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.
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List of the most influential people in Earth Sciences,
#3101
Esther Aberdeen Holm
1904 - 1984 (80 years)
Esther Aberdeen Holm was an American academic who began as a paleontologist turning to applied geology. Early life Born in Chicago, Illinois she made many trips to Lake Michigan where her passion for geology began. Through encouragement from her mother, she was able to support herself through her years attending Northwestern University by working as a stenographer for an advertising company. She married on August 15, 1953, to Donald August Holm who she met while working in Algiers. At the time, she traveled to Saudi Arabia where she grew fond of Arabian horses and brought several of them to A...
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John Evans
1770 - 1799 (29 years)
John Thomas Evans was a Welsh explorer who produced an early map of the Missouri River. Evans was born in Waunfawr, near Caernarfon. In the early 1790s there was an upsurge of interest in Wales in the story of Madog having discovered America, and there were persistent rumours in North America of the existence of a tribe of Welsh Indians, identified with the Mandan. Iolo Morganwg had originally intended to explore the Missouri to discover these Welsh Indians, and Evans was to have gone with him. However, Iolo withdrew from the expedition and Evans embarked for the United States alone, arriving in Baltimore in October 1792.
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Henry Paul Hansen
1907 - 1989 (82 years)
Henry Paul Hansen was an American palynologist known largely for his pioneering work on the vegetation history of the North American Pacific Northwest and for his time as the dean of Graduate Studies at Oregon State University from 1949 to 1972.
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Franz Reinzer
1661 - 1708 (47 years)
Franz Reinzer was an Austrian Jesuit professor of rhetoric, philosophy, and theology at Linz, Graz, Vienna, and Krems. His Meteorologia philosophico-politica, in duodecim dissertationes per quaestiones meteorologicas & conclusiones politicas divisa, appositisque was first published in 1697. A third edition was published posthumously in 1709.
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Harry von Eckermann
1886 - 1969 (83 years)
Harry von Eckermann was a Swedish industrialist, mineralogist and geologist. His studies were centered around anorogenic alkaline igneous rocks occurring in the Baltic Shield. Following this line he studied the Alnö Complex, Norra Kärr Alkaline Complex and various Rapakivi granites.
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John Evans
1823 - 1908 (85 years)
Sir John Evans was an English archaeologist and geologist. Biography John Evans, son of the Rev. A. B. Evans, was born at Britwell Court, Buckinghamshire. At the age of seventeen he started to work for the paper-manufacturing business of John Dickinson & Co. Ltd at Nash Mills . The company had been founded by his uncle and later father-in-law John Dickinson , who was also its senior partner. In 1850 Evans was admitted as a partner in the company and did not retire from active management until 1885.
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Grigory Gamburtsev
1903 - 1955 (52 years)
Grigory Aleksandrovich Gamburtsev was a Soviet seismologist and academician from Saint Petersburg, Russia who worked in the area of seismometry and earthquake prediction. Life Gamburtsev was born on March 23, 1903, in Saint Petersburg, Russia. He graduated from the Moscow State University in 1926. From 1938 onward, he worked at the Geophysical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences, serving as its director from 1949 to 1955. In 1946, Gamburtsev became a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences and in 1953 he became full member of the Academy. Gamburtsev developed a new design of seismographs and created their theory.
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Charles Lory
1823 - 1889 (66 years)
Charles Lory was a French geologist. He was born at Nantes. He graduated D. Sc. in 1847. In 1852 he was appointed to the chair of geology at the University of Grenoble, and in 1881 to that of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.
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Anatol Heintz
1898 - 1975 (77 years)
Anatol Heintz was a Russo-Norwegian palaeontologist. He was born in Petrograd to the geophysicist Yevgeniy Alfredovich Heintz and Olga Fyodorovna Hoffmann . He had two older siblings. In 1919 the family fled to Norway. He studied at the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry from 1919 to 1920 and at the Royal Frederick University from 1920, where he graduated in palaeontology in 1928. He was then hired as a curator at the Paleontological Museum of Tøyen. He took the dr.philos. degree in 1932 on the thesis The Structure of Dinichthys. A Contribution to our Knowledge of the Arthrodira.
