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,
#3151
Marinus J. A. Werger
#3152
Wilhelm Dunker
1809 - 1885 (76 years)
Wilhelm Dunker, full name Wilhelm Bernhard Rudolph Hadrian Dunker was a German geologist, paleontologist and zoologist . Wilhelm Dunker studied mining and metallurgical engineering in Göttingen and worked at first as a trainee with the local mining authority. Soon thereafter he was appointed a teacher of mineralogical sciences at the poly-technical school in Kassel. In 1854 he was appointed professor at the University of Marburg, at which he taught up to his death. Dunker was one of the most important malacologists of his time. He had a very extensive private collection of snails and shells, which he constantly increased by exchange with other collectors .
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Andrew Ramsay
1814 - 1891 (77 years)
Sir Andrew Crombie Ramsay was a Scottish geologist. Biography Ramsay was born at Glasgow. He was for a time actually engaged in business, but from spending his holidays in Arran he became interested in the study of the rocks of that island, and was thus led to acquire the rudiments of geology. A geological model of Arran, made by him on the scale of two inches to the mile, was exhibited at the meeting of the British Association at Glasgow in 1840, and attracted the notice of Roderick Murchison, with the result that he received, from Sir Henry De la Beche, an appointment on the Geological Sur...
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Jules Gosselet
1832 - 1916 (84 years)
Jules-Auguste Gosselet was a French geologist born in Cambrai, France. Following unsuccessful studies of pharmacy, and a stint as a mathematics teacher at the Lycée du Quesnoy, he pursued a career in natural history. In 1853 he became a preparateur of geology at the Sorbonne, later obtaining his doctorate with a thesis titled Mémoire sur les terrains primaires de la Belgique, des environs d'Avesnes et du Boulonnais .
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John Speed
1551 - 1629 (78 years)
John Speed was an English cartographer, chronologer and historian of Cheshire origins. The son of a citizen and Merchant Taylor in London, he rose from his family occupation to accept the task of drawing together and revising the histories, topographies and maps of the Kingdoms of Great Britain as an exposition of the union of their monarchies in the person of King James I and VI. He accomplished this with remarkable success, with the support and assistance of the leading antiquarian scholars of his generation. He drew upon and improved the shire maps of Christopher Saxton, John Norden and ot...
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Henry Darwin Rogers
1808 - 1866 (58 years)
Henry Darwin Rogers FRS FRSE LLD was an American geologist. His book, The Geology of Pennsylvania: A Government Survey , was regarded as one of the most important publications on American geology issued up to that point.
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Benjamin Kendall Emerson
1843 - 1932 (89 years)
Benjamin Kendall Emerson was an American geologist and author. Biography Emerson attended Amherst College, where he joined the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity and from which he graduated in 1865 as valedictorian. He went on to study in Germany at the University of Berlin, and received his doctorate from the University of Göttingen in 1870. He returned to the United States where he joined the faculty at Amherst, where he was professor of geology and related sciences from 1872 to 1917 and simultaneously at Smith College from 1878 to 1912. He was also assistant geologist from 1890 to 1896, and later geologist from 1896 to 1920 for the United States Geological Survey.
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John Flett
1869 - 1947 (78 years)
Sir John Smith Flett was a Scottish physician and geologist. Early life Born in Kirkwall, Orkney, the son of James Ferguson Flett, a merchant and baillie, and Mary Ann . He was educated at Kirkwall Burgh School, George Watson's College in Edinburgh, and the University of Edinburgh .
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Lawrence Martin
1880 - 1955 (75 years)
Lawrence Martin was an American geographer and president of the American Association of Geographers. A native of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Martin received his undergraduate degree from Cornell University in 1904, before heading to Harvard University to work with William Morris Davis for his Master's degree, received in 1906. He then returned to Cornell and completed his PhD in 1913.
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Philip Jackson
1802 - Present (224 years)
Philip Jackson was a British Royal Navy lieutenant in the Bengal Regiment Artillery. Jackson has also served as assistant engineer, executive officer and surveyor of public lands in colonial Singapore and laid out the city plan for Singapore in 1822. He was a key person in Raffles plans for the settlement and the Elgin Bridge in Singapore was once named in his honour.
