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.
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List of the most influential people in Earth Sciences,
#3701
Samuel Calvin
1840 - 1911 (71 years)
Samuel Calvin was Iowa's first systematic geologist, helping to make the first bedrock and landform maps of Iowa, as well as leading geological research throughout the state. He was born in Scotland, attended Lenox College in Hopkinton, Iowa, where he later taught. One of his collaborators was Thomas Huston Macbride, the notable Iowa naturalist. Calvin became a University of Iowa professor in 1873 and the Iowa State Geologist in 1892, and led the Iowa Geological Survey from 1892 until his death. Calvin documented the Devonian and Aftonian beds of Iowa, and was an expert on Pleistocene fauna. He was a founder of the American Geologist journal.
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Chester Baker Slawson
1898 - 1964 (66 years)
Chester Baker Slawson was a professor of mineralogy at the University of Michigan. After his death, the Slawson Memorial fund was created at the University of Michigan and in 2004 the first Slawson Fellowship was awarded to a student of the Department of Geological Sciences.
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Owen F. T. Roberts
1896 - 1968 (72 years)
Captain Owen Fiennes Temple Roberts FRSE MC was a British astronomer and meteorologist. Life Owen Roberts was born in Mauritius in 1896, and was the son of Alfred Temple Roberts and his wife Susan Charlotte Catherine Fiennes-Clinton .
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Einar Høiland
1907 - 1974 (67 years)
Einar Høiland was a Norwegian meteorologist. Høiland was born in Farsund. He received his PhD in 1939. In 1947, he was a lecturer in aerodynamics and hydrodynamics at the University of Oslo, and from 1954, he was a professor at the university. In 1951 he established the Institute for Weather and Climate Research of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, that he led until 1960. There he built a scientific environment that fostered meteorological research in Norway. Høiland's primary interest was on the connection between hydrodynamics and thermodynamics, the stability of fluids, and the...
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James Perrin Smith
1864 - 1931 (67 years)
James Perrin Smith was an American geologist and paleontologist. Smith was of English descent. T. M. Forster, one of his ancestors, was a surgeon in the Royal Navy and moved to Virginia in 1745. His paternal grandfather moved the family from Virginia to South Carolina, and Smith was born on November 27, 1864, near Cokesburg, to James Francis Smith, a planter and traveling preacher.
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David White
1862 - 1935 (73 years)
Charles David White , who normally went by his middle name, was an American geologist, born in Palmyra, New York. He graduated from Cornell University in 1886, and in 1889 became a member of the United States Geological Survey. Eventually, he rose to be chief geologist.
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Charles Eugène Bertrand
1851 - 1917 (66 years)
Charles Eugène Bertrand was a French botanist, paleobotanist and geologist. He is remembered for his research involving the formation of coal. He studied sciences in Paris, where he had as influences botanist Joseph Decaisne and plant physiologist Pierre Paul Deherain. In 1874 he obtained his doctorate in sciences, and was later appointed professor of botany at the University of Lille . From 1881 to 1887, he was head of the Archives botaniques du nord de la France.
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James Gates Percival
1795 - 1856 (61 years)
James Gates Percival was an American poet, surgeon, and geologist, born in Berlin, Connecticut, and died in Hazel Green, Wisconsin. Biography James Gates Percival was a precocious child and a versatile, yet morbid and impractical man. He had a remarkable ability to write verse on various subjects and in almost every known meter. His sentimentalism and dazzling diction appealed to a wide audience, earning him a reputation as the foremost poet in the United States during the 1820s. Some of his most famous poems include "Prometheus," "The Coral Grove," and "The Graves of the Patriots." He was a...
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Wilbur Clinton Knight
1858 - 1903 (45 years)
Wilbur Clinton Knight was a geologist and founding professor of geology at the University of Wyoming. He also served as state geologist for Wyoming and produced some of the earliest geological maps of the region. His son Samuel Howell Knight also became a geologist of repute. The genus Knightia is named in his honor.
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Alexander Pol
1832 - 1890 (58 years)
Alexander Nikolayevich Pol was a Ukrainian archaeologist, geologist, ethnographer and businessman of Baltic German descent. He is most well-known for discovering Kryvbas, a major iron ore region of Eastern Europe.
