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,
#301
James Morris Blaut
#13855
Overall Influence
1927 - 2000 (73 years)
James Morris Blaut was an American professor of anthropology and geography at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His studies focused on the agricultural microgeography , cultural ecology, theory of nationalism, philosophy of science, historiography and the relations between the First and the Third World. He was a critic of Eurocentrism. Blaut was one of the most widely read authors in the field of geography.
Go to Profile#302
Erik N. Rasmussen
#51952
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Erik Nels Rasmussen is an American meteorologist and leading expert on mesoscale meteorology, severe convective storms, forecasting of storms, and tornadogenesis. He was the field coordinator of the first of the VORTEX projects in 1994-1995 and a lead principal investigator for VORTEX2 from 2009-2010 and VORTEX-SE from 2016-2017, as well as involved in other smaller VORTEX offshoots and many field projects.
Go to Profile#303
James Syvitski
#57453
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Jaia Syvitski is an American-Canadian Professor Emeritus. Their interests include oceanography, geology, hydrology, numerical modelling, and geophysics. Career Syvitski obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in geology and mathematics in 1974, and an Honors degree geology in 1975 from Lakehead University. In 1978, she received a PhD from the University of British Columbia in oceanography and geology.
Go to Profile#304
Raymond S. Bradley
#37528
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Raymond S. Bradley is a climatologist and University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he is also research director of the Climate System Research Center. Bradley's work indicates that the warming of Earth's climate system in the twentieth century is inexplicable via natural mechanisms.
Go to Profile#305
James R. Holton
#61503
Overall Influence
1938 - 2004 (66 years)
James Reed Holton was a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington. He was a specialist on atmospheric dynamics, and the author of the atmospheric science textbook An Introduction to Dynamic Meteorology.
Go to Profile#306
Brian Kennett
#68505
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Brian Leslie Norman Kennett is a mathematical physicist and seismologist. He is now a professor emeritus at the Australian National University. Education and career Kennett graduated in Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge with a first class bachelor's degree in 1969 and then took the Mathematical Tripos Part III achieving Honours with Distinction in 1970. He received his Ph.D in theoretical seismology from the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics in 1973. He was a Research Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge from 1972 to 1976. As a postdoc, he was at the...
Go to Profile#307
Loretta Lees
#20987
Overall Influence
Loretta Lees is a university professor, urbanist, author, and scholar-activist. She is the Director of the Initiative on Cities and professor of sociology at Boston University. Prior to moving to Boston, she was Professor of Human Geography at the University of Leicester in the UK and served as Chair of the London Housing Panel working with the Mayor of London and Trust for London. Since 2009, she has co-organized The Urban Salon, a London forum and seminar series for architecture, cities, and international urbanism, which examines urban experiences using an international and comparative frame.
Go to Profile#308
David Strangway
#27029
Overall Influence
1934 - 2016 (82 years)
David William Strangway, was a Canadian geophysicist and university administrator. Strangway was the founder, first President and first Chancellor of Quest University Canada, a private non-profit liberal arts and sciences university in Squamish, British Columbia which opened in September 2007. He was President Emeritus of the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia.
Go to Profile#309
Christopher Landsea
#44842
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Christopher William "Chris" Landsea is an American meteorologist, formerly a research meteorologist with the Hurricane Research Division of the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory at NOAA, and now the Science and Operations Officer at the National Hurricane Center. He is a member of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society.
Go to Profile#310
Denise Pumain
#33187
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Denise Pumain is a French geographer. Pumain specialises in urban and theoretical geography. She is a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and of the British Academy. Early life and education Pumain was born in 1946. She studied geography at the École Normale Supérieure between 1965 and 1969 and received her doctorate in human sciences and literature in 1980.
Go to Profile#311
Richard A. Kerr
#75899
Overall Influence
#312
Kingsley Davis
#8135
Overall Influence
1908 - 1997 (89 years)
Kingsley Davis was an internationally recognized American sociologist and demographer. He was identified by the American Philosophical Society as one of the most outstanding social scientists of the twentieth century, and was a Hoover Institution senior research fellow.
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Herbert Riehl
#64490
Overall Influence
1915 - 1997 (82 years)
Herbert Riehl was a German-born American meteorologist who is widely regarded as the father of tropical meteorology. He is well known for his work with Joanne Simpson on the importance of hot towers, and their critical role in transport of energy out of the tropics via the Hadley circulation. He was responsible for founding the atmospheric science department at Colorado State University.
