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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential female people in Literature,
#451
Soledad Reyes
#49206
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Soledad Sarmiento Reyes is a Philippine literature scholar, literary and art critic, author, anthologist, consultant, professor, instructor, editor, annotator, researcher, and essayist in the Philippines. Specializing in the field of popular culture and the arts in the Philippines, Reyes is a professor teaching interdisciplinary studies at the University of the Philippines and the Ateneo de Manila University. She is an accomplished author of books and anthologies. "sa nobela mababalatuba ang mga pangyayati sa buhay ng isang kagawad sa union
Go to Profile#452
Susheila Nasta
#50502
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Susheila Nasta, MBE, Hon. FRSL , is a British critic, editor, academic and literary activist. She is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literatures at Queen Mary University of London, and founding editor of Wasafiri, the UK's leading magazine for international contemporary writing. She is a recipient of the Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature.
Go to Profile#453
Barbara Probst Solomon
#42233
Overall Influence
1928 - 2019 (91 years)
Barbara Probst Solomon was an American author, essayist and journalist. Her published works include two novels, two volumes of memoirs, and a book of collected essays. Solomon was the United States cultural correspondent for Spain's "newspaper-of-record", El País of Madrid. Solomon was awarded the 25th Francisco Cerecedo Prize by the Association of European Journalists in Spain. The prize, which comes with an award of $36,000, is the most prestigious journalism prize in that country, and Solomon was the first North American to receive it. She accepted the award from the future King of Spain ...
Go to Profile#454
Lucila Nogueira
#58279
Overall Influence
1950 - 2016 (66 years)
Lucila Nogueira Rodrigues was a Brazilian poet, essayist, short story writer, educator, and federal prosecutor. Published in 1978, Almenara won the Manuel Bandeira Poetry Prize in Pernambuco. It was the first of the 25 poetry books she was to publish, many of which were translated. Nogueira also published many books of literary criticism and short stories. In 2006, Nogueira was the first woman to represent Brazil at the International Poetry Festival of Medellín. In addition to being a celebrated author, Nogueira was a federal prosecutor, a professor of literature at the Federal University of ...
Go to Profile#455
Suzanne Keen
#42713
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Suzanne Keen is a literary scholar, feminist critic, a poet, author and academic administrator. She was W. M. Keck Foundation Presidential Chair and Professor of English at Scripps College, the women's college of the Claremont Colleges. Previously she served as Dean of the College at Washington and Lee University and Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dean of Faculty, and Professor of Literature at Hamilton College. She became president of Scripps College on July 1, 2022. Dr. Keen announced her resignation from Scripps College effective March 20, 2023. Her resignation letter states she inten...
Go to Profile#456
Lore Segal
#40549
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (96 years)
Lore Segal , née Lore Groszmann, is an American novelist, translator, teacher, short story writer, and author of children's books. Her novel Shakespeare's Kitchen was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2008.
Go to Profile#457
Elizabeth Spencer
#19939
Overall Influence
1921 - 2019 (98 years)
Elizabeth Spencer was an American writer. Spencer's first novel, Fire in the Morning, was published in 1948. She wrote a total of nine novels, seven collections of short stories, a memoir , and a play . Her novella The Light in the Piazza was adapted for the screen in 1962 and transformed into a Broadway musical of the same name in 2005. She was a five-time recipient of the O. Henry Award for short fiction.
Go to Profile#458
May Ayim
#22739
Overall Influence
1960 - 1996 (36 years)
May Ayim is the pen name of May Opitz ; she was an Afro-German poet, educator, and activist. The child of a German dancer and Ghanaian medical student, she lived with a white German foster family when young. After reconnecting with her father and his family in Ghana, in 1992 she took his surname for a pen name.
Go to Profile#459
Eiko Kadono
#32722
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Eiko Kadono, real name Eiko Watanabe, born January 1, 1935, is a Japanese author of children's literature, picture books, non-fiction, and essays in Shōwa and Heisei period in Japan. Her most famous work Kiki's Delivery Service, released in 1985, was made into an anime film by Hayao Miyazaki, and spawned a series of sequel novels. In 2018, she won the Hans Christian Andersen Award. Currently, she serves as a guest professor at the Nihon Fukushi University in Aichi Prefecture.
Go to Profile#460
Sue Miller
#41190
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Sue Miller is an American novelist and short story writer who has written a number of best-selling novels. She graduated from Radcliffe College. Biography Born in Chicago, Miller was preoccupied with her duties as a single mother, leaving little time to write for many years. As a result, she did not publish her first novel until 1986, after spending almost a decade in various fellowships and teaching positions.
Go to Profile#461
Judith Mossman
#52906
Overall Influence
Judith Mossman is Pro-Vice Chancellor for Arts and Humanities and Professor of Classics at Coventry University. She was the President of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies . Career Mossman was educated at Woldingham School, before reading Classics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. She received a D.Phil from Oxford University for a thesis entitled Euripides' Hecuba: A Re-evaluation, With Special Reference to Dramatic Technique. She held a Junior Research Fellowship at Christ Church and taught at Trinity College Dublin before moving to the University of Nottingham in 2004. Mossman was appointed to Coventry University in 2017.
Go to Profile#462
Francine du Plessix Gray
#20784
Overall Influence
1930 - 2019 (89 years)
Francine du Plessix Gray , was a French-American Pulitzer Prize–nominated writer and literary critic. Early life and education She was born on September 25, 1930, in Warsaw, Poland, where her father, Vicomte Bertrand Jochaud du Plessix, was a French diplomat – the commercial attaché. She spent her early years in Paris, where a milieu of mixed cultures and a multilingual family influenced her. Her father, then a sub-lieutenant in the Free French Air Force died in 1940, shot down near Gibraltar.
Go to Profile#463
Mona Simpson
#7778
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Mona Simpson is an American novelist. She has written six novels and studied English at University of California, Berkeley, and languages and literature at Columbia University. She won a Whiting Award for her first novel, Anywhere but Here . It was a popular success and adapted as a film by the same name, released in 1999. She wrote a sequel, The Lost Father . Critical recognition has included the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize and making the shortlist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for her novel Off Keck Road .
Go to Profile#464
Mary Biddinger
#40501
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Mary Biddinger is an American poet, editor, and academic. Biography Mary Biddinger received an Honors B.A. in English with a Creative Writing Subconcentration from the University of Michigan. She also holds an MFA in Poetry from Bowling Green State University, and a Ph.D. in English with Creative Dissertation from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Go to Profile#465
Marilyn Chin
#40454
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Marilyn Chin is a prominent Chinese American poet, writer, activist, and feminist, as well as an editor and Professor of English. She is well-represented in major canonical anthologies and textbooks and her work is taught all over the world. Marilyn Chin's work is a frequent subject of academic research and literary criticism. Marilyn Chin has read her poetry at the Library of Congress.
Go to Profile#466
Laura Mancinelli
#39934
Overall Influence
1933 - 2016 (83 years)
Laura Mancinelli was an Italian writer, germanist, medievalist and university professor. Mancinelli also wrote academic texts, children's books, essays , and historical novels. Life Laura Mancinelli was born in Udine in 1933, then, after a period of short stays between Rovereto and Mantua where she spent her early childhood, in 1937 the family moved permanently to Turin.
Go to Profile#467
Amanda Boyden
#28067
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Amanda Boyden is an American novelist. Born in Northern Minnesota and raised in Chicago and St. Louis, she studied creative writing at the University of New Orleans, where she and her ex-husband, Canadian writer Joseph Boyden, were faculty members until 2012. In addition to writing, Amanda Boyden is a trapeze artist who founded Aerialists, Inc., her own all-female troupe, and performed as Lady Hummingbird.
Go to Profile#468
Lotta Lotass
#33339
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Britt Inger Liselott "Lotta" Lotass Hagström is a Swedish writer. She holds a PhD of Comparative literature from the University of Gothenburg, and lives in Gothenburg, Sweden. Lotass made her literary debut in 2000, and two years later published her doctoral dissertation on Swedish writer Stig Dagerman. On 6 March 2009, Lotass was officially announced to succeed late Sten Rudholm at Seat No.1 at the Swedish Academy. Lotass took her seat on the 18-member assembly on 20 December 2009.
Go to Profile#469
Tina Darragh
#49778
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Tina Darragh is an American poet who was one of the original members of the Language group of poets. Biography Darragh was born in Pittsburgh and grew up in the south suburb of McDonald, Pennsylvania. She began writing in 1968 and studied poetry in Washington, D.C. at Trinity University from 1970 to 1972. Between 1974 and 1976, she worked with Some of Us Press and at the Mass Transit community bookstore and writing workshop.
Go to Profile#470
Mary Gordon
#23647
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Mary Catherine Gordon is an American writer from Queens and Valley Stream, New York. She is the McIntosh Professor of English at Barnard College. She is best known for her novels, memoirs and literary criticism. In 2008, she was named Official State Author of New York.
Go to Profile#471
Elzbieta Ettinger
#22946
Overall Influence
1925 - 2005 (80 years)
Elżbieta Ettinger was a Polish-American Jewish writer. Early life and education The daughter of Emmanuel Ettinger and Regina Stahl, she was born in Łódź. Along with her family, she was transferred to the Warsaw Ghetto but in 1942, she was able to escape the ghetto with the help of her mother and, using forged identity papers, adopted the name Elżbieta Chodakowska. She worked with the Polish resistance during World War II. In 1946, she received a degree in English and German philology from Jagellonian University and, in 1949, a MA in English philology from Warsaw University. In 1966, she earne...
Go to Profile#472
Elana Dykewomon
#38992
Overall Influence
1949 - 2022 (73 years)
Elana Dykewomon was an American lesbian activist, author, editor, and teacher. She was a recipient of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction. Early life and education Dykewomon was born Elana Michelle Nachman in Manhattan to middle class Jewish parents; her mother was a researcher and librarian, and her father was a lawyer. She was raised in a Zionist household, and her father fought in Israel's War of Independence. She and her family moved from Long Island, New York to Puerto Rico when she was eight.
Go to Profile#473
Doris Betts
#34835
Overall Influence
1932 - 2012 (80 years)
Doris Betts was a short story writer, novelist, essayist and Alumni Distinguished Professor Emerita at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She was the author of three short story collections and six novels.
Go to Profile#474
Farzaneh Milani
#14912
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Farzaneh Milani is an Iranian-born American scholar, author, poet, translator, and educator. Milani teaches Persian literature and women's studies at the University of Virginia; and serves as the Chair of the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures. She is also a poet, award-winning translator, and a recipient of the Carnegie Fellowship and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Milani's 1992 book Veils and Words: the Emerging Voices of Iranian Women Writers , has seen its sixteenth printing.
Go to Profile#475
Josephine Donovan
#13889
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Josephine Donovan is an American scholar of comparative literature who is a professor emerita of English in the Department of English at the University of Maine, Orono. Her research and expertise has covered feminist theory, feminist criticism, animal ethics, and both early modern and American literature with a special focus on American writer Sarah Orne Jewett and the local colorists. She recently extended her study of local color literature to the European tradition. Along with Marti Kheel, Carol J. Adams, and others, Donovan introduced ecofeminist care theory, rooted in cultural feminism, to the field of animal ethics.
Go to Profile#476
Yona Harvey
#33805
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Yona Harvey is an American poet and assistant professor at University of Pittsburgh. She won the 2014 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. She is also an author of Marvel Comics' World of Wakanda, becoming one of the first two black women writing for Marvel.
Go to Profile#477
Dorothy Hewett
#25510
Overall Influence
1923 - 2002 (79 years)
Dorothy Coade Hewett was an Australian playwright, poet and author, and a romantic feminist icon. In writing and in her life, Hewett was an experimenter. As her circumstances and beliefs changed, she progressed through different literary styles: modernism, socialist realism, expressionism and avant garde. She was a member of the Australian Communist Party in the 1950s and 1960s, which informed her work during that period.
Go to Profile#478
Marina Carr
#34217
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Marina Carr is an Irish playwright, known for By the Bog of Cats . Early life and education Carr was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1964, but spent most of her childhood in Pallas Lake, County Offaly, adjacent to the town of Tullamore. Carr's father, Hugh Carr, was a playwright and her mother, Maura Eibhlín Breathnach, was an Irish poet. As a child, Carr and her siblings, John and Deirdre, built a theater in their shed.
Go to Profile#479
Olga Sedakova
#41851
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Olga Alexandrovna Sedakova is a Russian poet and translator. She has been described as "one of the best confessional Christian poets writing in Russian today". Sedakova is also recognized as a philosopher and humanist.
Go to Profile#480
Valerie Taylor
#28873
Overall Influence
1913 - 1997 (84 years)
Valerie Taylor was an American author of books published in the lesbian pulp fiction genre, as well as poetry and novels after the "golden age" of lesbian pulp fiction. She also published as Nacella Young , Francine Davenport , and Velma Tate. Her publishers included Naiad Press, Banned Books, Universal, Gold Medal Books, Womanpress, Ace and Midwood-Tower.
