Arnold Henri Guyot was born on September 28, 1807, in Boudevilliers, Neuchâtel, Switzerland.

He was a Swiss-born American geologist, geographer, educator, and author. He studied at the College of Neuchâtel and the University of Berlin. In 1838, under the influence of the famed naturalist-geologist Louis Agassiz, he took up the study of the structure and motion of glaciers. He became a professor of history and physical geography at the Neuchâtel Academy in 1839. In 1848, Guyot settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and lectured on geography and teaching methods for the Massachusetts Board of Education. In 1854, he became Professor of Geology and Physical Geography at Princeton University. He developed topographical maps of the Appalachian and Catskill mountains. He was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1867. His extensive meteorological observations led to the establishment of the United States Weather Bureau, and his “Meteorological and Physical Tables” (4th ed., 1887) were long standard. His published works include “The Earth and Man” (1849) and “Creation, or the Biblical Cosmogony in the Light of Modern Science” (1884). The building housing the Department of Geosciences at Princeton is named Guyot Hall in his honour. He is the namesake of several geographical features, including Guyot Glacier in Alaska, The Guyot Crater, Mount Guyot on the North Carolina and Tennessee border, and a different Mount Guyot in New Hampshire, as well as Mount Guyot on the Rocky Mountain Continental Divide in Colorado.

In 1867, he married Sarah "Saddie" Doremus Haines (1834–1916). He died on February 8, 1884, in Princeton, New Jersey.