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.
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List of the most influential people in Earth Sciences,
#3101
Władysław Szafer
1886 - 1970 (84 years)
Prof Władysław Szafer PAS HFRSE was a Polish botanist, palaeobotanist, quaternary geologist and professor of botany at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. He was a world pioneer in nature conservation.
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Kenneth Mason
1887 - 1976 (89 years)
Lieut-Colonel Kenneth Mason MC was a British soldier and explorer notable as the first statutory professor of Geography at the University of Oxford. His work surveying the Himalayas was rewarded in 1927 with a Royal Geographical Society Founder's Medal, the citation reading for his connection between the surveys of India and Russian Turkestan, and his leadership of the Shaksgam Expedition.
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Karl Cäsar von Leonhard
1779 - 1862 (83 years)
Karl Cäsar von Leonhard was a German mineralogist and geologist. His son, Gustav von Leonhard, was also a mineralogist. From 1797 he studied at the universities of Marburg and Göttingen, where Johann Friedrich Blumenbach was an important influence to his career. He collected many mineralogical specimens on scientific excursions in Saxony and Thuringia, continued by travel to the Austrian Alps . During his journeys he made the acquaintance of Friedrich Mohs and Karl von Moll. In 1818, through assistance from Baden minister of state Sigismund von Reitzenstein, he was appointed professor of mine...
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Dicaearchus
350 BC - 280 BC (70 years)
Dicaearchus of Messana , also written Dikaiarchos , was a Greek philosopher, geographer and author. Dicaearchus was a student of Aristotle in the Lyceum. Very little of his work remains extant. He wrote on geography and the history of Greece, of which his most important work was his Life of Greece. Although modern scholars often consider him a pioneer in the field of cartography, this is based on a misinterpretation of a reference in Cicero to Dicaearchus' tabulae, which does not refer to any maps made by Dicaearchus but is a pun on account books and refers to Dicaearchus' Descent into the Sanctuary of Trophonius.
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Hans Steffen
1865 - 1936 (71 years)
Hans Steffen Hoffman was a German geographer and explorer of the Aysén Region in western Patagonia. Steffen also worked as a teacher, encyclopedist and historian. Steffen Glacier on the Northern Patagonian Ice Field is named after him.
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Alfred Kirchhoff
1838 - 1907 (69 years)
Alfred Kirchhoff was a German geographer and naturalist. Biography He was educated at Jena and Bonn, and for several years was an instructor at schools in Mülheim an der Ruhr and Erfurt. From 1871 to 1873 he was a lecturer on geography at the Kriegsakademie of Berlin, and in the latter year was appointed to the chair of geography in the University of Halle. He was an editor of the zur deutschen Landes- und Volksforschung.
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Viktor Uhlig
1857 - 1911 (54 years)
Viktor Karl Uhlig was an Austrian geologist and paleontologist. Biography He studied geology and mineralogy at the universities of Graz and Vienna, receiving his doctorate in 1879. Afterwards he worked as a research assistant under Melchior Neumayr in Vienna, and in 1891 was named an associate professor of geology and mineralogy at the German Polytechnic in Prague. Two years later he became a full professor, and in 1900 returned to Vienna as a professor of geology and paleontology. In 1907 he was a co-founder of the Geologischen Gesellschaft in Wien.
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Bertram Boltwood
1870 - 1927 (57 years)
Bertram Borden Boltwood was an American pioneer of radiochemistry. Boltwood attended Yale University, became a professor there and in 1910 was appointed chair of the first academic department of radiochemistry. He established that lead was the final decay product of uranium, noted that the lead-uranium ratio was greater in older rocks and, acting on a suggestion by Ernest Rutherford, was the first to measure the age of rocks by the decay of uranium to lead, in 1907. He got results of ages of 400 to 2200 million years, the first successful use of radioactive decay by Pb/U chemical dating. More...
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Gavril Tanfilyev
1857 - 1928 (71 years)
Gavril Ivanovich Tanfilyev was a Russian and Soviet soil scientist and botanist who worked on biogeography and aspects of plants ecology associated with soil and climate and examined the distributional limits of plants. He also produced a classification of the marshes.
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Arnold von Lasaulx
1839 - 1886 (47 years)
Arnold Constantin Peter Franz von Lasaulx was a German mineralogist and petrographer. Life He was born at Kastellaun near Coblenz, and educated at the University of Berlin, where he took his Ph.D. in 1868. In 1875, he became an associate professor of mineralogy at Breslau, and in 1880, a professor of mineralogy and geology at Bonn. He was distinguished for his researches on minerals and on crystallography, and he was one of the earlier workers on microscopic petrography. He described in 1878 the eruptive rocks of the district of Saar and Moselle.
