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,
#3901
Václav Zenger
1830 - 1908 (78 years)
Václav Karel Bedřich Zenger was a Czech physicist, meteorologist, professor and rector of the Czech Technical University in Prague. Life Zenger was born on 17 December 1830 in Chomutov. He was born into the family of a military physician. He attended secondary school in Hradec Králové, Prague and Čáslav, then the Cistercian grammar school in Německý Brod, the German grammar school in Malá Strana and the Piarist grammar school in Prague.
Go to Profile#3902
William King
1809 - 1886 (77 years)
William King , was an Anglo-Irish geologist at Queen's College Galway. He was the first to propose that the bones found in the German valley of Neanderthal in 1856 were not of Homo sapiens, but of a distinct species: Homo neanderthalensis. He proposed the name of this new species at a meeting of the British Association in 1863, with the written version published in 1864.
Go to Profile#3903
George Kingston
1816 - 1886 (70 years)
George Templeman Kingston was a Canadian professor, meteorologist, author, and public servant. For successfully promoting and organizing one of Canada's first national scientific services, Kingston has been called the father of Canadian Meteorology.
Go to Profile#3904
Robert A. Olson
1917 - 1987 (70 years)
Robert August Olson was an American soil scientist. He was a professor of agronomy at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, and one of the first to prove and warn that nitrogen fertilizers could harm crops and pollute groundwater.
Go to Profile#3905
William Roberts Flett
1900 - 1979 (79 years)
William Roberts Flett FRSE FGS was a Scottish geologist and author. He served in both world wars. Life He was born in Kirkwall on Orkney, the son of James Scott Flett and his wife Margaret Beatton Robertson.
Go to Profile#3906
Edward de Courcy Clarke
1880 - 1956 (76 years)
Edward de Courcy Clarke , was a teacher, researcher and field geologist, winner of the Clarke Medal in 1954. Biography Clarke was born in Waimate North, New Zealand, and studied at the University of Auckland, graduating in 1901.
Go to Profile#3907
Ernst Friedrich Germar
1786 - 1853 (67 years)
Ernst Friedrich Germar was a German professor and director of the Mineralogical Museum at Halle. As well as being a mineralogist he was interested in entomology and particularly in the Coleoptera and Hemiptera. He monographed the heteropteran family Scutelleridae.
Go to Profile#3908
Wenceslaus Hollar
1607 - 1677 (70 years)
Wenceslaus Hollar was a prolific and accomplished Bohemian graphic artist of the 17th century, who spent much of his life in England. He is known to German speakers as ; and to Czech speakers as . He is particularly noted for his engravings and etchings. He was born in Prague, died in London, and was buried at St Margaret's Church, Westminster.
Go to Profile#3909
John Weir
1896 - 1978 (82 years)
John Weir FRSE FGS was a 20th-century Scottish geologist and palaeontologist. Life Weir was born in Glasgow in 1896 and was educated at Woodside Secondary School. He served in the 51st Highland Division in the First World War. He was wounded in action three times and invalided out of the army in 1918. His main actions and wounds were received at High Wood, Arras and the main German counter-attack of 1918. His lungs were damaged by a gas attack in the latter.
Go to Profile#3910
Mikhail Tetyaev
1882 - 1956 (74 years)
Mikhail Mikhailovich Tetyaev was a Soviet tectonic geologist. The wrinkle ridge Dorsa Tetyaev on the Moon is named after Mikhail Tetyaev.
Go to Profile#3911
John Aitken
1839 - 1919 (80 years)
John Aitken, FRS, FRSE LLD was a Scottish meteorologist, physicist and marine engineer. He was one of the founders of cloud physics and aerosol science, who built the first apparatus to measure the number of dust and fog particles in the atmosphere, a koniscope.
