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,
#3701
Ernest Shackleton
1874 - 1922 (48 years)
Ernest Henry Shackleton was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic. He was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
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Milutin Milanković
1879 - 1958 (79 years)
Milutin Milanković was a Serbian mathematician, astronomer, climatologist, geophysicist, civil engineer and popularizer of science. Milanković gave two fundamental contributions to global science. The first contribution is the "Canon of the Earth's Insolation", which characterizes the climates of all the planets of the Solar System. The second contribution is the explanation of Earth's long-term climate changes caused by changes in the position of the Earth in comparison to the Sun, now known as Milankovitch cycles. This partly explained the ice ages occurring in the geological past of the Ea...
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René Just Haüy
1743 - 1822 (79 years)
René Just Haüy FRS MWS FRSE was a French priest and mineralogist, commonly styled the Abbé Haüy after he was made an honorary canon of Notre Dame. Due to his innovative work on crystal structure and his four-volume Traité de Minéralogie , he is often referred to as the "Father of Modern Crystallography". During the French revolution he also helped to establish the metric system.
Go to Profile#3704
Walther Penck
1888 - 1923 (35 years)
Walther Penck was a geologist and geomorphologist known for his theories on landscape evolution. Penck is noted for criticizing key elements of the Davisian cycle of erosion, concluding that the process of uplift and denudation occur simultaneously, at gradual and continuous rates. Penck's idea of parallel slope retreat led to revisions of Davis's cycle of erosion.
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Julius von Hann
1839 - 1921 (82 years)
Julius Ferdinand von Hann was an Austrian meteorologist. He is seen as a father of modern meteorology. Biography He was educated at the gymnasium of Kremsmünster and then studied mathematics, chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna, then geology and paleontology under Eduard Suess and physical geography under Friedrich Simony. From 1865 to 1868, he was master at the Oberrealschule at Linz, and in 1865 was invited by Karl Jelinek to become the first editor of the Zeitschrift für Meteorologie. In 1877, he succeeded Jelinek as the director of the Meteorologische Zentralanstalt and was appointed professor of meteorology at the University of Vienna.
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Gerhard vom Rath
1830 - 1888 (58 years)
Gerhard vom Rath , was a German mineralogist, born at Duisburg in Prussia. Biography Rath was educated at Cologne, at Bonn University, and finally at Berlin, where he graduated Ph.D. in 1853. In 1856 he became assistant to Johann Jakob Nöggerath in the mineralogical museum at Bonn, and succeeded to the directorship in 1872. Meanwhile, in 1863 he was appointed extraordinary professor of geology, and in 1872 he became professor of geology and mineralogy in the university at Bonn.
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Paul Vidal de La Blache
1845 - 1918 (73 years)
Paul Vidal de La Blache was a French geographer. He is considered to be the founder of modern French geography and also the founder of the French School of Geopolitics. He conceived the idea of genre de vie, which is the belief that the lifestyle of a particular region reflects the economic, social, ideological and psychological identities imprinted on the landscape.
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Friedrich Mohs
1773 - 1839 (66 years)
Carl Friedrich Christian Mohs was a German chemist and mineralogist. He was the creator of the Mohs scale of mineral hardness. Mohs also introduced a classification of the crystal forms in crystal systems independently of Christian Samuel Weiss.
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Jovan Cvijić
1865 - 1927 (62 years)
Jovan Cvijić was a Serbian geographer and ethnologist, president of the Serbian Royal Academy of Sciences and rector of the University of Belgrade. Cvijić is considered the founder of geography in Serbia. He began his scientific career as a geographer and geologist, and continued his activity as a human geographer and sociologist.
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Arnold Henry Guyot
1807 - 1884 (77 years)
Arnold Henry Guyot was a Swiss-American geologist and geographer. Early life Guyot was born on September 28, 1807, at Boudevilliers, near Neuchâtel, Switzerland. He was educated at Chaux-de-Fonds, then at the college of Neuchâtel. In 1825, he went to Germany and resided in Karlsruhe where he met Louis Agassiz, the beginning of a lifelong friendship. From Karlsruhe he moved to Stuttgart, where he studied at the gymnasium. He returned to Neuchâtel in 1827. He determined to enter the ministry and started at the University of Berlin to attend lectures. While pursuing his studies, he also attended lectures on philosophy and natural science.