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Alexis A. Julien
1840 - 1919 (79 years)
Alexis Anastay Julien was an American geologist who taught at Columbia University's School of Mines for many years. Biography Julien was born in New York City on February 13, 1840. He graduated from Union College in 1859, but continued as a student in the chemical laboratory a year longer. In 1860 he went to the guano island of Sombrero as resident chemist, and continued there until 1864, also making studies of its geology and natural history, especially of its birds and land shells. He sent his collections to the Smithsonian Institution, for which he also made meteorological observations, this island being the most southerly under its direction.
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George Nelson Allen
1812 - 1877 (65 years)
George Nelson Allen was an American composer and geologist who was associated with Oberlin College, where he taught for 34 years. He is primarily known today for writing the melody to the hymn Precious Lord, Take My Hand. He also served on the first geological survey of Yellowstone National Park, under Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden.
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Esther Aberdeen Holm
1904 - 1984 (80 years)
Esther Aberdeen Holm was an American academic who began as a paleontologist turning to applied geology. Early life Born in Chicago, Illinois she made many trips to Lake Michigan where her passion for geology began. Through encouragement from her mother, she was able to support herself through her years attending Northwestern University by working as a stenographer for an advertising company. She married on August 15, 1953, to Donald August Holm who she met while working in Algiers. At the time, she traveled to Saudi Arabia where she grew fond of Arabian horses and brought several of them to A...
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John Evans
1770 - 1799 (29 years)
John Thomas Evans was a Welsh explorer who produced an early map of the Missouri River. Evans was born in Waunfawr, near Caernarfon. In the early 1790s there was an upsurge of interest in Wales in the story of Madog having discovered America, and there were persistent rumours in North America of the existence of a tribe of Welsh Indians, identified with the Mandan. Iolo Morganwg had originally intended to explore the Missouri to discover these Welsh Indians, and Evans was to have gone with him. However, Iolo withdrew from the expedition and Evans embarked for the United States alone, arriving in Baltimore in October 1792.
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Henry Paul Hansen
1907 - 1989 (82 years)
Henry Paul Hansen was an American palynologist known largely for his pioneering work on the vegetation history of the North American Pacific Northwest and for his time as the dean of Graduate Studies at Oregon State University from 1949 to 1972.
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Franz Reinzer
1661 - 1708 (47 years)
Franz Reinzer was an Austrian Jesuit professor of rhetoric, philosophy, and theology at Linz, Graz, Vienna, and Krems. His Meteorologia philosophico-politica, in duodecim dissertationes per quaestiones meteorologicas & conclusiones politicas divisa, appositisque was first published in 1697. A third edition was published posthumously in 1709.
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Harry von Eckermann
1886 - 1969 (83 years)
Harry von Eckermann was a Swedish industrialist, mineralogist and geologist. His studies were centered around anorogenic alkaline igneous rocks occurring in the Baltic Shield. Following this line he studied the Alnö Complex, Norra Kärr Alkaline Complex and various Rapakivi granites.
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John Evans
1823 - 1908 (85 years)
Sir John Evans was an English archaeologist and geologist. Biography John Evans, son of the Rev. A. B. Evans, was born at Britwell Court, Buckinghamshire. At the age of seventeen he started to work for the paper-manufacturing business of John Dickinson & Co. Ltd at Nash Mills . The company had been founded by his uncle and later father-in-law John Dickinson , who was also its senior partner. In 1850 Evans was admitted as a partner in the company and did not retire from active management until 1885.
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Grigory Gamburtsev
1903 - 1955 (52 years)
Grigory Aleksandrovich Gamburtsev was a Soviet seismologist and academician from Saint Petersburg, Russia who worked in the area of seismometry and earthquake prediction. Life Gamburtsev was born on March 23, 1903, in Saint Petersburg, Russia. He graduated from the Moscow State University in 1926. From 1938 onward, he worked at the Geophysical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences, serving as its director from 1949 to 1955. In 1946, Gamburtsev became a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences and in 1953 he became full member of the Academy. Gamburtsev developed a new design of seismographs and created their theory.
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Charles Lory
1823 - 1889 (66 years)
Charles Lory was a French geologist. He was born at Nantes. He graduated D. Sc. in 1847. In 1852 he was appointed to the chair of geology at the University of Grenoble, and in 1881 to that of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.
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Anatol Heintz
1898 - 1975 (77 years)
Anatol Heintz was a Russo-Norwegian palaeontologist. He was born in Petrograd to the geophysicist Yevgeniy Alfredovich Heintz and Olga Fyodorovna Hoffmann . He had two older siblings. In 1919 the family fled to Norway. He studied at the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry from 1919 to 1920 and at the Royal Frederick University from 1920, where he graduated in palaeontology in 1928. He was then hired as a curator at the Paleontological Museum of Tøyen. He took the dr.philos. degree in 1932 on the thesis The Structure of Dinichthys. A Contribution to our Knowledge of the Arthrodira.
