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,
#3501
Ralph Early Grim
1902 - 1989 (87 years)
Ralph Early Grim was an American geologist and scientist, often referred to as the "Father of Mineralogy" because he made many discoveries during his investigations of clay materials. He was one of the most outstanding mineralogists of his time and was well-known throughout the world in the field of clay science and technology. Grim's career spanned over 60 years and he received many honors and awards in the field of mineralogy. Some of the textbooks he wrote have been standard university textbooks in mineralogy for many years.
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Henry William Menard
1920 - 1986 (66 years)
Henry William Menard was an American geologist. Life and career He earned a B.S. and M.S. from the California Institute of Technology in 1942 and 1947, having served in the South Pacific during World War II as a photo interpreter. In 1949, he completed a Ph.D. in marine geology at Harvard University. Menard is perhaps best known for his promotion of the theory of plate tectonics before it was widely accepted in the scientific community. Menard served many roles during his career as a marine geologist. Field worker, theorist, educator, popularizer, entrepreneur and statesman.
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Helmut Landsberg
1906 - 1985 (79 years)
Helmut Erich Landsberg was a noted and influential climatologist. He was born in Frankfurt, Germany, February 9, 1906 and died December 6, 1985 in Geneva, Switzerland while attending a meeting of the World Meteorological Organization. Landsberg was an important figure in meteorology and atmospheric science in education, public service and administration. He authored several notable works, particularly in the field of particulate matter and its influence on air pollution and human health. He is the first to write in English about the use of statistical analysis in the field of climatology and implemented such statistical analysis in aiding military operations during World War II.
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Chester Ray Longwell
1887 - 1975 (88 years)
Chester Ray Longwell was an American geologist who conducted extensive research into the geology of the Basin and Range province in Nevada. His fieldwork led to a more complete understanding of Paleozoic and lower Mesozoic stratigraphic sequence in the southern Great Basin.
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Richard Hartshorne
1899 - 1992 (93 years)
Richard Hartshorne was a prominent American geographer, and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who specialized in economic and political geography and the philosophy of geography. He is known in particular for his methodological work The Nature of Geography, published in 1939.
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Martin Julian Buerger
1903 - 1986 (83 years)
Martin Julian Buerger was an American crystallographer. He was a Professor of Mineralogy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He invented the X-ray precession camera for studies in crystallography. Buerger authored twelve textbooks/monographs and over 200 technical articles. He was awarded the Arthur L. Day Medal by the Geological Society of America in 1951. The mineral fluor-buergerite was named for him. The MJ Buerger Award was established in his honor.
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Edward Bullard
1907 - 1980 (73 years)
Sir Edward Crisp Bullard FRS was a British geophysicist who is considered, along with Maurice Ewing, to have founded the discipline of marine geophysics. He developed the theory of the geodynamo, pioneered the use of seismology to study the sea floor, measured geothermal heat flow through the ocean crust, and found new evidence for the theory of continental drift.
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William Joscelyn Arkell
1904 - 1958 (54 years)
William Joscelyn Arkell FGS, FRS was a British geologist and palaeontologist, regarded as the leading authority on the Jurassic Period during the middle part of the 20th century. Childhood Arkell was born in Highworth, Wiltshire, the youngest of a family of seven. His father, James Arkell was a partner in the prosperous family business Arkell's Brewery . His mother, Laura Jane Arkell, was an artist of noted ability.
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Dudley Stamp
1898 - 1966 (68 years)
Sir Dudley Stamp, CBE, DSc, D. Litt, LLD, Ekon D, DSc Nat , was professor of geography at Rangoon and London, and one of the internationally best known British geographers of the 20th century. Educated at King's College London, he specialised in the study of geology and geography and taught at the universities of Rangoon and London . From 1936 to 1944 he directed the compilation and publication of the report of the Land Utilisation Survey of Britain. He worked on many official enquiries into the use of land and planning.
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Arthur Holmes
1890 - 1965 (75 years)
Arthur Holmes was an English geologist who made two major contributions to the understanding of geology. He pioneered the use of radiometric dating of minerals, and was the first earth scientist to grasp the mechanical and thermal implications of mantle convection, which led eventually to the acceptance of plate tectonics.