Go to Profile#3912
Josua Lindahl
1844 - 1912 (68 years)
Johan Harald Josua Lindahl was a Swedish American geologist and paleontologist. He was a professor at Augustana College from 1878 to 1888, then was Illinois State Geologist until 1893. He is the namesake of the extinct Cyprinidae subspecies Aphelichthys lindahlii. and the extinct Medullosales Neuropteris lindahli named by David_White_
Go to Profile#3913
A. E. Trueman
1894 - 1956 (62 years)
Sir Arthur Elijah Trueman was a British geologist. Life Trueman was born in Nottingham, the son of Elijah Trueman, a lacemaker, and his wife Thirza Newton Cottee. He was educated at High Pavement School in Nottingham from 1899 to 1911, then became a student teacher at Huntington Street School, Nottingham. He entered University College Nottingham in 1912 with a grant as a teacher in training, and studied Geology under H. H. Swinnerton, graduating B.Sc. with first-class honours in 1914. He gained an M.Sc. in 1916 and doctorate in 1918, all from University College Nottingham.
Go to Profile#3914
Konstantin Markov
1905 - 1980 (75 years)
Konstantin Konstantinovich Markov was a Soviet geomorphologist and Quaternary geologist. As a geomorphologist Markov theorized on planation surfaces. His geographical research of arid areas outside the Soviet Union led to publications on Morocco, Lake Chad and the Dead Sea. Markov was professor at the Moscow State University.
Go to Profile#3915
Grace Anne Stewart
1893 - 1970 (77 years)
Grace Anne Stewart was a Canadian geologist, known for being the first woman to graduate in geology in Canada at the University of Alberta. Biography Grace Anne Stewart was born and raised in a rural farm near Minnedosa, Manitoba on August 4, 1893. Her parents were James Stewart and Elizabeth Crerar Stewart. Both her parents were Scottish.
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James Furman Kemp
1859 - 1926 (67 years)
James Furman Kemp was an American geologist. Early life He was born in New York City and graduated from Amherst in 1881 and from the Columbia School of Mines in 1884. Amherst gave him an honorary Sc.D. in 1906 and McGill an LL.D. in 1913. Professor Kemp taught at Cornell University from 1886 to 1891 and then at Columbia and served as geologist of the United States and New York State geological surveys of the Adirondack Mountains.
Go to Profile#3917
Henri Nicolaas ter Veen
1883 - 1949 (66 years)
Henri Nicolaas ter Veen was a Dutch social geographer. He was born in Amsterdam in 1882 in a simple workers’ family. In 1908 he became a professor of geography at the University of Amsterdam. In the 1930s he traveled to Libya, Italy, Poland, Finland, and the Soviet Union. He played an important role in popularising social geography in the Netherlands.
Go to Profile#3918
Gilbert Dennison Harris
1864 - 1952 (88 years)
Gilbert Dennison Harris was an American geologist and paleontologist. He was a professor of paleontology and stratigraphic geology at Cornell University and proprietor and editor of two scientific journals, Bulletins of American Paleontology and Palaeontographica Americana. Harris later left Cornell and founded the Paleontological Research Institution, an independent organization dedicated to research and education in the field of paleontology.
Go to Profile#3919
Thomas Green
1738 - 1788 (50 years)
Thomas Green was an English geologist, Woodwardian Professor of Geology at the University of Cambridge between 1778 and his death. Green was born in Wymeswold, Leicestershire, and his father was also called Thomas. He was educated at the Loughborough school of Mr Parkinson . He was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge as a sizar on 11 June 1756, and matriculated in the Michaelmas term of 1756. He became a scholar in 1759, was awarded a B.A. in 1760 and an M.A. in 1763.
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Charles S. Slichter
1864 - 1946 (82 years)
Charles Sumner Slichter was an applied mathematician and dean of the graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His most notable scholarly contribution focused on hydrogeology, where he developed a method of quantifying the velocity of ground-water underflow in river valleys. This method employed ammonium chloride that would be placed in an upstream, i.e., the upgradient, well and detected in three observation wells a short distance away, i.e., the downgradient.
Go to Profile#3921
Antonín Frič
1832 - 1913 (81 years)
Antonín Jan Frič was a Czech paleontologist, biologist and geologist, living during the Austria-Hungary era. Professor at the Charles University and later became director of the National Museum in Prague. He became famous for his contributions on the field of Permo - Carboniferous ecosystems.