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Ulysses S. Grant IV
1893 - 1977 (84 years)
Ulysses Simpson Grant IV was an American geologist and paleontologist known for his work on the fossil mollusks of the California Pacific Coast. He was the youngest son of Ulysses S. Grant Jr., and a grandson of President Ulysses S. Grant and Senator Jerome B. Chaffee. He was born at his father's farm, Merryweather Farm, in Salem Center, Westchester County, New York. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to San Diego, California.
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Margaret Jarman Hagood
1907 - 1963 (56 years)
Margaret Loyd Jarman "Marney" Hagood was an American sociologist and demographer who "helped steer sociology away from the armchair and toward the calculator". She wrote the books Mothers of the South and Statistics for Sociologists , and later became president of the Population Association of America and of the Rural Sociological Society.
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Charles Abiathar White
1836 - 1910 (74 years)
Charles Abiathar White was an American geologist, paleontologist, and writer whose publications total 238 titles. Biography Charles Abiathar White was born at North Dighton, Massachusetts. He was the State geologist of Iowa in 1866–1870, and professor of natural history in the State University of Iowa in 1867–1873. He held a similar position at Bowdoin College in 1873–1875, and was geologist and paleontologist of the United States Geological Survey between 1874 and 1892, and after 1895 was an associate in paleontology at the United States National Museum.
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Igino Cocchi
1827 - 1913 (86 years)
Igino Cocchi was an Italian geologist and paleontologist who worked at the Museum of Natural History, Florence. Cicchi was born in Terrarossa, Val di Magra where and studied Latin and natural sciences, graduating from the University of Pisa. training under Giuseppe Meneghini, after which he travelled to England during which time he made contact with Charles Darwin. He founded the Alpine Club of Florence in 1867 and the first Italian geology journal Bollettino del Reale Comitato Geologico d’Italia.
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John Fries Frazer
1812 - 1872 (60 years)
John Fries Frazer was a University of Pennsylvania graduate and first assistant geologist to the Geological Survey of Pennsylvania. He became a professor of Natural philosophy and Chemistry and in later years he became Vice Provost of the University of Pennsylvania.
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Henry Fairfield Osborn Jr.
1887 - 1969 (82 years)
Henry Fairfield Osborn Jr. , was an American conservationist. He was longtime president of the New York Zoological Society . Biography Henry Fairfield Osborn Jr. was born in Princeton, New Jersey in 1887. Born into the wealthy and influential Osborn family, he was the son of Henry Fairfield Osborn, a prominent paleontologist, eugenicist and "distinguished Aryan enthusiast". After obtaining his Bachelor of Arts from Princeton University, he went on to study biology at Cambridge University but then pursued a career in international business. Towards the end of the First World War, he served bri...
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Thomas Allen
1803 - 1833 (30 years)
Thomas Allen was an English topographer. Allen was the son of a map engraver. He died of cholera on 7 July 1833. Works In 1827 Allen published a quarto volume, The History and Antiquities of the Parish of Lambeth and the Archiepiscopal Palace, with illustrations, mainly drawn and etched by himself. He later published:in parts, the History and Antiquities of London, Westminster, and Southwark , illustrated by engravings on copper by himself and woodcuts;A New and Complete History of the County of York , with engravings after Nathaniel Whittock;History of the Counties of Surrey and Sussex , wi...
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Theodore B. Comstock
1849 - 1915 (66 years)
Theodore Bryant Comstock was an American geologist, educator, university administrator, and mining consultant. He served as the first president of the University of Arizona. Early life Theodore B. Comstock was born in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio on July 27, 1849. He earned a bachelor's degree at Pennsylvania State Agricultural College, and postgraduate degrees from Cornell University. He married Blanche Huggins in 1880.
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Donald Ferlys Wilson Baden-Powell
1897 - 1973 (76 years)
Donald Ferlys Wilson Baden-Powell , son of Sir George Smyth Baden-Powell, was a geologist who taught geology and palaeolithic archaeology at the University of Oxford. When Donald's father, Sir George Baden-Powell, died in 1898, his uncle, R.S.S. Baden-Powell, became something of a father figure. Donald attended the first experimental scout camp at Brownsea Island in August 1907 as well as the scout camp at Humshaugh in 1908.
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Henry James Anderson
1799 - 1875 (76 years)
Henry James Anderson was an American scientist and educator who worked with the great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Dallas Bache. He became Knight Commander, President of the Particular Council of New York, and Head of the Supreme Council.
