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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

Randy Read

1957 - 1983 (26 years)

Randy John Read is a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow and professor of protein crystallography at the University of Cambridge. Education Read was educated at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada where he was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in 1979 followed by a PhD in 1986 for X-ray crystallography of serine proteases and their protein inhibitors supervised by Michael N. G. James.

#3602

Hisakatsu Yabe

1878 - 1969 (91 years)

Hisakatsu Yabe was a Japanese paleontologist and geologist. He is from Tokyo and is a graduate of the University of Tokyo. He was an emeritus professor at Tohoku University. Yabe contributed to the development of geology in Japan. In 1918, He advocated Itoigawa-Shizuoka Tectonic Line.

#3603

Ernst Antevs

1888 - 1974 (86 years)

Ernst Valdemar Antevs was a Swedish-American geologist and educator who made significant contributions to Quaternary geology, particularly geomorphology and geochronology. Ernst Valdemar Antevs was born on a farm in the Vartofta-Åsaka parish of Skaraborg, , Sweden. He attended Stockholm University where in 1917, he was awarded his Ph.D. in geology. He was employed as a docent at the University of Stockholm from 1917 to 1935. He was also a research associate for the American Geographical Society , the Carnegie Institution of Washington , Geological Survey of Canada , and Harvard University .

#3604

Thomas Lyttleton Lyon

1869 - 1938 (69 years)

Thomas Lyttleton Lyon was an American soil scientist who wrote on the nitrogen cycle. He was secretary of the American Society of Agronomy from 1907 to 1909. He was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the American Chemical Society. His Principle of Soil Management went through 10 editions.

#3605

James Gilluly

1896 - 1980 (84 years)

James Gilluly was an American geologist. Regarding the Cupriferous Porphyry Genesis, Gilluly integrated detailed observations of the Ajo porphyry between 1936 and 1936 with experimental data . Gilluly concluded that after the Ajo quartz monzonite intruded and crystallized, it was fractured by magmatic bypass solutions . Gilluly frequency experimental restrictions to estimate a paleo depth between 1000 and 3000 , consistent with solidus temperatures of 900 °C for granite, containing 4% by weight of water. He realized that the source magmatic content was water, sulfur and halogens, and that the binders can form complexes with metals to produce an aqueous fluid with larger volumes.

#3606

Glenn Thomas Trewartha

1896 - 1984 (88 years)

Glenn Thomas Trewartha was an American geographer of Cornish American descent. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, with a Ph.D. in 1924. He taught at the University of Wisconsin.

#3607

Hugo Benioff

1899 - 1968 (69 years)

Victor Hugo Benioff was an American seismologist and a professor at the California Institute of Technology. He is best remembered for his work in charting the location of deep earthquakes in the Pacific Ocean.

#3608

Arthur Francis Buddington

1890 - 1980 (90 years)

Arthur Francis "Bud" Buddington was an American geologist. Born in Wilmington, Delaware, he grew up there and in West Mystic, Connecticut. He was educated at Brown University and Princeton University.

#3609

Isaiah Bowman

1878 - 1950 (72 years)

Isaiah Bowman, AB, Ph. D. , was an American geographer and President of the Johns Hopkins University, 1935–1948, controversial for his antisemitism and inaction in Jewish resettlement during WWII. Biography Bowman was born in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. His family was Mennonite, and, at the age of eight weeks, Bowman's father moved his family to a log cabin in Brown City, Michigan, sixty miles north of Detroit. In 1900, Isaiah became an American citizen and began intensive study to prepare himself for admittance to Harvard. Studying first at Michigan State Normal College in Ypsilanti , Bowman c...

#3610

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.

#3611

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.

#3612

Sverre Petterssen

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.

#3613

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.

#3614

Merle Tuve

1901 - 1982 (81 years)

Merle Anthony Tuve was an American geophysicist who was the Chairman of the Office of Scientific Research and Development's Section T, which was created in August 1940. He was founding director of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, the main laboratory of Section T during the war from 1942 onward. He was a pioneer in the use of pulsed radio waves whose discoveries opened the way to the development of radar and nuclear energy.

