Researchers in geology, geophysics, geochemistry, and hydrology

Igor Shiklomanov

Igor Shiklomanov, born Igor Alekseevich Shiklomanov, was a Russian hydrologist who directed the State Hydrological Institute in St Petersburg from 1981 until his death in 2010.

Ikuo Kushiro

Ikuo Kushiro (久城育夫, born 1934) is a Japanese experimental petrologist whose high-pressure experiments established how mantle peridotite melts to form basalt and andesite magmas.

Oct 15, 2026

Inge Lehmann

Inge Lehmann was a Danish seismologist who in 1936 discovered that the Earth has a distinct inner core, and headed seismology at the Danish Geodetic Institute.

Ingrid Kogel-Knabner, also written Ingrid Kögel-Knabner, is a German soil scientist and professor emeritus at the Technical University of Munich, elected to the US National Academy of Engineering in 2025.

Irene Fischer

Irene Fischer was an Austrian-born American geodesist who fled Vienna in 1939, led the Army Map Service geoid branch, and created the Fischer 1960 ellipsoid used by NASA.

Isaiah Bowman

Isaiah Bowman (1878–1950) was a Canadian-American geographer, director of the American Geographical Society from 1915 to 1935 and fifth president of Johns Hopkins University from 1935 to 1948.

Ivan Yefremov (Иван Антонович Ефремов)

Ivan Yefremov (Иван Ефремов), also known as Ivan Antonovich Yefremov, was a Soviet paleontologist and science fiction writer, founder of taphonomy and author of Andromeda Nebula.

J Harlen Bretz

J Harlen Bretz (1882–1981) was an American geologist who showed in the 1920s that the Channeled Scabland of eastern Washington was carved by cataclysmic floods.

J. David Lowell

J. David Lowell (James David Lowell; 1928–2020) was an American economic geologist from Tucson, Arizona, credited with more copper discoveries than anyone, including La Escondida in Chile.

J. Tuzo Wilson

J. Tuzo Wilson (1908–1993) was a Canadian geophysicist and geologist at the University of Toronto who proposed hot spots, named transform faults, and inspired the Wilson Cycle of ocean opening and closing.

J. William Schopf

J. William Schopf is a paleobiologist at UCLA who studies Precambrian life and is known for his claim to have found the oldest cellular fossils, in 3,465-million-year-old rocks of Western Australia.

J.W. de Leeuw

J.W. de Leeuw, born Jan Willem de Leeuw, is a Dutch organic geochemist known for work on organic sulfur compounds as recorders of ancient marine environments.

Sep 20, 2026

Jaap S. Sinninghe Damsté

Jaap S. Sinninghe Damsté, born 1959 in Baarn, is a Dutch organic geochemist at NIOZ and Utrecht University, known for the TEX86 paleothermometer and the 2004 Spinoza Prize.

Jack Horner (paleontologist)

Jack Horner, born John R. Horner, is an American paleontologist who discovered the Maiasaura nesting grounds at Egg Mountain, Montana, and was the scientific adviser to the Jurassic Park films.

Jack Oliver (seismologist)

Jack Oliver, born John Ertle Oliver (1923–2011), was an American seismologist at Columbia and Cornell whose earthquake evidence helped establish plate tectonics, and who pioneered deep seismic imaging of the continents.

Jakob Sederholm

Jakob Johannes Sederholm (1863–1934) was a Finnish geologist who directed the Geological Commission of Finland and, through his 1907 monograph Om granit och gnejs, founded the study of migmatites.

James B. Macelwane

James B. Macelwane (1883–1956) was an American seismologist and Jesuit priest who established the first geophysics department in the western hemisphere at Saint Louis University in 1925.

James Burleigh Thompson

James Burleigh Thompson (1921–2011) was an American metamorphic petrologist and mineralogist at Harvard University who applied chemical thermodynamics to rocks and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1967.

James D. Byerlee

James D. Byerlee is an experimental rock-mechanics geophysicist at the United States Geological Survey whose 1978 paper established Byerlee's law, the standard rule for rock fault friction.

James Dwight Dana

James Dwight Dana (1813–1895) was an American geologist, mineralogist, and zoologist, professor at Yale, author of A System of Mineralogy, and geologist on the United States Exploring Expedition of 1838–1842.

James Farquhar (geochemist)

James Farquhar is a geochemist at the University of Maryland, College Park, best known for mass-independent sulfur isotope signatures that trace oxygen's rise in Earth's early atmosphere.

James Freeman Gilbert

James Freeman Gilbert (1931–2014) was an American geophysicist and National Academy of Sciences member at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, known for the Backus–Gilbert inversion method and Earth's free oscillations.

James Furman Kemp

James Furman Kemp (1859–1926) was an American geologist and Columbia University professor known for applying petrography to economic geology and the origin of ore deposits.

James G. Moore

James G. Moore is an American research geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey known for studies of Hawaiian submarine landslides and the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption.

James Gilluly

James Gilluly (1896–1980) was an American field geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey whose 1949 paper argued that mountain building is continuous, not periodic, and that the geologic record grows more incomplete with age.

James Hall (American geologist)

James Hall (1811–1898) was an American geologist and paleontologist, New York State Paleontologist and first director of its state museum, whose Paleontology of New York founded American invertebrate paleontology.

James Hutton

James Hutton was a Scottish natural philosopher and farmer whose 1788 Theory of the Earth established modern geology, arguing the Earth is far older than commonly accepted.

James J. Morgan

James J. Morgan (1932–2020) was an American environmental engineer and aquatic chemist at Caltech who coauthored Aquatic Chemistry, the field's standard reference, and won the 1999 Stockholm Water Prize.

James Jackson (earth scientist)

James Jackson is a British earth scientist and Emeritus Professor of Active Tectonics at the University of Cambridge, known for combining earthquake seismology, geomorphology, and space geodesy to study continental deformation.