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Adam Sedgwick
1785 - 1873 (88 years)
Adam Sedgwick was a British geologist and Anglican priest, one of the founders of modern geology. He proposed the Cambrian and Devonian period of the geological timescale. Based on work which he did on Welsh rock strata, he proposed the Cambrian period in 1835, in a joint publication in which Roderick Murchison also proposed the Silurian period. Later in 1840, to resolve what later became known as the Great Devonian Controversy about rocks near the boundary between the Silurian and Carboniferous periods, he and Murchison proposed the Devonian period.
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Emil Wiechert
1861 - 1928 (67 years)
Emil Johann Wiechert was a German physicist and geophysicist who made many contributions to both fields, including presenting the first verifiable model of a layered structure of the Earth and being among the first to discover the electron. He went on to become the world's first Professor of Geophysics at the University of Göttingen.
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Douglas Mawson
1882 - 1958 (76 years)
Sir Douglas Mawson OBE FRS FAA was an Australian geologist, Antarctic explorer, and academic. Along with Roald Amundsen, Robert Falcon Scott, and Sir Ernest Shackleton, he was a key expedition leader during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
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M. King Hubbert
1903 - 1989 (86 years)
Marion King Hubbert was an American geologist and geophysicist. He worked at the Shell research lab in Houston, Texas. He made several important contributions to geology, geophysics, and petroleum geology, most notably the Hubbert curve and Hubbert peak theory , with important political ramifications. He was often referred to as "M. King Hubbert" or "King Hubbert".
Go to Profile#3715
Muhammad al-Idrisi
1111 - 1166 (55 years)
Abu Abdullah Muhammad al-Idrisi al-Qurtubi al-Hasani as-Sabti, or simply al-Idrisi , was a Muslim geographer and cartographer who served in the court of King Roger II at Palermo, Sicily. Muhammed al-Idrisi was born in Ceuta, then belonging to the Almoravid dynasty. He created the , one of the most advanced medieval world maps.
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James Dwight Dana
1813 - 1895 (82 years)
James Dwight Dana FRS FRSE was an American geologist, mineralogist, volcanologist, and zoologist. He made pioneering studies of mountain-building, volcanic activity, and the origin and structure of continents and oceans around the world.
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Enrico Clerici
1862 - 1938 (76 years)
Enrico Clerici was an Italian mineralogist and geologist. From 1903 on he worked at the University of Rome. He published in 1907 the composition of a solution with a density of 4.25 g/cm3 at 20 °C, to determine the density of minerals. The Clerici solution is a mixture of thallium formate and thallium malonate in water.
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Ellen Churchill Semple
1863 - 1932 (69 years)
Ellen Churchill Semple was an American geographer and the first female president of the Association of American Geographers. She contributed significantly to the early development of the discipline of geography in the United States, particularly studies of human geography. She is most closely associated with work in anthropogeography and environmentalism, and the debate about "environmental determinism".
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Wilhelm von Bezold
1837 - 1907 (70 years)
Johann Friedrich Wilhelm von Bezold was a German physicist and meteorologist born in Munich, Kingdom of Bavaria. He is best known for discovering the Bezold effect and the Bezold–Brücke shift. Bezold studied mathematics and physics at the University of Munich and the University of Göttingen. He taught meteorology in Munich from 1861, becoming a professor in 1866. In 1868 he began teaching at the Technical University of Munich. In 1875, he was named a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.
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Emmanuel de Martonne
1873 - 1955 (82 years)
Emmanuel de Martonne was a French geographer. He participated in the Paris Peace Conference. Early life and education Martonne was born on 1 April 1873 in Chabris, Indre, France, and was the son-in-law of Paul Vidal de la Blache. In 1892, he entered the École Normale Supérieure. He graduated three years later with a degree in history and geography. After that, he worked with Ferdinand von Richthofen and Albrecht Penck.