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Johan Axel Palmén
1845 - 1919 (74 years)
Johan Axel Palmén was a Finnish zoologist who was known for his studies on bird migration and for efforts in bird conservation in Finland. His studies of bird migration included the identification of flyways along which a majority of shorebirds migrated as well as the phenomenon of leap-frog migration. He established the first bird ringing station in Finland by purchasing a piece of land in the village of Tvärminne.
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Kushyar Gilani
971 - 1029 (58 years)
Abul-Hasan Kūshyār ibn Labbān ibn Bashahri Daylami , also known as Kūshyār Daylami , was an Iranian mathematician, geographer, and astronomer from Daylam, south of the Caspian Sea, Iran. Career Kūshyār Daylami's main work was probably done about the beginning of the 11th century, and seems to have taken an important part in the elaboration of trigonometry. He continued the investigations of the 10th century mathematician and astronomer Abul Wáfa, and devoted much space to this in his , which incorporated the improved values of the planetary apogees observed by al-Battani. The tables were translated into the Persian language before the end of the century.
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James Haward Taylor
1909 - 1968 (59 years)
James Haward Taylor FRS was a British geologist who served as president of the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland from 1963 to 1965. He was educated at Clifton College, King's College London , Harvard University , and the University of London .
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Joseph George Cumming
1812 - 1868 (56 years)
Joseph George Cumming, MA Cantab., was an English geologist and archaeologist. His major works concerned the geology and history of the Isle of Man. Biography Born at Matlock in Derbyshire where his mother and father ran the Old Bath Hotel at Matlock Bath. Cumming was educated at Oakham School, and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, taking the degree of MA, and entering holy orders in 1835. Joseph's elder cousin, James was Professor of Chemistry in Cambridge from 1815.
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Francesco Serao
1702 - 1783 (81 years)
Francesco Serao was an Italian physician, physicist, geologist, philosopher and scholar. He was born in San Cipriano d'Aversa and died in Naples, Italy. Biography Serao was taught by the Jesuits in Naples. He followed the thinking of Descartes. At eighteen, he graduated in medicine and in 1727 he was awarded the chair of theoretical medicine. In 1732 he was professor of anatomy, then of medicine.
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Theodor Fuchs
1842 - 1925 (83 years)
Theodor Fuchs was an Austrian geologist and paleontologist. He studied geology and paleontology at the University of Vienna as a pupil of Eduard Suess . Following graduation, he worked as an assistant at the Hofmineralienkabinett in Vienna, being named its curator in 1880. From 1889 to 1904 he was director of the geologic-paleontological department at the Natural History Museum in Vienna. In 1897 he became an associate professor of paleontology at the university.
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Alphonse François Renard
1842 - 1903 (61 years)
Alphonse Francois Renard , Belgian geologist and petrographer, was born at Ronse, in East Flanders, on 27 September 1842. He was educated for the church of Rome, and from 1866 to 1869 he was superintendent at the college de la Paix, Namur.
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Preston E. James
1899 - 1986 (87 years)
Preston Everett James was an American geographer. He was president of the American Association of Geographers from 1951 to 1952, and gave the annual presidential address at their 1966 banquet. James' work had a distinct focus on the geography of Latin America, and as such, the Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers' Preston E. James Eminent Latin Americanist Career Award is named for him.
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Hans Cloos
1885 - 1951 (66 years)
Hans Cloos was a prominent German structural geologist. Born in Magdeburg, Germany, Hans Cloos earned his doctorate at Freiburg in 1910, then worked in Indonesia and Namibia up until the start of First World War. During the war his geological skills were put to use along the western front.
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Randy Read
1957 - 1983 (26 years)
Randy John Read is a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow and professor of protein crystallography at the University of Cambridge. Education Read was educated at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada where he was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in 1979 followed by a PhD in 1986 for X-ray crystallography of serine proteases and their protein inhibitors supervised by Michael N. G. James.
