Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Earth Sciences,

#401

Natalia Zubarevich

#25357

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Natalya Vasilyevna Zubarevich is a Russian economist-geographer specializing on the socio-economic development of the regions. She has been the professor of the Department of Economic And Social Geography of Russia of the Moscow State University since 2005.

#402

David B. Weishampel

#9887

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Professor David Bruce Weishampel is an American palaeontologist in the Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Weishampel received his Ph.D. in Geology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1981. His research focuses include dinosaur systematics, European dinosaurs of the Late Cretaceous, jaw mechanics and herbivory, cladistics and heterochrony and the history of evolutionary biology. Weishampel's best known published work is The Dinosauria University of California Press; 2nd edition . He consulted for Jurassic Park and is a good friend of Steven Spielberg.

#403

Peter S. Eagleson

#50826

Overall Influence

1928 - 2021 (93 years)

Peter S. Eagleson was an American hydrologist, author of Dynamic Hydrology and Ecohydrology: Darwinian Expression of Vegetation Form and Function. He taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1952 and was a Professor Emeritus. He held professional positions including member of the National Academy of Engineering and President of the American Geophysical Union from 1986-1988. He won many awards including the Stockholm International Water Institute's World Water Prize in 1997.

#404

Philippe Janvier

#31819

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Philippe Janvier is a French paleontologist, specialising in Palaeozoic vertebrates, who currently works at the Museum National de l’Histoire Naturelle in Paris. He has written several books and scientific papers on Palaeozoic vertebrates and contributed to the Tree of Life phylogeny project. He has led the largest paleontology research group in France , located in Paris. Janvier received the award of the Grand prix scientifique de la Fondation Simone et Cino del Duca on June 11, 2008, for his work. He was a founding member of the Société Française de Systématique. He is currently Associate E...

#405

Stewart Brand

#392

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Stewart Brand is an American project developer and writer, best known as the co-founder and editor of the Whole Earth Catalog. He has founded a number of organizations, including the WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation. He is the author of several books, most recently Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto.

#406

Carle M. Pieters

Carle M. Pieters

#68559

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Carle McGetchin Pieters is an American planetary scientist. Pieters has published more than 150 research articles in peer-reviewed journals and was co-author of the book Remote Geochemical Analyses: Elemental and Mineralogical Composition along with Peter Englert. Her general research efforts include planetary exploration and evolution of planetary surfaces with an emphasis on remote compositional analyses.

#407

Paul E. Olsen

#42066

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Paul E. Olsen is an American paleontologist and author and co-author of a large number of technical papers. Biography Growing up as a teenager in Livingston, New Jersey, he was instrumental in Riker Hill Fossil Site being named a National Natural Landmark as a teenager by sending President Richard Nixon a dinosaur footprint cast from the site. He received a M. Phil. and a Ph.D. in Biology at Yale University in 1984. His thesis was on the Newark Supergroup.

#408

Anthony Hallam

#59221

Overall Influence

1933 - 2017 (84 years)

Anthony Hallam, aka Tony Hallam, was a British geologist, palaeontologist and writer. His research interests concentrated on the Jurassic Period, with particular reference to stratigraphy, sea level changes and palaeontology. He was also interested in mass extinctions, especially the end Triassic event.

#409

Cole Harris

#43489

Overall Influence

1936 - 2022 (86 years)

Richard Colebrook Harris , better known as Cole Harris, was a Canadian geographer and university professor. Education Harris received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of British Columbia, a Master of Science degree , and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

#410

James P. Kennett

#81386

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

James P. Kennett is an American paleoceanographer. Kennet has a PhD from Victoria University of Wellington, with a thesis on the Kapitean Stage in New Zealand. In 1986, Kennett became the founding editor of Paleoceanography, and in May 2000, he was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is also a cofounder and member of the Comet Research Group . He is widely known for his contributions to the controversial and disputed Younger Dryas impact hypothesis which asserts that the Clovis culture was destroyed by a shower of comets. His most widely disseminated paper was a collabo...

