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
Alfred Woodford
1890 - 1990 (100 years)
Alfred Oswald Woodford was an American geologist. He was the founding director of the geology department at Pomona College, where he taught for four decades. He was nicknamed "Woody". Early life and education Woodford was born in Upland, California, on February 27, 1890, to a family of successful citrus farmers. He moved with his family to neighboring Claremont in 1909, and graduated from Pomona College with a degree in chemistry in 1913. He subsequently pursued graduate work in soil chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, and received his doctorate in 1921.
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Winfried Otto Schumann
1888 - 1974 (86 years)
Winfried Otto Schumann was a German physicist and electrical engineer who predicted the Schumann resonances, a series of low-frequency resonances caused by lightning discharges in the atmosphere. Biography Winfried Schumann was born in Tübingen, Germany, the son of a physical chemist. His early years were spent in Kassel and in Berndorf, a town near Vienna. He majored in electrical engineering at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. In 1912, he gained a doctorate with a thesis on high-voltage technology under the supervision of Engelbert Arnold. Prior to the First World War, he managed the ...
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Felix Andries Vening Meinesz
1887 - 1966 (79 years)
Felix Andries Vening Meinesz was a Dutch geophysicist and geodesist. He is known for his invention of a precise method for measuring gravity . Thanks to his invention, it became possible to measure gravity at sea, which led him to the discovery of gravity anomalies above the ocean floor. He later attributed these anomalies to continental drift. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society.
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Howard Meyerhoff
1899 - 1982 (83 years)
Howard Augustus Meyerhoff was an American geologist who taught geology at Smith College from 1925 to 1949. He served as administrative secretary of the American Association for the Advancement of Science , as well as editor-in-chief of its journal, Science, from 1949 to 1953. He conducted research on the geology of Puerto Rico, which led to him publishing the book Geology of Porto Rico in 1933.
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James Wordie
1889 - 1962 (73 years)
Sir James Mann Wordie CBE FRS FRSGS LLD was a Scottish polar explorer and geologist. Friends knew him as Jock Wordie. He was President of the Royal Geographical Society from 1951 to 1954. Early life and education Wordie was born at Partick, Glasgow, the son of Jane Catherine and John Wordie, owner of Wordie & Co., a major carrier and carting contractor, with multiple premises throughout Glasgow. He had a sister, Helen. The family lived at 4 Buckingham Terrace in the Hillhead district. The house, which still stands, is a mid-terraced 19th-century three-storey and basement house facing Great W...
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Siemon Muller
1900 - 1970 (70 years)
Siemon William Muller was an American paleontologist and geologist, known for his studies on Triassic paleontology and stratigraphy, and for his work on permafrost. Siemon Muller was born in Blagoveshchensk on May 9, 1900 . Siemon attended the Russian Naval Academy until the Russian Revolution overtook the nation, when he moved to Shanghai to work with an American company. He sailed to the United States in 1921, and enrolled at the University of Oregon, where he studied geology. He graduated in 1927, and married Vera Vilamovsky the next year. Muller earned his master's degree from Stanford Un...
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Erling Dorf
1905 - 1984 (79 years)
Erling Dorf was an American geologist. He was born July 19, 1905, and died in April 1984. He was hired in 1928 as a professor of geology at Princeton University. He retired from Princeton in 1974. He was a renowned paleobotanist working on the floras of the Late Cretaceous and Paleogene. He was married to Ruth Kemmerer Dorf. They had three sons and a daughter: Thomas Alfred Dorf , Norman Kemmerer Dorf , Robert "Bob" Erling Dorf and Molly Dorf Purrington .
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Myra Keen
1905 - 1986 (81 years)
Angeline Myra Keen was an American malacologist and invertebrate paleontologist. She was an expert on the evolution of marine mollusks. With a PhD in psychology. Keen went from being a volunteer, identifying shells at Stanford, and having no formal training in biology or geology, to being one of the world's foremost malacologists. She was called the "First Lady of Malacology".
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Edgar W. Woolard
1899 - 1978 (79 years)
Edgar William Woolard was an American meteorologist, mathematician and planetary scientist. He was born in El Paso, Texas and received his college education from the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. During World War I, Woolard served in the U.S. Army. In 1919, he was employed at the U.S. Weather Bureau as an assistant meteorologist, where he would remain until 1928. He resigned to join the faculty of George Washington University as a mathematics instructor. Woolard was granted his Ph.D. from the university with a thesis titled, On the Geometrical Theory of Halos, published in 1929.
