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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School

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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Literature,

#5151

David E. Kaplan

#36057

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

David E. Kaplan is an investigative reporter and former director of the Center for Public Integrity's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Before this post, he worked for the American newsweekly U.S. News & World Report.

#5152

William Scammell

#95978

Overall Influence

1939 - 2000 (61 years)

William Scammell was a British poet. Life He was born into a working-class family in the waterside village of Hythe on Southampton Water, but failed the eleven-plus exam. His brother is Michael Scammell.

#5153

Nancy Snow

#53807

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Nancy E. Snow is a professor of philosophy specializing in ethics and the director of the Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing at the University of Oklahoma. Prior to her move to Norman, she was a professor of philosophy at Marquette University. In 2022, she will move to the University of Kansas.

#5154

Linda Bierds

#55802

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Linda Louise Bierds is an American poet and professor of English and creative writing at the University of Washington, where she also received her B.A. in 1969. Her books include Flights of the Harvest Mare; The Stillness, the Dancing; Heart and Perimeter; and The Ghost Trio . Since 1984, her work has appeared regularly in The New Yorker. Her poems are featured in American Alphabets: 25 Contemporary Poets and many other anthologies. She lives on Bainbridge Island.

#5155

Marie-Claire Bancquart

Marie-Claire Bancquart

#82529

Overall Influence

1932 - 2019 (87 years)

Marie-Claire Bancquart was a French poet, essayist, professor emerita and literary critic. She was the recipient of the Grand prix de la Critique littéraire of the Académie Française, the premier authority on matters related to French language and culture, as well as numerous other awards. Her poetry is known for its visceral nature, often exploring the interior of the human body as a means of exploring emotion and humanity.

#5156

William B. Branch

#89213

Overall Influence

1927 - 2019 (92 years)

William Blackwell Branch was an American playwright who was also involved in many aspects of entertainment, including journalism, media production, editing, a short-lived career acting for television as well as talking on the radio. He "wrote, directed, and produced extensively for the stage, television, radio, and his own media consulting and production firm".

#5157

Dana Johnson

#132813

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Dana Johnson is an American writer and Associate Professor at the University of Southern California. Honors include the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, and being named a nominee for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Her writing has appeared in Callaloo, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere.

#5158

Park Bum-shin

#100539

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Park Bum Shin is a South Korean writer. Life Park Bum Shin was born in Nonsan, Chungcheongnam-do. He graduated from Jeonju National University of Education, Wonkwang University and Korea University. While working as a Korean language teacher at a middle school, he made his literary debut in 1973 with the short story Remains of the Summer , which won him the JoongAng Ilbo's New Year's Literary Contest. In the same year, along with the poets Kim Seung-hui and Jeong Ho-seung, Park founded a literary group called the 73 Group.

#5159

Sandrine Bonnaire

Sandrine Bonnaire

#62610

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Sandrine Bonnaire is a French actress, film director and screenwriter who has appeared in more than 40 films. She won the César Award for Most Promising Actress for À Nos Amours , the César Award for Best Actress for Vagabond and the Volpi Cup for Best Actress for La Cérémonie . Her other films include Under the Sun of Satan , Monsieur Hire , East/West and The Final Lesson .

#5160

Warner Norton Grubb III

#143182

Overall Influence

1948 - 2015 (67 years)

Warner Norton Grubb III was an American author, educational economist, and professor. His academic focus was inequality in society, particularly institutional sources of inequality. Life Grubb was born in Santiago, Chile while his father was on foreign assignment with the Eastern Standard Oil Company . He was the grandson of U.S. Navy Commodore Warner Norton Grubb and a descendant of John Grubb, who came from Cornwall in 1677 and settled in Delaware. Grubb's father moved the family to Rhode Island several years before he died, when Grubb was eleven.