Go to Profile#314
Benjamin D. Santer
#28284
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Benjamin David Santer is a climate researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and former researcher at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit. He also worked at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology from 1987 to 1992. He specializes mainly in statistical analysis of climate data sets, and detection/attribution of climate change forcings.
Go to Profile#315
Mark Serreze
#57223
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Mark Clifford Serreze is an American geographer and the director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center , a project of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. He officially became the NSIDC's director in August 2009. In 2019, he was named a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geography. Serreze is primarily known for his expertise in the Arctic sea ice decline that has occurred over the last few decades due to global warming, a topic about which he has expressed serious concern.
Go to Profile#316
Michael Oppenheimer
#21608
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Michael Oppenheimer is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, the Department of Geosciences, and the High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton University. He is the director of the Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and Faculty Associate of the Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences Program and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies.
Go to Profile#317
Hans W. Paerl
#76168
Overall Influence
Hans W. Paerl is a Dutch American limnologist and a Kenan Professor of Marine and Environmental Sciences at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill Institute of Marine Sciences. His research primarily assesses microbially-mediated nutrient cycling, primary production dynamics, and the consequences of human impacts on water quality and sustainability in waters around the world.
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Jason Box
#59487
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Jason Eric Box is an American glaciologist who is professor in glaciology at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. For 10 years he worked at Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University, eventually a tenured physical climatology and geography associate professor in the department of geography.
Go to Profile#319
Daniel P. Schrag
#23254
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Daniel Paul Schrag is the Sturgis Hooper Professor of Geology, Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering at Harvard University and Director of the Harvard University Center for the Environment. He also co-directs the Science, Technology and Public Policy Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard University Harvard Kennedy School. He is also an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute.
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Pamela Matson
#29625
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
#321
Peter V. Hobbs
#42289
Overall Influence
1936 - 2005 (69 years)
Peter Victor Hobbs was a British-born professor of atmospheric sciences and director of the Cloud and Aerosol Research Group at the University of Washington. His research interests were in the physics and chemistry of the atmosphere, focusing on the roles played by aerosols, clouds, and precipitation. He authored over 250 peer-reviewed papers, authored four books, and edited three books. He was the coauthor with John Michael Wallace of what is generally considered the standard introductory textbook in the field: Atmospheric Science: An Introductory Survey.
Go to Profile#322
John Brian Harley
#31009
Overall Influence
1932 - 1991 (59 years)
Brian Harley was a geographer, cartographer, and map historian at the universities of Birmingham, Liverpool, Exeter and Wisconsin–Milwaukee. He helped found the History of Cartography Project and was the founding co-editor of the resulting The History of Cartography. In recent years, Harley's work has gained broad prominence among geographers and social theorists, and it has contributed greatly to the emerging discipline of critical cartography.
Go to Profile#323
Ruth DeFries
#20345
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
#324
Eugenia Kalnay
#60135
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Eugenia Enriqueta Kalnay is an Argentine meteorologist and a Distinguished University Professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science, which is part of the University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences at the University of Maryland, College Park in the United States.
Go to Profile#325
David D. Pollard
#64262
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
David D. Pollard is a professor in geomechanics and structural geology at Stanford University. Career David Pollard teaches an undergraduate course, Fundamentals of Structural Geology, and is writing an undergraduate textbook in structural geology. He teaches graduate-level courses in structural geology, rock mechanics, and rock fracture mechanics.
Go to Profile#326
James M. Rubenstein
#23474
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
James M. Rubenstein is an American geographer and Professor of Geography at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, known for his work on human geography and specifically on the US automotive industry. Rubenstein obtained his B.A. in public affairs from the University of Chicago in 1970, and went to London where he obtained his MSc in city and regional planning from the London School of Economics in 1971. Back in the States he obtained his PhD in geography and human engineering from the Johns Hopkins University in 1975. Rubenstein is appointed Professor of Geography at Miami University. He also wor...
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Thomas R. Holtz Jr.
#21294
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Thomas Richard Holtz Jr. is an American vertebrate palaeontologist, author, and principal lecturer at the University of Maryland's Department of Geology. He has published extensively on the phylogeny, morphology, ecomorphology, and locomotion of terrestrial predators, especially on tyrannosaurids and other theropod dinosaurs. He wrote the book Dinosaurs and is the author or co-author of the chapters "Saurischia", "Basal Tetanurae", and "Tyrannosauroidea" in the second edition of The Dinosauria. He has also been consulted as a scientific advisor for the Walking with Dinosaurs BBC series as wel...
