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,
#3901
Friedrich Walchner
1799 - 1865 (66 years)
Friedrich August Walchner was a German geologist, chemist and mineralogist. Life Walchner was born in Meersburg. He studied in Göttingen and at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg. In 1817 he joined the Corps Rhenania Freiburg. In Freiburg he was member of the Burschenschaft Genossenschaft/Verein zur Bearbeitung wissenschaftlicher Gegenstände and by the year 1818 he was member of the Alten Freiburger Burschenschaft . In Freiburg he habilitated in 1823 and became a private lecturer and associate professor. In 1825 he was appointed to professor in mineralogy, geology and chemistry at the...
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Eugene Allen Smith
1841 - 1927 (86 years)
Eugene Allen Smith was an American geologist. He was born in the town of Washington, Alabama, in 1841, the son of Samuel Parrish Smith and his wife Adelaide Julia Allen. After an education in Prattville and a three-year stint at Central High School in Philadelphia, Eugene matriculated to the University of Alabama as a junior in 1860, where he graduated with an A.B. in 1862. With the American Civil War underway, Eugene enlisted as a private with the 33rd Regiment Alabama Infantry of the Confederate States Army, and was elected to the rank of 2nd lieutenant by the men. In December 1862, Eugen...
Go to Profile#3903
Émile Haug
1861 - 1927 (66 years)
Gustave Émile Haug was a French geologist and paleontologist known for his contribution to the geosyncline theory. Career Émile Haug was born on 19 June 1861. In 1884 he received his doctorate in natural sciences from the University of Strasbourg with a dissertation on the ammonite genus Harpoceras, titled "Beiträge zu einer monographie der Ammonitengattung Harpoceras". In 1897 he became maître de conférences at the Sorbonne in Paris, where in 1904 he was named a full professor of geology. In 1902 he was appointed president of the Société géologique de France, and from 1917 to 1927, was a mem...
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Gustaf Troedsson
1891 - 1954 (63 years)
Gustaf Timothy Troedsson , was a Swedish geologist and paleontologist. He was the son of Troed Troedsson, and the father of Trygve Troedsson. Troedsson defended his Ph.D. in geology in 1918 on the thesis Om Skånes brachiopodskiffer at Lund University, where he became Associate Professor in 1919. He was Professor of Geology at Stockholm University from 1924 till 1929 and became a lecturer in biology and geography at Higher general secondary school in Helsingborg in 1929. He became lecturer in geography and biology at the Higher general secondary school on Kungsholmen in Stockholm and associate professor of geology at the University of Stockholm in 1933.
Go to Profile#3905
Pierre Jacotin
1765 - 1827 (62 years)
Pierre Jacotin was the director of the survey for the Carte de l'Égypte , the first triangulation-based map of Egypt, Syria and Palestine. The maps were surveyed in 1799–1800 during the campaign in Egypt and Palestine of Napoleon.
Go to Profile#3906
Albert Johannsen
1871 - 1962 (91 years)
Albert Johannsen , was a geologist and geology professor at the University of Chicago who wrote several books on rocks. He also authored The House of Beadle and Adams and Its Dime and Nickel Novels . He collected dime novels. His academic focus was petrology. He also wrote a book about Charles Dickens book illustrator Phiz.
Go to Profile#3907
Johannes Iversen
1904 - 1971 (67 years)
Johannes Iversen was a Danish palaeoecologist and plant ecologist. Biography He was born in Sønderborg and began studies in botany at the University of Copenhagen in 1923 under professor C.H. Ostenfeld, and with considerable inspiration from prof.em. Christen Raunkiær. At first he worked with macrophyte vegetation of lakes in relation to water pH. The influence from Raunkiær is particularly evident in Iversen's doctoral thesis, in which he divided herbaceous plants into hydrotypes based on experiments and morphological studies: xerophytes, mesophytes, hygrophytes, telmatophytes, amphiphytes and limnophytes.
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Henrik Johan Walbeck
1793 - 1822 (29 years)
Henrik Johan Walbeck was a Finnish geodesist and astronomer who studied the size and figure of the Earth by means of arc measurements. Walbeck was born in Turku . In 1817, he was made a corresponding member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and, in 1820, of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Mathematische Gesellschaft in Hamburg. He committed suicide in 1822, also in Åbo.
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Hans Schardt
1858 - 1931 (73 years)
Hans Schardt was a Swiss geologist and a professor at the University of Neuchâtel and at the ETH and the University of Zurich. He contributed to studies on the folding and movement of layers of the earth based on stratigraphy. His studies where based on the Glarus thrust which he explained as a nappe.
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Karl Emil von Schafhäutl
1803 - 1890 (87 years)
Karl Franz Emil von Schafhäutl was a German naturalist and musicologist. He was professor of Geognosy in Munich. He was the author of Geognostische Untersuchungen des südbayerischen Alpengebirges and Der Gregorianische Choral in seiner Entwicklung . He also studied mining and foundry practise.
Go to Profile#3911
Alice Garnett
1903 - 1989 (86 years)
Alice Garnett or Alice Crow was a British geographer at Sheffield University. She was the second British woman to become a professor of geography and she was vice-president of the Royal Geographical Society. She was the first woman president of the Institute of British Geographers and a winner of the Murchison Award.
Go to Profile#3912
Alois Musil
1868 - 1944 (76 years)
Alois Musil was a Czech theologian, orientalist, explorer and bilingual Czech and German writer. Biography Musil was the oldest son born in 1868 into an poor farming family in Moravia . His birthplace of Rychtářov was in an area surrounded by German-speakers, allowing him and his brothers to learn to read and write both German and Czech. He was a second cousin of Robert Musil, an Austrian writer. In the years 1887–1891 he studied Roman Catholic theology at the University of Olomouc, was consecrated as a priest in 1891 and received a doctorate in theology in 1895. In the years 1895–1898 he studied at the Dominican Biblical School in Jerusalem, in 1897-1898 at the Jesuit University of St.
Go to Profile#3913
David Page
1814 - 1879 (65 years)
David Page FRSE FGS LLD was a 19th-century Scottish geologist and scientific author. He was President of the Edinburgh Geological Society. Page was born on 24 August 1814 in Lochgelly, Fifeshire, where his father was a mason and builder. After being educated locally he was sent, at age 14, to the University of St Andrews, to be study divinity. However, he never joined the ministry and instead worked in scientific lecturing and journalism, acting for a time as editor of a Fifeshire newspaper.
Go to Profile#3914
William Savage Boulton
1867 - 1954 (87 years)
William Savage Boulton FGS was an English geologist, mining engineer, and water engineer. Boulton was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, Mason Science College, and the Royal College of Science. He was from 1890 to 1897 an assistant lecturer and demonstrator for Professor Charles Lapworth at Mason Science College. Boulton was then a professor of geology at University College, Cardiff from 1897 to 1913, when he went to the University of Birmingham as Lapworth's successor upon the latter's retirement in 1913. Boulton was Dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of Birmingham from 1926 to 1929.
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Michele Stefano de Rossi
1834 - 1898 (64 years)
Michele Stefano de Rossi was an Italian seismologist. He was a younger brother to archaeologist Giovanni Battista de Rossi . He received his education at the University of Rome, and during his subsequent career conducted research in the fields of archaeology, paleontology, geology, vulcanology and seismology. He studied the topography of catacombs, and collaborated with his brother on La Roma sotterranea cristiana .
Go to Profile#3916
Donald Esme Innes
Donald Esme Innes FRSE MC was a 20th century Scottish geologist. Life Born Donald Esme Isaacs on 22 November 1888 to Donald Isaacs and Anne Isaacs in Clifton, Bristol. He was bought up by Annie and Catherine Isaacson in Oxford from a very early age. He went to Repton and studied Sciences at Oxford University and graduated in 1911 with 1st class honours, specialising in Geology. He was awarded the Burden Coutts scholarship for post-graduate work and he later became Professor of Geology at St Andrews University.
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Ivar Werner Oftedal
1894 - 1976 (82 years)
Ivar Werner Oftedal was a Norwegian mineralogist. He was born in Larvik. He took his cand.real. degree in 1929 and the dr.philos. degree in 1941, both at the University of Oslo. After 29 years as a conservator at the University Museum, he was a professor of geology at the University of Oslo from 1949 to 1964, specializing in mineralogy, geochemistry and crystallography.