#5161

Philip Booth

#91241

Overall Influence

1925 - 2007 (82 years)

Philip Edmund Booth was an American poet and educator; he has been called "Maine's clearest poetic voice." Life Booth was born in 1925 in Hanover, New Hampshire. Booth served in the United States Air Force in the Second World War. He then attended Dartmouth College, where he studied with Robert Frost; he received his B.A. in 1947. He subsequently received an M.A. from Columbia University. Booth married Margaret Tillman in 1946; they had three daughters. He spent much of his time living in Castine, Maine in a house that has been handed down through his family for five generations.

#5162

Opal J. Moore

#94155

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Opal J. Moore is an African-American poet, short-story author, and professor. Life and career Moore was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1953. Moore received a BFA from Illinois Wesleyan University in 1974, an MA in fine arts from the University of Iowa School of Art in 1981, and an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1982.

#5163

Alvin Jackson

#91939

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Alvin Jackson is the Richard Lodge Professor of History at the University of Edinburgh. His work focuses on unionism in the history of the Britain and Ireland. Works

#5164

Yumna Al-Eid

#152417

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Yumna Al-Eid is a Lebanese writer and literary critic. She is considered a professor in Arabic criticism in more than one university in both the Orient and the Occident. Her original name, according to her identity, is Hikmat Al-Majthoob Al-Sabbagh, and she is also known as Hikmat Al-Khatib. She has tens of publications in both literature and criticism. She received many Arabic honorary certificates and awards, amongst which is Al-Owais Award. She was also chosen as the Cultural Personality of the Year in Sharjah International Book Fair.

#5165

Jean-Louis Schefer

#80930

Overall Influence

1938 - 2022 (84 years)

Jean Louis Schefer was a French writer, philosopher, art critic, and theoretician of cinema and image. Career Born in Paris, France, a graduate of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales on Les écritures figuratives, a problème de grammaire égyptienne , Schefer worked in Milan from 1965 to 1966, in the preparation of a dictionary, then in Venice from 1967 to 1968. In Italy he presented works of Gianfranco Pardi, Titina Maselli, , Gianni Colombo and others. From 1970 to 1981 he taught in Paris.

#5166

Raymond Trousson

#121840

Overall Influence

1936 - 2013 (77 years)

Raymond Trousson was a Belgian literary historian , professor emeritus at Free University of Brussels and member of the Royal Academy of French Language and Literature of Belgium. His interests were focused on the classical authors of the 18th century.

#5167

Helen Sword

#133512

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Helen Claire Sword is a New Zealand academic, specialising in modernist poetry and academic writing, and is an emeritus professor at the University of Auckland. She was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi in 2023.

#5168

Yang Hi Choe-Wall

Yang Hi Choe-Wall

#63204

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

Yang Hi Choe-Wall is a Korean Australian academic, writer and researcher specialising in Korean literature of Chosŏn period . She was Associate Professor in the Division of Pacific and Asian History, the Australian National University. Choe-Wall is the winner of the 2013 Daesan Literary Awards, who is now retired and living in Canberra, Australia.

#5169

Constance Beresford-Howe

#112771

Overall Influence

1922 - 2016 (94 years)

Constance Beresford-Howe was a Canadian novelist. Biography Constance Beresford-Howe was born in 1922 in Montreal and graduated from McGill University with an BA and MA, and from Brown University, where she completed a Ph.D. in 1950. She taught English literature and creative writing at McGill in Montreal and Ryerson University in Toronto until her retirement in 1988.

#5170

Bunty Avieson

#102026

Overall Influence

Carolyn "Bunty" Avieson is an Australian journalist, feature writer, novelist and academic. Career Avieson has a PhD and a Master of Philosophy from Macquarie University, as well as an Associate Diploma of Journalism from RMIT University. In 2008–2009 she worked as a media consultant to newspaper Bhutan Observer, partly funded by the United Nations Development Program and was a consultant to Journalists Without Borders, Asia Pacific Desk.

#5171

Anna Jackson

#136973

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Anna Jackson is a New Zealand poet, fiction and non-fiction writer and an academic. Biography Jackson grew up in Auckland and now lives in Wellington. She has an MA from the University of Auckland and a DPhil from Oxford University. She is currently an associate professor in the School of English, Film, Theatre and Media Studies at Victoria University of Wellington.

