The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people in Earth Sciences,
#351
Philip England
#65340
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
#352
Patricia Dove
#21603
Overall Influence
Patricia Martin Dove is an American geochemist. She is a university distinguished professor and the C.P. Miles Professor of Science at Virginia Tech with appointments in the department of geosciences and department of chemistry. Her research focuses on the kinetics and thermodynamics of mineral reactions with aqueous solutions in biogeochemical systems. Much of her work is on crystal nucleation and growth during biomineralization and biomaterial synthesis. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2012 and currently serves as chair of Class I, Physical and Mathematical S...
Go to Profile#353
Aksel C. Wiin-Nielsen
#66637
Overall Influence
1924 - 2010 (86 years)
Aksel C. Wiin-Nielsen was a Danish professor of meteorology at University of Copenhagen, University of Michigan, Director of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts , and Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization .
Go to Profile#354
Robert J. Stern
#70127
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Robert James Stern is an American geoscientist based in Texas. Stern is Professor of Geosciences and Director of the Global and Magmatic Research Laboratory at the University of Texas at Dallas University of Texas at Dallas. He has more than 40 years of geoscientific research experience, studying active convergent margin processes and products in the Mariana arc system Izu–Bonin–Mariana Arc in the Western Pacific as well as ancient crust exposed in the Arabian-Nubian Shield of Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel. Stern is expert on the Geology of the Dallas–Fort Worth ...
Go to Profile#355
Ian Simmons
#14417
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Ian Gordon Simmons is a British geographer. He retired as Professor of Geography from the University of Durham in 2001. He has made significant contributions to environmental history and prehistoric archaeology.
Go to Profile#356
Henry Pollack
#69473
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Henry N. Pollack is an American emeritus professor of geophysics at the University of Michigan. Pollack received his A.B. from Cornell University in 1958 and Ph.D in 1963 from the University of Michigan. He is also an advisor to the National Science Foundation and an author of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore. Pollack has conducted scientific research on all seven continents and has traveled regularly to Antarctica.
Go to Profile#357
Donald Mackay
#68586
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Donald Mackay was a Scottish-born Canadian scientist and engineer specializing in environmental chemistry. Life and career Donald Mackay was born on 30 October 1936. He was a member of the faculty of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry at the University of Toronto and the founding director of the Canadian Environmental Modelling Centre at Trent University. He has developed several multimedia fugacity models. He has stressed that principles of good practice also need to be adopted for chemical assessments, especially in a regulatory context.
Go to Profile#358
John Suppe
#53539
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
John Suppe is an American geologist who is Distinguished Professor of Geology at University of Houston and Princeton University. Biography He received his B.A. from University of California, Riverside in 1965, and his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1969. He joined the Princeton faculty in 1971, and was the chairman of the Department of Geology from 1991 to 1993. He transferred to emeritus status, and moved to Taiwan where he became a Distinguished Chair Research Professor at the National Taiwan University in 2007.
Go to Profile#359
William M. Kaula
#64012
Overall Influence
1926 - 2000 (74 years)
William M. Kaula was an Australian-born American geophysicist and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Kaula was most notable for his contributions to geodesy, including using early satellites to produce maps of Earth's gravity. The National Academies Press called Kaula "the father of space-based geodesy". The Los Angeles Times called him "one of the leading planetary physicists of the last four decades".
Go to Profile#360
Rosaly Lopes
#37411
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Rosaly M. C. Lopes is a planetary geologist, volcanologist, an author of numerous scientific papers and several books, as well as a proponent of education. Her major research interests are in planetary and terrestrial surface processes with an emphasis on volcanology.
Go to Profile#361
Michael Storper
#35167
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Michael Storper is an economic and urban geographer who teaches at the University of California , Sciences Po and London School of Economics. Biography Michael Storper completed a bachelor's degree in sociology and history in 1975, followed by a masters in 1979 and a PhD in geography in 1982 from the University of California, Berkeley.
Go to Profile#362
Terry Plank
#49169
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
#363
Haraldur Sigurðsson
#68250
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Haraldur Sigurðsson or Haraldur Sigurdsson is an Icelandic volcanologist and geochemist. Education Sigurdsson was born in Stykkishólmur in western Iceland. He studied geology and geochemistry in the United Kingdom, where he obtained a Bachelor of Science degree from Queen's University, Belfast, followed by a PhD under the supervision of George Malcolm Brown from Durham University in 1970.