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Francis Parker Shepard
1897 - 1985 (88 years)
Francis Parker Shepard was an American sedimentologist most associated with his studies of submarine canyons and seafloor currents around continental shelves and slopes. Early life and education Shepard was born to a moderately wealthy family in Marbleheard, Massachusetts. He studied geology under R. A. Daly at Harvard University, a period that was interrupted by service in the US Navy during the First World War. After meeting his future wife, Elizabeth Buchner, he chose to study for his doctorate at the University of Chicago, close to her Milwaukee home. There he worked alongside J. Harlan Bretz, Rollin D.
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Kirk Bryan
1888 - 1950 (62 years)
Kirk Bryan was an American geologist on the faculty of Harvard University from 1925 until his death in 1950. The son of R.W.D. Bryan , Bryan received his undergraduate education at the University of New Mexico and later obtained a Ph.D. from Yale University.
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Hans Jenny
1899 - 1992 (93 years)
Hans Jenny was a Swiss-born soil scientist and expert on pedology , particularly the processes of soil formation. He served as 1949 President of the Soil Science Society of America. Overview Hans Jenny was born in Basel, Switzerland. He earned a diploma in agriculture from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in 1922, and a D. Sc. degree in 1927 for a thesis on ion exchange reactions.
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Thomas Griffith Taylor
1880 - 1963 (83 years)
Thomas Griffith "Grif" Taylor was an English-born geographer, anthropologist and world explorer. He was a survivor of Captain Robert Scott's Terra Nova Expedition to Antarctica . Taylor was a senior academic geographer at universities in Sydney, Chicago, and Toronto. His writings on geography and race were controversial.
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Raymond Cecil Moore
1892 - 1974 (82 years)
Raymond Cecil Moore was an Americann geologist and paleontologist. He is known for his work on Paleozoic crinoids, bryozoans, and corals. Moore was a member of US Geological Survey from 1913 until 1949. In 1919 he became professor at the University of Kansas . In 1953 Professor Moore organized the launch and became the first editor of the still ongoing multi-volume work Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology. Contributors to the Treatise have included the world's specialists in the field. He served as president of the Geological Society of America in 1958. In 1970 he was awarded the Mary Clar...
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Percy Edward Kent
1913 - 1986 (73 years)
Sir Percy Edward Kent was a British geologist who won the Royal Medal in 1971. Awarded the Bigsby Medal in 1955 and the Murchison Medal in 1969, he was made a Knight Bachelor in the 1973 Birthday Honours.
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C. W. Thornthwaite
1899 - 1963 (64 years)
Charles Warren Thornthwaite was an American geographer and climatologist. He is best known for devising the Thornthwaite climate classification, a climate classification system modified in 1948 that is still in use worldwide, and also for his detailed water budget computations of potential evapotranspiration.
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Maurice Ewing
1906 - 1974 (68 years)
William Maurice "Doc" Ewing was an American geophysicist and oceanographer. Ewing has been described as a pioneering geophysicist who worked on the research of seismic reflection and refraction in ocean basins, ocean bottom photography, submarine sound transmission , deep sea core samples of the ocean bottom, theory and observation of earthquake surface wavess, fluidity of the Earth's core, generation and propagation of microseismss, submarine explosion seismology, marine gravity surveys, bathymetry and sedimentation, natural radioactivity of ocean waters and sediments, study of abyssal plain...
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Ralph Walter Graystone Wyckoff
1897 - 1994 (97 years)
Ralph Walter Graystone Wyckoff, Sr. was an American scientist and pioneer of X-ray crystallography. He was elected member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1949 and Foreign member of the Royal Society, on April 19, 1951.
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Beno Gutenberg
1889 - 1960 (71 years)
Beno Gutenberg was a German-American seismologist who made several important contributions to the science. He was a colleague and mentor of Charles Francis Richter at the California Institute of Technology and Richter's collaborator in developing the Richter magnitude scale for measuring an earthquake's magnitude.
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George Gaylord Simpson
1902 - 1984 (82 years)
George Gaylord Simpson was an American paleontologist. Simpson was perhaps the most influential paleontologist of the twentieth century, and a major participant in the modern synthesis, contributing Tempo and Mode in Evolution , The Meaning of Evolution and The Major Features of Evolution . He was an expert on extinct mammals and their intercontinental migrations. Simpson was extraordinarily knowledgeable about Mesozoic fossil mammals and fossil mammals of North and South America. He anticipated such concepts as punctuated equilibrium and dispelled the myth that the evolution of the horse was a linear process culminating in the modern Equus caballus.
