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,
#3351
Konrad Oebbeke
1853 - 1932 (79 years)
Konrad Oebbeke was a German geologist and mineralogist. He studied at the Universities of Heidelberg and Erlangen, obtaining his doctorate at the University of Würzburg in 1877. Afterwards he worked as an assistant to the Geological Survey of Bavaria. He served as privat-docent at the University of Munich, later becoming a professor of mineralogy and geology at Erlangen . From 1895 to 1927 he was a professor at the Technische Hochschule of Munich.
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Johannes Letzmann
1885 - 1971 (86 years)
Johannes Peter Letzmann was an Estonian meteorologist, and a pioneering tornado researcher. His prolific output related to severe storms concepts included: developing tornado damage studies, atmospheric vortices, theoretical studies and laboratory simulations, tornado case studies, and observation programs. It generated extensive analysis techniques and insights on tornadoes at a time when there was still very little research on the subject in the United States.
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Marguerite Williams
1895 - 1991 (96 years)
Marguerite Thomas Williams was an American geologist. She was the first African American to earn a doctorate in geology in the United States and dedicated most of her career to teaching geography and social sciences. Williams is a pioneer among geoscientists in recognizing how human activity and landscape management impact erosional processes and the risks of natural flooding.
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John Woodward
1665 - 1728 (63 years)
John Woodward was an English naturalist, antiquarian and geologist, and founder by bequest of the Woodwardian Professorship of Geology at the University of Cambridge. Though a leading supporter of observation and experiment in what we now call science, few of his theories have survived.
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Alexander Dallas Bache
1806 - 1867 (61 years)
Alexander Dallas Bache was an American physicist, scientist, and surveyor who erected coastal fortifications and conducted a detailed survey to map the mideastern United States coastline. Originally an army engineer, he later became Superintendent of the United States Coast Survey, and built it into the foremost scientific institution in the country before the Civil War.
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Fritz Laves
1906 - 1978 (72 years)
Fritz Henning Emil Paul Berndt Laves was a German crystallographer who served as the president of the German Mineralogical Society from 1956 to 1958. He is the namesake of Laves phases and the Laves tilings; the Laves graph, a highly-symmetrical three-dimensional crystal structure that he studied, was named after him by H. S. M. Coxeter.
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Nikolai Korzhenevskiy
1879 - 1958 (79 years)
Nikolai Leopoldovich Korzhenevskiy , born in Zaverezhye, Vitebsk Governorate, Russian Empire , died in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Korzhenevskiy was a Russian Empire and Soviet geographer, glaciologist, and explorer of the Pamir Mountains. His exploration of the Pamirs began in 1903, with support from the military command in the region. Between 1903 and 1928, Korzhenevskiy organized eleven expeditions to various parts of the Pamirs. In August 1910 he discovered one of the highest peaks in the Pamir Mountains, which he named Korzhenevskoi Peak after his wife Evgeniya Korzhenevskaya . In 1928 he produ...
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Leonard Horner
1785 - 1864 (79 years)
Leonard Horner FRSE FRS FGS was a Scottish merchant, geologist and educational reformer. He was the younger brother of Francis Horner. Horner was a founder of the School of Arts of Edinburgh, now Heriot-Watt University and one of the founders of the Edinburgh Academy. A 'radical educational reformer' he was involved in the establishment of University College School. As a commissioner on the Royal Commission on the Employment of Children in Factories, Horner arguably did more to improve the working conditions of women and children in North England than any other person in the 19th century.
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Ding Wenjiang
1887 - 1936 (49 years)
Ding Wenjiang , courtesy name Zaijun, was a Chinese essayist, geologist, and writer active especially in the Republic of China . In his own time, his name was transcribed as either V.K. Ting, or Ting Wen-chiang.
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Balfour Currie
1902 - 1981 (79 years)
Balfour Watson Currie, was a Canadian scientist specializing in the fields of meteorology and climatology. Early life Born in Montana, he came to Saskatchewan at an early age. His parents moved to a farm homestead at Netherhill, near Kindersley, in the west central region of the province. Because of his pioneer heritage, he was equally comfortable with internationally renowned scientists or with farmers in the field. He came to the University of Saskatchewan as a student and received a Bachelor-level degree in Physics and a Master-level degree in Physics . His Ph.D. program at McGill Univer...