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J. Lawrence Smith
1818 - 1883 (65 years)
John Lawrence Smith was an American chemist and mineralogist. He published extensively on analytical chemistry and mineralogy, including Mineralogy and Chemistry, Original Researches . His collection of meteorites was the finest in the United States, and upon his death, he passed it to Harvard. The J. Lawrence Smith Medal is named in his honor.
Go to Profile#3919
Thomas Robert Malthus
#3920
Jacoba Hol
1886 - 1964 (78 years)
Jacoba Hol was a Dutch physical geographer. In 1945, she was appointed professor of physical geography at the Geographic Institute at Utrecht University. This made her the first female 'normal' professor in the Netherlands.
Go to Profile#3921
George W. Brindley
1905 - 1983 (78 years)
George William Brindley was a British-American crystallographer and mineralogist. He was known for his study of clay minerals including the structure of kaolinites. Education and career Brindley studied at University of Manchester in the laboratory of Sir Lawrence Bragg and Reginald W. James, where he obtained an BSc and an MSc in crystallography in 1928. He then moved to University of Leeds, obtaining a PhD in physics in 1933. He subsequently became a Lecturer and a Reader in X-ray physics at Leeds. Until 1945, his research focused on X-ray scattering in metals and its use in studying their ...
Go to Profile#3922
George Hammell Cook
1818 - 1889 (71 years)
George Hammell Cook was the state geologist of New Jersey and vice president of Rutgers College. His geological survey of New Jersey became the predecessor for the U.S. Geological Survey. Biography He was born in Hanover Township, New Jersey, on January 5, 1818, to John Cook and Sarah Munn. He married Mary Halsey Thomas on March 23, 1846. He served as the principal of The Albany Academy in Albany, New York from 1850 to 1852.
Go to Profile#3923
Samuel Allport
1816 - 1897 (81 years)
Samuel Allport was an English petrologist. Life He was born in Birmingham and educated in that city. Although occupied in business during the greater portion of his life, his leisure was given to geological studies, and when residing for a short period in Bahia, South America, he made observations on the geology, published by the Geological Society in 1860. His chief work was in microscopic petrology, to the study of which he was attracted by the investigations of Dr. Henry Sorby; and he became one of the pioneers of this branch of geology, preparing his own rock-sections with remarkable sk...
Go to Profile#3924
James E. Talmage
1862 - 1933 (71 years)
James Edward Talmage was an English chemist, geologist, and religious leader who served as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1911 until his death.
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Hjalmar Uggla
1908 - 1983 (75 years)
Hjalmar Frederik Karl Uggla was a Polish soil scientist, professor, and head of the Department of Soil Science at the Higher Agricultural School in Olsztyn . During World War II, he was a member of a Polish resistance movement. He was also awarded the Righteous Among the Nations prize.
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Erich Haarmann
1882 - 1945 (63 years)
Erich Haarmann was a German geologist known for his tectonic theories. In a 1930 publication Haarmann wrote in detail about his oscillation theory to explain movements, structure and relief in Earth's crust.
Go to Profile#3927
Carl Fredrik Kolderup
1868 - 1942 (74 years)
Carl Fredrik Kolderup was a Norwegian geologist. He was a professor at the University of Bergen and curator at Bergen Museum. Biography He was born in Bergen, Norway. He was as a son of tailor Niels Chrispinus Kolderup and Rasmine Margrethe Olsen. He was the father of geologist and politician Niels-Henrik Kolderup.
Go to Profile#3928
Alan Grant Ogilvie
1887 - 1954 (67 years)
Alan Grant Ogilvie OBE FRSE FRSGS was a Scottish geographer after whom the University of Edinburgh's Ogilvie Chair in Human Geography is named. He was President of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society from 1946 to 1950 and President of the Institute of British Geographers from 1951 to 1952.
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Sidney William Wooldridge
1900 - 1963 (63 years)
Professor Sidney William Wooldridge CBE, FRS, FGS , geologist, geomorphologist and geographer, was a pioneer in the study of the geomorphology of south-east England and the first professor of geography at King's College London. He collaborated with Dudley Stamp and with David Linton.
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Heinrich Ries
1871 - 1951 (80 years)
Heinrich Ries was an American economic geologist, born in Brooklyn, New York, and educated at Columbia University and at the University of Berlin. He was employed principally at Cornell University, initially as an instructor , as an assistant professor , as professor, and as head of the geological department . Professor Ries made numerous reports on clay published by the United States Geological Survey, the New York State Geological Survey and the Canadian Geological Survey.
