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,

#5251

Thomas J. Kinne

Thomas J. Kinne

#104816

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Thomas J. Kinne is a German translator, author, editor, proofreader, travel writer, movie expert, comic-book collector. He became widely known in his home country for his frequent appearances as a contestant and winner on a wide variety of game shows on German and U.S. television. Since 2018, he is one of the “chasers” on Gefragt – Gejagt, the German version of the U.K. game show The Chase.

#5252

Tongo Eisen-Martin

#106786

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Tongo Eisen-Martin is an American poet and activist. He is the current poet laureate of San Francisco, California. Biography Tongo Eisen-Martin was born in 1980 in San Francisco, California to a revolutionary mother Arlene Eisen. His parents named him after Josiah Tongogara. Muralist Miranda Bergman is his godmother. He has a younger brother named Biko, and they both attended Meadows-Livingstone school in San Francisco as children. He earned a bachelor's and master's degree in African-American Studies, all from Columbia University where he taught at the Institute for Research in African-Americ...

#5253

Joan Chissell

#91774

Overall Influence

1919 - 2007 (88 years)

Joan Olive Chissell was an English writer and lecturer on music, and music reviewer for The Times 1948–79. She made a special study of the life and works of Robert Schumann. Career Joan Chissell was born in Cromer, and was educated at the Manor School in Sheringham. She gained a scholarship at Royal College of Music in 1937, where she studied piano and composition with Kendall Taylor, theory under Herbert Howells and history and criticism under Frank Howes. Her pianistic career was cut short by an injury. Despite this, while at the RCM she gave the first UK performance of Maurice Ravel's P...

#5254

Robert D. Newman

#103313

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Robert D. Newman is an American literary scholar, poet, and the current president and director of the National Humanities Center. From 2001 to 2015 he served as dean of the College of Humanities, Associate Vice President for Interdisciplinary Studies, and professor of English at the University of Utah where he was widely recognized for his efforts to increase support for the college, expand its program offerings, and in support of greater campus diversity.

#5255

Kirstin Cronn-Mills

Kirstin Cronn-Mills

#97208

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Kirstin Cronn-Mills is an American author of children's books including the Minnesota Book Award finalist The Sky Always Hears Me And the Hills Don't Mind and Beautiful Music for Ugly Children which was a Stonewall Book Award winner and a Lambda Literary Award finalist. Her third novel, Original Fake , was a Minnesota Book Award finalist in 2017, along with her third nonfiction volume for high school libraries, LGBTQ+ Athletes Claim the Field. Her fourth novel, Wreck, will be published in 2019.

#5256

Ibrahim Fawal

#78799

Overall Influence

1933 - 2020 (87 years)

Ibrahim Fawal was a Palestinian-American academic, former professor, and author of the historical novel On the Hills of God, about the experiences of a young Palestinian man during the Nakba, or "catastrophe" of 1948. He lived in Birmingham, Alabama.

#5257

John Stevens

#102164

Overall Influence

1921 - 2002 (81 years)

John Edgar Stevens, was an English musicologist, literary scholar and historian, whose research focused on the words of medieval and Renaissance music. He was the Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at the University of Cambridge from 1978 to 1988.

#5258

Peter Horn

#113138

Overall Influence

1934 - 2019 (85 years)

Peter Rudolf Gisela Horn was a Czech-born South African poet. He made his mark especially with his anti-Apartheid poetry. At the end of World War II he had to flee from his home and settled with his parents first in Bavaria and later in Freiburg im Breisgau, where he completed high school in 1954. He then emigrated with his parents to South Africa.

#5259

Muntassir Mamoon

Muntassir Mamoon

#45171

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Muntasir Mamoon his full name is Muntasir Uddin Khan Mamun, he is a Bangladeshi writer, historian, scholar, secularist, translator, and professor at University of Dhaka. He was awarded Bangla Academy Literary Award and Ekushey Padak by the Government of Bangladesh.

#5260

Kerry Madden

#89789

Overall Influence

Kerry Madden is an American author of teen novels and a professor of creative writing at Antioch University and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Personal life and education Madden was born November 22, 1961, in Daytona Beach, Florida.

