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,
#3951
Serge von Bubnoff
1888 - 1957 (69 years)
Sergius Nikolajewitsch von Bubnoff was a geologist and geotechnical engineer with Germano-Baltic ancestry who made important contributions to the rebuilding of geological research in East Germany after World War II. Starting in 1922, he was a professor at the University of Breslau. In 1929 he became a professor at the University of Greifswald and in 1950, he started his professorship at the Humboldt-University of Berlin. The Bubnoff unit, which is the unit of measure for the speed of geological processes, is named after him.
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James Edwin Hawley
1897 - 1965 (68 years)
James Edwin Hawley was a Canadian geologist and distinguished Professor of Mineralogy at Queen's University. Biography Hawley was raised in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. He earned both a Bachelor’s and a Master's degree from Queen’s University in 1918 and 1920, respectively. After completing his Masters, Hawley spent three years working in petroleum geology in Alberta, Ecuador, Burma and India. In 1926, he earned his PhD at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He stayed there for three years as an Assistant Professor.
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Fred B. Kniffen
1900 - 1993 (93 years)
Fred Bowerman Kniffen was an American geographer and distinguished professor in the Department of Geography and Anthropology at Louisiana State University for over 64 years. Kniffen had a background in anthropology, geography, and geology when he arrived at Louisiana State University in the late 1920s. While there, he made great strides in the Department of Geography and Anthropology that led to the development of new research areas, additional courses, and well trained graduate students. Kniffen stressed the importance of learning and understanding the history of geography, along with blending physical geography and anthropology with cultural geography.
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Edgar W. Woolard
1899 - 1978 (79 years)
Edgar William Woolard was an American meteorologist, mathematician and planetary scientist. He was born in El Paso, Texas and received his college education from the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. During World War I, Woolard served in the U.S. Army. In 1919, he was employed at the U.S. Weather Bureau as an assistant meteorologist, where he would remain until 1928. He resigned to join the faculty of George Washington University as a mathematics instructor. Woolard was granted his Ph.D. from the university with a thesis titled, On the Geometrical Theory of Halos, published in 1929.
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Myra Keen
1905 - 1986 (81 years)
Angeline Myra Keen was an American malacologist and invertebrate paleontologist. She was an expert on the evolution of marine mollusks. With a PhD in psychology. Keen went from being a volunteer, identifying shells at Stanford, and having no formal training in biology or geology, to being one of the world's foremost malacologists. She was called the "First Lady of Malacology".
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Erling Dorf
1905 - 1984 (79 years)
Erling Dorf was an American geologist. He was born July 19, 1905, and died in April 1984. He was hired in 1928 as a professor of geology at Princeton University. He retired from Princeton in 1974. He was a renowned paleobotanist working on the floras of the Late Cretaceous and Paleogene. He was married to Ruth Kemmerer Dorf. They had three sons and a daughter: Thomas Alfred Dorf , Norman Kemmerer Dorf , Robert "Bob" Erling Dorf and Molly Dorf Purrington .
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Julius Büdel
1903 - 1983 (80 years)
Julius Büdel was a German geomorphologist noted for his work on the influence of climate in shaping landscapes and landforms. In his work Büdel stressed the importance of inherited landforms in present-day landscapes and argued that many landforms are the result of a combination of processes, and not of a single process. Büdel estimated that 95% of mid-latitude landforms are relict. Büdel studied both cold-climate processes in Svalbard and "tropical" weathering processes in India to understand the origin of the relief of Central Europe, which he argued was a palimpsest of landforms formed at different times and under different climates.
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Siemon Muller
1900 - 1970 (70 years)
Siemon William Muller was an American paleontologist and geologist, known for his studies on Triassic paleontology and stratigraphy, and for his work on permafrost. Siemon Muller was born in Blagoveshchensk on May 9, 1900 . Siemon attended the Russian Naval Academy until the Russian Revolution overtook the nation, when he moved to Shanghai to work with an American company. He sailed to the United States in 1921, and enrolled at the University of Oregon, where he studied geology. He graduated in 1927, and married Vera Vilamovsky the next year. Muller earned his master's degree from Stanford Un...