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Ludwik Zejszner
1803 - 1871 (68 years)
Ludwik Zejszner born Ludwig Zeuschner was a Prussian geologist, paleontologist and mineralogist. He is considered a pioneer of cartographic approaches to geology. He taught mineralogy at Warsaw and was a specialist on the Tatra Mountains in the Carpathians where he was also involved in conservation.
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Max Eckert-Greifendorff
1868 - 1938 (70 years)
Max Eckert was a German geographer. Biography He received his education in Löbau and Berlin, and taught for some time at Löbau and Leipzig. In 1903, he became Privatdozent at Kiel University. In 1907, he was appointed to the chair of geography in the Royal Technical High School of Aachen . He invented the six Eckert projections and others such as Eckert-Greifendorff projection
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Mungo Park
1771 - 1806 (35 years)
Mungo Park was a Scottish explorer of West Africa. After an exploration of the upper Niger River around 1796, he wrote a popular and influential travel book titled Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa in which he theorized the Niger and Congo merged to become the same river, though it was later proven that they are different rivers. He was killed during a second expedition, having successfully travelled about two-thirds of the way down the Niger.
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Fredrik Johan Wiik
1839 - 1909 (70 years)
Fredrik Johan Wiik, also known as F.J. Wiik, was a Finnish geologist and mineralogist; in 1877, he was named the first professor of geology and mineralogy at the Imperial Alexander University of Finland, where his students included Jakob Sederholm and Wilhelm Ramsay. He was also the first scientist in Finland to use a petrographic microscope.
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Waldemar Lindgren
1860 - 1939 (79 years)
Waldemar Lindgren was a Swedish-American geologist and a founder of modern economic geology. Life Lindgren was born in Vassmolösa, Kalmar Municipality, Småland, Sweden, the son of Johan and Emma Lindgren. Johan was a judge and member of parliament, Emma the daughter of a clergyman. He attended the Freiberg Mining Academy, Germany, graduating as a mining engineer in 1882.
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J. N. L. Baker
1893 - 1971 (78 years)
John Norman Leonard Baker was a geographer associated with Jesus College, Oxford for nearly sixty years. Born in Liverpool, Baker studied at Liverpool College from 1911 to 1913 before entering Jesus College as an exhibitioner in 1913, where he read Modern History. His undergraduate career was interrupted by the First World War, during which he was wounded on the Somme. He married Phyllis Hancock in 1917 whilst convalescing. He then spent two years in the Indian Army . He returned to Oxford and completed his history degree in 1920 before switching to geography . He obtained the diploma in geography in 1921 and a B.Litt.
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Kostiantyn Voblyi
1876 - 1947 (71 years)
Kostiantyn Hryhorovych Voblyi was a Ukrainian economic geographer, scientist economist, professor of the Kyiv University, academician of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences , Vice-president of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences , director of the Institute of Economics . Honored Scientist of Ukraine , awarded the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labour.
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John Cary
1755 - 1835 (80 years)
John Cary was an English cartographer. Life Cary served his apprenticeship as an engraver in London, before setting up his own business in the Strand in 1783. He soon gained a reputation for his maps and globes, his atlas, The New and Correct English Atlas published in 1787, becoming a standard reference work in England.
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Gilbert Walker
1868 - 1958 (90 years)
Sir Gilbert Thomas Walker was an English physicist and statistician of the 20th century. Walker studied mathematics and applied it to a variety of fields including aerodynamics, electromagnetism and the analysis of time-series data before taking up a teaching position at the University of Cambridge. Although he had no experience in meteorology, he was recruited for a post in the Indian Meteorological Department where he worked on statistical approaches to predict the monsoons. He developed the methods in the analysis of time-series data that are now called the Yule-Walker equations. He is kn...
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Auguste Himly
1823 - 1906 (83 years)
Auguste Louis Himly was a French historian and geographer. After studying in his native town and taking the university course in Berlin , Himly went to Paris and passed first in the examination for fellowship of the lycées , first in the examinations on leaving the École des Chartes, and first in the examination for fellowship of the faculties . In 1849 he took the degree of doctor of letters with two theses, one of which, Wala et Louis le Débonnaire , placed him in the front rank of French scholars in the province of Carolingian history.
