The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential female people in Literature,
#851
Isabel Freire de Matos
#33208
Overall Influence
1915 - 2004 (89 years)
Isabel Freire de Matos was a writer, educator, journalist, and activist for Puerto Rican independence. Freire de Matos was the author of several children's books and the wife of Francisco Matos Paoli, a high-ranking member of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party.
Go to Profile#852
Fiona Maazel
#71188
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Fiona Maazel is the author of three novels: Last Last Chance, Woke Up Lonely, and A Little More Human. In 2008 she was named a 5 under 35 honoree by the National Book Foundation. In 2017, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Go to Profile#853
Sheila Callaghan
#51187
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Sheila Callaghan is a playwright and screenwriter who emerged from the RAT movement of the 1990s. She has been profiled by American Theater Magazine, "The Brooklyn Rail", Theatermania, and The Village Voice. Her work has been published in American Theatre magazine.
Go to Profile#854
Michelle de Kretser
#63109
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Michelle de Kretser is an Australian novelist who was born in Sri Lanka , and moved to Australia in 1972 when she was 14. Education and literary career De Kretser was educated at Methodist College, Colombo, in Melbourne at Elwood College, and in Paris.
Go to Profile#855
Martha Ronk
#52942
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Martha Clare Ronk is an American poet. Life She graduated from Wellesley College, and Yale University with a Ph.D. She taught at Colorado University and Otis College of Art and Design, and Naropa University Summer Writing Program. and Occidental College. She joined the Occidental faculty in 1981 and retired as a professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies in 2014.
Go to Profile#856
Rene Steinke
#41079
Overall Influence
Rene Steinke is an American novelist. She is the author of three novels: The Fires , Holy Skirts , and Friendswood . Holy Skirts, a novel based on the life of the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, was a finalist for the 2005 National Book Award. Her essays and articles have appeared in The New York Times, Vogue, O: the Oprah Magazine, Bookforum, and elsewhere.
Go to Profile#857
Emily Lyle
#74657
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (92 years)
Emily Lyle is a Scottish ballad scholar and senior research fellow in the School of Celtic and Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Biography Emily Lyle grew up in Kilbarchan, Renfrewshire, Scotland. She studied English language and literature at the University of St Andrews , followed by an education course at the University of Glasgow .
Go to Profile#858
Rosellen Brown
#63731
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Rosellen Brown is an American author, and has been an instructor of English and creative writing at several universities, including the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Houston. She has won several grants and awards for her work, including the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. The 1996 film Before and After was adapted from her novel of the same name.
Go to Profile#859
Jane Miller
#80595
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Jane Miller is an American poet. Life Jane Miller was born in New York and lives in Tucson, Arizona. She served as a professor for many years in the Creative Writing Program at The University of Arizona—including a stint as its Director—and is currently Visiting Poet at The University of Texas Michener Center in Austin. She has published ten volumes of poetry of which The Greater Leisures was a National Poetry Series selection. Who Is Trixie the Trasher? and Other Questions is her most recent book of poems.
Go to Profile#860
Yasmeen Hameed
#50051
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Yasmeen Hameed is a Pakistani Urdu poet, translator and an educator. Career Yasmeen Hameed has more than thirty years of experience in the fields of education, literature and art. She was the Founding Director of Gurmani Centre for South Asian Languages and Literature in the Social Sciences Department at the Lahore University of Management Sciences where she worked from 2007 to August 2016.
Go to Profile#861
Patricia Powell
#65750
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Patricia Powell is a Jamaican writer, who has won awards for her novels. Biography Born in Jamaica, she moved to the United States in her late teens. She received her bachelor's degree at Wellesley College, and an MFA in creative writing from Brown University, where she studied with Michael Ondaatje, among others.
Go to Profile#862
Rita Kothari
#37694
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Rita Kothari is a Gujarati and English language author and translator from Gujarat, India. In an attempt to preserve her memories and her identity as a member of the Sindhi people, Kothari wrote several books on partition and its effects on people. She has translated several Gujarati works into English.
