Desmarest, Nicolas - Earth didn't start as waterworld.

Desmarest, Nicolas was a French geologist who lived 1725-1815. His claim to fame is that he disproved the Neptunist theory that all rocks were formed by sedimentation from primeval oceans.

Basically, the idea was that the Earth used to be a water world and that sediment settled and formed all the rocks. Of course, rocks like that do exist, but that isn't the only way that rock is formed. As it turns out, if it was, Hawaii wouldn't exist and that would be an absence too horrible to imagine. (Seriously, if you have vacation time available, go to Hawaii. There's no reason to go anywhere else.)

Hawaii

He studied basalt in Auvergne France and proved that these rocks were the result of old lava streams.