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,
#3551
Charles S. Slichter
1864 - 1946 (82 years)
Charles Sumner Slichter was an applied mathematician and dean of the graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His most notable scholarly contribution focused on hydrogeology, where he developed a method of quantifying the velocity of ground-water underflow in river valleys. This method employed ammonium chloride that would be placed in an upstream, i.e., the upgradient, well and detected in three observation wells a short distance away, i.e., the downgradient.
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Antonín Frič
1832 - 1913 (81 years)
Antonín Jan Frič was a Czech paleontologist, biologist and geologist, living during the Austria-Hungary era. Professor at the Charles University and later became director of the National Museum in Prague. He became famous for his contributions on the field of Permo - Carboniferous ecosystems.
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Douglas Allan
1896 - 1967 (71 years)
Douglas Alexander Allan, CBE, FRSGS, FRSE, FMA was a geologist and curator, eventually becoming the director of the Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh, from 1945 until 1961. Early life Born in Edinburgh in 1896 and the son of James Allan and Agnes Annie Logan, Douglas Allan was educated at George Watson's College and Boroughmuir Student Centre before going on to serve throughout World War I at the Department of Explosives Supply, Ministry of Munitions and the Royal Field Artillery. He graduated from the University of Edinburgh with BScs in Geology and Chemistry in 1921 and furthered his education with a PhD from the same University in 1923 and a DSc in 1927.
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Carl Hintze
1851 - 1916 (65 years)
Carl Adolf Ferdinand Hintze was a German mineralogist and crystallographer. From 1868 he studied at the University of Breslau, where he was a student of Ferdinand von Roemer. He then furthered his education at the universities of Bonn and Berlin. Beginning in 1872 he served as an assistant to mineralogist Paul Heinrich von Groth at the University of Strasbourg. In 1875, eye problems along with financial issues forced him to abandon his scientific activity at the university, and he subsequently found employment as a trader in the minerals business. Since 1880 he worked as a scientific director...
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Samuel Howell Knight
1892 - 1975 (83 years)
Samuel Howell "Doc" Knight was an American geologist who taught at the University of Wyoming and also served as a state geologist from 1933 to 1941. Known as "Doc" Knight, he was an influential teacher, noted for his use of multi-colour chalk illustrations to teach geology over a span of fifty years.
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Dixie Lee Bryant
1862 - 1949 (87 years)
Dixie Lee Bryant was a geologist and educator. Dixie Lee Bryant was born on January 7, 1862, in Louisville, Kentucky. After her family moved to Columbia, Tennessee in 1886, she enrolled in the Columbia Female Institute. Despite her desire to access a full college education, no Southern universities would admit her as a woman to their science programs. In 1887 she applied, and was admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. She graduated in 1891 with a Bachelor of Science. She submitted a thesis on the tide water region of the Charles River and was the first student to re...
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Ernst von Rebeur-Paschwitz
1861 - 1895 (34 years)
Ernst von Rebeur-Paschwitz was a German astronomer, geophysicist and seismologist. He is best known for the first recording of teleseism with the use of his sensitive self-registering horizontal pendulums in 1889. He proposed to create an international network of seismological stations. His ideas led to the founding of the International Seismological Association.
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K. J. V. Steenstrup
1842 - 1913 (71 years)
Knud Johannes Vogelius Steenstrup was a Danish geologist. He was most noted as an explorer of Greenland. Biography Steenstrup was born at Høstemark Mill in Mou Sogn, Jutland, Denmark. He was the son of Johan Peter Steenstrup and Sinned Claudine Lund , He was a nephew of zoologist Japetus Steenstrup .
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Max Lohest
1857 - 1926 (69 years)
Marie Joseph Maximin Lohest was a Belgian paleontologist and geologist. He served as an influential professor at the University of Liège and was involved in the discovery of Neanderthal remains in Spy Cave in 1886.
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Carl Uhlig
1872 - 1938 (66 years)
Carl Ludwig Gustav Uhlig was a German geographer and meteorologist. He was the son of philologist Gustav Uhlig . He studied natural sciences at the universities of Heidelberg, Freiburg, Göttingen and Berlin, receiving his doctorate in 1897 with the thesis Die Veränderungen der Volksdichte im nördlichen Baden 1852–1895. In Heidelberg, Uhlig joined the German student fraternity Leonensia. From 1900 to 1906 he worked as a meteorologist and geographer for the government of German East Africa, during which time, he carried out investigations of Kilimanjaro and Mount Meru as well as scientific studies of Lake Victoria .
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Oswald Rishbeth
1886 - Present (140 years)
Oswald Henry Theodore Rishbeth was an Australian geographer who was Professor and Chair of Geography at the University of Southampton, England. He is considered a pioneer of academic geography in Britain. He was the husband of zoologist Kathleen Rishbeth.
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Karl von Kraatz-Koschlau
1867 - 1900 (33 years)
Alexander Karl von Kraatz-Koschlau was a German geologist. Karl von Kraatz-Koschlau was born in Reichenbach near Stettin. He studied philosophy and sciences in Freiburg and Munich, where he obtained his doctorate with a dissertation on tartaric acid and its salts . Afterwards he was assigned to the mineralogical institute in Munich. One of his scientific excursions during this time period involved geological research of the Serra de Monchique in the Algarve.
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Henning Illies
1924 - 1982 (58 years)
Jürgen Henning Illies was a German geologist, an expert in taphrogenesis . Apart from his work on rifts, including the Rhine Rift Valley, he is known for his contributions to Chilean geology. Illies was active at the Austral University of Chile in Valdivia where he mapped the geology of the Old Valdivia Province in 1956–1957. After the mapping was done he studied more specific geologic problems in Chile the years of 1958–59. Illies is currently regarded as a "founding father" of the geology department of the Austral University of Chile.
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Joannes de Laet
1581 - 1649 (68 years)
Joannes or Johannes De Laet was a Dutch geographer and director of the Dutch West India Company. Philip Burden called his History of the New World, "...arguably the finest description of the Americas published in the seventeenth century" and "...one of the foundation maps of Canada". De Laet was the first to print maps with the names Manhattan, New Amsterdam and Massachusetts.
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Aaron Louis Treadwell
1866 - 1947 (81 years)
Aaron Louis Treadwell, Ph.D. was a college professor of zoology at Vassar. He was born at Redding, Connecticut, and educated at Wesleyan University and at the University of Chicago . He was a professor of zoology and geology at Miami University , professor of biology at Vassar , and afterwards professor of zoology. In addition to his work in the schools, he was instructor at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole. Treadwell published The Cytogeny of Podarke obscura . His writings dealt chiefly with annelid systematics and embryonics.
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Edmond Hébert
1812 - 1890 (78 years)
Edmond Hébert , French geologist, was born at Villefargau, Yonne. He was educated at the College de Meaux, Auxerre, and at the École Normale in Paris. In 1836 he became professor at Meaux, in 1838 demonstrator in chemistry and physics at the École Normale, and in 1841 sub-director of studies at that school and lecturer on geology. In 1857 the degree of D. es Sc. was conferred upon him, and he was appointed professor of geology at the Sorbonne.
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Stuart Weller
1870 - 1927 (57 years)
Stuart Weller was an American paleontologist and geologist. Weller studied geology and paleontology at Cornell University with bachelor's degree in 1894 and at Yale University with Ph.D. in 1901. Beginning in 1895 he worked at the University of Chicago, where in 1897–1900 he was a research associate, and became in 1900 Instructor, in 1902 Assistant Professor, in 1908 Associate Professor and in 1915 Professor of Paleontology and Geology. It is noteworthy to mention that Weller supervised Grace Anne Stewart, the first Canadian female to earn a B.A. majoring in geology, as she earned her Ph.D. f...
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Heinrich Edmund Naumann
1854 - 1927 (73 years)
Heinrich Edmund Naumann was a German geologist, regarded as the "father of Japanese geology" in Meiji period Japan. Biography Heinrich Edmund Naumann was hired by the Meiji government in 1875 as a foreign advisor, with the task of introducing the science of geology to Japan through his teaching at the Kaisei Gakkō, the forerunner to Tokyo Imperial University.
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Ibn al-Athir
1160 - 1233 (73 years)
Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ash-Shaybānī, better known as ʿAlī ʿIzz ad-Dīn Ibn al-Athīr al-Jazarī was an Hadith expert, historian, and biographer who wrote in Arabic and was from the Ibn Athir family. At the age of twenty-one he settled with his father in Mosul to continue his studies, where he devoted himself to the study of history and Islamic tradition.
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Johan Herman Lie Vogt
1858 - 1932 (74 years)
Johan Herman Lie Vogt was a Norwegian geologist and petrologist. Vogt was a professor at the University of Oslo and at the Norwegian Institute of Technology. Biography Vogt was born in Tvedestrand, Norway. He was a son of physician Olaus Fredrik Sand Vogt and Mathilde Eliza Lie. He was the nephew of mathematician Sophus Lie . Psychiatrist Ragnar Vogt was a younger brother. Vogt studied at the Technical Institute in Dresden and in 1880 graduated from the University of Christiania . Vogt was cand.min. from 1880.
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Eliot Blackwelder
1880 - 1969 (89 years)
Eliot Blackwelder was an American geologist who from 1922 to 1945 was head of the Stanford University department of geology. He served as president of the Geological Society of America in 1940 and of the Seismological Society of America from 1947 to 1949. He was a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.
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Ulbo de Sitter
1902 - 1980 (78 years)
Lamoraal Ulbo de Sitter was a Dutch geologist at Leiden University, where he was the founder of the school of structural geology. De Sitter was known for his research on the geology of the Alps and Pyrenees. His father was the astronomer Willem de Sitter , and one of his sons was the Dutch sociologist Ulbo de Sitter .
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Fedir Abramov
1904 - 1982 (78 years)
Fedir Abramov was a Ukrainian geologist and mining specialist. He was a member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. His works dealt with problems of ventilation and aerogas dynamics of mines, and the prevention of sudden emissions of coal, rock and gas.
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Robert Edmund Scoresby-Jackson
1833 - 1867 (34 years)
Robert Edmund Scoresby-Jackson FRSE FRCPE FRCSE was a short-lived but influential British physician and historian. He specialised in the effects of climate upon health. Life He was born Robert Edmund Jackson on 12 November 1833 in Whitby on the Yorkshire coast. He was the son of Captain Thomas Jackson , a merchant mariner and shipowner, and his wife Arabella Scoresby , sister of Rev William Scoresby. Both his parents outlived him. He adopted the name Scoresby-Jackson on the death of his uncle.
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Percy Fry Kendall
1856 - 1936 (80 years)
Percy Fry Kendall, FRS , was an English geologist who was Professor of Geology at the University of Leeds from 1906 to 1922. Early life and education Kendall was the youngest of the eight children of Charles Kendall, a commercial traveller, and his wife Hannah Eltringham. He was born on 15 November 1856 in Mile End, London.
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John Henry Alexander
1812 - 1867 (55 years)
John Henry Alexander was a noted scientist, civil engineer and businessman. Personal life Alexander was born in Annapolis, Maryland, on June 26, 1812. The youngest child of William and Mary Alexander. His education was acquired in his native city, he was graduated from St. John's College in 1826, and he spent the next four years reading law privately, but apparently he did not take the bar exam. He, instead, chose to begin working for the Baltimore and Susquehanna Railroad, later part of the Northern Central. Alexander also attended medical lectures in Baltimore, though he did not receive a ...
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Grigoriu Ștefănescu
1836 - 1911 (75 years)
Grigoriu Ștefănescu was a Wallachian-born Romanian geologist, mineralogist paleontologist. Ștefănescu was elected a titular member of the Romanian Academy in 1876. From 1897 to 1898, he served as rector of the University of Bucharest.
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Ulysses Sherman Grant
1867 - 1932 (65 years)
Ulysses Sherman Grant was an American geologist. He was the son of Lewis A. Grant and Mary Helen Pierce. Biography Ulysses Sherman Grant was born in Moline, Illinois on February 14, 1867. He graduated from the University of Minnesota with B.S. in 1888, and received a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1893. He married Avis Winchell in 1891, and they had four children.
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Hermann Traube
1860 - 1913 (53 years)
Hermann Traube was a German mineralogist born in Ratibor, Silesia . He was the son of chemist Moritz Traube . He studied at the Universities of Leipzig, Heidelberg, Breslau and Greifswald, earning his doctorate in 1884. At Breslau his instructors were Ferdinand Cohn and Theodor Poleck .
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Marjorie Korringa
1943 - 1974 (31 years)
Marjorie Kitchel Korringa was an igneous petrologist, volcanologist, and structural geologist. She is chiefly known for her research on active fault systems as a critical part of decision-making for the location of oil pipelines and nuclear reactors.
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John Thomson
1837 - 1921 (84 years)
John Thomson FRGS was a pioneering Scottish photographer, geographer, and traveller. He was one of the first photographers to travel to the Far East, documenting the people, landscapes and artefacts of eastern cultures. Upon returning home, his work among the street people of London cemented his reputation, and is regarded as a classic instance of social documentary which laid the foundations for photojournalism. He went on to become a portrait photographer of High Society in Mayfair, gaining the Royal Warrant in 1881.
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Vilho Väisälä
1889 - 1969 (80 years)
Vilho Väisälä was a Finnish meteorologist and physicist, and founder of Vaisala Oyj. After graduation in mathematics in 1912, Väisälä worked for the Finnish Meteorological Institute in aerological measurements, specializing in the research of the higher troposphere. At the time the measurements were conducted by attaching a thermograph to a kite.
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Alexander Winchell
1824 - 1891 (67 years)
Alexander Winchell was a United States geologist who contributed to this field mainly as an educator and a popular lecturer and author. His views on evolution aroused controversy among his contemporaries; today the racism of these views is more cause for comment.
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Katherine Greacen Nelson
1913 - 1982 (69 years)
Katherine Greacen Nelson , born in Sierra Madre, California, was an American geologist. She was one of the first women to receive a degree in geology, obtaining a PhD from Rutgers University. Growing up in a military family exposed to nature and traveling at an early age, Nelson showed an eagerness for geology by devoting her days to learning the various geological processes that encompass the earth, eventually winning a prize for an excellence in geology from Vassar College. She was later hired by Milwaukee-Downer College as part of college's expanding geological and geographical sciences dep...
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Friedrich Christoph Müller
1751 - 1808 (57 years)
Christoph Friedrich Müller was a theologian and cartographer in Schwelm. Mueller studied theology, mathematics, astronomy and the sciences. In addition, he learned four languages. He was pastor from 1776 in Bad Sassendorf, from 1782 in Unna, and from 1785 in Schwelm.
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Nicolai Ivanovich Andrusov
1861 - 1924 (63 years)
Mykola Ivanovych Andrusiv or Nicolai Ivanovich Andrusov was a Ukrainian geologist, stratigrapher, and palaeontologist. He was born in Odessa, then a part of the Russia Empire. He studied geology and zoology at the Novorossia University in Odessa. He then traveled across the Russian Empire and central Europe to collect fossil specimens.
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Ramón Jardí i Borrás
1881 - 1972 (91 years)
Ramon Jardí i Borras was a Catalan meteorologist, astronomer and seismologist. He participated in the foundation of the Meteorological Service of Catalonia . He was member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts , professor of electricity at Industrial School University , professor at the University of Barcelona and a member of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans .
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Henry Shaler Williams
1847 - 1918 (71 years)
Henry Shaler Williams was an American geologist. He was the son of State Senator Josiah B. Williams . He graduated from Yale College and studied with Louis Agassiz at Cornell University. In 1871, he taught for a year at Transylvania University and then worked in business with his father in Ithaca, New York until joining the Cornell University faculty in 1879. From 1892 to 1904 he was Professor of Geology at Yale University and Professor of Geology at Cornell University from 1904 until 1912 when he was named Emeritus Professor.
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David Robertson
1806 - 1896 (90 years)
David Robertson FLS, FGS was a Scottish naturalist and geologist who founded the University Marine Biological Station, Millport. Robertson was born in Glasgow. From age 8 he worked as a herd boy in Ayrshire, but eventually went on to gain a medical degree. His interests turned to the study of Natural History in the town he regularly visited, Millport, in the Firth of Clyde. He studied the local flora and fauna and established Millport as a significant area for marine biological research. In 1885 he had the 'Ark', an old floating laboratory, drawn up on shore, at Port Loy, Cumbrae. He persuade...
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Edward Wells
1667 - 1727 (60 years)
Edward Wells was an English mathematician, geographer, and controversial theologian. Life He was the son of Edward Wells, vicar of Corsham, Wiltshire. He was admitted to Westminster School in 1680, and elected to a scholarship at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1686. He graduated B.A. in 1690 and M.A. in 1693.
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Pierre Pruvost
1890 - 1967 (77 years)
Pierre Eugène Marie Joseph Pruvost was a French geologist who worked as a professor of geology at the University of Lille. He was a specialist on the fossil fauna and flora of the coal basins of Europe.
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Arthur Starr Eakle
1862 - 1931 (69 years)
Arthur Starr Eakle was an American mineralogist. Eakle researched the mineralogical conditions of areas of California, Nevada and Hawaii. His work on Oahu, the third largest island in Hawaii, included identifying numerous new minerals.
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Mazie O. Tyson
1900 - 1975 (75 years)
Mazie Oylee Tyson was an American geographer who taught at historically-black colleges from the 1920s into the 1970s, including over twenty years at Tennessee State College. Early life and education Tyson was originally from Jacksonville, Florida. She attended Florida A & M College for two years, and graduated from Howard University in 1921. In 1937 she earned a master's degree in geography at Ohio State University, with a thesis titled "A Florida Phosphate Landscape." She did doctoral work at Syracuse University, but health problems prevented the completion of her doctorate.
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John Septimus Roe
1797 - 1878 (81 years)
John Septimus Roe was the first Surveyor-General of Western Australia. He was a renowned explorer, a member of Western Australia's legislative and executive councils for nearly 40 years, but also a participant in the Pinjarra massacre on 28 October 1834.
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John Adams Bownocker
1865 - 1928 (63 years)
Dr. John Adams Bownocker was an American geologist and educator. Biography Born in St. Paul Pickaway County, Ohio to parents Michael Bownocker and Eliza Bownocker. Married Anna K. Flint on June 12, 1911.
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E. J. Bowen
1898 - 1980 (82 years)
Edmund John Bowen FRS was a British physical chemist. Early life and wartime career E. J. Bowen was the eldest of four born to Edmund Riley Bowen and Lilias Bowen in 1898 in Worcester, England. He attended the Royal Grammar School Worcester.
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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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Walter Hermann Bucher
1888 - 1965 (77 years)
Walter Hermann Bucher was a German-American geologist and paleontologist. He was born in Akron, Ohio, to Swiss-German parents. The family then returned to Germany, where he was raised. In 1911 he was awarded a Ph.D. by the University of Heidelberg with a focus on geology and paleontology. The same year he returned to the U.S. and joined the University of Cincinnati as a lecturer. By 1924 he was a professor of geology at the institution.
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Sverre Petterssen
1898 - 1974 (76 years)
Sverre Petterssen was a Norwegian meteorologist, prominent in the field of weather analysis and forecasting. Early life Born in Norway into a humble family, he paid for his higher education by working at the telegraph office, and a nursery provided by the armed forces that he joined as a recruit. He studied in Bergen where he met Tor Bergeron during a lecture, and was so impressed by his analysis of a 1922 storm that he joined the Bergen School of Meteorology in 1923. In the late 1920s, he worked at the Geophysical Institute in Tromsø, northern Norway.
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Owen Thomas Jones
1878 - 1967 (89 years)
Owen Thomas Jones, FRS FGS was a Welsh geologist. Education He was born in Beulah, near Newcastle Emlyn, Cardiganshire, the only son of David Jones and Margaret Thomas. He attended the local village school in Trewen before going to Pencader Grammar School in 1893. In 1896 he went up to University College, Aberystwyth, to study physics, graduating in 1900. He then went to Trinity College, Cambridge, and was awarded a B.A. degree in Natural Sciences in 1902.
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