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Richard Joel Russell
1895 - 1971 (76 years)
Richard Joel Russell was an American professor of physical geography and geology at the Louisiana State University who contributed to pioneering studies of long-term climatology and geomorphology. Russell was born in Hayward, California to Nellie Potter Morril and lawyer Frederick James. His early education was in Honololu where he went to the Punahou Kindergarten. The family moved back to California and studied at the Hayward High School before going to the University of California, Berkeley where he began to study forestry in 1915 after becoming interested on a hunting trip in Santa Lucia. ...
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John Mason Clarke
1857 - 1925 (68 years)
John Mason Clarke was an American teacher, geologist and paleontologist. Early career Born in Canandaigua, New York, the fifth of six children of Noah Turner Clarke and Laura Mason Merrill, he attended Canandaigua Academy where his father was teacher and principal. In 1873 he matriculated to Amherst College, where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1877. He returned to Canandaigua Academy and served as an instructor in various subjects. In 1879–1880 he worked as an assistant to Benjamin K. Emerson at Amherst, then he taught at the Utica Free Academy during 1880–1881. This was followed by work as an instructor at Smith College from 1881–1882, where he was made professor.
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Adolf Knop
1828 - 1893 (65 years)
Adolf Knop was a German geologist and mineralogist. He studied mathematics and sciences at the University of Göttingen, where he was a pupil of chemist Friedrich Wohler and mineralogist Johann Friedrich Ludwig Hausmann. From 1849 he taught classes at the vocational school in Chemnitz. In 1857 he became an associate professor of geology and mineralogy at the University of Giessen, where in 1863 he attained a full professorship. In 1866 he relocated to Karlsruhe as a professor at the Polytechnic school. In 1878 he succeeded Moritz August Seubert as manager of the Grand Ducal Natural History Cab...
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Juan Brüggen
1887 - 1953 (66 years)
Johannes Brüggen Messtorff better known by his hispanized name Juan Brüggen was a German-Chilean geologist. One of his most famous works is the extensive treaty of Fundamentos de la geología de Chile published in 1950. Brüggen Glacier in the Southern Patagonian Ice Field is named after him.
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Giovan Battista Nicolosi
1610 - 1670 (60 years)
Giovan Battista Nicolosi, D.D., was a Sicilian priest and geographer. Nicolosi proposed a new projection for the construction of the world map in two hemispheres, known today as the Nicolosi globular projection, in which the parallels and meridians are arcs of the circle and equidistant along the equator and central meridian.
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Herbert Harold Read
1889 - 1970 (81 years)
Herbert Harold Read FRS, FRSE, FGS, was a British geologist and Professor of Geology at Imperial College. From 1947-1948 he was president of the Geological Society. Life He was born at Whitstable in Kent on 17 December 1889 the son of Herbert Read, a dairy farmer, and his wife, Caroline Mary Kearn. He attended St Alphege Church School in Whitstable then Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys in Canterbury. He then studied Sciences at the University of London, graduating BSc in 1911.
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Johannes Stabius
1460 - 1522 (62 years)
Johannes Stabius was an Austrian cartographer and astronomer of Vienna who developed, around 1500, the heart-shape projection map later developed further by Johannes Werner. It is called the Werner map projection, but also the Stabius-Werner or the Stab-Werner projection.
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Thomas Webster
1773 - 1844 (71 years)
Thomas Webster was a Scottish geologist. Life Webster was born in Orkney in 1772, probably at Kirkwall, and was educated at Aberdeen. He subsequently went to London and studied architecture, the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street being built from his design, and where in 1830 he delivered the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture. In 1826 he was appointed house-secretary and curator to the Geological Society of London, and for many years he rendered important services in editing and illustrating the Transactions of the Society. In 1841–42 he was professor of geology in University College, London.
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Charles L. Christ
1916 - 1980 (64 years)
Charles Louis Christ was an American scientist, geochemist and mineralogist. Education He received his Bachelor's, Master's and Doctoral degrees from the Johns Hopkins University, completing his Ph.D. in 1940.