#5261

Ira Sadoff

#93338

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Ira Sadoff is an American poet, critic, novelist and short story writer. Life Sadoff was born on March 7, 1945, in Brooklyn, New York. He earned a B.A. from Cornell University in industrial and labor relations and an M.F.A. from the University of Oregon. He has taught at colleges and universities including the University of Virginia, the Iowa Writer's Workshop and the M.F.A. program at Warren Wilson College. He is currently the Arthur Jeremiah Roberts Professor of Literature at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.

#5262

Shirō Hattori

#82687

Overall Influence

1908 - 1995 (87 years)

Shiro Hattori was a Japanese academic and writer. Born in Kameyama, Mie, Hattori was a linguist known particularly for his work on premodern Japanese and Japonic languages and the Ainu language. He was a professor at the University of Tokyo.

#5263

Patrick O'Brien

#119198

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Patrick Lyons O’Brien is an American artist and writer, known for his children's books and for his maritime paintings. The National Maritime Historical Society awarded O’Brien their Distinguished Service Award for his body of artwork in 2012.

#5264

Naomi Lebowitz

#101164

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

Naomi Gordon Lebowitz is a literary philosopher, author, critic, and scholar of American, English, Scandinavian, and continental European literature, as well as a translator of Danish fiction. Her seven book-length critical studies of authors and thinkers have focused on the difficulties of spiritual and religious passion in the face of modern belief systems. Lebowitz's studies were sometimes eclipsed by the concentration of American academics on deconstructionist theory during the latter decades of the twentieth-century. More recent approaches that value intersectionality and historicism, h...

#5265

Leon Stokesbury

#152845

Overall Influence

1945 - 2018 (73 years)

Leon Stokesbury was an American poet. Life He graduated from the University of Arkansas with an MFA, and earned his Ph.D. at Florida State University. He taught creative writing at Georgia State University.

#5266

Naomi Lindstrom

#75993

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Naomi Eva Lindstrom is an American literary critic and translator who has published books and articles on Latin American narrative and poetry and Jewish writing from Latin America. Background Lindstrom studied at the University of Chicago and is the Gale Family Foundation Professor in Jewish Arts and Culture and Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Texas at Austin, where she is co-director of the Gale Collaborative on Jewish Life in the Americas at the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies. Lindstrom is the daughter of the noted sociologist Frederick B. Lindstrom , best kn...

#5267

Michael Blumlein

Michael Blumlein

#62357

Overall Influence

1948 - 2019 (71 years)

Michael Blumlein, M.D. was an American fiction writer and a physician. Profile Blumlein attended medical school at the University of California, San Francisco and worked as a practicing doctor and member of the faculty at the University of California, San Francisco for decades. The majority of Blumlein's fiction was in the fields of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. He was nominated for the World Fantasy Award and the Bram Stoker Award. His short fiction was published in venues incuding Interzone and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and republished in anthologies and collections.

#5268

Oriza Hirata

#21321

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Oriza Hirata is a Japanese playwright, director, and academic. For the majority of his life, he has been best known for his work in theater and creating what he has coined, “contemporary colloquial theater,” or as theater critics call it, “quiet drama.”

#5269

Rilla Askew

#93026

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Rilla Askew is an American novelist and short story writer who was born in Poteau, in the Sans Bois Mountains of southeastern Oklahoma, and grew up in the town of Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Early life and education Askew graduated from the University of Tulsa with a B.F.A. in Theatre Performance in 1980. She moved then to New York where she studied acting at HB Studio with Herbert Bergoff in New York and later Curt Dempster at Ensemble Studio Theatre. She began writing—plays first, then fiction—with her theatre background supporting the use of language and rhythm in her works. She went on to stu...

#5270

Geoffrey Becker

#120449

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Geoffrey Becker is an American short story writer, and novelist. Life He teaches at Towson University. Graduated from Colby College in 1980. His work appeared in Antioch Review, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Crescent Review, failbetter.com, Florida Review, Gettysburg Review, Kansas Quarterly, North American Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Quarterly West, Roanoke Review, Sonora Review, The Cincinnati Review, West Branch.

