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,
#901
Tina Howe
#24408
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Mabel Davis "Tina" Howe was an American playwright. In a career that spanned more than four decades, Howe's best-known works include Museum, The Art of Dining, Painting Churches, Coastal Disturbances, and Pride's Crossing.
Go to Profile#902
Suzette Mayr
#78832
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Suzette Mayr is a Canadian novelist who has written five critically acclaimed novels. Currently a professor at the University of Calgary's Faculty of Arts, Mayr's works have both won and been nominated for several literary awards.
Go to Profile#903
Saskia Hamilton
#74944
Overall Influence
1967 - 2023 (56 years)
Maria Saskia Hamilton was an American poet, editor, and professor and university administrator at Barnard College. She published four collections of poetry, with a fifth collection, All Souls, set to be posthumously published in September 2023. Her academic focus was largely on the American poet Robert Lowell; she edited several collections of the writings and personal correspondence of Lowell, Elizabeth Hardwick, and Elizabeth Bishop. Additionally, she served as the director of literary programs at the Lannan Foundation, as the Vice Provost for Academic Programs and Curriculum at Barnard Col...
Go to Profile#904
Jocelyn Harris
#45538
Overall Influence
Jocelyn Harris is an academic known for her studies of Jane Austen's creative process, and for her promotion of the teaching and study of women's literature at the University of Otago. Harris was a founding member of the Dunedin Collective for Woman, and from 1970 until 2005 taught at the University of Otago, of which she remains Professor Emerita.
Go to Profile#905
Ann Douglas
#29535
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Ann Douglas is an American literary historian who specializes in intellectual history. She is the Parr Professor Emerita of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Biography Douglas attended Milton Academy, received her B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University and B.Phil. from the University of Oxford. She taught at Princeton University from 1970 to 1974 and was the first woman to teach in Princeton's English department and the first woman to be offered assistant professorship at Harvard. She then joined Columbia's faculty. Her research interests include 20th-century American intellectual and cultural history.
Go to Profile#906
Amanda Cockrell
#59011
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Amanda Cockrell is a professor of English at Hollins University, specializing in children's literature and creative writing. She is the author of a number of historical novels for adults, some written under her own name and some under the pseudonym Damion Hunter. She has written novels about the Romans and about the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Her first young adult novel, What We Keep Is Not Always What Will Stay, was published in 2011 and was named one of the best children's books of the year by The Boston Globe.
Go to Profile#907
Kathi Appelt
#92689
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Kathi Appelt is an American author of more than forty books for children and young adults. She won the annual PEN USA award for Children's Literature recognizing The Underneath . Biography Kathi Appelt was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and grew up in Houston, Texas. She graduated from Texas A&M University and lives in College Station, Texas.
Go to Profile#908
Kirsty Gunn
#92271
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Kirsty Gunn is a novelist and writer of short stories. Her stories include "Rain", which led to the 2001 film of the same name, directed by Christine Jeffs and also the 2001 ballet by the Rosas Company, set to "Music for Eighteen Musicians" a 1976 score by Steve Reich.
Go to Profile#909
Vievee Francis
#79117
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Vievee Elaure Francis is an American poet. She is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. She earned an MFA from the University of Michigan in 2009, and she received a Rona Jaffe Award the same year. Vievee is the author of three collections of the poetry, the third of which, Forest Primeval, won the 2016 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for poetry and the 2017 Kingsley Tufts poetry award.
Go to Profile#910
Emily Fridlund
#53035
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Emily Fridlund is an author and academic best known for her novel History of Wolves. Personal life Fridlund grew up in Edina, Minnesota. She has a bachelor's degree from Principia College in Illinois, an MFA in fiction from Washington University in St. Louis, and a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California.
Go to Profile#911
Darcey Steinke
#68348
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Darcey Steinke is an American author and educator. She has written five novels: Up Through the Water, Suicide Blonde, Jesus Saves, and Milk, Easter Everywhere, and Sister Golden Hair. Steinke has also served as a lecturer at Princeton University, the American University of Paris, New School University, Barnard College, the University of Mississippi, and Columbia University.
Go to Profile#912
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley
#78149
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley is a Liberian poet and writer and Professor of English and Creative Writing at Penn State University. She is a Liberian Civil War survivor who immigrated to the United States with her family in 1991, and the author of six books of poetry and a children's book, as well as an anthology editor. Jabbeh Wesley also founded, chairs, and teaches in the educational/humanitarian organization Young Scholars of Liberia.
Go to Profile#913
Carol Iannone
#95483
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Carol Iannone is a conservative writer and literary critic. She first made her mark as a strong critic of feminism in articles such as "The Barbarism of Feminist Scholarship." She has published extensively in Commentary, National Review, First Things, Modern Age, The American Conservative, Academic Questions, and other conservative and neoconservative publications.
Go to Profile#914
Alison Hawthorne Deming
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#78535
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Alison Hawthorne Deming is an American poet, essayist and teacher, former Agnese Nelms Haury Chair in Environment and Social Justice and currently Regents Professor Emerita in Creative Writing at the University of Arizona. She received a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship.
Go to Profile#915
Agata Tuszyńska
#60717
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Agata Tuszynska is a Polish writer, poet and journalist. Biography The daughter of Bogdan Tuszyński, sports reporter and historian, and Halina Przedborska journalist, Agata Tuszynska graduated from the prestigious Academy of Drama and Theatrical Art in Warsaw, majoring in History of Drama. She received her PhD in humanities from the Institute of Arts of the Polish Academy of Sciences. In 1987–1992, she worked as a lecturer at the Institute of Literary Research. In 1996–1998, she lectured at the Center for Journalism in Warsaw, and from 2001, taught courses in reportage and literary history at Warsaw University.
Go to Profile#916
Alafair Burke
#49752
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Alafair S. Burke is an American crime novelist, professor of law, and legal commentator. She is a New York Times bestselling author of twenty crime novels, including The Ex, The Wife, and The Better Sister, and two series—one featuring NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher, and the other, Portland, Oregon, prosecutor Samantha Kincaid. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
Go to Profile#917
Brigit Pegeen Kelly
#76435
Overall Influence
1951 - 2016 (65 years)
Brigit Pegeen Kelly was an American poet and teacher. Born in Palo Alto, California, Kelly grew up in southern Indiana and lived much of her adult life in central Illinois. An intensely private woman, little is known about her life.
Go to Profile#918
Renée Ashley
#76939
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Renée Ashley is an American poet, novelist, essayist, and educator. Presently on the faculty of Fairleigh Dickinson University and an editor of The Literary Review, Ashley is the author of five collections of poetry, two chapbooks and a novel. Her work has garnered several honours including the Brittingham Prize in Poetry, Pushcart Prize, as well as fellowships granted by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment of the Arts. Several of her poems have been published in noted literary journals and magazines, including Poetry, American Voice, Bellevue Literary Review, ...
Go to Profile#919
Elizabeth Webby
#86523
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Elizabeth Anne Webby was an Australian literary critic, editor and scholar of literature. Emeritus Professor Webby retired from the Chair of Australian Literature at the University of Sydney in 2007. She edited The Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature and was editor of Southerly from 1988 to 1999.
Go to Profile#920
Akiko Itoyama
#83267
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
is a Japanese novelist. She has won the Akutagawa Prize, the Kawabata Yasunari Prize, and the Tanizaki Prize, and her work has been adapted for film. Biography After graduation from Shinjuku High School and Waseda University, she worked as a saleswoman for a major household equipment company and, as is common in Japanese corporate life, was transferred several times to various localities. Treatment for cyclic psychosis led to her writing.
Go to Profile#921
Shumona Sinha
#55450
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Shumona Sinha, also spelled Sumana Sinha; , is a naturalised French writer born in Calcutta, West Bengal, India, who lives in France. In her interviews for the French media, Shumona Sinha claims that her homeland is no longer India, nor even France, but the French language.
Go to Profile#922
Colette Inez
#35938
Overall Influence
1931 - 2018 (87 years)
Colette Inez was an American poet and a faculty member at Columbia University’s Undergraduate Writing Program. She published ten poetry collections and won the Guggenheim Fellowship, Rockefeller Fellowship, and two National Endowment for the Arts and two Prizes and many other awards. Her memoir, The Secret of M. Dulong, was released in 2008 by The University of Wisconsin Press.
Go to Profile#923
Susan Somers-Willett
#69732
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Susan Somers-Willett is an American author and academic working as a professor of literature and creative writing at the University of Texas at Austin. Education Somers-Willett earned an A.B. from Duke University, followed by a Master of Arts in creative writing and PhD in American literature from the University of Texas at Austin.
Go to Profile#924
Serena Vitale
#99704
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Serena Vitale is an Italian academic, scholar, writer, and translator. She won the 2001 Bagutta Prize. Life In 1958, she moved to Rome with her family. She was married to the poet Giovanni Raboni. In 2003 she married Vladimír Novák. She is a Professor of Russian language and literature; she taught at the Università degli Studi di Napoli "L'Orientale", and the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore from 1971 to 2015.
Go to Profile#925
Zhang Yueran
#91582
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (42 years)
Zhang Yueran is a Chinese writer. Biography Zhang was born in 1982 in Jinan, Shandong. She is an only child. Her father was a professor of Shandong University, and he was very keen on literature. Zhang is an alumnus of Shandong Experimental High School, Shandong University and National University of Singapore.
Go to Profile#926
Sara Nović
#90438
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (37 years)
Sara Nović is an American writer, translator, and creative writing professor. Nović is also a deaf rights' activist who has written about the challenges she has faced as a deaf novelist. Nović is most notable for her debut novel, Girl at War, which tells the story of Ana Jurić, a ten-year-old girl whose life is upended by the civil war that resulted in the dissolution of Yugoslavia. The novel was an Alex Awards recipient in 2016. In 2014, Nović was awarded an ALTA Travel Fellowship by the American Literary Translators Association. In addition to publishing her own literary works, Nović has translated poems written by Izet Sarajlić, a renowned Bosnian writer.
Go to Profile#927
Aza Takho-Godi
#104806
Overall Influence
1922 - Present (102 years)
Aza Alibekovna Takho-Godi is a Soviet and Russian philologist. Since 1954 she was officially married to philosopher and philologist Aleksei Losev, whom she met in 1944. Takho-Godi graduated from the Philological Faculty of Moscow State Pedagogical University in 1944. She defended her dissertation, titled «Поэтические тропы Гомера и их социальный смысл», at Lomonosov Moscow State University. She lectured at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv from 1948 to 1949, then worked as an associate professor at Moscow Regional Pedagogical Institute from 1949 to 1957. Since 1958 till now she works at Lomonosov Moscow State University.
Go to Profile#928
Matthea Harvey
#60911
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Matthea Harvey is a contemporary American poet, writer and professor. She has published four collections of poetry. The most recent of these, If the Tabloids Are True What Are You?, a collection of poetry and images, was published in 2014. Prior to this, the collection Modern Life earned her the 2009 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and was a finalist for the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award, and a New York Times Notable Book.
Go to Profile#929
Melissa Pritchard
#67630
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Melissa Pritchard is an American short story writer, novelist, essayist, and journalist. Life Melissa Brown was born on December 12, 1948 in San Mateo, California. She grew up in San Mateo, Burlingame and Menlo Park and attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart High School in Atherton, California. Her parents are Clarence John Brown, Jr., and Helen Lorraine Reilly Brown; she has one sibling, Penny Lee Byrd. She graduated in 1970 from the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a B.A. in Comparative Religions and in 1995, received an M.F.A. from Vermont College. Her first marriage of five...
Go to Profile#930
Lynn Crosbie
#48471
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Lynn Crosbie is a Canadian poet and novelist. She teaches at the University of Toronto. Life and career Crosbie was born in Montreal, Quebec, and now lives in Toronto, Ontario. She received her PhD in English from the University of Toronto, writing her PhD thesis on the work of the American poet Anne Sexton.
Go to Profile#931
Ana Luísa Amaral
#93925
Overall Influence
1956 - 2022 (66 years)
Ana Luísa Amaral was a Portuguese poet. Professor at the University of Porto, she held a Ph.D. on the poetry of Emily Dickinson and had academic publications in the areas of English and American poetry, comparative poetics, and feminist studies. She was a senior researcher and co-director of the Institute for Comparative Literature Margarida Losa. Co-author of the Dictionary of Feminist Criticism and responsible for the annotated edition of New Portuguese Letters and the coordinator of the international project New Portuguese Letters 40 Years Later, financed by FCT, that involves 10 countries and over 60 researchers.
Go to Profile#932
Gabrielle Gourdeau
#82470
Overall Influence
1952 - 2006 (54 years)
Gabrielle Gourdeau was a writer in Quebec, Canada. Biography Born in the Limoilou neighbourhood of Quebec City, Gourdeau received a PhD in French literature from the University of Toronto. She lectured in the Department of Literature at Laval University for a number of years.
Go to Profile#933
Assia Djebar
#60878
Overall Influence
1936 - 2015 (79 years)
Fatima-Zohra Imalayen , known by her pen name Assia Djebar , was an Algerian novelist, translator and filmmaker. Most of her works deal with obstacles faced by women, and she is noted for her feminist stance. She is "frequently associated with women's writing movements, her novels are clearly focused on the creation of a genealogy of Algerian women, and her political stance is virulently anti-patriarchal as much as it is anti-colonial." Djebar is considered to be one of North Africa's pre-eminent and most influential writers. She was elected to the Académie française on 16 June 2005, the first writer from the Maghreb to achieve such recognition.
Go to Profile#934
Elizabeth Farrelly
#27275
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Elizabeth Margaret Farrelly , is a Sydney-based author, architecture critic, essayist, columnist and speaker who was born in New Zealand but later became an Australian citizen. She has contributed to current debates about aesthetics and ethics; design, public art and architecture; urban and natural environments; society and politics, including criticism of the treatment of Julian Assange. Profiles of her have appeared in the New Zealand Architect, Urbis, The Australian Financial Review, the Australian Architectural Review, and Australian Geographic.
Go to Profile#935
Molly Peacock
#73439
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Molly Peacock is an American-Canadian poet, essayist, biographer and speaker, whose multi-genre literary life also includes memoir, short fiction, and a one-woman show. Career Peacock's latest book is Flower Diary: Mary Hiester Reid Paints, Travels, Marries & Opens a Door , a layered memoir and biography that examines the balancing act of female creativity and domesticity in the life of Mary Hiester Reid, a painter who produced over three hundred stunning, emotive floral still lifes and landscapes. Critics noted that the biography is written with the "lingering observations and lyrical touch ...
Go to Profile#936
Karen Lynn Williams
#96842
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Karen Lynn Williams is an American writer of children's literature. She is best known for her books about the difficulties of children in developing countries. Background Williams was born in 1952 in New Haven, Connecticut. She was graduated from the University of Connecticut and Southern Connecticut State University . She was a teacher of the deaf in Connecticut from 1977 to 1980 and a Peace Corps teacher of English in Malawi from 1980 to 1983. From 1990 to 1993 she lived and worked in Deschapelles, Haiti, where her husband, Steven Williams, was a doctor at the Hôpital Albert Schweitzer.
Go to Profile#937
Suzanne Martel
#66629
Overall Influence
1924 - 2012 (88 years)
Suzanne Chouinard Martel was a French Canadian journalist, novelist and children's writer. Life Suzanne Chouinard was the daughter of Francis Xavier Chouinard, clerk of Quebec City between 1927 and 1961 and Lady Couillard, who resided at rue de Bernières in Quebec City until 1963. Her younger sister Monique became well known in Quebec as Monique Corriveau, the author of more than twenty novels for teenagers.
Go to Profile#938
Mary Harron
#55767
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Mary Harron is a Canadian film director and screenwriter. She wrote and directed American Psycho, Charlie Says,The Notorious Bettie Page, and I Shot Andy Warhol. Early life Born in Bracebridge, Ontario, Canada, Harron grew up with a family that was entrenched in the world of film and theatre. She is the daughter of Gloria Fisher and Don Harron, a Canadian actor, comedian, author, and director. Her parents divorced when she was six years old. Harron spent her early life residing between Toronto and Los Angeles. Harron's first stepmother, Virginia Leith, was discovered by Stanley Kubrick and ac...
Go to Profile#939
Linda Gregerson
#59563
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Linda Gregerson is an American poet and member of faculty at the University of Michigan. In 2014, she was named as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Life Linda Gregerson received a B.A. from Oberlin College in 1971, an M.A. from Northwestern University, an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop, and her Ph.D. from Stanford University. She teaches American poetry and Renaissance literature at the University of Michigan, where she has also directed the M.F.A. program in creative writing. She took up an appointment as the Lois and Willard Mackey Chair in Creative Writ...
Go to Profile#940
Osonye Tess Onwueme
#36266
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Osonye Tess Onwueme, also known as T. Akaeke Onwueme is a Nigerian playwright, scholar and poet, who rose to prominence writing plays with themes of social justice, culture, and the environment. In 2010, she became the university Professor of Global Letters, following her exceptional service as Distinguished Professor of Cultural Diversity and English at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire. Through her plays, she is able to use the theatre as a medium to showcase historically silenced views such as African women, and shedding more light on African life. She sustains her advocacy for the gl...
Go to Profile#941
Sarah B. Pomeroy
#20699
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Sarah B. Pomeroy is an American Professor of Classics. Early life and education Sarah Pomeroy was born in New York City in 1938. She attended the Birch Wathen School, taking Latin and ancient history among other subjects. She graduated high school at age 16, and began a degree course at Barnard College in Classics, taking courses at Columbia University alongside those at Barnard, due to the small size of the Barnard department at the time. Pomeroy graduated in 1957, at the age of nineteen, and began a course of graduate study at Columbia, under the supervision of Eve Harrison and Otto Brendel....
Go to Profile#942
Beverly Lowry
#94357
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Beverly Lowry is an American educator, novelist and short story writer. Biography The daughter of David Leonard Fey and Dora Smith, both natives of Arkansas, she was born Beverly Fey in Memphis, Tennessee and grew up in Greenville, Mississippi. She was educated at the University of Mississippi and Memphis State University, receiving a BA from the latter institution in 1960. In 1960, she married Glenn Lowry and moved to Manhattan. In 1965, the family moved to Houston and she began writing. In 1976, Lowry began teaching fiction writing at the University of Houston.
Go to Profile#943
Meira Delmar
#80325
Overall Influence
1922 - 2009 (87 years)
Olga Isabel Chams Eljach , better known by her pseudonym Meira Delmar, was a Colombian poet of Lebanese descent. She is considered one of the most famous Colombian poets of the 20th century and published seven books of poetry in her lifetime.
Go to Profile#944
Susan Stewart
#40156
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Susan Stewart is an American poet and literary critic. She is the Avalon Foundation University Professor in the Humanities and Professor of English, emerita, at Princeton University. In 2023, she was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
Go to Profile#945
Leah Price
#64614
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Leah Price is an American literary critic who specializes in the British novel and in the history of the book. She is Henry Rutgers Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at Rutgers University and founding director of the Rutgers Initiative for the Book. Prior to moving to Rutgers, Price was Professor of English and American Literature at Harvard University, where at the age of 31 she became one of the youngest assistant professors ever to be promoted to tenure at Harvard. She has written essays on old and new media for The New York Times Book Review, London Review of Books, The...
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Marta Portal
#90035
Overall Influence
1930 - 2016 (86 years)
Marta Portal Nicolás was a Spanish writer, critic, journalist, and professor associated with the Generation of '50. She was a recipient of the Premio Planeta de Novela. Career Portal held a degree in philosophy and literature and a PhD in Information Sciences, and taught Hispano-American literature at the Complutense University of Madrid. In her work as a journalist she wrote news articles and literary criticism, as well as opinion columns in media such as ABC, El Alcázar, and .
Go to Profile#947
Susanna Roxman
#35966
Overall Influence
1946 - 2015 (69 years)
Susanna Roxman was an Anglophone writer, poet and critic born in Stockholm; her father’s family is Scottish. She was considered a gifted child. Her first few books were written in Swedish, but she switched over to English as her professional language. After having worked for some years as a secretary, a ballet teacher, and a fashion model, Roxman studied at Stockholm University, King’s College at London University, Lund University, and Gothenburg University, where she earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature. From 1996 to 2005 she headed the Centre of Classical Mythology at Lund University. She had several collections of poetry published, as well as literary criticism.
Go to Profile#948
Jesse Lee Kercheval
#43674
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Jesse Lee Kercheval is an American poet, memoirist, translator and fiction writer. She is an emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is the author of numerous books, notably Building Fiction, The Museum of Happiness, Space and Underground Women.
Go to Profile#949
Elizabeth Graver
#76492
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Elizabeth Graver is an American writer and academic. Early life and education Graver was born in Los Angeles on July 2, 1964, and grew up in Williamstown, Massachusetts. She received her B.A. from Wesleyan University in 1986, and her M.F.A. from the Washington University in St. Louis in 1999. She also did graduate work at Cornell University.
Go to Profile#950
Irena Klepfisz
#75553
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Irena Klepfisz is a Jewish lesbian author, academic and activist. Early life Klepfisz was born in the Warsaw Ghetto on April 17, 1941, the daughter of Michał Klepfisz, a member of the Jewish Labour Bund , and his wife, Rose Klepfisz . In late April 1943, when she had just turned two years old, her father was killed on the second day of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising .
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