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Marcus Jordanus
1531 - 1595 (64 years)
Marcus Jordanus was a Danish cartographer and mathematician. Jordanus studied at the University of Copenhagen, where in 1550 he was appointed Professor of Mathematics. Among other things, he gave lectures on geodesy and dealt with the geography of Ptolemy. In 1552, he published a map with the printer Hans Vingaard in Copenhagen. This was one of the first printed maps of the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, and Abraham Ortelius referred to it in his Catalogus Cartographorum. The map is now lost, and no copies survive.
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Viktor Nikolaev
1893 - 1960 (67 years)
Viktor Arsenyevich Nikolaev was a Russian and Soviet geologist and petrographer. He was a specialist on the petrology and deep crustal structure of the Tien Shan region. The so-called "Nikolaev Line" is a fault that separates the northern and central Tien Shan ranges.
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Harold Williams
#3173
Carl Størmer
1874 - 1957 (83 years)
Fredrik Carl Mülertz Størmer was a Norwegian mathematician and astrophysicist. In mathematics, he is known for his work in number theory, including the calculation of and Størmer's theorem on consecutive smooth numbers. In physics, he is known for studying the movement of charged particles in the magnetosphere and the formation of aurorae, and for his book on these subjects, From the Depths of Space to the Heart of the Atom. He worked for many years as a professor of mathematics at the University of Oslo in Norway. A crater on the far side of the Moon is named after him.
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Morten Thrane Brünnich
1737 - 1827 (90 years)
Morten Thrane Brünnich was a Danish zoologist and mineralogist. Biography Brünnich was born in Copenhagen, the son of a portrait painter. He studied oriental languages and theology, but soon became interested in natural history. He contributed his observations of insects to Erik Pontoppidan's Danske Atlas . After being put in charge of the natural history collection of Christian Fleischer he became interested in ornithology, and in 1764 he published Ornithologia Borealis, which included the details of many Scandinavian birds, some described for the first time.
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Hermann Guthe
1824 - 1874 (50 years)
Hermann Guthe was a German geographer. Biography He was born at Sankt Andreasberg in the Harz region, son of Heinrich Frederich Wilhelm Guthe , a merchant, and Wilhelmine Sophie Frederika Woge . Guthe was educated at Clausthal gymnasium , Göttingen , and Berlin , where he was a pupil of Carl Ritter.
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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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Robert Hues
1553 - 1632 (79 years)
Robert Hues was an English mathematician and geographer. He attended St. Mary Hall at Oxford, and graduated in 1578. Hues became interested in geography and mathematics, and studied navigation at a school set up by Walter Raleigh. During a trip to Newfoundland, he made observations which caused him to doubt the accepted published values for variations of the compass. Between 1586 and 1588, Hues travelled with Thomas Cavendish on a circumnavigation of the globe, performing astronomical observations and taking the latitudes of places they visited. Beginning in August 1591, Hues and Cavendish again set out on another circumnavigation of the globe.
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A. Morley Davies
1869 - 1959 (90 years)
Arthur Morley Davies was a British palaeontologist and author or co-author of a number of books on the subject. He was an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and Reader in Palaeontology at the Imperial College of Science and Technology, University of London. He was awarded the Lyell Medal in 1929.
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Ian Holbourn
1872 - 1935 (63 years)
Ian Holbourn , born John Bernard Stoughton Holbourn, was laird of Foula, a professor and lecturer for the University of Oxford, and a writer. Education and career Holbourn was educated at the Slade School of Art and Merton College at Oxford. As a young man he became fond of the remote Scottish island of Foula, which he succeeded in purchasing around 1900, thus becoming its laird.
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Isabel Fothergill Smith
1890 - 1990 (100 years)
Isabel Fothergill Smith was a geology professor from Greeley, Colorado. She studied geology at Bryn Mawr College under her mentor Florence Bascom. Smith published various articles as a student and a memoir on Bascom later during her retirement. Beginning her career as an associate professor of geology at Smith College, Isabel later became the first dean of Scripps College, a prestigious women's liberal arts college.
