

Donna Eberhart-Phillips

#190323

Overall Influence

Donna Eberhart-Phillips is a geologist known for her research on subduction zones, especially in Alaska and New Zealand. Education and career Eberhart-Phillips earned her Ph.D. in 1989 from Stanford University where she worked on the tectonic processes in California. As of 2021, Eberhart-Phillips has joint appointments at the University of California, Davies and GNS Science in Dunedin, New Zealand.

#2896

Beverly Wright

#107306

Overall Influence

Beverly Wright is an American environmental justice scholar and the founder of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice at Dillard University. Her research considers the environmental and health inequalities along the Mississippi River Chemical Corridor. Her awards and honours include the Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Justice Achievement Award.

#2897

Paul Harrison

#190831

Overall Influence

#2898

Julienne Stroeve

#188305

Overall Influence

Professor Julienne Christine Stroeve is a polar climate scientist known for her research on remote sensing of ice and snow. She is Professor of Polar Observation & Modelling at the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling, University College London, Senior Canada-150 Research Chair in Climate Forcing of Sea Ice at the University of Manitoba, and a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center within the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences . She is also a member of the American Geophysical Union and an ISI highly cited researcher.

#2899

Evelyn M. Kitagawa

#49353

Overall Influence

1920 - 2007 (87 years)

Evelyn Mae Kitagawa was an American sociologist and demographer who worked as a professor at the University of Chicago and became president of the Population Association of America and chair of the U.S. Census Bureau's Advisory Committee on Population Statistics. She is known for her book with Philip Hauser, Differential Mortality in the United States: A Study in Socioeconomic Epidemiology, which discovered systematic correlations between the death rates of Americans and their income and level of education. Kitagawa wrote the first paper on decomposing statistics into components associated with the joint movement of the levels and returns to predictors.

#2900

Anita Marshall

#190879

Overall Influence

Anita Marshall is an American geoscience education researcher and disability activist. She is known for her research on and personal experience with disability in geology. Education and career Marshall received her PhD in geology from the University of South Florida. She is a geology lecturer at the University of Florida.

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