#5172

Jaan Kaplinski

#98117

Overall Influence

1941 - 2021 (80 years)

Jaan Kaplinski was an Estonian poet, philosopher, politician, and culture critic, known for his focus on global issues and support for left-wing/liberal thinking. He was influenced by Eastern philosophical schools .

#5173

Susan Hubbard

#117578

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Susan Hubbard is an American fiction writer and professor emerita at the University of Central Florida. She has written seven books of fiction, and is a winner of the Associated Writing Program Prize for Short Fiction and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for best prose book of the year by an American woman.

#5174

Carol Lynch Williams

#118602

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Carol Lynch Williams is an author of Young Adult and Middle Grade novels. As of 2016, Williams is the conference director for Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers conference and is a professor of creative writing at Brigham Young University . She graduated in 2008 from Vermont College of Fine Arts with a degree in Writing for Children and Young Adults.

#5175

Steven Lehrer

#63005

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Steven Lehrer is a physician and writer, known for medical research and for his English translation of Else Ury. Early years and education Lehrer was born in Los Angeles. He attended UCLA and graduated from Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

#5176

Manuel Mantero

#102186

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (96 years)

Manuel Mantero is a Spanish professor and writer . In 1969, Mantero moved to the United States and continued his work as a professor. Biography He earned a law degree from the University of Seville, and a doctorate in law from the University of Salamanca, with a dissertation on philosophy and law in the work of the Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi . He served as a professor in the University of Seville and contributor to the School of Hispanic American Studies, under the direction of Spain’s Higher Council of Scientific Research , as well as a member of the school journal, Estudios Americanos I...

#5177

Jonas Zdanys

#53687

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Jonas Zdanys is a bilingual poet, a leading translator of modern Lithuanian fiction and poetry into the English language., and a literary theorist whose writings on translation theory reinforce a conservative humanistic literary agenda. He was born in New Britain, Connecticut, in 1950, a few months after his parents arrived in the United States from a United Nations camp for Lithuanian refugees. He is a graduate of Yale University and earned a Ph.D. in English literature from the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he studied with Robert Creeley among other writers.

#5178

Panna Naik

#59803

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

Panna Naik is an Indian Gujarati language poet and story writer who has lived in Philadelphia, United States since 1960. Working in the local university, she wrote poetry drawn from the world around her. Her book Pravesh received critical acclaim and she has published several poetry collections since.

#5179

Goran Simić

#100210

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Goran Simić is a Serbian-Canadian poet from Bosnia and Herzegovina, recognized internationally for his works of poetry, essays, short stories and theatre. Biography Simić was born in Vlasenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1952 and has written eleven volumes of poetry, drama and short fiction, including Sprinting from the Graveyard . His work has been translated into nine languages and has been published and performed in several European countries. One of the most prominent writers of the former Yugoslavia, Simić was trapped in the Siege of Sarajevo. In 1995 he and his family were able to settle in Canada as the result of a Freedom to Write Award from PEN.

#5180

Mazin Qumsiyeh

#39114

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Mazin Butros Qumsiyeh is a Palestinian scientist and author, founder and director of the Palestine Museum of Natural History and the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University where he teaches. After serving on the faculties of the University of Tennessee , Duke University , and Yale University , he now researches and teaches at Bethlehem and Birzeit Universities since 2008. Here Qumsiyeh joined with other professors to introduce the first Biotechnology Masters program in the region. Over the course of his career he has published well over 150 scientific papers on topics ranging from cultural heritage to biodiversity in addition to several books.

#5181

Paul Edwards

#98700

Overall Influence

1926 - 1992 (66 years)

Paul Geoffrey Edwards was a wide-ranging literary scholar at the University of Edinburgh, appreciated for his "adventurous and unorthodox teaching". As a scholar of black history and literature, Edwards's work on Olaudah Equiano "helped to establish Equiano as a key figure in African and black literature in general." Edwards also wrote on Romanticism, and collaborated with Hermann Pálsson in translations of the Icelandic sagas and other books on the literature of medieval Iceland.