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Ruth Harris
Ruth Harris is a scientist at the United States Geological Survey known for her research on large earthquakes, especially on how they begin, end, and cause the ground to shake. In 2019, Harris was elected a fellow of the American Geophysical Union who cited her "for outstanding contributions to earthquake rupture dynamics, stress transfer, and triggering".
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Marshall Kay
1904 - 1975 (71 years)
Marshall Kay was a geologist and professor at Columbia University. He is best known for his studies of the Ordovician of New York, Newfoundland, and Nevada, but his studies were global and he published widely on the stratigraphy of the middle and upper Ordovician. Kay's careful fieldwork provided much geological evidence for the theory of continental drift. He was awarded the Penrose Medal in 1971. Less well known is his work for the Manhattan Project, as a geologist searching for manganese deposits. Marshall's son Robert Kay of Cornell University, daughter Elizabeth Berner of University of Connecticut and son-in-law Robert Berner of Yale University are also geology professors.
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George Cressey
1896 - 1963 (67 years)
George Babcock Cressey was an American geographer, author, and academic. Born in Tiffin, Ohio, he attended Denison University and then the University of Chicago, where he received a PhD in geology. After receiving his degree, he taught at University of Shanghai and traveled widely in China. Upon his return to the United States in 1929, he completed a pioneering book on the country, China's Geographic Foundations.
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Louis B. Slichter
1896 - 1978 (82 years)
Louis Byrne Slichter was an American physicist and geophysicist who directed the Institute of Geophysics at UCLA. Slichter was notable for, among other things, earth tides research, submarine detection, development of three-component short-period seismographs, studies of the earth temperature distribution, and the invention of a number of important geophysical devices. Slichter Foreland peninsula in Antarctica is named after him. The Institute of Geophysics building in UCLA where he used to work as a director of the Institute has been named Slichter Hall. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the chair of the Academy's Geophysics Section.
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Howel Williams
1898 - 1980 (82 years)
Howel Williams was an American geologist and volcanologist. Early life He was born of Welsh parents in Liverpool, England, on October 12, 1898. He received a BA in geography in 1923 and an MA in archaeology in 1924 from Liverpool University. He studied geology at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London. Howel Williams moved to the University of California at Berkeley in 1926. In 1928 he was awarded the degree of D.Sc. from the University of Liverpool and published his first papers on the geology of various California volcanic regions. Williams was a member of the National Aca...
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Harry Hammond Hess
1906 - 1969 (63 years)
Harry Hammond Hess was an American geologist and a United States Navy officer in World War II who is considered one of the "founding fathers" of the unifying theory of plate tectonics. He is best known for his theories on sea floor spreading, specifically work on relationships between island arcs, seafloor gravity anomalies, and serpentinized peridotite, suggesting that the convection of the Earth's mantle was the driving force behind this process.
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Allan V. Cox
1926 - 1987 (61 years)
Allan Verne Cox was an American geophysicist. His work on dating geomagnetic reversals, with Richard Doell and Brent Dalrymple, made a major contribution to the theory of plate tectonics. Allan Cox won numerous awards, including the prestigious Vetlesen Prize, and was the president of the American Geophysical Union. He was the author of over a hundred scientific papers, and the author or editor of two books on plate tectonics. On January 27, 1987, Cox died in an apparent suicide.
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Philip Kuenen
1902 - 1976 (74 years)
Philip Henry Kuenen was a Dutch geologist. Kuenen spent his earliest youth in Scotland, as his father was professor of physics at University College, Dundee until 1906. He studied geology at Leiden University, where he was a pupil of K. Martin and B.G. Escher. He finished his studies in 1925 and then became assistant to Escher. He worked on paleontology and experimental geology.
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Charles Francis Richter
1900 - 1985 (85 years)
Charles Francis Richter was an American seismologist and physicist. Richter is most famous as the creator of the Richter magnitude scale, which, until the development of the moment magnitude scale in 1979, quantified the size of earthquakes. Inspired by Kiyoo Wadati's 1928 paper on shallow and deep earthquakes, Richter first used the scale in 1935 after developing it in collaboration with Beno Gutenberg; both worked at the California Institute of Technology.
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Norman L. Bowen
1887 - 1956 (69 years)
Norman Levi Bowen FRS was a Canadian geologist. Bowen "revolutionized experimental petrology and our understanding of mineral crystallization". Beginning geology students are familiar with Bowen's reaction series depicting how different minerals crystallize under varying pressures and temperatures."
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Richard Foster Flint
1902 - 1976 (74 years)
Richard Foster Flint was an American geologist. Biography He was born in Chicago on March 1, 1902. Flint graduated from the University of Chicago and earned his Ph.D. in geology at the University of California graduating in 1925. He then joined Yale as a member of the faculty, becoming a full professor in 1945.
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Dudley Stamp
1898 - 1966 (68 years)
Sir Dudley Stamp, CBE, DSc, D. Litt, LLD, Ekon D, DSc Nat , was professor of geography at Rangoon and London, and one of the internationally best known British geographers of the 20th century. Educated at King's College London, he specialised in the study of geology and geography and taught at the universities of Rangoon and London . From 1936 to 1944 he directed the compilation and publication of the report of the Land Utilisation Survey of Britain. He worked on many official enquiries into the use of land and planning.
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William Joscelyn Arkell
1904 - 1958 (54 years)
William Joscelyn Arkell FGS, FRS was a British geologist and palaeontologist, regarded as the leading authority on the Jurassic Period during the middle part of the 20th century. Childhood Arkell was born in Highworth, Wiltshire, the youngest of a family of seven. His father, James Arkell was a partner in the prosperous family business Arkell's Brewery . His mother, Laura Jane Arkell, was an artist of noted ability.
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Edward Bullard
1907 - 1980 (73 years)
Sir Edward Crisp Bullard FRS was a British geophysicist who is considered, along with Maurice Ewing, to have founded the discipline of marine geophysics. He developed the theory of the geodynamo, pioneered the use of seismology to study the sea floor, measured geothermal heat flow through the ocean crust, and found new evidence for the theory of continental drift.
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Martin Julian Buerger
1903 - 1986 (83 years)
Martin Julian Buerger was an American crystallographer. He was a Professor of Mineralogy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He invented the X-ray precession camera for studies in crystallography. Buerger authored twelve textbooks/monographs and over 200 technical articles. He was awarded the Arthur L. Day Medal by the Geological Society of America in 1951. The mineral fluor-buergerite was named for him. The MJ Buerger Award was established in his honor.
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Richard Hartshorne
1899 - 1992 (93 years)
Richard Hartshorne was a prominent American geographer, and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who specialized in economic and political geography and the philosophy of geography. He is known in particular for his methodological work The Nature of Geography, published in 1939.
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Chester Ray Longwell
1887 - 1975 (88 years)
Chester Ray Longwell was an American geologist who conducted extensive research into the geology of the Basin and Range province in Nevada. His fieldwork led to a more complete understanding of Paleozoic and lower Mesozoic stratigraphic sequence in the southern Great Basin.
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Bruce C. Heezen
1924 - 1977 (53 years)
Bruce Charles Heezen was an American geologist. He worked with oceanographic cartographer Marie Tharp at Columbia University to map the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in the 1950s. Biography Heezen was born in Vinton, Iowa. An only child, he moved at age six with his parents to Muscatine, Iowa, where he graduated from high school in 1942. He received his B.A. from the University of Iowa in 1947. He received his M.A. in 1952 and a Ph.D in 1957 from Columbia University.
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Cecil Edgar Tilley
1894 - 1973 (79 years)
Cecil Edgar Tilley FRS HonFRSE PGS was an Australian-British petrologist and geologist. Life He was born in Unley, Adelaide, the youngest child of John Thomas Edward Tilley, a civil engineer from London, and his wife South Australia-born wife, Catherine Jane Nicholas.
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Helmut Landsberg
1906 - 1985 (79 years)
Helmut Erich Landsberg was a noted and influential climatologist. He was born in Frankfurt, Germany, February 9, 1906 and died December 6, 1985 in Geneva, Switzerland while attending a meeting of the World Meteorological Organization. Landsberg was an important figure in meteorology and atmospheric science in education, public service and administration. He authored several notable works, particularly in the field of particulate matter and its influence on air pollution and human health. He is the first to write in English about the use of statistical analysis in the field of climatology and implemented such statistical analysis in aiding military operations during World War II.
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