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Danny Dorling
#22278
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Danny Dorling is a British social geographer. Since 2013, he has been Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography of the School of Geography and the Environment of the University of Oxford. He is also a visiting professor in the Department of Sociology of Goldsmiths, University of London, a visiting professor in the School of Social and Community Medicine of the University of Bristol, a visiting fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research, and a member of the National Advisory Panel for the Centre for Labour and Social Studies . He is a patron of RoadPeace since 2011 and from 2007 to 20...
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Robert Bingham
#71977
Overall Influence
Robert George Bingham is a Professor in glaciology and geophysics at the University of Edinburgh. His research focuses on using geophysical, remote sensing, and modelling techniques to understand modern glacial change and processes, and on understanding the landforms left behind by retreating Northern Hemisphere glaciers at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum.
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Alan MacEachren
#28653
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Alan M. MacEachren is an American geographer, Professor of Geography and Director, GeoVISTA Center, Department of Geography, The Pennsylvania State University. He is known for his cross-disciplinary work in the fields of human-centered geographic visualization, scientific and information visualization, and in statistics.
Go to Profile#331
William A. V. Clark
#44432
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
William Arthur Valentine Clark is Distinguished University Research Professor in the Geography Department at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on housing markets and residential mobility and migration, and the impacts of local residential change on neighborhood outcomes, including segregation and ethnic and racial patterns.
Go to Profile#332
Hans-Ulrich Schmincke
#35462
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Hans-Ulrich Schmincke is a German volcanologist. Formation Hans-Ulrich Schmincke studied between 1957 and 1964 geology and petrology at different universities in Germany and the USA: Universität Göttingen, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, RWTH Aachen as well as Johns Hopkins University and University of California, Santa Barbara
Go to Profile#333
Heinrich Harrer
#7102
Overall Influence
1912 - 2006 (94 years)
Heinrich Harrer was an Austrian mountaineer, explorer, writer, sportsman, geographer, and SS sergeant. He was a member of the four-man climbing team that made the first ascent of the North Face of the Eiger, the "last problem" of the Alps. While on expedition in the Indian Himalayas, Harrer and his group were arrested by British forces because of the outbreak of World War II and he escaped to Tibet, staying there until 1951 and never seeing active combat. He wrote the books Seven Years in Tibet and The White Spider .
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Cliff Ollier
#52137
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (93 years)
Cliff Ollier is a geologist, geomorphologist, soil scientist, emeritus professor and honorary research fellow, at the School of Earth and Geographical Sciences University of Western Australia. He was formerly at Australian National University, University of New England, Australia, Canberra University, University of Papua New Guinea, and University of Melbourne.
Go to Profile#335
Eldridge M. Moores
#27542
Overall Influence
1938 - 2018 (80 years)
Eldridge Moores was an American geologist. He specialized in the understanding of ophiolites and the geology of the continental crust of the Western United States and Tethyan belt, the geology of Greece, Cyprus, and Pakistan, and the tectonic development of the Sierra Nevada and the Alpine - Himalayan systems.
Go to Profile#336
Arnon Soffer
#33719
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Arnon Soffer is an Israeli geographer and a professor of Geography and environmental sciences, specialising in water issues and demography. Soffer is one of the founders of the University of Haifa. He is known for his research into demographic, water, environmental, political, and strategy issues of the state of Israel.
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Kelvin Droegemeier
#26161
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Kelvin Kay Droegemeier is an American research meteorologist, most recently having served as Director of The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Droegemeier is known for his research in predicting the development of extreme weather events, and previously served as Oklahoma Secretary of Science and Technology and the Vice President for Research at the University of Oklahoma. He currently is serving as Regents Professor of Meteorology, Roger and Sherry Teigen Presidential Professor, and Weathernews Chair Emeritus at the University of Oklahoma.
Go to Profile#338
William E. Dietrich
#57241
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
For other people with the same or similar name, see William Dietrich .William Eric Dietrich is a professor of geology in the Department of Earth and Planetary Science at the University of California, Berkeley. His specialty is geomorphology, with a particular interest in the biological forces shaping landscapes. He obtained his Ph.D. in geology from the University of Washington. Dietrich was elected as a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences in 2003. In 2009, he was awarded the Robert E. Horton Medal by the American Geophysical Union.
