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.

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List of the most influential people in Literature,

#6051

Andrew Sant

#75183

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Andrew Sant is an English-born Australian poet, essayist, and former editor. In 1962 Sant moved from London, where he was born, with his family to Melbourne where he finished his formal education. He has since lived in London for periods, particularly between the years 2002–2016. In 2001 he was resident at the University of Peking in Beijing, China. In the early nineties he was resident in the Australia Council-administered B R Whiting studio in Rome.

#6052

David Siegel

#119510

Overall Influence

David Siegel is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer, and part of a long-standing writing-directing-producing team with the filmmaker Scott McGehee. Filmography Feature films Executive producerThe Business of Strangers Life of the Party

#6053

Kiki Petrosino

#165404

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (47 years)

Kiki Petrosino is an American poet and professor of poetry. She currently teaches at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia. Early life and education Petrosino was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. After spending two years in Switzerland teaching Italian and English in a private school, she earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Virginia , a Master of Arts in humanities degree from the University of Chicago , and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop .

#6054

Truesdell Sparhawk Brown

#104799

Overall Influence

1906 - 1992 (86 years)

Truesdell Sparhawk Brown was a classical scholar, ancient historian, and co-founder of the journal California Studies in Classical Antiquity, which became the journal Classical Antiquity. Biography Brown attended Haverford College in 1922–1923 and then transferred to Harvard University, where he received his A.B in 1928 and his M.A. in 1929. He was an instructor in ancient history at the University of Colorado from 1929 to 1932 and from 1933 to 1937 with an interruption for the academic year 1932–1933 when he studied under C. F. Lehmann-Haupt at the University of Innsbruck. Brown was an instr...

#6055

Jeremy Pikser

#176198

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Jeremy Pikser is an American screenwriter. Pikser is best known for Bulworth , which was nominated for Academy, Golden Globe and WGA Awards for Best Screenplay and which won the Los Angeles Film Critics' Best Screenplay award for 1998.

#6056

Aled Gruffydd Jones

Aled Gruffydd Jones

#75150

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Aled Gruffydd Jones FRHistS FRSiaticS FLSW is a Welsh historian and academic. He was Librarian of the National Library of Wales between 2013 and 2015. Biography Jones was educated at Ysgol Ardudwy, Harlech, Wales, and the University of York, where he met and later married political sociologist and writer Yasmin Ali . He holds a doctorate from the University of Warwick .

#6057

Erland Munch-Petersen

#144844

Overall Influence

1930 - 1997 (67 years)

Erland Munch-Petersen was a Danish literary scholar and professor at the University of Gothenburg. He was the general editor of the Guide to Nordic bibliography. Biography Munch-Petersen was born in Copenhagen, Denmark . He was the grandson of scholar and jurist Erland Munch-Petersen . His basic education was at the Holte Gymnasium. Munch-Petersen trained as a librarian from 1956. He gained his M.A. in general and comparative literature from the University of Copenhagen in 1962 and his Ph.D. in 1978 for his thesis on Romanens århundrede. Studier i den masselæste oversatte roman i Danmar...

#6058

John Patrick

#107759

Overall Influence

1905 - 1995 (90 years)

John Patrick was an American playwright and screenwriter. Biography He was born John Patrick Goggin in Louisville, Kentucky. His parents soon abandoned him, and he spent a delinquent youth in foster homes and boarding schools. At age 19, he secured a job as an announcer at KPO Radio in San Francisco, California, marrying Mildred Legaye in 1925. He wrote over 1,000 scripts for the Cecil and Sally radio program , broadcast between 1928 and 1933. The show's sole actors were Patrick and Helen Troy. In 1937, Patrick wrote adaptations for NBC's Streamlined Shakespeare series, guest-starring Helen H...

#6059

Borja Bagunyà

#177901

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (44 years)

Borja Bagunyà Costes is a Catalan writer and university professor. Biography He has a degree in Literary Theory and Comparative Literature from the University of Barcelona, where he is an associate professor. He is also co-founder of the Escola Bloom with Lana Bastasic and editor of the literary magazine Carn de cap.

#6060

Virgil Burnett

#139176

Overall Influence

1928 - 2012 (84 years)

Virgil Burnett was an author, illustrator, and professor of Fine arts at the University of Waterloo whose works have been published in both North America and Europe. He was a Fulbright Scholarship recipient.