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James Gilluly
1896 - 1980 (84 years)
James Gilluly was an American geologist. Regarding the Cupriferous Porphyry Genesis, Gilluly integrated detailed observations of the Ajo porphyry between 1936 and 1936 with experimental data . Gilluly concluded that after the Ajo quartz monzonite intruded and crystallized, it was fractured by magmatic bypass solutions . Gilluly frequency experimental restrictions to estimate a paleo depth between 1000 and 3000 , consistent with solidus temperatures of 900 °C for granite, containing 4% by weight of water. He realized that the source magmatic content was water, sulfur and halogens, and that the binders can form complexes with metals to produce an aqueous fluid with larger volumes.
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Glenn Thomas Trewartha
1896 - 1984 (88 years)
Glenn Thomas Trewartha was an American geographer of Cornish American descent. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, with a Ph.D. in 1924. He taught at the University of Wisconsin.
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Hugo Benioff
1899 - 1968 (69 years)
Victor Hugo Benioff was an American seismologist and a professor at the California Institute of Technology. He is best remembered for his work in charting the location of deep earthquakes in the Pacific Ocean.
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Arthur Francis Buddington
1890 - 1980 (90 years)
Arthur Francis "Bud" Buddington was an American geologist. Born in Wilmington, Delaware, he grew up there and in West Mystic, Connecticut. He was educated at Brown University and Princeton University.
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Isaiah Bowman
1878 - 1950 (72 years)
Isaiah Bowman, AB, Ph. D. , was an American geographer and President of the Johns Hopkins University, 1935–1948, controversial for his antisemitism and inaction in Jewish resettlement during WWII. Biography Bowman was born in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. His family was Mennonite, and, at the age of eight weeks, Bowman's father moved his family to a log cabin in Brown City, Michigan, sixty miles north of Detroit. In 1900, Isaiah became an American citizen and began intensive study to prepare himself for admittance to Harvard. Studying first at Michigan State Normal College in Ypsilanti , Bowman c...
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Sverre Petterssen
1898 - 1974 (76 years)
Sverre Petterssen was a Norwegian meteorologist, prominent in the field of weather analysis and forecasting. Early life Born in Norway into a humble family, he paid for his higher education by working at the telegraph office, and a nursery provided by the armed forces that he joined as a recruit. He studied in Bergen where he met Tor Bergeron during a lecture, and was so impressed by his analysis of a 1922 storm that he joined the Bergen School of Meteorology in 1923. In the late 1920s, he worked at the Geophysical Institute in Tromsø, northern Norway.
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Owen Thomas Jones
1878 - 1967 (89 years)
Owen Thomas Jones, FRS FGS was a Welsh geologist. Education He was born in Beulah, near Newcastle Emlyn, Cardiganshire, the only son of David Jones and Margaret Thomas. He attended the local village school in Trewen before going to Pencader Grammar School in 1893. In 1896 he went up to University College, Aberystwyth, to study physics, graduating in 1900. He then went to Trinity College, Cambridge, and was awarded a B.A. degree in Natural Sciences in 1902.
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Henry Hurd Swinnerton
1875 - 1966 (91 years)
Henry Hurd Swinnerton was a British geologist. He was professor of geology at University College Nottingham from 1910 to 1946. Swinnerton was educated at the Royal College of Science, and earned a doctorate in zoology from the University of London in July 1902.
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Adolf Carl Noé
1873 - 1939 (66 years)
Adolf Carl Noé was an Austrian-born paleobotanist. He is credited for identifying the first coal ball in the United States in 1922, which renewed interest in them. He also developed a method of peeling coal balls using nitrocellulose. Many of the paleobotanical materials owned by the University of Chicago's Walker Museum were provided by Noé, where he was also a curator of fossil plants. He was also a research associate at the Field Museum of Natural History, where he assisted with their reconstruction of a Carboniferous forest.
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Katsutada Sezawa
1895 - 1944 (49 years)
Katsutada Sezawa was a Japanese geophysicist . Sezawa's key work was on the mathematical aspects of wave transmission in media of different viscosities and the Sezawa wave mode of surface waves is named after him.
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Paul F. Kerr
1897 - 1981 (84 years)
Dr. Paul F. Kerr , was a Professor of Mineralogy at Columbia University. During the second World War, he was tasked with locating and procuring supplies of uranium for the Manhattan Project. Kerr had an academic interest in the geology of tungsten, uranium and clay minerals. He pioneered the use of X-rays in the process of mineral identification and is considered to be one of the fathers of applied mineralogy. At Columbia University he was instrumental in the founding of the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory.