#411

Mark Meier

#74590

Overall Influence

1925 - 2012 (87 years)

Mark F. Meier was an American glaciologist who was considered a leading expert on the study of rising sea levels due to the melting of glaciers. Meier was the Director of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research from 1985 to 1994 and remained the institute's director emeritus until his death in 2012. He was also a professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.

#412

Phil Jones

#28831

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Philip Douglas Jones is a former director of the Climatic Research Unit and a professor in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia from 1998, having begun his career at the unit in 1976. He retired from these positions at the end of 2016, and was replaced as CRU director by Tim Osborn. Jones then took up a position as a Professorial Fellow at the UEA from January 2017.

#413

John J. Clague

#60928

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

John Joseph Clague PhD FRSC OC is a Canadian authority in Quaternary and environmental earth sciences. He is a professor of earth sciences at Simon Fraser University and an emeritus scientist of the Geological Survey of Canada.

#414

Neil Adger

#53430

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

William Neil Adger is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Exeter. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh , Wye College, University of London and the University of East Anglia . He was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2001 and is a Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Scientist. He has been a Co-ordinating Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

#415

Rob Kitchin

#12539

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Robert Michael Kitchin is an Irish geographer and academic. Since 2005, he has been Professor of Human Geography at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. Education and career Kitchin graduated from Lancaster University in 1991 with a geography BSc. The following year, he completed an MSc in geographical information systems at the University of Leicester and in 1995 was awarded a PhD by the University of Wales, Swansea, for his thesis "Issues of validity and integrity in cognitive mapping research: investigating configurational knowledge". From 1995 to 1996, he was a lecturer at Swansea, and was then a lecturer at Queen's University Belfast .

#416

Harold Wellman

#67982

Overall Influence

1909 - 1999 (90 years)

Harold William Wellman was an English-born New Zealand geologist known for his work on plate tectonics. He is notable for his discovery of South Island's Alpine Fault. Wellman became a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 1954, and was awarded the Hector Memorial Medal and Prize in 1957 and the McKay Hammer Award in 1959.

#417

Masayuki Kikuchi

#49140

Overall Influence

1948 - 2003 (55 years)

Masayuki Kikuchi was a Japanese seismologist. He was famous for real-time seismology. Education and career Bachelor of Science , Master of Science , and Doctor of Science , in Geophysics, University of Tokyo.

#418

Susan Hough

#36216

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Susan Elizabeth Hough is a seismologist at the United States Geological Survey in Pasadena, California, and scientist in charge of the office. She has served as an editor and contributor for many journals and is a contributing editor to Geotimes Magazine. She is the author of five books, including Earthshaking Science .

#419

Julia Slingo

#30484

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

#420

Fernando Flávio Marques de Almeida

Fernando Flávio Marques de Almeida

#52841

Overall Influence

1916 - 2013 (97 years)

Fernando Flávio Marques de Almeida was a Brazilian geologist considered to be one of the top Brazilians concerned with the study. Almeida did the central works to understand the South American geology. He is the son of the first Brazilian generation of geologists who did the pioneering papers of the continent's geology. Marques de Almeida is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences.

#421

Susanna Hecht

#13395

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Susanna B. Hecht is an American geographer, professor of Urban Planning at UCLA and professor of international history at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. Life and work Her early work on the deforestation of the Amazon led to the founding of the subfield of political ecology. This subfield of geography embraces sociology, economics, history, literature, ecology, environmental studies and a wide variety of other fields in an effort to paint a more intricate picture of a particular geographic region and the influence it has on the world around it as well as how the world impacts the region.

#422

Eugene Merle Shoemaker

Eugene Merle Shoemaker

#14756

Overall Influence

1928 - 1997 (69 years)

Eugene Merle Shoemaker was an American geologist. He co-discovered Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 with his wife Carolyn S. Shoemaker and David H. Levy. This comet hit Jupiter in July 1994: the impact was televised around the world. Shoemaker also studied terrestrial craters, such as Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona, and along with Edward Chao provided the first conclusive evidence of its origin as an impact crater. He was also the first director of the United States Geological Survey's Astrogeology Research Program.

