Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Earth Sciences,

#3601

David Williams

1898 - 1984 (86 years)

David Williams was a noted British geologist. Williams was born of Welsh parents in Liverpool, England. After studying civil engineering at the University of Liverpool, he became interested in geology after his twin brother Howel began to study geology. David Williams studied under Percy Boswell at the University of Liverpool. There David Williams received his Ph.D. for research on paleozoic volcanic rock in Snowdonia.

#3602

Filip Hjulström

Filip Hjulström

1902 - 1982 (80 years)

Henning Filip Hjulström was a Swedish geographer. Hjulström was professor of geography at Uppsala University from 1944, and in 1949, when the subject of geography was split, he became professor of Physical Geography.

#3603

George Brown Barbour

1890 - 1977 (87 years)

George Brown Barbour FGS FRSE FRSSA was an internationally renowned Scottish geologist and educator. Life He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, 22 August 1890. He was the son of the eminent gynaecologist, Alexander Hugh Freeland Barbour and Margaret Nelson Brown.

#3604

Otto Jaekel

1863 - 1929 (66 years)

Otto Max Johannes Jaekel was a German paleontologist and geologist. Biography Jaekel was born in Neusalz , Prussian Silesia, the son of a builder and the youngest of seven children. He studied at the Ritterakademie in Liegnitz . After graduating in 1883, he came to study geology and paleontology under Ferdinand Roemer in Breslau until 1885. Karl von Zittel awarded a PhD to Jaekel in Munich in 1886. Between 1887 and 1889, Jaekel was an assistant of E.W. Benecke at the Geologisch-Paläontologisches Institut in Straßburg, where he received his Habilitation.

#3605

Armin K. Lobeck

1886 - 1958 (72 years)

Armin Kohl Lobeck was a noted American Cartographer, Geomorphologist and Landscape Artist. He was born in New York City on August 16, 1886, but his family moved to Haworth, New Jersey, three years later.

#3606

Arthur Raistrick

1896 - 1991 (95 years)

Arthur Raistrick was a British geologist, archaeologist, academic, and writer. He was born in a working class home in Saltaire, Yorkshire. He was a scholar in many related, and some unrelated, fields. He published some 330 articles, books, pamphlets and scholarly treatises.

#3607

Victor Goldschmidt

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.

#3608

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.

#3609

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.

#3610

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.

#3611

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.

#3612

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.

#3613

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.

#3614

E. G. Bowen

1900 - 1983 (83 years)

Emrys George Bowen FRGS, FSA, also known as E. G. Bowen , was an internationally renowned geographer with a particular interest in the physical geography and social geography of his native Wales. A diminutive figure, Bowen was on the academic staff of the Department of Geography and Anthropology at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, from the 1920s and continued to write and lecture there until his death in 1983.

#3615

Charles Thomson Rees Wilson

Charles Thomson Rees Wilson

1869 - 1959 (90 years)

Charles Thomson Rees Wilson, was a Scottish physicist and meteorologist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention of the cloud chamber. Education and early life Wilson was born in the parish of Glencorse, Midlothian to Annie Clark Harper and John Wilson, a sheep farmer. After his father died in 1873, he moved with his family to Manchester. With financial support from his step-brother he studied biology at Owens College, now the University of Manchester, with the intent of becoming a doctor. In 1887, he graduated from the College with a BSc. He won a scholarship to attend Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he became interested in physics and chemistry.

#3616

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.

#3617

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 ...

#3618

Julia Anna Gardner

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...

#3619

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.

#3620

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.

#3621

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.

#3622

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...

#3623

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.

#3624

Georg Gürich

1859 - 1938 (79 years)

Georg Julius Ernst Gürich was a German geologist, paleontologist and university teacher, who wrote on Paleozoic geological formations in Poland and ranged through Guinea, Tanzania and Southern Africa , in search of unrecorded new species.

#3625

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.

#3626

William Trevelyan Harry

1911 - 1964 (53 years)

William Trevelyan Harry FRSE FGS was a British geologist and academic author. He specialised in the geology of Greenland and north-east Canada. Life He was born in Yorkshire in northern England around 1911.

#3627

Cornelis Hendrik Edelman

1903 - 1964 (61 years)

Cornelis Hendrik "Kees" Edelman was a Dutch geologist and soil scientist who worked at the Agricultural College in Wageningen. He is credited with popularizing the use of the so-called Edelman soil auger to study soil profiles. Using studies of soil profiles he compiled a very high resolution soil-types map of the Netherlands.

#3628

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.

#3629

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.

#3630

Reinout Willem van Bemmelen

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.

#3631

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.

#3632

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.

#3633

Alexander H. Rice Jr.

1875 - 1956 (81 years)

Alexander Hamilton Rice Jr. was an American physician, geographer, and explorer especially noted for his expeditions to the Amazon Basin. He was a professor of geography at Harvard University from 1929 to 1952, and was the founder and director of the Harvard Institute of Geographical Exploration. He was also the curator of the South American Section of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.

#3634

Karl Martin

1851 - 1942 (91 years)

Johann Karl Ludwig Martin was a German geologist. He was professor in geology at Leiden University from 1877 to 1922. From 1880 to 1922 he also was director of the Geological Museum of Leiden. As a scientist he is known for his paleontological and stratigraphical research on the Cenozoic fauna of the Dutch East Indies, especially on mollusks.

#3635

Hans Peder Steensby

Hans Peder Steensby

1875 - 1920 (45 years)

Hans Peder Steensby was an ethnographer, geographer and professor at the University of Copenhagen. Career Steensby was born into a family of farmers. His original name was Hans Peder Jensen, but in 1902 he changed his name to Steensby, the name of the parish where he was born. After completing his education in 1900 he moved to Copenhagen and became a teacher. In 1908 he travelled to Algeria and Tunisia, where he studied the culture of the nomads. In 1909 he lived among the Greenlandic Inuit of the Cape York area. In 1911 he became professor of Geography at the Copenhagen University. In 1913 h...

#3636

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.

#3637

George Gaylord Simpson

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.

#3638

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.

#3639

Frederick J. Pack

1875 - 1938 (63 years)

Frederick James Pack was a professor of geology at the University of Utah and Brigham Young College and a writer on the deleterious effects of tobacco on human health. Pack was also a leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , serving as the chairman of the Gospel Doctrine Committee of the church.

#3640

Giovanni Boaga

1902 - 1961 (59 years)

Giovanni Boaga was an Italian mathematician and geodesy professor. He was born in Trieste and died in Tripoli, Libya. His Gauss-Boaga Projection is the standard projection used in Italian topography by the Istituto Geografico Militare.

#3641

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...

#3642

Thomas John Jehu

1871 - 1943 (72 years)

Thomas John Jehu was a British physician and geologist. The Jehu-Campbell Fossil Collection at the University of Edinburgh was donated by Jehu in combination with Robert Campbell and is now the main component of their “Highland Border Series” of fossils. Many of the fossils come from the Aberfoyle area.

#3643

Edward Battersby Bailey

1881 - 1965 (84 years)

Sir Edward Battersby Bailey FRS FRSE MC LLD was an English geologist. Life Bailey was born in Marden, Kent, the son of Dr James Battersby Bailey and Louise Florence Carr. He was educated at Kendal grammar school and Clare College, Cambridge. He gained first-class honours in both parts one and two of the natural sciences tripos. He also won a heavyweight boxing medal while at Cambridge.

#3644

Friedrich Ratzel

Friedrich Ratzel

1844 - 1904 (60 years)

Friedrich Ratzel was a German geographer and ethnographer, notable for first using the term Lebensraum in the sense that the National Socialists later would. Life Ratzel's father was the head of the household staff of the Grand Duke of Baden. Friedrich attended high school in Karlsruhe for six years before being apprenticed at age 15 to apothecaries. In 1863, he went to Rapperswil on the Lake of Zurich, Switzerland, where he began to study the classics. After a further year as an apothecary at Moers near Krefeld in the Ruhr area , he spent a short time at the high school in Karlsruhe and became a student of zoology at the universities of Heidelberg, Jena and Berlin, finishing in 1868.

#3645

Merton Yarwood Williams

1883 - 1974 (91 years)

Merton Yarwood Williams was a Canadian geologist and academic. Education Born near Bloomfield, Ontario, of Loyalist descent, Williams graduated from Picton High School in 1902 and was a teacher for three years before starting University. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in mining engineering from Queen's University in 1909. While a student at University, he was a student assistant for the Geological Survey of Canada and did geological work in British Columbia, Yukon and Nova Scotia. In 1912, he received a Ph.D. degree from Yale University where he studied stratigraphy and paleontology under Charles Schuchert.

#3646

Boris Borisovich Golitsyn

Boris Borisovich Golitsyn

1862 - 1916 (54 years)

Prince Boris Borisovich Golitsyn was a prominent Russian Empire physicist who invented the first electromagnetic seismograph in 1906. He was one of the founders of modern Seismology. In 1911 he was chosen to be the president of the International Seismology Association.

#3647

Norman L. Bowen

Norman L. Bowen

1887 - 1956 (69 years)

Norman Levi Bowen FRS was a Canadian geologist. Bowen "revolutionized experimental petrology and our understanding of mineral crystallization". Beginning geology students are familiar with Bowen's reaction series depicting how different minerals crystallize under varying pressures and temperatures."

#3648

Oliver Edwin Baker

1883 - 1949 (66 years)

Oliver Edwin Baker was an American economic geographer. Education and early career Baker was born in Tiffin, Ohio. His father, Edwin Baker, was a merchant, and his mother, Martha Ranney Thomas, had been a schoolteacher. His health in his early life was so poor that he did not begin school until the age of 12, before which time he was taught by his mother. After graduating public school he went on to Heidelberg College. He graduated with a B.S. degree in history and mathematics at the age of 19 in 1903, and took an M.S. degree in philosophy and sociology a year later. The next year he went on to Columbia University, receiving an M.A.

#3649

Marguerite Lefèvre

1894 - 1967 (73 years)

Marguerite Alice Lefèvre was an academic geographer and the first woman to hold a professorship at the Catholic University of Leuven. A prize at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and a street in Leuven are named in her honour.

#3650

Albert Hugh Smith

1903 - 1967 (64 years)

Albert Hugh Smith OBE was a scholar of Old English and Scandinavian languages and played a major part in the study and publication of English place-names. Hugh Smith was the son of Albert John Smith, a butler, and Anne Smith of Sowerby, West Yorkshire. He was educated at Rishworth School, West Yorkshire, and, after a time working as a railway booking clerk, he went to Leeds University where he was awarded 1st Class BA in English in 1924 and a PhD in 1926. His PhD thesis was on the place-names of the North Riding and the study of place-names remained of continuing interest to him, resulting in several publications.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions