The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
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List of the most influential people in Earth Sciences,
#3651
Leonard Horner
1785 - 1864 (79 years)
Leonard Horner FRSE FRS FGS was a Scottish merchant, geologist and educational reformer. He was the younger brother of Francis Horner. Horner was a founder of the School of Arts of Edinburgh, now Heriot-Watt University and one of the founders of the Edinburgh Academy. A 'radical educational reformer' he was involved in the establishment of University College School. As a commissioner on the Royal Commission on the Employment of Children in Factories, Horner arguably did more to improve the working conditions of women and children in North England than any other person in the 19th century.
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Ding Wenjiang
1887 - 1936 (49 years)
Ding Wenjiang , courtesy name Zaijun, was a Chinese essayist, geologist, and writer active especially in the Republic of China . In his own time, his name was transcribed as either V.K. Ting, or Ting Wen-chiang.
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Balfour Currie
1902 - 1981 (79 years)
Balfour Watson Currie, was a Canadian scientist specializing in the fields of meteorology and climatology. Early life Born in Montana, he came to Saskatchewan at an early age. His parents moved to a farm homestead at Netherhill, near Kindersley, in the west central region of the province. Because of his pioneer heritage, he was equally comfortable with internationally renowned scientists or with farmers in the field. He came to the University of Saskatchewan as a student and received a Bachelor-level degree in Physics and a Master-level degree in Physics . His Ph.D. program at McGill Univer...
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Ludwik Zejszner
1803 - 1871 (68 years)
Ludwik Zejszner born Ludwig Zeuschner was a Prussian geologist, paleontologist and mineralogist. He is considered a pioneer of cartographic approaches to geology. He taught mineralogy at Warsaw and was a specialist on the Tatra Mountains in the Carpathians where he was also involved in conservation.
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Max Eckert-Greifendorff
1868 - 1938 (70 years)
Max Eckert was a German geographer. Biography He received his education in Löbau and Berlin, and taught for some time at Löbau and Leipzig. In 1903, he became Privatdozent at Kiel University. In 1907, he was appointed to the chair of geography in the Royal Technical High School of Aachen . He invented the six Eckert projections and others such as Eckert-Greifendorff projection
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Mungo Park
1771 - 1806 (35 years)
Mungo Park was a Scottish explorer of West Africa. After an exploration of the upper Niger River around 1796, he wrote a popular and influential travel book titled Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa in which he theorized the Niger and Congo merged to become the same river, though it was later proven that they are different rivers. He was killed during a second expedition, having successfully travelled about two-thirds of the way down the Niger.
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Fredrik Johan Wiik
1839 - 1909 (70 years)
Fredrik Johan Wiik, also known as F.J. Wiik, was a Finnish geologist and mineralogist; in 1877, he was named the first professor of geology and mineralogy at the Imperial Alexander University of Finland, where his students included Jakob Sederholm and Wilhelm Ramsay. He was also the first scientist in Finland to use a petrographic microscope.
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Waldemar Lindgren
1860 - 1939 (79 years)
Waldemar Lindgren was a Swedish-American geologist and a founder of modern economic geology. Life Lindgren was born in Vassmolösa, Kalmar Municipality, Småland, Sweden, the son of Johan and Emma Lindgren. Johan was a judge and member of parliament, Emma the daughter of a clergyman. He attended the Freiberg Mining Academy, Germany, graduating as a mining engineer in 1882.
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J. N. L. Baker
1893 - 1971 (78 years)
John Norman Leonard Baker was a geographer associated with Jesus College, Oxford for nearly sixty years. Born in Liverpool, Baker studied at Liverpool College from 1911 to 1913 before entering Jesus College as an exhibitioner in 1913, where he read Modern History. His undergraduate career was interrupted by the First World War, during which he was wounded on the Somme. He married Phyllis Hancock in 1917 whilst convalescing. He then spent two years in the Indian Army . He returned to Oxford and completed his history degree in 1920 before switching to geography . He obtained the diploma in geography in 1921 and a B.Litt.
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Alexander Kruber
1871 - 1941 (70 years)
Alexander Alexandrovich Kruber was a Soviet geographer, professor, the founder of the Russian and Soviet karstology. Alexander Kruber was born in Istra , Russia. He graduated from the Moscow University in 1897. He became chairman of the Geography Department of the Moscow University in 1919 and director of the Scientific Research Institute of Geography during 1923-1927. Since 1927 he could no longer work due to grave health problems.