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Hans P. Eugster
1925 - 1987 (62 years)
Hans Peter Eugster was a Swiss-American geochemist, mineralogist, and petrologist. Education Eugster studied at ETH Zurich with Diplom in 1948 and D.Sc. in 1951 under Paul Niggli with a dissertation on metamorphic recrystallization in the eastern part of the Aar massif. As a postdoctoral fellow, Eugster studied optical spectroscopy from 1951 to 1952 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was also influenced by research on petrology done by James Burleigh Thompson's team at Harvard University.
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P.A. Sheppard
1907 - 1977 (70 years)
Professor Percival Albert "Peter" Sheppard CBE FRS was a Meteorologist at Imperial College, London from 1952 to 1974 and thereafter emeritus professor. He was born in Box, Wiltshire and was educated at City of Bath Boys School and the University of Bristol, graduating with a first class honours BSc in 1927. He stayed on there as a student demonstrator, doing research on the loading of gaseous ions by polar molecules.
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David T. Griggs
1911 - 1974 (63 years)
David Tressel Griggs was an American geophysicist. He served as the second Chief Scientist of the U.S. Air Force from 1951 to 1952. Early life David Griggs was born in Columbus, Ohio. His father was Robert Fiske Griggs, who discovered the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes near Mount Katmai in Alaska. The highest area in this area was officially named Mount Griggs in his honor. David accompanied his father on an expedition to that area in 1930.
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Sergei Ivanovich Tomkeieff
1892 - 1968 (76 years)
Prof Sergei Ivanovich Tomkeieff FRSE FGS was a 20th-century Russian and British geologist and petrologist who won the Geological Society's Lyell Medal in 1966. Life Tomkeieff was born on 20 October 1892 in Vilna, in the Russian Empire, and studied petrology in Petrograd Polytechnic Institute. Tomkeieff came to Britain either during or just after the First World War, and began lecturing in geology at Anderson College in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1920.
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Philip Kuenen
1902 - 1976 (74 years)
Philip Henry Kuenen was a Dutch geologist. Kuenen spent his earliest youth in Scotland, as his father was professor of physics at University College, Dundee until 1906. He studied geology at Leiden University, where he was a pupil of K. Martin and B.G. Escher. He finished his studies in 1925 and then became assistant to Escher. He worked on paleontology and experimental geology.
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Gordon Manley
1902 - 1980 (78 years)
Gordon Valentine Manley, FRGS was a British climatologist who has been described as "probably the best known, most prolific and most expert on the climate of Britain of his generation". He assembled the Central England temperature series of monthly mean temperatures stretching back to 1659, which is the longest standardised instrumental record available for anywhere in the world. It provides a benchmark for proxy records of climatic change for the period covered, and is a notable example of scientific scholarship and perseverance . His two papers describing the work are available online.
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Jule Gregory Charney
1917 - 1981 (64 years)
Jule Gregory Charney was an American meteorologist who played an important role in developing numerical weather prediction and increasing understanding of the general circulation of the atmosphere by devising a series of increasingly sophisticated mathematical models of the atmosphere. His work was the driving force behind many national and international weather initiatives and programs.
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Cecil Edgar Tilley
1894 - 1973 (79 years)
Cecil Edgar Tilley FRS HonFRSE PGS was an Australian-British petrologist and geologist. Life He was born in Unley, Adelaide, the youngest child of John Thomas Edward Tilley, a civil engineer from London, and his wife South Australia-born wife, Catherine Jane Nicholas.
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Bruce C. Heezen
1924 - 1977 (53 years)
Bruce Charles Heezen was an American geologist. He worked with oceanographic cartographer Marie Tharp at Columbia University to map the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in the 1950s. Biography Heezen was born in Vinton, Iowa. An only child, he moved at age six with his parents to Muscatine, Iowa, where he graduated from high school in 1942. He received his B.A. from the University of Iowa in 1947. He received his M.A. in 1952 and a Ph.D in 1957 from Columbia University.
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Richard Foster Flint
1902 - 1976 (74 years)
Richard Foster Flint was an American geologist. Biography He was born in Chicago on March 1, 1902. Flint graduated from the University of Chicago and earned his Ph.D. in geology at the University of California graduating in 1925. He then joined Yale as a member of the faculty, becoming a full professor in 1945.
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