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,
#3651
James Hector
1834 - 1907 (73 years)
Sir James Hector was a Scottish-New Zealand geologist, naturalist, and surgeon who accompanied the Palliser Expedition as a surgeon and geologist. He went on to have a lengthy career as a government employed man of science in New Zealand, and during this period he dominated the colony's scientific institutions in a way that no single man has since.
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Sjur Aasmundsen Sexe
1808 - 1888 (80 years)
Sjur Aasmundsen Sexe was a Norwegian mineralogist and educator. Biography Sexe was from Ullensvang parish in Hordaland, Norway. He was the son of Aamund Sjursen Sexe and Brita Torsteinsdatter Mæland. He grew up on a farm with pietist parents who were members of the Haugean movement. He attended Bergen Cathedral School and took the examen artium in 1834. Sexe studied rock science at the University of Christiania and graduated with a cand.miner. degree in 1840. During the years 1843–1844 he received a state scholarship to complete study trips at mines in Sweden and Germany and at the Un...
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Samuel Haughton
1821 - 1897 (76 years)
Samuel Haughton was an Irish clergyman, medical doctor, and scientific writer. Biography The scientist Samuel Haughton was born in Carlow, the son of another Samuel Haughton and grandson of the three-times-married Samuel Pearson Haughton , a Quaker.
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Jean Brunhes
1869 - 1930 (61 years)
Jean Brunhes was a French geographer. His most famous book is La géographie humaine . He was the director of The Archives of the Planet, an international photographic project sponsored by Albert Kahn.
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Josiah Whitney
1819 - 1896 (77 years)
Josiah Dwight Whitney was an American geologist, professor of geology at Harvard University , and chief of the California Geological Survey . Through his travels and studies in the principal mining regions of the United States, Whitney became the foremost authority of his day on the economic geology of the U.S. Mount Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous 48 United States, and the Whitney Glacier, the first confirmed glacier in the United States, on Mount Shasta, were both named after him by members of the Survey.
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Otto Volger
1822 - 1897 (75 years)
Georg Heinrich Otto Volger was a German geologist from Lüneburg. He was the founder and first chairman of the Freies Deutsches Hochstift, which he led from 1859 to 1882. Life Volger was born to , a teacher and school director in Lüneburg, and his wife Rosalie Franziska, on 30 January 1822. After attending the Johanneum gymnasium, Volger began studying law at the University of Göttingen in 1842, but changed in 1843 to study natural sciences. Volger obtained his PhD in geology from Gottingen in 1845. Volger was a member of the Corps Hannovera Göttingen during his studies.
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Abbott Lawrence Rotch
1861 - 1912 (51 years)
Abbott Lawrence Rotch was an American meteorologist and founder of the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory, the longest continually operating observation site in the United States and an important site for world climatology.
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Rollin D. Salisbury
1858 - 1922 (64 years)
Rollin Daniel Salisbury was an American geologist and educator. Biography Salisbury was born at Spring Prairie, Wisconsin, in 1858. He studied at Whitewater State Normal School in Whitewater, Wisconsin, graduating in 1877 after completing the four-year course in just two-and-one-half years. He taught in a village school in Port Washington, Wisconsin, for one year before entering Beloit College as a sophomore in the fall of 1878. At Beloit, he studied geology with T.C. Chamberlin as his professor. After graduating from Beloit in 1881, he spent one year working for the U.S. Geological Survey as Chamberlin's field assistant, during which time he lived in the Chamberlin household.
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John Edward Marr
1857 - 1933 (76 years)
John Edward Marr FGS FRS was a British geologist. After studying at Lancaster Royal Grammar School, he matriculated to St John's College, Cambridge, graduating with First Class Honours in 1878. Following undergraduate work in the Lake District, he travelled to Bohemia to investigate the fossil collection of Joachim Barrande, where his work won him the Sedgwick Prize in 1882. In 1886, Marr became lecturer at the University of Cambridge Department of Geology, a position he held for 32 years until he succeeded Thomas McKenny Hughes as Woodwardian Professor of Geology in 1917.
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George Jarvis Brush
1831 - 1912 (81 years)
George Jarvis Brush was an American mineralogist and academic administrator who spent most of his career at Yale University in the Sheffield Scientific School. Career Brush was born in Brooklyn, New York on December 15, 1831. He studied at Cream Hill Agricultural School and commenced his studies at Yale in 1848 with courses from Benjamin Silliman, Jr. and John Pitkin Norton on practical chemistry and agriculture. He also studied chemistry, metallurgy and mineralogy. He left in 1850 to work with Benjamin Silliman, Jr. but received his Ph.D. from Yale in 1852 by special examination. From 1852 to 1855, Brush worked and studied at the University of Virginia and in Munich and Freiberg.
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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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