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).

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.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Literature,

#5701

Persis Karim

#65541

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Persis Maryam Karim is an American poet, essayist, editor, and educator. She serves as the Neda Nobari Distinguished Chair and director of the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University since 2017. Her work focuses on Iranians living outside of Iran, specifically Iranian Americans, and their complicated histories and identities which is often presented through storytelling.

#5702

Daniel Catán

#109571

Overall Influence

1949 - 2011 (62 years)

Daniel Catán Porteny was a Mexican composer, writer and professor known particularly for his operas and his contribution of the Spanish language to the international repertory. With a compositional style described as lush, romantic and lyrical, Catán's second opera, Rappaccini’s Daughter, became the first Mexican opera in the United States to be produced by a professional opera company. Upon receiving international recognition, Catán's next opera, Florencia en el Amazonas, became the first opera in Spanish to be commissioned by an opera company in the United States. Shortly after, Catán received a Plácido Domingo Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship Award for his contributions to music.

#5703

Bettina Judd

#101057

Overall Influence

Bettina Judd is an African-American interdisciplinary writer, scholar, artist, and performer. Early life and education Judd was born in Baltimore and raised in Southern California. She received her bachelor's degree in Comparative Women’s Studies and English from Spelman College in 2005, her master's degree in Women's Studies from University of Maryland in 2007, and her PhD in Women's Studies in 2014, also from the University of Maryland. Her dissertation, Feelin Feminism: Black Women's Art as Feminist Thought , is an analysis of how various oppressions that affect black women are felt, and ma...

#5704

Sinan Antoon

#107423

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Sinan Antoon , is an Iraqi poet, novelist, scholar, and literary translator. He has been described as "one of the most acclaimed authors of the Arab world." Alberto Manguel described him as "one of the great fiction writers of our time.” He is an associate professor at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University.

#5705

R. J. Tarrant

#103917

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Richard John Tarrant, is an American classicist and Emeritus Pope Professor of Latin at Harvard University. He is an expert on the textual criticism and the transmission of Latin poetry. Career A native of Brooklyn, Tarrant was educated at Fordham University, where he obtained a BA in 1966. He then moved to Oxford University and graduated with a DPhil from Corpus Christi College .

#5706

Razi Hirmandi

#89292

Overall Influence

Razi Hirmandi Hirmandi was born in 1948 in Sistan, Southeast Iran. He studied English literature at Mashhad University and later got his M.A. in general linguistics from Tehran University. Hirmandi has written and translated more than 100 books. So far, he has won several national awards and IBBY Certificate of Honor for his literary translations, mainly for children.

#5707

Shinji Aoyama

#97835

Overall Influence

1964 - 2022 (58 years)

Shinji Aoyama was a Japanese film director, screenwriter, composer, film critic, and novelist. He graduated from Rikkyo University. He won two awards at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival for his film Eureka.

#5708

Celia Deutsch

#95455

Overall Influence

Celia M. Deutsch is an American religious sister, academic, educator, writer, and Old Testament scholar. She is a professor at Barnard College and serves on the Christian Scholars Group on Christian-Jewish Relations.

#5709

Urayoán Noel

#113817

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Urayoán Noel is a translator, poet, and critic who is the author of poetry collections, poetry criticism and books. He has received fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Bronx Council on the Arts, the Howard Foundation, and CantoMundo .

#5710

Patrick Corrigan

#26034

Overall Influence

Patrick W. Corrigan is a US-based author and advocate for people with a mental illness, particularly in relation to the issue of stigma. He has written more than 15 books and 400 peer reviewed articles specializing in issues related to the mental illness stigmas. Corrigan suffered from mental illness himself and is most likely the reason his research has this focus. Corrigan currently resides in Northern Illinois, and family life is unknown.

#5711

Steven Zwicker

#121045

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Steven Nathan Zwicker is an American literary scholar and the Stanley Elkin Professor in the Humanities in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. Biography Zwicker is an expert on Restoration-era English literature and politics and is the author of Dryden's Political Poetry: The Typology of King and Nation , Politics and Language in Dryden's Poetry: The Arts of Disguise , and Lines of Authority: Politics and English Literary Culture, 1649-1689 . He has edited six volumes and published more than two dozen essays in journals and volumes in the United States and abroad.

