Physical geography founded by Alexander von Humboldt
Notable physical geographers
Eratosthenes (276 – 194 BC) who invented the discipline of geography. He made the first known reliable estimation of the Earth's size. He is considered the father of mathematical geography and geodesy.
Ptolemy (c. 90 – c. 168), who compiled Greek and Roman knowledge to produce the book Geographia.
Abū Rayhān Bīrūnī (973 – 1048 AD), considered the father of geodesy.
Ibn Sina (Avicenna, 980–1037), who formulated the law of superposition and concept of uniformitarianism in Kitāb al-Šifāʾ (also called The Book of Healing).
Muhammad al-Idrisi (Dreses, 1100 – c. 1165), who drew the Tabula Rogeriana, the most accurate world map in pre-modern times.
Piri Reis (1465 – c. 1554), whose Piri Reis map is the oldest surviving world map to include the Americas and possibly Antarctica
Gerardus Mercator (1512–1594), an innovative cartographer and originator of the Mercator projection.
Bernhardus Varenius (1622–1650), Wrote his important work "General Geography" (1650), first overview of the geography, the foundation of modern geography.
Mikhail Lomonosov (1711–1765), father of Russian geography and founded the study of glaciology.
Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), considered the father of modern geography. Published Cosmos and founded the study of biogeography.
Arnold Henry Guyot (1807–1884), who noted the structure of glaciers and advanced the understanding of glacial motion, especially in fast ice flow.
Louis Agassiz (1807–1873), the author of a glacial theory which disputed the notion of a steady-cooling Earth.
Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913), founder of modern biogeography and the Wallace line.
Vasily Dokuchaev (1840–1903), patriarch of Russian geography and founder of pedology.
Wladimir Peter Köppen (1846–1940), developer of most important climate classification and founder of Paleoclimatology.
William Morris Davis (1850–1934), father of American geography, founder of Geomorphology and developer of the geographical cycle theory.
John Francon Williams FRGS (1854-1911), wrote his seminal work Geography of the Oceans published in 1881.
Walther Penck (1888–1923), proponent of the cycle of erosion and the simultaneous occurrence of uplift and denudation.
Sir Ernest Shackleton (1874–1922), Antarctic explorer during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
Robert E. Horton (1875–1945), founder of modern hydrology and concepts such as infiltration capacity and overland flow.
J Harlen Bretz (1882–1981), pioneer of research into the shaping of landscapes by catastrophic floods, most notably the Bretz (Missoula) floods.
Luis García Sáinz (1894–1965), pioneer of physical geography in Spain.
Willi Dansgaard (1922–2011), palaeoclimatologist and quaternary scientist, instrumental in the use of oxygen-isotope dating and co-identifier of Dansgaard-Oeschger events.
Hans Oeschger (1927–1998), palaeoclimatologist and pioneer in ice core research, co-identifier of Dansgaard-Orschger events.
Richard Chorley (1927–2002), a key contributor to the quantitative revolution and the use of systems theory in geography.
Sir Nicholas Shackleton (1937–2006), who demonstrated that oscillations in climate over the past few million years could be correlated with variations in the orbital and positional relationship between the Earth and the Sun.