#5271

Kevin Rabas

#110233

Overall Influence

Kevin Rabas is an American poet, professor and jazz musician. He is the author of two collections of poetry, the co-director of the Creative Writing Program at Emporia State University, co-edits a literary magazine, and was the winner of the Langston Hughes Award for Poetry.

#5272

Abe Peck

#89329

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Abe Peck is a magazine consultant, writer, editor and professor, known for having been an editor and writer at the Chicago Seed underground newspaper from 1968 to 1971. Biography Early life and education Peck was born in the Bronx, New York on Jan 18, 1945. He graduated from New York University with a degree in history and pursued graduate studies before dropping out of school and into New York's East Village.

#5273

Brian Cox

#30709

Overall Influence

1928 - 2008 (80 years)

Charles Brian Cox CBE was an English academic and poet. Cox was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he received MA and MLitt degrees. In 1959 he and his friend A. E. Dyson founded the literary journal Critical Quarterly. English teachers in more than half the grammar schools in the country subscribed to it. The journal published five Black Papers between 1969 and 1977. These were controversial, due to their criticism of comprehensive schools and child-centred teaching methods.

#5274

Stan Dragland

#136509

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Stanley Louis Dragland was a Canadian novelist, poet and literary critic. A longtime professor of English literature at the University of Western Ontario, he was most noted for his 1994 critical study Floating Voice: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Literature of Treaty 9, which played a key role in the contemporary reevaluation of the legacy of poet Duncan Campbell Scott in light of his role as deputy superintendent of the Department of Indian Affairs.

#5275

Fritz Paul

#165046

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Fritz Paul is a German philologist who specializes in Scandinavian studies. Biography Fritz Paul was born in Nesselwang, Germany on 4 April 1942. After gaining his abitur in Kempten in 1962, Paul studied German and Nordic philology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and the University of Oslo. He received his Ph.D. in 1968 with a thesis on the Norwegian writer Henrik Ibsen.

#5276

Leona Gom

#34132

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Leona Gom is a Canadian poet and novelist. Born on an isolated farm in northern Alberta, she received her B.Ed. and M.A. from the University of Alberta in Edmonton. She has published six books of poetry and eight novels and has won both the Canadian Authors Association Award for her poetry collection Land of the Peace in 1980 and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize for her novel Housebroken in 1986.

#5277

Christopher Guest

Christopher Guest

#94047

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Christopher Haden-Guest, 5th Baron Haden-Guest , known professionally as Christopher Guest, is an American-British screenwriter, composer, musician, director, actor, and comedian. Guest is most widely known in Hollywood for having written, directed, and starred in his series of comedy films shot in mockumentary style. Many scenes and character backgrounds in Guest's films are written and directed, although actors have no rehearsal time and the ensemble improvises scenes while filming them. The series of films began with This Is Spinal Tap and continued with Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, ...

#5278

Chike Frankie Edozien

Chike Frankie Edozien

#48104

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Chiké Frankie Edozien is a Nigerian-American writer and journalist. He is currently the director of New York University, Accra. He directed the New York University Journalism Institute's Ghana based Reporting Africa program from 2008 to 2019. He is a journalist who honed his skills writing about government, health and cultural issues for a variety of publications.

#5279

Dolors Bramon

#94467

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Maria Dolors Bramon Planes is a Spanish philologist, historian, and university professor specializing in the Muslim world. Biography Dolors Bramon married Ernest Lluch in 1966, with whom she had three daughters – Eulàlia, Rosa, and Mireia – and whom she accompanied to Valencia in 1970 when he joined its University. They lived there for a decade, until 1977.

#5280

Grace Bauer

#97308

Overall Influence

Grace Bauer is an American poet. She lives in Nebraska, grew up in Pennsylvania and has also lived in New Orleans, Montana, Virginia and Massachusetts. Biography Bauer received her BA in journalism from Temple University. She received her MFA in Poetry from the University of Massachusetts Amherst's MFA Program for Poets & Writers.

#5281

Douglas Trevor

#105621

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Douglas Trevor is an American author and academic. He received the Iowa Short Fiction Award and was a finalist for the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for his first book, a collection of stories entitled The Thin Tear in the Fabric of Space . His other books include The Poetics of Melancholy in Early Modern England , the novel Girls I Know , which won the 2013 Balcones Fiction Prize, and most recently the short story collection The Book of Wonders. He teaches in the English Department and Creative Writing Program at the University of Michigan, and is a former Director of the Helen Zell Writers...

#5282

Nicole Burdette

#126844

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Nicole Maria Burdette is an American playwright and actress. She is also an assistant professor at The New School for Drama. Early life and education Burdette was born in San Francisco, the first of two children of Ellen and Lawrence Burdette. Her uncle is former governor of Alaska, Mike Stepovich whose daughter, Nada, is married to NBA Hall of Fame player John Stockton.

#5283

Janet Charman

#116249

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Janet Charman is a poet from New Zealand. Background Born in 1954, Charman grew up in the Hutt Valley and Taranaki. Charman initially trained as a nurse and worked in social welfare. After receiving an MA in English from the University of Auckland she worked as a tutor in the university's English department. In 1997 was named as a writer in residence and received a Literary Fellowship. She also received a fellowship from the Hong Kong Baptist University. Charman continues to teach writing classes and is based in Auckland.

#5284

T. Alan Broughton

#129996

Overall Influence

1936 - 2013 (77 years)

Thomas Alan Broughton was an American poet and amateur pianist. Broughton was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, the son of Thomas Robert Shannon Broughton, the noted Latin prosopographer, and Annie Leigh Hobson Broughton.

#5285

Patty Dann

#115840

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Patty Dann is an American novelist and nonfiction writer. She studied at the University of Oregon, and later earned an MFA in writing from Columbia University. While working at the A&E network in 1986, she revised Mermaids, a coming-of-age novel she had written as her Master's thesis, which was subsequently published by Ticknor and Fields. It was later made into a feature film of the same name in 1990.

#5286

Alexander F. Gavrilov

Alexander F. Gavrilov

#155617

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Alexander Feliksovich Gavrilov is a Russian literary critic and editor. He was editor-in-chief of the Книжное обозрение Book Review from 2000 to 2010. He was a finalist in the Young Creative Entrepreneur program of the British Council.

#5287

Mark Richard

#124315

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Mark Richard is an American short story writer, novelist, screenwriter, and poet. He is the author of two award-winning short story collections, The Ice at the Bottom of the World and Charity, a bestselling novel, Fishboy, and House of Prayer No. 2: A Writer's Journey Home.

#5288

Jason Miller

#78343

Overall Influence

1939 - 2001 (62 years)

Jason Miller was an American playwright and actor. He won the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play for his play That Championship Season, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Father Damien Karras in the 1973 horror film The Exorcist, a role he reprised in The Exorcist III. He later became artistic director of the Scranton Public Theatre in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where That Championship Season was set.

#5289

Ode Ogede

#128855

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Ode Ogede is a Nigerian-born American academic who is professor of African literature and was a lecturer at Ahmadu Bello University. Publications Art, Society, and Performance: Igede Praise Poetry Ayi Kwei Armah, Radical Iconoclast Achebe and the Politics of Representation Teacher Commentary on Student Papers Conventions, Beliefs, and Practices. Westport, Conn: Bergin & Garvey, 2002Achebe's Things Fall Apart: Reader's Guide Helping Students Write Successful papers Intertextuality in Contemporary African Literature: Looking Inward Chiji Akoma, Research in African Literatures 30 #4 : 227–28Ade...

#5290

Sam Uzochukwu

#74442

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Sam Uzochukwu is a Nigerian academic and expert on Igbo oral poetry. Life Uzochukwu was born in 1940 at Ebenato, Nnewi South Local Government Area, Anambra State, Nigeria. After his B.A. Degree in English Language from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile- Ife , he branched off to Igbo Studies. Uzochukwu received his PhD from the University of Lagos in 1981 for a thesis on Igbo oral literature. He stayed at the University of Lagos, rising to become a Professor and Head of the Department of African and Asian Studies.

