Search People Result | Academic Influence

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).

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List of the most influential people in Literature,

#5051

Tuli Kupferberg

Tuli Kupferberg

#68550

Overall Influence

1923 - 2010 (87 years)

Naphtali "Tuli" Kupferberg was an American counterculture poet, author, singer, cartoonist, publisher, and co-founder of the rock band The Fugs. Biography Naphtali Kupferberg was born into a Jewish, Yiddish-speaking household in New York City. A cum laude graduate of Brooklyn College in 1944, Kupferberg founded the magazine Birth in 1958.

#5052

Craig Lesley

#85406

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Craig Lesley is a memoirist and novelist of the modern American west. He has been nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize, first for his novel The Sky Fisherman in 1996, and again for Storm Riders in 2001. He has received three Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Awards, and an Oregon Book Award. His novel Winterkill was the first to win the Golden Spur award for Best Novel and Medicine Pipe Bearer's for Best First Novel from the Western Writers of America He has been the recipient of several national fellowships and holds a Doctorate of Humane Letters from Whitman College.

#5053

Pearl London

#118627

Overall Influence

1916 - 2003 (87 years)

Pearl London was an American supporter of literary arts and teacher of poetry in New York City. Early life Born Pearl Levison on April 23, 1916, London was the daughter of Joshua Jacob Levison and Ray Levison. Her father was a renowned landscape architect on Long Island and her mother was an emigrant from Latvia. London had two sisters, Sylvia and Beatrice.

#5054

William Dickey

#101368

Overall Influence

1928 - 1994 (66 years)

William Hobart Dickey was an American poet and professor of English and creative writing at San Francisco State University. He wrote 15 books of poetry over a career that lasted over 30 years. Early life and education Dickey was born in 1928 in Bellingham, Washington and was raised in Washington and Oregon. He attended Reed College, graduating in 1951. At Reed, he wrote a novel for his bachelor's thesis and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa Society.

#5055

Susan McLean

#144760

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Susan McLean is an American poet, a translator of poetry, and a retired professor of English at Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall, Minnesota. She graduated from Harvard University with a BA in English in 1975 and from Rutgers University with a PhD in 1990. Her work has appeared in Kalliope, Atlanta Review, The Formalist, Iambs and Trochees, Arion, Measure, The Classical Outlook, Literary Imagination. She writes in the field of formalism. According to an interview with the Poetry Foundation, she describes her love of formalism as: " I am addicted to the esoteric pleasures of rhyme and meter, and I don’t even try to deny it or camouflage it with slant rhyme".

#5056

Bora Chung

#110830

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Bora Chung is a South Korean writer and translator. Her collection of short stories, Cursed Bunny, was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize. Life and career Bora Chung was born in 1976, in Seoul. Her parents were dentists. She completed graduate studies in Russian and East European area studies at Yale University, then went on to gain a PhD in Slavic literature from Indiana University. She taught the Russian language, literature and science fiction studies at Yonsei University. She is a social activist.

#5057

Jean McNeil

#139772

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Jean McNeil, born 1968, is a Canadian fiction and travel author. She is a Reader in Creative Writing and co-convenor of the MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. She grew up on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. She presently lives in London, England.

#5058

T. Corey Brennan

#109656

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Terry Corey Brennan is a Professor of Classics at Rutgers University-New Brunswick . Under the stage name Corey "Loog" Brennan he was a guitarist and songwriter involved with several bands, including Boston-based bands Bullet LaVolta and The Lemonheads, and the Rome, Italy-based Superfetazione.

#5059

Mary McHenry

#98757

Overall Influence

1933 - 2021 (88 years)

Mary Williamson McHenry was "credited with bringing African-American literature to Mount Holyoke College," where she was Emeritus Professor of English. McHenry also introduced her then student, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, to Five Colleges faculty member James Baldwin during the 1980s. Parks would later credit McHenry with her success.