#5182

David Isaacs

#118366

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

David Isaacs is an American screenwriter and producer. He has written episodes of M*A*S*H, Cheers, its spin-off Frasier, and The Simpsons with Ken Levine. Isaacs became a consulting producer and writer for the AMC television drama Mad Men for the show's second season. He won the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Dramatic Series at the February 2009 ceremony for his work on the second season.

#5183

Ned O'Gorman

#52606

Overall Influence

1929 - 2014 (85 years)

Edward Charles "Ned" O'Gorman was an American poet and educator. Biography Early life Edward Charles O'Gorman was born on September 26, 1929, in New York City. His father was Samuel Franklin Engs O'Gorman and his mother, Annette de Bouthillier-Chavigny, a French aristocrat. He spent most of his early life in Southport, Connecticut, and Bradford, Vermont. In 1950, he graduated from St. Michael's College in Vermont and later received an M.A. from Columbia University, where he studied with poet and scholar Mark Van Doren. While at Princeton University in 1957, he rented a room in the house of novelist Caroline Gordon Tate, former wife of poet Allen Tate.

#5184

Emily Apter

#107702

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Emily Susan Apter is an American academic, translator, editor and professor. Her areas of research are translation theory, language philosophy, political theory, critical theory, continental philosophy, history and theory of comparative literature, psychoanalysis, and political fiction. She is currently Silver Professor of French and Comparative Literature and Chair of the Department of French Literature, Thought and Culture at New York University.

#5185

Jerome J. Pollitt

#88633

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Jerome Jordan Pollitt is an American art historian and educator. Pollitt is the Sterling Professor of Classical Archeology and History of Art Emeritus at Yale University. Early life Pollitt graduated from the Hotchkiss School in 1953. He then earned a Bachelor of Arts from Yale University in 1957 and a Doctor of Philosophy from Columbia University in 1963. Upon graduating from Yale, Pollitt became a Fulbright Scholar at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. After returning to the United States, he was drafted and served a term in the United States Army before continuing his educ...

#5186

Gale Owen-Crocker

#77432

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Gale Owen-Crocker is a professor emerita of the University of Manchester, England. Before her retirement she was Professor of Anglo-Saxon Culture and Director of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies.

#5187

Shahd Alshammari

#113778

Overall Influence

Shahd Alshammari is a Kuwaiti writer, academic scholar and assistant professor of the English language. She is well known for her researches that focus on human and women's rights, disability issues and, recently, illness narrative. She published six books, in total, three of which she was the author, and the other three co-author. Additionally, she participated in over 15 conference, both as attendee and Keynote speaker, and discussed different topics in the fields of literature and culture. In 2019, she was nominated for the British Council Alumni Awards – Social Impact. In 2021 she won Out...

#5188

Paco Vidarte

#36758

Overall Influence

1970 - 2008 (38 years)

Francisco "Paco" Javier Vidarte Fernández was a Spanish philosopher, writer and LGBT activist. Biography After studying philosophy at the Universidad Pontificia Comillas in Madrid/Spain, as well as psychoanalysis at the Universidad Complutense MadridUNED

#5189

Connie Ann Kirk

#119961

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Connie Ann Kirk is an American author. Her books cover a range of subjects including concise literary biographies for students, bio-critical literary studies, and references. She has also written a fiction picture book for children. Her articles, both in print and online, address topics in literature, poetry, popular culture, history, education, art, television, science, sports, and film.

#5190

Carole Glasser Langille

#139422

Overall Influence

Carole Glasser Langille is a Canadian poet and author of three books of poetry. Life Langille is the author of four books of poetry, two collections of short stories, two children's books, and a non-fiction book, Doing Time: Writing Workshops in Prison.