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Isaiah Bowman
1878 - 1950 (72 years)
Isaiah Bowman, AB, Ph. D. , was an American geographer and President of the Johns Hopkins University, 1935–1948, controversial for his antisemitism and inaction in Jewish resettlement during WWII. Biography Bowman was born in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. His family was Mennonite, and, at the age of eight weeks, Bowman's father moved his family to a log cabin in Brown City, Michigan, sixty miles north of Detroit. In 1900, Isaiah became an American citizen and began intensive study to prepare himself for admittance to Harvard. Studying first at Michigan State Normal College in Ypsilanti , Bowman c...
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Arthur Francis Buddington
1890 - 1980 (90 years)
Arthur Francis "Bud" Buddington was an American geologist. Born in Wilmington, Delaware, he grew up there and in West Mystic, Connecticut. He was educated at Brown University and Princeton University.
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Hugo Benioff
1899 - 1968 (69 years)
Victor Hugo Benioff was an American seismologist and a professor at the California Institute of Technology. He is best remembered for his work in charting the location of deep earthquakes in the Pacific Ocean.
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Glenn Thomas Trewartha
1896 - 1984 (88 years)
Glenn Thomas Trewartha was an American geographer of Cornish American descent. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, with a Ph.D. in 1924. He taught at the University of Wisconsin.
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James Gilluly
1896 - 1980 (84 years)
James Gilluly was an American geologist. Regarding the Cupriferous Porphyry Genesis, Gilluly integrated detailed observations of the Ajo porphyry between 1936 and 1936 with experimental data . Gilluly concluded that after the Ajo quartz monzonite intruded and crystallized, it was fractured by magmatic bypass solutions . Gilluly frequency experimental restrictions to estimate a paleo depth between 1000 and 3000 , consistent with solidus temperatures of 900 °C for granite, containing 4% by weight of water. He realized that the source magmatic content was water, sulfur and halogens, and that the binders can form complexes with metals to produce an aqueous fluid with larger volumes.
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Randy Read
1957 - 1983 (26 years)
Randy John Read is a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow and professor of protein crystallography at the University of Cambridge. Education Read was educated at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada where he was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in 1979 followed by a PhD in 1986 for X-ray crystallography of serine proteases and their protein inhibitors supervised by Michael N. G. James.
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Preston E. James
1899 - 1986 (87 years)
Preston Everett James was an American geographer. He was president of the American Association of Geographers from 1951 to 1952, and gave the annual presidential address at their 1966 banquet. James' work had a distinct focus on the geography of Latin America, and as such, the Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers' Preston E. James Eminent Latin Americanist Career Award is named for him.
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Victor P. Starr
1909 - 1976 (67 years)
Victor Paul Starr was an American meteorologist and professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1947 to 1974. For his contributions to atmospheric science, he received the Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal in 1961.
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Hans Cloos
1885 - 1951 (66 years)
Hans Cloos was a prominent German structural geologist. Born in Magdeburg, Germany, Hans Cloos earned his doctorate at Freiburg in 1910, then worked in Indonesia and Namibia up until the start of First World War. During the war his geological skills were put to use along the western front.
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Henry Hurd Swinnerton
1875 - 1966 (91 years)
Henry Hurd Swinnerton was a British geologist. He was professor of geology at University College Nottingham from 1910 to 1946. Swinnerton was educated at the Royal College of Science, and earned a doctorate in zoology from the University of London in July 1902.
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Reinout Willem van Bemmelen
1904 - 1983 (79 years)
Reinout Willem van Bemmelen, also known as Rein van Bemmelen, was a Dutch geologist whose interests were structural geology, economic geology and volcanology. He is known for his work on these subjects and the geology of Indonesia.
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Edward Ullman
1912 - 1976 (64 years)
Edward Louis Ullman , son of classical scholar Berthold Ullman, was trained as a geographer at University of Chicago where he was influenced by the urban and economic emphasis in social science. He was an urban geographer, transportation researcher and regional development specialist and became the champion of applied geography. His study and dissertation on the economic aspects of Mobile, Ullman began a career of transit studies. He was the Office of Strategic Services transportation specialist in World War II.