Go to Profile#364
Augustin Berque
#20724
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Augustin Berque , is a French geographer, Orientalist and philosopher. He is the son of the famous Egyptologist Jacques Berque. He is professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris . His specialist field of interest is Japan.
Go to Profile#365
Heather Reid
#27863
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Heather Margaret Murray Reid , also known as "Heather the Weather", is a Scottish meteorologist, physicist, science communicator and educator. She was formerly a broadcaster and weather presenter for BBC Scotland.
Go to Profile#366
Gerald Manfred Friedman
#80427
Overall Influence
#367
David A. Hodell
#67135
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
David A. Hodell is a British–American geologist and paleoclimatologist. He currently holds the position of Woodwardian Professor of Geology in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge, where he is also a fellow of Clare College. He is a dual citizen of the United Kingdom and the United States. Previously, he taught at the University of Florida from 1986–2008, earning the rank of full professor in geological sciences. Hodell was also the director of the Stable Isotope Laboratory from 1996–2008. Hodell earned his Ph.D. in 1986 in oceanography from the University of Rhode...
Go to Profile#368
Paul Tapponnier
#62221
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Paul Tapponnier is a French geologist, specializing in plate tectonics and crustal deformation. Education and career Tapponnier graduated in 1970 with an M.S. in geology from the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris. From 1972 to 1975 he was a research fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . He received in 1978 his doctorate from the Université Montpellier-II. He was an associate professor from 1980 to 1985, a full professor from 1986 to 1990, and a full professor with tenure from 1991 to 2009 at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris. In 1985 he was a visiting scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Go to Profile#369
Bertha Becker
#29291
Overall Influence
1930 - 2013 (83 years)
Bertha Koiffmann Becker was a Brazilian geographer, author and professor emeritus at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. She published more than 180 books, articles, and other works during her career. Much of her research dealt with issues affecting the Amazon rainforest and surrounding regions, as well as the political geography of Brazil. She helped develop new public policies for the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology. She spoke as a panelist at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development Rio+20 in 2012.
Go to Profile#370
Christopher Hawkesworth
#48043
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Christopher John Hawkesworth FRS FRSE is a British earth scientist, and former Deputy Principal and Vice-Principal for Research, at University of St Andrews. Biography Hawkesworth was born in Khartoum, Sudan on 18 December 1947, and was brought up in Ireland. He graduated from Trinity College, Dublin in 1970, and Oxford University at St Edmund Hall in 1974. He received his DPhil at Oxford under the supervision of Professor Ron Oxburgh.
Go to Profile#371
Christopher Scotese
#56164
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Christopher R. Scotese is an American geologist and paleogeographer. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1985. He is the creator of the Paleomap Project, which aims to map Earth over the last billion years, and is credited with predicting Pangaea Ultima, a possible future supercontinent configuration. Later Scotese changed Pangaea Ultima to Pangaea Proxima to alleviate confusion about the name Pangaea Ultima, which would imply that it would be the last supercontinent.
Go to Profile#372
Walter C. Pitman III
#65135
Overall Influence
1931 - 2019 (88 years)
Walter Clarkson Pitman III was an American geophysicist and a professor emeritus at Columbia University. His measurements of magnetic anomalies on the ocean floor supported the Morley–Vine–Matthews hypothesis explaining seafloor spreading. With William Ryan, he developed the Black Sea deluge theory. Among his major awards are the Alexander Agassiz Medal and the Vetlesen Prize.
Go to Profile#373
Robert P. Sharp
#49497
Overall Influence
1911 - 2004 (93 years)
Robert Phillip Sharp was an American geomorphologist and expert on the geological surfaces of the Earth and the planet Mars. Sharp served as the chairman of the Division of Geological Sciences at California Institute of Technology from 1952 to 1968. He built the modern department and especially recruited new faculty in geochemistry, tectonic geomorphology, planetary science, and field geology.
Go to Profile#374
William Sager
#54878
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
William W. Sager is a marine geophysicist from the University of Houston. Before joining the Houston faculty in 2013, he held the Jane and R. Ken Williams ’45 Chair in Ocean Drilling Science at Texas A&M University from 2003 to 2012.
Go to Profile#375
Raymond A. Price
#59031
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Raymond Alexander Price, is a Canadian geologist. He has used his research on the structure and tectonics of North America’s lithosphere to produce extensive geological maps. He has also provided guidance for nuclear fuel waste disposal and reports on the human contribution to Global warming.