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William A. Dimichele
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Friedrich Walchner
1799 - 1865 (66 years)
Friedrich August Walchner was a German geologist, chemist and mineralogist. Life Walchner was born in Meersburg. He studied in Göttingen and at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg. In 1817 he joined the Corps Rhenania Freiburg. In Freiburg he was member of the Burschenschaft Genossenschaft/Verein zur Bearbeitung wissenschaftlicher Gegenstände and by the year 1818 he was member of the Alten Freiburger Burschenschaft . In Freiburg he habilitated in 1823 and became a private lecturer and associate professor. In 1825 he was appointed to professor in mineralogy, geology and chemistry at the...
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Eugene Allen Smith
1841 - 1927 (86 years)
Eugene Allen Smith was an American geologist. He was born in the town of Washington, Alabama, in 1841, the son of Samuel Parrish Smith and his wife Adelaide Julia Allen. After an education in Prattville and a three-year stint at Central High School in Philadelphia, Eugene matriculated to the University of Alabama as a junior in 1860, where he graduated with an A.B. in 1862. With the American Civil War underway, Eugene enlisted as a private with the 33rd Regiment Alabama Infantry of the Confederate States Army, and was elected to the rank of 2nd lieutenant by the men. In December 1862, Eugen...
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Émile Haug
1861 - 1927 (66 years)
Gustave Émile Haug was a French geologist and paleontologist known for his contribution to the geosyncline theory. Career Émile Haug was born on 19 June 1861. In 1884 he received his doctorate in natural sciences from the University of Strasbourg with a dissertation on the ammonite genus Harpoceras, titled "Beiträge zu einer monographie der Ammonitengattung Harpoceras". In 1897 he became maître de conférences at the Sorbonne in Paris, where in 1904 he was named a full professor of geology. In 1902 he was appointed president of the Société géologique de France, and from 1917 to 1927, was a mem...
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Gustaf Troedsson
1891 - 1954 (63 years)
Gustaf Timothy Troedsson , was a Swedish geologist and paleontologist. He was the son of Troed Troedsson, and the father of Trygve Troedsson. Troedsson defended his Ph.D. in geology in 1918 on the thesis Om Skånes brachiopodskiffer at Lund University, where he became Associate Professor in 1919. He was Professor of Geology at Stockholm University from 1924 till 1929 and became a lecturer in biology and geography at Higher general secondary school in Helsingborg in 1929. He became lecturer in geography and biology at the Higher general secondary school on Kungsholmen in Stockholm and associate professor of geology at the University of Stockholm in 1933.
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Pierre Jacotin
1765 - 1827 (62 years)
Pierre Jacotin was the director of the survey for the Carte de l'Égypte , the first triangulation-based map of Egypt, Syria and Palestine. The maps were surveyed in 1799–1800 during the campaign in Egypt and Palestine of Napoleon.
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Albert Johannsen
1871 - 1962 (91 years)
Albert Johannsen , was a geologist and geology professor at the University of Chicago who wrote several books on rocks. He also authored The House of Beadle and Adams and Its Dime and Nickel Novels . He collected dime novels. His academic focus was petrology. He also wrote a book about Charles Dickens book illustrator Phiz.
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Johannes Iversen
1904 - 1971 (67 years)
Johannes Iversen was a Danish palaeoecologist and plant ecologist. Biography He was born in Sønderborg and began studies in botany at the University of Copenhagen in 1923 under professor C.H. Ostenfeld, and with considerable inspiration from prof.em. Christen Raunkiær. At first he worked with macrophyte vegetation of lakes in relation to water pH. The influence from Raunkiær is particularly evident in Iversen's doctoral thesis, in which he divided herbaceous plants into hydrotypes based on experiments and morphological studies: xerophytes, mesophytes, hygrophytes, telmatophytes, amphiphytes and limnophytes.
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Henrik Johan Walbeck
1793 - 1822 (29 years)
Henrik Johan Walbeck was a Finnish geodesist and astronomer who studied the size and figure of the Earth by means of arc measurements. Walbeck was born in Turku . In 1817, he was made a corresponding member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and, in 1820, of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Mathematische Gesellschaft in Hamburg. He committed suicide in 1822, also in Åbo.
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Hans Schardt
1858 - 1931 (73 years)
Hans Schardt was a Swiss geologist and a professor at the University of Neuchâtel and at the ETH and the University of Zurich. He contributed to studies on the folding and movement of layers of the earth based on stratigraphy. His studies where based on the Glarus thrust which he explained as a nappe.
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Karl Emil von Schafhäutl
1803 - 1890 (87 years)
Karl Franz Emil von Schafhäutl was a German naturalist and musicologist. He was professor of Geognosy in Munich. He was the author of Geognostische Untersuchungen des südbayerischen Alpengebirges and Der Gregorianische Choral in seiner Entwicklung . He also studied mining and foundry practise.
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Alice Garnett
1903 - 1989 (86 years)
Alice Garnett or Alice Crow was a British geographer at Sheffield University. She was the second British woman to become a professor of geography and she was vice-president of the Royal Geographical Society. She was the first woman president of the Institute of British Geographers and a winner of the Murchison Award.
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Alois Musil
1868 - 1944 (76 years)
Alois Musil was a Czech theologian, orientalist, explorer and bilingual Czech and German writer. Biography Musil was the oldest son born in 1868 into an poor farming family in Moravia . His birthplace of Rychtářov was in an area surrounded by German-speakers, allowing him and his brothers to learn to read and write both German and Czech. He was a second cousin of Robert Musil, an Austrian writer. In the years 1887–1891 he studied Roman Catholic theology at the University of Olomouc, was consecrated as a priest in 1891 and received a doctorate in theology in 1895. In the years 1895–1898 he studied at the Dominican Biblical School in Jerusalem, in 1897-1898 at the Jesuit University of St.
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David Page
1814 - 1879 (65 years)
David Page FRSE FGS LLD was a 19th-century Scottish geologist and scientific author. He was President of the Edinburgh Geological Society. Page was born on 24 August 1814 in Lochgelly, Fifeshire, where his father was a mason and builder. After being educated locally he was sent, at age 14, to the University of St Andrews, to be study divinity. However, he never joined the ministry and instead worked in scientific lecturing and journalism, acting for a time as editor of a Fifeshire newspaper.
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William Savage Boulton
1867 - 1954 (87 years)
William Savage Boulton FGS was an English geologist, mining engineer, and water engineer. Boulton was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, Mason Science College, and the Royal College of Science. He was from 1890 to 1897 an assistant lecturer and demonstrator for Professor Charles Lapworth at Mason Science College. Boulton was then a professor of geology at University College, Cardiff from 1897 to 1913, when he went to the University of Birmingham as Lapworth's successor upon the latter's retirement in 1913. Boulton was Dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of Birmingham from 1926 to 1929.
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Michele Stefano de Rossi
1834 - 1898 (64 years)
Michele Stefano de Rossi was an Italian seismologist. He was a younger brother to archaeologist Giovanni Battista de Rossi . He received his education at the University of Rome, and during his subsequent career conducted research in the fields of archaeology, paleontology, geology, vulcanology and seismology. He studied the topography of catacombs, and collaborated with his brother on La Roma sotterranea cristiana .
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Donald Esme Innes
Donald Esme Innes FRSE MC was a 20th century Scottish geologist. Life Born Donald Esme Isaacs on 22 November 1888 to Donald Isaacs and Anne Isaacs in Clifton, Bristol. He was bought up by Annie and Catherine Isaacson in Oxford from a very early age. He went to Repton and studied Sciences at Oxford University and graduated in 1911 with 1st class honours, specialising in Geology. He was awarded the Burden Coutts scholarship for post-graduate work and he later became Professor of Geology at St Andrews University.
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Ivar Werner Oftedal
1894 - 1976 (82 years)
Ivar Werner Oftedal was a Norwegian mineralogist. He was born in Larvik. He took his cand.real. degree in 1929 and the dr.philos. degree in 1941, both at the University of Oslo. After 29 years as a conservator at the University Museum, he was a professor of geology at the University of Oslo from 1949 to 1964, specializing in mineralogy, geochemistry and crystallography.
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J. Lawrence Smith
1818 - 1883 (65 years)
John Lawrence Smith was an American chemist and mineralogist. He published extensively on analytical chemistry and mineralogy, including Mineralogy and Chemistry, Original Researches . His collection of meteorites was the finest in the United States, and upon his death, he passed it to Harvard. The J. Lawrence Smith Medal is named in his honor.
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