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Leonard Radinsky
1937 - 1985 (48 years)
Leonard Burton Radinsky was an American paleontologist and expert in fossil odd-toed ungulates and their relatives. He was professor at the University of Chicago from 1967 until his death, serving as chairman of the Department of Anatomy from 1978 to 1983. Born in Staten Island, New York, he earned a bachelor's degree from Cornell University and his master's and doctorate degrees from Yale University. His works include "Origin and early evolution of North American Tapiroidea", "The fossil record of primate brain evolution", and the textbook The Evolution of Vertebrate Design.
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Harry George Champion
1891 - 1979 (88 years)
Sir Harry George Champion CIE was a Geographer and forest officer in British India who created a classification of the forest types of India and Burma. Champion was the son of British entomologist George Charles Champion. He studied at New College, Oxford, and obtained a degree in chemistry in 1912 and then studied botany and forestry under William Schlich. He joined the Indian Forest Service in 1915 and became a silviculturist at the Forest Research Institute at Dehradun staying there until 1936 before becoming a Conservator in the United Provinces. He left India in 1939 and became a Professor of Forestry at Oxford, succeeding Robert Scott Troup.
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Jacob Bjerknes
1897 - 1975 (78 years)
Jacob Aall Bonnevie Bjerknes was a meteorologist. He is known for his key paper in which he pointed the dynamics of the polar front, mechanism for north-south heat transport and for which he was also awarded a doctorate from the University of Oslo.
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Percy George Hamnall Boswell
1886 - 1960 (74 years)
Professor Percy George Hamnall Boswell was a British geologist. Biography Boswell was born in Woodbridge, Suffolk, the son of printer George James Boswell of Ipswich and Mary Elizabeth Marshall He developed an early interest in geology while at school in Ipswich through fossil collecting and visiting local museums. As a teen he founded the Ipswich and District Field Club, which led to his election to as a fellow of the Geological Society of London in 1907. However, possibly as a result of his explorations, he developed choroiditis in both his eyes at 18 and nearly went blind; he never fully...
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Percy Edgar Brown
1885 - 1937 (52 years)
Percy Edgar Brown was a soil scientist at Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa. Brown is perhaps best known for the book, Soils of Iowa, which was published in 1936. The classic map, "Landform Regions of Iowa," was originally published in this text.
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Neville George
1904 - 1980 (76 years)
Thomas Neville George FRS FRSE LLD was a Welsh geologist. He was president of the Geological Society of London. Life Thomas Neville George was born in the Morriston district of Swansea, the son of Thomas Rupert George, a schoolmaster and ardent socialist, and his wife, Elizabeth Evans, also a teacher. He was educated at Swansea Municipal Secondary School and Swansea Grammar School. He won a place at the University of Wales graduating BSc in 1924 and MSc in 1926. He then went to Cambridge University to study at postgraduate level gaining a doctorate in 1928.
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William Quarrier Kennedy
1903 - 1979 (76 years)
William Quarrier Kennedy FRS FRSE FGS was a Scottish geologist. He specialised in the geology of Scotland and Africa. In authorship he is usually referred to as W. Q. Kennedy. Early life and education Kennedy was born on 30 November 1903 at the William Quarrier School for Orphans in Bridge of Weir, Renfrewshire, where his father, John Gordon Kennedy, was headmaster. He was named after the school's founder. He was educated at his father's school alongside the orphans then at Glasgow High School. He studied agriculture at Glasgow University, graduating BSc in 1926, then did a further degree in geology, graduating BSc in 1927.
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Julia Anna Gardner
1882 - 1960 (78 years)
Julia Anna Gardner , was an American geologist who worked for the United States Geological Survey for 32 years, was known worldwide for her work in stratigraphy and mollusc paleontology. Early life and education Gardner was born in Chamberlain, South Dakota, the only child of Charles Henry and Julia Gardner. She was raised in South Dakota but completed high school in North Adams, Massachusetts. At the very young age of 4 months, Julia's father died. Julia and her mother moved back to Dixon in 1895, and then by 1898, they moved to North Adams, Mass; here, Julia completed her high school educ...