#423

John Michael Wallace

#83959

Overall Influence

#424

Christian Koeberl

Christian Koeberl

#63194

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Christian Köberl is a professor of impact research and planetary geology at the University of Vienna, Austria. From June 2010 to May 2020 he was director general of the Natural History Museum in Vienna. He is best known for his research on meteorite impact craters.

#425

Peter Francis

#66420

Overall Influence

1944 - 1999 (55 years)

Peter William Francis was a British volcanologist specialising in the study of active volcanoes on both the Earth and other planets in the Solar System. He was also renowned for his ability as a communicator, reaching the general public in a series of popular and acclaimed books on his subject.

#426

Bertram Eugene Warren

#77502

Overall Influence

1902 - 1991 (89 years)

Bertram Eugene Warren was an American crystallographer. His studies of X-rays provided much knowledge and understanding of both crystalline and non-crystalline materials. He also worked on changing amorphous solids to a crystalline state.

#427

Claire Craig

#66661

Overall Influence

Claire Harvey Craig is a British geophysicist, civil servant and science communicator. Since 2019, she has been Provost of The Queen's College, Oxford. Education Craig was educated at Redland High School for Girls and Newnham College, Cambridge, where she gained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Natural Sciences in 1982. In 1985, she was awarded a PhD also from the University of Cambridge for research on numerical modelling of mantle convection and the geoid.

#428

Norman F. Ness

#66015

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (91 years)

Norman Frederick Ness is an American geophysicist. He worked at the University of California, Los Angeles. From 1966 to 1986 he was director of the Laboratory of Extraterrestrial Physics at the Goddard Space Flight Center.

#429

Peter Newman

#14874

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Peter William Geoffrey Newman is an environmental scientist, author and educator based in Perth, Western Australia. He is currently Professor of Sustainability at Curtin University. He is best known for his contributions to the development of Perth's electrified metropolitan rail network through both activist and official consulting roles since the 1980s.

#430

Maria Bianca Cita

#68294

Overall Influence

1924 - Present (100 years)

Maria Bianca Cita is an Italian geologist and paleontologist. She was born in Milan and graduated in geology from the University of Milan in 1946. She lectured there on micropaleontology, physical geography, engineering geology, geology and stratigraphy. In 1973, she became a full professor, teaching in turn micropaleontology, geology and marine geology. From 1982 to 1988, she was head of the earth sciences department at the University of Milan.

#431

Peter Thorne

#31271

Overall Influence

Peter William Thorne is a climatologist and professor of physical geography in the Department of Geography, Maynooth University. He graduated with a BSc in Environmental Sciences from the University of East Anglia in 1998, and a PhD from the School of Environmental Sciences in 2001. He previously worked at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research and the National Climatic Data Center, and he was a senior scientist at the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center, Bergen, Norway. He is the chair of the International Surface Temperature Initiative which consists of an interdisc...

#432

Paul F. Hoffman

#53404

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Paul Felix Hoffman, FRSC, OC is a Canadian geologist and Sturgis Hooper Professor Emeritus of Geology at Harvard University. He specializes in the Precambrian era and is widely known for his research on Snowball Earth glaciation in the Neoproterozoic era particularly through his research on sedimentary rocks of Namibia.

#433

Gerald North

#47945

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Gerald R. North is Distinguished Professor and Holder of the Harold J. Haynes Endowed Chair in Geosciences at Texas A&M University, and previous Head of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences. His interests include climate change using simplified climate models.

#434

Peter Ward

#15489

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Peter Douglas Ward is an American paleontologist and professor at the University of Washington, Seattle, and Sprigg Institute of Geobiology at the University of Adelaide. He has written numerous popular science works for a general audience and is also an adviser to the Microbes Mind Forum. In 2000, along with his co-author Donald E. Brownlee, he co-originated the term Rare Earth and developed the Medea hypothesis alleging that multicellular life is ultimately self-destructive.

#435

David Suzuki

#1902

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

David Takayoshi Suzuki is a Canadian academic, science broadcaster, and environmental activist. Suzuki earned a PhD in zoology from the University of Chicago in 1961, and was a professor in the genetics department at the University of British Columbia from 1963 until his retirement in 2001. Since the mid-1970s, Suzuki has been known for his television and radio series, documentaries and books about nature and the environment. He is best known as host and narrator of the popular and long-running CBC Television science program The Nature of Things, seen in over 40 countries. He is also well kn...

