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).
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List of the most influential people in Earth Sciences,
#3551
Giovanni Antonio Magini
1555 - 1617 (62 years)
Giovanni Antonio Magini was an Italian astronomer, astrologer, cartographer, and mathematician. His Life He was born in Padua, and completed studies in philosophy in Bologna in 1579. His father was Pasquale Magini, a citizen of Padua. Dedicating himself to astronomy, in 1582 he wrote Ephemerides coelestium motuum, translated into Italian the following year.
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Otto Erdmannsdörffer
1876 - 1955 (79 years)
Otto Heinrich Erdmannsdörffer was a German mineralogist and petrographer, known for his analysis of rocks and minerals found in the Odenwald, the Black Forest and the Harz Mountains. He was the son of historian Bernhard Erdmannsdörffer.
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Sekiya Seikei
1855 - 1896 (41 years)
, alternatively Sekiya Kiyokage, was a Japanese geologist, one of the first seismologists, influential in establishing the study of seismology in Japan and known for his model showing the motion of an earth-particle during an earthquake.
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Karl August Lossen
1841 - 1893 (52 years)
Karl August Lossen was a German petrologist and geologist. After finishing his studies at the gymnasium of Kreuznach in 1859 Lossen became a mining engineer; he began by two and a half years of practical work, then studied at the Universities of Berlin and Halle, where he graduated in 1866; in the same year he became assistant geologist of the Prussian national geological survey. He began immediately his well-known petrolographic studies of the Harz Mountains, which lasted till his death. In 1870 he became instructor in petrology at the Berlin mining academy, and at the same time lecturer at the university.
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Luis García Sainz
1894 - 1965 (71 years)
Luis García Sáinz was a pioneer of physical geography in Spain. He was the first professor of Geography en la University of Valencia and secretary at the Instituto Juan Sebastián Elcano. His final position was as a professor at the University of Barcelona.
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William John McGee
1853 - 1912 (59 years)
William John McGee, LL.D. was an American inventor, geologist, anthropologist, and ethnologist, born in Farley, Iowa. Biography While largely self-taught, McGee attended a rural one-room schoolhouse north of Farley during the four winter months from about 1858 to 1867. He devoted his early years to reading law and to surveying. He invented and patented several improvements on agricultural implements.
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Petrus Bertius
1565 - 1629 (64 years)
Petrus Bertius was a Flemish philosopher, theologian, historian, geographer and cartographer. Bertius published much in mathematics, and historical and theological works, but he is now best known as cartographer with his edition of the Geographia of Ptolemy , and for its atlas.
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Josef Felix Pompeckj
1867 - 1930 (63 years)
Josef Felix Pompeckj was a German paleontologist and geologist. He was born in Groß-Köllen, Kingdom of Prussia . He studied geology and paleontology at the University of Königsberg, receiving his doctorate in 1890 with the thesis Die Trilobitenfauna der ost- und westpreußischen Diluvialgeschiebe. In 1903 he became an associate professor in Munich, and from 1904 taught classes in geology and mineralogy at the agricultural college in Hohenheim.
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William Russel Buck
#3560
Henrik Munthe
1860 - 1958 (98 years)
Henrik Vilhelm Munthe was a Swedish geologist. Biography Munthe became a student in 1882 and in 1892 a doctor of philosophy and associate professor of geology at Uppsala University, where he was acting professor of mineralogy and geology in 1894–96. In 1898 he was appointed and in 1899 regular geologist at the Swedish Geological Survey . In the years 1904-13 he was secretary of the Geological Society in Stockholm. Munthe received the title of professor in 1917. He was elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1928.
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James Tennant
1808 - 1881 (73 years)
James Tennant was an English mineralogist, the master of the Worshipful Company of Turners and mineralogist to Queen Victoria. Biography Tennant was born on 8 February 1808 at Upton, near Southwell, Nottinghamshire. He was the third child in a family of twelve. His father, John Tennant, was an officer in the Her Majesty's Customs and Excise; his mother, Eleanor Kitchen, came from a family of yeomen resident at Upton for more than two centuries. His parents later moved to Derby, and Tennant attended a school in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire. In October 1824, Tennant was apprenticed to John Mawe, a dealer in minerals at 149 Strand in London.
