The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
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List of the most influential people in Earth Sciences,
#3551
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.
Go to Profile#3564
George E. Backus
#3565
Robert Bell
1841 - 1917 (76 years)
Robert Bell was a Canadian geologist, professor and civil servant. He is considered one of Canada’s greatest exploring scientists, having named over 3,000 geographical features. Personal life Robert Bell was born in Toronto, Upper Canada to Presbyterian clergy and amateur geologist, Reverend Andrew Bell and Elizabeth Notman. In 1873, Bell married Agnes Smith. They had a son and three daughters. He spent his retirement at his home in Ottawa and his farm in Rathwell, Manitoba. Bell died after a brief illness at the age of 76 at his farm.
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Carl Wilhelm Correns
1893 - 1980 (87 years)
Carl Wilhelm Correns was a German geologist who pioneered the field of sedimentary petrology. He was noted as an influential teacher and for his textbook Einführung in die Mineralogie . Correns received the Roebling Medal of the Geological Society of America in 1976.
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Hans Kinzl
1898 - 1979 (81 years)
Hans Kinzl was an Austrian geographer and mountain researcher. Life Hans Kinzl was born in Upper Austria in 1899. After his studies of geography at the University of Innsbruck he became assistant of his mentor Johann Sölch—disciple of Albrecht Penck—in Innsbruck. He then followed Sölch—who succeeded Alfred Hettner in Heidelberg—but returned to the University of Innsbruck where he became a professor of geography.
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Albert Huntington Chester
1843 - 1903 (60 years)
Professor Albert Huntington Chester was an American geologist and mining engineer. Personal life Chester was the son of Albert Tracey and Elizabeth Chester of Connecticut. He was married to Alethea S. Rudd of New York City from 1869 until her death in 1891. He was then married to Georgiana Waldron Jenks of Buffalo, New York from 1898 until his own death. He was the father of one child, Albert Huntington Chester, Jr.
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Johann Reinhard Blum
1802 - 1883 (81 years)
Johann Reinhard Blum was a German mineralogist. From 1821 he studied at the universities of Heidelberg and Marburg, receiving his habilitation for mineralogy in 1828. In 1838 he became an associate professor, and in 1856, a full professor of mineralogy at the University of Heidelberg. For many years he was director of the university's mineral collection. In 1871 he was a founding member of the Oberrheinischen Geologischen Vereins .
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Joan Blaeu
1596 - 1673 (77 years)
Joan Blaeu was a Dutch cartographer born in Alkmaar, the son of cartographer Willem Blaeu. Life In 1620, Blaeu became a doctor of law but he joined in the work of his father. In 1635, they published the Atlas Novus in two volumes. Joan and his brother Cornelius took over the studio after their father died in 1638. Blaeu became the official cartographer of the Dutch East India Company like his father before him.
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Thomas Sterry Hunt
1826 - 1892 (66 years)
Thomas Sterry Hunt was an American geologist and chemist. Biography Hunt was born at Norwich, Connecticut. He lost his father when twelve years old, and had to earn his own livelihood. In the course of two years he found employment in a printing office, in an apothecary shop, in a book store and as a clerk. He became interested in natural science, and especially in chemical and medical studies, and in 1845 he was elected a member of the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists at Yale—a body which four years later became the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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Petrus Plancius
1552 - 1622 (70 years)
Petrus Plancius was a Dutch-Flemish astronomer, cartographer and clergyman. He was born as Pieter Platevoet in Dranouter, now in Heuvelland, West Flanders. He studied theology in Germany and England. At the age of 24 he became a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church.
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Arthur Philemon Coleman
1852 - 1939 (87 years)
Arthur Philemon Coleman was a Canadian geologist and academic. Biography Born in Lachute, Quebec, the son of Rev. Francis Coleman and Emmeline Maria Adams, he received his Bachelor of Arts in 1876 and Master of Arts in 1880 from Victoria College in Cobourg, Ontario. He received a Ph.D. at the University of Breslau in 1881.