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Ulysses S. Grant IV
1893 - 1977 (84 years)
Ulysses Simpson Grant IV was an American geologist and paleontologist known for his work on the fossil mollusks of the California Pacific Coast. He was the youngest son of Ulysses S. Grant Jr., and a grandson of President Ulysses S. Grant and Senator Jerome B. Chaffee. He was born at his father's farm, Merryweather Farm, in Salem Center, Westchester County, New York. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to San Diego, California.
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Margaret Jarman Hagood
1907 - 1963 (56 years)
Margaret Loyd Jarman "Marney" Hagood was an American sociologist and demographer who "helped steer sociology away from the armchair and toward the calculator". She wrote the books Mothers of the South and Statistics for Sociologists , and later became president of the Population Association of America and of the Rural Sociological Society.
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Charles Abiathar White
1836 - 1910 (74 years)
Charles Abiathar White was an American geologist, paleontologist, and writer whose publications total 238 titles. Biography Charles Abiathar White was born at North Dighton, Massachusetts. He was the State geologist of Iowa in 1866–1870, and professor of natural history in the State University of Iowa in 1867–1873. He held a similar position at Bowdoin College in 1873–1875, and was geologist and paleontologist of the United States Geological Survey between 1874 and 1892, and after 1895 was an associate in paleontology at the United States National Museum.
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Igino Cocchi
1827 - 1913 (86 years)
Igino Cocchi was an Italian geologist and paleontologist who worked at the Museum of Natural History, Florence. Cicchi was born in Terrarossa, Val di Magra where and studied Latin and natural sciences, graduating from the University of Pisa. training under Giuseppe Meneghini, after which he travelled to England during which time he made contact with Charles Darwin. He founded the Alpine Club of Florence in 1867 and the first Italian geology journal Bollettino del Reale Comitato Geologico d’Italia.
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John Fries Frazer
1812 - 1872 (60 years)
John Fries Frazer was a University of Pennsylvania graduate and first assistant geologist to the Geological Survey of Pennsylvania. He became a professor of Natural philosophy and Chemistry and in later years he became Vice Provost of the University of Pennsylvania.
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Henry Fairfield Osborn Jr.
1887 - 1969 (82 years)
Henry Fairfield Osborn Jr. , was an American conservationist. He was longtime president of the New York Zoological Society . Biography Henry Fairfield Osborn Jr. was born in Princeton, New Jersey in 1887. Born into the wealthy and influential Osborn family, he was the son of Henry Fairfield Osborn, a prominent paleontologist, eugenicist and "distinguished Aryan enthusiast". After obtaining his Bachelor of Arts from Princeton University, he went on to study biology at Cambridge University but then pursued a career in international business. Towards the end of the First World War, he served bri...
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Thomas Allen
1803 - 1833 (30 years)
Thomas Allen was an English topographer. Allen was the son of a map engraver. He died of cholera on 7 July 1833. Works In 1827 Allen published a quarto volume, The History and Antiquities of the Parish of Lambeth and the Archiepiscopal Palace, with illustrations, mainly drawn and etched by himself. He later published:in parts, the History and Antiquities of London, Westminster, and Southwark , illustrated by engravings on copper by himself and woodcuts;A New and Complete History of the County of York , with engravings after Nathaniel Whittock;History of the Counties of Surrey and Sussex , wi...
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Theodore B. Comstock
1849 - 1915 (66 years)
Theodore Bryant Comstock was an American geologist, educator, university administrator, and mining consultant. He served as the first president of the University of Arizona. Early life Theodore B. Comstock was born in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio on July 27, 1849. He earned a bachelor's degree at Pennsylvania State Agricultural College, and postgraduate degrees from Cornell University. He married Blanche Huggins in 1880.
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Donald Ferlys Wilson Baden-Powell
1897 - 1973 (76 years)
Donald Ferlys Wilson Baden-Powell , son of Sir George Smyth Baden-Powell, was a geologist who taught geology and palaeolithic archaeology at the University of Oxford. When Donald's father, Sir George Baden-Powell, died in 1898, his uncle, R.S.S. Baden-Powell, became something of a father figure. Donald attended the first experimental scout camp at Brownsea Island in August 1907 as well as the scout camp at Humshaugh in 1908.
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Henry James Anderson
1799 - 1875 (76 years)
Henry James Anderson was an American scientist and educator who worked with the great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Dallas Bache. He became Knight Commander, President of the Particular Council of New York, and Head of the Supreme Council.
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Johan Axel Palmén
1845 - 1919 (74 years)
Johan Axel Palmén was a Finnish zoologist who was known for his studies on bird migration and for efforts in bird conservation in Finland. His studies of bird migration included the identification of flyways along which a majority of shorebirds migrated as well as the phenomenon of leap-frog migration. He established the first bird ringing station in Finland by purchasing a piece of land in the village of Tvärminne.
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Kushyar Gilani
971 - 1029 (58 years)
Abul-Hasan Kūshyār ibn Labbān ibn Bashahri Daylami , also known as Kūshyār Daylami , was an Iranian mathematician, geographer, and astronomer from Daylam, south of the Caspian Sea, Iran. Career Kūshyār Daylami's main work was probably done about the beginning of the 11th century, and seems to have taken an important part in the elaboration of trigonometry. He continued the investigations of the 10th century mathematician and astronomer Abul Wáfa, and devoted much space to this in his , which incorporated the improved values of the planetary apogees observed by al-Battani. The tables were translated into the Persian language before the end of the century.
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James Haward Taylor
1909 - 1968 (59 years)
James Haward Taylor FRS was a British geologist who served as president of the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland from 1963 to 1965. He was educated at Clifton College, King's College London , Harvard University , and the University of London .
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Joseph George Cumming
1812 - 1868 (56 years)
Joseph George Cumming, MA Cantab., was an English geologist and archaeologist. His major works concerned the geology and history of the Isle of Man. Biography Born at Matlock in Derbyshire where his mother and father ran the Old Bath Hotel at Matlock Bath. Cumming was educated at Oakham School, and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, taking the degree of MA, and entering holy orders in 1835. Joseph's elder cousin, James was Professor of Chemistry in Cambridge from 1815.
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Francesco Serao
1702 - 1783 (81 years)
Francesco Serao was an Italian physician, physicist, geologist, philosopher and scholar. He was born in San Cipriano d'Aversa and died in Naples, Italy. Biography Serao was taught by the Jesuits in Naples. He followed the thinking of Descartes. At eighteen, he graduated in medicine and in 1727 he was awarded the chair of theoretical medicine. In 1732 he was professor of anatomy, then of medicine.
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Theodor Fuchs
1842 - 1925 (83 years)
Theodor Fuchs was an Austrian geologist and paleontologist. He studied geology and paleontology at the University of Vienna as a pupil of Eduard Suess . Following graduation, he worked as an assistant at the Hofmineralienkabinett in Vienna, being named its curator in 1880. From 1889 to 1904 he was director of the geologic-paleontological department at the Natural History Museum in Vienna. In 1897 he became an associate professor of paleontology at the university.
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Maurice Lugeon
1870 - 1953 (83 years)
Maurice Lugeon FRS HFRSE FGS was a Swiss geologist, and the pioneer of nappe tectonics. He was a pupil of Eugène Renevier. Named for Maurice Lugeon, the lugeon is a measure of transmissivity in rocks, determined by pressurized injection of water through a bore hole driven through the rock. One Lugeon is equivalent to one litre of water per minute, injected into 1 metre of borehole at an injection pressure of 10 atmospheres.
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Leonid Kulik
1883 - 1942 (59 years)
Leonid Alekseyevich Kulik was a Soviet mineralogist who is noted for his research into meteorites. He was born in Dorpat, , and was educated at the Imperial Forestry Institute in Saint Petersburg and the Kazan University. He served in the Russian military during the Russo-Japanese War, then spent some time in jail for revolutionary political activities. He then served with the Russian military during World War I.
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Afrikan Krishtofovich
1885 - 1953 (68 years)
Afrikan Nikolayevich Krishtofovich was a Soviet geologist, paleobotanist and botanist. His name is abbreviated as "Krysht." when attributing him as the author of botanical names. He was a fossil hunter specializing in Mesozoic flora. In 1932 he published his book Geological review of the countries of the Far East.
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Motonori Matuyama
1884 - 1958 (74 years)
Motonori Matuyama was a Japanese geophysicist who was the first to provide systematic evidence that the Earth's magnetic field had been reversed in the early Pleistocene and to suggest that long periods existed in the past in which the polarity was reversed. He remarked that the Earth's field had later changed to the present polarity. The era of reversed polarity preceding the current Brunhes Chron of normal polarity is now called the Matuyama Reversed Chron; and the transition between them is called the Brunhes–Matuyama or Matuyama-Brunhes reversal.
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Feodor Yulievich Levinson-Lessing
1861 - 1939 (78 years)
Franz Yulievich Levinson-Lessing , or Theodor Levinson-Lessing was a Russian geologist. He graduated from the physico-mathematical faculty of the University of St. Petersburg in 1883, was placed in charge of the geological collection in 1886, and was appointed privat-docent at St. Petersburg University in 1889. In 1892 he became professor, and the next year dean, of the physico-mathematical faculty of Yuryev University . Aside from his work on petrography he published also essays in other branches of geology, the result of scientific journeys throughout Russia.
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Joseph Partsch
1851 - 1925 (74 years)
Joseph Partsch was a German geographer, born at Schreiberhau, Silesia. Biography He studied at the University of Breslau, receiving his doctorate in 1874, and began teaching at the university , becoming later a professor of geography. Here he remained until 1905, when on the death of Friedrich Ratzel, he was called to the chair of geography at the University of Leipzig. Here, he served as a full professor of geography up until 1922. He died in Bad Brambach, Vogtland on June 22, 1925.
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Hendrik Enno Boeke
1881 - 1918 (37 years)
Hendrik Enno Boeke was a Dutch mineralogist and petrographer. From 1900 he studied chemistry and physics at the University of Amsterdam, where his instructors included Hendrik Willem Bakhuis Roozeboom and Johannes Diderik van der Waals. He then worked as an assistant under Gustav Tammann in Göttingen and to Friedrich Rinne at the Technical University of Hannover. In 1909 he became a lecturer of chemistry at the University of Königsberg, and during the following year, an associate professor of physical-chemical mineralogy and petrology at the University of Leipzig.
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Elias Mariolopoulos
1900 - 1991 (91 years)
Elias Mariolopoulos was a Greek astronomer, physicist, author, professor, dean, meteorologist, and climatologist. He is considered the father of modern Greek meteorology and climatology. Elias established a facility for the measurement of atmospheric electricity for the first time in Greece and also founded a special radiometric station in Hymettos, as an extension to the National Observatory of Athens. As an academic, he was the doctoral advisor overseeing the publication of dozens of doctoral dissertations. He was the Dean of the School of Physics and Mathematics at both the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and National and Kapodistrian University of Athens twice.
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Raymond Priestley
1886 - 1974 (88 years)
Sir Raymond Edward Priestley was an English geologist and early Antarctic explorer. He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Birmingham, where he helped found The Raymond Priestley Centre on the shores of Coniston Water in the Lake District National Park.
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José Carlos Millás
1889 - 1965 (76 years)
José Carlos Millás was a Cuban meteorologist. He is known for his research on past Atlantic hurricane seasons, and has been called one of the "fathers of tropical meteorology". Born in Havana, Cuba, Millás graduated as a civil engineer from the University of Havana. He then took post-graduate courses at the University of Chicago. In 1913 he was appointed assistant director of the National Observatory of Cuba, becoming the institute's director in 1921. In the 1930s, before radar and refined hurricane-tracking equipment was available, Millás collaborated with R. W. Gray and Grady Norton of the ...
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Aleksandr A. Chernov
1877 - 1963 (86 years)
Aleksandr A. Chernov was a geologist and paleontologist from the Russian Empire and later the Soviet Union. He was made a Hero of Socialist Labor in 1957, and granted the title of Honoured Scientist of the RSFSR in 1946.
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Wilhelm Eitel
1891 - 1979 (88 years)
Wilhelm Hermann Julius Eitel was a German-American scientist. Education In Frankfurt am Main, Wilhelm Eitel completed his pre-academical training at the Wöhler-Gymnasium in 1909; after that he studied at the universities of Tübingen and Heidelberg , where, on 23 July 1912, he obtained his Ph.D. in "Mineralchemie" from his promotor Professor Theodor Curtius.
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Karl-Erik Bergsten
1909 - 1990 (81 years)
Karl-Erik Bergsten was a Swedish geographer. When professor Fredrik Enquist retired in 1952 Bergsten assumed his chair as geography professor in Göteborg University. Bergsten held that position until 1958 when he moved to the University of Lund being succeeded by Sten Rudberg in Göteborg.
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