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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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,

#6101

Thomas O'Malley

#172524

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Thomas O'Malley is an Irish writer. Life He emigrated to the U.S. from New Ross, Ireland, at the age of sixteen. He attended the University of Massachusetts Boston, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He has been a Returning Writing Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Mass, and the recipient of the Grace Paley endowed Fellowship. He is on the creative writing faculty at Dartmouth College and lives in the Boston area.

#6102

Kjersti Bale

#151852

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Kjersti Bale is a Norwegian philologist. She is a professor at the Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages, University of Oslo. She headed the aesthetics study programme from its inception in 2003 to 2005, and headed her Department from 2009 to 2012. She is a co-editor of the Journal of Aesthetics & Culture and editorial board member of Agora. Among her literary interests are Cora Sandel and Michel de Montaigne.

#6103

David López

#136322

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

David López is a Spanish comic book artist. Biography López started his comics career in the Spanish fanzine before moving on to work on Espiral. In 2002 he moved to the American comic book market.

#6104

Pattie McCarthy

#176157

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Pattie McCarthy is an American poet and educator. Biography McCarthy completed undergraduate work at Towson University and received her MA in creative writing from Temple University in Philadelphia in 1998.

#6105

Wendy Mayer

#97742

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Wendy Mayer is an Australian scholar in late antiquity and religion who is a research professor and associate dean for research at Australian Lutheran College, dean of research strategy for the University of Divinity, and honorary research fellow at the University of South Africa. She is known for her work on John Chrysostom and on early Christian preaching.

#6106

Elizabeth Abel

#146837

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Elizabeth Abel is an American literary scholar, professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. Abel was an assistant professor at the University of Chicago. In 1981 she was guest editor for a special issue of Critical Inquiry, 'Writing and Sexual Difference'. The essays marked a shift in feminist literary theory from "recovering a lost tradition to discovering the terms of confrontation with the dominant tradition", by means of "specific historical studies of the ways women revise prevailing themes and styles". Abel's Virginia Woolf and the fictions of psychoanalysis related ...

#6107

M. A. R. Habib

#173993

Overall Influence

M. A. Rafey Habib is an academic humanities scholar and poet. His published books are about literary theory, T. S. Eliot, Urdu poetry, translating the Quran, pacifism in Islam, and the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. He is currently Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at Rutgers University-Camden,

#6108

Wolf-Peter Funk

#154883

Overall Influence

1943 - 2021 (78 years)

Wolf-Peter Funk was a historian of religion and Coptologist known for his pioneering studies on Gnosticism, Manichaeism, and Coptic manuscripts such as the Nag Hammadi library. Biography Wolf-Peter Funk was born in 1943 in Oederan, Germany as the only son of Johanna Roeber and Wolfgang Funk.

#6109

Larry Atlas

#98924

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Larry Atlas is the author of eight produced plays, and the novel South Eight. He is best known for the award-winning play Yield of the Long Bond, which premiered at the Matrix Theatre in Los Angeles starring Ian McShane and Byron Jennings. He directed the second production of this play at NY Stage and Film with Jennings, David Strathairn, and Kyra Sedgwick. Also noteworthy is Total Abandon, which was produced on Broadway starring Richard Dreyfuss and John Heard.

#6110

Brendan Galvin

#117668

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Brendan James Galvin is an American poet. His book, Habitat: New and Selected Poems 1965–2005, was a finalist for the 2005 National Book Award. Life During forty years of college teaching, he served as Wyndham Robertson Visiting Writer in Residence in the MA program at Hollins University, Coal Royalty Distinguished Writer in Residence in the MFA program at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, and Whichard chair in the Humanities at East Carolina University.

#6111

Douglas H. Thayer

#171090

Overall Influence

1929 - 2017 (88 years)

Douglas H. Thayer was a prominent author in the "faithful realism" movement of Mormon fiction. He has been called the "Mormon Hemingway" for his straightforward style and powerful prose. Eugene England called him the "father of contemporary Mormon fiction."

#6112

Ryūzō Saki

#85207

Overall Influence

1937 - 2015 (78 years)

was a Japanese novelist and non-fiction writer, born in North Hamgyong, a province of what is now North Korea. He was interested in high-profile crimes in Japan and published a number of non-fiction books about Japanese crimes.

#6113

Maria de la Pau Janer

Maria de la Pau Janer

#100488

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Maria de la Pau Janer is a writer from Spain who works in Spanish and Catalan. She is a recipient of the Premio Planeta de Novela and the Ramon Llull Novel Award. She got her PhD degree at the University of the Balearic Islands. She is a member of the Associació d'Escriptors en Llengua Catalana. She was married to Joan Oliver Araujo. They divorced and then she married Joan Corbella. Her father, Gabriel Janer Manila, is also a well-known writer.

#6114

Louise Plummer

#115814

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Louise Plummer is an American author of young adult fiction and a retired associate professor of English at Brigham Young University. She lives in New York, New York with her writer/professor husband Tom. Together they have four sons.

#6115

Carlos Cumpián

#142641

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Carlos Cumpián, an American Chicano writer who examines American realities absent from mainstream poetry. Originally from San Antonio, Texas, Cumpián has planted firm roots in the Midwest. Cumpián was named among the Chicago Public Library's "Top Ten" requested poets and his poetry has been published in small press magazines as well as numerous anthologies. He has taught at Columbia College Chicago and has offered workshops on poetry and small press management. His books "14 Abriles: Poems" , Latino Rainbow , Armadillo Charm and Coyote Sun have received positive reviews for their contributio...

#6116

Xu Zhongyu

#130464

Overall Influence

1915 - 2019 (104 years)

Xu Zhongyu was a Chinese writer and literary scholar who served as Professor and Chair of the Department of Chinese of East China Normal University. His book University Chinese has been the standard textbook in Chinese universities for almost forty years, with 30 million copies printed as of 2019.

#6117

Melba Boyd

#99104

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Melba Joyce Boyd is a significant figure in African-American poetry. She has authored 13 books and is a Distinguished University Professor and Chair of the Department of Africana Studies at Wayne State University.

#6118

Hillel Schwartz

#68312

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Hillel Schwartz is an American cultural historian, translator and poet. Education and teaching Hillel Schwartz was born in Chicago and got his B.A. degree at Brandeis University in 1969. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in European History at Yale University , and the following year he got a master's degree in library science at the University of California, Berkeley.

#6119

Joseph Langland

#152192

Overall Influence

1917 - 2007 (90 years)

Joseph Langland was an American poet. Life Born in Spring Grove, Minnesota, Langland was raised in Northeastern Iowa on the family farm. Langland received both a bachelor's degree and a master's degree from the University of Iowa. He served in the U.S. Army as an infantryman during World War II. His first collection of poems For Harold was written for his younger brother who was killed in action in the Philippines.

#6120

Edward Weismiller

#158907

Overall Influence

1915 - 2010 (95 years)

Edward Ronald Weismiller was an American poet, scholar and professor of English, George Washington University. . Life He was raised in Wisconsin and Vermont. In 1936, the twenty-year-old Edward Weismiller became the youngest poet to win the prestigious Yale Series of Younger Poets prize.

#6121

Ruth Dean

#125065

Overall Influence

1902 - 2003 (101 years)

Ruth Josephine Dean was an American scholar of Anglo-Norman literature. Throughout her career, she worked hard to establish the legitimacy of Anglo-Norman literature as a subject of study, and her definitive work, Anglo-Norman Literature: A Guide to Texts and Manuscripts has won widespread praise for its substantial contribution to the study of literature.

