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,
#3401
Albrecht Schrauf
1837 - 1897 (60 years)
Albrecht Schrauf was an Austrian mineralogist and crystallographer. Biography Schrauf studied mathematics, physics and mineralogy at the University of Vienna, where one of his instructors was Wilhelm Josef Grailich. Several years later, he became "custos-adjunct" at the "Imperial Hofmineralien Cabinet" in Vienna. In 1867 he was named first curator of the mineral cabinet, and in 1874 was appointed professor and director of the mineralogical museum at the University of Vienna.
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William Walden Rubey
1898 - 1974 (76 years)
William Walden Rubey was an American geologist. He was born in Moberly, Missouri. He attended the University of Missouri, and in 1920 he graduated with an A.B. degree. During the same year he married Susan Elsie Manovill, and joined the U.S. Geological Survey. He performed his graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University and Yale University.
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Wang Chong
27 - 97 (70 years)
Wang Chong , courtesy name Zhongren , was a Chinese astronomer, meteorologist, naturalist, philosopher, and writer active during the Eastern Han dynasty. He developed a rational, secular, naturalistic and mechanistic account of the world and of human beings and gave a materialistic explanation of the origin of the universe. His main work was the Lunheng . This book contained many theories involving early sciences of astronomy and meteorology, and Wang Chong was even the first in Chinese history to mention the use of the square-pallet chain pump, which became common in irrigation and public works in China thereafter.
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Hugo Hergesell
1859 - 1938 (79 years)
Hugo Emil Hergesell was a German meteorologist. Works He co-founded "Beiträge zur Physik der freien Atmosphäre" Ergebnisse aerologischer Beobachtungen an internationalen Tagen, 1900–1913, 1925–1928
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Henri Coudreau
1859 - 1899 (40 years)
Henri Anatole Coudreau was a French professor of history and geography, explorer and geographer of French Guiana and the tributaries of the Amazon. Exploration of the Amazon At the time of the "contesté franco-brésilien" boundary dispute between colonial France and Brazil, Coudreau worked in the service of Governors of the states of Brazil, mapping the Amazon's tributaries and identifying possible resources for farmers and foresters. On behalf of the State of Pará, Coudreau was charged with exploring the Trombetas river, shortly after he married Octavie Coudreau.
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Carsten Niebuhr
1733 - 1815 (82 years)
Carsten Niebuhr, or Karsten Niebuhr , was a German mathematician, cartographer, and explorer in the service of Denmark. He is renowned for his participation in the Danish Arabia expedition . He was the father of the Danish-German statesman and historian Barthold Georg Niebuhr, who published an account of his father's life in 1817.
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Maurycy Pius Rudzki
1862 - 1916 (54 years)
Maurycy Pius Rudzki was the first person to call himself a professor of geophysics. He held the Chair of Geophysics at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, and established the Institute of Geophysics there in 1895. His research specialty was elastic anisotropy, as applied to wave propagation in the earth, and he established many of the fundamental results in that arena.
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William Smith
1790 - 1847 (57 years)
William Smith was an English captain born in Blyth, Northumberland, who discovered the South Shetland Islands, an archipelago off the Graham Land in Antarctica. His discovery was the first ever made south of 60° south latitude, in the present Antarctic Treaty area.
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Elisabeth Gottschalk
1912 - 1989 (77 years)
Maria Karoline Elisabeth Gottschalk was a German-born Dutch historical geographer and professor. She was noted for Stormvloeden en rivieroverstromingen in Nederland , a three volume study into the historical storm surges and river floods, which is considered a standard work which corrected the existing theories behind storm surges.
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Johan Georg Forchhammer
1794 - 1865 (71 years)
Johan Georg Forchhammer was a Danish mineralogist and geologist. Early life and education Forchhammer was born at Husum, Schleswig. He studied at the universities of Kiel and Copenhagen from 1815 to 1818.
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Friedrich Burmeister
1890 - 1969 (79 years)
Friedrich Burmeister was a German geophysicist. He was director of the Munich University’s Geomagnetic Observatory. Burmeister studied mathematics and physics at the University of Munich under Hugo von Seeliger and Arnold Sommerfeld, and he received his doctorate in 1919. Upon graduation, he became Director of the Munich Geomagnetic Observatory, of the Geomagnetism Branch of the Munich Earth Observatory, under the Geophysics Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, at the University of Munich. Due to the industrialization of Munich, operation of the observatory became more and more dif...
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Johann Carl Gehler
1732 - 1796 (64 years)
Johann Carl Gehler was a German physician, mineralogist, and anatomist. Born 17 May 1732 in Görlitz, Gehler studied medicine from 1751 to 1758 at the University of Leipzig, where he was a pupil of physician and botanist Christian Gottlieb Ludwig. While a student at Leipzig, he furthered his interest in natural sciences, publishing the mineralogical treatise, De characteribus fossilium externis , as a result. Following graduation, he continued his education by studying mineralogy in Freiberg and obstetrics in Strasbourg as a student of Johann Jakob Fried .
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Gabriel Auguste Daubrée
1814 - 1896 (82 years)
Gabriel Auguste Daubrée MIF FRS FRSE was a French geologist, best known for applying experimental methods to structural geology. He served as the director of the École des Mines as well as the president of the French Academy of Sciences.
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Frederik Johnstrup
1818 - 1894 (76 years)
Johannes Frederik Johnstrup was a Danish professor, geologist and paleontologist. He was the founder of the Danish scientific periodical Meddelelser om Grønland. Biography Johnstrup was born at Christianshavn, Denmark. He attended the Technical University of Denmark where he received B.Sc. in 1844. He became an associate professor of mineralogy and natural science at Sorø Academy in 1846. When the academy closed in 1848, he became assistant lecturer in Kolding. Three years later, he taught in Sorø and in 1866, he became professor of mineralogy and geology at the University of Copenhagen ...
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Edward Hitchcock
1793 - 1864 (71 years)
Edward Hitchcock was an American geologist and the third President of Amherst College . Life Born to poor parents, he attended newly founded Deerfield Academy, where he was later principal, from 1815 to 1818. In 1821 he was ordained as a Congregationalist pastor and served as pastor of the Congregational Church in Conway, Massachusetts, 1821–1825. He left the ministry to become Professor of Chemistry and Natural History at Amherst College. He held that post from 1825 to 1845, serving as Professor of Natural Theology and Geology from 1845 until his death in 1864. In 1845, Hitchcock became President of the College, a post he held until 1854.
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Carl Ludvig Godske
1906 - 1970 (64 years)
Carl Ludvig Schreiner Godske was a Norwegian mathematician and meteorologist. He was born in Bindal. He was a member of the Bergen School of Meteorology, working as meteorologist in Bergen from 1938, and appointed professor at the University of Bergen from 1946. Among his publications is Dynamic Meteorology and Weather Forecasting from 1957. He was also a pioneer in the application of electronic computers in Norway. He chaired the Norwegian Geophysical Society from 1956 to 1957 and was a fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters from 1937. He was decorated Knight, First Class of the Order of St.
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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
#3450
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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