Go to Profile#481
Nancy Farmer
#33195
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Nancy Farmer is an American writer of children's and young adult books and science fiction. She has written three Newbery Honor Books and won the U.S. National Book Award for Young People's Literature for The House of the Scorpion, published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers in 2002.
Go to Profile#482
Margherita Guidacci
#35882
Overall Influence
1921 - 1992 (71 years)
Margherita Guidacci , was an Italian poet born in Florence, Italy. She graduated from the University of Florence in 1943 and traveled to England and Ireland in 1947. Guidacci married the sociologist Lucca Pinna in 1949, and they moved to Rome in 1957. The poet taught English language and literature at the Liceo Scientifico Cavour for ten years, from 1965 to 1975.
Go to Profile#483
Laurence Plazenet
#53782
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Laurence Plazenet is a French novelist. She was born in Paris and studied at the Ecole Normale Supérieure. A literature PhD, she taught at Sorbonne, and studied at Princeton University. She has written three novels:L’amour seulLa Blessure et la soifDisproportion de l’hommeShe won the European Union Prize for Literature for L’amour seul.
Go to Profile#484
Fernanda Melchor
#38843
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (42 years)
Fernanda Melchor is a Mexican writer best known for her novel Hurricane Season for which she won the 2019 Anna Seghers Prize and a place on the shortlist for the 2020 International Booker Prize. Life and career Melchor graduated with a degree in Journalism from the Universidad Veracruzana where she was Coordinator of Communication of the Veracruz-Del Río campus.
Go to Profile#485
Sofia Samatar
#42039
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Sofia Samatar is an American scholar, novelist and educator from Indiana. Early life Samatar was born in 1971 in northern Indiana, United States. Her father was the Somali scholar, historian and writer Said Sheikh Samatar. Her mother is a Swiss-German Mennonite from North Dakota. Sofia's parents met in 1970 in Mogadishu, Somalia, while her mother was teaching English.
Go to Profile#486
Amy Clampitt
#42327
Overall Influence
1920 - 1994 (74 years)
Amy Clampitt was an American poet and author. Life Clampitt was born on June 15, 1920, of Quaker parents, and brought up in New Providence, Iowa. In the American Academy of Arts and Letters and at nearby Grinnell College she began a study of English literature that eventually led her to poetry. Clampitt graduated from Grinnell College, and from that time on lived mainly in New York City. To support herself, she worked as a secretary at the Oxford University Press, a reference librarian at the Audubon Society, and a freelance editor.
Go to Profile#487
Tamara Hundorova
#33747
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Tamara Ivanivna Hundorova is a Ukrainian literary critic, culturologist and writer. She is a professor and head of the Theory of Literature Department at the Institute of Literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and a professor and dean at the Ukrainian Free University.
Go to Profile#488
Rosamunde Pilcher
#22421
Overall Influence
1924 - 2019 (95 years)
Rosamunde Pilcher, OBE was a British novelist, best known for her sweeping novels set in Cornwall. Her books have sold over 60 million copies worldwide. Early in her career she was published under the pen name Jane Fraser. In 2001, she received the Corine Literature Prize's Weltbild Readers' Prize for Winter Solstice.
Go to Profile#489
Tatyana Tolstaya
#40429
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Tatyana Nikitichna Tolstaya is a Russian writer, TV host, publicist, novelist, and essayist from the Tolstoy family. Family Tolstaya was born in Leningrad into a family of writers. Her paternal grandfather, Aleksei Nikolaevich Tolstoy, was a pioneering science fiction writer, and the son of Count Nikolay Alexandrovich Tolstoy and Alexandra Leontievna Turgeneva , a relative of Decembrist Nikolay Turgenev and the writer Ivan Turgenev. Tolstaya's paternal grandmother was the poet Natalia Krandievskaya. Mikhail Lozinsky , her maternal grandfather, was a literary translator renowned for his translation of Dante's The Divine Comedy.
Go to Profile#490
Patience Agbabi
#45644
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Patience Agbabi FRSL is a British poet and performer who emphasizes the spoken word. Although her poetry hits hard in addressing contemporary themes, it often makes use of formal constraints, including traditional poetic forms. She has described herself as "bicultural" and bisexual. Issues of racial and gender identity feature in her poetry. She is celebrated "for paying equal homage to literature and performance" and for work that "moves fluidly and nimbly between cultures, dialects, voices; between page and stage." In 2017, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Go to Profile#491
Maya Plisetskaya
#6550
Overall Influence
1925 - 2015 (90 years)
Maya Mikhailovna Plisetskaya was a Soviet and Russian ballet dancer, choreographer, ballet director, and actress. In post-Soviet times, she held both Lithuanian and Spanish citizenship. She danced during the Soviet era at the Bolshoi Theatre under the directorships of Leonid Lavrovsky, then of Yury Grigorovich; later she moved into direct confrontation with him. In 1960, when famed Russian ballerina Galina Ulanova retired, Plisetskaya became prima ballerina assoluta of the company.
Go to Profile#492
Bárbara Jacobs
#26219
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Bárbara Jacobs is a Mexican writer, poet, essayist and translator. Life Born in Mexico City in 1947, Jacobs grew up in a home where five languages were spoken. Her grandparents were Lebanese Jewish and Lebanese Maronites. After attending school in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, she returned to Mexico and received a degree in psychology from the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
Go to Profile#493
Sarah Treem
#41404
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (44 years)
Sarah Treem is an American TV writer-producer and playwright. She is the co-creator and showrunner of the Showtime drama The Affair, which won the Golden Globe Award for Outstanding Drama Series, and was a writer and co-executive producer on the inaugural season of House of Cards, which was nominated for nine Golden Globes, including Outstanding Drama Series. She also wrote on all three seasons of the HBO series In Treatment.
Go to Profile#494
Carolina Schutti
#63527
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (48 years)
Carolina Schutti is an Austrian writer. Born in Innsbruck, she studied an eclectic range of subjects: German philology, English and American Studies, and music. She obtained her PhD on the work of the Nobel Prize-winning writer Elias Canetti. She then taught at the University of Florence, before joining Literaturhaus am Inn as a researcher. She has published widely on literary matters. Schutti received the 2015 EU Prize for Literature for her novel Einmal muss ich über weiches Gras gelaufen sein .
Go to Profile#495
Efua Sutherland
#32368
Overall Influence
1924 - 1996 (72 years)
Efua Theodora Sutherland was a Ghanaian playwright, director, dramatist, children's author, poet, educationalist, researcher, child advocate, and cultural activist. Her works include the plays Foriwa , Edufa , and The Marriage of Anansewa . She founded the Ghana Drama Studio, the Ghana Society of Writers, the Ghana Experimental Theatre, and a community project called the Kodzidan . As Ghana's earliest playwright-director, she was an influential figure in the development of modern Ghanaian theatre, and helped to introduce the study of African performance traditions at university level. She was...
Go to Profile#496
Zsófia Bán
#55994
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Zsófia Bán is a writer, literary historian, essayist and art and literature critic. Personal life Zsófia Bán grew up in Rio de Janeiro as the child of Jewish parents. In 1969, she and her family returned to Hungary where she studied English language and Literature as well as Romance Studies in Budapest , Lisbon, Minneapolis and New Brunswick. She has worked in film studios, curated art exhibitions, was a fellow at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and at the John-F.-Kennedy-Institut in Berlin, a Fulbright Fellow at Harvard University, as well as a writer-in-residence in Zug, Switzerland, among other residencies.
Go to Profile#497
Dodie Bellamy
#49738
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Dodie Bellamy is an American novelist, nonfiction author, journalist, educator and editor. Her book, Cunt-Ups won the 2002 Firecracker Alternative Book Award. Her work is frequently associated with that of the New Narrative movement in San Francisco and fellow writers Robert Glück, Dennis Cooper, Kathy Acker, Kevin Killian, and Eileen Myles.
Go to Profile#498
Jo Shapcott
#29092
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Jo Shapcott FRSL is an English poet, editor and lecturer who has won the National Poetry Competition, the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, the Costa Book of the Year Award, a Forward Poetry Prize and the Cholmondeley Award.
Go to Profile#499
Aritha Van Herk
#39825
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Aritha van Herk, , is a Canadian writer, critic, editor, public intellectual, and university professor. Her work often includes feminist themes, and depicts and analyzes the culture of western Canada.
Go to Profile#500
Laura Kasischke
#42972
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Laura Kasischke is an American fiction writer and poet. She is best known for writing the novels Suspicious River, The Life Before Her Eyes and White Bird in a Blizzard, all of which have been adapted to film.
Go to Profile