#6122

Jean-Loup Rivière

#79915

Overall Influence

1948 - 2018 (70 years)

Jean-Loup Rivière was a French playwright and drama critic. Biography Jean-Loup Rivière was born on 10 January 1948 in Caen, France. He studied philosophy at the University of Caen, and led the Theatrical Research Group from 1969 to 1972. He wrote his doctoral thesis at École pratique des hautes études and began teaching at Paris West University Nanterre La Défense on 15 December 2001.

#6123

Jed Whedon

#166674

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Jed Tucker Whedon is an American screenwriter and musician, and the son of screenwriter Tom Whedon, grandson of screenwriter John Whedon, and the brother of screenwriter Zack Whedon and of filmmaker Joss Whedon.

#6124

M. J. Alhabeeb

#96725

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Musaddak Jameel Al-Habeeb is an Iraqi American contemporary calligrapher who follows the original traditions in Arabic-Islamic calligraphy. He is self-taught, and never studied under any master calligrapher, according to the traditional norm.

#6125

Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood

#172869

Overall Influence

1945 - 2007 (62 years)

Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood was a scholar in the field of Ancient Greek religion and a highly influential Hellenist. Biography Sourvinou-Inwood was born in Volos, Greece, in 1945, but grew up in Corfu. Sourvinou-Inwood studied at the University of Athens from 1962–66, where she specialised in history and archaeology, and was a pupil of the Greek prehistoric archaeologist Spyridon Marinatos; after graduating with a starred first in Classics, she began research in the field of Mycenology in Rome, publishing her first article on the reading of a Linear B tablet from Knossos in 1968.

#6126

Niall Johnson

#149153

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Niall Johnson is an English screenwriter and film director. He is best known for his 2005 comedy film Keeping Mum. Filmography Film External links

#6127

Karen Simpson Nikakis

#170806

Overall Influence

Karen Simpson Nikakis, known commonly as K. S. Nikakis, is an Australian fantasy author, writer and poet who lives at Melton, who has written the fantasy novel The Whisper of Leaves . She was nominated for an Aurealis Awards twice in 2020.

#6128

Donal O'Mathuna

#59711

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Donal O'Mathuna is an associate professor within the College of Nursing at The Ohio State University. He is formerly a Senior Lecturer in Ethics, Decision-Making & Evidence in the School of Nursing & Human Sciences at Dublin City University, Ireland, and Chair of the Academy of Fellows at the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity in Chicago. His research interests include theology, alternative medicine and disaster ethics. He has written or edited several books, including Nanoethics: Big Ethical Issues with Small Technology .

#6129

Ronan Noone

#144904

Overall Influence

Ronan Noone is an American playwright based in Boston, Massachusetts. Personal life Noone grew up in the town of Clifden in Galway, Ireland. He studied politics and math at the University in Galway, and moved to Prague when he was 23. He arrived at Martha's Vineyard at the age of 24, after the St. Vincent de Paul Society sponsored him for a green card to America. He worked as a bartender and wrote a play about sexual abuse by priests, which later became The Lepers of Baile Baiste. He teaches playwriting at Boston University, Lesley University and the Walnut Hill School of the Arts. Noone was a...

#6130

Leif Longum

#157260

Overall Influence

1927 - 1997 (70 years)

Leif Longum was a Norwegian essayist and literary researcher. He was born in Oslo. He was assigned to the Nansen Academy from 1960 to 1972, and the University of Bergen from 1972 to 1995; from 1992 as a professor. He published the textbook Å lese skuespill in 1976. His principal work is an analysis of the "cultural radicalism" in Norway in the interwar years, with particular focus on the troika Sigurd Hoel, Helge Krog and Arnulf Øverland. He published the essay collection Å krysse sine spor in 1995, while the collection På fallrepet was published posthumously in 1998.

#6131

Kristian Smidt

#169058

Overall Influence

1916 - 2013 (97 years)

Kristian Smidt, OBE was a Norwegian literary historian. Biography Smidt was born in Sandefjord as a son of bishop Johannes Smidt. His doctor thesis from 1949 was a treatment of the work of T. S. Eliot. He was appointed professor of English literature at the University of Oslo from 1955 to 1985. Among his publications are works on James Joyce and on the composition of Shakespeare's plays.

#6132

Marianne Boruch

#109904

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Marianne Boruch is an American poet whose published work also includes essays on poetry, sometimes in relation to other fields and a memoir about a hitchhiking trip taken in 1971. Life Born and raised Catholic in Chicago, Boruch was educated in parish schools and spent many summers in Tuscola, Illinois with her grandparents. She graduated from the University of Illinois, then earned her MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst where her MFA thesis advisor was James Tate. She has taught at Tunghai University in Taiwan, and at the University of Maine at Farmington, going on, in 1987, t...

#6133

Anna Leahy

#161713

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Anna Leahy is an American poet and nonfiction writer. The author of numerous books of poetry, essays, and creative writing pedagogy, Leahy directs the Tabula Poetica Center for Poetry and MFA in Creative Writing program at Chapman University in Orange, California. In 2013, she was named editor of TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics.

#6134

Vera Mireeva

#108642

Overall Influence

1931 - 2004 (73 years)

Vera Arsenivna Mireeva was a philologist, turkologist, and Russian scholar, teacher, and methodologist of the Russian language, poet and prose writer, journalist. She gave 45 years for enlightenment and russification of the Turkic peoples of Central Asia, Honorary student of education of the USSR and an excellent student of national education of the Uzbek SSR.

#6135

Aya de Leon

#162925

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Aya de Leon is an American novelist and activist who teaches at the University of California Berkeley. She first came to national attention as a spoken-word artist in the underground poetry scene in the San Francisco Bay Area, and a hip-hop theater artist. de Leon is of Puerto Rican, African-American, and West Indian heritage, and much of her work explores issues of race, gender, socio-economic class, body, nation and the climate crisis.

#6136

Kim Taeyong

#166858

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Kim Taeyong is a South Korean writer. Life Kim Taeyong was born in Seoul in 1974. He graduated in creative writing from Soongsil University. He began his literary career when his short story “Oreunjjogeseo sebeonjjae jip” was published in the 2005 spring issue of the quarterly literary magazine Segyeuimunhak. He has won the Hankook Ilbo Literary Award, Moonji Literary Award, KimHyun Literary Award.

#6137

Robin Beth Schaer

Robin Beth Schaer

#174536

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Robin Beth Schaer is an American poet. Biography Born in 1971, she graduated from Colgate University and Columbia University, and has taught at Columbia University, The New School, Cooper Union, Oberlin College and worked at the Academy of American Poets.

#6138

Rosemary Winslow

#95110

Overall Influence

Rosemary Winslow is an American poet and academic. Life Rosemary Winslow lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband John, a visual artist. She teaches at The Catholic University of America. Her work has appeared in 32 poems, Poet Lore, The Southern Review, Crux. She published a collection of poems in 2007 entitled Greenbodies.

#6139

Jane Wong

#163295

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (42 years)

Jane Wong is an American poet and professor at Western Washington University. She is the author of Overpour and has been published in Best American Poetry 2015 and Best New Poets 2012. Wong grew up in Tinton Falls, New Jersey, where her parents owned a Chinese restaurant, and where Jane remembers much of her childhood. She currently resides in Seattle, Washington.

#6140

Eric Wright

#105629

Overall Influence

1929 - 2015 (86 years)

Eric Wright was a Canadian writer of mystery novels. Life Wright was born on Kennington Park Road, in South London, England. He was the son of seamstress Caroline , and carter Joseph Wright. Wright was born into a large, poor family of ten children. After growing up in Lambeth, he immigrated to Canada in 1951.

#6141

Margaret Belcher

#141313

Overall Influence

1936 - 2016 (80 years)

Margaret Belcher was a New Zealand literary scholar who was a specialist in the literary output of Augustus Pugin, whose letters she edited in five volumes. Early life Margaret Belcher was born on 18 September 1936 in Christchurch, New Zealand, the second daughter of Nelson and Lesley Belcher. She had a brother John and a sister Pam. She was educated at Rangi Ruru Girls' School, a private academy in Christchurch, and then at Canterbury University College, a constituent college of the University of New Zealand, where she obtained an MA in English. She won a scholarship to study at St Hugh's Co...

#6142

Jakob Lothe

#105664

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Jakob Lothe is a Norwegian literary scholar and Professor of English literature at the University of Oslo. Early life and education After growing up in Lote, Norway, Lothe studied at the University of Bergen where he completed his undergraduate work. He then studied at the University of California, Santa Barbara where he obtained an MA degree in Comparative Literature, before receiving his doctorate in Bergen in 1986. In addition to his professorship in Oslo he has held positions at the University of Bergen and the University of Tromsø, and has been visiting professor at the University of Oxford, the University of Cape Town and Harvard University.

#6143

Ruby Blondell

#162424

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Ruby Blondell is Professor Emerita of Classics and Adjunct Professor Emerita of Gender, Women, & Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington; prior to retirement, they were the Byron W. and Alice L. Lockwood Professor of Humanities also at the University of Washington. Their research centres on Greek intellectual history, gender studies, and the reception of ancient myth in contemporary culture.

#6144

Karen Volkman

#135479

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Karen Volkman is an American poet. Life She was educated at New College of Florida, Syracuse University, and the University of Houston. Her poems have appeared in anthologies including The Best American Poetry, and The Pushcart Prize XXVII.

#6145

William Harrison

#128500

Overall Influence

1933 - 2013 (80 years)

William Neal Harrison was an American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. Three films were based on two of his works: The short story "Roller Ball Murder" was turned into a screenplay for the 1975 film Rollerball, with a remake in 2002. The novel Burton and Speke was turned into the 1990 film Mountains of the Moon.

#6146

Ruth Whitman

#144549

Overall Influence

1922 - 1999 (77 years)

Ruth Whitman was an American poet, translator, and professor. Career Whitman received a B.A. and an M.A. from Radcliffe College, and also taught at Radcliffe, and at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

#6147

Jane Howard

#56191

Overall Influence

1954 - 1996 (42 years)

Jane Temple Howard was an American journalist, author, and educator. She worked at Life magazine from 1956 to 1972. She contributed articles to many publications and wrote several books; most well-known was her biography of Margaret Mead.

#6148

Sieglinde Gstöhl

#129886

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Sieglinde Gstöhl is an academic from Liechtenstein. Biography She currently serves as Director of Studies of the department of EU International Relations and Diplomacy Studies at the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium, as well as a professor of international relations. Before joining the College she was assistant professor of international relations from 1999 to 2005 at the Institute of Social Sciences at Humboldt University of Berlin.

#6149

Ernst Vogt

#135723

Overall Influence

1930 - 2017 (87 years)

Ernst Vogt was a German classical philologist. He was a professor at the Universities of Mannheim and Munich . Between 2002 and 2014 he served president of the International Thesaurus Commission.

#6150

Paul Cook

#113869

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Paul Cook is an American science fiction writer and classical music critic. He is a Principal Lecturer in the English Department at Arizona State University. Works Novels Paul Cook has written eight science fiction novels.Tintagel . Ace Science Fiction. Finalist for the 1982 Locus Award for Best First Novel.The Alejandra Variations . Ace Science Fiction.Duende Meadow . Bantam Spectra.Halo . Bantam Spectra.On The Rim Of The Mandala . Bantam Spectra.Fortress On The Sun . Roc SF; Reprint . Phoenix Pick/Arc Manor BooksThe Engines Of Dawn . Roc SF; Reprint . Phoenix Pick/Arc Manor BooksKarma Kommandos .

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