Go to Profile#863
Rosa Beltrán
#34378
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Rosa María Beltrán Álvarez is a Mexican novelist, short story writer, essayist, and translator. She was the deputy director of La Jornada Semanal from 1999 to 2002 and has been a member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores from 1997 to 2000. She was the director of the Literature department at the UNAM and is actually the chair in Coordinación de Difusión Cultural at UNAM. On June 12, 2014, she was appointed as a member by the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua as the 36th Chair, becoming the tenth woman to hold this position.
Go to Profile#864
Bertha Harris
#53680
Overall Influence
1937 - 2005 (68 years)
Bertha Harris was an American lesbian novelist. She is highly regarded by critics and admirers, but her novels are less familiar to the broader public. Personal life Bertha Anne Harris was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina on December 17, 1937 to John Holmes Harris and Mary Zeleka Jones.
Go to Profile#865
Cynthia Zarin
#69209
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Cynthia Zarin is an American poet and journalist. Life She graduated from Harvard University magna cum laude, and Columbia University with an M.F.A. She married Michael Seccareccia on January 24, 1988, but later divorced. She married Joseph Goddu on December 6, 1997, but later divorced.
Go to Profile#866
Suhayr al-Qalamawi
#85863
Overall Influence
1911 - 1997 (86 years)
Sahier al-Qalamawi was a significant literary figure and politician from Egypt who shaped Arabic writing and culture through her writing, feminist activism, and advocacy. She was one of the first women to attend Cairo University and in 1941 became the first Egyptian woman to earn her Master of Arts Degree and PhD for her work in Arabic literature. After graduating, she was employed by the university as their first woman lecturer. Al-Qalamawi was also one of the first women to hold a number of chief positions including chairperson of the Arabic Department at Cairo University, president of the Egyptian Feminist Union, and president of the League of Arab Women University Graduates.
Go to Profile#867
Miriam Cooke
#38720
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Miriam Cooke is an American academic in Middle Eastern and Arab world studies. She focuses on modern Arabic literature and critical reassessment of women's roles in the public sphere. She was educated in the United Kingdom, and is co-editor of the Journal of Middle East Women's Studies. She has published over 100 articles and 130 book reviews.
Go to Profile#868
Amanda Lohrey
#53734
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Amanda Frances Lillian Lohrey is an Australian writer and novelist. Career Lohrey completed her education at the University of Tasmania before taking up a scholarship at the University of Cambridge. From 1988 to 1994 she lectured in writing and textual studies at the University of Technology, Sydney. She has held the position of lecturer in School of English, Media Studies and Art History at the University of Queensland in Brisbane in 2002, and joined the Australian National University School of Literature, Languages, and Linguistics as a visiting fellow in 2016 where she continues to write ...
Go to Profile#869
Alma Flor Ada
#50152
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Alma Flor Ada is a Cuban-American author of children's books, poetry, and novels. A Professor Emerita at the University of San Francisco, she is recognized for her work promoting bilingual and multicultural education in the United States.
Go to Profile#870
Diana Ramírez de Arellano
#101963
Overall Influence
1919 - 1997 (78 years)
Diana Ramírez de Arellano was an American poet, literary critic and professor of Spanish language and literature. A former Poet Laureate of Puerto Rico, she taught at the City College of New York for many years. In 1963, she founded the Ateneo Puertorriqueño de Nueva York, a cultural center for Puerto Ricans in New York.
Go to Profile#871
Lisa Yaszek
#85725
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Lisa Yaszek is an American academic in the field of science fiction literature, particularly the history and cultural implications of the genre and underrepresented groups in science fiction, including women and people of color. She is a Regents professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#872
Sylvia Wilkinson
#72795
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Sylvia Jean Wilkinson is an American author. She was born in Durham, North Carolina, United States and grew up in the nearby community of Nelson. She graduated from Woman's College, now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, in 1962. She received her master's degree from Hollins College in 1963 and studied at Stanford University under a Wallace Stegner Creative Writing Fellowship 1965-66.
Go to Profile#873
Christine Schutt
#73576
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Christine Schutt, an American novelist and short story writer, has been a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She received her BA and MA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and her MFA from Columbia University. She is also a senior editor at NOON, the literary annual published by Diane Williams.