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Pramatha Nath Bose
1855 - 1935 (80 years)
Pramatha Nath Bose was a pioneering Indian geologist and paleontologist. Bose was educated at Krishnagar Government College and later at St. Xavier's College of the University of Calcutta when he obtained a Gilchrist scholarship to study in London in 1874. He graduated in 1877 and went on to study at the Royal School of Mines in London and excelled in biology and paleontology. During his study at Cambridge he became a friend of Rabindranath Tagore. He was one of the early Indians to join the Geological Survey of India as a graded officer. His initial work was on the Siwalik fossils. He is cre...
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Jørgen Holmboe
1902 - 1979 (77 years)
Jørgen Holmboe was a Norwegian-American meteorologist. Life and career Jørgen Holmboe was born near Hammerfest, Norway, on an island a short distance from the northernmost point in Norway. He was the son of priest Leonhard Christian Borchgrevink Holmboe, Jr. and his wife Thea Louise Schetelig. He had several brothers and sisters. His great-grandfather Leonhard Christian Borchgrevink Holmboe was a priest and national politician.
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George Henry Frederick Ulrich
1830 - 1900 (70 years)
George Henry Frederick Ulrich FGS was a notable New Zealand mineralogist, university professor and director of the school of mines. Early life He was born in Zellerfeld, Germany in 1830. Australia Ulrich arrived in Melbourne, Australia in 1853 where he worked as a geologist and later became a lecturer in mining at the University of Melbourne.
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John Milne
1850 - 1913 (63 years)
John Milne was a British geologist and mining engineer who worked on a horizontal seismograph. Biography Milne was born in Liverpool, England, the only child of John Milne of Milnrow, and at first raised in Tunshill and later moved to Richmond, London, and then in 1895 to the Isle of Wight with his wife. He was educated at King's College London and the Royal School of Mines.
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Yuri Alexandrovich Bilibin
1901 - 1952 (51 years)
Yuri Alexandrovich Bilibin was a Soviet geologist. Biography Between 1919-1921 he served in the Red Army. In 1926 he graduated from the Leningrad Mining Institute. He later became a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and in 1946 was awarded the Stalin Prize for his contribution in the discovery of gold deposits in northeast Siberia. Together with mining engineer Evgeny Bobin , Bilibin surveyed and charted the last unmapped areas of continental USSR, the Sette-Daban and the Yudoma-Maya and Aldan highlands, in the course of an expedition sent by the Soviet government in 1934.
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Johan Gadolin
1760 - 1852 (92 years)
Johan Gadolin was a Finnish chemist, physicist and mineralogist. Gadolin discovered a "new earth" containing the first rare-earth compound yttrium, which was later determined to be a chemical element. He is also considered the founder of Finnish chemistry research, as the second holder of the Chair of Chemistry at the Royal Academy of Turku . Gadolin was ennobled for his achievements and awarded the Order of Saint Vladimir and the Order of Saint Anna.
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Georg Gerland
1833 - 1919 (86 years)
Georg Cornelius Karl Gerland was a German anthropologist and geophysicist. He studied classical philology, Germanistics and anthropology at the universities of Berlin and Marburg. From 1856 to 1875 he successively worked as a gymnasium teacher in Kassel, Hanau, Magdeburg and Halle an der Saale, and in 1875 was named a professor of ethnology and geography at the University of Strasbourg. In 1900 he became director of the Imperial Central Bureau for Earthquake Research in Strasbourg.
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Wilhelm Tomaschek
1841 - 1901 (60 years)
Wilhelm Tomaschek, or Vilém Tomášek was a Czech-Austrian geographer and orientalist. He is known for his work in the fields of historical topography and historical ethnography. Born at Olmütz, in Moravia, he received his education at the University of Vienna , afterwards working as a teacher in gymnasiums at Sankt Pölten and Vienna. On the strength of the first volume of Centralasiatische Studien, he was named an associate professor of geography at the University of Graz in 1877. In 1881 he attained the rank of full professor, and in 1885, was appointed chair of historical geography at the University of Vienna.
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Alfred Wilhelm Stelzner
1840 - 1895 (55 years)
Alfred Wilhelm Stelzner was a German geologist. From 1859 to 1864 he was a student at the Bergakademie Freiberg, an institute where he later served as inspector. From 1871 to 1874 he was a professor of mineralogy and geology at the University of Córdoba in Argentina. In 1874 he returned to the Bergakademie at Freiberg, where he succeeded his former teacher, Bernhard von Cotta. Here, he taught classes until his death in 1895.
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André Dumont
1809 - 1857 (48 years)
André Hubert Dumont was a Belgian geologist. Dumont was born in Liège. His first work was a masterly Mémoire on the geology of the province of Liège published in 1832. A few years later he became a professor of mineralogy and geology and afterwards Rector of the University of Liège. He subsequently turned his attention to the mineralogical and stratigraphical description of the geological formations in Belgium. The names given by him to many subdivisions of the Cretaceous and Tertiary have been adopted.
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Eugène Renevier
1831 - 1906 (75 years)
Eugène Renevier Swiss geologist, was born at Lausanne, Switzerland, as a descendant of a noble family. After about three years of study at the polytechnical school of Stuttgart, Renevier in 1851 went to Geneva to study under F. J. Pictet. In 1854 he went to Paris to attend the lectures of Hébert and to study fossil nummulites found in the limestone of the Alps.
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Andrei Krasnov
1862 - 1914 (52 years)
Andrei Nikolaevich Krasnov was a Russian Empire botanist who explored the plants of Turkestan, Altai, Nizhny Novgorod, Tian Shan and the Caucasus regions. He was a professor at the University of Kharkov. His major contribution was in phytogeography, identifying combinations of species found in different regions and contributing to the study of global vegetation patterns and their links to the Köppen climate classification.
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George E. Backus
#3384
Robert Bell
1841 - 1917 (76 years)
Robert Bell was a Canadian geologist, professor and civil servant. He is considered one of Canada’s greatest exploring scientists, having named over 3,000 geographical features. Personal life Robert Bell was born in Toronto, Upper Canada to Presbyterian clergy and amateur geologist, Reverend Andrew Bell and Elizabeth Notman. In 1873, Bell married Agnes Smith. They had a son and three daughters. He spent his retirement at his home in Ottawa and his farm in Rathwell, Manitoba. Bell died after a brief illness at the age of 76 at his farm.
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Carl Wilhelm Correns
1893 - 1980 (87 years)
Carl Wilhelm Correns was a German geologist who pioneered the field of sedimentary petrology. He was noted as an influential teacher and for his textbook Einführung in die Mineralogie . Correns received the Roebling Medal of the Geological Society of America in 1976.
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Hans Kinzl
1898 - 1979 (81 years)
Hans Kinzl was an Austrian geographer and mountain researcher. Life Hans Kinzl was born in Upper Austria in 1899. After his studies of geography at the University of Innsbruck he became assistant of his mentor Johann Sölch—disciple of Albrecht Penck—in Innsbruck. He then followed Sölch—who succeeded Alfred Hettner in Heidelberg—but returned to the University of Innsbruck where he became a professor of geography.
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Albert Huntington Chester
1843 - 1903 (60 years)
Professor Albert Huntington Chester was an American geologist and mining engineer. Personal life Chester was the son of Albert Tracey and Elizabeth Chester of Connecticut. He was married to Alethea S. Rudd of New York City from 1869 until her death in 1891. He was then married to Georgiana Waldron Jenks of Buffalo, New York from 1898 until his own death. He was the father of one child, Albert Huntington Chester, Jr.
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Johann Reinhard Blum
1802 - 1883 (81 years)
Johann Reinhard Blum was a German mineralogist. From 1821 he studied at the universities of Heidelberg and Marburg, receiving his habilitation for mineralogy in 1828. In 1838 he became an associate professor, and in 1856, a full professor of mineralogy at the University of Heidelberg. For many years he was director of the university's mineral collection. In 1871 he was a founding member of the Oberrheinischen Geologischen Vereins .
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Joan Blaeu
1596 - 1673 (77 years)
Joan Blaeu was a Dutch cartographer born in Alkmaar, the son of cartographer Willem Blaeu. Life In 1620, Blaeu became a doctor of law but he joined in the work of his father. In 1635, they published the Atlas Novus in two volumes. Joan and his brother Cornelius took over the studio after their father died in 1638. Blaeu became the official cartographer of the Dutch East India Company like his father before him.
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Thomas Sterry Hunt
1826 - 1892 (66 years)
Thomas Sterry Hunt was an American geologist and chemist. Biography Hunt was born at Norwich, Connecticut. He lost his father when twelve years old, and had to earn his own livelihood. In the course of two years he found employment in a printing office, in an apothecary shop, in a book store and as a clerk. He became interested in natural science, and especially in chemical and medical studies, and in 1845 he was elected a member of the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists at Yale—a body which four years later became the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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Petrus Plancius
1552 - 1622 (70 years)
Petrus Plancius was a Dutch-Flemish astronomer, cartographer and clergyman. He was born as Pieter Platevoet in Dranouter, now in Heuvelland, West Flanders. He studied theology in Germany and England. At the age of 24 he became a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church.
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Arthur Philemon Coleman
1852 - 1939 (87 years)
Arthur Philemon Coleman was a Canadian geologist and academic. Biography Born in Lachute, Quebec, the son of Rev. Francis Coleman and Emmeline Maria Adams, he received his Bachelor of Arts in 1876 and Master of Arts in 1880 from Victoria College in Cobourg, Ontario. He received a Ph.D. at the University of Breslau in 1881.
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John Farey Sr.
1766 - 1826 (60 years)
John Farey Sr. was an English geologist and writer best known for Farey sequence, a mathematical construct that is named after him. Biography Youth and early career Farey was born on 24 September 1766 at Woburn in Bedfordshire to John Farey and his second wife, Rachel , a Wesleyan Methodist. He was educated at Halifax in Yorkshire, and showed such aptitude in mathematics, drawing and surveying, that he was brought under the notice of John Smeaton .
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Hjalmar Sjögren
1856 - 1922 (66 years)
Sten Anders Hjalmar Sjögren was a Swedish geologist and mineralogist. Biography Sten Anders Hjalmar Sjögren became associate professor of mineralogy and geology at Uppsala University from 1882-84. He studied in Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1883.
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Newton Horace Winchell
1839 - 1914 (75 years)
Newton Horace Winchell was an American geologist chiefly notable for his six-volume work The Geology of Minnesota: Final Report of the Geological and Natural History Survey of Minnesota, which was prepared by Winchell and his assistants. A bibliography of his publications by Warren Upham in the Bulletin of the Geological Society of America contains almost 300 titles.
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August Emanuel von Reuss
1811 - 1873 (62 years)
August Emanuel Rudolph von Reuss was an Austrian geologist and palaeontologist. Biography Reuss was born on 8 July 1811 in Bílina, Bohemia. He was the son of Franz Ambrosius Reuss and the father of ophthalmologist August Leopold von Reuss . He was educated for the medical profession, graduating in 1834 at the University of Prague, and afterwards practising for fifteen years at the Bílinská Kyselka spa.
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Élisée Reclus
1830 - 1905 (75 years)
Jacques Élisée Reclus was a French geographer, writer and anarchist. He produced his 19-volume masterwork, La Nouvelle Géographie universelle, la terre et les hommes , over a period of nearly 20 years . In 1892 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Paris Geographical Society for this work, despite having been banished from France because of his political activism.
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Ernst Dieffenbach
1811 - 1855 (44 years)
Johann Karl Ernst Dieffenbach , also known as Ernest Dieffenbach, was a German physician, geologist and naturalist, the first trained scientist to live and work in New Zealand, where he travelled widely under the auspices of the New Zealand Company, returning in 1841–42 and publishing in English his Travels in New Zealand in 1843.
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William Whitehead Watts
1860 - 1947 (87 years)
Prof William Whitehead Watts FRS HFRSE FGS FMS LLD was a British geologist. Life He was born near Broseley in Shropshire, the eldest of two sons of Isaac Watts, but then a music master, and his wife, Maria Whitehead, daughter of a farmer.
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William Hughes
1818 - 1876 (58 years)
William Hughes FRGS was an English geographer, cartographer, author and academic. Life In early life Hughes was in business as an engraver in Pentonville, London. In 1840 he became a lecturer at St John's College, Battersea.
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