#5712

Laura Kipnis

#79107

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Laura Kipnis is an American cultural critic and essayist. Her work focuses on sexual politics, gender issues, aesthetics, popular culture, and pornography. She began her career as a video artist, exploring similar themes in the form of video essays. She is professor of media studies at Northwestern University in the Department of Radio-TV-Film, where she teaches filmmaking. In recent years she has become known for debating sexual harassment and free speech policies in higher education.

#5713

Luigi Fontanella

#121068

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Luigi Augusto Fontanella is a poet, critic, translator, playwright, and novelist. Life He was a student of Giacomo Debenedetti and after he graduated from the Sapienza University of Rome, he obtained a Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. He has taught at Columbia University, Princeton University, , and at Wellesley College.

#5714

Masatsugu Ono

#159059

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

is a Japanese writer. He resides in Ōita Prefecture and is associate professor at the Rikkyo University. He was awarded the 152nd Akutagawa Prize , for the novel Kyūnen-mae no inori . Works in Translation Novels, translated by Angus Turvill, Two Lines Press, 2020. , translated by Angus Turvill, Two Lines Press, 2018. Short StoriesA breast, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter, in At the edge of the wood, Strangers Press, 2017. A breast, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter, in At the edge of the woods, Two Lines Press, 2022. The pastry shop at the edge of the wood, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter, in At the edge of the wood, Strangers Press, 2017.

#5715

Bang Hyeon-seok

#151361

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Bang Hyeon-seok is a South Korean writer Life Bang was born in 1961 in Ulsan, South Korea, and has served as the president of Society of Young Writers For Understanding Vietnam, and he continues to devote much of his creative energy to exploring Vietnam’s troubled past. His debut was in 1988 with "The Practice." Bang enrolled in the Chung-Ang University's Department of Creative writing in 1980 and later, under an assumed identity, worked as a laborer in Incheon. After leaving the factory in 1994 Bang collected history and information on democratic labor unions, a collection that informed some of his work including Off to Battle a Dawn.

#5716

Phillip E. Wegner

#118403

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Phillip E. Wegner is a professor in the Department of English and the Marston-Milbauer Eminent Scholar in English at the University of Florida. Career Phillip E. Wegner earned his Bachelor of Arts in Honors English, summa cum laude, at California State University, Northridge in 1986. He earned his PhD from the Literature Program at Duke University in 1993, where he studied under the preeminent Marxist critic Fredric Jameson. He began working as a professor of English at the University of Florida in 1994 and was appointed the Marston-Milbauer Eminent Scholar Professorship in 2012. From 2009 to 2012 he served as the graduate program coordinator.

#5717

Natasha Sajé

#88922

Overall Influence

Natasha Sajé is an American poet. Life She grew up in New York City, and New Jersey. She graduated from the University of Virginia, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Maryland, College Park. She teaches at Westminster College. and Vermont College.

#5718

Mary Schendlinger

#147749

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Mary Schendlinger is a writer and editor. She is the senior editor at Geist, a magazine she co-founded with Stephen Osborne. Personal life Schendlinger grew up in Waukesha, Wisconsin. As a child, she was greatly inspired by Mad Magazine, and submitted her writing and comics to it several times without success.

#5719

J. B. Trapp

#74302

Overall Influence

1925 - 2005 (80 years)

Joseph Burney Trapp CBE FBA FSA was the director of the Warburg Institute and Professor of the History of the Classical Tradition at London University from 1976 to 1990. Life Trapp was born in Carterton, New Zealand, on 16 July 1925, and was educated at Dannevirke School. He graduated MA from Victoria University College in Wellington, New Zealand in 1947, and began his career as an academic at that institution in 1950, after a spell working at the Alexander Turnbull Library from 1946 to 1950.

#5720

Robert Harris

#125617

Overall Influence

1951 - 1993 (42 years)

Robert Harris was an Australian poet, who also wrote as Orson Rattray Der. Life Robert Harris was born in Melbourne. He was educated in Doveton High School. He enlisted in the Australian Navy in 1968 during the Vietnam War. During the 1970s he spent time in a commune. He was married but separated from his wife in the 1980s with no children. He lived in Sydney in the later part of his life.

#5721

Bernice McFadden

Bernice McFadden

#144660

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Bernice L. McFadden is an American novelist. She has also written humorous erotica under the pseudonym Geneva Holliday. Author of fifteen novels, she is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Tulane University in New Orleans.

#5722

Eleanor Winsor Leach

#149069

Overall Influence

1937 - 2018 (81 years)

Eleanor Winsor Leach was the Ruth N. Halls Professor with the Department of Classical Studies at Indiana University. She was a trustee of the Vergilian Society in 1978–83 and was second and then first vice-president in 1989–92. Leach was the president of the Society of Classical Studies in 2005/6, and the chair of her department . She was very involved with academics and younger scholars – directing 26 dissertations, wrote letters for 200 tenure and promotion cases, and refereed more than 100 books and 200 articles. Leach's research interests included Roman painting, Roman sculpture, and Cicero and Pliny's Letters.

#5723

Daniel Hall

#110251

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Daniel J. Hall is an American poet. Life Hall's first book, Hermit with Landscape, was selected by James Merrill as winner of the 1989 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. Hall's second book, Strange Relation, was selected by Mark Doty as winner of the 1995 National Poetry Series. His latest book is Under Sleep.

#5724

Muhamed Mechbal

#97144

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Muhamed Mechbal is a Moroccan academic and critic. He is currently the head of Rhetoric and Discourse Analysis team is the College of Arts in Abdelmalek Essaadi University in Tétouan. He won the King Faisal International Prize in Arabic language and literature in its 43rd round in 2021.

#5725

Adela de la Torre

#46590

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Adela de la Torre is an American professor and university administrator. She has served as the ninth president of San Diego State University in San Diego, California, since 2018. She is the first woman to serve in the role.

#5726

Nalini Das

#103493

Overall Influence

1916 - 1993 (77 years)

Nalini Das was a Bengali educationist, writer and editor. She was one of the editors of the Bengali children's magazine Sandesh. Early life Nalini Das was born to Arunnath Chakraborty and Punyalata . Her father was a deputy magistrate posted in Bihar, and her mother was the daughter of Bengali writer, technologist and entrepreneur Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury. Bengali writer Sukumar Ray was her maternal uncle, and Oscar-winning filmmaker Satyajit Ray her cousin. She completed her matriculation from the Brahmo Balika Shikshalaya and IA from St. John's Diocesan Girls' Higher Secondary School in...

#5727

Richard B. Sewall

#120698

Overall Influence

1908 - 2003 (95 years)

Richard Benson Sewall was a professor of English at Yale University, and author of the influential works The Life of Emily Dickinson and The Vision of Tragedy. He was born in Albany, New York to a family with a long Congregational tradition: his father, Reverend Charles G. Sewall, was the thirteenth son in an unbroken chain of Congregational ministers. His mother, Kate Strong, was the daughter of Reverend Augustus Hopkins Strong, president of the Rochester Theological Seminary.

#5728

Sue Owen

#119952

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Sue Owen is a dark humor poet influenced by the work of W. S. Merwin, Charles Simic, and Mark Strand. As the Poet-in-Residence, she taught poetry writing until 2005 at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. She now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

#5729

Jostein Børtnes

#113579

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Jostein Børtnes is a Norwegian literary historian and Slavist with emphasis on Russian. He was born in Hovin, Telemark. He took the Russian training in the Norwegian Armed Forces, then graduated with the cand.philol. degree in Russian from the University of Oslo in 1965. He was a NAVF research fellow from 1966 to 1969, research fellow at the University of Oslo from 1970 to 1972, visiting fellow at Clare Hall from 1971 to 1972, and then lecturer at the University of Oslo. After taking the dr.philos. degree at the University of Oslo in 1976 he was promoted to first lecturer. He spent the years ...

#5730

William Allegrezza

William Allegrezza

#138756

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

William Allegrezza is a poet, fiction writer, translator, and critic. He edits Moria Books and teaches at Indiana University Northwest. He has published eighteen poetry books; eleven chapbooks, including Sonoluminescence and Filament Sense ; and many poetry reviews, articles, and poems. His poetry has been translated into Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. He founded and curated series A, a reading series in Chicago, from 2006 to 2010. He also co-founded Cracked Slab Books and edited it for five years. He edits the blogzine Moss Trill. He earned his PhD in Comparative Literature at L...

#5731

Ken Brewer

#44501

Overall Influence

1941 - 2006 (65 years)

Kenneth Wayne Brewer was an American poet and longtime scholar who resided in Utah, where he served as Poet Laureate. Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, he attended Butler University and Western New Mexico University in the 1960s, then earned a master's degree in English literature from New Mexico State University, followed by a Ph.D. from the University of Utah, where he worked with Pulitzer Prize winner Henry Taylor, in 1973. Since that time he taught a wide variety of courses at Utah State University, concentrating on mentoring creative writers at the graduate level, while publishing prolifically and speaking extensively.

#5732

Margaret Diesendorf

Margaret Diesendorf

#121661

Overall Influence

1912 - 1993 (81 years)

Margaret Diesendorf née Máté , , was an Australian linguist, poet, editor, translator and educationist. Born in Vienna, Austria, Diesendorf migrated to Australia in 1939. She published two books of poetry, made numerous translations of other people's works, and with Grace Perry, edited Poetry Australia.

#5733

Joseph Heller

#78708

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Joseph Heller, transcribed also as Yosef Heller , is an Israeli historian. He is Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He was born in Tel Aviv. Published works The Birth of Israel, 1945–1949: Ben-Gurion and his critics, , University of Florida Press, The Stern Gang: ideology, politics, and terror, 1940–1949 British Policy towards the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1914 The Struggle for the Jewish State: Zionist Politics, 1936—1948, The Zalman Shazar Center For The Furtherance Of The Study Of Jewish History, Jerusalem, 1984. 560 pages. A Collection of documents by various authors, in Hebrew.

#5734

Wolfgang Victor Ruttkowski

#137170

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Wolfgang Victor Ruttkowski is a scholar of literature and culture. He has written four works of comparative literature and psychology of art, now considered standards of their genre. Born in 1935 in Silesia , he began his studies in 1961 at the University of Vienna studying theatre arts and at the University of Göttingen, mainly German and comparative literature under Wolfgang Kayser. After the latter's unexpected death, he received a DAAD-scholarship at McGill university in Montreal/Canada . He obtained his PhD on the subject of cabaret ballads in Germany after which he was invited by Göttingen University for an oral examination, after which he also received the German Dr.Phil.

#5735

Edith Covensky

#169808

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Edith Covensky is a Hebrew poet living in the United States and senior lecturer in Hebrew and Israeli Studies at Wayne State University. She has authored 34 books of poetry, in Hebrew, bilingually in Hebrew and English, trilingually in Hebrew, Arabic and English, and in Romanian and Spanish.

#5736

Nadine Meyer

#110952

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Nadine Sabra Meyer is an American poet. Life Nadine Meyer grew up in Baltimore, MD, where she earned a B.A. in Writing Seminars from the Johns Hopkins University. She earned her M.F.A. from George Mason University and a Ph.D. in English and Creative Writing from the University of Missouri, Columbia. Her forthcoming book of poems, entitled Chrysanthemum, Chrysanthemum, won the Green Rose Prize and will be published by New Issues Poetry and Prose in spring 2017. Her first book of poems, The Anatomy Theater, won the National Poetry Series, and was published by HarperCollins. Her poems have won the New Letters Prize for Poetry, the Meridian Editor's Prize, and a Pushcart Prize.

#5737

Roberto Carifi

#102403

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Roberto Carifi , is an Italian poet, philosopher, and translator, supported since the beginning from Piero Bigongiari, one of the major exponents of Florentine Hermeticism. Considered one of the most important poet and intellectual of his generation he has been influenced by having a very difficult illness to cope with.

#5738

Alan L. Berger

#68853

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Alan L. Berger is an American scholar, writer and professor of Judaic Studies and Holocaust studies from the Florida Atlantic University. He occupies the Raddock Family eminent scholar chaired of the Holocaust Studies at Florida Atlantic University and director Center for the Study of Values and Violence. He is best known for Judaism educations, Abrahamic religions challenges and scholar of Holocaust studies.

#5739

Susan Kinsolving

#81905

Overall Influence

Susan Kinsolving is an American poet whose books include The White Eyelash, Dailies & Rushes Peripheral Vision and Among Flowers. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and publications including The New York Times Book Review, Poetry, Yale Review, The Paris Review, The New Republic, The Nation, and The Washington Post. A finalist for the Walt Whitman Award and the Yale Younger Series award, she has taught at Bennington College, California Institute of the Arts, University of Connecticut, Southampton College, and Chautauqua Institution. She has received international fellowships from ...

#5740

Michael David Lukas

Michael David Lukas

#168454

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (47 years)

Michael David Lukas is an American author best known for his internationally bestselling novel, The Oracle of Stamboul, published by HarperCollins and translated into over a dozen languages. Michael's second novel, The Last Watchman of Old Cairo, was published by Random House in 2018 and received the Sami Rohr Prize as well as the National Jewish Book Award. He teaches at San Francisco State University.