#436

Barbara Romanowicz

Barbara Romanowicz

#59432

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Barbara A. Romanowicz is a French geophysicist and an expert on imaging the Earth's interior. Early life Romanowicz was born in Suresnes, France. Barbara Romanowicz is the daughter of Kazimierz Romanowicz and Zofia Romanowiczowa. The first years of Barbara's life were an inspiration for Zofia Romanowiczowa's debut novel entitled Baśka and Barbara.

#437

Cliff Mass

#59282

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Clifford F. Mass is an American professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington. His research focuses on numerical weather modeling and prediction, the role of topography in the evolution of weather systems, regional climate modeling, and the weather of the Pacific Northwest. He is a fellow of the American Meteorological Society, past-president of the Puget Sound American Meteorological Society chapter, and past chair of the College of the Environment College Council.

#438

S. George Philander

#75967

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Samuel George Harker Philander is a climate scientist, known for his work on atmospheric circulation and oceanic currents, particularly El Niño. He is the Knox Taylor Professor emeritus of Geosciences at Princeton University.

#439

Donald Canfield

#56370

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Donald Eugene Canfield is a geochemist and Professor of Ecology at the University of Southern Denmark known for his work on the evolution of Earth's atmosphere and oceans. The Canfield ocean, a sulfidic partially oxic ocean existing during the middle of the Proterozoic eon, is named after him.

#440

Craig D. Idso

#59398

Overall Influence

Craig D. Idso is the founder, president and current chairman of the board of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, a group which receives funding from ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy and which promotes climate change denial. He is the brother of Keith E. Idso and son of Sherwood B. Idso.

#441

Timothy Osborn

#40731

Overall Influence

Timothy John Osborn is a climatologist and Professor of Climate Science at the University of East Anglia. In January 2017 he replaced Phil Jones as the Research Director of the Climatic Research Unit.

#442

John Michael Wallace

#56047

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

John Michael Wallace , is a professor of Atmospheric Sciencess at the University of Washington, as well as the former director of the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean —a joint research venture between the University of Washington and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration .

#443

Brent N. Holben

#85507

Overall Influence

#444

James N. Brune

#85578

Overall Influence

#445

Tim Burt

#58303

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Timothy Peter Burt is a British geographer, academic, and academic administrator. He was Master of Hatfield College, Durham and Professor of Geography at the University of Durham between 1996 and 2017. He had previously taught at Huddersfield Polytechnic, the University of Oxford, and Keble College, Oxford.

#446

Lars Håkanson

#85657

Overall Influence

#447

Kayla Iacovino

#72180

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (123 years)

Kayla Iacovino is an American volcanologist, noted for her widespread fieldwork and experimental petrology. She was the first woman to do her field work in North Korea and has international experience and recognition. Originally from Arizona in the United States, she has worked in countries including Chile, North Korea, China, Costa Rica, Antarctica, Italy, Japan and Ethiopia.

#448

George R. Rossman

#67457

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

George R. Rossman is an American mineralogist and the Professor of Mineralogy at the California Institute of Technology. Early life Rossman was born in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, but soon moved to Eau Claire. His father owned a dental laboratory.

#449

Linda Mearns

#60419

Overall Influence

Linda Opal Mearns is a geographer and climate scientist specializing in climate change assessment science. Mearns is a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research . Mearns is the director of NCAR's Weather and Climate Impacts Assessment Science Program and head of the Regional Integrated Sciences Collective . Mearns is a lead principal investigator for the North American Regional Climate Change Program .

#450

Saul B. Cohen

#52790

Overall Influence

1925 - 2021 (96 years)

Saul Bernard Cohen was an American human geographer. Cohen graduated from Harvard University just before the faculty closed its Department of Geography . He was President Emeritus of the Queens College and was Professor of Geography at the Hunter College in New York and Clark University In Massachusetts.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions