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.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Earth Sciences,
#3251
Harry George Champion
1891 - 1979 (88 years)
Sir Harry George Champion CIE was a Geographer and forest officer in British India who created a classification of the forest types of India and Burma. Champion was the son of British entomologist George Charles Champion. He studied at New College, Oxford, and obtained a degree in chemistry in 1912 and then studied botany and forestry under William Schlich. He joined the Indian Forest Service in 1915 and became a silviculturist at the Forest Research Institute at Dehradun staying there until 1936 before becoming a Conservator in the United Provinces. He left India in 1939 and became a Professor of Forestry at Oxford, succeeding Robert Scott Troup.
Go to Profile#3252
Jacob Bjerknes
1897 - 1975 (78 years)
Jacob Aall Bonnevie Bjerknes was a meteorologist. He is known for his key paper in which he pointed the dynamics of the polar front, mechanism for north-south heat transport and for which he was also awarded a doctorate from the University of Oslo.
Go to Profile#3253
Percy George Hamnall Boswell
1886 - 1960 (74 years)
Professor Percy George Hamnall Boswell was a British geologist. Biography Boswell was born in Woodbridge, Suffolk, the son of printer George James Boswell of Ipswich and Mary Elizabeth Marshall He developed an early interest in geology while at school in Ipswich through fossil collecting and visiting local museums. As a teen he founded the Ipswich and District Field Club, which led to his election to as a fellow of the Geological Society of London in 1907. However, possibly as a result of his explorations, he developed choroiditis in both his eyes at 18 and nearly went blind; he never fully...
Go to Profile#3254
Percy Edgar Brown
1885 - 1937 (52 years)
Percy Edgar Brown was a soil scientist at Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa. Brown is perhaps best known for the book, Soils of Iowa, which was published in 1936. The classic map, "Landform Regions of Iowa," was originally published in this text.
Go to Profile#3255
Neville George
1904 - 1980 (76 years)
Thomas Neville George FRS FRSE LLD was a Welsh geologist. He was president of the Geological Society of London. Life Thomas Neville George was born in the Morriston district of Swansea, the son of Thomas Rupert George, a schoolmaster and ardent socialist, and his wife, Elizabeth Evans, also a teacher. He was educated at Swansea Municipal Secondary School and Swansea Grammar School. He won a place at the University of Wales graduating BSc in 1924 and MSc in 1926. He then went to Cambridge University to study at postgraduate level gaining a doctorate in 1928.
Go to Profile#3256
William Quarrier Kennedy
1903 - 1979 (76 years)
William Quarrier Kennedy FRS FRSE FGS was a Scottish geologist. He specialised in the geology of Scotland and Africa. In authorship he is usually referred to as W. Q. Kennedy. Early life and education Kennedy was born on 30 November 1903 at the William Quarrier School for Orphans in Bridge of Weir, Renfrewshire, where his father, John Gordon Kennedy, was headmaster. He was named after the school's founder. He was educated at his father's school alongside the orphans then at Glasgow High School. He studied agriculture at Glasgow University, graduating BSc in 1926, then did a further degree in geology, graduating BSc in 1927.
Go to Profile#3257
Julia Anna Gardner
1882 - 1960 (78 years)
Julia Anna Gardner , was an American geologist who worked for the United States Geological Survey for 32 years, was known worldwide for her work in stratigraphy and mollusc paleontology. Early life and education Gardner was born in Chamberlain, South Dakota, the only child of Charles Henry and Julia Gardner. She was raised in South Dakota but completed high school in North Adams, Massachusetts. At the very young age of 4 months, Julia's father died. Julia and her mother moved back to Dixon in 1895, and then by 1898, they moved to North Adams, Mass; here, Julia completed her high school educ...
Go to Profile#3258
Arthur T. Ippen
1907 - 1974 (67 years)
Arthur Thomas Ippen was a noted hydrologist and engineer and was an Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Born to German parents, he attended high school and college in Aachen, Germany graduating with a degree in Civil Engineering in 1931. He then took an Institute of International Education scholarship to study at the University of Iowa but after his doctoral advisor, Floyd Nagler, died suddenly, Ippen transferred to Caltech to complete his Ph.D. His doctoral work, supervised by Theodore von Kármán and Robert T. Knapp, explored sediment transport and open-channel ...
Go to Profile#3259
John Vernon Harrison
1892 - 1972 (80 years)
John Vernon Harrison FRSE FGS was a British structural geologist, explorer and cartographer. Life He was born to British parents in Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State on 16 March 1892. His father was John Frederick Harrison, a civil engineer. His family returned to Scotland in his early childhood, living at a flat at 37 Warrender Park Road in Marchmont in Edinburgh and he here attended George Watson's College. Moving to Glasgow around 1905 the family lived first at 32 Hamilton Park Terrace and then 34 Rowallan Gardens in Partick, a pleasant terraced house. In Glasgow he attended Allan Glen's School.
Go to Profile#3260
Harry E. Wheeler
1907 - 1987 (80 years)
Harry Eugene Wheeler was an American geologist and stratigrapher. Eric Cheney called him "the chief theoretical architect of sequence stratigraphy" Wheeler was a professor of geology at the University of Washington from 1948 until 1976.
Go to Profile#3261
Konrad Johannes Karl Büttner
1903 - 1970 (67 years)
Konrad Johannes Karl Büttner, or Buettner was a German-American meteorologist, bioclimatologist and university professor. Life and times Büttner was born in Westendorf, in the province of Hannover, Germany and died in New Haven, Connecticut. He was a Protestant, married and had one child. His father was John Samuel Julius Büttner and his mother was Emilie Henriette Elisabeth Büttner née Kreuser.
Go to Profile#3262
Noel Odell
1890 - 1987 (97 years)
Noel Ewart Odell FRSE FGS was an English geologist and mountaineer. In 1924 he was an oxygen officer on the Everest expedition in which George Mallory and Andrew Irvine famously perished during their summit attempt. Odell spent two weeks living above , and twice climbed to and higher, all without supplemental oxygen. In 1936 Noel Odell with Bill Tilman climbed Nanda Devi, at the time the highest mountain climbed.
Go to Profile#3263
James B. Macelwane
1883 - 1956 (73 years)
James B. Macelwane, S.J. was a Jesuit Catholic priest and pioneering American seismologist. Biography Father Macelwane was the second of nine children born to Alexander Macelwane, a fisherman and farmer, and Catherine Agnes Carr.
Go to Profile#3264
Joseph Barrell
1869 - 1919 (50 years)
Joseph Barrell was an American geologist who developed many ideas on the origins of the Earth, isostasy and ideas on the origins of sedimentary rocks. He suggested that they were produced by the action of rivers, winds, and ice , as well as by marine sedimentation. He also independently arrived at the theory of stoping as a mechanism for igneous intrusion. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1915.
Go to Profile#3265
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.
Go to Profile#3266
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.
Go to Profile#3267
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.
Go to Profile#3268
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.
Go to Profile#3269
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.
Go to Profile#3270
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.
Go to Profile#3271
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.
Go to Profile#3272
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.
Go to Profile#3273
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.
Go to Profile#3274
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.
Go to Profile#3275
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.
Go to Profile#3276
George Jobberns
1895 - 1974 (79 years)
George Jobberns was a New Zealand geographer and educator. Born in 1895 at Te Moana near Geraldine in the foothills of South Canterbury, New Zealand, Jobberns taught the first Geography I course at Canterbury University College in 1934. In 1937 he was appointed lecturer-in-charge of the first independent Department of Geography in New Zealand and in 1942 was elected to the first chair of Geography in New Zealand. On his retirement in May 1960, he was made Professor emeritus of the University of Canterbury. In the 1963 New Year Honours, Jobberns was appointed a Commander of the Order of the B...
Go to Profile#3277
Leif Størmer
1905 - 1979 (74 years)
Leif Størmer was a Norwegian paleontologist and geologist. He was professor of historical geology at the University of Oslo from 1946 to 1975. His father was the mathematician Carl Størmer, and his son the mathematician Erling Størmer.
Go to Profile#3278
Heinrich von Ficker
1881 - 1957 (76 years)
Heinrich von Ficker was a German-Austrian meteorologist and geophysicist who was a native of Munich. He was the son of historian Julius von Ficker . Career From 1911 he was a professor of meteorology at the University of Graz, and from 1923 to 1937 was a professor at the University of Berlin. During his tenure at Berlin, he also spent several years as director of the Prussian Meteorological Institute. From 1937 until his retirement in 1952, he was a professor at University of Vienna and director of the Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik .
Go to Profile#3279
Alexei Vasilievich Shubnikov
1887 - 1970 (83 years)
Alexei Vasilievich Shubnikov was a Soviet crystallographer and mathematician. Shubnikov was the founding director of the Institute of Crystallography of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union in Moscow. Shubnikov pioneered Russian crystallography and its application.
Go to Profile#3280
Marius Jeuken
1916 - 1983 (67 years)
Marius Jeuken was professor of theoretical biology at the Institute of Theoretical Biology at Leiden University in the Netherlands, from 1968 until his death. Jeuken was also a member of the Society of Jesus; he joined the Dutch Jesuits in 1934 and was ordained a Catholic priest in 1946 in Maastricht.
Go to Profile#3281
Emyr Estyn Evans
1905 - 1989 (84 years)
Emyr Estyn Evans CBE was a geographer and archaeologist, whose primary field of interest was the Irish neolithic. Early life He was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, the son of a Welsh Presbyterian minister, George Owen Evans. He was educated at Welshpool Intermediate School and University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, where he read Geography and Anthropology. Illness forced him to turn down a post at Oxford University and worked instead for geographer and zoologist H. J. Fleure, preparing contributions for the 14th edition of Encyclopædia Britannica.
Go to Profile#3282
Dimitri Nalivkin
1889 - 1982 (93 years)
#3283
Robert Charles Wallace
1881 - 1955 (74 years)
Robert Charles Wallace was a Scots-Canadian geologist, educator, and administrator who served as president of the University of Alberta , the principal of Queen's University , and the head of the Arctic Institute of North America .
Go to Profile#3284
Berend George Escher
1885 - 1967 (82 years)
Berend George Escher was a Dutch geologist. Escher had a broad interest, but his research was mainly on crystallography, mineralogy and volcanology. He was a pioneer in experimental geology. He was a half-brother of the artist M. C. Escher, and had some influence on his work due to his knowledge of crystallography. M.C. Escher created a woodcut ex libris for his brother 'Beer' with a stylized image of a volcano around 1922 .
Go to Profile#3285
Giuseppina Aliverti
1894 - 1982 (88 years)
Giuseppina Aliverti was an Italian geophysicist specializing in several fields of terrestrial physics. She is remembered for developing the Aliverti-Lovera method of measuring the radioactivity of water.
Go to Profile#3286
Erich Obst
1886 - 1981 (95 years)
Karl August Erich Obst was a German geographer and geopolitician. Between 1924 and 1944 he was the editor of the German geopolitical magazine "Zeitschrift für Geopolitik". External links
Go to Profile#3287
Elizabeth Alexander
1908 - 1958 (50 years)
Frances Elizabeth Somerville Alexander was a British geologist, academic, and physicist, whose wartime work with radar and radio led to early developments in radio astronomy and whose post-war work on the geology of Singapore is considered a significant foundation to contemporary research. Alexander earned her PhD from Newnham College, Cambridge, and worked in Radio Direction Finding at Singapore Naval Base from 1938 to 1941. In January 1941, unable to return to Singapore from New Zealand, she became Head of Operations Research in New Zealand's Radio Development Lab, Wellington. In 1945, Alex...
Go to Profile#3288
George Etzel Pearcy
1905 - 1980 (75 years)
George Etzel Pearcy was an American geographer known for his plan to re-draw the United States map to have only 38 states. He also published influential work on America's global role in stewardship over the air.
Go to Profile#3289
Ida Helen Ogilvie
1874 - 1963 (89 years)
Ida Helen Ogilvie was a United States educator and notable early twentieth century woman geologist. Early life and education Ida Helen Ogilvie was born in New York City to Clinton Ogilvie and Helen Ogilvie, who were both artists. Her first language was French, then English. She was raised in a wealthy family with roots tracing back to the Mayflower, and was well travelled, attending schools in Europe before studying at The Brearley School.
Go to Profile#3290
W. J. Varley
1904 - 1976 (72 years)
William Jones Varley, FSA was a British geographer and archaeologist, particularly known for his excavations of English Iron Age hillforts, including Maiden Castle and Eddisbury hillfort in Cheshire, Old Oswestry hillfort in Shropshire, and Castle Hill in West Yorkshire. He was also a pioneer of geographical research and education in colonial Ghana where he worked from 1947 to 1956, and was involved in historical conservation there.
Go to Profile#3291
Robin Allan
1900 - 1966 (66 years)
Robin Sutcliffe Allan was a New Zealand geologist and university professor. The university professor William Salmond was his grandfather. In 1953, Allan was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Medal. The Allan Hills in Antarctica, mapped by the New Zealand party of the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition, were named in his honour.
Go to Profile#3292
Johannes Walther
1860 - 1937 (77 years)
Johannes Walther was a German geologist who discovered important principles of stratigraphy, including Walther's Law. Early life and work Walther came from a religious home and studied botany, zoology, and philosophy at the University of Jena. In 1882 he successfully completed this course with a doctorate. Then he studied geology and palaeontology in Leipzig and later Munich.
Go to Profile#3293
Ernst Neef
1908 - 1984 (76 years)
Ernst Neef was a German geographer. Together with Carl Troll and Josef Schmithüsen , he is considered one of the founders of landscape ecology. Neef's concept of landscape and landscape ecology can be summarized as follows: "Neef holds the classical geographical view that all components of the geosphere exist interdependently at every point on the earth’s surface by virtue of lawful relations . However, he rejects the classical assumption of natural landscape units, contending instead that landscapes are not objectively given entities. Instead, they are sections within the uninterrupted ear...
Go to Profile#3294
Wataru Ishijima
1906 - 1980 (74 years)
Wataru Ishijima was a paleontologist and geologist. Ishijima was one of the most prolific researchers of fossil calcareous algae. After graduating from the Imperial Fisheries Institute in 1927, Ishijima joined the Institute of Geology and Paleontology, Faculty of Science, Tohoku Imperial University from 1927–1931. He then worked at the Institute of Geology, Taihoku Imperial University during 1942–1945 and then at the Rikkyo University from 1945–1980. His doctoral dissertation was submitted to Tohoku University and was privately published by Yūhodō . He described a total of 139 taxa of foss...
Go to Profile#3295
Julie Moschelesová
1892 - 1956 (64 years)
Julie Moschelesová , also known as Julie Moscheles, was a Jewish German-speaking Czechoslovak geographer. Moschelesová was brought up in London by her uncle, the English painter Felix Moscheles. While on a trip to North Africa with him, she met the Norwegian geologist Hans Henrik Reusch who invited her to work in Oslo, Norway. While there, her interest in geography was noticed by of the German University of Prague who persuaded her to study there. Earning a Ph.D. in 1916, she later moved to the Czech University in Prague obtaining habilitation in anthropogeography in 1934. In 1939, she fled the Nazi occupation and moved to Australia, where she lectured at the University of Melbourne.
Go to Profile#3296
Otto Maull
1887 - 1957 (70 years)
Otto Maull was a German geographer and geopolitician. He taught human geography at University of Graz, in Austria, and was the author of several books, including . He spent time in Latin America, about which he wrote extensively in a series of papers. He was a co-founder and co-editor of Zeitschrift, and subscribed to the theory of the organic state as a collection of spatial cells , each with a life of its own. Maull was at one time part of a team led by former military commander and political geographer Karl Haushofer. Haushofer was a close associate of Rudolf Hess and called for Nazi G...
Go to Profile#3297
George Walter Tyrrell
1883 - 1961 (78 years)
George Walter Tyrrell FRSE FGS was a 20th-century British geologist, glaciologist and petrologist. A specialist in Arctic and Antarctic landscapes he was the first to describe the recticular glaciers of Spitzbergen.
Go to Profile#3298
Werner Janensch
1878 - 1969 (91 years)
Werner Ernst Martin Janensch was a German paleontologist and geologist. Biography Janensch was born at Herzberg . In addition to Friedrich von Huene, Janensch was probably Germany's most important dinosaur specialist from the early and middle twentieth century. His most famous and significant contributions stemmed from the expedition undertaken to the Tendaguru Beds in what is now Tanzania. As leader of an expedition set up by the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, where he worked as a curator, Janensch helped uncover an enormous quantity of fossils of late Jurassic period dinosaurs, including several complete Brachiosaurus skeletons, then the largest animal ever known.
Go to Profile#3299
Siegfried Passarge
1866 - 1958 (92 years)
Otto Karl Siegfried Passarge was a German geographer from East Prussia. Life Siegfried Passarge was born in Königsberg, the son of travel writer Ludwig Passarge. He attended Collegium Fridericianum, and after graduation studied geography in Berlin and Jena. He also trained in medicine, and worked as a doctor during his military service.
Go to Profile#3300
Naomasa Yamasaki
1870 - 1929 (59 years)
Naomasa Yamasaki was a Japanese geographer and regarded as the father of modern Japanese geography. He was a professor at Tokyo Imperial University from 1911 to 1929, where he created the department of geography and founded The Association of Japanese Geographers. The latter is the primary academic geographic society in Japan.
Go to Profile