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Billie Lee Turner II
#23640
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Billie Lee Turner II is an American geographer and human-environmental scientist, member of the National Academy of Sciences and other honorary institutions. Prominent among the third generation of the Berkeley School of Latin Americanist Geography and cultural ecological research, he has been a leader in bridging this work with the Chicago School of natural hazards and risk research. In August 2008, he took a position as the first Gilbert F. White Chair in Environment and Society at Arizona State University, where he is affiliated with the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning and the School of Sustainability.
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Lucy Jones
#35117
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Lucile M. Jones is a seismologist and public voice for earthquake science and earthquake safety in California. One of the foremost and trusted public authorities on earthquakes, Jones is viewed by many in Southern California as "the Beyoncé of earthquakes" who is frequently called up on to provide information on recent earthquakes.
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Robert Ladislav Parker
#31578
Overall Influence
Robert L. Parker is an American geophysicist and mathematician, currently holding a Professor Emeritus of Geophysics position at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego in La Jolla, California.
Go to Profile#342
Charles W. J. Withers
#43127
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Charles William John Withers, is a British historical geographer and academic. He has been the Geographer Royal for Scotland since 2015, and held the Ogilvie Chair of Geography at the University of Edinburgh from 1994 to 2019.
Go to Profile#343
Hubert Lamb
#21518
Overall Influence
1913 - 1997 (84 years)
Hubert Horace Lamb was an English climatologist who founded the Climatic Research Unit in 1972 in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia. Career Most of Lamb's scientific life was spent at the Meteorological Office, UK, where he started as a Technical Officer progressing by special merit promotion. As a Quaker and conscientious objector, Lamb refused to work on the meteorology of gas spraying during World War II, and was transferred to the Irish Meteorological Service, then still closely associated with the UK Met Office. On returning to the UK service after th...
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Jon Claerbout
#40690
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Jon F. Claerbout is an American geophysicist and seismologist. He is the Cecil Green Professor Emeritus of Geophysics at Stanford University. Since the later half of the 20th century, he has been a leading researcher and pioneered the use of computers in processing and filtering seismic exploration data, eventually developing the field of time series analysis and seismic interferometry, modelling the propagation of seismic waves.
Go to Profile#345
Arthur Wallace
#47737
Overall Influence
1919 - 2008 (89 years)
Arthur Wallace , was a soil scientist. Biography Schooling Wallace received a B.S. from Utah State University in 1943 and at Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 1949 . Professor He was a professor of Plant Physiology at University of California, Los Angeles .
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Werner Schreyer
#67463
Overall Influence
1930 - 2006 (76 years)
Werner Schreyer was a German mineralogist and experimental metamorphic petrologist. Schreyer completed his undergraduate work in geology and petrology at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, obtained his doctorate from the University of Munich in 1957, and in 1966 received his Habilitation from the University of Kiel. He was a professor at Ruhr University Bochum from 1966 to 1996. In 2002 Schreyer became the first German to be awarded the Mineralogical Society of America's highest honor, the Roebling Medal. Schreyer was a leading expert on phase relations in the MgO–Al2O3–SiO2–H2O system, s...
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Mary P. Anderson
#34242
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Mary Pikul Anderson is a hydrologist, geologist, and professor emerita of hydrogeology. She is a fellow of the Geological Society of America, the American Geophysical Union, and the National Academy of Engineering.
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Ronald F. Abler
#59108
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Ronald Francis Abler is an American geographer at Pennsylvania State University and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Abler obtained his PhD in 1968 from the University of Minnesota, where he had started his academic career as faculty member in 1967.
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Klaus Keil
#52634
Overall Influence
1934 - 2022 (88 years)
Klaus Keil was a professor at the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. He was the former Director of the Hawaiʻi Institute of Geophysics and Planetology. He was also the former director of the University of New Mexico Institute of Meteoritics. Klaus pioneered the use of the electron microprobe to study meteorite samples. He was one of the co-inventors of the Energy dispersive X-ray spectrometer.
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Jane Francis
#46323
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Dame Jane Elizabeth Francis, is the Director of the British Antarctic Survey. She previously worked as Professor of Palaeoclimatology at the University of Leeds where she also was Dean of the Faculty of Environment. In 2002 she was the fourth woman to receive the Polar Medal for outstanding contribution to British polar research. She is currently the Chancellor of the University of Leeds.
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