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Fred B. Kniffen
1900 - 1993 (93 years)
Fred Bowerman Kniffen was an American geographer and distinguished professor in the Department of Geography and Anthropology at Louisiana State University for over 64 years. Kniffen had a background in anthropology, geography, and geology when he arrived at Louisiana State University in the late 1920s. While there, he made great strides in the Department of Geography and Anthropology that led to the development of new research areas, additional courses, and well trained graduate students. Kniffen stressed the importance of learning and understanding the history of geography, along with blending physical geography and anthropology with cultural geography.
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Valter Schytt
1919 - 1985 (66 years)
Stig Valter Schytt was a Swedish glaciologist. Biography Schytt was born at Solna in Stockholm, Sweden. He studied physics and mathematics at Stockholm University and was awarded Master of Philosophy in 1946, Licentiate in 1947 and Ph. D in 1958. He became a lector in geography at Stockholm University in 1943, glaciologist with the Swedish Antarctic Committee in 1948, research associate at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois in 1953 and assistant teacher in geography at Stockholm University in 1955. He became associated with the Swedish Research Council in 1963, an assistant professor in 1969 and was a professor from 1970.
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Victor Goldschmidt
1888 - 1947 (59 years)
Victor Moritz Goldschmidt was a Norwegian mineralogist considered to be the founder of modern geochemistry and crystal chemistry, developer of the Goldschmidt Classification of elements. Early life and education Goldschmidt was born in Zürich, Switzerland on 27 January 1888. His father, Heinrich Jacob Goldschmidt, was a physical chemist at the Eidgenössisches Polytechnikum and his mother, Amelie Koehne , was the daughter of a lumber merchant. They named him Viktor after a colleague of Heinrich, Victor Meyer. His father's family was Jewish back to at least 1600 and mostly highly educated, with rabbis, judges, lawyers and military officers among their numbers.
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Arthur Raistrick
1896 - 1991 (95 years)
Arthur Raistrick was a British geologist, archaeologist, academic, and writer. He was born in a working class home in Saltaire, Yorkshire. He was a scholar in many related, and some unrelated, fields. He published some 330 articles, books, pamphlets and scholarly treatises.
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Armin K. Lobeck
1886 - 1958 (72 years)
Armin Kohl Lobeck was a noted American Cartographer, Geomorphologist and Landscape Artist. He was born in New York City on August 16, 1886, but his family moved to Haworth, New Jersey, three years later.
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Otto Jaekel
1863 - 1929 (66 years)
Otto Max Johannes Jaekel was a German paleontologist and geologist. Biography Jaekel was born in Neusalz , Prussian Silesia, the son of a builder and the youngest of seven children. He studied at the Ritterakademie in Liegnitz . After graduating in 1883, he came to study geology and paleontology under Ferdinand Roemer in Breslau until 1885. Karl von Zittel awarded a PhD to Jaekel in Munich in 1886. Between 1887 and 1889, Jaekel was an assistant of E.W. Benecke at the Geologisch-Paläontologisches Institut in Straßburg, where he received his Habilitation.
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George Brown Barbour
1890 - 1977 (87 years)
George Brown Barbour FGS FRSE FRSSA was an internationally renowned Scottish geologist and educator. Life He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, 22 August 1890. He was the son of the eminent gynaecologist, Alexander Hugh Freeland Barbour and Margaret Nelson Brown.
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Filip Hjulström
1902 - 1982 (80 years)
Henning Filip Hjulström was a Swedish geographer. Hjulström was professor of geography at Uppsala University from 1944, and in 1949, when the subject of geography was split, he became professor of Physical Geography.
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David Williams
1898 - 1984 (86 years)
David Williams was a noted British geologist. Williams was born of Welsh parents in Liverpool, England. After studying civil engineering at the University of Liverpool, he became interested in geology after his twin brother Howel began to study geology. David Williams studied under Percy Boswell at the University of Liverpool. There David Williams received his Ph.D. for research on paleozoic volcanic rock in Snowdonia.
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William Warntz
1922 - 1988 (66 years)
William Warntz was an American mathematical geographer based at the Harvard Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis. He was a "pioneer in mathematical approaches to spatial analysis". Life Warntz studied economics at the University of Pennsylvania, gaining a PhD there. His papers are held at Cornell University Library.
