The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
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List of the most influential people in Earth Sciences,
#3301
Frederick William Shotton
1906 - 1990 (84 years)
Professor Frederick William Shotton FRS was a British geologist. He was awarded the Prestwich Medal in 1954. Shotton's research into the geological makeup of Normandy beaches helped allied commanders decide which were the best to use on D-Day. From May 1941 to September 1943, based in Egypt, he used hydrogeology to guide development of potable water supplies for British forces operational in the Middle East and northern Africa. From October 1943 he helped plan for the Allied liberation of Normandy by providing terrain evaluation relating to beach conditions, suitability of ground for the rapid construction of temporary airfields, and water supply.
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Amadeus William Grabau
1870 - 1946 (76 years)
Amadeus William Grabau was an American geologist, teacher, stratigrapher, paleontologist, and author who worked in the United States and China. Biography Grabau's grandfather, J.A.A. Grabau, led a group of dissident Lutheran immigrants from Germany to Buffalo, New York. His education began in his father's parochial school in his birthplace of Cedarburg, Wisconsin, and then the public high school there. After his father became head of the Martin Luther Seminary in 1885, he finished high school in Buffalo. He took classes in the evenings while apprenticed to a bookbinder. His interest in local fossils grew.
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Charles Henry Hitchcock
1836 - 1919 (83 years)
Charles Henry Hitchcock was an American geologist. Life Hitchcock was born August 23, 1836, in Amherst, Massachusetts. His father was Edward Hitchcock who was a professor of geology and natural theology and then president of Amherst College. His mother was Orra White Hitchcock, who illustrated much of his father's work. He graduated from Amherst College in 1856, and considered entering the ministry. He married Martha Bliss Barrows.
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Rudolf Staub
1890 - 1961 (71 years)
Rudolf Staub was a Swiss field geologist who examined mountain formation and tectonics in the Alps. He produced high resolution maps including the first to indicate tectonic regions in the Swiss Alps and came up with ideas on mountain formation based on the idea that there were alternating tectonic forces, Polflucht and Poldrift as suggested by Alfred Wegener.
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Geoffrey Blewitt
#3306
Yanosuke Otsuka
1903 - 1950 (47 years)
Yanosuke Otsuka was a Japanese geologist and professor. Yanosuke Otsuka was born in Nihonbashi, Tokyo on 11 July 1903. He went to the Junior High School attached to Tokyo Higher Normal School , and after that to Shizuoka High School . For his undergraduate studies, he entered the Department of Geology, Faculty of Science, Imperial University of Tokyo, where he graduated in 1929. While he was student, he learned the methods of historical geology from Yoshiaki Ozawa, topography from Taro Tsujimura , and Cenozoic biological stratigraphy from Shigeyasu Tokunaga. After graduation, he entered the ...
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Tadevos Hakobyan
1917 - 1989 (72 years)
Tadevos Hakobyan was a Soviet Armenian historian and geographer. Biography Hakobyan was born in 1917 in the village of Lernadzor, now in Armenia's southern province of Syunik. In 1940, he graduated from the Faculty of Geography and Geology of Yerevan State University . In 1942–43, he fought in the Eastern Front of World War II. He was the dean of the YSU's Faculty of Geography in 1955–57 and 1963–65. He then served as the chair of that department from 1962 to 1986. Most of his work was focused on the historical geography of Armenia. Together with Stepan Melik-Bakhshyan and Hovhannes Barseghya...
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Mikhail Usov
1883 - 1939 (56 years)
Mikhail Antonovich Usov was a Russian and Soviet geologist and member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He was the first native of Siberia to be elected. He completed his studies at Tomsk Technological Institute under Vladimir Obruchev and later served on the school's faculty.
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Elizabeth F. Fisher
1873 - 1941 (68 years)
Elizabeth Florette Fisher was one of the first field geologists in the United States. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she attended and later taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . She was also the first woman to be sent out by an oil company for a survey, helping to locate oil wells in North-Central Texas during a nationwide oil shortage. During this same time, she not only continued her career as an instructor at Wellesley College, but also wrote an influential textbook for junior high students called Resources and Industries of the United States. She stressed the need for conservation, and believed "unclaimed" land should be used for agriculture.
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Marinus J. A. Werger
#3311
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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Samuel Klein
1886 - 1940 (54 years)
Samuel Klein was a Hungarian-born rabbi, historian and historical geographer in Mandatory Palestine. Biography Born in Hungary to Idel Hertzfeld and to Avraham Zvi Klein, a rabbi of Szilas-Balhas in western Hungary, he initially received a traditional Jewish education , graduating from the Government Gymnasium at Budapest in 1905. From there he went on to study at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Berlin where he was ordained in the rabbinate. From 1906 to 1909, he was enrolled at the Hochschule für Wissenschaft des Judentums, and in the Friedrich-Wilhelm University of Berlin, before advanci...
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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
#3332
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
#3341
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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Howard Meyerhoff
1899 - 1982 (83 years)
Howard Augustus Meyerhoff was an American geologist who taught geology at Smith College from 1925 to 1949. He served as administrative secretary of the American Association for the Advancement of Science , as well as editor-in-chief of its journal, Science, from 1949 to 1953. He conducted research on the geology of Puerto Rico, which led to him publishing the book Geology of Porto Rico in 1933.
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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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