#6061

L. D. Reynolds

#116725

Overall Influence

1930 - 1999 (69 years)

Leighton Durham Reynolds was a British Latinist who was known for his work on textual criticism. Spending his entire teaching career at Brasenose College, Oxford, he prepared the most commonly cited edition of Seneca the Younger's Letters.

#6062

Mary Moore

#124147

Overall Influence

1930 - 2017 (87 years)

Georgina Mary Moore was a British author, diplomat and administrator, the principal of St Hilda's College, Oxford, from 1980 to 1990. She published several novels, radio and television plays under the pen name Helena Osborne.

#6063

Tanaya Winder

#98510

Overall Influence

Tanaya Winder is a performance poet, writer, motivational speaker, and educator. She was raised on the Southern Ute reservation in Ignacio, Colorado and is an enrolled member of the Duckwater Shoshone Tribe. Her background includes Southern Ute, Pyramid Lake Paiute, Dine, and Black heritages. With fellow Indigenous writer Casandra Lopez, she founded , an online literary magazine to "showcase the creative literary expressions and scholarly work of both emerging and established women writers from around the world." With Lakota rap artist Frank Waln and other collaborators, she runs Dream Warriors Management, an organization to promote Indigenous artists and support young Native students.

#6064

Vicente Alejandro Guillamón

Vicente Alejandro Guillamón

#102744

Overall Influence

1930 - 2021 (91 years)

Vicente Alejandro Guillamón was a Spanish journalist and writer. Biography Vicente Alejandro Guillamón was born in Onda, Castellon, Spain in 1930, and he was the youngest child of a humble farming and ranching family.

#6065

Kevin Curran

#132096

Overall Influence

1957 - 2016 (59 years)

Kevin Patrick Curran was an American television comedy writer. He wrote for Late Night with David Letterman, Married... with Children, and The Simpsons. He was also the voice of Buck the Dog on Married... with Children .

#6066

Vladislav Rusanov

Vladislav Rusanov

#61735

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Vladislav Adolfovitch Rusanov is a fantasy writer, candidate of technical sciences . Writes in Russian language. Also is known for translations of fantasy and romantic poetry into Russian. Formerly a Ukrainian citizen he now identifies with the Donetsk People's Republic.

#6067

Huda al-Attas

#149157

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Huda al-Attas is a Southern Yemeni journalist and author. Biography She was born in 1971 in Dawʿan in the Hadhramaut. She is best known for her short stories, for which she has won a number of awards, including the Al-Afif prize in 1997. Her first collection of stories hājis rūḥ wa hājis jasad was published in Aden in 1995. Since then she has published two more collections.

#6068

Ken Duncum

#168698

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Ken Duncum is a New Zealand playwright and screenwriter. His plays Cherish and Trick of the Light won best new New Zealand play at the Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards in 2003 and 2004. His script for television drama series Cover Story won Best Script for Drama at the New Zealand Film and Television Awards and Best Writer - Comedy for Willy Nilly in 2002. Duncum's plays have toured New Zealand as well as internationally. He was awarded the New Zealand Post Katherine Mansfield Prize for 2010. The prize is NZ$100,000 for a writing residency in France.

#6069

Michael Pearson

#148062

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Michael Patrick Pearson is an American author of hundreds of essays and eight books — a novel, Shohola Falls , and seven works of non-fiction; Imagined Places: Journeys into Literary America , A Place That's Known: Essays , John McPhee , Dreaming of Columbus: A Boyhood in the Bronx , Innocents Abroad Too: Journeys Around the World on Semester at Sea , Reading Life: On Books, Memory and Travel , The Road to Dungannon: Journeys in Literary Ireland .

#6070

Donald A. Grinde Jr.

#74696

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Donald Andrew Grinde Jr., a professor at the University at Buffalo, is noted for his scholarship and writing on Native American issues. Grinde was born in Savannah, Georgia, and has Yamasee heritage. He received his B.A. from Georgia Southern College , and received his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Delaware. He taught at Mercyhurst College, Buffalo State College, UCLA, the University of Utah, University of California, Riverside, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and the University of Vermont before moving to Buffalo in 2004 as chair of its American Studies De...

#6071

Gosho Aoyama

#58606

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Gosho Aoyama is a Japanese manga artist best known for his manga series Case Closed . As of 2017, his various manga series had a combined 250 million copies in print worldwide. Educational background Aoyama was talented in drawing even at an early age. In elementary school, his painting of "Yukiai War" won a competition and was displayed at the Tottori Daimaru Department Store. He has an older brother who is a scientist and helps him out with the "gimmicks" in Case Closed. He has another brother who is a doctor.