#5191

Jason Sommer

#90351

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Jason Sommer is an American poet and academic. Life He graduated from Brandeis University, Stanford University , and St. Louis University. He taught at St. Louis University, Webster University, and University College, Dublin.

#5192

Dora Malech

#151659

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

Dora Malech is an American poet. Life Malech grew up in Bethesda, Maryland, earned a BA in Fine Arts from Yale University in 2003, and received her MFA in Poetry from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop in 2005. She has since taught writing at the University of Iowa; Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand; Kirkwood Community College; and Augustana College. She has served as Distinguished Poet-in-Residence at Saint Mary's College of California, and she is a co-founder and former director of the arts engagement organization the Iowa Youth Writing Project.

#5193

Summer Edward

#132898

Overall Influence

1986 - Present (40 years)

Summer Edward is a Trinidadian American writer, children's editor, educator, literary activist and children's literature specialist based in the USA. In 2010, at the age of 24, she founded Anansesem ezine, the first children's literature publication in the English-speaking Caribbean and served as its editor-in-chief for 10 years. At 26, she became one of the Caribbean's youngest literary editors. Anansesem has published some of the most distinctive and distinguished voices in Caribbean literature for young people including Floella Benjamin, Gerald Hausman, Ibi Zoboi, Itah Sadu, Lynn Joseph, Margarita Engle, Nadia L.

#5194

Ljubiša Rajić

#129022

Overall Influence

1947 - 2012 (65 years)

Ljubiša Rajić was a Serbian university professor of North Germanic languages, prolific translator and academic. Biography He graduated North Germanic languages in 1975 in Oslo, and went on the get a master's degrees and a PhD at Faculty of Philology in Belgrade.

#5195

Carole E. Newlands

#134654

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Carole Elizabeth Newlands is a scholar of Latin literature and culture. She is a distinguished professor and associate chair of undergraduate studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. Career Newlands joined the faculty of classics at the University of Colorado Boulder in 2009, after previously teaching at Cornell University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and University of Wisconsin, Madison. In the summer of 2010, she was selected as the Visiting NEH Professor of Classics at the University of Richmond. Her responsibilities included teaching Ovid's works to students in their classics department.

#5196

Sylvie Bérard

#132343

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Sylvie Bérard is a Canadian academic and science fiction writer. Born in Montreal, she studied semiotics at the Université du Québec à Montréal and went on to lecture for the Department of French and perform post-doctoral research at the University of Toronto. She later lectured on Quebec literature at Trent University; she also was director of the Department of languages and modern literature.

#5197

Alessandro Lami

Alessandro Lami

#128654

Overall Influence

1949 - 2015 (66 years)

Alessandro Lami was an Italian classical philologist. Life Born to the workman Pietro Lami and his wife Rina Colombini he grew up in Castiglioncello and was schooled in the knowledge of Latin and Classical Greek at the Liceo Classico "Niccolini Guerrazzi" in Livorno where he firstmeets his wife, Elisabetta Piccioni.

#5198

Choi Seungho

#115298

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Choi Seung-Ho is identified as a Korean ecopoet. His publications also include children's poetry. He was born in the small rural village of Chungcheong, Gangwon Province, in 1954, and taught for many years in an elementary school in the countryside.

#5199

Lynda Myles

#105732

Overall Influence

1939 - 2023 (84 years)

Lynda Myles was an American television writer, actress, playwright, memoirist, and short fiction writer. She attended Michigan State University and was known for her Broadway plays such as Two Gentlemen of Verona, Iphigenia in Aulis, No Exit, Rocking Chair, Trojan Women and Neil Simon's Plaza Suite.

#5200

Ross Clark

#88747

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Ross Clark is an Australian poet. His poems often use strongly physical imagery and he is a strong exponent of haiku poetry. Life Born in Toowoomba, Clark attended Mount Gravatt State High School and the University of Queensland. He spent over a decade teaching in rural and regional communities. In recent years he has specialized in teaching poetry and creative writing at Queensland University of Technology, as well as performing as a musician.

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