American soil scientists

Albert Israel Schatz (2 February 1920 – 17 January 2005) was an American microbiologist and science educator, best known as the discoverer of the antibiotic streptomycin. Schatz graduated from Rutgers University in 1942 with a bachelor's degree in soil microbiology, and received his doctorate from Rutgers in 1945.

Selman Abraham Waksman (July 22, 1888 – August 16, 1973) was a Russian Empire-born Jewish-American inventor, biochemist and microbiologist whose research into the decomposition of organisms that live in soil enabled the discovery of streptomycin and several other antibiotics. A professor of biochemistry and microbiology at Rutgers University for four decades, he discovered a number of antibiotics (and introduced the modern sense of that word to name them), and he introduced procedures that have led to the development of many others. The proceeds earned from the licensing of his patents funded a foundation for microbiological research, which established the Waksman Institute of Microbiology located on the Rutgers University Busch Campus in Piscataway, New Jersey (USA). In 1952, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for "ingenious, systematic and successful studies of the soil microbes that led to the discovery of streptomycin." Waksman and his foundation later were sued by Albert Schatz, one of his PhD students and first discoverer of streptomycin, for minimizing Schatz's role in the discovery of streptomycin.

Mary K. Firestone is a professor of soil microbiology in the Department of Environmental Studies, Policy, and Management at the University of California, Berkeley and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Her laboratory's research focuses on the ecology of microbes in various soils, and their contribution to the carbon cycle and nitrogen cycle in particular.

Diana Harrison Wall (died March 25, 2024) was an American environmental scientist and a soil ecologist. She was the founding director of the School of Global Environmental Sustainability, a distinguished biology professor, and senior research scientist at the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University. Her research focussed on the Antarctic McMurdo Dry Valleys. Wall investigated ecosystem processes, soil biodiversity and ecosystem services and she was interested in how these are impacted by global change. Wall Valley was named after her in recognition of her research in the McMurdo Dry Valleys. Wall was a globally recognized leader and speaker on life in Antarctica and climate change. Diana Wall died on March 25, 2024.

Dr. Andrew Colin McClung is an American scientist who received the 2006 World Food Prize for his role in helping transform the Cerrado – a region of vast, once infertile tropical high plains stretching across Brazil – into highly productive cropland. McClung's research on the soil degradation plaguing central Brazil showed that acidity, toxic levels of aluminum, and deficiencies of several micronutrients in the soil limited plant growth. Moreover, McClung developed a treatment which employed dolomitic lime to eliminate the aluminum toxicity of the soils, supply calcium and magnesium, and modify the availability of other nutrients.

Alfred Eduard Hartemink (born 14 January 1964, in Doetinchem) is a soil scientist. He is a professor and chair of the department of soil science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Geoderma Regional and of the World Soils book series.

G. Wade Hurt is a soil scientist in the United States and an authority on hydric soils. As of 2007, he has a position with the University of Florida's Soil and Water Science Department in Gainesville.

Lorenzo Adolph Richards (April 24, 1904 – March 12, 1993) or known as Ren was one of the 20th century’s most influential minds in the field of soil physics.

Edgar Buckingham (July 8, 1867 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – April 29, 1940 in Washington DC) was an American physicist.

Nathaniel Southgate Shaler (February 20, 1841 – April 10, 1906) was an American paleontologist and geologist who wrote extensively on the theological and scientific implications of the theory of evolution.