#6072

Pierre Brind'Amour

#172091

Overall Influence

1941 - 1995 (54 years)

Pierre Rodrigue Brind'Amour was a French-speaking Canadian philologist, professor in the Department of Classics at the University of Ottawa. Author of works on Greco-Roman antiquity, he brought new elements in support of a fact already seen by an anonymous writer from the eighteenth century, by Eugen Parker by Georges Dumézil and others, namely that Nostradamus, in his Prophecies, was inspired more than once by historical or literary books printed at his time.

#6073

W. Dabney Stuart

#138366

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Walker Dabney Stuart III is an American poet. He graduated from Davidson College, with a BA in English in 1960, and from Harvard University, with an MA in English in 1962. He is professor emeritus of English at Washington and Lee University. His work appeared in Poetry, Shenandoah, Southern Review, and Yale Review.

#6074

Chris Clark

#49089

Overall Influence

Chris Clark is a British amateur crime writer who writes chiefly about serial killers and their supposed links to unsolved crimes. He is a retired police intelligence officer who worked in the King's Lynn area for Norfolk Police, although his career was somewhat unsuccessful and he had three applications to join the new National Criminal Intelligence Service rejected in 1993, with the commanding officers unimpressed by his record and applications. In 2022, his book Yorkshire Ripper: The Secret Murders, which was jointly written with journalist Tim Tate and alleged links between Peter Sutcliff...

#6075

Ladette Randolph

#140774

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Ladette Randolph is an American author and editor. Ladette Randolph is the author of five books: three novels: Private Way, Haven’s Wake and A Sandhills Ballad, a short story collection, This is Not the Tropics, and a memoir, Leaving the Pink House. She is the editor-in-chief of the literary journal Ploughshares at Emerson College and co-owner of the manuscript consulting firm Randolph Lundine. A long-time Nebraskan, she spent her childhood in the same part of west-central Nebraska where her family lived for five generations. She now lives in Boston with her husband Noel.

#6076

Michael Jackman

#148158

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Michael Jackman is an American columnist, poet, essayist, fiction writer, and college professor. Life Michael Jackman was born and raised in Queens, New York and attended Belmont University. In 1992, he moved to Louisville, Kentucky to attend University of Louisville where he studied under poet Jeffrey Skinner and fiction writer Sena Naslund. From 1992 to 2002, he taught at University of Louisville both while in this Master's and PhD programs as well as afterwards. He began teaching at Indiana University Southeast in 2005 as a Visiting Lecturer and is currently Senior Lecturer in Writing. He ...

#6077

Mateja Matejić

#134070

Overall Influence

1924 - 2018 (94 years)

Mateja Matejić was a Serbian American writer, translator, anthologist, Serbian Orthodox priest, and Professor Emeritus of Slavic languages and Literatures at Ohio State University. Biography Matejić was born in Smederevo in what was then the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and educated there. As a seminarian at Bitola during the Axis occupation of Yugoslavia, he left the country and completed his seminary education in a displaced persons camp in Eboli, Italy. In 1949, at another camp in West Germany, he married Ljubica Nebrigić of Srem .

#6078

Muzammil H. Siddiqi

#29441

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Muzammil H. Siddiqi is an Indian-American Muslim writer who has been on the faculty of Chapman University. Education Born in India in 1943, Siddiqi received his early education at Aligarh Muslim University and Darul-uloom Nadwatul Ulama, Lucknow, India. He graduated from the Islamic University of Medina in Saudi Arabia in 1965 with a higher degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies. Siddiqi received an M.A. in Theology from Birmingham University in England, and a Ph.D. in Comparative Religion from Harvard University in the United States.

#6079

Thomas Rogers

#158939

Overall Influence

1927 - 2007 (80 years)

Thomas Rogers was an American novelist. Life and career Born in Chicago, Illinois, Rogers graduated from Harvard University in 1950 before earning a master's degree and a PhD from the University of Iowa. He was twice nominated for the National Book Award for Fiction, for his first novel The Pursuit of Happiness, which was adapted into a 1971 film, and his second novel The Confessions of a Child of the Century by Samuel Heather . His final two novels were both centered on the same protagonist. Before his retirement in 1992, he taught at Pennsylvania State University for three decades and lived...

#6080

Miriam Gamble

#140744

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Miriam Gamble is a poet who won the Eric Gregory Award in 2007 and the Somerset Maugham Award in 2011. She lives in Scotland and works as a lecturer at the University of Edinburgh. Life and career Miriam Gamble was born in Brussels, Belgium, in 1980 and grew up in Belfast in Northern Ireland. She studied English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford and Modern Literary Studies at Queen's University of Belfast where she also received her phD in Form, Genre and Lyric Subjectivity in Contemporary British and Irish Poetry. She moved to Scotland in 2010 and began teaching creative wr...

#6081

Michael Petracca

#175597

Overall Influence

Michael Petracca is an American novelist, Lecturer Emeritus and former Acting Co-Director of the Writing Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Petracca is the son of screenwriter Joseph Petracca, and grew up in Southern California. After studying music, art, and the French language at the University of California, Los Angeles, he did graduate work at the University of California, Santa Barbara in the early 1970s, completing a master's degree there in 1972. As well as teaching writing, Petracca has also worked as a prison counselor, and has played guitar for musical groups J. T.

#6082

Ann Darr

#159603

Overall Influence

1920 - 2007 (87 years)

Ann Darr was an American poet and educator who lived in Washington, D.C. Biography Born Lois Ann Russell in Bagley, Iowa she studied at the University of Iowa where she graduated in 1941 and also completed Civilian Pilot Training.

#6083

Reinhard Stupperich

#122312

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Reinhard Stupperich is a German classical archaeologist. The son of the theologian Robert Stupperich, he studied history, Greek, Latin and classical archaeology at the University of Münster from 1970 to 1971. In 1975 he passed the First Philological State Examination for teaching at grammar schools. From 1975 to 1976 he studied classical and provincial Roman archaeology as well as ancient history at the University of Oxford. In the summer of 1976 he was involved in excavations at the Roman villa of Gorhambury in Verulamium and in Mycenaean beehive tombs in Messinia. In 1977 he received his doctorate from Münster for the dissertation Staatsbegräbnis und Privatgrabmal im klassischen Athen .

#6084

William E. Naff

#175280

Overall Influence

1929 - 2005 (76 years)

William E. Naff was an American scholar of Japanese language and literature. He was born on February 14, 1929, in Wenatchee, Washington State, and served with the US Air Force from 1946-1949. He received a BA degree, magna cum laude, from the University of Washington, and subsequently earned an MA in Japanese history and a Ph.D. in Japanese literature from the same university.

#6085

Kai Lee

#52393

Overall Influence

Kai Lee is the program officer of science for the Conservation and Science Program of the Packard Foundation. Lee's work focuses on science-based environmental issues. Lee is well regarded for his advocacy of Adaptive Management.

#6086

Synnøve des Bouvrie

#171460

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Synnøve des Bouvrie is a Norwegian philologist. She was born in Naarden, Netherlands as a twin. She took her classical languages education at Leiden University. In her academic career she served as managing director of the Norwegian Institute at Athens and professor of antique culture and literature at the University of Tromsø. She is a fellow of the Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

#6087

Ted Bishop

#103505

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Edward L. Bishop is a Canadian writer and academic. A professor of English literature and film studies at the University of Alberta, his first non-academic publication was Riding with Rilke: Reflections on Motorcycles and Books, a travel memoir which was a Canadian bestseller in 2005 and a finalist for the 2005 Governor General's Award for English non-fiction, and won the MAX Award for best Motorcycle Book and Wilfred Eggleston Award for Non-Fiction.

#6088

Chris Bryant

#127680

Overall Influence

1936 - 2008 (72 years)

Christopher Bryan Spencer Dobson , who wrote for the screen as Chris Bryant, was an English screenwriter and occasional actor . Early life Christopher Brian Spencer Dobson was born in Bolton, Lancashire, a great-grandson of Sir Benjamin Dobson , who made a large fortune as a manufacturer of textile machinery and became mayor of Bolton. Dobson was educated at Radley College, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he read law, and finally McGill University, Canada, where he received a Master of Civil Law degree in 1959.

#6089

Daniel Torday

#173114

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Daniel Torday is an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. He serves as an Associate Professor and Director of Creative Writing at Bryn Mawr College. Career Torday graduated from Kenyon College in 2000 and continued his study under George Saunders in Syracuse University's graduate writing program. He later worked as a junior editor at Esquire and is currently the Director of Creative Writing at Bryn Mawr College and former editor of The Kenyon Review. His 2012 novella "The Sensualist" won the National Jewish Book Award for debut fiction.

#6090

Lola Haskins

#170807

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Lola Haskins is an American poet. Life She was born in New York, and raised in northern California. Haskins has lived in San Francisco, Greece, and Mexico. She now divides her time between Northern England and North-Central Florida.

#6091

Juana María Rodríguez

Juana María Rodríguez

#127693

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Juana María Rodríguez is a Cuban-American professor of Ethnic Studies, Gender and Women's Studies, and Performance Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her scholarly writing in queer theory, critical race theory, and performance studies highlights the intersection of race, gender, sexuality and embodiment in constructing subjectivity.

#6092

Sarah Viren

#144112

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (47 years)

Sarah Viren is an American essayist best known for her 2018 essay collection Mine. Career In 2016, Viren won the Riverteeth Book Prize which offered publication of her essay collection Mine. Mine was published in 2018 and was longlisted at the 31st Annual Lammy Finalists in the Lesbian Memoir/Biography category and longlisted for the 2018 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay.

#6093

Nicholas Watson

#114706

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Nicholas Watson is an English-Canadian medievalist, literary critic, religious historian, and author. He is Henry B. and Anne M. Cabot Professor of English at Harvard University and chair of the Harvard English Department.

#6094

Martha Serpas

#141548

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Martha Serpas is an American poet and educator. She has published a few poetry books and is a professor at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. Biography Serpas was born on December 10, 1965, in Galliano, Louisiana. She received her BA degree from Louisiana State University. She subsequently did graduate study at New York University , Yale Divinity School , and the University of Houston .

#6095

Bettelou Los

#111279

Overall Influence

Bettelou Los is a linguist and philologist specializing in the history of the English language. Since 2013 she has held the Forbes Chair of English Language at the University of Edinburgh. Academic career Los received her MA from the University of Amsterdam in 1986. After spending some time working as a translator, she obtained her PhD in 2000 from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; her dissertation focused on infinitives in Old and Middle English. From 2004 she held positions as lecturer first at the Vrije Universiteit and then at Radboud University Nijmegen, where she was promoted to senior l...

#6096

Chae Ho-ki

#168429

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Chae Ho-ki is a modern South Korean poet. Life Chae Ho-ki was born on October 13, 1957, in Daegu, South Korea and published his first poem in 1988 and since that time has been considered by South Korean critics as one of the major voices in Korean literature.

#6097

Brian Bartlett

#173390

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Brian Bartlett is a Canadian poet, essayist, nature writer, and editor. He has published 14 books or chapbooks of poetry, two prose books of nature writing, and a compilation of prose about poetry. He was born in St. Stephen, New Brunswick, and lived in Fredericton from 1957 to 1975. While a high-school student and an undergraduate he attended the informal writers workshop the Ice House ; there and elsewhere he benefited from the generosity and friendship of writers such as Nancy and William Bauer, Robert Gibbs, Alden Nowlan, A.G. Bailey, Kent Thompson, Fred Cogswell, David Adams Richards, and Michael Pacey.

#6098

Amira Nur al-Din

#167154

Overall Influence

1925 - 2020 (95 years)

Amira Nur al-Din Daoud was an Iraqi poet. Born in Baghdad. After completing her secondary education, she joined Fuad I University in Cairo in 1943, and BA in Arabic Language and Literature in 1947, and a master's degree from the same university in 1957. She worked as a teacher of Arabic in secondary schools, then at the Faculty of Arts of Baghdad, then dean of the Institute of Applied Arts. Published her poetry in many Iraqi and Arab magazines and newspapers.

#6099

James R. Lawler

#90284

Overall Influence

1929 - 2013 (84 years)

James Ronald Lawler was the foundation professor of French studies at the University of Western Australia and later the Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor in Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago.

#6100

José Rodrigues dos Santos

José Rodrigues dos Santos

#50211

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

José António Afonso Rodrigues dos Santos is a Portuguese journalist, novelist and university lecturer. He has been one of the presenters of Telejornal, the evening news program on the Portuguese public television channel RTP1, since 1991. Since the 2000s he has published several thriller and historical fiction novels, becoming a best-selling author in Portugal.

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