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John Farey Sr.
1766 - 1826 (60 years)
John Farey Sr. was an English geologist and writer best known for Farey sequence, a mathematical construct that is named after him. Biography Youth and early career Farey was born on 24 September 1766 at Woburn in Bedfordshire to John Farey and his second wife, Rachel , a Wesleyan Methodist. He was educated at Halifax in Yorkshire, and showed such aptitude in mathematics, drawing and surveying, that he was brought under the notice of John Smeaton .
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Hjalmar Sjögren
1856 - 1922 (66 years)
Sten Anders Hjalmar Sjögren was a Swedish geologist and mineralogist. Biography Sten Anders Hjalmar Sjögren became associate professor of mineralogy and geology at Uppsala University from 1882-84. He studied in Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1883.
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Newton Horace Winchell
1839 - 1914 (75 years)
Newton Horace Winchell was an American geologist chiefly notable for his six-volume work The Geology of Minnesota: Final Report of the Geological and Natural History Survey of Minnesota, which was prepared by Winchell and his assistants. A bibliography of his publications by Warren Upham in the Bulletin of the Geological Society of America contains almost 300 titles.
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August Emanuel von Reuss
1811 - 1873 (62 years)
August Emanuel Rudolph von Reuss was an Austrian geologist and palaeontologist. Biography Reuss was born on 8 July 1811 in Bílina, Bohemia. He was the son of Franz Ambrosius Reuss and the father of ophthalmologist August Leopold von Reuss . He was educated for the medical profession, graduating in 1834 at the University of Prague, and afterwards practising for fifteen years at the Bílinská Kyselka spa.
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Élisée Reclus
1830 - 1905 (75 years)
Jacques Élisée Reclus was a French geographer, writer and anarchist. He produced his 19-volume masterwork, La Nouvelle Géographie universelle, la terre et les hommes , over a period of nearly 20 years . In 1892 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Paris Geographical Society for this work, despite having been banished from France because of his political activism.
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Ernst Dieffenbach
1811 - 1855 (44 years)
Johann Karl Ernst Dieffenbach , also known as Ernest Dieffenbach, was a German physician, geologist and naturalist, the first trained scientist to live and work in New Zealand, where he travelled widely under the auspices of the New Zealand Company, returning in 1841–42 and publishing in English his Travels in New Zealand in 1843.
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William Whitehead Watts
1860 - 1947 (87 years)
Prof William Whitehead Watts FRS HFRSE FGS FMS LLD was a British geologist. Life He was born near Broseley in Shropshire, the eldest of two sons of Isaac Watts, but then a music master, and his wife, Maria Whitehead, daughter of a farmer.
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William Hughes
1818 - 1876 (58 years)
William Hughes FRGS was an English geographer, cartographer, author and academic. Life In early life Hughes was in business as an engraver in Pentonville, London. In 1840 he became a lecturer at St John's College, Battersea.
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Antonio D'Achiardi
1839 - 1902 (63 years)
Antonio D'Achiardi was an Italian geologist and mineralogist known for his mineralogical studies of Tuscany. He was the father of mineralogist , and the artist, Pietro D'Achiardi. In 1859 he received his doctorate in sciences from the University of Pisa, afterwards working as an assistant for chemistry . Three months after this appointment, he lost the use of his left eye due to a laboratory accident involving nitric acid. He subsequently abandoned his career in chemistry, and instead devoted his attention to geology and mineralogy, becoming a student of Giuseppe Meneghini. He later became a ...
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Domenico Lovisato
1842 - 1916 (74 years)
Domenico Lovisato was an Italian geologist. He was a very early proponent of the theory of continental drift. Education Domenico Lovisato was born in Isola, in Istria on 12 August 1842, then under Austrian rule. He was the third of five children. His father died when he was very young, leaving the family extremely poor. However, with the help of relatives and family friends he was able to complete his primary and secondary education, enrolling in the University of Padua in 1862 to study mathematics. He was vocal in seeking independence, and was arrested eight times. In 1864 he was tried for high treason, but acquitted for lack of evidence.
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Karl von Seebach
1839 - 1880 (41 years)
Karl Albert Ludwig von Seebach was a German geologist known for his studies in the field of volcanology. He studied geology and paleontology at Breslau as a pupil of Ferdinand von Roemer, with whom he took a scientific journey to Russia. He also studied at the Universities of Göttingen and Berlin, where he was a student of Heinrich Ernst Beyrich. In 1862 he obtained his doctorate at Göttingen with a thesis on conch-fauna of the Weimar Triassic. In 1870 he became a full professor at Göttingen and subsequently chosen as the first director of the geological-palaeontological institute.
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Otto Mügge
1858 - 1932 (74 years)
Johannes Otto Conrad Mügge was a German mineralogist and crystallographer. From 1875 to 1879 he studied mathematics and sciences at the Technical University of Hannover and at the University of Göttingen. After graduation, he spent three years as an assistant to Harry Rosenbusch at the mineralogical-geological institute of the University of Heidelberg. From 1882 he worked as curator of the mineralogical and geological department at the Natural History Museum in Hamburg, and in 1886 became an associate professor at the academy in Münster. Later on, he served as a full professor at the University of Königsberg, where in 1903/04 he was named dean to the faculty of philosophy.
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Gustav Hellmann
1854 - 1939 (85 years)
Gustav Johann Georg Hellmann or Georg Gustav Hellmann was a German meteorologist. Hellmann was born in Löwen , Prussian Silesia. Since 1907 to 1922, he was the principal of the Preußischen Meteorologischen Institut in Berlin. He died in Berlin.
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Ernst Anton Wülfing
1860 - 1930 (70 years)
Ernst Anton Wülfing was a German mineralogist and petrographer, known for his research on the optical properties of minerals and meteorites. He studied chemistry at Geneva and at Heidelberg as a student of Robert Bunsen, then focused his attention to mineralogy and geology, of which, he studied at Greifswald and Vienna . Afterwards he served as an assistant to Harry Rosenbusch at the University of Heidelberg.
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Hans Georg Wunderlich
1928 - 1974 (46 years)
Hans Georg Wunderlich was a German geologist. Life and work Wunderlich studied geology in Bonn and Göttingen. In 1952 he was awarded his doctorate in Göttingen and from 1957 he taught in Göttingen. In 1963 he became a professor in Göttingen, in 1970 professor of geology and palaeontology in Stuttgart.
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Ljudmila Dolar Mantuani
1906 - 1988 (82 years)
Ljudmila Dolar Mantuani, a Slovenian petrologist , was born 5 July 1906, in Celje, Slovenia, and died 22 September 1988, in Toronto, Canada. She was the first female assistant professor of petrography in Yugoslavia.
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Alexei Alexeivich Bogdanov
1907 - 1971 (64 years)
Alexei Alexeivich Bogdanov was a Soviet geologist and specialist on tectonics. After producing a tectonic map of the USSR, he began a collaboration to produce a tectonic map of Europe which was produced in sixteen sheets in 1964. A son, also named Alexei , became a noted molecular biologist. The mineral Bogdanovite is named in his honour.
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Heinrich Ernst Beyrich
1815 - 1896 (81 years)
Heinrich Ernst Beyrich was a German palaeontologist. Life Born in Berlin, he was educated at the university in that city, and afterwards at Bonn, where he studied under Georg August Goldfuss and Johann Jakob Nöggerath. He obtained his degree of Ph.D. in 1837 at Berlin, and was subsequently employed in the mineralogical museum of the university, becoming director of the palaeontological collection in 1857, and director of the museum in 1875.
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Johannes Gabriel Granö
1882 - 1956 (74 years)
Johannes Gabriel Granö was a Finnish geographer, chiefly remembered as a professor of three universities and an explorer of Siberia and Mongolia. He is also noted for his pioneering studies on landscape geography, and his book Pure Geography. Granö was a professor in universities of Tartu, Helsinki and Turku.
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John Ogilby
1600 - 1676 (76 years)
John Ogilby was a Scottish translator, impresario, publisher and cartographer. He was probably at least a half-brother to James Ogilvy, 1st Earl of Airlie, though neither overtly acknowledged this. Ogilby's most-noted works include translations of the works of Virgil and Homer, and his version of the Fables of Aesop.
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Eduard Pechuël-Loesche
1840 - 1913 (73 years)
Moritz Eduard Pechuël-Loesche, , was a German naturalist, geographer, ethnologist, painter, traveler, author, plant collector and Professor of Geography in Jena and Erlangen. Eduard was the eldest son of Ferdinand Moritz Pechuël, an innkeeper and mill owner, and Wilhelmine Lösche.
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William Bullock Clark
1860 - 1917 (57 years)
William Bullock Clark , was an American geologist. Early life William Bullock Clark was born on December 15, 1860, at Brattleboro, Vermont, to Helen and Barna Atherton Clark. Clark had private tutors and graduated from Brattleboro High School. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Amherst College in 1884. He graduated with a PhD from the University of Munich in 1887. Clark graduated from Amherst College with a Doctor of Laws in 1908. He also spent time in the field doing geographical surveys in Great Britain and Prussia.
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Herbert E. Gregory
1869 - 1952 (83 years)
Herbert Ernest Gregory was a Yale University geologist well known for his early 20th-century explorations of the Colorado Plateau in Arizona and Utah. One of his most important works is Colorado Plateau Region, published by the United States Geological Survey on the occasion of the United States sponsoring the 16th International Geological Congress.
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Felix Karl Ludwig Machatschki
1895 - 1970 (75 years)
Karl Ludwig Felix Machatschki was an Austrian mineralogist. He was born in Arnfels in Styria, Austria. He studied at the University of Graz, obtaining his habilitation in 1925; in 1927 he joined the group of Victor Goldschmidt in Oslo for one year. In 1930 he was appointed as a professor at the University of Tübingen. He changed university twice, first in 1941 to the University of Munich and finally in 1944 to the University of Vienna.
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Arnold Escher von der Linth
1807 - 1872 (65 years)
Arnold Escher von der Linth was a Swiss geologist, the son of Hans Conrad Escher von der Linth . He made the first ascent of the Lauteraarhorn on 8 August 1842 together with Pierre Jean Édouard Desor and Christian Girard, and guides Melchior Bannholzer and Jakob Leuthold.
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Edward Waller Claypole
1835 - 1901 (66 years)
Edward Waller Claypole was a British American geologist and paleobotanist. Claypole was born in England and educated at the University of London, where he received the degrees of A.B. in 1862, S.B. in 1864, and Sc.D. in 1888. He came to America in 1872 and served as Professor of Natural Sciences in Antioch College, at Yellow Springs, Ohio, from 1873 to 1881. For two years he was paleontologist to the Pennsylvania Geological Survey. From 1883 to 1898 he was Professor of Natural Sciences in Buchtel College at Akron. On account of the failing health of his wife, he resigned this position and sought a southwestern climate.
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Eva Germaine Rimington Taylor
1879 - 1966 (87 years)
Eva Germaine Rimington Taylor was an English geographer and historian of science, the first woman to hold an academic chair of geography in the United Kingdom. Taylor was educated at the Camden School for Girls, the North London Collegiate School, and Royal Holloway College. In 1903 she obtained a first class BSc in chemistry from the University of London. While teaching chemistry she studied at the University of Oxford and from 1908 to 1910 acted as research assistant to A. J. Herbertson, head of the Oxford Geography School. She wrote school geography textbooks in collaboration with J. F. Un...
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