#5060

Silvester Brito

#89022

Overall Influence

1937 - 2018 (81 years)

Silvester John Brito was an American poet and academic. He was an associate professor of anthropology and folklore at the University of Wyoming. Early life and education Brito was born September 26, 1937, in Delta, Colorado. He was of Comanche and Purépecha descent. Brito completed a Ph.D. in Folklore at Indiana University.

#5061

Agymah Kamau

#101171

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Kwadwo Agymah Kamau is a Barbadian American novelist. Life A native of Barbados, he moved to New York in 1977. He studied at Virginia Commonwealth University. He graduated from Baruch College of CUNY with a bachelor's degree in finance and a master's degree in quantitative economics. He served first as a statistician at the New York City Department of Investigation, then as a senior economist at the New York State Department of Taxation & Finance. He studied with Paule Marshall at Virginia Commonwealth University in the MFA program.

#5062

William Leonard Pickard

William Leonard Pickard

#60296

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

William Leonard Pickard is one of two people convicted in the largest lysergic acid diethylamide manufacturing case in history. In 2000, while moving their LSD laboratory across Kansas, Pickard and Clyde Apperson were pulled over while driving a Ryder rental truck and a follow car. The laboratory had been stored near a renovated Atlas-E missile silo near Wamego, Kansas. Gordon Todd Skinner, one of the men intimately involved in the case but not charged due to his cooperation, owned the property where the laboratory equipment was stored.

#5063

Ifeoma Okoye

#82959

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Ifeoma Okoye is a Nigerian novelist. She has been referred to by fans as "the most important female novelist from Nigeria after Flora Nwapa and Buchi Emecheta," according to Oyekan Owomoyela. She was born in Anambra State in Eastern Region, Nigeria. She went to school at St. Monica's College in Ogbunike to receive a teaching certificate in 1959. She then graduated from the University of Nigeria in Nsukka to earn a Bachelor of Arts honours degree in English in 1977. She wrote novels including Behind the Clouds, children's novels and short stories, such as The Village Boy and Eme Goes to Scho...

#5064

Elizabeth Alexander

Elizabeth Alexander

#101118

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Elizabeth Alexander is an American poet, writer, and literary scholar who has served as the president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation since 2018. Previously, Alexander was a professor for 15 years at Yale University, where she taught poetry and chaired the African American studies department. In 2015, she was appointed director of creativity and free expression at the Ford Foundation. She then joined the faculty of Columbia University in 2016, as the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor in the Humanities in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. In 2022, Time named Alexander one of...

#5065

Jeanne Murray Walker

#118282

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Jeanne Murray Walker is an American poet and playwright. Life Jeanne Murray was born on May 27, 1944, in Parkers Prairie, Minnesota, the daughter of John Gerald and Erna Murray. In 1965, she won the Atlantic Monthly Award for both fiction and Poetry and was named the Atlantic Monthly Scholar at Bread Loaf School of English. She graduated from Wheaton College in Illinois with a B.A. in English in 1966. In 1969 she received an M.A. from Loyola University, and in 1974, she was granted a Ph.D. in English from The University of Pennsylvania.

#5066

Pius Adesanmi

#47920

Overall Influence

1972 - 2019 (47 years)

Pius Adebola Adesanmi was a Nigerian-born Canadian academic and author. He was the author of Naija No Dey Carry Last, a 2015 collection of satirical essays. Adesanmi died on 10 March 2019, when Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed shortly after take-off.

#5067

Gillian Lynne

#50831

Overall Influence

1926 - 2018 (92 years)

Dame Gillian Barbara Lynne was an English ballerina, dancer, choreographer, actress, and theatre-television director, noted for her theatre choreography associated with two of the longest-running shows in Broadway history, Cats and The Phantom of the Opera. At age 87, she was made a DBE in the 2014 New Year Honours List.

#5068

Mervyn Thompson

#101055

Overall Influence

1936 - 1992 (56 years)

Mervyn Garfield Thompson was a New Zealand playwright and theatre director. He was one of the founders of Court Theatre in Christchurch, an artistic director of Downstage Theatre in Wellington and writer in residence at the University of Canterbury. His theatrical writing championed the downtrodden and featured a revival and refinement of the genre of songspiel.