Go to Profile#874
Estela Portillo-Trambley
#73953
Overall Influence
1936 - 1998 (62 years)
Estela Portillo-Trambley was a Chicana poet and playwright. She gained recognition through the publishing of her many plays, prose, and poetry depicting the lives and plight of Chicana women in male-dominated societies.
Go to Profile#875
Reingard M. Nischik
#82257
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Reingard M. Nischik is a retired German university professor and literary scholar. Academic career Nischik studied English and North American Literature as well as Social Sciences at the University of Cologne , taking the First State Examination in 1977. She spent one year of her doctoral studies on a scholarship from the Canadian Government at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver from 1978-79. In 1980 she obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Cologne with a thesis on single and multiple plotting in English-language literatures. Between 1984 and 1989 Nischik conducted postdocto...
Go to Profile#876
Gina B. Nahai
#64484
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Gina B. Nahai is the author of Cry of the Peacock, Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith, Sunday's Silence and Caspian Rain. Her novels have been translated into more than a dozen languages. She was also a lecturer in the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California.
Go to Profile#877
Natalia Tolstaya
#58274
Overall Influence
1943 - 2010 (67 years)
Natalia Nikitichna Tolstaya was a Russian writer and translator from the Tolstoy family. She was a granddaughter of writer Alexei Tolstoy and poet Mikhail Lozinsky, and sister of the writer Tatyana Tolstaya. She taught for many years at Saint Petersburg State University, from which she had also graduated. Tolstaya's specialty was Scandinavian languages, and she wrote her first stories in Swedish before turning to Russian. In 2004 she was awarded the Order of the Polar Star by the Swedish government for her efforts in fostering better relations between Russia and Sweden.
Go to Profile#878
Sofia Polyakova
#99202
Overall Influence
1914 - 1994 (80 years)
Sofia Polyakova was a Soviet classical philologist, Byzantine specialist and scholar of ancient Greek and Byzantine authors. She published the first collection of the works of the Russian poet Sophia Parnok and was the first scholar to unravel the relationship of Parnok and Marina Tsvetaeva. Her work on Parnok, revived scholarly interest in the poet.
Go to Profile#879
Astrid Cabral
#92857
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Astrid Cabral Félix de Sousa is a novelist, critic, environmentalist, and diplomat, and one of the most eminent contemporary poets in Brazil. She is the author of numerous books of poetry, including Through Water and Anteroom , along with many collections of essays and short fiction. Born in Manaus, Amazonasas, she has lived and worked as a diplomat in Beirut and Chicago and has taught in both the United States and Brazil. A mother of five, she currently resides in Rio de Janeiro, where she continues her work as a figure in the Amazonian cultural identity and recovery movement.
Go to Profile#880
Alejandra Costamagna
#90473
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Alejandra Costamagna Crivelli is a Chilean writer and journalist. Biography Costamagna's parents arrived in Chile from Argentina in 1967. Alejandra Costamagna recalls that her first approach to writing was through journal entries that she began to make irregularly from age 10.
Go to Profile#881
Delia Grigore
#71371
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Delia Grigore is a Romanian Romani writer, philologist, academic, and Romani rights activist. Biography Delia Grigore was born in Galați and grew up under the Romanian communist regime, when the Roma were not recognized as an ethnic group, but as foreign elements that must assimilate in Romanian society. During that time, her family hid their real identity so as to avoid discrimination. After the Romanian Revolution of 1989 she could reassert her Romani ethnicity and relearn the language. In 1990, she completed secondary studies at the Zoia Kosmodemianskaia High School in Bucharest, while in...
Go to Profile#882
Rowena Tiempo Torrevillas
#75643
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Rowena Tiempo Torrevillas is a Filipina poet, fiction writer and essayist. Personal life and education She was born to writers Edilberto Tiempo and Edith Tiempo in Dumaguete, Philippines. Torrevillas received a bachelor's degree in 1971, and a masters in 1978, both in creative writing. She also received a PhD in English Literature, all from Silliman University. She married Multimedia artist Lemuel Torrevillas and together they have a daughter, Lauren Maria Torrevillas Seamans .
Go to Profile#883
Beatriz Villacañas
#75022
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Beatriz Villacañas is a poet, essayist and literary critic. Biography Beatriz Villacañas was born in Toledo . She obtained her PhD in English Philology at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, where she is professor of English and Irish literature. Daughter of Juan Antonio Villacañas. Corresponding member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and History of Toledo. She has lived in the UK where she taught Spanish. She has translated English and Irish poets such as: W. Shakespeare, W.B. Yeats, Seamus Heaney, Michael Hartnett and Brendan Kennelly. Due to family and professional reasons, Ireland has long been her second country.
Go to Profile#884
Kathy Acker
#65649
Overall Influence
1947 - 1997 (50 years)
Kathy Acker was an American experimental novelist, playwright, essayist, and postmodernist writer, known for her idiosyncratic and transgressive writing that dealt with themes such as childhood trauma, sexuality and rebellion. She was influenced by the Black Mountain School poets, William S. Burroughs, David Antin, Carolee Schneeman, Eleanor Antin, French critical theory, mysticism, and pornography, as well as classic literature.
Go to Profile#885
Ruth Stone
#53506
Overall Influence
1915 - 2011 (96 years)
Ruth Stone was an award-winning American poet. Life and poetry Stone was born in Roanoke, Virginia and lived there until age 6, when her family moved back to her parents' hometown of Indianapolis, Indiana. She went to college at the University of Illinois. Her first marriage was to John Clapp in 1935, and they had one daughter. Her second marriage was to professor and poet Walter Stone, in 1944, with whom she had two daughters. Walter Stone, who served in World War II, received a PhD from Harvard, and taught at University of Illinois, and then at Vassar College. Walter Stone committed suicide...
Go to Profile#886
Florence Delay
#59685
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Florence Delay is a French academician and actress. Biography The daughter of Marie-Madeleine Carrez and Jean Delay, Delay studied at the Lycée Jean de La Fontaine and then the Sorbonne. In 1962, she played the title role of Joan of Arc in Procès de Jeanne d'Arc by Robert Bresson. At 30, she published her first novel Minuit sur les jeux. She was awarded the Prix Femina in 1983 for her novel Riche et légère. With Jacques Roubaud of the Oulipo, she compiled Graal Théâtre, a series of 10 plays about the Arthurian legend, from 1977 to 2005.
Go to Profile#887
Ilana Pardes
#81970
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Ilana Pardes is a biblical scholar. She is Katharine Cornell Professor of Comparative Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Pardes attended the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied under Robert Alter. She received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature in 1990, and taught at Princeton University from 1990 to 1992. She has been at the Hebrew University since then.
Go to Profile#888
Amira Nowaira
#40352
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Amira Nowaira is an Egyptian academic, translator, columnist and author. She gained her doctorate in English literature from Birmingham University. She has served as chair of the English department at Alexandria University, and is currently a professor there. She has published a number scholarly books and journal articles. More recently, she has contributed journalistic pieces to The Guardian. Apart from her own books, Nowaira has also done translations, both from Arabic to English and from English to Arabic .
Go to Profile#889
Ania Loomba
#64093
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Ania Loomba is an Indian literary scholar who works as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Her work focuses on colonialism and postcolonial studies, race and feminist theory, contemporary Indian literature and culture, and early modern literature. She studied at the University of Delhi, where she received her BA, MA and MPhil degrees, before moving to England to study at the University of Sussex, where she received her PhD.
Go to Profile#890
Catherine Johnson
#44248
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Catherine Johnson is a British playwright, producing works for stage and television. She is best known for her book for the ABBA-inspired musical Mamma Mia! and screenplay for the musical's film adaptation. The film became the highest-grossing British picture of all time in the UK, and the biggest selling UK DVD of all time in January 2009. She also co-wrote the 2018 sequel, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again.
Go to Profile#891
Barbara Jane Reyes
#71081
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Barbara Jane Reyes is an American poet whose work "explores the translatable and untranslatable collisions of writing, self and culture." Early life Reyes was born in Manila, Philippines, and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She received her B.A. in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. As an undergraduate, Reyes "served as editor in chief for maganda magazine, and witnessed the emergence of Filipino American literary figures." Reyes received her M.F.A. at San Francisco State University.
Go to Profile#892
Barbara Hamby
#85977
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Barbara Hamby is an American poet, fiction writer, editor, and critic. Life She was born in New Orleans and raised in Hawaii. Her poems have been printed in numerous publications and her first book of poetry, Delirium , received literary recognition. She lives with her husband and fellow poet David Kirby in Tallahassee, Florida, where she is a writer-in-residence in the Creative Writing Program, and he a professor, both with the English Department at Florida State University.
Go to Profile#893
Anne Lill
#62184
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Anne Lill is an Estonian classical philologist and translator. She is Professor Emeritus at the University of Tartu. Education Anne Laansoo was born on 15 October 1946. She graduated from University of Tartu in 1970. From 1976 to 1978 she was a postgraduate student at Leningrad State University. In 1987 she defended her doctoral thesis at the University of Tartu with research entitled: "The foreign elements in terms of medical terminology in shaping Estonian 1869-1914". This work examined the issues around the transfer of the Latin and Ancient Greek prefix and suffix systems from classical to...
Go to Profile#894
Aimee Phan
#37448
Overall Influence
Aimee Phan is a Vietnamese-American author. She was born and raised in Orange County, California. She received her BA in English from UCLA and her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she won a Maytag Fellowship. Her first novel, We Should Never Meet, was named a Notable Book by the Kiriyama Prize in fiction and a finalist for the 2005 Asian American Literary Awards. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Virginia Quarterly Review, USA Today and The Oregonian among other publications. She has received residencies from the MacDowell Colony, Hedgebrook and the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center.
Go to Profile#895
Elizabeth Wilson
#69637
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Elizabeth Wilson is a British independent researcher and writer best known for her commentaries on feminism and popular culture. She was a professor at London Metropolitan University and the London College of Fashion and is the author of several non-fiction books and fiction books. In particular, she writes on feminist politics and policy; the history of fashionable dress and dress as cultural practice; the cultures of urban life; and high culture and popular culture, especially architecture and film. Her novels The Twilight Hour, War Damage and The Girl in Berlin are published by Serpent’s Tail.
Go to Profile#896
Helga Königsdorf
#60407
Overall Influence
1938 - 2014 (76 years)
Helga Königsdorf was an East German author and physicist. Life She was born in Gera, a farmer's daughter. She went into academia and was appointed to the East Berlin Academy of Sciences of the GDR from 1961 to 1990. Since 1974, she headed the Department of Probability and Mathematical Statistics. At age 40, she published her first short-story collection Meine ungehörigen Träume .
Go to Profile#897
Fiona Kelleghan
#52364
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Fiona Kelleghan is an American academic and critic specializing in science fiction and fantasy. She was a metadata librarian and a cataloguer at the University of Miami's Otto G. Richter Library. She left the university in 2011.
Go to Profile#898
Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit
#20637
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit is a German Japanologist and translator. In 1992 she was awarded Germany's most prestigious prize for distinction in research, the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize. Life From 1967 to 1969 she studied Japanology, Sinology, Philosophy and Sociology at Hamburg University. She then studied at the Ruhr University in Bochum , and in the same year took up a scholarship to study at Waseda University and Tokyo University. On her return, she completed her doctorate summa cum laude at the Department of Oriental Studies of the Ruhr University in Bochum, combining Japanology, German Studies and the Communication Science.
Go to Profile#899
Shara McCallum
#84386
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Shara McCallum is an American poet. She was awarded a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry. McCallum is the author of four collections of poems, including Madwoman, which won the 2018 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature in the poetry category. She currently lives in Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#900
Teresa Präauer
#95742
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (45 years)
Teresa Präauer is an Austrian writer and visual artist. Life Teresa Präauer was born in Linz and grew up in Graz and St. Johann im Pongau District. From 1997 to 2003 she studied German studies at the University of Salzburg and the Humboldt University of Berlin as well as painting at the Mozarteum Salzburg. From 2003 she lived and worked in Vienna, where she studied as a postgraduate at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna from 2004 to 2005. [4] For her first novel titled, For the Ruler from Overseas, Präauer was awarded the aspects literature prize of ZDF for the best German-language prose debut. ...
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