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Ernst Reinhold von Hofmann
1801 - 1871 (70 years)
Ernst Reinhold von Hofmann was a Russian geologist, geographer, explorer, and lecturer. He was a geologist who accompanied Otto von Kotzebue and his crew during his travels around the world from 1823 to 1826. After that, he made several travels to regions such as the Uralss and Continental Europe and made note of orography and general geography. He was also a professor at Saint Petersburg State University and an associate professor at the University of Kyiv.
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Leonard Johnston Wills
1884 - 1979 (95 years)
Professor Leonard Johnston Wills – known as 'Jack' to friends and family – was one of the leading British geologists of his generation. He held the Chair of Geology at the University of Birmingham from 1932 to 1949, and received many honours including the Geological Society of London's highest award, the Wollaston Medal, in 1954.
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Baltazar Mathias Keilhau
1797 - 1858 (61 years)
Balthazar Mathias Keilhau was a Norwegian geologist and mountain pioneer. He is regarded as the founder of the discipline of geology in Norway, and has also been credited for the discovery of the Jotunheimen mountain range.
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William Roy
1726 - 1790 (64 years)
Major-General William Roy was a Scottish military engineer, surveyor, and antiquarian. He was an innovator who applied new scientific discoveries and newly emerging technologies to the accurate geodetic mapping of Great Britain. His masterpiece is usually referred to as Roy's Map of Scotland.
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George Vâlsan
1885 - 1935 (50 years)
George Vâlsan was a Romanian geographer and writer. Biography Education and career Born in Bucharest, he attended primary school in Iași and Craiova, and began high school in Pitești. He completed secondary education at the Gheorghe Lazăr High School in Bucharest, graduating in 1904. He then attended the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy at the University of Bucharest, obtaining his diploma in 1908. Encouraged by Titu Maiorescu and Simion Mehedinți, he continued his studies of geography in Berlin and, under Emmanuel de Martonne, in Paris.
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George R. Stewart
1895 - 1980 (85 years)
George Rippey Stewart Jr. was an American historian, toponymist, novelist, and a professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. His 1959 book, Pickett's Charge, a detailed history of the final attack at Gettysburg, was called "essential for an understanding of the Battle of Gettysburg". His 1949 post-apocalyptic novel Earth Abides won the first International Fantasy Award in 1951.
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Bernhard von Cotta
1808 - 1879 (71 years)
Carl Bernhard von Cotta, known as Bernhard von Cotta , was a German geologist. Life He was born in a forester's lodge at Kleine Zillbach, Meiningen, near Eisenach, the son of Heinrich von Cotta, founder of the Tharandt Forestry Academy near Dresden. He was educated first at the Tharnadt Academcy, then at the Bergakademie Freiberg and the University of Heidelberg. Botany at first attracted him and he was one of the earliest to use the microscope in determining the structure of fossil plants. Later on he gave his attention to geology, to the study of ore-deposits, of rockss and metamorphism. He studied deposits of minerals in the Austrian Alps, Hungary, and Romania.
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Karl Georg von Raumer
1783 - 1865 (82 years)
Karl Georg von Raumer was a German geologist and educator. Biography Raumer was born in Wörlitz, in Anhalt-Dessau. He was educated at the universities of Göttingen and Halle, and at the mining academy in Freiberg as a student of Abraham Gottlob Werner. In 1811 he became professor of mineralogy at Breslau, and two years later, participated in the German Campaign of 1813. In 1819 he relocated as a professor to the University of Halle, then in 1827 settled at the University of Erlangen as a professor of natural history and mineralogy. Raumer died in Erlangen.
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William Thomas Blanford
1832 - 1905 (73 years)
William Thomas Blanford was an English geologist and naturalist. He is best remembered as the editor of a major series on The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma. Biography Blanford was born in London to William Blanford and Elizabeth Simpson. His father owned a factory next to their house on Bouverie street, Whitefriars. He was educated in private schools in Brighton and Paris . He joined his family business in carving and gilding and studied at the School of Design in Somerset House. Suffering from ill health, he spent two years in a business house at Civitavecchia owned by a friend of his father.
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Gabriel Delafosse
1796 - 1878 (82 years)
Gabriel Delafosse was a French mineralogist who worked at the Natural History Museum in Paris and for sometime at the University of Paris. He contributed to development of the idea of unit cells in crystallography. The mineral Delafossite is named after him. He was one of the founding members of the Société Geologique de France.
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Hans Wilhelmsson Ahlmann
1889 - 1974 (85 years)
Hans Jakob Konrad Wilhelmsson Ahlmann was a Swedish geographer, glaciologist, and diplomat. Born in Karlsborg, Sweden, Ahlmann grew up in Stockholm. He studied with Professor Gerard De Geer at Stockholm University, and gained his doctorate in 1915 on a doctoral thesis on Sweden's Lake Ragundasjön. The same year, he became an associate professor of geography at the University of Stockholm. He was appointed Associate Professor of Geography at Uppsala University in 1920 and professor at the Stockholm University from 1929 until 1950.
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Johann Ernst Fabri
1755 - 1825 (70 years)
Johann Ernst Fabri was a German geographer and statistician. Fabri was born in Oels, Silesia. In 1776, he began his studies in theology at the University of Halle, but his focus soon turned to geography and history. Later, he served as privat-docent at the University of Göttingen, where he was influenced by distinguished scholars that included Johann Christoph Gatterer, August Ludwig von Schlözer and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach.
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Constance Tipper
1894 - 1995 (101 years)
Constance Tipper was an English metallurgist and crystallographer. She investigated brittle fracture and the ductile-brittle transition of metals used in the construction of warships, and was the first female full-time faculty member at Cambridge University Department of Engineering.
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Henrik Mohn
1835 - 1916 (81 years)
Henrik Mohn was a Norwegian astronomer and meteorologist. Although he enrolled in theology studies after finishing school, he is credited with founding meteorological research in Norway, being a professor at the Royal Frederick University and director of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute from 1866 to 1913.
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August Karl Rosiwal
1860 - 1923 (63 years)
August Karl Rosiwal was an Austrian geologist. Rosiwal was born and died in Vienna. From 1885 to 1891, he worked as an assistant to Franz Toula. In 1892 he began lecturing in mineralogy and petrography and then from 1898 finally earning fees from his lectures. Many of the studies self conducted. From 1918 until his death in 1923, he was administrator of the "Geological Institute of the University of Vienna", following his mentor Franz Toula. He conducted a comprehensive dating, geological details of Austria.
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Gemma Frisius
1508 - 1555 (47 years)
Gemma Frisius was a Dutch physician, mathematician, cartographer, philosopher, and instrument maker. He created important globes, improved the mathematical instruments of his day and applied mathematics in new ways to surveying and navigation. Gemma's rings, an astronomical instrument, are named after him. Along with Gerardus Mercator and Abraham Ortelius, Frisius is often considered one of the founders of the Netherlandish school of cartography, and significantly helped lay the foundations for the school's golden age .
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Heinrich Vater
1859 - 1930 (71 years)
Heinrich August Vater was a German soil scientist and forestry scientist. Vater was a pioneer in the areas of forest soil science, land evaluation, and forest fertilization. In 1884, he received his doctorate at Leipzig with the dissertation Die fossilen Hölzer der Phosphoritlager des Herzogthums Braunschweig. He was an employee of the Royal Saxon Geological Survey, and in 1886, qualified as a lecturer of mineralogy and geology at the Polytechnic Institute in Dresden. During the following year, he became a professor at the Academy of Forestry in Tharandt. In 1898, he became a member of the De...
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Sten De Geer
1886 - 1933 (47 years)
Sten De Geer was a Swedish professor of geography and ethnography. As son of geologist Gerard De Geer Sten was born into the Swedish nobility holding the title of baron.
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Edgar Kant
1902 - 1978 (76 years)
Edgar Kant was Estonian geographer and economist. He laid the foundation for Estonian urban geography. In 1928 he graduated from the University of Tartu. From 1934 he was lecturer at Tartu University.
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Đuro Pilar
1846 - 1893 (47 years)
Đuro Pilar was a Croatian geologist, palaeontologist, and professor and rector at the University of Zagreb. Biography Pilar had, with his mother , a strong family relationship to Bosnia. His formal training was very extensive. The first training he received was at Zagreb and Osijek. Later, he studied at the Université Libre de Bruxelles , the Sorbonne , and the École de Chimie in Paris. He received his Ph.D. in 1868 and acquired a title of docent.
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Thomas McKenny Hughes
1832 - 1917 (85 years)
Thomas McKenny Hughes was a Welsh geologist. He was Woodwardian Professor of Geology at Cambridge University. Private life Thomas M. Hughes was born in Aberystwyth, one of the nine children of the Welsh bishop Joshua Hughes and his wife Margaret Hughes . His younger brother Joshua Pritchard Hughes was bishop of Llandaff. The Mckenny connection was through his maternal grandfather, Sir Thomas McKenny, first baronet and Lord Mayor of Dublin.
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John Strong Newberry
1822 - 1892 (70 years)
John Strong Newberry was an American physician, geologist and paleontologist. He participated as a naturalist and surgeon on three expeditions to explore and survey the western United States. During the Civil War he served in the US Sanitary Commission and was appointed secretary of the western department of the commission. After the war he became professor of geology and paleontology at Columbia University School of Mines and chief geologist of the Geological Survey of Ohio.
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Wolfgang Franz von Kobell
1803 - 1882 (79 years)
Wolfgang Xavier Franz Ritter von Kobell was a German mineralogist and writer of short stories and poems in Bavarian dialect. Biography Kobell was born in Munich, Bavaria , son of the painter Wilhelm Kobell. After studying mineralogy in Landshut, he became professor of mineralogy in 1826 at the University of Munich, and in 1856 was appointed first curator of the Bavarian State collection of minerals. His greatest contributions were new methods in crystallography. In 1855 he invented the stauroscope for the study of the optical properties of crystals. The mineral kobellite is named after him, ...
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Karl Maximilian von Bauernfeind
1818 - 1894 (76 years)
Karl Maximilian von Bauernfeind was a German geodesist and civil engineer. Education At the age of 18, Bauernfeind studied under Georg Ohm at the Polytechnic School in Nuremberg. Two years later, he studied mathematics and physics at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and passed the state examination in 1841.
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Alfred de Quervain
1879 - 1927 (48 years)
Alfred de Quervain was a Swiss Arctic explorer and geophysicist. Biography De Quervain was born in Uebeschi in the Swiss district of Thun. After completing his schooling in Bern, he studied geophysics and meteorology at the University of Bern from 1898. In early 1901, he investigated the winter temperatures of continental Europe by deploying sounding balloons in Russia. He earned a doctoral degree in 1902.
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Francis John Turner
1904 - 1985 (81 years)
Francis John Turner was a New Zealand geologist. He received his BSc and MSc from the Auckland University College. He worked with the New Zealand Geological Survey and in 1926 he became a geology lecturer in the University of Otago.
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Heinrich Girard
1814 - 1878 (64 years)
Heinrich Girard was a German mineralogist and geologist born in Berlin. He studied natural sciences in Berlin, receiving his habilitation in 1845. Afterwards he became an associate professor of mineralogy and geology at the University of Marburg, and in 1854 a full professor at the University of Halle. In 1863/64 he was rector at the university.
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Georg August Goldfuss
1782 - 1848 (66 years)
Georg August Goldfuß was a German palaeontologist, zoologist and botanist. Goldfuß was born at Thurnau near Bayreuth. He was educated at Erlangen, where he graduated PhD in 1804 and became professor of zoology in 1818. He was subsequently appointed professor of zoology and mineralogy at the University of Bonn. Aided by Count Georg zu Münster, he issued the important , a work which was intended to illustrate the invertebrate fossils of Germany, but it was left incomplete after the sponges, corals, crinoids, echinoderms and part of the mollusca had been figured. A collection of Goldfuß' botani...
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Nikolai Kudryavtsev
1893 - 1971 (78 years)
Nikolai Alexandrovich Kudryavtsev was a Soviet Russian petroleum geologist. He is the founding father of modern abiogenic theory for origin of petroleum, which states that some petroleum is formed from non-biological sources of hydrocarbons located deep in the Earth's crust and mantle.
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Andrew John Herbertson
1865 - 1915 (50 years)
Andrew John Herbertson FRSE FRGS FRMS was a Scottish geographer. Life He was born in Galashiels, Selkirkshire to parents Andrew Hunter Herbertson and Janet Matthewson. He went to school locally at Galashiels Academy and in Edinburgh at Edinburgh Institution. From 1886 to 1889 he studied in the University of Edinburgh, but he never gained a degree. He then gained a place at Oxford University where he graduated MA.
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Ermine Cowles Case
1871 - 1953 (82 years)
Ermine Cowles Case , invariably known as E.C. Case, was a prominent American paleontologist in the second generation that succeeded Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope. A graduate of the University of Kansas, with a PhD from the University of Chicago , Case became a paleontologist of international stature while working at the University of Michigan. He was a Member of the American Philosophical Society .
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Dicuil
800 - 900 (100 years)
Dicuilus was a monk and geographer, born during the second half of the 8th century. Noble and Evans identify him as a Gael and suggest that he had probably spent time in the Hebrides. Background The exact dates of Dicuil's birth and death are unknown. Of his life nothing is known except that he probably belonged to one of the numerous Irish monasteries of the Frankish Kingdom, and became acquainted by personal observation with islands near England and Scotland. From 814 and 816 Dicuil taught in one of the schools of Louis the Pious, where he wrote an astronomical work, and in 825 a geographic...
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Gregor von Helmersen
1803 - 1885 (82 years)
Gregor von Helmersen or Grigory Petrovich Helmersen was a Baltic German geologist. Biography Helmersen was born in Duckershof, Livonia and went to boarding school in St. Petersburg. He graduated from the University of Dorpat in 1825 and joined the finance ministry. He accompanied Alexander von Humboldt into the Orenburg region and was recommended, along with E.K. Hoffman, by the minister E.F. Kankrin to be sent for higher education. The two travelled and listened to lectures in the universities of Berlin, Heidelberg, and Bonn. In 1835 he was put in the Corps of Mining Engineers and in 1838 ...
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Jules Marcou
1824 - 1898 (74 years)
Jules Marcou was a French-Swiss-American geologist. Biography He was born at Salins, in the département of Jura, in France. He was educated at Besançon and at the Collège Saint Louis, Paris. After completing his studies, he made several excursions through Switzerland to recover his health. These travels led him to devote himself to natural science. During these travels, he met Jules Thurmann , who introduced him to Louis Agassiz.
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Artur Gavazzi
1861 - 1944 (83 years)
Artur Gavazzi was a geographer and cartographer. Gavazzi was born in Split and died in Zagreb . Gavazzi was the first professor of geography at the University of Ljubljana, where Anton Melik succeeded him. In 1928, Gavazzi went to the University of Zagreb.
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Charles Lapworth
1842 - 1920 (78 years)
Charles Lapworth FRS FGS was a headteacher and an English geologist who pioneered faunal analysis using index fossils and identified the Ordovician period. Biography Charles Lapworth was born at Faringdon in Berkshire the son of James Lapworth. He trained as a teacher at the Culham Diocesan Training College near Abingdon, Oxfordshire. He moved to the Scottish border region, where he investigated the previously little-known fossil fauna of the area. He was headmaster of the school in Galashiels from 1864 to 1875. In 1869 he married Janet, daughter of Galashiels schoolmaster Walter Sanderson.
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Eduard Brückner
1862 - 1927 (65 years)
Eduard Brückner was a geographer, glaciologist and climatologist. Biography He was born in Jena, the son of the Baltic-German historian Alexander Brückner and Lucie Schiele. After an education at the Karlsruhe gymnasium, beginning in 1881 he studied meteorology and physics at the University of Dorpat, graduating in 1885. He joined the Deutsche Seewarte in Hamburg, then, following studies at Dresden and Munich, he became a professor at the University of Bern in 1888. The same year he married Ernestine Steine. In 1899, he was rector at the university. He moved back to Germany in 1904, becoming a professor at the University of Halle.
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Marcel Aurousseau
1891 - 1983 (92 years)
Marcel Aurousseau MC C. de G. was an Australian geographer, geologist, war hero, historian and translator. Aurousseau, who was of French and Irish descent, attended Sydney Boys High School alongside three students who were also later prominent in various fields: Arthur Wheen , Raymond Kershaw and Arthur McLaughlin .
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William Johnson Sollas
1849 - 1936 (87 years)
Prof William Johnson Sollas PGS FRS FRSE LLD was a British geologist and anthropologist. After studying at the City of London School, the Royal College of Chemistry and the Royal School of Mines he matriculated to St. John's College, Cambridge, where he was awarded First Class Honours in geology. After some time spent as a University Extension lecturer he became lecturer in Geology and Zoology at University College, Bristol in 1879, where he stayed until he was offered the post of Professor of Geology at Trinity College Dublin. In 1897 he was offered the post of Professor of Geology at the Un...
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Levi Stockbridge
1820 - 1904 (84 years)
Levi Stockbridge was a farmer and scientist from Hadley, Massachusetts. He was instrumental in the early history of the Massachusetts Agricultural College now known as the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
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