#5069

Airea D. Matthews

#110419

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Airea D. Matthews is an American poet. She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing and the co-director of the Creative Writing Program at Bryn Mawr College. She was named the 2022–23 Poet Laureate of Philadelphia.

#5070

Angharad Price

#106963

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Angharad Price FLSW is a Welsh academic and novelist. She is a recipient of the Glyndŵr Award. Biography Price was born in Bethel, Gwynedd, Wales, the daughter of the Welsh historian . She graduated with a BA and DPhil in Modern Languages from Jesus College, Oxford. She teaches at Bangor University and works on Welsh prose of the modern era. She currently lives in Caernarfon.

#5071

Oreste Plath

#97458

Overall Influence

1907 - 1996 (89 years)

César Octavio Müller Leiva ,, mostly known under the pseudonym Oreste Plath, was a Chilean writer and folklorist. In 1942, he began studying folklore, making trips to neighboring countries like Bolivia, Brazil and Argentina. In 1982, he was elected to the Academia Chilena de la Lengua.

#5072

Josephine Wilson

#112899

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Josephine Wilson is an Australian writer and academic based in Perth, Western Australia. Biography Wilson was born in Lincolnshire, England, and came to live in Australia with her family at the age of six. She has a Masters of Philosophy from the University of Queensland and a PhD from University of Western Australia .

#5073

Ruth Ellen Kocher

Ruth Ellen Kocher

#131082

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Ruth Ellen Kocher is an American poet. She is the recipient of the PEN/Open Book Award, the Dorset Prize, the Green Rose Prize, and the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and Cave Canem. She is Professor of English at the University of Colorado - Boulder where and serves as Associate Dean for the College of Arts and Sciences and Divisional Dean for Arts and Humanities.

#5074

George Francis Mitchell

#65879

Overall Influence

1912 - 1997 (85 years)

George Francis Mitchell, was an Irish geologist, naturalist and conservationist. He was generally known as Frank Mitchell. Career He was born in Dublin, the son of David William Mitchell, a merchant, and his wife Frances Elizabeth Kirkby. He was educated at the High School in Dublin then studied Natural Sciences at Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated BA. He was later awarded M.Sc and M.A. .

#5075

Michael Carson

#69544

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Michael Carson is the pen name of British author Michael Wherly. He is best known for his Benson trilogy of novels, about a young man growing up Catholic and homosexual. Childhood and education Carson was born in 1946 in Wallasey, in the north-west of England. He was brought up as a devout Catholic.

#5076

Pamela Uschuk

#122877

Overall Influence

Pamela Uschuk is an American poet, and 2011 Visiting Poet at University of Tennessee. She won a 2010 American Book Award, for Crazy Love: New Poems. Life Born in 1953 and raised on a farm in Michigan, she received her B.A. In English from Central Michigan University. She graduated from the University of Montana with a MFA in Poetry and Fiction.

#5077

David Thorburn

#134490

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (125 years)

David Thorburn is an American professor of literature at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is notable for media studies, literary criticism, and teaching. He has published poetry in Slate Magazine, Threepenny Review, and The Atlantic. He was one of the first academics to study the medium of television as an academic field of inquiry. He is the director of MIT's Communications Forum. He is regarded as an authority on modernist literature, and he was selected by the Teaching Company to teach a course on entitled Masterworks of Early 20th-Century Literature.

#5078

Ron Miller

#39996

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Ron Miller is an illustrator and writer who lives and works in South Boston, Virginia. He now specializes in astronomical, astronautical and science fiction books for adults and young adults. Miller was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He holds a BFA from Columbus, Ohio, College of Art and Design. He worked as a commercial artist and designer for six years, before taking a position as art director for the National Air and Space Museum's Albert Einstein Planetarium. He left there in 1977 to become a freelance illustrator and author; to date he has nearly sixty book titles to his credit, and his...

#5079

Fanny Carrión de Fierro

#102400

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Fanny Carrión de Fierro is an Ecuadorian poet, literary critic, essayist and university professor. Life and career She received a Doctorate in Literature from the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador , as well as a Master of Arts degree from the University of California at Berkeley, and a Bachelor's degree in Education from the Central University of Ecuador.