#5291

Kathryn Reiss

#93316

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Kathryn Reiss is an American author of award-winning children's and young adult fiction. Biography Kathryn Reiss was born in Massachusetts, December 4, 1957. She grew up in Ohio, and received B.A. degrees in English and German from Duke University, and an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. After college, she lived in Bonn, Germany, as a Fulbright Scholar, and during this time wrote the first draft of her first novel.

#5292

Michael Farrell

#119412

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Michael Farrell is a contemporary Australian poet. Biography Michael Farrell was born in Bombala, New South Wales in 1965. He presently lives in Melbourne, where he is the Australian editor of Slope magazine.

#5293

Robert Torrance

#72490

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Robert M. Torrance is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at UC Davis. Torrance received his B.A. from Harvard in Greek and English, his M.A. at UC Berkeley in Comparative Literature, and his Ph.D. at Harvard in Comparative Literature. After teaching at Harvard and at Brooklyn College of CUNY, he moved to UC Davis in 1976. During his 25 years at Davis, he served several terms as both director and graduate adviser.

#5294

Katie Ford

#108106

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Katie Ford is an American poet, essayist, and professor. Life She was born to Mary and Michael Ford. She has two siblings, Kristin and Brian. She began writing at the age of 19, while earning her B.A. in English from Whitman College. Soon after, she earned her Master’s in Divinity from Harvard. Ford went on to pursue her Master’s in Fine Arts , with a concentration in poetry, from Iowa’s Writers Workshop. Along with her published poetry collections— Deposition, Colosseum, and Storm—her individual poems and essays can be found in many contemporary journals and reviews. Ford is currently a pro...

#5295

Marion Montgomery

#80844

Overall Influence

1925 - 2011 (86 years)

Marion Montgomery was an American poet, novelist, educator, and critic. For more than 30 years he was a professor of English at the University of Georgia. Early years and education Marion Hoyt Montgomery was born in Thomaston, Georgia. After service in the United States Army from 1943 to 1946, he married Dorothy Carlisle in 1951. They had five children. He received his A.B. and M.A. from the University of Georgia in 1950 and 1953 respectively and did postgraduate work in creative writing at the University of Iowa .

#5296

Barry Hill

#118415

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Barry Hill is an Australian historian, writer, and academic. He has written poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and libretti. He is known for his biography of anthropologist Ted Strehlow, called Broken Song: T G H Strehlow and Aboriginal Possession, published in 2002.

#5297

Mona Lisa Saloy

#102629

Overall Influence

Mona Lisa Saloy is an American poet and folklorist. She is the Poet Laureate of Louisiana since 2021. Biography Mona Lisa Saloy was born in New Orleans and got her education in the University of Washington, where she graduated in 1979 with a BA in English. She then went to San Francisco State University and left with her MA in creative writing and English in 1982. She then went to Louisiana State University, which she left with a PhD in English and MFA in creative writing in 2005 and 1988. Saloy is the Conrad N. Hilton Endowed Professor of English at Dillard University.

#5298

María Emma Mannarelli

#51750

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

María Emma Mannarelli Cavagnari is a Peruvian feminist writer, historian, and professor. She is the founder and coordinator of the Gender Studies Program at the National University of San Marcos , where she also serves as director of the School of History and coordinator of the Master's in Gender and Development Studies.

#5299

Joe Weil

#110889

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Joseph D. Weil is an American poet. He currently teaches undergraduate and graduate creative writing classes at Binghamton University. Weil grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey and was described by The New York Times as personifying that town: "working-class, irreverent, modest, but open to the world and filled with a wealth of possibilities."

#5300

Choe Dooseok

#129545

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Choe Dooseok is a Korean poet. Since his debut in 1980, he has continued to write poems that combine facticity with lyricism. His poems are considered compassionate toward objects, and at the same time, equipped with keen insight into reality. He argued for narrative poetics from a realist perspective.

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