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Timothy Pont
1560 - 1614 (54 years)
Reverend Timothy Pont was a Scottish minister, cartographer and topographer. He was the first to produce a detailed map of Scotland. Pont's maps are among the earliest surviving to show a European country in minute detail, from an actual survey.
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Seymour Hess
1920 - 1982 (62 years)
Seymour Lester Hess was an American meteorologist and planetary scientist. He was born in Brooklyn, New York. After earning a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Brooklyn College, in 1943 he entered the University of Chicago as an Army Air Cadet. He completed his master's degree in 1945, then, following his release from military service as a lieutenant in the United States Army Air Forces, he became a doctoral student in the meteorology department. In 1948 he explored an interest in planetary meteorology, and spent his time at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona observing Mars. His dissertation was titled, Some Aspects of the Meteorology of Mars.
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Andrey Arkhangelsky
1879 - 1940 (61 years)
Andrey Dmitriyevich Arkhangelsky was a geologist. He was a professor at Moscow State University. He was Corresponding Member of the Division of Physical-Mathematical Sciences since 1925, and Academician of the Division of Physical-Mathematical Sciences since 1929.
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Frederick William Shotton
1906 - 1990 (84 years)
Professor Frederick William Shotton FRS was a British geologist. He was awarded the Prestwich Medal in 1954. Shotton's research into the geological makeup of Normandy beaches helped allied commanders decide which were the best to use on D-Day. From May 1941 to September 1943, based in Egypt, he used hydrogeology to guide development of potable water supplies for British forces operational in the Middle East and northern Africa. From October 1943 he helped plan for the Allied liberation of Normandy by providing terrain evaluation relating to beach conditions, suitability of ground for the rapid construction of temporary airfields, and water supply.
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Amadeus William Grabau
1870 - 1946 (76 years)
Amadeus William Grabau was an American geologist, teacher, stratigrapher, paleontologist, and author who worked in the United States and China. Biography Grabau's grandfather, J.A.A. Grabau, led a group of dissident Lutheran immigrants from Germany to Buffalo, New York. His education began in his father's parochial school in his birthplace of Cedarburg, Wisconsin, and then the public high school there. After his father became head of the Martin Luther Seminary in 1885, he finished high school in Buffalo. He took classes in the evenings while apprenticed to a bookbinder. His interest in local fossils grew.
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Charles Henry Hitchcock
1836 - 1919 (83 years)
Charles Henry Hitchcock was an American geologist. Life Hitchcock was born August 23, 1836, in Amherst, Massachusetts. His father was Edward Hitchcock who was a professor of geology and natural theology and then president of Amherst College. His mother was Orra White Hitchcock, who illustrated much of his father's work. He graduated from Amherst College in 1856, and considered entering the ministry. He married Martha Bliss Barrows.
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Rudolf Staub
1890 - 1961 (71 years)
Rudolf Staub was a Swiss field geologist who examined mountain formation and tectonics in the Alps. He produced high resolution maps including the first to indicate tectonic regions in the Swiss Alps and came up with ideas on mountain formation based on the idea that there were alternating tectonic forces, Polflucht and Poldrift as suggested by Alfred Wegener.
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Geoffrey Blewitt
#3570
Yanosuke Otsuka
1903 - 1950 (47 years)
Yanosuke Otsuka was a Japanese geologist and professor. Yanosuke Otsuka was born in Nihonbashi, Tokyo on 11 July 1903. He went to the Junior High School attached to Tokyo Higher Normal School , and after that to Shizuoka High School . For his undergraduate studies, he entered the Department of Geology, Faculty of Science, Imperial University of Tokyo, where he graduated in 1929. While he was student, he learned the methods of historical geology from Yoshiaki Ozawa, topography from Taro Tsujimura , and Cenozoic biological stratigraphy from Shigeyasu Tokunaga. After graduation, he entered the ...
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Tadevos Hakobyan
1917 - 1989 (72 years)
Tadevos Hakobyan was a Soviet Armenian historian and geographer. Biography Hakobyan was born in 1917 in the village of Lernadzor, now in Armenia's southern province of Syunik. In 1940, he graduated from the Faculty of Geography and Geology of Yerevan State University . In 1942–43, he fought in the Eastern Front of World War II. He was the dean of the YSU's Faculty of Geography in 1955–57 and 1963–65. He then served as the chair of that department from 1962 to 1986. Most of his work was focused on the historical geography of Armenia. Together with Stepan Melik-Bakhshyan and Hovhannes Barseghya...
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Mikhail Usov
1883 - 1939 (56 years)
Mikhail Antonovich Usov was a Russian and Soviet geologist and member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He was the first native of Siberia to be elected. He completed his studies at Tomsk Technological Institute under Vladimir Obruchev and later served on the school's faculty.
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Elizabeth F. Fisher
1873 - 1941 (68 years)
Elizabeth Florette Fisher was one of the first field geologists in the United States. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she attended and later taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . She was also the first woman to be sent out by an oil company for a survey, helping to locate oil wells in North-Central Texas during a nationwide oil shortage. During this same time, she not only continued her career as an instructor at Wellesley College, but also wrote an influential textbook for junior high students called Resources and Industries of the United States. She stressed the need for conservation, and believed "unclaimed" land should be used for agriculture.
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Marinus J. A. Werger
#3575
Wilhelm Dunker
1809 - 1885 (76 years)
Wilhelm Dunker, full name Wilhelm Bernhard Rudolph Hadrian Dunker was a German geologist, paleontologist and zoologist . Wilhelm Dunker studied mining and metallurgical engineering in Göttingen and worked at first as a trainee with the local mining authority. Soon thereafter he was appointed a teacher of mineralogical sciences at the poly-technical school in Kassel. In 1854 he was appointed professor at the University of Marburg, at which he taught up to his death. Dunker was one of the most important malacologists of his time. He had a very extensive private collection of snails and shells, which he constantly increased by exchange with other collectors .
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Andrew Ramsay
1814 - 1891 (77 years)
Sir Andrew Crombie Ramsay was a Scottish geologist. Biography Ramsay was born at Glasgow. He was for a time actually engaged in business, but from spending his holidays in Arran he became interested in the study of the rocks of that island, and was thus led to acquire the rudiments of geology. A geological model of Arran, made by him on the scale of two inches to the mile, was exhibited at the meeting of the British Association at Glasgow in 1840, and attracted the notice of Roderick Murchison, with the result that he received, from Sir Henry De la Beche, an appointment on the Geological Sur...
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Jules Gosselet
1832 - 1916 (84 years)
Jules-Auguste Gosselet was a French geologist born in Cambrai, France. Following unsuccessful studies of pharmacy, and a stint as a mathematics teacher at the Lycée du Quesnoy, he pursued a career in natural history. In 1853 he became a preparateur of geology at the Sorbonne, later obtaining his doctorate with a thesis titled Mémoire sur les terrains primaires de la Belgique, des environs d'Avesnes et du Boulonnais .
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John Speed
1551 - 1629 (78 years)
John Speed was an English cartographer, chronologer and historian of Cheshire origins. The son of a citizen and Merchant Taylor in London, he rose from his family occupation to accept the task of drawing together and revising the histories, topographies and maps of the Kingdoms of Great Britain as an exposition of the union of their monarchies in the person of King James I and VI. He accomplished this with remarkable success, with the support and assistance of the leading antiquarian scholars of his generation. He drew upon and improved the shire maps of Christopher Saxton, John Norden and ot...
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Henry Darwin Rogers
1808 - 1866 (58 years)
Henry Darwin Rogers FRS FRSE LLD was an American geologist. His book, The Geology of Pennsylvania: A Government Survey , was regarded as one of the most important publications on American geology issued up to that point.
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Benjamin Kendall Emerson
1843 - 1932 (89 years)
Benjamin Kendall Emerson was an American geologist and author. Biography Emerson attended Amherst College, where he joined the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity and from which he graduated in 1865 as valedictorian. He went on to study in Germany at the University of Berlin, and received his doctorate from the University of Göttingen in 1870. He returned to the United States where he joined the faculty at Amherst, where he was professor of geology and related sciences from 1872 to 1917 and simultaneously at Smith College from 1878 to 1912. He was also assistant geologist from 1890 to 1896, and later geologist from 1896 to 1920 for the United States Geological Survey.