#3615

Adolf Carl Noé

1873 - 1939 (66 years)

Adolf Carl Noé was an Austrian-born paleobotanist. He is credited for identifying the first coal ball in the United States in 1922, which renewed interest in them. He also developed a method of peeling coal balls using nitrocellulose. Many of the paleobotanical materials owned by the University of Chicago's Walker Museum were provided by Noé, where he was also a curator of fossil plants. He was also a research associate at the Field Museum of Natural History, where he assisted with their reconstruction of a Carboniferous forest.

#3616

Gabrielle Donnay

1920 - 1987 (67 years)

Gabrielle Donnay, née Hamburger , was a German-born American crystallographer and historian of science. Life Gabrielle Donnay was born in Landeshut, Germany on 21 March 1920 and emigrated to the United States in 1937. She received her B.A. from UCLA with highest honors in chemistry in 1941 and was awarded her Ph.D in 1949 from MIT. She then went to work for Carnegie Institution of Washington where she met and married Jose Donnay that same year. When he retired from Johns Hopkins in 1970, she was hired as a faculty member by McGill University in Canada.

#3617

Charles Fleming

1916 - 1987 (71 years)

Sir Charles Alexander Fleming was a New Zealand geologist, ornithologist, molluscan palaeontologist and environmentalist. He spent the last twenty years of his life studying the evolution and systematics of New Zealand cicadas.

#3618

Katsutada Sezawa

Katsutada Sezawa

1895 - 1944 (49 years)

Katsutada Sezawa was a Japanese geophysicist . Sezawa's key work was on the mathematical aspects of wave transmission in media of different viscosities and the Sezawa wave mode of surface waves is named after him.

#3619

Paul F. Kerr

1897 - 1981 (84 years)

Dr. Paul F. Kerr , was a Professor of Mineralogy at Columbia University. During the second World War, he was tasked with locating and procuring supplies of uranium for the Manhattan Project. Kerr had an academic interest in the geology of tungsten, uranium and clay minerals. He pioneered the use of X-rays in the process of mineral identification and is considered to be one of the fathers of applied mineralogy. At Columbia University he was instrumental in the founding of the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory.

#3620

Hans P. Eugster

1925 - 1987 (62 years)

Hans Peter Eugster was a Swiss-American geochemist, mineralogist, and petrologist. Education Eugster studied at ETH Zurich with Diplom in 1948 and D.Sc. in 1951 under Paul Niggli with a dissertation on metamorphic recrystallization in the eastern part of the Aar massif. As a postdoctoral fellow, Eugster studied optical spectroscopy from 1951 to 1952 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was also influenced by research on petrology done by James Burleigh Thompson's team at Harvard University.

#3621

P.A. Sheppard

1907 - 1977 (70 years)

Professor Percival Albert "Peter" Sheppard CBE FRS was a Meteorologist at Imperial College, London from 1952 to 1974 and thereafter emeritus professor. He was born in Box, Wiltshire and was educated at City of Bath Boys School and the University of Bristol, graduating with a first class honours BSc in 1927. He stayed on there as a student demonstrator, doing research on the loading of gaseous ions by polar molecules.

#3622

David T. Griggs

1911 - 1974 (63 years)

David Tressel Griggs was an American geophysicist. He served as the second Chief Scientist of the U.S. Air Force from 1951 to 1952. Early life David Griggs was born in Columbus, Ohio. His father was Robert Fiske Griggs, who discovered the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes near Mount Katmai in Alaska. The highest area in this area was officially named Mount Griggs in his honor. David accompanied his father on an expedition to that area in 1930.

#3623

Sergei Ivanovich Tomkeieff

1892 - 1968 (76 years)

Prof Sergei Ivanovich Tomkeieff FRSE FGS was a 20th-century Russian and British geologist and petrologist who won the Geological Society's Lyell Medal in 1966. Life Tomkeieff was born on 20 October 1892 in Vilna, in the Russian Empire, and studied petrology in Petrograd Polytechnic Institute. Tomkeieff came to Britain either during or just after the First World War, and began lecturing in geology at Anderson College in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1920.

#3624

Harry Hammond Hess

Harry Hammond Hess

1906 - 1969 (63 years)

Harry Hammond Hess was an American geologist and a United States Navy officer in World War II who is considered one of the "founding fathers" of the unifying theory of plate tectonics. He is best known for his theories on sea floor spreading, specifically work on relationships between island arcs, seafloor gravity anomalies, and serpentinized peridotite, suggesting that the convection of the Earth's mantle was the driving force behind this process.

#3625

Allan V. Cox

1926 - 1987 (61 years)

Allan Verne Cox was an American geophysicist. His work on dating geomagnetic reversals, with Richard Doell and Brent Dalrymple, made a major contribution to the theory of plate tectonics. Allan Cox won numerous awards, including the prestigious Vetlesen Prize, and was the president of the American Geophysical Union. He was the author of over a hundred scientific papers, and the author or editor of two books on plate tectonics. On January 27, 1987, Cox died in an apparent suicide.

#3626

Ralph Early Grim

1902 - 1989 (87 years)

Ralph Early Grim was an American geologist and scientist, often referred to as the "Father of Mineralogy" because he made many discoveries during his investigations of clay materials. He was one of the most outstanding mineralogists of his time and was well-known throughout the world in the field of clay science and technology. Grim's career spanned over 60 years and he received many honors and awards in the field of mineralogy. Some of the textbooks he wrote have been standard university textbooks in mineralogy for many years.

#3627

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.

#3628

Henry William Menard

Henry William Menard

1920 - 1986 (66 years)

Henry William Menard was an American geologist. Life and career He earned a B.S. and M.S. from the California Institute of Technology in 1942 and 1947, having served in the South Pacific during World War II as a photo interpreter. In 1949, he completed a Ph.D. in marine geology at Harvard University. Menard is perhaps best known for his promotion of the theory of plate tectonics before it was widely accepted in the scientific community. Menard served many roles during his career as a marine geologist. Field worker, theorist, educator, popularizer, entrepreneur and statesman.

#3629

Helmut Landsberg

Helmut Landsberg

1906 - 1985 (79 years)

Helmut Erich Landsberg was a noted and influential climatologist. He was born in Frankfurt, Germany, February 9, 1906 and died December 6, 1985 in Geneva, Switzerland while attending a meeting of the World Meteorological Organization. Landsberg was an important figure in meteorology and atmospheric science in education, public service and administration. He authored several notable works, particularly in the field of particulate matter and its influence on air pollution and human health. He is the first to write in English about the use of statistical analysis in the field of climatology and implemented such statistical analysis in aiding military operations during World War II.

#3630

Chester Ray Longwell

1887 - 1975 (88 years)

Chester Ray Longwell was an American geologist who conducted extensive research into the geology of the Basin and Range province in Nevada. His fieldwork led to a more complete understanding of Paleozoic and lower Mesozoic stratigraphic sequence in the southern Great Basin.

#3631

Arthur Holmes

1890 - 1965 (75 years)

Arthur Holmes was an English geologist who made two major contributions to the understanding of geology. He pioneered the use of radiometric dating of minerals, and was the first earth scientist to grasp the mechanical and thermal implications of mantle convection, which led eventually to the acceptance of plate tectonics.

#3632

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.

#3633

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.

#3634

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.

#3635

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.

#3636

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...

#3637

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.

#3638

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.

#3639

Louis B. Slichter

1896 - 1978 (82 years)

Louis Byrne Slichter was an American physicist and geophysicist who directed the Institute of Geophysics at UCLA. Slichter was notable for, among other things, earth tides research, submarine detection, development of three-component short-period seismographs, studies of the earth temperature distribution, and the invention of a number of important geophysical devices. Slichter Foreland peninsula in Antarctica is named after him. The Institute of Geophysics building in UCLA where he used to work as a director of the Institute has been named Slichter Hall. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the chair of the Academy's Geophysics Section.

#3640

George Cressey

1896 - 1963 (67 years)

George Babcock Cressey was an American geographer, author, and academic. Born in Tiffin, Ohio, he attended Denison University and then the University of Chicago, where he received a PhD in geology. After receiving his degree, he taught at University of Shanghai and traveled widely in China. Upon his return to the United States in 1929, he completed a pioneering book on the country, China's Geographic Foundations.

#3641

Marshall Kay

1904 - 1975 (71 years)

Marshall Kay was a geologist and professor at Columbia University. He is best known for his studies of the Ordovician of New York, Newfoundland, and Nevada, but his studies were global and he published widely on the stratigraphy of the middle and upper Ordovician. Kay's careful fieldwork provided much geological evidence for the theory of continental drift. He was awarded the Penrose Medal in 1971. Less well known is his work for the Manhattan Project, as a geologist searching for manganese deposits. Marshall's son Robert Kay of Cornell University, daughter Elizabeth Berner of University of Connecticut and son-in-law Robert Berner of Yale University are also geology professors.

#3642

Ruth Harris

Ruth Harris is a scientist at the United States Geological Survey known for her research on large earthquakes, especially on how they begin, end, and cause the ground to shake. In 2019, Harris was elected a fellow of the American Geophysical Union who cited her "for outstanding contributions to earthquake rupture dynamics, stress transfer, and triggering".

#3643

Sidney William Wooldridge

1900 - 1963 (63 years)

Professor Sidney William Wooldridge CBE, FRS, FGS , geologist, geomorphologist and geographer, was a pioneer in the study of the geomorphology of south-east England and the first professor of geography at King's College London. He collaborated with Dudley Stamp and with David Linton.

#3644

W. B. R. King

1889 - 1963 (74 years)

William Bernard Robinson King was a British geologist. Education King was educated at the University of Cambridge graduating a first-class Honours degree in geology in 1912 Career He joined the British Geological Survey and distinguished himself on field studies in Wales. In 1914 he was commissioned as a second-lieutenant in the Territorial Army and in 1915 was rapidly trained as a hydrologist and sent to France to assist the Chief Engineer of the British Expeditionary Force establish potable water supplies from boreholes. He has been called "the first British military hydrogeologist"

#3645

Doris Reynolds

1899 - 1985 (86 years)

Doris Livesey Reynolds FRSE FGS was a British geologist, best known for her work on metasomatism in rocks and her role in the "Granite Controversy". She was the first woman to be elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

#3646

Harold Masursky

1922 - 1990 (68 years)

Harold Masursky was an American astrogeologist. After leaving Yale University without defending his dissertation, he started his career in the early 1950s as a field geologist in Wyoming and Colorado working for the United States Geological Survey . In the early 1960s, he moved to the Astrogeology division of the USGS and began working at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. In the mid-1960s, he moved to Flagstaff, Arizona as a founding planetary geologist at the newly constructed USGS Astrogeology Science Center. Throughout his professional career with the USGS, his wo...

#3647

Frederic Brewster Loomis

1873 - 1937 (64 years)

Frederic Brewster Loomis was an American paleontologist. Educated at Amherst College and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, he spent his entire professional career at Amherst. His specialty was vertebrate paleontology. Many fossils he uncovered during his extensive field work are still exhibited at Amherst's Beneski Museum of Natural History. He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the Geological Society of America, and president of the Paleontological Society.

#3648

Erwin Raisz

1893 - 1968 (75 years)

Erwin Raisz was a Hungarian-born American cartographer, best known for his physiographic maps of landforms. Early life and education Born in Lőcse, Hungary in 1893, Raisz was the son of a civil engineer who introduced him to maps through his work. He received his degree in civil engineering and architecture from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics in Budapest in 1914.

#3649

William Dickson Lang

1878 - 1966 (88 years)

William Dickson Lang was Keeper of the Department of Geology at the British Museum from 1928 until 1938. Early life Lang was born at Kurnal, India the second son of Edward Tickle Lang and Hebe, the daughter of John Venn Prior. At the age of 1, the family returned to England from the Punjab region of India. Lang's father was a civil servant, who had been working on the Jumna Canal in the Punjab.

#3650

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.

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