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Henryk Arctowski
1871 - 1958 (87 years)
Henryk Arctowski , born Henryk Artzt, was a Polish scientist and explorer. Living in exile for a large part of his life, Arctowski was educated in Belgium and France. He was one of the first humans to winter in Antarctica, as part of the Belgian Antarctic Expedition, and became an internationally renowned meteorologist, also working for over 10 years in the United States. Arctowski was instrumental in restoring Polish independence after the First World War, after which he returned to Poland, where he continued a prolific academic career, having even declined an offer to become Minister of Education.
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Nathaniel Shaler
1841 - 1906 (65 years)
Nathaniel Southgate Shaler was an American paleontologist and geologist who wrote extensively on the theological and scientific implications of the theory of evolution, whose work is now considered scientific racism.
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Nicolas Steno
1638 - 1686 (48 years)
Niels Steensen was a Danish scientist, a pioneer in both anatomy and geology who became a Catholic bishop in his later years. Steensen was trained in the classical texts on science; however, by 1659 he seriously questioned accepted knowledge of the natural world. Importantly he questioned explanations for tear production, the idea that fossils grew in the ground and explanations of rock formation. His investigations and his subsequent conclusions on fossils and rock formation have led scholars to consider him one of the founders of modern stratigraphy and modern geology. The importance of Ste...
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Stephanus of Byzantium
501 - 600 (99 years)
Stephanus or Stephen of Byzantium was a Byzantine grammarian and the author of an important geographical dictionary entitled Ethnica . Only meagre fragments of the dictionary survive, but the epitome is extant, compiled by one Hermolaus, not otherwise identified.
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Fred K. Schaefer
1904 - 1953 (49 years)
Fred Kurt Schaefer was a geographer. He is considered one of the pioneers of quantitative revolution. Life Fred K. Schaefer was born in Berlin, Germany in the family of metal worker. He was involved in politics as a member of Social Democratic party and after the rise of fascism he fled from Nazi Germany. He attended the University of Berlin pursuing both undergraduate and postgraduate studies from 1928 through 1932. As an undergraduate he studied economics, economic geography, and political geography. As a graduate student he studied mathematics and population statistics.
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Francis Galton
1822 - 1911 (89 years)
Sir Francis Galton was a British polymath and the originator of the eugenics movement during the Victorian era. Galton produced over 340 papers and books. He also developed the statistical concept of correlation and widely promoted regression toward the mean. He was the first to apply statistical methods to the study of human differences and inheritance of intelligence, and introduced the use of questionnaires and surveyss for collecting data on human communities, which he needed for genealogical and biographical works and for his anthropometric studies. He coined the phrase "nature versus nurture".
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Otto Schlüter
1872 - 1959 (87 years)
Otto Schlüter was a German geographer. Schlüter was a professor of geography at the University of Halle from 1911 until his death. He is credited with creation of the term cultural landscape, which is one of the turning points of geographical history.
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Carl Troll
1899 - 1975 (76 years)
Carl Troll , was a German geographer, brother of botanist Wilhelm Troll. From 1919 until 1922 Troll studied biology, chemistry, geology, geography and physics at the Universität in München. In 1921 he obtained his doctorate in botany and in 1925 his habilitation in geography. Between 1922 and 1927 he worked as an assistant at the Geography Institute in Munich. Troll was engaged in research in the ecology and geography of mountainous lands: between 1926 and 1929 went on a research journey throughout South American Andean countries where he visited northern Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Panama.
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Friedrich Simony
1813 - 1896 (83 years)
Friedrich Simony was an Austrian geographer and Alpine researcher. Initially trained as a pharmacist, from 1836 he studied natural sciences at the University of Vienna by way of influence from botanist Joseph Franz von Jacquin. In 1848 he became a curator at the natural history museum in Klagenfurt, and during the following year, served as chief geologist at the Imperial Geological Institute in Vienna. In 1851, at the University of Vienna, he attained the first professorship for geography in Austria. In this role, he conducted research in the fields of glaciology, climatology, speleology, eco...
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Evgraf Fedorov
1853 - 1919 (66 years)
Evgraf Stepanovich Fedorov was a Russian mathematician, crystallographer and mineralogist. Fedorov was born in the Russian city of Orenburg. His father was a topographical engineer. The family later moved to Saint Petersburg. From the age of fifteen, he was deeply interested in the theory of polytopes, which later became his main research interest. He was a distinguished graduate of the Gorny Institute, which he joined at the age of 26. He was elected the first Director of the Institute in 1905.
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Lewis Fry Richardson
1881 - 1953 (72 years)
Lewis Fry Richardson, FRS was an English mathematician, physicist, meteorologist, psychologist, and pacifist who pioneered modern mathematical techniques of weather forecasting, and the application of similar techniques to studying the causes of wars and how to prevent them. He is also noted for his pioneering work concerning fractals and a method for solving a system of linear equations known as modified Richardson iteration.
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Georg von Neumayer
1826 - 1909 (83 years)
Georg Balthazar von Neumayer , was a German polar explorer and scientist who was a proponent of the idea of international cooperation for meteorology and scientific observation. Biography Early years Born in Kirchheimbolanden, Palatinate, Neumayer finished his education in geophysics and hydrography in Munich, Bavaria in 1849; and becoming much interested in polar exploration, continued his studies in terrestrial magnetism, oceanography, navigation, and nautical astronomy. To obtain practical experience he made a voyage to South America, and after his return gave a series of lectures at Hamburg on Maury's theories of the ocean, and recent improvements in navigation.
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Ferdinand von Richthofen
1833 - 1905 (72 years)
Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen , better known in English as was a German traveller, geographer, and scientist. He is noted for coining the terms "Seidenstraße" and "Seidenstraßen" = "Silk Road" or "Silk Route" in 1877. He also standardized the practices of chorography and chorology. He was an uncle of the World War I flying ace Manfred von Richthofen, best known as the "Red Baron".
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Émile Argand
1879 - 1940 (61 years)
Émile Argand was a Swiss geologist. He was born in Eaux-Vives near Geneva. He attended vocational school in Geneva then worked as a draftsman. He studied anatomy in Paris, but gave up medicine to pursue his interest in geology.
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Ellsworth Huntington
1876 - 1947 (71 years)
Ellsworth Huntington was a professor of geography at Yale University during the early 20th century, known for his studies on environmental determinism/climatic determinism, economic growth, and economic geography. He served as president of the Ecological Society of America in 1917, the Association of American Geographers in 1923 and president of the board of directors of the American Eugenics Society from 1934 to 1938.
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Roderick Murchison
1792 - 1871 (79 years)
Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, 1st Baronet, was a Scottish geologist who served as director-general of the British Geological Survey from 1855 until his death in 1871. He is noted for investigating and describing the Silurian, Devonian and Permian systems.
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Charles Schuchert
1858 - 1942 (84 years)
Charles Schuchert was an American invertebrate paleontologist who was a leader in the development of paleogeography, the study of the distribution of lands and seas in the geological past. Biography He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on July 3, 1858, to Philip and Agatha Schuchert. He received a common school education up to the age of thirteen, and then he spent a number of years working in his father's furniture business. Schuchert possessed an aptitude for scientific investigation, and in 1878 he began to attend meetings of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History. Here he developed a friendship with fellow Cincinnati native Edward Oscar Ulrich.
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Nikolay Baransky
1881 - 1963 (82 years)
Nikolay Nikolayevich Baransky was a Soviet economic geographer, founder of Soviet Rayon school of economic geography, and corresponding member of Soviet Academy of Sciences ; he was a Hero of Socialist Labour and winner of the Stalin Prize .
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Yaqut al-Hamawi
1178 - 1229 (51 years)
Yāqūt Shihāb al-Dīn ibn-ʿAbdullāh al-Rūmī al-Ḥamawī was a Muslim scholar of Byzantine Greek ancestry active during the late Abbasid period . He is known for his , an influential work on geography containing valuable information pertaining to biography, history and literature as well as geography.
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William Smith
1769 - 1839 (70 years)
William 'Strata' Smith was an English geologist, credited with creating the first detailed, nationwide geological map of any country. At the time his map was first published he was overlooked by the scientific community; his relatively humble education and family connections prevented him from mixing easily in learned society. Financially ruined, Smith spent time in debtors' prison. It was only late in his life that Smith received recognition for his accomplishments, and became known as the "Father of English Geology".
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Pomponius Mela
15 - 100 (85 years)
Pomponius Mela, who wrote around AD 43, was the earliest known Roman geographer. He was born in Tingentera and died AD 45. His short work remained in use nearly to the year 1500. It occupies less than one hundred pages of ordinary print, and is described by the Encyclopædia Britannica as "dry in style and deficient in method, but of pure Latinity, and occasionally relieved by pleasing word-pictures." Except for the geographical parts of Pliny's Historia naturalis , the De situ orbis is the only formal treatise on the subject in Classical Latin.
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William Buckland
1784 - 1856 (72 years)
William Buckland DD, FRS was an English theologian who became Dean of Westminster. He was also a geologist and palaeontologist. Buckland wrote the first full account of a fossil dinosaur, which he named Megalosaurus. His work proved that Kirkdale Cave in North Yorkshire had been a prehistoric hyena den, for which he was awarded the Copley Medal. It was praised as an example of how scientific analysis could reconstruct events in the distant past. He pioneered the use of fossilised faeces in reconstructing ecosystems, coining the term coprolites.
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Konstantin Glinka
1867 - 1927 (60 years)
Konstantin Dmitrievich Glinka was a Russian soil scientist. He was Director of the Agricultural College of Leningrad and Experimental Station, and the first director of the Dokuchaev Soil Science Institute. He authored over 150 works on soil, geography, mineralogy, and geology. He is known for having published the first world soil map in 1906.
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Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler
1770 - 1843 (73 years)
Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler was a Swiss-American surveyor who is considered the forefather of both the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Institute of Standards and Technology for his achievements as the first Superintendent of the U.S. Survey of the Coast and the first U.S. Superintendent of Weights and Measures.
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Matthew Flinders
1774 - 1814 (40 years)
Captain Matthew Flinders was a British navigator and cartographer who led the first inshore circumnavigation of mainland Australia, then called New Holland. He is also credited as being the first person to utilise the name Australia to describe the entirety of that continent including Van Diemen's Land , a title he regarded as being "more agreeable to the ear" than previous names such as Terra Australis.
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Otto Nordenskjöld
1869 - 1928 (59 years)
Nils Otto Gustaf Nordenskjöld was a Fenno-Swedish geologist, geographer, and polar explorer. Early life Nordenskjöld was born in Hässleby in Småland in eastern Sweden, in a Fenno-Swedish family that included his maternal uncle, the polar explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld, and cousin Gustaf Nordenskiöld. His father and mother were cousins, but his father's family name was "Nordenskjöld", while his mother's family name was spelled "Nordenskiöld".
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Tadeusz Banachiewicz
1882 - 1954 (72 years)
Tadeusz Julian Banachiewicz was a Polish astronomer, mathematician and geodesist. Scientific career Banachiewicz was educated at University of Warsaw and his thesis was on "reduction constants of the Repsold heliometer". In 1905, after the closure of the University by the Russians, he moved to Göttingen and in 1906 to the Pulkovo Observatory. He also worked at the Engelhardt Observatory at Kazan University from 1910 to 1915.
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Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld
1832 - 1901 (69 years)
Nils Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld was a Finland-Swedish aristocrat, geologist, mineralogist and Arctic explorer. He was a member of the Fenno-Swedish Nordenskiöld family of scientists and held the title of a friherre . His ethnicity was Finnish-Swedish.
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Gerardus Mercator
1512 - 1594 (82 years)
Gerardus Mercator was a Flemish geographer, cosmographer and cartographer. He is most renowned for creating the 1569 world map based on a new projection which represented sailing courses of constant bearing as straight lines—an innovation that is still employed in nautical charts.
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Henry Fairfield Osborn
1857 - 1935 (78 years)
Henry Fairfield Osborn, Sr. was an American paleontologist, geologist and eugenics advocate. He was the president of the American Museum of Natural History for 25 years and a cofounder of the American Eugenics Society.
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