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,
#3251
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
#3255
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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Thomas Robert Malthus
#3274
Jacoba Hol
1886 - 1964 (78 years)
Jacoba Hol was a Dutch physical geographer. In 1945, she was appointed professor of physical geography at the Geographic Institute at Utrecht University. This made her the first female 'normal' professor in the Netherlands.
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George W. Brindley
1905 - 1983 (78 years)
George William Brindley was a British-American crystallographer and mineralogist. He was known for his study of clay minerals including the structure of kaolinites. Education and career Brindley studied at University of Manchester in the laboratory of Sir Lawrence Bragg and Reginald W. James, where he obtained an BSc and an MSc in crystallography in 1928. He then moved to University of Leeds, obtaining a PhD in physics in 1933. He subsequently became a Lecturer and a Reader in X-ray physics at Leeds. Until 1945, his research focused on X-ray scattering in metals and its use in studying their ...
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George Hammell Cook
1818 - 1889 (71 years)
George Hammell Cook was the state geologist of New Jersey and vice president of Rutgers College. His geological survey of New Jersey became the predecessor for the U.S. Geological Survey. Biography He was born in Hanover Township, New Jersey, on January 5, 1818, to John Cook and Sarah Munn. He married Mary Halsey Thomas on March 23, 1846. He served as the principal of The Albany Academy in Albany, New York from 1850 to 1852.
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Samuel Allport
1816 - 1897 (81 years)
Samuel Allport was an English petrologist. Life He was born in Birmingham and educated in that city. Although occupied in business during the greater portion of his life, his leisure was given to geological studies, and when residing for a short period in Bahia, South America, he made observations on the geology, published by the Geological Society in 1860. His chief work was in microscopic petrology, to the study of which he was attracted by the investigations of Dr. Henry Sorby; and he became one of the pioneers of this branch of geology, preparing his own rock-sections with remarkable sk...
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James E. Talmage
1862 - 1933 (71 years)
James Edward Talmage was an English chemist, geologist, and religious leader who served as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1911 until his death.
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Hjalmar Uggla
1908 - 1983 (75 years)
Hjalmar Frederik Karl Uggla was a Polish soil scientist, professor, and head of the Department of Soil Science at the Higher Agricultural School in Olsztyn . During World War II, he was a member of a Polish resistance movement. He was also awarded the Righteous Among the Nations prize.
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Erich Haarmann
1882 - 1945 (63 years)
Erich Haarmann was a German geologist known for his tectonic theories. In a 1930 publication Haarmann wrote in detail about his oscillation theory to explain movements, structure and relief in Earth's crust.
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Carl Fredrik Kolderup
1868 - 1942 (74 years)
Carl Fredrik Kolderup was a Norwegian geologist. He was a professor at the University of Bergen and curator at Bergen Museum. Biography He was born in Bergen, Norway. He was as a son of tailor Niels Chrispinus Kolderup and Rasmine Margrethe Olsen. He was the father of geologist and politician Niels-Henrik Kolderup.
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Alan Grant Ogilvie
1887 - 1954 (67 years)
Alan Grant Ogilvie OBE FRSE FRSGS was a Scottish geographer after whom the University of Edinburgh's Ogilvie Chair in Human Geography is named. He was President of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society from 1946 to 1950 and President of the Institute of British Geographers from 1951 to 1952.
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Heinrich Ries
1871 - 1951 (80 years)
Heinrich Ries was an American economic geologist, born in Brooklyn, New York, and educated at Columbia University and at the University of Berlin. He was employed principally at Cornell University, initially as an instructor , as an assistant professor , as professor, and as head of the geological department . Professor Ries made numerous reports on clay published by the United States Geological Survey, the New York State Geological Survey and the Canadian Geological Survey.
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George Hunt Barton
1852 - 1933 (81 years)
George Hunt Barton was an American geologist, arctic explorer, and college professor. He was an alumnus and faculty member in geology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, served as the director of the Teachers' School of Science in Boston and was the founding president of the Boston Children's Museum. He was an explorer of Greenland with Robert E. Peary in 1896, and in 1916 was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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Charles Henry Smyth Jr.
1866 - 1937 (71 years)
Charles Henry Smyth Jr. was an American geologist. Born to a prominent family in Upstate New York, he studied geology at Columbia University before becoming a professor of geology at Hamilton College and Princeton University. At Princeton he strengthened the Department of Geology's graduate program.
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Theodore Salisbury Woolsey Jr.
1880 - 1933 (53 years)
Theodore Salisbury Woolsey Jr. was a United States Forest Service employee, forestry researcher, professor at Yale University and author of books and articles related to forestry and forest regulation.
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John Duer Irving
1874 - 1918 (44 years)
John Duer Irving was an American geologist. He was born in Madison, Wisconsin. He graduated from Columbia University in 1896 and 1899. He was a member of the 11th Engineers, U.S. Army during World War I and died in France on July 20 or 26, 1918, of pneumonia.
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John Downie Falconer
1876 - 1947 (71 years)
John Downie Falconer FRSE FGS FRGS was a Scottish geologist and geographer linked to colonial Africa. Life He was born in the village of Midlothian, on 1 November 1876, the son of John Falconer and Sophia Downie. He attended Glasgow University graduating MA in 1897 and receiving a doctorate in 1906.
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Alexander Geddes
1885 - 1970 (85 years)
Alexander Ebenezer McLean Geddes OBE FRSE was a Scottish meteorologist and physicist. He was generally known as Sandy Geddes and nicknamed Siccer Sandy . Life He was born in Fordyce, Aberdeenshire on 8 February 1885 and educated at Fordyce Academy. He then attended the University of Aberdeen graduating with a MA in 1906. In 1908 he became an assistant lecturer at the university teaching natural philosophy . He received a doctorate in 1913.
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Ubbo Emmius
1547 - 1625 (78 years)
Ubbo Emmius was a German historian and geographer. Early life Ubbo Emmius was born on 5 December 1547 in Greetsiel, East Frisia. From the ages of 9 to 18 Emmius studied in a Latin school, before having to leave on the death of his father, a Lutheran preacher. After studying at Rostock, at the age of 30, Emmius took classes in Geneva with Theodorus Beza, a Calvinist who influenced Emmius greatly.
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Henry Nicholas Ridley
1855 - 1956 (101 years)
Henry Nicholas Ridley CMG , MA , FRS, FLS, F.R.H.S. was an English botanist, geologist and naturalist who lived much of his life in Singapore. He was instrumental in promoting rubber trees in the Malay Peninsula and, for the fervour with which he pursued it, came to be known as "Mad Ridley".
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James Thompson
1789 - 1872 (83 years)
James Thompson was an American surveyor who created the first plat of Chicago. Born in South Carolina, Thompson moved to Kaskaskia in southern Illinois as a young man and lived in the area for the rest of his life, working primarily as a surveyor. He was hired to plat settlements at the ends of the proposed Illinois and Michigan Canal in northern Illinois; he completed the plat of Chicago, the settlement at the eastern end, on August 4, 1830. After completing his survey of Chicago he returned to the Kaskaskia area and declined an offer of land in Chicago in favor of a cash payment. In additio...
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Herman LeRoy Fairchild
1850 - 1943 (93 years)
Herman Le Roy Fairchild was an American educator and geologist. He was an early proponent of the theory of meteorite impact causing craters such as that of Meteor Crater, Arizona. Fairchild also left his mark on glacial geology. In that field he is best known for having accurately mapped the proglacial lakes of western New York. He did his field work between the 1888 and the early years of the 20th century. He located strand lines and erosional surfaces, determined their altitude, and interpolated between them to show the extent of several large bodies of water. A series of lakes was create...
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Ferdinando Castagnoli
1917 - 1988 (71 years)
Ferdinando Castagnoli was a Roman topographer who taught at the University of Rome. Among Castagnoli's fieldwork accomplishments was the amazing discovery of the Latin sanctuary at Lavinium and its series of 13 altars, a find that was revealed to the world in 1959. Also at the site is the so-called heroon of Aeneas.
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Cleveland Abbe Jr.
1872 - 1934 (62 years)
Cleveland Abbe Jr. was an American geographer. Biography He was born in Washington, D.C., on March 25, 1872; son of Cleveland and Francis M. Abbe. He graduated from Harvard University in 1894 and A.M. in 1896. He took post-graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University, from which he received a Ph.D. in 1898.
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Joseph Prestwich
1812 - 1896 (84 years)
Sir Joseph Prestwich, FRS, FGS was a British geologist and businessman, known as an expert on the Tertiary Period and for having confirmed the findings of Boucher de Perthes of ancient flint tools in the Somme valley gravel beds.
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Giovanni Lorenzo d'Anania
1545 - 1609 (64 years)
Giovanni Lorenzo d'Anania or Gian Lorenzo d'Anania was an Italian geographer and theologian. Biography Little is known for certain of d'Anania's life. His dates of birth and death are uncertain. He was born in Taverna, a city in the province of Catanzaro in Sila Piccola. He later studied natural science, languages and theology, probably in Naples. He certainly lived there for a few years and served as the teacher of the Archbishop Mario Carafa. At Carafa's death on 11 September 1575, d'Anania returned to Taverna where he remained until his death .
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Eileen McCracken
1920 - 1988 (68 years)
Eileen May McCracken was an Irish botanist, geographer and historian of botany. She also wrote on the history of Irish Gardens. Life Born 16 February 1920 in Lisburn, Ireland, the daughter of Colin and Bessie Webb, McCracken was educated at the Friends' School Lisburn and the Queens' University, Belfast, where she gained her BSc, M.Sc and PhD .
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Albert Wigand
1882 - 1932 (50 years)
Ernst Heinrich Paul Albert Wigand , known as Albert Wigand, was a German professor who lectured in the fields of physics, geodesy, meteorology and climatology. His is most well-known as one of the earliest physicists to successfully devise a method of studying fog and cloud matter in mid-air. In his later years, he became a fierce supporter of the xenophobic and nationalist thinking that would underpin Nazi ideology, and that association has clouded his legacy.
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Mark Walrod Harrington
1848 - 1926 (78 years)
Mark Walrod Harrington was an American scientist, the first civilian head of the United States Weather Bureau, and former president of the University of Washington. Considered a prominent scientist in the late 19th century, Harrington studied and published works in multiple disciplines, including botany, astronomy, meteorology, and geology, and knew a half-dozen languages. His academic achievements were overshadowed by his disappearance in 1899, when he left home one day and disappeared for many years. His wife and son located him in 1908 at a psychiatric hospital in New Jersey where he had been admitted as patient John Doe No.
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