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John Flett
1869 - 1947 (78 years)
Sir John Smith Flett was a Scottish physician and geologist. Early life Born in Kirkwall, Orkney, the son of James Ferguson Flett, a merchant and baillie, and Mary Ann . He was educated at Kirkwall Burgh School, George Watson's College in Edinburgh, and the University of Edinburgh .
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Lawrence Martin
1880 - 1955 (75 years)
Lawrence Martin was an American geographer and president of the American Association of Geographers. A native of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Martin received his undergraduate degree from Cornell University in 1904, before heading to Harvard University to work with William Morris Davis for his Master's degree, received in 1906. He then returned to Cornell and completed his PhD in 1913.
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Philip Jackson
1802 - Present (224 years)
Philip Jackson was a British Royal Navy lieutenant in the Bengal Regiment Artillery. Jackson has also served as assistant engineer, executive officer and surveyor of public lands in colonial Singapore and laid out the city plan for Singapore in 1822. He was a key person in Raffles plans for the settlement and the Elgin Bridge in Singapore was once named in his honour.
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Richard Joel Russell
1895 - 1971 (76 years)
Richard Joel Russell was an American professor of physical geography and geology at the Louisiana State University who contributed to pioneering studies of long-term climatology and geomorphology. Russell was born in Hayward, California to Nellie Potter Morril and lawyer Frederick James. His early education was in Honololu where he went to the Punahou Kindergarten. The family moved back to California and studied at the Hayward High School before going to the University of California, Berkeley where he began to study forestry in 1915 after becoming interested on a hunting trip in Santa Lucia. ...
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John Mason Clarke
1857 - 1925 (68 years)
John Mason Clarke was an American teacher, geologist and paleontologist. Early career Born in Canandaigua, New York, the fifth of six children of Noah Turner Clarke and Laura Mason Merrill, he attended Canandaigua Academy where his father was teacher and principal. In 1873 he matriculated to Amherst College, where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1877. He returned to Canandaigua Academy and served as an instructor in various subjects. In 1879–1880 he worked as an assistant to Benjamin K. Emerson at Amherst, then he taught at the Utica Free Academy during 1880–1881. This was followed by work as an instructor at Smith College from 1881–1882, where he was made professor.
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Adolf Knop
1828 - 1893 (65 years)
Adolf Knop was a German geologist and mineralogist. He studied mathematics and sciences at the University of Göttingen, where he was a pupil of chemist Friedrich Wohler and mineralogist Johann Friedrich Ludwig Hausmann. From 1849 he taught classes at the vocational school in Chemnitz. In 1857 he became an associate professor of geology and mineralogy at the University of Giessen, where in 1863 he attained a full professorship. In 1866 he relocated to Karlsruhe as a professor at the Polytechnic school. In 1878 he succeeded Moritz August Seubert as manager of the Grand Ducal Natural History Cab...
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Juan Brüggen
1887 - 1953 (66 years)
Johannes Brüggen Messtorff better known by his hispanized name Juan Brüggen was a German-Chilean geologist. One of his most famous works is the extensive treaty of Fundamentos de la geología de Chile published in 1950. Brüggen Glacier in the Southern Patagonian Ice Field is named after him.
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Giovan Battista Nicolosi
1610 - 1670 (60 years)
Giovan Battista Nicolosi, D.D., was a Sicilian priest and geographer. Nicolosi proposed a new projection for the construction of the world map in two hemispheres, known today as the Nicolosi globular projection, in which the parallels and meridians are arcs of the circle and equidistant along the equator and central meridian.
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Herbert Harold Read
1889 - 1970 (81 years)
Herbert Harold Read FRS, FRSE, FGS, was a British geologist and Professor of Geology at Imperial College. From 1947-1948 he was president of the Geological Society. Life He was born at Whitstable in Kent on 17 December 1889 the son of Herbert Read, a dairy farmer, and his wife, Caroline Mary Kearn. He attended St Alphege Church School in Whitstable then Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys in Canterbury. He then studied Sciences at the University of London, graduating BSc in 1911.
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Johannes Stabius
1460 - 1522 (62 years)
Johannes Stabius was an Austrian cartographer and astronomer of Vienna who developed, around 1500, the heart-shape projection map later developed further by Johannes Werner. It is called the Werner map projection, but also the Stabius-Werner or the Stab-Werner projection.
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Thomas Webster
1773 - 1844 (71 years)
Thomas Webster was a Scottish geologist. Life Webster was born in Orkney in 1772, probably at Kirkwall, and was educated at Aberdeen. He subsequently went to London and studied architecture, the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street being built from his design, and where in 1830 he delivered the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture. In 1826 he was appointed house-secretary and curator to the Geological Society of London, and for many years he rendered important services in editing and illustrating the Transactions of the Society. In 1841–42 he was professor of geology in University College, London.
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Samuel Klein
1886 - 1940 (54 years)
Samuel Klein was a Hungarian-born rabbi, historian and historical geographer in Mandatory Palestine. Biography Born in Hungary to Idel Hertzfeld and to Avraham Zvi Klein, a rabbi of Szilas-Balhas in western Hungary, he initially received a traditional Jewish education , graduating from the Government Gymnasium at Budapest in 1905. From there he went on to study at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Berlin where he was ordained in the rabbinate. From 1906 to 1909, he was enrolled at the Hochschule für Wissenschaft des Judentums, and in the Friedrich-Wilhelm University of Berlin, before advanci...
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Marcus Jordanus
1531 - 1595 (64 years)
Marcus Jordanus was a Danish cartographer and mathematician. Jordanus studied at the University of Copenhagen, where in 1550 he was appointed Professor of Mathematics. Among other things, he gave lectures on geodesy and dealt with the geography of Ptolemy. In 1552, he published a map with the printer Hans Vingaard in Copenhagen. This was one of the first printed maps of the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, and Abraham Ortelius referred to it in his Catalogus Cartographorum. The map is now lost, and no copies survive.
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Viktor Nikolaev
1893 - 1960 (67 years)
Viktor Arsenyevich Nikolaev was a Russian and Soviet geologist and petrographer. He was a specialist on the petrology and deep crustal structure of the Tien Shan region. The so-called "Nikolaev Line" is a fault that separates the northern and central Tien Shan ranges.
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Harold Williams
#3596
Carl Størmer
1874 - 1957 (83 years)
Fredrik Carl Mülertz Størmer was a Norwegian mathematician and astrophysicist. In mathematics, he is known for his work in number theory, including the calculation of and Størmer's theorem on consecutive smooth numbers. In physics, he is known for studying the movement of charged particles in the magnetosphere and the formation of aurorae, and for his book on these subjects, From the Depths of Space to the Heart of the Atom. He worked for many years as a professor of mathematics at the University of Oslo in Norway. A crater on the far side of the Moon is named after him.
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Morten Thrane Brünnich
1737 - 1827 (90 years)
Morten Thrane Brünnich was a Danish zoologist and mineralogist. Biography Brünnich was born in Copenhagen, the son of a portrait painter. He studied oriental languages and theology, but soon became interested in natural history. He contributed his observations of insects to Erik Pontoppidan's Danske Atlas . After being put in charge of the natural history collection of Christian Fleischer he became interested in ornithology, and in 1764 he published Ornithologia Borealis, which included the details of many Scandinavian birds, some described for the first time.
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Hermann Guthe
1824 - 1874 (50 years)
Hermann Guthe was a German geographer. Biography He was born at Sankt Andreasberg in the Harz region, son of Heinrich Frederich Wilhelm Guthe , a merchant, and Wilhelmine Sophie Frederika Woge . Guthe was educated at Clausthal gymnasium , Göttingen , and Berlin , where he was a pupil of Carl Ritter.
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Alphonse François Renard
1842 - 1903 (61 years)
Alphonse Francois Renard , Belgian geologist and petrographer, was born at Ronse, in East Flanders, on 27 September 1842. He was educated for the church of Rome, and from 1866 to 1869 he was superintendent at the college de la Paix, Namur.
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Robert Hues
1553 - 1632 (79 years)
Robert Hues was an English mathematician and geographer. He attended St. Mary Hall at Oxford, and graduated in 1578. Hues became interested in geography and mathematics, and studied navigation at a school set up by Walter Raleigh. During a trip to Newfoundland, he made observations which caused him to doubt the accepted published values for variations of the compass. Between 1586 and 1588, Hues travelled with Thomas Cavendish on a circumnavigation of the globe, performing astronomical observations and taking the latitudes of places they visited. Beginning in August 1591, Hues and Cavendish again set out on another circumnavigation of the globe.
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