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,
#3451
Aksel Arstal
1855 - 1940 (85 years)
Aksel Kristian Andersen Arstal was a Norwegian theologian, schoolteacher and geographer. He was born in Christiania to city engineer Oluf Martin Andersen and Annette Fredrikke Sontum, and was a brother of pianist Hildur Andersen.
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William Williams Mather
1804 - 1859 (55 years)
William Williams Mather was an American geologist. Biography He was a lineal descendant of Richard Mather's son Timothy. He was admitted to the U.S. Military Academy in 1823. In 1826 and 1827 he led his class in the newly established department of chemistry and mineralogy, and to him were submitted the proof sheets of Webster's A Manual of Chemistry, then in process of publication. He also invented an apparatus for drawing water from the lowest depths of the Hudson River, and noting its temperature.
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Johann Friedrich Julius Schmidt
1825 - 1884 (59 years)
Johann Friedrich Julius Schmidt was a German astronomer and geophysicist. He was the director of the National Observatory of Athens in Greece from 1858 to 1884. Julius Schmidt was tireless in his work, it was suggested by William Henry Pickering that he perhaps devoted more of his life than any other man to the study of the Moon. During his lifetime, he made some of the most complete lunar maps of the 19th century.
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John Wood
1812 - 1871 (59 years)
John Wood was a Scottish naval officer, surveyor, cartographer and explorer, principally remembered for his exploration of central Asia. Biography Wood was born in Perth, Scotland. After schooling at Perth Academy, he joined the British Indian Navy, was made a Lieutenant, and soon demonstrated a flair for surveying. Many of the maps of southern Asia which he compiled remained standard for the rest of the 19th century.
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Arthur Edmund Seaman
1858 - 1937 (79 years)
Arthur Edmund Seaman was a professor at the Michigan College of Mines and curator of the A. E. Seaman Mineral Museum which bears his name. Biography Seaman was born in Casnovia, Michigan, near Grand Rapids. He moved to the Upper Peninsula in the 1880s and began working in the timber industry as a "land looker" estimating timber. Because of his abilities, he was hired by the Michigan Geological Survey under Charles E. Wright and later Marshman E. Wadsworth, who was also president of the Michigan College of Mines. Seaman became an assistant at the college in 1890 and began earning his bachelor's degree.
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Joseph LeConte
1823 - 1901 (78 years)
Joseph Le Conte was a physician, geologist, professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and early California conservationist. Early life Of Huguenot descent, he was born in Liberty County, Georgia, to Louis Le Conte, patriarch of the noted LeConte family, and Ann Quarterman. He was educated at Franklin College in Athens, Georgia , where he was a member of the Phi Kappa Literary Society. After graduation in 1841, he studied medicine and received his degree at the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1845. After practising for three or four years in Macon, Georgia, he entered Harvard University and studied natural history under Louis Agassiz.
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Armand Lévy
1795 - 1841 (46 years)
Serve-Dieu Abailard "Armand" Lévy was a French mathematician and mineralogist. He is remembered in the Haüy-Lévy notation for describing mineral crystal structures. Life Lévy was born in Paris where his Jewish businessman father had married Céline Mailfert, a Catholic. Although his birth and death records have his given names as Serve-Dieu Abailard, he registered with the Geological Society of London under the name Armand. Armand Lévy studied mathematics, passing his agrégation in 1816 from the École Normale Supérieure. His Jewish origin prevented him from obtaining jobs in France and took up an offer Collège Royal on Reunion Island.
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Charles Hyde Warren
1876 - 1950 (74 years)
Charles Hyde Warren was an American geologist. He grew up in Watertown, Connecticut. He graduated from the Sheffield Scientific School in 1896. He was on the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1900 to 1922. He was Sterling Professor and chair of Geology at Yale University and Dean of the Sheffield Scientific School starting in 1922. He was also professor of Mineralogy. In 1908, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1928. Warren retired in 1945. He was a member of the Geological Socie...
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Petrus Apianus
1495 - 1552 (57 years)
Petrus Apianus , also known as Peter Apian, Peter Bennewitz, and Peter Bienewitz, was a German humanist, known for his works in mathematics, astronomy and cartography. His work on "cosmography", the field that dealt with the earth and its position in the universe, was presented in his most famous publications, Astronomicum Caesareum and Cosmographicus liber . His books were extremely influential in his time, with the numerous editions in multiple languages being published until 1609. The lunar crater Apianus and asteroid 19139 Apian are named in his honour.
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Ebenezer Emmons
1799 - 1863 (64 years)
Ebenezer Emmons , was a pioneering American geologist whose work includes the naming of the Adirondack Mountains in New York as well as a first ascent of Mount Marcy. Early life Emmons was born at Middlefield, Massachusetts, on May 16, 1799, son of Ebenezer and Mary Emmons. Emmons entered Williams College at age 16 and graduated with a degree in medicine in 1818. He went on to study medicine at Albany, New York. After graduating, he practiced as a doctor in Berkshire County, Massachusetts. In 1824, he assisted Chester Dewey in preparing a geological map of Berkshire County, in which the first attempt was made to classify the rocks of the Taconic area.
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Juana Cortelezzi
1887 - 1974 (87 years)
Juana Cortelezzi was an Argentine scientist and professor, with outstanding performance in the area of mineralogy. She is recognized for being the first woman to reach the position of full professor at the National University of La Plata and for her contributions in teaching geology.
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Armin Öpik
1898 - 1983 (85 years)
Armin Aleksander Öpik was an Estonian paleontologist who spent the second half of his career at the Bureau of Mineral Resources in Australia. Early life He was born on at the village Lontova, now a quarter of Kunda in Estonia and died in Canberra. His father Karl Heinrich Öpik was a harbormaster and his mother was Leontine Johanna Öpik . He had five brothers and one sister. His oldest brother Paul Öpik, later a director of the Bank of Estonia, introduced Armin to fossils. His sister Anna was a philologist, fluent in 14 languages, including Sanskrit. His brother Oskar was a diplomat. His brother Ernst was a famous astronomer.
Go to Profile#3463
Cornelio August Severinus Doelter
1850 - 1930 (80 years)
Cornelio August Severinus Doelter, Doelter y Cisterich or Cisterich y de la Torre was a Caribbean born Austrian geologist who specialized in chemical mineralogy and petrology, serving as a professor at the Universities of Graz and Vienna. He conducted pioneering experiments in synthetic mineralogy and petrology by melting down rocks and allowing recrystallization of mineral constituents.
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John Graunt
1620 - 1674 (54 years)
John Graunt has been regarded as the founder of demography. Graunt was one of the first demographers, and perhaps the first epidemiologist, though by profession he was a haberdasher. He was bankrupted later in life by losses suffered during Great Fire of London and the discrimination he faced following his conversion to Catholicism.
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J. Willis Ambrose
1904 - 1974 (70 years)
John Willis Ambrose Ph.D. was the first President of the Geological Association of Canada in 1947. Early life Ambrose grew up in southwestern Alberta. Education Ambrose obtained a B.A. from Stanford University in 1932 and a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1935.
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Achille Delesse
1817 - 1881 (64 years)
Achille Ernest Oscar Joseph Delesse was a French geologist and mineralogist. He is credited for inventing the Delesse principle in stereology. Education and career Delesse was born at Metz. At the age of twenty he entered the École Polytechnique, and subsequently went to the Ecole des Mines, where he was trained under the tutelage of Jean-Baptiste Élie de Beaumont and Ours-Pierre-Armand Petit-Dufrénoy. In 1845, he was appointed to the chair of mineralogy and geology at the University of Franche-Comté in Besançon. In 1850, he became the chair of geology at the Sorbonne in Paris; and in 1864, p...
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Franklin Alton Wade
1903 - 1978 (75 years)
Franklin Alton Wade was an American geologist. One of his chief scientific interests was the geology of Antarctica, to which he traveled several times, including twice with the explorer Admiral Richard E. Byrd.
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Hendrik Albertus Brouwer
1886 - 1973 (87 years)
Hendrik Albertus Brouwer was a Dutch geologist who specialized in petrology and explored South Africa and the Dutch colonies in Indonesia. Brouwer was born in Medemblik, the son of Egbertus L. Brouwer and Hendrika Poutsma. After schooling in Haarlem he went to the Technical University in Delft to study mine engineering and obtained a diploma in 1908. He received a doctoral degree for a dissertation on South African nepheline syenites in 1910. He became a professor of geology at the Delft Technical University in 1918 and during his career he travelled to Brazil, North America, South Africa and parts of southeast Asia to conduct studies on rocks.
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Niels Viggo Ussing
1864 - 1911 (47 years)
Niels Viggo Ussing , Professor of Mineralogy, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. The mineral ussingite is named after this Professor. External links Beskrivelse til geologisk kort over Danmark, By Niels Viggo Ussing, Victor Christian MadsenNiels Viggo Ussing - Pedigree Chart
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Adolf von Koenen
1837 - 1915 (78 years)
Adolf von Koenen was a German geologist best remembered for his paleontological research of northern Germany. He received his education in Berlin, and following study trips through Belgium, England and France, he obtained his habilitation at the University of Marburg in 1867. In 1878 he became a full professor at Marburg, then relocated to the University of Göttingen in 1881 as a professor of geology. At Göttingen one of his better known students was mineralogist Friedrich Rinne.
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Carl August von Schmidt
1840 - 1929 (89 years)
Carl August von Schmidt or August Schmidt was a German geophysicist and meteorologist. He innovated seismographs and developed techniques based on plotting distance and time to demonstrate the refraction of seismic waves as they travelled through the earth.
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Robert Dudley
1574 - 1649 (75 years)
Sir Robert Dudley was an English explorer and cartographer. In 1594, he led an expedition to the West Indies, of which he wrote an account. The illegitimate son of Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, he inherited the bulk of the Earl's estate in accordance with his father's will, including Kenilworth Castle. In 1603–1605, he tried unsuccessfully to establish his legitimacy in court. After that he left England forever, finding a new existence in the service of the grand dukes of Tuscany. There, he worked as an engineer and shipbuilder, and designed and published Dell'Arcano del Mare , the first maritime atlas to cover the whole world.
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Johann Jakob Früh
1852 - 1938 (86 years)
Johann Jakob Früh was a Swiss geographer and geologist. From 1869 to 1872 he attended the teacher's seminar in Kreuzlingen, then furthered his education at the University and Polytechnic in Zürich. From 1877 to 1890 he taught classes in natural sciences and geography at the cantonal school in Trogen, and afterwards worked as an assistant geologist at the Polytechnic in Zürich. In 1891 he obtained his habilitation, and in 1899 became the first full professor of geography at the Polytechnic.
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Frank Howe Bradley
1838 - 1879 (41 years)
Frank Howe Bradley was an American geologist. Bradley, son of Abijah and Eliza Collis Bradley, was born in New Haven, Conn., September 20, 1838 He graduated from Yale College in 1863. Through his undergraduate course he was partially employed in teaching in Gen. Russel's Collegiate and Commercial Institute in New Haven, at which school he was himself fitted for college. In the year 1863-4 he taught in Hartford, Conn., and spent the next year as a student in the Chemical Laboratory of the Sheffield Scientific School. His tastes early led him to the study of geology, and up to this time his vacations had been largely spent in the field in making collections of fossils.
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Werner Werenskiold
1883 - 1961 (78 years)
Werner Werenskiold was a Norwegian geologist and geographer. He was a son of Erik Werenskiold and visual artist Sophie Marie Stoltenberg Thomesen , and the brother of Dagfin Werenskiold. Werenskiold made field studies in Telemark and Gudbrandsdalen in his younger days, and later focused on studies at Svalbard and of glaciers in Jotunheimen. He was the principal editor of the two-volume series Norge, vårt land and the book series Jorden vår klode. He was a professor of geography at the University of Oslo from 1925.
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Karel Absolon
1877 - 1960 (83 years)
Karel Absolon was a Czech archaeologist, geographer, paleontologist, and speleologist. He was born in Boskovice. Absolon was the grandchild of paleontologist Jindřich Wankel. During his studies at Charles University in Prague he started with speleological research in the caves of Moravský kras in the Moravia of what is now the Czech Republic. In 1907 he became the custodian of the Moravian museum in Brno and a professor of paleoanthropology at the Charles University in Prague in 1926.
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Walery Łoziński
1880 - 1944 (64 years)
Walery Władysław Daniel Łoziński was a Polish geographer, geomorphologist and soil scientist known for introducing the concept of periglaciation into geomorphology in 1909. Łoziński extended the work of Swedish geologist Johan Gunnar Andersson who had written about periglacial phenomena in Bjørnøya and the Falkland Islands. The concept of "periglaciation" was the subject of an intensive discussion at the 1910 International Geological Congress held in Stockholm.
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C. E. A. Wichmann
1851 - 1927 (76 years)
Carl Ernst Arthur Wichmann was a German geologist and mineralogist. He was professor in geology at Utrecht University from 1879 to 1921, where he founded the geological institute. His daughter was the jurist and anarchist-socialist Clara Wichmann, his son the artist and fascist Erich Wichmann.
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Georg Ludwig Hartig
1764 - 1837 (73 years)
Georg Ludwig Hartig was a German forester. Education Hartig was born at Gladenbach, in present-day Hesse. After obtaining a practical knowledge of forestry from his uncle at Harzburg, he studied from 1781 to 1783 at the University of Giessen, which had commenced a course of instruction in forestry just a few years earlier, in 1778.
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Nathaniel Lord Britton
1859 - 1934 (75 years)
Nathaniel Lord Britton was an American botanist and taxonomist who co-founded the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, New York. Early life Britton was born on the 15 of January 1859 at New Dorp, Richmond County, New York to Jasper Alexander Hamilton Britton and Harriet Lord Turner. His parents wanted him to study religion, but he was attracted to nature study at an early age.
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John Fleming
1785 - 1857 (72 years)
John Fleming FRSE FRS FSA was a Scottish Free Church minister, naturalist, zoologist and geologist. He named and described a number of species of molluscs. During his life he tried to reconcile theology with science.
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John Morris
1810 - 1886 (76 years)
John Morris was an English geologist. Life He was born in 1810 at Homerton, London, and educated at private schools. He was engaged for some years as a pharmaceutical chemist at Kensington, but soon became interested in geology and other branches of science, and ultimately retired from business. His published papers speedily attracted notice, and his Catalogue of British Fossils, published in 1845, a work involving much critical research, added greatly to his reputation.
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Frederick Hutton
1836 - 1905 (69 years)
Captain Frederick Wollaston Hutton was an English-born New Zealand scientist who applied the theory of natural selection to explain the origins and nature of the natural history of New Zealand. Whilst an army officer, he embarked on an academic career in geology and biology, to become one of the most able and prolific nineteenth century naturalists of New Zealand.
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Walter Behrmann
1882 - 1955 (73 years)
Walter Emmerich Behrmann was a German geographer. He is remembered for introducing a cylindrical map projection known as the "Behrmann projection". Biography From 1901 to 1905, he studied geography, mathematics and physics at the University of Göttingen, where he was a student of Hermann Wagner. Later on, he worked as an assistant to geographer Joseph Partsch at the University of Leipzig . In 1912/13 he participated as a geographer in the Kaiserin-Augusta-Fluss Expedition to New Guinea along with Richard Thurnwald.
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James M. Safford
1822 - 1907 (85 years)
James Merrill Safford was an American geologist, chemist and university professor. Biography Early life James M. Safford was born in Putnam, Ohio on August 13, 1822. He received an M.D. and a PhD. He was trained as a chemist at Yale University.
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Per Geijer
1886 - 1976 (90 years)
Per Adolf Geijer was a Swedish geologist, mineralogist, and professor. He was a member of the Geijer family . Geijer received his doctoral degree and was named as an associate professor of petrography at Stockholm University in 1910. He undertook a trip to North America in 1913 to study mining operations there and in 1916 became a state geologist at the Swedish Geological Survey . He was professor of mineralogy and geology at the Royal Institute of Technology from 1931 to 1941 and director general and head of SGU from 1942 to 1951.
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Thomas Phemister
1902 - 1982 (80 years)
Prof Thomas Crawford Phemister FRSE FGS was a 20th-century Scottish geologist. Life He was born in Glasgow, Scotland on 25 May 1902 the son of John Clark Phemister and his wife, Elizabeth Galbraith Crawford. He was the younger brother of James Phemister. He was educated at Allan Glen's School in Glasgow. He studied geology at Glasgow University then went to the University of Chicago where he obtained a postgraduate MSc, then in 1926 began lecturing as an associate professor at the University of British Columbia. He also studied at St John's College, Cambridge, where he received his PhD.
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Ida Browne
1900 - 1976 (76 years)
Ida Alison Browne was an Australian geologist, petrologist and paleontologist at the University of Sydney. Early life and education Ida Alison Brown was born 16 August 1900 in Paddington, Sydney, New South Wales. She was educated at Fort Street Girls' High School, and went on to study her B.Sc. at the University of Sydney. She graduated in 1922 with first class Honours and the University medal in geology and mineralogy and second class Honours in mathematics, having also won Professor David's prize for geology and mineralogy and the Deas Thomson scholarship for mineralogy.
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Charles Kenneth Leith
1875 - 1956 (81 years)
Charles Kenneth Leith was an American geologist. He was head of the University of Wisconsin geology department for 30 years. In 1942, he was awarded the Penrose Medal by the Geological Society of America, the highest award given in the geosciences.
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Finn Malmgren
1895 - 1928 (33 years)
Finn Adolf Erik Johan Malmgren was a Swedish meteorologist and Arctic explorer. Biography Malmgren studied in Göteborg, Sundsvall, and Stockholm. In 1912, he began his studies at Uppsala University where he received a bachelor's degree in 1916. In 1917, Malmgren became assistant to professor Axel Hamberg in his observatory at Pårtetjåkko; in 1920, he returned to the meteorological institute in Uppsala and a year later was appointed assistant professor at Otto Pettersson's hydrographic institute for oceanic studies on an island in the Gullmarsfjord.
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Alexandre Guy Pingré
1711 - 1796 (85 years)
Dom Alexandre Guy Pingré was a French canon regular, astronomer and naval geographer. Early life Pingré was born in Paris but was educated by the canons regular of the Abbey of St. Vincent in Senlis, Oise, where he entered the community at the age of sixteen. In 1735, after his ordination as a priest, he was appointed professor of theology at the school. He soon, however, came under suspicion of subscribing to Jansenism and was summoned by the Bishop of Pamiers, by whom he was rebuked and required to submit to an interrogation by a committee of Jesuits.
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Alfred Merz
1880 - 1925 (45 years)
Alfred Merz was an Austrian geographer, oceanographer and director of the Institute of Marine Science in Berlin. He died of pneumonia in Buenos Aires while on an expedition to survey the South Atlantic and is buried in Perchtoldsdorf. Merz Peninsula is named after him.
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Charles Barrois
1851 - 1939 (88 years)
Charles Eugene Barrois was a French geologist and palaeontologist. Life Barrois was born at Lille and educated at the Jesuit College of St Joseph in that town, where he studied geology under Professor Jules Gosselet.
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Augustin Hirschvogel
1503 - 1553 (50 years)
Augustin Hirschvogel was a German artist, mathematician, and cartographer known primarily for his etchings. His thirty-five small landscape etchings, made between 1545 and 1549, assured him a place in the Danube School, a circle of artists in 16th-century Bavaria and Austria.
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Akiva Vroman
1912 - 1989 (77 years)
Akiva Jaap Vroman was an Israeli geologist. Biography Vroman was born in the Netherlands, where he studied geology and theology at the Utrecht University. He immigrated to the then British Mandate of Palestine in 1940, having previously lived there in mid-1930s. In 1936, he pursued geological work in Zichron Ya'akov, studying the geological history of the Carmel Mountains. He married Gonny Betsy DeLeo, with whom he had three daughters, all born in Jerusalem.
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Sidney Hugh Reynolds
1867 - 1949 (82 years)
Sidney Hugh Reynolds DSc, FGS was an English geologist, paleontologist, and zoologist who was born in Brighton. He died in Clifton, Bristol, aged 81 leaving behind a widow and a daughter. Education and career Reynolds was educated at Marlborough College and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he received B.A. 1889; ; M.A. 1894; Sc.D. 1913. He was acting professor of zoology at Madras Christian College in 1891–1892 and in 1897–1898. He taught Geology and Zoology at the University of Bristol in 1894 where he became an assistant professor in 1899 and then a professor in 1900. In 1910 he was appointed the chair of geology, a position held until he retired as professor emeritus in 1933.
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James Alfred Steers
1899 - 1987 (88 years)
James Alfred Steers was a prominent coastal geomorphologist who was Professor of Geography at the University of Cambridge from 1949 to 1966. Steers was one of the first students to complete the Geographical Tripos introduced in 1919. He spent a year teaching at Framlingham College but returned to Cambridge in 1922.
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Raffaele Molin
1825 - 1887 (62 years)
Raffaele Molin was an Italian scientist with successful career as physician, zoologist, geologist. He is most revered for his works in ichthyology and parasitology. He is immortalised as the authority of a number of parasitic worms.
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William Francis Ainsworth
1807 - 1896 (89 years)
William Francis Ainsworth was an English surgeon, traveller, geographer, and geologist, known also as a writer and editor. Life Ainsworth was born in Exeter, the son of John Ainsworth of Rostherne in Cheshire, captain in the 15th and 128th regiments. The novelist William Harrison Ainsworth was his cousin; at his cousin's request he adopted the additional Christian name Francis, to avoid confusion.
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Grenville Cole
1859 - 1924 (65 years)
Grenville Arthur James Cole FRS, FGS, MRIA was an English geologist. He was from 1890 the Professor of Geology and Mineralogy in the Royal College of Science for Ireland, and from 1905 he became the fifth Director of the Geological Survey of Ireland.
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