#5741

Amal Saad-Ghorayeb

#34312

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Amal Abdo Saad-Ghorayeb is a Lebanese writer and political analyst known for her writings on the Israeli–Lebanese conflict and Hezbollah. Life Saad-Ghorayeb was an assistant professor of political science at the Lebanese American University until 2008. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Birmingham, England. She was a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center .

#5742

Zandra Ahl

#151585

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Zandra Ahl, born 1975 in Växjö, is a Swedish designer, artist, and author. Biography Ahl graduated from Konstfack university in 1999. She subsequently became a Professor of glass and ceramics at Konstfack, before becoming the rector of Beckmans College of Design in September 2016. She is the author of the books Fult och snyggt in 1998 and, Svensk smak: myter om den moderna formen in 2001, which was co-authored with Emma Ohlson. Her writing caused controversy through their criticism of Swedish design as "banal", "white", and "austere" and its description of Sweden's late-20th century "less is...

#5743

John Paul Frank

#29815

Overall Influence

1917 - 2002 (85 years)

John Paul Frank was an American lawyer and scholar involved in landmark civil rights, school desegregation, and criminal procedure cases before the United States Supreme Court. Biography Frank attended the University of Wisconsin and obtained a B.A. and M.A. in history. In 1940, Frank graduated with an LL.B. from the University of Wisconsin Law School with Order of the Coif honors. He clerked for Justice Hugo Black of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1942 to 1943. Frank spent the next two years as the assistant to the Secretary of the Interior and then to the U.S. Attorney General. He studied at Yale Law School and obtained a S.J.D.

#5744

Mayra Santos-Febres

#145676

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Mayra Santos-Febres is a Puerto Rican author, poet, novelist, professor of literature, essayist, and literary critic and author of children's books. Her work focuses on themes of race, diaspora identity, female sexuality, gender fluidity, desire, and power. She is a cultural activist who helps to bring books to young readers and the less fortunate. Her writings have been translated into French, English, German, and Italian.

#5745

Susan Steinberg

#132156

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Susan Steinberg is an American writer. She is the author of the short story collections The End of Free Love , Hydroplane and Spectacle . Her first novel Machine: A Novel , revolving around a group of teenagers during a single summer at the shore, employs experimental language and structure to interrogate gender, class, privilege, and the disintegration of identity in the shadow of trauma.

#5746

Robert Montgomery

Robert Montgomery

#81279

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Robert Montgomery is a Scottish-born, London-based poet, artist and sculptor known for his site-specific installations created from light and text, as well as his 'fire poems'. Montgomery works in a "melancholic post-Situationist" tradition, primarily in public spaces. He is regarded as a leading figure in the conceptual art world.

#5747

Patricia Smith Yaeger

#123461

Overall Influence

1949 - 2014 (65 years)

Patricia Smith Yaeger was an American academic and literary critic. Biography Yaeger studied at Bryn Mawr College, receiving her BA in 1972. She took a Ph. D. at Yale University in 1980. She began her teaching career with posts at Williams College, the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University before becoming an associate professor at the University of Michigan in 1990. She was promoted to professor in 1999 and named the Henry Simmons Frieze Collegiate Professor of English and Women's Studies in 2005. At the time of her death from ovarian cancer, she was researching the concept of the "female sublime".

#5748

John R. Clarke

#76708

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

John R. Clarke is Annie Laurie Howard Regents Professor of Fine Arts, University of Texas at Austin, teaching in the Department of Art and Art History. Clarke , joined the University of Texas at Austin in 1980. His research and teaching focus on Roman art and archaeology, art-historical methodology, art of the sixties, and digital modeling.

#5749

Sebastian Rahtz

Sebastian Rahtz

#78519

Overall Influence

1955 - 2016 (61 years)

Sebastian Patrick Quintus Rahtz was a British digital humanities information professional. Life Born in 1955 to Somerset-focused archaeologist Philip Rahtz, Sebastian trained in archaeology, before delving into the computing realm via Lexicon of Greek Personal Names in 1982.

#5750

Harriet Brown

#50733

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (125 years)

Harriet Brown is an American writer, magazine editor, and professor of magazine journalism at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. Career She began her magazine career in 1979, with a stint at Popular Science magazine. She was part of the start-up staff for both Wigwag magazine, 1989–1991, and American Girl magazine American Girl, 1992–2000. Her 2006 New York Times article "One Spoonful at a Time" chronicled her daughter's descent into anorexia and recovery via family-based treatment, also known as the Maudsley approach. That article became the basis of her 2010 book, Brave Girl Eating.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions