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The Most Famous

GEOLOGISTS from United States

This page contains a list of the greatest American Geologists. The pantheon dataset contains 59 Geologists, 13 of which were born in United States. This makes United States the birth place of the 2nd most number of Geologists.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary American Geologists of all time. This list of famous American Geologists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of American Geologists.

1. Charles Francis Richter (1900 - 1985)

With an HPI of 68.31, Charles Francis Richter is the most famous American Geologist. His biography has been translated into 59 different languages on wikipedia.

Charles Francis Richter (; April 26, 1900 – September 30, 1985) was an American seismologist and physicist. He is the namesake and one of the creators of the Richter magnitude scale, which, until the development of the moment magnitude scale in 1979, was widely used to quantify 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.

2. Harry Hammond Hess (1906 - 1969)

With an HPI of 51.99, Harry Hammond Hess is the 2nd most famous American Geologist. His biography has been translated into 20 different languages.

Harry Hammond Hess (May 24, 1906 – August 25, 1969) 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.

3. Barnum Brown (1873 - 1963)

With an HPI of 48.98, Barnum Brown is the 3rd most famous American Geologist. His biography has been translated into 28 different languages.

Barnum Brown (February 12, 1873 – February 5, 1963), commonly referred to as Mr. Bones, was an American paleontologist. Named after the circus showman P. T. Barnum, he discovered the first documented remains of Tyrannosaurus during a career that made him one of the most famous fossil hunters working from the late Victorian era into the early 20th century.

4. Niles Eldredge (1943 - )

With an HPI of 48.42, Niles Eldredge is the 4th most famous American Geologist. His biography has been translated into 20 different languages.

Niles Eldredge (; born August 25, 1943) is an American biologist and paleontologist, who, along with Stephen Jay Gould, proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium in 1972.

5. M. King Hubbert (1903 - 1989)

With an HPI of 46.64, M. King Hubbert is the 5th most famous American Geologist. His biography has been translated into 18 different languages.

Marion King Hubbert (October 5, 1903 – October 11, 1989) was an American geologist and geophysicist. He worked at the Shell research lab in Houston, Texas. He made several important contributions to geology, geophysics, and petroleum geology, most notably the Hubbert curve and Hubbert peak theory (a basic component of peak oil), with important political ramifications. He was often referred to as "M. King Hubbert" or "King Hubbert".

6. James Hall (1811 - 1898)

With an HPI of 46.09, James Hall is the 6th most famous American Geologist. His biography has been translated into 18 different languages.

James Hall Jr. (September 12, 1811 – August 7, 1898) was an American geologist and paleontologist. He was a noted authority on stratigraphy and had an influential role in the development of paleontology in the United States.

7. David A. Johnston (1949 - 1980)

With an HPI of 44.59, David A. Johnston is the 7th most famous American Geologist. His biography has been translated into 15 different languages.

David Alexander Johnston (December 18, 1949 – May 18, 1980) was an American United States Geological Survey (USGS) volcanologist who was killed by the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in the U.S. state of Washington. A principal scientist on the USGS monitoring team, Johnston was killed in the eruption while manning an observation post six miles (10 km) away on the morning of May 18, 1980. He was the first to report the eruption, transmitting "Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!" before he was swept away by a lateral blast; despite a thorough search, Johnston's body was never found, but state highway workers discovered remnants of his USGS trailer in 1993.Johnston's career took him across the United States, where he studied the Augustine Volcano in Alaska, the San Juan volcanic field in Colorado, and long-extinct volcanoes in Michigan. Johnston was a meticulous and talented scientist, known for his analyses of volcanic gases and their relationship to eruptions. This, along with his enthusiasm and positive attitude, made him liked and respected by many co-workers. After his death, other scientists lauded his character, both verbally and in dedications and letters. Johnston felt scientists must do what is necessary, including taking risks, to help protect the public from natural disasters. His work, and that of fellow USGS scientists, convinced authorities to close Mount St. Helens to the public before the 1980 eruption. They maintained the closure despite heavy pressure to re-open the area; their work saved thousands of lives. His story became intertwined with the popular image of volcanic eruptions and their threat to society, and a part of volcanology's history. To date, Johnston, along with his mentee Harry Glicken, is one of two American volcanologists known to have died in a volcanic eruption. Following his death, Johnston was commemorated in several ways, including a memorial fund established in his name at the University of Washington to fund graduate-level research. Two volcano observatories were established and named after him: one in Vancouver, Washington, and another on the ridge where he died. Johnston's life and death are featured in several documentaries, films, docudramas and books. A biography of his life, A Hero on Mount St. Helens: The Life and Legacy of David A. Johnston, was published 2019.

8. Daniel Barringer (1860 - 1929)

With an HPI of 44.41, Daniel Barringer is the 8th most famous American Geologist. His biography has been translated into 16 different languages.

Daniel Barringer (May 25, 1860 – November 30, 1929) was a geologist best known as the first person to prove the existence of an impact crater on the Earth, Meteor Crater in Arizona. The site has been renamed the Barringer Crater in his honor, which is the preferred name used in the scientific community. A small lunar crater on the far side of the Moon is also named after him.

9. Walter Alvarez (1940 - )

With an HPI of 44.35, Walter Alvarez is the 9th most famous American Geologist. His biography has been translated into 20 different languages.

Walter Alvarez (born October 3, 1940) is a professor in the Earth and Planetary Science department at the University of California, Berkeley. He and his father, Nobel Prize–winning physicist Luis Alvarez, developed the theory that dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid impact.

10. Hugo Benioff (1899 - 1968)

With an HPI of 43.80, Hugo Benioff is the 10th most famous American Geologist. His biography has been translated into 17 different languages.

Victor Hugo Benioff (September 14, 1899 – February 29, 1968) was an American seismologist and a professor at the California Institute of Technology. He is best remembered for his work in charting the location of deep earthquakes in the Pacific Ocean. Benioff was born in Los Angeles. His father was a Jewish immigrant from Kyiv in the Russian Empire and his mother a Lutheran from Sweden. After graduating from Pomona College in 1921, Benioff began his career with the idea of being an astronomer and worked for a time at Mount Wilson Observatory, but when he found that astronomers work at night and sleep in the daytime, he quickly switched to seismology. He joined the Seismological Laboratory in 1924 and received his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1935. Benioff is noted as a pioneer in the design of earthquake instruments. One of his first instruments, created in 1932, was the Benioff seismograph, which senses the movement of the earth – these instruments are now used in every country in the world. Equally famous is the Benioff strain instrument, which records the stretching of the Earth's surface. One of his most recent accomplishments was a refined version of the old Benioff seismometer which has given seismologists more knowledge about the cause of very deep earthquakes. Benioff noticed that earthquake sources get deeper under the overriding tectonic plate proceeding away from the trench at a subduction zone. He realized that this inclined array of earthquake sources indicate the position of the portion of the plate that has already been subducted. Thus, that pattern of earthquakes is known as a Wadati–Benioff zone. From the early 1930s, Benioff also worked on creating electric musical instruments; in particular a piano, violin and cello. He continued developing these instruments for the rest of his life, working for over two decades with pianist Rosalyn Tureck and also, towards the end of his life with the Baldwin Piano Company. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1958. Also in the same year he was elected as President of Seismological Society of America (1958).

People

Pantheon has 13 people classified as geologists born between 1811 and 1965. Of these 13, 3 (23.08%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living geologists include Niles Eldredge, Walter Alvarez, and Michael E. Mann. The most famous deceased geologists include Charles Francis Richter, Harry Hammond Hess, and Barnum Brown. As of April 2022, 2 new geologists have been added to Pantheon including David A. Johnston and Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin.