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,

#6351

William Allan

#125628

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

William R. Allan is a Scottish classicist specializing in Greek epic and tragedy, particularly the plays of Euripides. He is currently McConnell Laing Fellow and Tutor in Greek and Latin Languages and Literature at University College, Oxford and Professor of Greek, Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford. He was formerly Assistant Professor of Classics at Harvard University.

#6352

Oliver Crawford

#126992

Overall Influence

1917 - 2008 (91 years)

Oliver Crawford was an American screenwriter and author who overcame the Hollywood blacklist during the McCarthy Era of the 1950s to become one of the entertainment industry's most successful television writers. Shows that Crawford wrote for include Star Trek, Bonanza, Quincy, M.E., Perry Mason, and the Kraft Television Theatre.

#6353

Ante Peterlić

#148518

Overall Influence

1936 - 2007 (71 years)

Ante Peterlić was a Croatian screenwriter and film director. He is best known for his film Accidental Life , his debut feature film. Peterlić was a prominent young film critic, and a professor of film theory at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. In the 1960s, he directed his first short TV drama, and was active as an assistant director in several feature films and documentaries, working also as a script doctor.

#6354

Rosabetty Muñoz

#179427

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Rosabetty Muñoz Serón is a Chilean poet and professor who is linked to the cultural movements from Ancud, from Castro, and Índice and Matra from Valdivia. She is a recipient of the Pablo Neruda Award and the Poetry Altazor Award of the National Arts.

#6355

Ivan Vyrypaev

#148198

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Ivan Aleksandrovich Vyrypaev is a Russian and Polish playwright, screenwriter, film director, actor and art director. He is a leading figure in the Russian New Drama movement. Biography In 1995, Ivan graduated from the Irkutsk Theater School, after graduation he worked for one season as an actor in the Magadan Theater, then for two seasons as an actor in the Drama and Comedy Theater in Kamchatka.

#6356

Gloria Dünkler

#130955

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Gloria Dünkler is a Chilean writer, and winner of the 2016 Pablo Neruda Award. She is best known for her poetry, although she also collects folktales. Biography Gloria Dünkler was born into a large family of artisans, musicians, and fishermen. She studied Pedagogy in Language and Communication at the University of La Frontera in Temuco, and graduated as a Spanish teacher and a licentiate in education in 2003. Later, in 2009, she qualified as a librarian at the Metropolitan University of Technology in Santiago.

#6357

Kofi Akpabli

#79707

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Kofi Akpabli is a Ghanaian academic, journalist, publisher, tourism consultant and cultural activist. He is a two-time winner of the CNN Multichoice African Journalist for Arts and Culture Awards. His latest work 'Made in Nima' has been featured in the new Commonwealth Anthology which was published in May 2016 Safe House: Explorations into Creative Non-Fiction. Akpabli has four books to his credit and currently works as a lecturer at Central University College in Ghana. He is a founding member of Ghana Cultural Forum and has participated in Xplore FrankfurtRheinemann 2012, Tallberg Forum, Sw...

#6358

Myriam J. A. Chancy

#172022

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Myriam J. A. Chancy is a Haitian-Canadian-American writer and a fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. , she is the Hartley Burr Alexander Chair of Humanities at Scripps College of the Claremont Consortium. As a writer, she focuses on Haitian culture, gender, class, sexuality, and Caribbean women's studies. Her novels have won several awards, including the Guyana Prize in Literature Caribbean Award.

#6359

Toril Swan

#141168

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Toril Swan was a Norwegian linguist. She was born in Sandnessjøen. After taking a bachelor's degree in philosophy at Bates College in 1970, she graduated with the cand.philol. degree from the University of Oslo in 1978. Swan was hired as an associate professor at the University of Tromsø in 1980, and received the dr.philos. degree from the same institution in 1987. Promoted to professor in 1990, she also served as dean of the Faculty of Humanities from 1997 to 2002.

#6360

V. V. Ganeshananthan

#102588

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

V. V. "Sugi" Ganeshananthan is an American fiction writer, essayist, and journalist of Ilankai Tamil descent. Her work has appeared in many leading newspapers and journals, including Granta, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Washington Post.

#6361

Patrick Cheney

#175452

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Patrick Gerard Cheney is an American scholar of English Renaissance Literature. He is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the Pennsylvania State University. Education Cheney received his BA degree from the University of Montana and his MA and PhD degrees from the University of Toronto . He has taught at the Pennsylvania State University since 1980.

#6362

Diana Brydon

#176639

Overall Influence

Diana Brydon is a Canadian literary scholar, currently a Canada Research Chair at University of Manitoba.

#6363

Paul Petrie

#169860

Overall Influence

1928 - 2012 (84 years)

Paul James Petrie was an American poet and professor emeritus of English and creative writing at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston, where he taught for over 30 years. His work has appeared in over 100 literary journals and magazines—including Poetry, The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, New York Times, The Nation, The New Republic, Sewanee Review, Paris Review, Massachusetts Review, The Michigan Quarterly Review - and has been reprinted in eight anthologies including The Treasury of American Poetry.

#6364

Eric Pankey

#114759

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Eric Pankey is an American poet and artist. He is married to the poet Jennifer Atkinson . Pankey's poetry has moved from the literal and narrative as in _Heartwood,_ towards the suggestiveness of Emerson, without the hopefulness implicit in Emerson's transcendentalism. In Pankey's poems, often written in free verse forms or in prose poetry, the hint of grand comprehensiveness is suggested, without the hope of absorption into a universalizing or redemptive whole. The result, as in his "Souvenir de Voyage" —an implied answer to Baudelaire's "Invitation au Voyage," is a glimpse of redemption fro...

#6365

Hans Karl Peterlini

#42027

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Hans Karl Peterlini is an author, journalist, Austrian university professor and educational researcher originally from South Tyrol , an autonomous, mostly German speaking province in Northern Italy.

#6366

Kekla Magoon

#174311

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Kekla Magoon is an American author, best known for her NAACP Image Award-nominated young adult novel The Rock and the River, How It Went Down, The Season of Styx Malone, and X. In 2021, she received the Margaret Edwards Award from the American Library Association for her body of work. Her works also include middle grade novels, short stories, and historical, socio-political, and economy-related non-fiction.

#6367

Sally Ball

#115108

Overall Influence

Sara Louise "Sally" Ball is an American poet, editor, and professor. She is the author of Annus Mirabilis . Her poems and essays have appeared in literary journals and magazines including American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Rivendell, Slate, Threepenny Review, Salmagundi, The Southwest Review, The Threepenny Review, Yale Review, and the Review of Contemporary Fiction.

#6368

Howard Erskine-Hill

#130169

Overall Influence

1936 - 2014 (78 years)

Howard Henry Erskine-Hill, was an English literary scholar most notable for his work on the eighteenth century poet Alexander Pope. Early life He was born in Wakefield and studied at a Methodist boarding school in Harrogate, Ashville College. He was exempt from National Service due to his asthma and he studied English with philosophy at the University of Nottingham. He graduated with a BA in 1957 and then embarked on his PhD thesis , titled "Tradition and Affinity in the Poetry of Pope".

#6369

Robert Abirached

#106319

Overall Influence

1930 - 2021 (91 years)

Robert Abirached was a French writer and theatrologist. He moved to Paris in 1948 and was admitted to the École normale supérieure in 1952. He earned a doctoral degree from the Sorbonne in 1974. Principal works Écrivains d’aujourd’hui Casanova ou la dissipation L’Emerveillée Tu connais la musique? Jean Vauthier La Crise du personnage dans le théâtre moderne La Décentralisation théâtraleLe Premier Âge, 1945-1958 Les Années Malraux, 1959-1968 1968, le tournant Le Temps des incertitudes, 1969-1981 Le Théâtre et le Prince Le Théâtre en France au xxe siècle

#6370

Elizabeth Stuckey-French

#124340

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Elizabeth Stuckey-French is an American short story writer, novelist and professor. Life Stuckey-French was born on September 2, 1958, in Little Rock. She grew up in the town of Lafayette, IN. She graduated from Purdue University and was founding editor of the Sycamore Review. She was a James A. Michener Fellow at the Iowa Writers Workshop; she graduated with an MFA in 1992. Her stories have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, Five Points, Narr ative. She teaches creative writing at Florida State University. Richard Russo in his commentary about the selections in the 2005 O.