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William John McCallien
1902 - 1981 (79 years)
William John McCallien FRSE FGS OBE was a 20th-century Scottish geologist and artist. He is known generally as William J. McCallien as an author, a common misconception is that he was also the artist known as W. J. McCallien , this was in fact his father.
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Adolph Knopf
1882 - 1966 (84 years)
Adolph Knopf was an American geologist. Educated at the University of California, Berkeley, he held professional appointments at the United States Geological Survey, Yale University, and Stanford University. He was primarily a petrologist and mineralogist, though later in his career contributed to geochronology. He performed much of his field work in the western United States, investigating mineral deposits in Alaska, the Boulder Batholith in Montana, and the Gold Country of California.
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Guy D. Smith
1907 - 1981 (74 years)
Guy Donald Smith was a distinguished international soil scientist, who was born in Atlantic, Iowa. Biography Guy graduated from the University of Illinois circa 1929, earned his master's degree from the University of Missouri in 1934, and received his PhD in 1940 from the University of Illinois.
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Adolf Pabst
1899 - 1990 (91 years)
Adolf Pabst was an American mineralogist and geologist. Biography Pabst received in 1925 his bachelor's degree at the University of Illinois and in 1928 his Ph.D. in geology and mineralogy at the University of California, Berkeley under George D. Louderbeck with a thesis on mineral inclusionss in the granitic plutons of the Sierra Nevada. For the academic year 1928/29 he won an American-Scandinavian Foundation fellowship for postdoctoral study; on this postdoc under Victor Moritz Goldschmidt in Oslo, Pabst married Gudrun Lisabeth Bert. After returning to Berkeley, he became in 1929 an instructor, in 1931 an assistant professor, in 1936 an associate professor, and in 1944 a full professor.
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Johan Gunnar Andersson
1874 - 1960 (86 years)
Johan Gunnar Andersson was a Swedish archaeologist, paleontologist and geologist, closely associated with the beginnings of Chinese archaeology in the 1920s. Early life and polar research After studies at Uppsala University, and research in the polar regions, Andersson served as Director of Sweden's National Geological Survey.
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Edward Henry Kraus
1875 - 1973 (98 years)
Edward Henry Kraus was a professor of mineralogy at the University of Michigan and also served as Dean of the Summer Session, 1915–1933, Dean of the College of Pharmacy, 1923–1933, and Dean of the College of Literature, Science and the Arts, 1933–1945.
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Martin Gerard Rutten
1910 - 1970 (60 years)
Martin Gerard Rutten was a Dutch geologist, paleontologist, and biologist. He worked as a professor of geology at the universities of Amsterdam and Utrecht. Rutten was born in Jombang, Indonesia to geologist Louis Martin Robert and biologist Johanna Catharina Pekelharing. He joined the Dutch Youth Association for Nature Study and took an early interest in birds and published briefly on birds observed during his later travels. Like his father, who was a geologist in the oil industry, he took an interest in geology and natural history travelling around the world. He studied at the University of...
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Serge von Bubnoff
1888 - 1957 (69 years)
Sergius Nikolajewitsch von Bubnoff was a geologist and geotechnical engineer with Germano-Baltic ancestry who made important contributions to the rebuilding of geological research in East Germany after World War II. Starting in 1922, he was a professor at the University of Breslau. In 1929 he became a professor at the University of Greifswald and in 1950, he started his professorship at the Humboldt-University of Berlin. The Bubnoff unit, which is the unit of measure for the speed of geological processes, is named after him.
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James Edwin Hawley
1897 - 1965 (68 years)
James Edwin Hawley was a Canadian geologist and distinguished Professor of Mineralogy at Queen's University. Biography Hawley was raised in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. He earned both a Bachelor’s and a Master's degree from Queen’s University in 1918 and 1920, respectively. After completing his Masters, Hawley spent three years working in petroleum geology in Alberta, Ecuador, Burma and India. In 1926, he earned his PhD at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He stayed there for three years as an Assistant Professor.
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Julius Büdel
1903 - 1983 (80 years)
Julius Büdel was a German geomorphologist noted for his work on the influence of climate in shaping landscapes and landforms. In his work Büdel stressed the importance of inherited landforms in present-day landscapes and argued that many landforms are the result of a combination of processes, and not of a single process. Büdel estimated that 95% of mid-latitude landforms are relict. Büdel studied both cold-climate processes in Svalbard and "tropical" weathering processes in India to understand the origin of the relief of Central Europe, which he argued was a palimpsest of landforms formed at different times and under different climates.
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George Louderback
1874 - 1957 (83 years)
George Davis Louderback was an American geologist, known for identifying and describing benitoite and joaquinite. Biography Louderback was born in San Francisco, and received an A.B. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1896, followed by a Ph.D. in 1899. He married Clara Augusta Henry on October 3, 1899.
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Andrew O'Dell
1909 - 1966 (57 years)
Andrew Charles O'Dell FRSE FRGS FRSGS was a Scottish geographer and antiquarian. A keen railway enthusiast he left a large collection of railway memorabilia to Aberdeen University, known as the O'Dell Collection. He was joint founder of the Institute of British Geographers in 1933.
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Walter George Woolnough
1876 - 1958 (82 years)
Walter George Woolnough was an Australian geologist. Woolnough was born in Brushgrove, Grafton, New South Wales, and attended Sydney Boys High School , Newington College and the University of Sydney. In 1897, as an undergraduate, he accompanied Edgeworth David's expedition to Funafuti Atoll, where Charles Darwin's theory of the formation of coral reefs was tested.
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Percy Viosca
1892 - 1961 (69 years)
Percy Viosca Jr. was a freshwater and marine biologist who specialized in the fauna of Louisiana and in the aquaculture of sportfish. He identified four species of native Louisiana iris and experimented extensively with iris breeding, much like his contemporary Caroline Dormon. He was awarded bachelor's and master's degrees in science at Tulane University, where he was also appointed lecturer.
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Llewellyn Ivor Price
1905 - 1980 (75 years)
Llewellyn Ivor Price was one of the first Brazilian paleontologists. His work contributed not only to the development of Brazilian but also to global paleontology. He collected Staurikosaurus in 1936, the first dinosaur discovered in Brazil.
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George Kish
1914 - 1989 (75 years)
Professor George Kish was an internationally recognized authority known for work in geography and the history of cartography. His professional papers are held at the Bentley Historical Library in Ann Arbor.
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Elinor Wight Gardner
1892 - 1980 (88 years)
Elinor Wight Gardner , a geology lecturer at Bedford College, London and research fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, is best known for her field surveys with Gertrude Caton–Thompson of the Kharga Oasis which are now recognized as pioneering interdisciplinary research in Africa.
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Fritiof Fryxell
1900 - 1986 (86 years)
Fritiof M. Fryxell was an American educator, geologist and mountain climber, best known for his research and writing on the Teton Range of Wyoming. Upon the establishment of Grand Teton National Park in 1929, he was named the park’s first naturalist, a position he held for six summers. He was also an accomplished biographer, publishing works on several artists and explorers of the American West.
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Maurice Hill
1919 - 1966 (47 years)
Maurice Neville Hill FRS was a British marine geophysicist. Background Hill was the son of Nobel Prize–winning physiologist Archibald Vivian Hill and his wife Margaret Hill, the daughter of John Neville Keynes and sister of John Maynard Keynes. His sister was Polly Hill and his brother the biophysicist David Keynes Hill.
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Darashaw Nosherwan Wadia
1883 - 1969 (86 years)
Darashaw Nosherwan Wadia FRS was a pioneering geologist in India and among the first Indian scientists to work in the Geological Survey of India. He is remembered for his work on the stratigraphy of the Himalayas. He helped establish geological studies and investigations in India, specifically at the Institute of Himalayan Geology, which was renamed in 1976 after him as the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology. His textbook on the Geology of India, first published in 1919, continues to be in use.
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Noel Benson
1885 - 1957 (72 years)
William Noel Benson FRS FRGS was an English-born research geologist and academic active first in Australia and then New Zealand. After studying geology at the University of Sydney, Benson worked temporarily at the University of Adelaide before returning to Sydney as a demonstrator. After winning an 1851 Exhibition Science Scholarship in 1910 he left Sydney to study at the University of Cambridge, where he worked until 1913. He returned to Sydney in 1914 as the Macleay Fellow in Geology, leaving in 1917 to become Chair of the Geology Department at the University of Otago, where for many years he was the only lecturer.
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Clarence Glacken
1909 - 1989 (80 years)
Clarence James Glacken was Professor of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley. He was known for a 1967 magnum opus, Traces on the Rhodian Shore, that demonstrated how perceptions of the natural environment shaped the course of human events over millennia. He is recognised as a key contributor to the field of environmental history.
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Fritz Müller
1926 - 1980 (54 years)
Fritz Müller was a Swiss glaciologist, who carried out research in Switzerland, Greenland, the Canadian Arctic, Antarctica and the Himalayas. Fritz Müller was born 1926 in a little town near Zurich and graduated in 1954 in Geographies and Geology from the University of Zurich. After expeditions to Greenland and Mount Everest, he concentrated his work on cold region hydrology. In 1959 he became the scientific leader of a Canadian expedition to Axel Heiberg Island organised by McGill University, where he became Assistance Professor of Glaciology. In 1970 he changed to ETH Zurich, where he becam...
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Hans Bobek
1903 - 1990 (87 years)
Hans Bobek was an Austrian geographer. After his studies in geography at the University of Innsbruck, where Johann Sölch—a pupil of Albrecht Penck in Vienna—was his main teacher, he became professor of geography at the University of Vienna . Bobek is noted for his works on cultural and social geography, urban geography as well as on the regional geography of the Near and Middle East, then primarily known as the "Orient". He was, among others, the author of Iran: Probleme eines unterentwickelten Landes alter Kultur. His theory about rural and urban interactions was called Rentenkapitalismus; a...
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Carl-Erik Quensel
1907 - 1977 (70 years)
Carl-Erik Quensel was a Swedish statistician and demographer, specializing in population statistics, statistical distribution theory and biostatistics. Biography Early life Carl-Erik Quensel was born in Malmö, Sweden on 9 October 1907, the son of Conrad and Ester Quensel. .
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Esther Applin
1895 - 1972 (77 years)
Esther Applin was an American geologist and paleontologist. She completed her undergraduate degree in 1919 from the University of California, Berkeley. Later, she completed a master's degree which was focused on microfossils. She was a leading figure in the use of microfossils to determine the age of rock formation for use in oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico region. Her job was to examine microfossils collected in drill holes to determine the age of the rock into which the company was drilling. Applin's discoveries were crucial to successful drilling operations across the entire oil industry.
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Franklin Sibly
1883 - 1948 (65 years)
Thomas Franklin Sibly K.B.E. was a British geologist who had a distinguished career in University administration, being first Principal of University College, Swansea , and later Vice-Chancellor of the University of Wales, Principal of the University of London and from 1929 to 1946 Vice-Chancellor of the University of Reading.
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Abdul Jabbar Abdullah
1911 - 1969 (58 years)
Abdul Jabbar Abdullah Sam was an Iraqi wave theory physicist, dynamical meteorologist, and President Emeritus of the University of Baghdad. Abdullah obtained a doctorate in meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1946 before returning to Iraq to become an educator and researcher. After several years as the President of the University of Baghdad, Abdullah left Iraq amid a period of social unrest, and lived in the United States for the remainder of his life.
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Reino Antero Hirvonen
1908 - 1989 (81 years)
Reino Antero Hirvonen was a famous Finnish physical geodesist, also well known for contributions in mathematical and astronomical geodesy. He worked at first at the Finnish Geodetic Institute under W.A. Heiskanen on gravimetric geoid determination, publishing his dissertation The Continental Undulations of the Geoid in 1934 on the determination of a global geoid model from only 4500 data points.
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M. S. Krishnan
1898 - 1970 (72 years)
Maharajapuram Seetharaman Krishnan was an Indian Geologist. He was the first Indian to serve as the Director of the Geological Survey of India. Early years Krishnan was born on 24 August 1898 in Tanjore, Madras Presidency. After school education in Tanjore, he continued his studies in St.Joseph's College, Tiruchirappalli. He graduated with B.A. Honours in geology from the Presidency College, Madras, in 1919, undertook post-graduate training and research with ARCS Scholarship at Imperial College London in 1921 and received his Diploma of Imperial College in 1923 and in 1924, he was awarded t...
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Kenneth Walton
1923 - 1979 (56 years)
Prof Kenneth Walton FRSE was a 20th-century Scottish geographer. He was Vice Principal of the University of Aberdeen 1977 to 1979. Life He was born in Cheshire in 1923. He was educated at King's School in Macclesfield.
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