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Douglas Allan
1896 - 1967 (71 years)
Douglas Alexander Allan, CBE, FRSGS, FRSE, FMA was a geologist and curator, eventually becoming the director of the Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh, from 1945 until 1961. Early life Born in Edinburgh in 1896 and the son of James Allan and Agnes Annie Logan, Douglas Allan was educated at George Watson's College and Boroughmuir Student Centre before going on to serve throughout World War I at the Department of Explosives Supply, Ministry of Munitions and the Royal Field Artillery. He graduated from the University of Edinburgh with BScs in Geology and Chemistry in 1921 and furthered his education with a PhD from the same University in 1923 and a DSc in 1927.
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Carl Hintze
1851 - 1916 (65 years)
Carl Adolf Ferdinand Hintze was a German mineralogist and crystallographer. From 1868 he studied at the University of Breslau, where he was a student of Ferdinand von Roemer. He then furthered his education at the universities of Bonn and Berlin. Beginning in 1872 he served as an assistant to mineralogist Paul Heinrich von Groth at the University of Strasbourg. In 1875, eye problems along with financial issues forced him to abandon his scientific activity at the university, and he subsequently found employment as a trader in the minerals business. Since 1880 he worked as a scientific director...
Go to Profile#3924
Samuel Howell Knight
1892 - 1975 (83 years)
Samuel Howell "Doc" Knight was an American geologist who taught at the University of Wyoming and also served as a state geologist from 1933 to 1941. Known as "Doc" Knight, he was an influential teacher, noted for his use of multi-colour chalk illustrations to teach geology over a span of fifty years.
Go to Profile#3925
Dixie Lee Bryant
1862 - 1949 (87 years)
Dixie Lee Bryant was a geologist and educator. Dixie Lee Bryant was born on January 7, 1862, in Louisville, Kentucky. After her family moved to Columbia, Tennessee in 1886, she enrolled in the Columbia Female Institute. Despite her desire to access a full college education, no Southern universities would admit her as a woman to their science programs. In 1887 she applied, and was admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. She graduated in 1891 with a Bachelor of Science. She submitted a thesis on the tide water region of the Charles River and was the first student to re...
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Ernst von Rebeur-Paschwitz
1861 - 1895 (34 years)
Ernst von Rebeur-Paschwitz was a German astronomer, geophysicist and seismologist. He is best known for the first recording of teleseism with the use of his sensitive self-registering horizontal pendulums in 1889. He proposed to create an international network of seismological stations. His ideas led to the founding of the International Seismological Association.
Go to Profile#3927
K. J. V. Steenstrup
1842 - 1913 (71 years)
Knud Johannes Vogelius Steenstrup was a Danish geologist. He was most noted as an explorer of Greenland. Biography Steenstrup was born at Høstemark Mill in Mou Sogn, Jutland, Denmark. He was the son of Johan Peter Steenstrup and Sinned Claudine Lund , He was a nephew of zoologist Japetus Steenstrup .
Go to Profile#3928
Max Lohest
1857 - 1926 (69 years)
Marie Joseph Maximin Lohest was a Belgian paleontologist and geologist. He served as an influential professor at the University of Liège and was involved in the discovery of Neanderthal remains in Spy Cave in 1886.
Go to Profile#3929
Carl Uhlig
1872 - 1938 (66 years)
Carl Ludwig Gustav Uhlig was a German geographer and meteorologist. He was the son of philologist Gustav Uhlig . He studied natural sciences at the universities of Heidelberg, Freiburg, Göttingen and Berlin, receiving his doctorate in 1897 with the thesis Die Veränderungen der Volksdichte im nördlichen Baden 1852–1895. In Heidelberg, Uhlig joined the German student fraternity Leonensia. From 1900 to 1906 he worked as a meteorologist and geographer for the government of German East Africa, during which time, he carried out investigations of Kilimanjaro and Mount Meru as well as scientific studies of Lake Victoria .
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Oswald Rishbeth
1886 - Present (140 years)
Oswald Henry Theodore Rishbeth was an Australian geographer who was Professor and Chair of Geography at the University of Southampton, England. He is considered a pioneer of academic geography in Britain. He was the husband of zoologist Kathleen Rishbeth.
Go to Profile#3931
Karl von Kraatz-Koschlau
1867 - 1900 (33 years)
Alexander Karl von Kraatz-Koschlau was a German geologist. Karl von Kraatz-Koschlau was born in Reichenbach near Stettin. He studied philosophy and sciences in Freiburg and Munich, where he obtained his doctorate with a dissertation on tartaric acid and its salts . Afterwards he was assigned to the mineralogical institute in Munich. One of his scientific excursions during this time period involved geological research of the Serra de Monchique in the Algarve.
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Henning Illies
1924 - 1982 (58 years)
Jürgen Henning Illies was a German geologist, an expert in taphrogenesis . Apart from his work on rifts, including the Rhine Rift Valley, he is known for his contributions to Chilean geology. Illies was active at the Austral University of Chile in Valdivia where he mapped the geology of the Old Valdivia Province in 1956–1957. After the mapping was done he studied more specific geologic problems in Chile the years of 1958–59. Illies is currently regarded as a "founding father" of the geology department of the Austral University of Chile.
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Joannes de Laet
1581 - 1649 (68 years)
Joannes or Johannes De Laet was a Dutch geographer and director of the Dutch West India Company. Philip Burden called his History of the New World, "...arguably the finest description of the Americas published in the seventeenth century" and "...one of the foundation maps of Canada". De Laet was the first to print maps with the names Manhattan, New Amsterdam and Massachusetts.
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Aaron Louis Treadwell
1866 - 1947 (81 years)
Aaron Louis Treadwell, Ph.D. was a college professor of zoology at Vassar. He was born at Redding, Connecticut, and educated at Wesleyan University and at the University of Chicago . He was a professor of zoology and geology at Miami University , professor of biology at Vassar , and afterwards professor of zoology. In addition to his work in the schools, he was instructor at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole. Treadwell published The Cytogeny of Podarke obscura . His writings dealt chiefly with annelid systematics and embryonics.
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Edmond Hébert
1812 - 1890 (78 years)
Edmond Hébert , French geologist, was born at Villefargau, Yonne. He was educated at the College de Meaux, Auxerre, and at the École Normale in Paris. In 1836 he became professor at Meaux, in 1838 demonstrator in chemistry and physics at the École Normale, and in 1841 sub-director of studies at that school and lecturer on geology. In 1857 the degree of D. es Sc. was conferred upon him, and he was appointed professor of geology at the Sorbonne.
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Stuart Weller
1870 - 1927 (57 years)
Stuart Weller was an American paleontologist and geologist. Weller studied geology and paleontology at Cornell University with bachelor's degree in 1894 and at Yale University with Ph.D. in 1901. Beginning in 1895 he worked at the University of Chicago, where in 1897–1900 he was a research associate, and became in 1900 Instructor, in 1902 Assistant Professor, in 1908 Associate Professor and in 1915 Professor of Paleontology and Geology. It is noteworthy to mention that Weller supervised Grace Anne Stewart, the first Canadian female to earn a B.A. majoring in geology, as she earned her Ph.D. f...
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Heinrich Edmund Naumann
1854 - 1927 (73 years)
Heinrich Edmund Naumann was a German geologist, regarded as the "father of Japanese geology" in Meiji period Japan. Biography Heinrich Edmund Naumann was hired by the Meiji government in 1875 as a foreign advisor, with the task of introducing the science of geology to Japan through his teaching at the Kaisei Gakkō, the forerunner to Tokyo Imperial University.
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Ibn al-Athir
1160 - 1233 (73 years)
Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ash-Shaybānī, better known as ʿAlī ʿIzz ad-Dīn Ibn al-Athīr al-Jazarī was an Hadith expert, historian, and biographer who wrote in Arabic and was from the Ibn Athir family. At the age of twenty-one he settled with his father in Mosul to continue his studies, where he devoted himself to the study of history and Islamic tradition.
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Johan Herman Lie Vogt
1858 - 1932 (74 years)
Johan Herman Lie Vogt was a Norwegian geologist and petrologist. Vogt was a professor at the University of Oslo and at the Norwegian Institute of Technology. Biography Vogt was born in Tvedestrand, Norway. He was a son of physician Olaus Fredrik Sand Vogt and Mathilde Eliza Lie. He was the nephew of mathematician Sophus Lie . Psychiatrist Ragnar Vogt was a younger brother. Vogt studied at the Technical Institute in Dresden and in 1880 graduated from the University of Christiania . Vogt was cand.min. from 1880.
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Eliot Blackwelder
1880 - 1969 (89 years)
Eliot Blackwelder was an American geologist who from 1922 to 1945 was head of the Stanford University department of geology. He served as president of the Geological Society of America in 1940 and of the Seismological Society of America from 1947 to 1949. He was a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.
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Ulbo de Sitter
1902 - 1980 (78 years)
Lamoraal Ulbo de Sitter was a Dutch geologist at Leiden University, where he was the founder of the school of structural geology. De Sitter was known for his research on the geology of the Alps and Pyrenees. His father was the astronomer Willem de Sitter , and one of his sons was the Dutch sociologist Ulbo de Sitter .
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Fedir Abramov
1904 - 1982 (78 years)
Fedir Abramov was a Ukrainian geologist and mining specialist. He was a member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. His works dealt with problems of ventilation and aerogas dynamics of mines, and the prevention of sudden emissions of coal, rock and gas.
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Robert Edmund Scoresby-Jackson
1833 - 1867 (34 years)
Robert Edmund Scoresby-Jackson FRSE FRCPE FRCSE was a short-lived but influential British physician and historian. He specialised in the effects of climate upon health. Life He was born Robert Edmund Jackson on 12 November 1833 in Whitby on the Yorkshire coast. He was the son of Captain Thomas Jackson , a merchant mariner and shipowner, and his wife Arabella Scoresby , sister of Rev William Scoresby. Both his parents outlived him. He adopted the name Scoresby-Jackson on the death of his uncle.
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Percy Fry Kendall
1856 - 1936 (80 years)
Percy Fry Kendall, FRS , was an English geologist who was Professor of Geology at the University of Leeds from 1906 to 1922. Early life and education Kendall was the youngest of the eight children of Charles Kendall, a commercial traveller, and his wife Hannah Eltringham. He was born on 15 November 1856 in Mile End, London.
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John Henry Alexander
1812 - 1867 (55 years)
John Henry Alexander was a noted scientist, civil engineer and businessman. Personal life Alexander was born in Annapolis, Maryland, on June 26, 1812. The youngest child of William and Mary Alexander. His education was acquired in his native city, he was graduated from St. John's College in 1826, and he spent the next four years reading law privately, but apparently he did not take the bar exam. He, instead, chose to begin working for the Baltimore and Susquehanna Railroad, later part of the Northern Central. Alexander also attended medical lectures in Baltimore, though he did not receive a ...
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Grigoriu Ștefănescu
1836 - 1911 (75 years)
Grigoriu Ștefănescu was a Wallachian-born Romanian geologist, mineralogist paleontologist. Ștefănescu was elected a titular member of the Romanian Academy in 1876. From 1897 to 1898, he served as rector of the University of Bucharest.
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Ulysses Sherman Grant
1867 - 1932 (65 years)
Ulysses Sherman Grant was an American geologist. He was the son of Lewis A. Grant and Mary Helen Pierce. Biography Ulysses Sherman Grant was born in Moline, Illinois on February 14, 1867. He graduated from the University of Minnesota with B.S. in 1888, and received a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1893. He married Avis Winchell in 1891, and they had four children.
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Hermann Traube
1860 - 1913 (53 years)
Hermann Traube was a German mineralogist born in Ratibor, Silesia . He was the son of chemist Moritz Traube . He studied at the Universities of Leipzig, Heidelberg, Breslau and Greifswald, earning his doctorate in 1884. At Breslau his instructors were Ferdinand Cohn and Theodor Poleck .
Go to Profile#3949
Marjorie Korringa
1943 - 1974 (31 years)
Marjorie Kitchel Korringa was an igneous petrologist, volcanologist, and structural geologist. She is chiefly known for her research on active fault systems as a critical part of decision-making for the location of oil pipelines and nuclear reactors.
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John Thomson
1837 - 1921 (84 years)
John Thomson FRGS was a pioneering Scottish photographer, geographer, and traveller. He was one of the first photographers to travel to the Far East, documenting the people, landscapes and artefacts of eastern cultures. Upon returning home, his work among the street people of London cemented his reputation, and is regarded as a classic instance of social documentary which laid the foundations for photojournalism. He went on to become a portrait photographer of High Society in Mayfair, gaining the Royal Warrant in 1881.
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