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Arthur T. Ippen
1907 - 1974 (67 years)
Arthur Thomas Ippen was a noted hydrologist and engineer and was an Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Born to German parents, he attended high school and college in Aachen, Germany graduating with a degree in Civil Engineering in 1931. He then took an Institute of International Education scholarship to study at the University of Iowa but after his doctoral advisor, Floyd Nagler, died suddenly, Ippen transferred to Caltech to complete his Ph.D. His doctoral work, supervised by Theodore von Kármán and Robert T. Knapp, explored sediment transport and open-channel ...
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John Vernon Harrison
1892 - 1972 (80 years)
John Vernon Harrison FRSE FGS was a British structural geologist, explorer and cartographer. Life He was born to British parents in Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State on 16 March 1892. His father was John Frederick Harrison, a civil engineer. His family returned to Scotland in his early childhood, living at a flat at 37 Warrender Park Road in Marchmont in Edinburgh and he here attended George Watson's College. Moving to Glasgow around 1905 the family lived first at 32 Hamilton Park Terrace and then 34 Rowallan Gardens in Partick, a pleasant terraced house. In Glasgow he attended Allan Glen's School.
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Harry E. Wheeler
1907 - 1987 (80 years)
Harry Eugene Wheeler was an American geologist and stratigrapher. Eric Cheney called him "the chief theoretical architect of sequence stratigraphy" Wheeler was a professor of geology at the University of Washington from 1948 until 1976.
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Konrad Johannes Karl Büttner
1903 - 1970 (67 years)
Konrad Johannes Karl Büttner, or Buettner was a German-American meteorologist, bioclimatologist and university professor. Life and times Büttner was born in Westendorf, in the province of Hannover, Germany and died in New Haven, Connecticut. He was a Protestant, married and had one child. His father was John Samuel Julius Büttner and his mother was Emilie Henriette Elisabeth Büttner née Kreuser.
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Noel Odell
1890 - 1987 (97 years)
Noel Ewart Odell FRSE FGS was an English geologist and mountaineer. In 1924 he was an oxygen officer on the Everest expedition in which George Mallory and Andrew Irvine famously perished during their summit attempt. Odell spent two weeks living above , and twice climbed to and higher, all without supplemental oxygen. In 1936 Noel Odell with Bill Tilman climbed Nanda Devi, at the time the highest mountain climbed.
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James B. Macelwane
1883 - 1956 (73 years)
James B. Macelwane, S.J. was a Jesuit Catholic priest and pioneering American seismologist. Biography Father Macelwane was the second of nine children born to Alexander Macelwane, a fisherman and farmer, and Catherine Agnes Carr.
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Joseph Barrell
1869 - 1919 (50 years)
Joseph Barrell was an American geologist who developed many ideas on the origins of the Earth, isostasy and ideas on the origins of sedimentary rocks. He suggested that they were produced by the action of rivers, winds, and ice , as well as by marine sedimentation. He also independently arrived at the theory of stoping as a mechanism for igneous intrusion. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1915.
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Valter Schytt
1919 - 1985 (66 years)
Stig Valter Schytt was a Swedish glaciologist. Biography Schytt was born at Solna in Stockholm, Sweden. He studied physics and mathematics at Stockholm University and was awarded Master of Philosophy in 1946, Licentiate in 1947 and Ph. D in 1958. He became a lector in geography at Stockholm University in 1943, glaciologist with the Swedish Antarctic Committee in 1948, research associate at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois in 1953 and assistant teacher in geography at Stockholm University in 1955. He became associated with the Swedish Research Council in 1963, an assistant professor in 1969 and was a professor from 1970.
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Victor Goldschmidt
1888 - 1947 (59 years)
Victor Moritz Goldschmidt was a Norwegian mineralogist considered to be the founder of modern geochemistry and crystal chemistry, developer of the Goldschmidt Classification of elements. Early life and education Goldschmidt was born in Zürich, Switzerland on 27 January 1888. His father, Heinrich Jacob Goldschmidt, was a physical chemist at the Eidgenössisches Polytechnikum and his mother, Amelie Koehne , was the daughter of a lumber merchant. They named him Viktor after a colleague of Heinrich, Victor Meyer. His father's family was Jewish back to at least 1600 and mostly highly educated, with rabbis, judges, lawyers and military officers among their numbers.
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