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James Wordie
1889 - 1962 (73 years)
Sir James Mann Wordie CBE FRS FRSGS LLD was a Scottish polar explorer and geologist. Friends knew him as Jock Wordie. He was President of the Royal Geographical Society from 1951 to 1954. Early life and education Wordie was born at Partick, Glasgow, the son of Jane Catherine and John Wordie, owner of Wordie & Co., a major carrier and carting contractor, with multiple premises throughout Glasgow. He had a sister, Helen. The family lived at 4 Buckingham Terrace in the Hillhead district. The house, which still stands, is a mid-terraced 19th-century three-storey and basement house facing Great W...
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Howard Meyerhoff
1899 - 1982 (83 years)
Howard Augustus Meyerhoff was an American geologist who taught geology at Smith College from 1925 to 1949. He served as administrative secretary of the American Association for the Advancement of Science , as well as editor-in-chief of its journal, Science, from 1949 to 1953. He conducted research on the geology of Puerto Rico, which led to him publishing the book Geology of Porto Rico in 1933.
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Felix Andries Vening Meinesz
1887 - 1966 (79 years)
Felix Andries Vening Meinesz was a Dutch geophysicist and geodesist. He is known for his invention of a precise method for measuring gravity . Thanks to his invention, it became possible to measure gravity at sea, which led him to the discovery of gravity anomalies above the ocean floor. He later attributed these anomalies to continental drift. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society.
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Winfried Otto Schumann
1888 - 1974 (86 years)
Winfried Otto Schumann was a German physicist and electrical engineer who predicted the Schumann resonances, a series of low-frequency resonances caused by lightning discharges in the atmosphere. Biography Winfried Schumann was born in Tübingen, Germany, the son of a physical chemist. His early years were spent in Kassel and in Berndorf, a town near Vienna. He majored in electrical engineering at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. In 1912, he gained a doctorate with a thesis on high-voltage technology under the supervision of Engelbert Arnold. Prior to the First World War, he managed the ...
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George Louderback
1874 - 1957 (83 years)
George Davis Louderback was an American geologist, known for identifying and describing benitoite and joaquinite. Biography Louderback was born in San Francisco, and received an A.B. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1896, followed by a Ph.D. in 1899. He married Clara Augusta Henry on October 3, 1899.
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Alfred Woodford
1890 - 1990 (100 years)
Alfred Oswald Woodford was an American geologist. He was the founding director of the geology department at Pomona College, where he taught for four decades. He was nicknamed "Woody". Early life and education Woodford was born in Upland, California, on February 27, 1890, to a family of successful citrus farmers. He moved with his family to neighboring Claremont in 1909, and graduated from Pomona College with a degree in chemistry in 1913. He subsequently pursued graduate work in soil chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, and received his doctorate in 1921.
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Robert Wallace Webb
1909 - 1984 (75 years)
Robert Wallace Webb was a professor of geology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and during World War II was Coordinator of Veterans Affairs for the University of California system. After World War II, Santa Barbara State College became a branch of the University of California and he transferred there in 1948 where he was one of the original professors of earth science at the University of California, Santa Barbara .
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John Leighly
1895 - 1986 (91 years)
John Leighly was a 20th-century American geographer and professor.
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Alan Mara Bateman
1889 - 1971 (82 years)
Alan Mara Bateman was an economic geologist who worked on mining in North America and a professor at Yale University who also served as a long-standing editor of the journal Economic Geology. He also wrote several textbooks on mining including the Formation of Mineral Deposits.
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Joseph Barrell
1869 - 1919 (50 years)
Joseph Barrell was an American geologist who developed many ideas on the origins of the Earth, isostasy and ideas on the origins of sedimentary rocks. He suggested that they were produced by the action of rivers, winds, and ice , as well as by marine sedimentation. He also independently arrived at the theory of stoping as a mechanism for igneous intrusion. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1915.
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James B. Macelwane
1883 - 1956 (73 years)
James B. Macelwane, S.J. was a Jesuit Catholic priest and pioneering American seismologist. Biography Father Macelwane was the second of nine children born to Alexander Macelwane, a fisherman and farmer, and Catherine Agnes Carr.
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Noel Odell
1890 - 1987 (97 years)
Noel Ewart Odell FRSE FGS was an English geologist and mountaineer. In 1924 he was an oxygen officer on the Everest expedition in which George Mallory and Andrew Irvine famously perished during their summit attempt. Odell spent two weeks living above , and twice climbed to and higher, all without supplemental oxygen. In 1936 Noel Odell with Bill Tilman climbed Nanda Devi, at the time the highest mountain climbed.
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Konrad Johannes Karl Büttner
1903 - 1970 (67 years)
Konrad Johannes Karl Büttner, or Buettner was a German-American meteorologist, bioclimatologist and university professor. Life and times Büttner was born in Westendorf, in the province of Hannover, Germany and died in New Haven, Connecticut. He was a Protestant, married and had one child. His father was John Samuel Julius Büttner and his mother was Emilie Henriette Elisabeth Büttner née Kreuser.
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Harry E. Wheeler
1907 - 1987 (80 years)
Harry Eugene Wheeler was an American geologist and stratigrapher. Eric Cheney called him "the chief theoretical architect of sequence stratigraphy" Wheeler was a professor of geology at the University of Washington from 1948 until 1976.
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John Vernon Harrison
1892 - 1972 (80 years)
John Vernon Harrison FRSE FGS was a British structural geologist, explorer and cartographer. Life He was born to British parents in Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State on 16 March 1892. His father was John Frederick Harrison, a civil engineer. His family returned to Scotland in his early childhood, living at a flat at 37 Warrender Park Road in Marchmont in Edinburgh and he here attended George Watson's College. Moving to Glasgow around 1905 the family lived first at 32 Hamilton Park Terrace and then 34 Rowallan Gardens in Partick, a pleasant terraced house. In Glasgow he attended Allan Glen's School.
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Andrew O'Dell
1909 - 1966 (57 years)
Andrew Charles O'Dell FRSE FRGS FRSGS was a Scottish geographer and antiquarian. A keen railway enthusiast he left a large collection of railway memorabilia to Aberdeen University, known as the O'Dell Collection. He was joint founder of the Institute of British Geographers in 1933.
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Arthur T. Ippen
1907 - 1974 (67 years)
Arthur Thomas Ippen was a noted hydrologist and engineer and was an Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Born to German parents, he attended high school and college in Aachen, Germany graduating with a degree in Civil Engineering in 1931. He then took an Institute of International Education scholarship to study at the University of Iowa but after his doctoral advisor, Floyd Nagler, died suddenly, Ippen transferred to Caltech to complete his Ph.D. His doctoral work, supervised by Theodore von Kármán and Robert T. Knapp, explored sediment transport and open-channel ...
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Julia Anna Gardner
1882 - 1960 (78 years)
Julia Anna Gardner , was an American geologist who worked for the United States Geological Survey for 32 years, was known worldwide for her work in stratigraphy and mollusc paleontology. Early life and education Gardner was born in Chamberlain, South Dakota, the only child of Charles Henry and Julia Gardner. She was raised in South Dakota but completed high school in North Adams, Massachusetts. At the very young age of 4 months, Julia's father died. Julia and her mother moved back to Dixon in 1895, and then by 1898, they moved to North Adams, Mass; here, Julia completed her high school educ...
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Walter George Woolnough
1876 - 1958 (82 years)
Walter George Woolnough was an Australian geologist. Woolnough was born in Brushgrove, Grafton, New South Wales, and attended Sydney Boys High School , Newington College and the University of Sydney. In 1897, as an undergraduate, he accompanied Edgeworth David's expedition to Funafuti Atoll, where Charles Darwin's theory of the formation of coral reefs was tested.
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William Quarrier Kennedy
1903 - 1979 (76 years)
William Quarrier Kennedy FRS FRSE FGS was a Scottish geologist. He specialised in the geology of Scotland and Africa. In authorship he is usually referred to as W. Q. Kennedy. Early life and education Kennedy was born on 30 November 1903 at the William Quarrier School for Orphans in Bridge of Weir, Renfrewshire, where his father, John Gordon Kennedy, was headmaster. He was named after the school's founder. He was educated at his father's school alongside the orphans then at Glasgow High School. He studied agriculture at Glasgow University, graduating BSc in 1926, then did a further degree in geology, graduating BSc in 1927.