#6371

Alice Mary Stoll

Alice Mary Stoll

#105829

Overall Influence

1917 - 2014 (97 years)

Alice Mary Stoll was an American biophysicist who developed fire-resistant fabric. She was a pioneer in aerospace medicine. She received the Achievement Award from the Society of Women Engineers in 1969.

#6372

Alberto Caramella

#177810

Overall Influence

1928 - 2007 (79 years)

Alberto Caramella spent all his life in Florence. He was an Italian poet. His first poetical works were published in 1995 after a successful career as a lawyer. In 1997 he founded the "Fondazione il Fiore" in Florence, with the aim to promote Italian and international poetry.

#6373

Bruce Whiteman

#171059

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Bruce Whiteman is a Canadian poet, translator, editor, and essayist whose writings focus on music, bibliography, cultural history, and literature. Born in Southern Ontario and educated at Trent University and the University of Toronto, in 1996 Whiteman was appointed director of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library at the University of California, Los Angeles, a position he held until 2010. Currently Whiteman lives in Peterborough, Ontario, and contributes book reviews and essays regularly to publications such as TriQuarterly, Rattle, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

#6374

Ingrid Horrocks

Ingrid Horrocks

#92585

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Ingrid Horrocks is a creative writing teacher, poet, travel writer, editor and essayist. She lives in Wellington, New Zealand. Biography Ingrid Horrocks was born in Hamilton in 1975 and grew up on farms north of Auckland and in the Wairarapa.

#6375

Darryl Dickson-Carr

#171041

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Darryl Dickson-Carr is an American author, professor, and literary critic. Life Dr. Dickson-Carr graduated from University of California, Santa Barbara, with a Ph.D. in English with a focus on African American satire. He taught at Florida State University before joining the English faculty at Southern Methodist University, where he currently teaches and serves as interim Director of Graduate Studies.

#6376

Mohammad Moniruzzaman

#116627

Overall Influence

1936 - 2008 (72 years)

Mohammad Moniruzzaman was a Bangladeshi writer, poet, professor, freedom fighter and lyricist. Career Moniruzzaman received his BA in 1958 and his MA in 1959 from University of Dhaka. In 1969, he got his Ph.D. on Hindu-Muslim relationship in modern Bengali poetry. He joined the University's Department of Bengali as a teaching advisor in 1959 and became a lecturer in 1962. He became a professor in 1975 and chair of the department in 1978. He was also district governor of the Rotary club as well as a member of the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh.

#6377

Brock Brower

#97912

Overall Influence

1931 - 2014 (83 years)

Brock Brower was an American novelist, magazine journalist, and TV writer of various magazines, including Esquire, Life, Harper’s Magazine, and The New York Times Magazine. Background The son of Charles H. Brower, Brock Hendrickson Brower was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, and raised in Westfield, New Jersey. In 1953, he graduated from Dartmouth College, where he served as managing editor for The Dartmouth. He then attended Harvard Law School but left to study English literature for his MA as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University's Merton College.

#6378

Motoka Murakami

#115554

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Motoka Murakami is a Japanese manga artist. He won the Kodansha Manga Award for shōnen for Gakuto Retsuden in 1982 and the Shogakukan Manga Award twice, for shōnen for Musashi no Ken in 1984 and for general manga in 1996 for Ron, serialized in Big Comic Original from 1991 to 2006. In 1998, he received an Excellence Prize at the Japan Media Arts Festival for Ron. Jin won the Grand Prize at the 2011 Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize. On a list published in the beginning of August 2011, he ranked as the 35th best-selling manga artist since January 2010, with 1,901,000 copies sold.

#6379

Igor Youskevitch

Igor Youskevitch

#54435

Overall Influence

1912 - 1994 (82 years)

Igor Youskevitch was a ballet dancer and a choreographer of Russian-Ukrainian origin, famous as one of the greatest male ballet dancers of the 20th century, as a master of the classic style, e.g., in Afternoon of a Faun, and as a dance partner to Alicia Alonso.

#6380

Åse-Marie Nesse

#110299

Overall Influence

1934 - 2001 (67 years)

Åse-Marie Nesse was a Norwegian philologist, translator and poet. Biography Åse-Marie Nesse was born in Klepp, in Rogaland county, Norway. She finished her secondary education in 1952 at Rogaland offentlege landsgymnas. She attended Oslo Teachers' College from 1953 to 1955, then worked as a school teacher before enrolling at the University of Oslo. She graduated with the cand.philol. degree in 1963, and was hired as a lecturer in Germanic studies. She was later promoted to associate professor, and retired in 2000.

#6381

Stephen Oakley

#119376

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Stephen Phelps Oakley, FBA is a British classicist and academic. An expert on the work of Livy, he is the ninth Kennedy Professor of Latin at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Emmanuel College.

#6382

Hyun Kil-un

#120694

Overall Influence

1940 - 2020 (80 years)

Hyun Kil-Un was a Jeju Island-based South Korean writer. Life Hyun Kil-Un was born on February 17, 1940, on Jeju-do. Hyun graduated from Jeju University and then Hanyang University's Graduate School. Hyun was a professor of Korean Language and Literature at Hanyang University.

#6383

John Mills

#141080

Overall Influence

1930 - 2016 (86 years)

Howard Edwin "John" Mills was a Canadian writer, professor of medieval literature and publisher of novels and essays. Early life and education Mills was born in London, England in 1930 to working-class parents. He went to high school in Sutton, just south of the city. He won a Surrey Agricultural scholarship to The University of Wales at Bangor, but spent most his time mountain climbing and did not graduate.

#6384

William Olsen

#175346

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

William Olsen is an American poet. Life He was raised in Park Forest, Illinois. His poems and essays have appeared in "Chicago Review, "Crazyhorse", "Gettysburg Review", "The Kenyon Review", "The Nation", The New Republic, Paris Review, "Poetry", "Poetry Northwest", Southern Review, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. He teaches at Western Michigan University, and the MFA Program at Vermont College.

#6385

Sarah Leggott

#177727

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Sarah Janet Leggott is a New Zealand literature academic. She is currently a full professor at the Victoria University of Wellington. Academic career After a 1999 PhD titled 'Reinscribing the female historical subject: auto/biographical voices of contemporary Spanish women writers' at the University of Auckland, she moved to the Victoria University of Wellington, rising to full professor. In December 2021, Leggott was appointed Acting Pro Vice-Chancellor for both the Wellington Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Wellington Faculty of Education. She will hold this role until a...

#6386

Ko Jinha

#178029

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Ko Jinha is a South Korean poet. As a man of religion and a poet, he has published many essay collections, poetry collections, and biblical stories for children. Since he became a farmer to live a life enjoying inconveniences and unhappiness, he has been giving lectures about sustainable living. His poetry discovers sanctity inherent in all living things on earth and continue forth into affirmation of life.

#6387

Jinyu Liu

#177265

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Jinyu Liu is the acting Betty Gage Holland Professor of Roman History at the Department of History of Emory University. She was a professor of classics at DePauw University, and was a distinguished guest professor at Shanghai Normal University. She is an expert in Roman history, social history, translation, the reception of Graeco-Roman classics in China, and Latin epigraphy.

#6388

Arnold Drake

#146717

Overall Influence

1924 - 2007 (83 years)

Arnold Drake was an American comic book writer and screenwriter best known for co-creating the DC Comics characters Deadman and the Doom Patrol, and the Marvel Comics characters the Guardians of the Galaxy, among others.

#6389

Marcus Wicker

#172865

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (42 years)

Marcus Wicker is an American poet. He won the 2011 National Poetry Series Prize for his collection Maybe the Saddest Thing and a 2014 Pushcart Prize for his poem "Interrupting Aubade Ending In Epiphany". He teaches creative writing in the MFA program at the University of Memphis.

#6390

Jerome Coopersmith

Jerome Coopersmith

#115510

Overall Influence

1925 - 2023 (98 years)

Jerome Coopersmith was an American dramatist known for television, theater, and his work as a professor of screenplay writing. Working in the television industry since 1947, Coopersmith authored more than 100 television scripts for anthology dramas, episodic series and television movies and specials. His television work included Johnny Jupiter , Armstrong Circle Theater , Hawaii Five-O , and Streets of San Francisco , and the holiday classics 'Twas the Night Before Christmas and An American Christmas Carol . Coopersmith's theatrical plays span Broadway, off-Broadway, and regional productions.

#6391

Diane McKinney-Whetstone

#175219

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Diane McKinney-Whetstone is an American author and is a member of the University of Pennsylvania Creative Writing program faculty. Her works of fiction have won numerous awards, including the BCALA Literary Award for Fiction from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, Inc. in 2005 and 2009

#6392

Diana Cage

#154724

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Diana Cage is an American feminist author, editor, cultural critic and radio personality. Her work examines sexuality, feminism, and LGBT culture. Career Cage began writing about sex and culture while interning under editor Lisa Palac at the San Francisco-based magazine Future Sex. In 2000, Cage's editorial work and extensive writing on sex and sexuality converged when she was hired as editor at the landmark lesbian magazine On Our Backs. During her tenure there, Cage operated the magazine according to her radical beliefs about sex and sexual identity, expanding the magazine's vision of what constituted lesbian sex.

#6393

Gillian Jerome

#175406

Overall Influence

Gillian Jerome is a Canadian poet, essayist, editor and instructor. She won the City of Vancouver Book Award in 2009 and the ReLit Award for Poetry in 2010. Jerome is a co-founder of Canadian Women In Literary Arts , and also serves as the poetry editor for Geist. She is a lecturer in literature at the University of British Columbia and also runs writing workshops at the Post 750 in downtown Vancouver.

#6394

Nkem Nwankwo

#118907

Overall Influence

1936 - 2001 (65 years)

Nkem Nwankwo was a Nigerian novelist and poet. Biography Born in Nawfia-Awka, a village near the Igbo city of Onitsha in Nigeria, Nwankwo attended University College in Ibadan, gaining a BA in 1962. After graduating he took a teaching job at Ibadan Grammar School, before going on to write for magazines, including Drum and working for the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation.

#6395

Lincoln Kirstein

Lincoln Kirstein

#135839

Overall Influence

1907 - 1996 (89 years)

Lincoln Edward Kirstein was an American writer, impresario, art connoisseur, philanthropist, and cultural figure in New York City, noted especially as co-founder of the New York City Ballet. He developed and sustained the company with his organizing ability and fundraising for more than four decades, serving as the company's general director from 1946 to 1989. According to the New York Times, he was "an expert in many fields", organizing art exhibits and lecture tours in the same years.

#6396

Rhiannon Ash

#166973

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Rhiannon Ash is a British classical scholar specialising in Latin literature and Tacitus. She is professor of Roman Historiography in the Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. She was formerly a lecturer at the Department of Greek and Latin at University College, London.

#6397

Robert Rehder

#169016

Overall Influence

1935 - 2009 (74 years)

Robert McConkie Rehder was an American poet and literary scholar. He authored two books of poetry and several scholarly volumes. A posthumous volume of poetry, I'm back and still returning, was published by Poetry Salzburg in October 2016. Rehder was professor of English and American literature at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. He lived for many years in Corminboeuf in French-speaking Switzerland. In his poetry he treated the small village as a center of cultural life.

#6398

Juan Antonio González Iglesias

#180066

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Juan Antonio González Iglesias is a Spanish poet. He was the 2006 winner of the Loewe in poetry Prizes Premio Vicente Núñez en 1993.IV Premio Internacional de Poesía Generación del 27XIX Premio Loewe

#6399

David Lloyd

#157821

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

David Lloyd is an English comics artist best known as the illustrator of the story V for Vendetta, written by Alan Moore, and the designer of its anarchist protagonist V and the modern Guy Fawkes/V mask, the latter going on to become a symbol of protest.

#6400

Joanie Mackowski

#173464

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Joanie V. Mackowski is an American poet. Life Mackowski grew up in Connecticut. She graduated from Wesleyan University, the University of Washington, and was a Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University. She earned a Ph.D. at University of Missouri.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions