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,
#3601
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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Gérard Paul Deshayes
1795 - 1875 (80 years)
Gérard Paul Deshayes was a French geologist and conchologist. Career He was born in Nancy, his father at that time being professor of experimental physics in the École Centrale of the département Meurthe
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Fusakichi Omori
1868 - 1923 (55 years)
was a pioneer Japanese seismologist, second chairman of seismology at the Imperial University of Tokyo and president of the Japanese Imperial Earthquake Investigation Committee. Omori is also known for his observation describing the aftershock rate of earthquakes, now known as Omori's law.
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Francis Pettit Bundy
#3615
Edward Orton Sr.
1829 - 1899 (70 years)
Edward Francis Baxter Orton Sr. was a United States geologist, and the first president of The Ohio State University. Biography Orton came from New York State, born in the town of Deposit in Delaware County and raised in the Lake Erie town of Ripley. He entered Hamilton College in 1845, graduating in 1848. He then spent time at Lane Theological Seminary , Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard , and then Andover Theological Seminary. During those times he taught to get income, but was interested in entering the ministry. He was ordained in 1856.
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Doris Schachner
1904 - 1988 (84 years)
Doris Schachner née Korn was the first female German professor for Mineralogy and Honorary Senator of the RWTH Aachen University. Life Schachner studied mineralogy at the universities in Heidelberg, Freiburg i. Br., and Innsbruck. She completed her doctorate at the Heidelberg University in 1928 and she completed her habilitation at the TH Aachen in 1933. From 1933 to 1940, she was a lecturer at the TH Aachen. At the end of the second world war , she worked at the Brno University of Technology. In 1946, she returned to Aachen. In 1948, she became an extraordinary professor at the TH Aachen. From 1949 to 1972, she was an ordinary professor at the TH Aachen.
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A. R. Crook
1864 - 1930 (66 years)
Alja Robinson Crook was an American scientist and academic from Ohio. Crook attended Ohio Wesleyan University and received a Dr. phil. in Munich, Germany in 1892. He was a professor of mineralogy and economic geology at Northwestern University from 1893 to 1906, when he was named Illinois State Geologist. As state geologist, he greatly expanded the state museum.
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Louis Rutten
1884 - 1946 (62 years)
Louis Martin Robert Rutten was a Dutch geologist. In the first part of the twentieth century he mapped large parts of the islands of the Dutch East Indies, Cuba, the Betic Cordilleras and the Dutch Antilles. He was the father of the biologist and geologist Martin Rutten.
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Alexander Aslanikashvili
1916 - 1981 (65 years)
Alexander Aslanikashvili was a Georgian cartographer. Doctor of Geographical Sciences . Corresponding member of the Georgian Academy of Sciences . Professor of the Tbilisi State University and the Chair of Cartography and Geodesy . Director of the Vakhushti Bagrationi Institute of Geography . He developed his theory of cartography, which is called Metacartography.
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Aksel Berg
1893 - 1979 (86 years)
Aksel Ivanovich Berg was a Soviet scientist in radio-frequency engineering and Soviet Navy Admiral, Hero of Socialist Labour. He was a key figure in the introduction of cybernetics to the Soviet Union.
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Gustav von Leonhard
1816 - 1878 (62 years)
Gustav von Leonhard was a German mineralogist and geologist. He was the son of mineralogist Karl Cäsar von Leonhard. He studied mineralogy and related sciences at the University of Heidelberg, receiving his doctorate in 1840. He continued his education in Berlin, and in 1841 obtained his habilitation at Heidelberg. In 1853 he became an associate professor of mineralogy at the University of Heidelberg.
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Charles Peter Berkey
1867 - 1955 (88 years)
Charles Peter Berkey was an American geologist, notable as a founder of the discipline of engineering geology, for his work on the great dams of the 1930s, and as chief geologist on the Gobi Desert expeditions in Mongolia led by Roy Chapman Andrews in the 1920s.
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James Richardson
1809 - 1851 (42 years)
James Richardson was a British explorer known for his expeditions into the Sahel region of the Saharan desert. Richardson was educated for the evangelical ministry. His early training and enterprising temper produced in adult life an ambition to propagate Christianity and suppress the slave trade in Africa. He attached himself to the British Anti-Slavery Society, and under its auspices he went out to Malta, where he took part in the editing of a newspaper and also engaged in the study of the Arabic language and of geography, with a view to systematic exploration.
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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
#3633
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
#3643
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
#3648
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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