Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

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Subdiscipline

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List of the most influential people in Literature,

#6401

Francisco Granizo Ribadeneira

#125982

Overall Influence

1925 - 2009 (84 years)

Francisco Granizo Ribadeneira was an Ecuadorian poet born in Quito on November 8, 1925, and died on January 21, 2009. For some, he was considered a model for Ecuadorian religious lyrical poetry; his work surpasses an exact classification and in more than one occasion, it has been categorized as "intense poetry", a middle ground between eroticism, mysticism , and existentialism.

#6402

Harry Smith

#136324

Overall Influence

1936 - 2012 (76 years)

Harry Joseph Smith was a poet, editor, and founder of the American small press movement of the later twentieth century. Biography He was born on October 15, 1936. Educated at Brown University Smith first became known in the small press world as the founder of The Smith, a literary magazine and journal of experimental writing that was in publication from 1964 to 1974. Later he established a second magazine, Pulpsmith, and a small press, The Smith-Publishers. He is recognized as a mover and a shaker in the burgeoning small press scene of the 1960s and 1970s. Typical prose can be found in The W...

#6403

Michael Berk

#166619

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Michael Berk is an American television screenwriter. He worked with Douglas Schwartz as a writer on the television series Manimal, and many made-for-television movies. He wrote the earlier scripts of the series Baywatch, and is also known as the creator, co-producer, and writer of the television series The Wizard.

#6404

Hugh Graham Miller

#125794

Overall Influence

1939 - 2019 (80 years)

Hugh Graham Miller, FICFor, was professor emeritus of forestry and former head of the Department of Forestry at the University of Aberdeen. In 1981 he was awarded the Scientific Achievement Award by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations.

#6405

Norm Foster

#56869

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Norman Foster, is a Canadian playwright, considered to be Canada's most produced playwright. Foster discovered his talents as a playwright in Fredericton, New Brunswick, while he was working as host of a popular morning radio show. He accompanied a friend to an audition, and landed his first acting job, as Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey, without ever having even seeing a play. Intrigued with the theatre, he set his pen to paper and wrote his first play titled Sinners.

#6406

Betty Jane Belanus

#102122

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Betty Jane Belanus is an American writer and folklorist. Belanus completed her graduate work in folklore at Indiana University and has been with the Smithsonian Institution since 1987, ultimately working with the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage as an education specialist. Part of her work with the Smithsonian has been the curating of programs for the Smithsonian's annual Folklife Festival, including the 2009 Wales program. She has worked on "Smithsonian Inside Out", on the occupational life of the Smithsonian.

#6407

Deanne Lundin

#67921

Overall Influence

Deanne Lundin is an American poet, and short story writer. Life She was born and raised in Florida and has lived in Oklahoma, Boston, California, England and Wales. She graduated from Harvard University, and University of Michigan in 1997 with an MFA. She graduated from the Eastman School of Music, with a master's in music.

#6408

Jennette McCurdy

Jennette McCurdy

#157368

Overall Influence

1992 - Present (34 years)

Jennette Michelle Faye McCurdy is an American producer, director, singer, writer and former actress. McCurdy's breakthrough role as Sam Puckett in the Nickelodeon sitcom iCarly earned her four Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards. She reprised the character in the iCarly spin-off series Sam & Cat before leaving Nickelodeon. McCurdy also appeared in the television series Malcolm in the Middle , Zoey 101 , Lincoln Heights , True Jackson, VP , and Victorious . She produced, wrote, and starred in her own webseries, What's Next for Sarah? , and led the science-fiction series Between .

#6409

Jana Harris

#178777

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Jana Harris is an American poet, novelist, and essayist and the founder of one of the internet's first electronic poetry journals. Biography Harris was born in San Francisco, California. She attended the University of Oregon and San Francisco State University . She has taught creative writing at New York University and, since 1986, at the University of Washington.

#6410

John Engman

#182478

Overall Influence

1949 - 1996 (47 years)

John Engman was an American poet from Minneapolis, Minnesota. He published several books of poems, most notably Keeping Still, Mountain and Temporary Help: Poems . He has five poems included in the anthology New American Poets of the 90s : "Mushroom Clouds," "Atlantis," "Another Word for Blue," "Staff," and "One Minute of Night Sky."

#6411

Robert W. Hamblin

#173870

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Bobby Wayne Hamblin is a poet, an author, and a professor emeritus at Southeast Missouri State University. He is best known for his achievements related to the works of William Faulkner. Early years Born in Jericho, Mississippi, Hamblin grew up in Brice's Cross Roads. He attended Baldwyn, Mississippi, public schools and graduated from Booneville High School in Mississippi. After attending Northeast Mississippi Community College, he graduated from Delta State University in 1960 with a bachelor's degree in English education. He went on to gain his master's and doctoral degrees from the Univers...

#6412

Dong Jian

#173476

Overall Influence

1936 - 2019 (83 years)

Dong Jian was a Chinese literary scholar who specialized in the history of the theatre of China. He was a distinguished professor and Chair of the Department of Chinese of Nanjing University, and served as Vice President of the university from 1988 to 1993.

#6413

Penny Rimbaud

#128774

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Penny Lapsang Rimbaud is a writer, poet, philosopher, painter, musician and activist. He was a member of the performance art groups EXIT and Ceres Confusion, and in 1972 was co-founder of the Stonehenge Free Festival, together with Phil Russell aka Wally Hope. In 1977 with Steve Ignorant, he co-founded the seminal anarchist punk band Crass and served as its drummer. Crass disbanded in 1984. Until 2000 Rimbaud devoted himself almost entirely to writing, returning to the public platform in 2001 as a performance poet working with Australian saxophonist Louise Elliott and a wide variety of jazz m...

#6414

Gary Miranda

#167660

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Gary Miranda is an American poet. Life Miranda was raised in the Pacific Northwest. He spent six years in a Jesuit seminary, then did graduate work at San Jose State College and the University of California, Irvine. He has published poems in numerous magazines, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere.

#6415

Michael Friedman

#168591

Overall Influence

1960 - 2020 (60 years)

Michael Friedman was an American author, poet, editor, publisher, lawyer, and teacher. His most recent work, the fiction novel series Martian Dawn & Other Novels was recognized by Editor-in-Chief Lorin Stein of the Paris Review. The collection includes his first novel Martian Dawn, originally published in 2006 by Turtle Point Press, Are We Done Here? and On My Way To See You. Friedman is the author of poetry books Species , and Distinctive Belt , as well as poetry chapbooks Celluloid City , Arts & Letters , Cameo , and Special Capacity .

#6416

Paul Castro

#168447

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Paul Castro is an American screenwriter and educator. He is best known for the musical fantasy, August Rush. Early life Born in the Bronx in New York, Castro graduated #1 from UCLA's film school and before that attended military school during his high-school years. He later wrote a script about a nun he met in grade school named Sister Eileen. Castro was a world-class soccer player, earned a full soccer scholarship to college and played in Brazil.

#6417

Brian Burns

#123991

Overall Influence

Brian Burns is an American screenwriter and producer. Career After graduating from college, Burns moved to Washington, D.C. to pursue a career in political journalism. He served as a copy writer and Segment Producer while covering Capitol Hill and the Clinton White House for The Fox Morning News at Washington, D.C.'s affiliate WTTG. Burns then wrote and produced the popular political roundtable discussion, Off the Record, which aired as part of The Fox Morning News.

#6418

Rosamond S. King

#152490

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Rosamond S. King is an American poet and literary theorist. She is a literature professor at Brooklyn College, where her courses focus on Caribbean and African literature, sexuality, and performance. In 2017, she won the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry for her debut poetry collection, Rock | Salt | Stone.

#6419

David Francis

#125436

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

David Francis is an Australian novelist, lawyer and academic. Life David Francis was born in the Mornington Bush Nursing Hospital in Victoria, Australia on 12 November 1958. His mother, Judith Francis, was a prominent Australian horsewoman. Francis spent much of his early life between Mount Eliza, where he attended The Peninsula School, and his family farm, "Tooradin Estate".

#6420

Marina Vishmidt

#168351

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Marina Vishmidt is an American writer, editor and critic. She lectures at the Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London in the MA program Culture Industry, and teaches Art Theory in the MA Art Praxis at the Dutch Art Institute in Arnhem. Her research mainly concerns the relationship between art, value and labour. She further explores this through works on debt, social reproduction and artistic entrepreneurialism. In 2013, she completed her PhD entitled 'Speculation as a Mode of Production in Art and Capital' at the Queen Mary University of London.

#6421

Cornelia Hoogland

#176940

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Cornelia Hoogland is a Canadian poet, playwright and retired professor. She lived on Hornby Island, British Columbia, Canada, but until 2011 divided her time between London, Ontario as well, where she was a professor at the University of Western Ontario. Hoogland has performed and worked internationally in the areas of poetry and theatre. In 2004, she founded and was the director until 2011 of Antler River Poetry , a poetry reading and workshop series.

#6422

Lee Yeong-gwang

#181710

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Lee Yeong-gwang is a South Korean poet and educator. He was born in 1965 in Gyeongsangbuk-do. He graduated from Korea University’s graduate school. He has won the 8th Nojak Literature Prize in 2008, the 11th Jihoon Prize in 2011, and the 11th Midang Literary Award in the same year. He is a poet who depicts life’s sadness in elaborate language, but does not dwell in despair, and lyrically shows the image of gaining the will for starting life again. He has been a creative writing professor at Korea University since 2015.

#6423

Ed Rosenthal

#76312

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Edward "Ed" Rosenthal is an American horticulturist, author, publisher, and Cannabis grower known for his advocacy for the legalization of marijuana use. He served as a columnist for High Times Magazine during the 1980s and 1990s. He was arrested in 2002 for cultivation of cannabis by federal authorities, who do not recognize the authority of states to regulate the use of medical marijuana. He was convicted in federal court, but the conviction was overturned on appeal. Rosenthal was subsequently convicted again, but was not re-sentenced, since his original sentence had been completed.

#6424

Michael Meyerhofer

#153275

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Michael Meyerhofer is a contemporary poet and fiction writer. He was born in Iowa in 1977, received his Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Iowa in 2000, and his Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Southern Illinois University Carbondale in 2006. He currently teaches as a Visiting Professor at DeVry University in Fresno, California Retrieved on December 18, 2014.

#6425

Kristopher Jansma

#166212

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (44 years)

Kristopher Jansma is an American fiction writer and essayist. Born in the Lincroft section of Middletown Township, New Jersey, he attended Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University. Career and accolades His short fiction has appeared in ZYZZVA, Adult Magazine, Recommended Reading, Columbia Magazine, and The Blue Mesa Review. His "Why We Write" was selected as a notable essay in Best American Essays 2014, after being published in Slice Magazine. He has also written essays and reviews for The New York Times, Salon, Electric Literature, The Rumpus, The Millions, Johns Hopkins Magazine, an...

#6426

Pippa Little

#179909

Overall Influence

Pippa Little is a Scottish poet, reviewer, translator, and editor. She has published five poetry collections and her work has appeared in several anthologies, including Oxford Poets 2010 and Best British Poetry 2011.

#6427

Katherine Firth

#175395

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (47 years)

Katherine Elizabeth Firth is a British-Australian poet and librettist. She is the inaugural Head of Lisa Bellear House in the University of Melbourne. She previously was Academic Coordinator at International House, University of Melbourne, a university lecturer at La Trobe University, Melbourne, and a research associate at Trinity College Theological School, Melbourne, the theological college of the Anglican Province of Victoria.

#6428

Amanda Coplin

#142461

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

Amanda Coplin is an American novelist. She was born in Wenatchee, Washington, and graduated from the University of Oregon and University of Minnesota. In 2013 Coplin won a Whiting Writer's Award and was named to the National Book Foundation's "5 Under 35".

#6429

Jean-Paul Pecqueur

#98482

Overall Influence

Jean-Paul Pecqueur is an American poet, critic, and professor. He is author of The Case Against Happiness , winner of a New England/New York Award. Publishers Weekly, in praising The Case Against Happiness, wrote "...a promising poet with a generosity of spirit and the knowledge that 'joy is not impossible,'" and Library Journal wrote, "Sardonic and humorous, cynical and complex, these metaphysical musings celebrate the nameless dread, the logic of the illogical. They address big ideas: life, death, heaven, shoe shopping. They twist and loop, follow to unexpected conclusions...." Pecqueur has ...

#6430

Winfried Bühler

#175831

Overall Influence

1929 - 2010 (81 years)

Winfried Bühler was a German classical philologist. Life Winfried Gregor Anton Maria Bühler was born in Münster. Ottmar Bühler , his father, was a distinguished Professor of Public Law - notably of Tax Law - at the university. Soon after Winfried was born his elder brother died, something which he very seldom mentioned but which nevertheless haunted him through his life. However, the timing of his birth meant that he narrowly avoided wartime conscription into the army or "Volkssturm" . He attended the classics oriented "Beethoven Gymnasium" in Bonn, successfully completing his school leaving exams at an unusually young age.

#6431

Warren Hope

#134132

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Warren T. Hope was an American poet and university professor. Biography Hope was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and educated in the public schools there. After graduating from Philadelphia's Central High School, Hope served in the United States Air Force, and then attended the Community College of Philadelphia. Hope eventually received a BA, MA, and Ph.D. in English from Temple University. He has worked as a printer, a warehouseman, and an editor, eventually working at the Insurance Institute of America and the American Institute for Property and Liability Underwriters in Malvern, Pa. in...

#6432

John Osborne

#100893

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

John Osborne writes books, scripts and stories for Radio 4. He co-created the Sky 1 sitcom After Hours. He is based in Norwich, United Kingdom and studied at the University of East Anglia. He created the sell out Edinburgh show John Peel's Shed and has written and performed six half hours storytelling shows for Radio 4.

#6433

Freddy Buache

#41955

Overall Influence

1924 - 2019 (95 years)

Freddy Buache was a Swiss journalist, cinema critic and film historian. He was the director of the Swiss Film Archive from 1951 to 1996. He was a privatdozent at the University of Lausanne. Biography He was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, spending his early childhood in Villars-Mendraz, Vaud, where his parents ran the Café de la Poste. The family moved to Lausanne in 1933, where Buache later attended the Collège Scientifique. A meeting with Henri Langlois in 1945 at an international cinema conference in Basle led to the start-up with other film enthusiasts of Lausanne's first film club in 19...

#6434

Evan Jones

#169424

Overall Influence

1927 - 2023 (96 years)

Evan Gordon Newton Jones was a Jamaican poet, playwright and screenwriter based in the United Kingdom. He was educated in Jamaica, the United States and England. Jones taught at schools in the United States before moving to England in 1956 and beginning a career as a writer.

#6435

Stefan Herbrechter

#144119

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Stefan Herbrechter is a freelance writer, academic, researcher and translator. Until 2014, he was Reader in Cultural Theory and Director of Postgraduate Studies at Coventry University. In 2015, he was a Senior Fellow at the IKKM in Weimar. Currently, he is a research fellow at Coventry University, Leeds Trinity University and Privatdozent at Heidelberg University.

#6436

Wendell Clausen

#179728

Overall Influence

1923 - 2006 (83 years)

Wendell Vernon Clausen was an American classicist. External links Clausen, Wendell 1923-2006 [WorldCat Identities]

#6437

Aaron Santesso

#179430

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Aaron Santesso is a Canadian literary scholar and professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His primary area of expertise lies in 17th and 18th-century literature, with published works cover a wide variety of topics within this broader category. Most notably, Santesso has published numerous works regarding surveillance in regards to literature and societal perceptions. His book, The Watchman in Pieces: Surveillance, Literature, and Liberal Personhood, which was cowritten with David Rosen, details the ways in which literature has sh...

#6438

Pierre Coustillas

#168010

Overall Influence

1930 - 2018 (88 years)

Pierre Coustillas was a French literary scholar and emeritus professor of English at the University of Lille. He was a specialist in the work of George Gissing. Selected publications Gissing's writings on Dickens : a bio-bibliographical survey. Enitharmon Press, London, 1971.The rediscovery of George Gissing. London, 1971. London and the life of literature in late Victorian England: The diary of George Gissing, novelist. Harvester Press, 1978. The heroic life of George Gissing. Pickering & Chatto, London, 2011-2012. George Gissing: The critical heritage. Routledge, London, 2013.

#6439

Hartmut Abendschein

#85616

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Hartmut Abendschein is a German – Swiss writer. Biography Hartmut Abendschein attended German studies and English studies in Stuttgart, Constance and Glasgow. He lives in Bern since 2003 where he has a blog called taberna kritika – kleine formen.

#6440

David Reynolds

#166375

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

David Reynolds is an American screenwriter for television and film. His credits include the Disney animated films The Emperor's New Groove and Finding Nemo. Biography In the early 1990s, he became a television writer. He made his writing debut on the late-night television series, Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Afterwards, he started to trend into film with his theatrical debut as additional story material on Mulan. After the success of Mulan, Disney gave Reynolds a 'six-year contract' deal to work for both Walt Disney Feature Animation and Pixar Animation Studios. Some later works with the "M...

#6441

Bashir Ahmad

#170711

Overall Influence

1940 - 2014 (74 years)

Bashir Ahmed was a Pakistani-Bangladeshi playback singer, lyricist, and musician who started his career from Lollywood in the 1960s. He is known for his playback songs in the films Talash and Darshan . He was awarded Ekushey Padak in 2005 by the Government of Bangladesh and Bangladesh National Film Award for Best Male Playback Singer for his performance in the film Kokhono Megh Kokhono Bristi . He is known as East Pakistan's Ahmed Rushdi because his singing style is inspired by him.

#6442

Nadine Akkerman

#160237

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Nadine Akkerman is Professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Her published work has been concerned with the life and letters of Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia, and early modern espionage, and she has made a major contribution to studies of that Queen, the Thirty Years War, and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, by revisiting and editing original manuscript sources and letters.

#6443

Judy Radul

#173801

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Judy Radul is a Canadian multidisciplinary artist, writer and educator. She is known for her performance art and media installations, as well as her critical writing. Biography She has exhibited her work around the world, and recently participated in the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst program in Berlin. She is currently a professor at Simon Fraser University, in the School for Contemporary Arts and is represented by the Catriona Jeffries Gallery.

#6444

Eric Rasmussen

#136857

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Eric Rasmussen is an American scholar, academic and author. He is Regents Teaching Professor and Foundation Professor of English at the University of Nevada. Rasmussen's scholarship is focused on the work of Shakespeare. He has authored numerous books and editions, including The Shakespeare Thefts: In Search of the First Folios .

#6445

Marjorie Garber

#182845

Overall Influence

#6446

Marie-Pascale Huglo

#175267

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Marie-Pascale Huglo is a French-born writer and educator living in Quebec. Biography She was born in Amiens. She studied modern literature and English studies at the University of Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3. She moved to Montreal in 1983. She pursued studies in comparative literature at the Université de Montréal, receiving a doctorate in 1983. She teaches at the Université de Montréal, where she is a professor in the department of French language literature, and at the Université du Québec à Montréal.

#6447

Michael Carroll

#153034

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Michael Owen Carroll is an Irish writer of novels and short stories for adults and children. He is best known for his series of superhero novels The New Heroes , and for his romantic fiction under the name Jaye Carroll. He also writes Judge Dredd for 2000 AD and the Judge Dredd Megazine.

#6448

Howard Wolf

#168318

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Howard R. Wolf Life and work Wolf attended the Horace Mann School in New York City before attending Amherst College, where he earned a B.A. in 1959. He earned an M.A. from Columbia University in 1960 and a Ph.D from the University of Michigan in 1967. He was a full-time professor at the University at Buffalo's English department for 40 years, from 1967 to 2007, then an adjunct professor there until 2010. Wolf continues to teach a course on travel writing as a part of University at Buffalo's Discovery Seminars Program.

#6449

Charles Smith

#105132

Overall Influence

Charles Smith is a playwright and educator based in the Midwestern United States. He is known for his works staged at Victory Gardens Theater, and his teleplays on WMAQ-TV. He is the head of the Professional Playwriting Program at Ohio University.

#6450

Joseph Galdon

#132415

Overall Influence

1928 - 2010 (82 years)

Fr. Joseph Galdon, S.J. was a Jesuit priest and writer. He was a former dean at the Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines. He first went to the Philippines in the 1950s as a novice. He was ordained in the United States on June 20, 1959 by Cardinal Francis Spellman at Fordham University.

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