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Neville George
1904 - 1980 (76 years)
Thomas Neville George FRS FRSE LLD was a Welsh geologist. He was president of the Geological Society of London. Life Thomas Neville George was born in the Morriston district of Swansea, the son of Thomas Rupert George, a schoolmaster and ardent socialist, and his wife, Elizabeth Evans, also a teacher. He was educated at Swansea Municipal Secondary School and Swansea Grammar School. He won a place at the University of Wales graduating BSc in 1924 and MSc in 1926. He then went to Cambridge University to study at postgraduate level gaining a doctorate in 1928.
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Percy Edgar Brown
1885 - 1937 (52 years)
Percy Edgar Brown was a soil scientist at Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa. Brown is perhaps best known for the book, Soils of Iowa, which was published in 1936. The classic map, "Landform Regions of Iowa," was originally published in this text.
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Percy George Hamnall Boswell
1886 - 1960 (74 years)
Professor Percy George Hamnall Boswell was a British geologist. Biography Boswell was born in Woodbridge, Suffolk, the son of printer George James Boswell of Ipswich and Mary Elizabeth Marshall He developed an early interest in geology while at school in Ipswich through fossil collecting and visiting local museums. As a teen he founded the Ipswich and District Field Club, which led to his election to as a fellow of the Geological Society of London in 1907. However, possibly as a result of his explorations, he developed choroiditis in both his eyes at 18 and nearly went blind; he never fully...
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Jacob Bjerknes
1897 - 1975 (78 years)
Jacob Aall Bonnevie Bjerknes was a meteorologist. He is known for his key paper in which he pointed the dynamics of the polar front, mechanism for north-south heat transport and for which he was also awarded a doctorate from the University of Oslo.
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Harry George Champion
1891 - 1979 (88 years)
Sir Harry George Champion CIE was a Geographer and forest officer in British India who created a classification of the forest types of India and Burma. Champion was the son of British entomologist George Charles Champion. He studied at New College, Oxford, and obtained a degree in chemistry in 1912 and then studied botany and forestry under William Schlich. He joined the Indian Forest Service in 1915 and became a silviculturist at the Forest Research Institute at Dehradun staying there until 1936 before becoming a Conservator in the United Provinces. He left India in 1939 and became a Professor of Forestry at Oxford, succeeding Robert Scott Troup.
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Leonard Radinsky
1937 - 1985 (48 years)
Leonard Burton Radinsky was an American paleontologist and expert in fossil odd-toed ungulates and their relatives. He was professor at the University of Chicago from 1967 until his death, serving as chairman of the Department of Anatomy from 1978 to 1983. Born in Staten Island, New York, he earned a bachelor's degree from Cornell University and his master's and doctorate degrees from Yale University. His works include "Origin and early evolution of North American Tapiroidea", "The fossil record of primate brain evolution", and the textbook The Evolution of Vertebrate Design.
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Edward Ullman
1912 - 1976 (64 years)
Edward Louis Ullman , son of classical scholar Berthold Ullman, was trained as a geographer at University of Chicago where he was influenced by the urban and economic emphasis in social science. He was an urban geographer, transportation researcher and regional development specialist and became the champion of applied geography. His study and dissertation on the economic aspects of Mobile, Ullman began a career of transit studies. He was the Office of Strategic Services transportation specialist in World War II.
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Reinout Willem van Bemmelen
1904 - 1983 (79 years)
Reinout Willem van Bemmelen, also known as Rein van Bemmelen, was a Dutch geologist whose interests were structural geology, economic geology and volcanology. He is known for his work on these subjects and the geology of Indonesia.
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Henry Hurd Swinnerton
1875 - 1966 (91 years)
Henry Hurd Swinnerton was a British geologist. He was professor of geology at University College Nottingham from 1910 to 1946. Swinnerton was educated at the Royal College of Science, and earned a doctorate in zoology from the University of London in July 1902.
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Hans Cloos
1885 - 1951 (66 years)
Hans Cloos was a prominent German structural geologist. Born in Magdeburg, Germany, Hans Cloos earned his doctorate at Freiburg in 1910, then worked in Indonesia and Namibia up until the start of First World War. During the war his geological skills were put to use along the western front.
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Victor P. Starr
1909 - 1976 (67 years)
Victor Paul Starr was an American meteorologist and professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1947 to 1974. For his contributions to atmospheric science, he received the Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal in 1961.
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Preston E. James
1899 - 1986 (87 years)
Preston Everett James was an American geographer. He was president of the American Association of Geographers from 1951 to 1952, and gave the annual presidential address at their 1966 banquet. James' work had a distinct focus on the geography of Latin America, and as such, the Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers' Preston E. James Eminent Latin Americanist Career Award is named for him.
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Randy Read
1957 - 1983 (26 years)
Randy John Read is a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow and professor of protein crystallography at the University of Cambridge. Education Read was educated at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada where he was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in 1979 followed by a PhD in 1986 for X-ray crystallography of serine proteases and their protein inhibitors supervised by Michael N. G. James.
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C. W. Thornthwaite
1899 - 1963 (64 years)
Charles Warren Thornthwaite was an American geographer and climatologist. He is best known for devising the Thornthwaite climate classification, a climate classification system modified in 1948 that is still in use worldwide, and also for his detailed water budget computations of potential evapotranspiration.
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Percy Viosca
1892 - 1961 (69 years)
Percy Viosca Jr. was a freshwater and marine biologist who specialized in the fauna of Louisiana and in the aquaculture of sportfish. He identified four species of native Louisiana iris and experimented extensively with iris breeding, much like his contemporary Caroline Dormon. He was awarded bachelor's and master's degrees in science at Tulane University, where he was also appointed lecturer.
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E. J. Bowen
1898 - 1980 (82 years)
Edmund John Bowen FRS was a British physical chemist. Early life and wartime career E. J. Bowen was the eldest of four born to Edmund Riley Bowen and Lilias Bowen in 1898 in Worcester, England. He attended the Royal Grammar School Worcester.
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Raymond Cecil Moore
1892 - 1974 (82 years)
Raymond Cecil Moore was an Americann geologist and paleontologist. He is known for his work on Paleozoic crinoids, bryozoans, and corals. Moore was a member of US Geological Survey from 1913 until 1949. In 1919 he became professor at the University of Kansas . In 1953 Professor Moore organized the launch and became the first editor of the still ongoing multi-volume work Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology. Contributors to the Treatise have included the world's specialists in the field. He served as president of the Geological Society of America in 1958. In 1970 he was awarded the Mary Clar...
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Hans Jenny
1899 - 1992 (93 years)
Hans Jenny was a Swiss-born soil scientist and expert on pedology , particularly the processes of soil formation. He served as 1949 President of the Soil Science Society of America. Overview Hans Jenny was born in Basel, Switzerland. He earned a diploma in agriculture from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in 1922, and a D. Sc. degree in 1927 for a thesis on ion exchange reactions.
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Llewellyn Ivor Price
1905 - 1980 (75 years)
Llewellyn Ivor Price was one of the first Brazilian paleontologists. His work contributed not only to the development of Brazilian but also to global paleontology. He collected Staurikosaurus in 1936, the first dinosaur discovered in Brazil.
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Kirk Bryan
1888 - 1950 (62 years)
Kirk Bryan was an American geologist on the faculty of Harvard University from 1925 until his death in 1950. The son of R.W.D. Bryan , Bryan received his undergraduate education at the University of New Mexico and later obtained a Ph.D. from Yale University.
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Francis Parker Shepard
1897 - 1985 (88 years)
Francis Parker Shepard was an American sedimentologist most associated with his studies of submarine canyons and seafloor currents around continental shelves and slopes. Early life and education Shepard was born to a moderately wealthy family in Marbleheard, Massachusetts. He studied geology under R. A. Daly at Harvard University, a period that was interrupted by service in the US Navy during the First World War. After meeting his future wife, Elizabeth Buchner, he chose to study for his doctorate at the University of Chicago, close to her Milwaukee home. There he worked alongside J. Harlan Bretz, Rollin D.
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Arthur Holmes
1890 - 1965 (75 years)
Arthur Holmes was an English geologist who made two major contributions to the understanding of geology. He pioneered the use of radiometric dating of minerals, and was the first earth scientist to grasp the mechanical and thermal implications of mantle convection, which led eventually to the acceptance of plate tectonics.
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