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Anton Melik
1890 - 1966 (76 years)
Anton Melik was a Slovene geographer. Biography Melik was born in the village of Črna Vas in Carniola, part of Austria-Hungary. Before and during World War I, he studied at the University of Vienna, graduating in 1916 in history and geography. Later he was employed as a secondary school teacher. In 1926–1927 he became an associate professor at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana, in 1932 a senior lecturer, and then in 1938 a professor.
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Louis de Loczy
1891 - 1980 (89 years)
Louis de Loczy . He was the son of Lajos Lóczy, probably the most famous Hungarian geologist. Lajos de Loczy was the first western geologist to describe the structure, geomorphology and stratigraphy of mountain chains bordering the Tibetan Plateau that links the Kunlun Mountains with the north-south-oriented belt of mountains and gorges in central China.
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Robert DeCourcy Ward
1867 - 1931 (64 years)
Robert DeCourcy Ward was an American climatologist, author, educator and leading eugenics and immigration reform advocate in the early 20th Century. He became the first ever professor of climatology in the United States and made contributions to the study of the climate. His advocacy for immigration reform and eugenics led him to co-found the Immigration Restriction League which was instrumental in the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924 which reduced Jewish and Italian immigration to the U.S. by over 95% and completely barred Asian immigration until 1952.
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Olaf Holtedahl
1885 - 1975 (90 years)
Prof Olaf Holtedahl ForMemRS FRSE was a Norwegian geologist . He became a senior lecturer at the University of Oslo in 1914, and was Professor of Geology there from 1920 to 1956. Career Olaf Holtedahl was born in Kristiania , Norway, the son of Arne H. Holtedahl, superintendent of pauper administration, and his wife, Mathilde Madsen.
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Paulus Merula
1558 - 1607 (49 years)
Paulus Merula, or Paul van Merle was a Dutch jurist, classicist, historian, geographer and librarian. In 1592 he was appointed professor of history at Leiden University, and was elevated to full professor in 1593. From 1597 until his death he was librarian to Leiden University Library, and in 1603 he was appointed rector magnificus of the university. He was friends with Janus Dousa and Daniël Heinsius, and was a Leiden contemporary of the humanist Joseph Justus Scaliger.
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Ivan Batakliev
1891 - 1973 (82 years)
Ivan Batakliev is a Bulgarian geographer, historian and geopolitician. Professor, Head of the Department of General Geography and Cultural and Political Geography, Dean of the Faculty of History and Philology and Director of the Geographical Institute of Sofia University ″St. Kliment Ohridski″, co-founder and chairman of the Bulgarian Geographical Society, corresponding member of the geographical societies in Berlin, Prague, Belgrade, Würzburg, Greifswald, the Bulgarian Archaeological Institute and a full member of the Thracian Scientific Institute and the Union of Scientists.
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Albrecht Schrauf
1837 - 1897 (60 years)
Albrecht Schrauf was an Austrian mineralogist and crystallographer. Biography Schrauf studied mathematics, physics and mineralogy at the University of Vienna, where one of his instructors was Wilhelm Josef Grailich. Several years later, he became "custos-adjunct" at the "Imperial Hofmineralien Cabinet" in Vienna. In 1867 he was named first curator of the mineral cabinet, and in 1874 was appointed professor and director of the mineralogical museum at the University of Vienna.
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William Walden Rubey
1898 - 1974 (76 years)
William Walden Rubey was an American geologist. He was born in Moberly, Missouri. He attended the University of Missouri, and in 1920 he graduated with an A.B. degree. During the same year he married Susan Elsie Manovill, and joined the U.S. Geological Survey. He performed his graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University and Yale University.
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Wang Chong
27 - 97 (70 years)
Wang Chong , courtesy name Zhongren , was a Chinese astronomer, meteorologist, naturalist, philosopher, and writer active during the Eastern Han dynasty. He developed a rational, secular, naturalistic and mechanistic account of the world and of human beings and gave a materialistic explanation of the origin of the universe. His main work was the Lunheng . This book contained many theories involving early sciences of astronomy and meteorology, and Wang Chong was even the first in Chinese history to mention the use of the square-pallet chain pump, which became common in irrigation and public works in China thereafter.
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Hugo Hergesell
1859 - 1938 (79 years)
Hugo Emil Hergesell was a German meteorologist. Works He co-founded "Beiträge zur Physik der freien Atmosphäre" Ergebnisse aerologischer Beobachtungen an internationalen Tagen, 1900–1913, 1925–1928
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Henri Coudreau
1859 - 1899 (40 years)
Henri Anatole Coudreau was a French professor of history and geography, explorer and geographer of French Guiana and the tributaries of the Amazon. Exploration of the Amazon At the time of the "contesté franco-brésilien" boundary dispute between colonial France and Brazil, Coudreau worked in the service of Governors of the states of Brazil, mapping the Amazon's tributaries and identifying possible resources for farmers and foresters. On behalf of the State of Pará, Coudreau was charged with exploring the Trombetas river, shortly after he married Octavie Coudreau.
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Carsten Niebuhr
1733 - 1815 (82 years)
Carsten Niebuhr, or Karsten Niebuhr , was a German mathematician, cartographer, and explorer in the service of Denmark. He is renowned for his participation in the Danish Arabia expedition . He was the father of the Danish-German statesman and historian Barthold Georg Niebuhr, who published an account of his father's life in 1817.
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Maurycy Pius Rudzki
1862 - 1916 (54 years)
Maurycy Pius Rudzki was the first person to call himself a professor of geophysics. He held the Chair of Geophysics at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, and established the Institute of Geophysics there in 1895. His research specialty was elastic anisotropy, as applied to wave propagation in the earth, and he established many of the fundamental results in that arena.
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William Smith
1790 - 1847 (57 years)
William Smith was an English captain born in Blyth, Northumberland, who discovered the South Shetland Islands, an archipelago off the Graham Land in Antarctica. His discovery was the first ever made south of 60° south latitude, in the present Antarctic Treaty area.
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Elisabeth Gottschalk
1912 - 1989 (77 years)
Maria Karoline Elisabeth Gottschalk was a German-born Dutch historical geographer and professor. She was noted for Stormvloeden en rivieroverstromingen in Nederland , a three volume study into the historical storm surges and river floods, which is considered a standard work which corrected the existing theories behind storm surges.
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Johan Georg Forchhammer
1794 - 1865 (71 years)
Johan Georg Forchhammer was a Danish mineralogist and geologist. Early life and education Forchhammer was born at Husum, Schleswig. He studied at the universities of Kiel and Copenhagen from 1815 to 1818.
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Friedrich Burmeister
1890 - 1969 (79 years)
Friedrich Burmeister was a German geophysicist. He was director of the Munich University’s Geomagnetic Observatory. Burmeister studied mathematics and physics at the University of Munich under Hugo von Seeliger and Arnold Sommerfeld, and he received his doctorate in 1919. Upon graduation, he became Director of the Munich Geomagnetic Observatory, of the Geomagnetism Branch of the Munich Earth Observatory, under the Geophysics Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, at the University of Munich. Due to the industrialization of Munich, operation of the observatory became more and more dif...
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Johann Carl Gehler
1732 - 1796 (64 years)
Johann Carl Gehler was a German physician, mineralogist, and anatomist. Born 17 May 1732 in Görlitz, Gehler studied medicine from 1751 to 1758 at the University of Leipzig, where he was a pupil of physician and botanist Christian Gottlieb Ludwig. While a student at Leipzig, he furthered his interest in natural sciences, publishing the mineralogical treatise, De characteribus fossilium externis , as a result. Following graduation, he continued his education by studying mineralogy in Freiberg and obstetrics in Strasbourg as a student of Johann Jakob Fried .
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Gabriel Auguste Daubrée
1814 - 1896 (82 years)
Gabriel Auguste Daubrée MIF FRS FRSE was a French geologist, best known for applying experimental methods to structural geology. He served as the director of the École des Mines as well as the president of the French Academy of Sciences.
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Frederik Johnstrup
1818 - 1894 (76 years)
Johannes Frederik Johnstrup was a Danish professor, geologist and paleontologist. He was the founder of the Danish scientific periodical Meddelelser om Grønland. Biography Johnstrup was born at Christianshavn, Denmark. He attended the Technical University of Denmark where he received B.Sc. in 1844. He became an associate professor of mineralogy and natural science at Sorø Academy in 1846. When the academy closed in 1848, he became assistant lecturer in Kolding. Three years later, he taught in Sorø and in 1866, he became professor of mineralogy and geology at the University of Copenhagen ...
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Edward Hitchcock
1793 - 1864 (71 years)
Edward Hitchcock was an American geologist and the third President of Amherst College . Life Born to poor parents, he attended newly founded Deerfield Academy, where he was later principal, from 1815 to 1818. In 1821 he was ordained as a Congregationalist pastor and served as pastor of the Congregational Church in Conway, Massachusetts, 1821–1825. He left the ministry to become Professor of Chemistry and Natural History at Amherst College. He held that post from 1825 to 1845, serving as Professor of Natural Theology and Geology from 1845 until his death in 1864. In 1845, Hitchcock became President of the College, a post he held until 1854.
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Carl Ludvig Godske
1906 - 1970 (64 years)
Carl Ludvig Schreiner Godske was a Norwegian mathematician and meteorologist. He was born in Bindal. He was a member of the Bergen School of Meteorology, working as meteorologist in Bergen from 1938, and appointed professor at the University of Bergen from 1946. Among his publications is Dynamic Meteorology and Weather Forecasting from 1957. He was also a pioneer in the application of electronic computers in Norway. He chaired the Norwegian Geophysical Society from 1956 to 1957 and was a fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters from 1937. He was decorated Knight, First Class of the Order of St.
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Konrad Oebbeke
1853 - 1932 (79 years)
Konrad Oebbeke was a German geologist and mineralogist. He studied at the Universities of Heidelberg and Erlangen, obtaining his doctorate at the University of Würzburg in 1877. Afterwards he worked as an assistant to the Geological Survey of Bavaria. He served as privat-docent at the University of Munich, later becoming a professor of mineralogy and geology at Erlangen . From 1895 to 1927 he was a professor at the Technische Hochschule of Munich.
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Johannes Letzmann
1885 - 1971 (86 years)
Johannes Peter Letzmann was an Estonian meteorologist, and a pioneering tornado researcher. His prolific output related to severe storms concepts included: developing tornado damage studies, atmospheric vortices, theoretical studies and laboratory simulations, tornado case studies, and observation programs. It generated extensive analysis techniques and insights on tornadoes at a time when there was still very little research on the subject in the United States.
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Marguerite Williams
1895 - 1991 (96 years)
Marguerite Thomas Williams was an American geologist. She was the first African American to earn a doctorate in geology in the United States and dedicated most of her career to teaching geography and social sciences. Williams is a pioneer among geoscientists in recognizing how human activity and landscape management impact erosional processes and the risks of natural flooding.
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John Woodward
1665 - 1728 (63 years)
John Woodward was an English naturalist, antiquarian and geologist, and founder by bequest of the Woodwardian Professorship of Geology at the University of Cambridge. Though a leading supporter of observation and experiment in what we now call science, few of his theories have survived.
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Alexander Dallas Bache
1806 - 1867 (61 years)
Alexander Dallas Bache was an American physicist, scientist, and surveyor who erected coastal fortifications and conducted a detailed survey to map the mideastern United States coastline. Originally an army engineer, he later became Superintendent of the United States Coast Survey, and built it into the foremost scientific institution in the country before the Civil War.
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Fritz Laves
1906 - 1978 (72 years)
Fritz Henning Emil Paul Berndt Laves was a German crystallographer who served as the president of the German Mineralogical Society from 1956 to 1958. He is the namesake of Laves phases and the Laves tilings; the Laves graph, a highly-symmetrical three-dimensional crystal structure that he studied, was named after him by H. S. M. Coxeter.
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Nikolai Korzhenevskiy
1879 - 1958 (79 years)
Nikolai Leopoldovich Korzhenevskiy , born in Zaverezhye, Vitebsk Governorate, Russian Empire , died in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Korzhenevskiy was a Russian Empire and Soviet geographer, glaciologist, and explorer of the Pamir Mountains. His exploration of the Pamirs began in 1903, with support from the military command in the region. Between 1903 and 1928, Korzhenevskiy organized eleven expeditions to various parts of the Pamirs. In August 1910 he discovered one of the highest peaks in the Pamir Mountains, which he named Korzhenevskoi Peak after his wife Evgeniya Korzhenevskaya . In 1928 he produ...
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Leonard Horner
1785 - 1864 (79 years)
Leonard Horner FRSE FRS FGS was a Scottish merchant, geologist and educational reformer. He was the younger brother of Francis Horner. Horner was a founder of the School of Arts of Edinburgh, now Heriot-Watt University and one of the founders of the Edinburgh Academy. A 'radical educational reformer' he was involved in the establishment of University College School. As a commissioner on the Royal Commission on the Employment of Children in Factories, Horner arguably did more to improve the working conditions of women and children in North England than any other person in the 19th century.
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Ding Wenjiang
1887 - 1936 (49 years)
Ding Wenjiang , courtesy name Zaijun, was a Chinese essayist, geologist, and writer active especially in the Republic of China . In his own time, his name was transcribed as either V.K. Ting, or Ting Wen-chiang.
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Balfour Currie
1902 - 1981 (79 years)
Balfour Watson Currie, was a Canadian scientist specializing in the fields of meteorology and climatology. Early life Born in Montana, he came to Saskatchewan at an early age. His parents moved to a farm homestead at Netherhill, near Kindersley, in the west central region of the province. Because of his pioneer heritage, he was equally comfortable with internationally renowned scientists or with farmers in the field. He came to the University of Saskatchewan as a student and received a Bachelor-level degree in Physics and a Master-level degree in Physics . His Ph.D. program at McGill Univer...
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Ludwik Zejszner
1803 - 1871 (68 years)
Ludwik Zejszner born Ludwig Zeuschner was a Prussian geologist, paleontologist and mineralogist. He is considered a pioneer of cartographic approaches to geology. He taught mineralogy at Warsaw and was a specialist on the Tatra Mountains in the Carpathians where he was also involved in conservation.
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Max Eckert-Greifendorff
1868 - 1938 (70 years)
Max Eckert was a German geographer. Biography He received his education in Löbau and Berlin, and taught for some time at Löbau and Leipzig. In 1903, he became Privatdozent at Kiel University. In 1907, he was appointed to the chair of geography in the Royal Technical High School of Aachen . He invented the six Eckert projections and others such as Eckert-Greifendorff projection
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Mungo Park
1771 - 1806 (35 years)
Mungo Park was a Scottish explorer of West Africa. After an exploration of the upper Niger River around 1796, he wrote a popular and influential travel book titled Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa in which he theorized the Niger and Congo merged to become the same river, though it was later proven that they are different rivers. He was killed during a second expedition, having successfully travelled about two-thirds of the way down the Niger.
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Fredrik Johan Wiik
1839 - 1909 (70 years)
Fredrik Johan Wiik, also known as F.J. Wiik, was a Finnish geologist and mineralogist; in 1877, he was named the first professor of geology and mineralogy at the Imperial Alexander University of Finland, where his students included Jakob Sederholm and Wilhelm Ramsay. He was also the first scientist in Finland to use a petrographic microscope.
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Waldemar Lindgren
1860 - 1939 (79 years)
Waldemar Lindgren was a Swedish-American geologist and a founder of modern economic geology. Life Lindgren was born in Vassmolösa, Kalmar Municipality, Småland, Sweden, the son of Johan and Emma Lindgren. Johan was a judge and member of parliament, Emma the daughter of a clergyman. He attended the Freiberg Mining Academy, Germany, graduating as a mining engineer in 1882.
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J. N. L. Baker
1893 - 1971 (78 years)
John Norman Leonard Baker was a geographer associated with Jesus College, Oxford for nearly sixty years. Born in Liverpool, Baker studied at Liverpool College from 1911 to 1913 before entering Jesus College as an exhibitioner in 1913, where he read Modern History. His undergraduate career was interrupted by the First World War, during which he was wounded on the Somme. He married Phyllis Hancock in 1917 whilst convalescing. He then spent two years in the Indian Army . He returned to Oxford and completed his history degree in 1920 before switching to geography . He obtained the diploma in geography in 1921 and a B.Litt.
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Kostiantyn Voblyi
1876 - 1947 (71 years)
Kostiantyn Hryhorovych Voblyi was a Ukrainian economic geographer, scientist economist, professor of the Kyiv University, academician of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences , Vice-president of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences , director of the Institute of Economics . Honored Scientist of Ukraine , awarded the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labour.
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John Cary
1755 - 1835 (80 years)
John Cary was an English cartographer. Life Cary served his apprenticeship as an engraver in London, before setting up his own business in the Strand in 1783. He soon gained a reputation for his maps and globes, his atlas, The New and Correct English Atlas published in 1787, becoming a standard reference work in England.
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