#5080

John T. Hamilton

#124725

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

John T. Hamilton is a literary scholar, musician, and William R. Kenan Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Harvard University. He previously held positions at the University of California-Santa Cruz and New York University , and has also taught as a visiting professor at the Institute of Greece, Rome, and the Classical Tradition at Bristol University. Numerous academic fellowships include the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, the ETH-Zürich, the Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung Berlin, and the Hamburg Institute for Advanced Study.

#5081

Nathan A. Scott Jr.

#101806

Overall Influence

1925 - 2006 (81 years)

Nathan A. Scott Jr. was an American scholar who helped establish the modern field of theology and literature and who helped found the well-known Ph.D. program in that field at the University of Chicago. Scott also published seventeen books, in addition to publishing articles and reviews and editing editions. He has likewise been the subject of numerous articles and books.

#5082

Rick Hillis

#156280

Overall Influence

1956 - 2014 (58 years)

Rick Hillis was a Canadian poet and short story writer. Life He graduated from the University of Saskatchewan and the Iowa Writers Workshop, with an MFA. He attended Stanford University as a Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer in fiction writing, and was also a Chesterfield Film Writers’ Fellow at Universal Studios.

#5083

Susan Miller

#87871

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Susan Miller, recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Playwriting, is perhaps best known as the author/performer of the critically acclaimed one woman play, My Left Breast and as Executive Producer and writer for the award-winning web series Anyone But Me. For her work on the web series she won the first Writers Guild of America Award for Outstanding Achievement in Writing Original New Media.

#5084

Carol Burnett

#74836

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

Carol Creighton Burnett is an American comedian, actress, and singer. Her groundbreaking comedy-variety show The Carol Burnett Show, which originally aired on CBS, was one of the first to be hosted by a woman. She has performed onstage, on television, and in film in varying genres, including dramatic and comedic roles. She has received numerous accolades, including six Primetime Emmy Awards, a Tony Award, a Grammy Award, and seven Golden Globe Awards. Burnett was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005, the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2013, and the Screen Actors Guild Lif...

#5085

Dan Beachy-Quick

#109950

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Dan Beachy-Quick is an American poet, writer, and critic. He is the author of eight collections of poems, most recently, Variations on Dawn and Dusk , longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award for Poetry. His other books include A Whaler’s Dictionary , a collection of essays about Moby Dick. His honors include a Lannan Foundation Residency and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

#5086

Vincent J. Cardinal

#57660

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Vincent J. Cardinal is a graduate of Yale School of Drama. He is a playwright and director. He has written The Colorado Catechism and directed Queens Blvd. and Steve Hayes' Hollywood Reunion. Cardinal is the former chair of the Department of Musical Theatre at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance.

#5087

Vincent Gillespie

#94303

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Vincent Gillespie, FEA is Emeritus J. R. R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language at the University of Oxford. He was editor of the Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies Series from 2002 until 2023, and was the Honorary Director of the Early English Text Society from 2013 until 2023, having previously served as its Executive Secretary from 2004 until 2013. His major research area is late medieval English literature. He has published over sixty articles and book chapters ranging from medieval book history, through Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland, to the medieval mystics such as Richard Rolle and, most recently, Julian of Norwich.

#5088

Yolanda Wisher

#112565

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Yolanda Wisher is an American poet, educator and spoken word artist who focuses on the experience of being African-American. She is a graduate of Temple University and was selected as the third Poet Laureate of Philadelphia in 2016.

#5089

Dennis McFarland

#112420

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Dennis McFarland is an American novelist and short story writer. His novels include Nostalgia, Letter from Point Clear, Prince Edward, Singing Boy, A Face at the Window, School for the Blind and The Music Room. His short fiction has appeared in The American Scholar, The New Yorker, Prize Stories: the O’Henry Awards, Best American Short Stories and elsewhere. He has received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Wallace E. Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University.

#5090

Catherine Petroski

#84177

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Catherine Petroski , born Catherine Groom in St. Louis, Missouri, is an American writer and photographer. Life She holds degrees from MacMurray College and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has taught writing and literature at Duke University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and aboard ships at sea. She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle, the Authors Guild, and SABR, the Society for American Baseball Research.

#5091

Robert Phillips

Robert Phillips

#86676

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Robert Schaeffer Phillips was an American poet and professor of English at the University of Houston. He was the author or editor of more than 30 volumes of poetry, fiction, poetry criticism and other works.

#5092

David Bell

#48279

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

David J. Bell is an American writer and university professor of English. His most recent novel is She's Gone, his first young adult novel and a New York Times bestseller. Bell's next adult novel, Try Not To Breathe, will be published in June 2023.

#5093

Myra Sklarew

#90751

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Myra Weisberg Sklarew is an American biologist, poet and teacher. Life She received a biology degree from Tufts University, in 1956. She studied bacterial genetics and bacterial viruses with Salvador Luria and Max Delbrück at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. She later studied with Elliott Coleman at the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars, where she received an M.A. in 1970. She has worked in the Department of Neurophysiology, at Yale University School of Medicine, where she studied frontal lobe function and delayed response memory in Rhesus monkeys.

#5094

Cristóvão Tezza

Cristóvão Tezza

#119742

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Cristóvão Tezza is a Brazilian novelist and university professor. Biography Cristóvão Tezza was born in Lages, Santa Catarina, Brazil in 1952, but moved to Curitiba in Paraná by the time he was ten. This city would later serve as the backdrop for many of his stories, with characters visiting familiar streets and local attractions.

#5095

Catherine Tufariello

#99349

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Catherine Tufariello is an American poet and former professor at Cornell University, the College of Charleston, and the University of Miami. Biography She graduated from University at Buffalo, and Cornell University with a PhD.

#5096

Stephen Lovely

#134556

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Stephen Lovely is an American novelist and educator. He attended Kenyon College and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he studied with Deborah Eisenberg, Margot Livesey, Ethan Canin, and Frank Conroy. His first novel, Irreplaceable, was published by Hyperion/Voice in 2009 and translated into German, Dutch, and Chinese. Irreplaceable received the Dana Award for the Novel and a James Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award. Since 2005 Stephen has been the director of the Iowa Young Writers' Studio, a creative writing program for high school students at The University of Iowa. He lives in Io...

#5097

Steven P. Schneider

#127224

Overall Influence

Steven P. Schneider is an American poet, critic, and professor of English at the University of Texas-Pan American, where he serves as director of new programs and special projects in the College of Arts and Humanities. He is the author of three books of poetry, Borderlines: Drawing Border Lives , a collaborative effort with his wife, Reefka Schneider, Unexpected Guests , and Prairie Air Show . He is the author and editor of several scholarly books, including The Contemporary Narrative Poem: Critical Crosscurrents , a collection of ten essays from poet-critics on the contemporary American narra...

#5098

Victor Coleman

#131614

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Victor Coleman is a Canadian poet. Biography Born in Toronto, Coleman was the first editor at Coach House Books from 1966 until 1975. After his tenure in publishing, he managed the multidisciplinary art centre, A Space in Toronto for four years. He has also taught film studies and creative writing at Queen's University and creative writing at York University.

#5099

Steven L. Peck

#57662

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Steven L. Peck is an evolutionary biologist, poet, and novelist. His literary work is influential in Mormon literature circles. He is a professor of biology at Brigham Young University . He grew up in Moab, Utah and lives in Pleasant Grove, Utah.

#5100

Sergio Ramírez

#66195

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Sergio Ramírez Mercado is a Nicaraguan writer and intellectual who was a key figure in 1979 revolution, served in the leftist Government Junta of National Reconstruction and as vice president of the country 1985–1990 under the presidency of Daniel Ortega. He has been described as Nicaragua's "best-known living writer". Since the 1990s, he has been involved in the left-wing opposition to the Nicaraguan government, in particular in the Movimiento de Renovación Sandinista. He was exiled from the country in 2021 and stripped of his nationality by the government in 2023.

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