Go to Profile#376
Maureen Raymo
#56743
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Maureen E. "Mo" Raymo is an American paleoclimatologist and marine geologist. She is the Co-Founding Dean of the Columbia Climate School, Director of the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, the G. Unger Vetlesen Professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences, and Director of the Lamont–Doherty Core Repository at the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. She is the first female climate scientist and first female scientist to head the institution.
Go to Profile#377
John P. Burrows
#59970
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
John Philip Burrows is professor of the Physics of the Ocean and Atmosphere and Director of the Institutes of Environmental Physics and Remote Sensing at the University of Bremen. He is also a Fellow of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology , part of the Natural Environment Research Council .
Go to Profile#378
Mark Zoback
#78341
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Mark D. Zoback is an American geophysicist and Emeritus Faculty at Stanford University. He is also a senior fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University, an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Engineering, and he directs or co-directs the Stanford Center for Induced and Triggered Seismicity , the Stanford Natural Gas Initiative , and the Stanford Rock Physics and Borehole Geophysics program . Zoback is the author of the textbook Reservoir Geomechanics. Zoback is the author of over 300 peer-reviewed publications and he holds seven patents.
Go to Profile#379
David M. Raup
#18456
Overall Influence
1933 - 2015 (82 years)
David M. Raup was a University of Chicago paleontologist. Raup studied the fossil record and the diversity of life on Earth. Raup contributed to the knowledge of extinction events along with his colleague Jack Sepkoski. They suggested that the extinction of dinosaurs 66 mya was part of a cycle of mass extinctions that may have occurred every 26 million years.
Go to Profile#380
Simon Dalby
#27954
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Simon Dalby is an Irish born academic and CIGI Chair in the Political Economy of Climate Change at the Balsillie School of International Affairs. Dalby works in the disciplines of environmental security and critical geopolitics.
Go to Profile#381
Kenneth Hare
#36081
Overall Influence
1919 - 2002 (83 years)
Fredrick Kenneth Hare, was a Canadian climatologist and academic, who researched atmospheric carbon dioxide, climate change, drought, and arid zone climates and was a strong advocate for preserving the natural environment.
Go to Profile#382
Hans Neuberger
#74126
Overall Influence
1910 - 1996 (86 years)
Hans Hermann Neuberger was head of Pennsylvania State University's Department of Meteorology. Early life On 17 February 1910, Hans Hermann Neuberger was born in Mannheim, Germany. Education In 1936, Neuberger received a doctorate from the University of Hamburg in Hamburg, Germany. In 1937, Neuberger emigrated to the United States.
Go to Profile#383
Piers Blaikie
#15814
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Piers Macleod Blaikie is a Scottish geographer and scholar of international development and natural resources, who worked until 2003 at the School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia. His contribution to development has been in four areas:EnvironmentAgrarian changeAIDS and family planningPolitical ecology
Go to Profile#384
Ragnar Fjørtoft
#25096
Overall Influence
1913 - 1998 (85 years)
Ragnar Fjørtoft was an internationally recognized Norwegian meteorologist. He was part of a Princeton, New Jersey team that in 1950 performed the first successful numerical weather prediction using the ENIAC electronic computer. He was also a professor of meteorology at the University of Copenhagen and director of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute.
Go to Profile#385
Michael John Keen
#70075
Overall Influence
1935 - 1991 (56 years)
Michael John Keen was a Canadian geoscientist. From 1961 to 1977, he was a professor at Dalhousie University in the Department of Geology. He chaired the department for several years. From 1977 to 1991, he was with the Geological Survey of Canada’s Atlantic Geoscience Centre in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
Go to Profile#386
Stanley Robert Hart
#36147
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Stanley Robert Hart is an American geologist, geochemist, leading international expert on mantle isotope geochemistry, and pioneer of chemical geodynamics. Biography Hart graduated from MIT with a bachelor's degree in geology in 1956 and a master's degree in geochemistry in 1957 from Caltech. In 1960 he received his doctorate in geochemistry from MIT with thesis Mineral ages and metamorphism under the supervision of Patrick M. Hurley. After a year as a Carnegie Fellow, Hart was from 1961 to 1975 at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C. in the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism. From 1...
Go to Profile#387
John O. Norrman
#72838
Overall Influence
1929 - 2013 (84 years)
John Olof Norrman was a Swedish geographer and geomorphologist known for his contributions to the coastal dynamics. Together with the other Ph.D. students of Filip Hjulström; Anders Rapp, Valter Axelsson and Åke Sundborg, Norrman was part of what came to be known as the Uppsala School of Physical Geography. Norrman became in 1971 professor of physical geography at Uppsala and in 1987 he was elected member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#388
Michael Manga
#52567
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Michael Manga is a Canadian-American geoscientist who is currently a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Born in Hamilton, Ontario, Manga grew up in Ottawa. His father is a South African immigrant of Indian descent, and his mother is of German and Polish descent. He has a B.S. in geophysics from McGill University , S.M. in engineering sciences from Harvard University , and Ph.D. in Earth and planetary sciences from Harvard.
Go to Profile#389
Paul Markowski
#48691
Overall Influence
#390
Jamie Peck
#46161
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Jamie Peck FRSC FAcSS is Canada Research Chair in Urban & Regional Political Economy and Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia, Canada. He is the Managing Editor of Environment and Planning A and the convenor of the Summer Institute in Economic Geography.
Go to Profile#391
Jagadish Shukla
#53335
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Jagadish Shukla is an Indian meteorologist and Distinguished University Professor at George Mason University in the United States. Early years Shukla was born in 1944 in the village of Middha in the Ballia district of Uttar Pradesh, India. This village had no electricity, no roads or transportation, and no primary school building. Most of his primary school education was received under a large banyan tree. He passed from the S.R.S. High School, Sheopur, in the first class with distinction in Mathematics and Sanskrit. He studied science, firstly outside school, then at S.C. College, Ballia. A...
Go to Profile#392
Andrey Kapitsa
#36558
Overall Influence
1931 - 2011 (80 years)
Andrey Petrovich Kapitsa was a Soviet and Russian geographer and Antarctic explorer, discoverer of Lake Vostok, the largest subglacial lake in Antarctica. He was a member of the Kapitsa family, a scientific dynasty in Russia.
Go to Profile#393
Keith Shine
#35096
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Keith Peter Shine FRS is the Regius Professor of Meteorology and Climate Science at the University of Reading. He is the first holder of this post, which was awarded to the university by Queen Elizabeth II to mark her Diamond Jubilee.
Go to Profile#394
Emrys Jones
#38402
Overall Influence
1920 - 2006 (86 years)
Emrys Jones, FBA, FRGS was a Welsh Professor of Geography at the London School of Economics and a renowned author and consultant in the fields of geography and urban planning.
Go to Profile#395
Pierre George
#35250
Overall Influence
1909 - 2006 (97 years)
Pierre George was a French geographer. Further reading Hugh Clout: Pierre George , in Geographers: Biobibliographical Studies 29, 2010, pp. 35–56.
Go to Profile#396
Michael John Wise
#41099
Overall Influence
1918 - 2015 (97 years)
Michael John Wise CBE, MC was a British academic who served as a professor of geography at the University of London. Early life Michael Wise was born in Stafford in 1918. He was the son of Harry Cuthbert Wise and Sarah Evelyn Wise.
Go to Profile#397
Dorothy Hill
#28075
Overall Influence
1907 - 1997 (90 years)
Dorothy Hill, was an Australian geologist and palaeontologist, the first female professor at an Australian university, and the first female president of the Australian Academy of Science. Education Dorothy Hill was born in Taringa, the third of seven children, and grew up in Coorparoo in Brisbane. She attended Coorparoo State School, and then won a scholarship to attend Brisbane Girls Grammar School. She received the Lady Lilley Gold Medal, and the Phyllis Hobbs Memorial Prize in English and History, in 1924.
Go to Profile#398
Stanley R. Hart
#82296
Overall Influence
#399
Jay Appleton
#33800
Overall Influence
1919 - 2015 (96 years)
Jay Appleton was a British geographer who proposed "habitat theory" and advanced the notion of "prospect-refuge". Biography Appleton was born in Yorkshire in December 1919. He moved to Stibbard, near Fakenham in Norfolk, at the age of eighteen months. In 1940, he moved south to Diss, but ten years later a university appointment took him back to Yorkshire, and he lived in Cottingham until his death.
Go to Profile#400
Keith Browning
#53623
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Keith Anthony Browning is a British meteorologist who worked at Imperial College London, the Met Office, and the University of Reading departments of meteorology. His work with Frank Ludlam on the supercell thunderstorm at Wokingham, UK in 1962 was the first detailed study of such a storm. His well regarded research covered many areas of mesoscale meteorology including developing the theory of the sting jet. Arguably his greatest talent is his intuitive understanding of complex three-dimensional meteorological processes which he has described more simply using conceptual models.
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