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,

#6551

David Richardson

#177268

Overall Influence

1955 - 2021 (66 years)

David Wayne Richardson was an American television writer and producer who wrote for The Simpsons , Malcolm in the Middle, Two and a Half Men, and F Is for Family. Richardson, a cancer survivor for nearly thirty years, died of heart failure in early 2021.

#6552

Sarah Glaz

#101202

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Sarah Glaz is a mathematician and mathematical poet. Her research specialty is commutative algebra; she is a professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of Connecticut. Education and career Glaz was born in Bucharest, Romania, and earned a bachelor's degree in 1972 at Tel Aviv University, Israel. She came to the US for her graduate education in mathematics, completing a Ph.D. in 1977 at Rutgers University. Her dissertation, Finiteness and Differential Properties of Ideals, was supervised by Wolmer Vasconcelos.

#6553

Juanita León

#63295

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Juanita León García is a Colombian journalist, writer, and public speaker. She is best known as the founder and director of the news website La Silla Vacía. Biography León obtained a law degree at the University of the Andes in Bogotá and an M.S. in Journalism from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York. She worked as a reporter on the Wall Street Journal Americas before returning to Colombia in 1998.

#6554

Lynne McMahon

#171209

Overall Influence

Lynne McMahon is an American poet. She graduated from University of Utah with a PhD in 1982. She teaches at University of Missouri, Her work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, New Virginia Review, American Poetry Review, The Southern Review, The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, Partisan Review, Poetry, The New Republic, Rolling Stone, The Yale Review, The New England Review and The Paris Review.

#6555

Ruth Perry

#168064

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Ruth Perry is an American literary scholar who works on the literary and cultural history of eighteenth-century England and Scotland. She is known especially for her work on women’s writing. She is the Ann Fetter Friedlaender Professor of the Humanities Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and past president of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.

#6556

Robin Mukherjee

#170621

Overall Influence

Robin Mukherjee is a British screenwriter, author, and teacher. He has written for a number of high-profile television series, including The Bill, Casualty, EastEnders and Roman Mysteries. He has also written two feature films, one of which Lore, was critically acclaimed worldwide and won many international awards, including the Australian Writer's Guild Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. It was Australia's official entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2012 Oscars.

#6557

John Ellis Hare

#117669

Overall Influence

1933 - 2005 (72 years)

John Ellis Hare was a Francophone author, historian, biographer, bibliographer, and academic. He was a professor at the University of Ottawa in Ontario, Canada. Early life and education Hare was born in Toronto, and began his studies at the University of Toronto Schools. He obtained his bachelor and master's degrees in Philosophy from Laval University between 1955 and 1956.

#6558

Jacqueline Fabre-Serris

#179432

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Jacqueline Fabre-Serris is a French classical scholar, who is known for her work on Ovid, mythography, classical reception, and gender studies. She is Professeure des Universités of Latin Literature at the Charles de Gaulle University – Lille III.

#6559

Stephen Jones

#130277

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Stephen Jones is an English musician and novelist. Career Lo-fi period After studying at Nottingham Trent University, Jones became involved with an experimental theatre company, Dogs in Honey, in Nottingham in the late 1980s, writing songs for productions.

#6560

Tenaya Darlington

#176312

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Tenaya Darlington is an American writer as well as associate professor at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her general fields of professional interest include food writing, fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and journalism. She is the author of six books.

#6561

Aaron Fogel

#175310

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Aaron Moses Fogel is an American poet. Life He was raised in New York City. He graduated from Columbia University, Cambridge University, and Columbia University, with a Ph.D. Fogel has been on the faculty at Boston University since 1978.

#6562

Christopher Smith

#127642

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Christopher John Smith, FRSE, FSA, FRHistS , is a British academic and classicist specialising in early Ancient Rome. Professor of Ancient History at the University of St Andrews, and formerly Director of the British School at Rome, Smith was appointed on 1 September 2020 as Executive Chairman of the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

#6563

Julia Kindt

#119363

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Julia Kindt is a German academic and writer who specialises in ancient Greek history and religion. She is a professor at the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Sydney, Australia.

#6564

Sabra Loomis

#100601

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Sabra Loomis is an Irish-American poet. Her most recent poetry collection is House Held Together by Winds , winner of the 2007 National Poetry Series. Her honors include Yaddo and MacDowell Colony fellowships. Her poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines including American Poetry Review, American Voice, Cincinnati Poetry Review, Cyphers, Florida Review, Heliotrope, Lumina, Negative Capability, Poetry Ireland Review, Salamander, Salt Hill Journal, and St. Ann's Review. She is the daughter of Alfred Loomis of Tuxedo Park, New York. She graduated from New York University. She teaches at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and was on the faculty of the Poets' House, Donegal.

#6565

Víctor Amela

#173271

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Victor Manuel Amela Bonilla, better known as Víctor Amela is a Spanish writer and journalist present in several media. It is one of the co-creators of the section La contra at La Vanguardia, where he has published more than 1,800 interviews in 15 years.

#6566

Greg Wrenn

#101798

Overall Influence

Greg Wrenn is an American writer from Jacksonville, Florida. He lives in Harrisonburg, Virginia, where he is an associate professor of English at James Madison University. He was educated at Harvard University and Washington University in St. Louis. From 2010-2016 he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry and then a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University.

#6567

Harvey Broadbent

Harvey Broadbent

#158109

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Harvey Broadbent, AM is an Australian writer, lecturer, broadcaster, former award-winning full-time television and radio documentary maker and cruise ship cultural history lecturer. He was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia on 26 January 2016 for significant service to the literary arts as an author and publisher, to the television industry as a producer, and to tertiary education. He is nowadays best known in Australia as a Gallipoli Campaign historian and specialist in Turkish, Anatolian, and Eastern Mediterranean history and culture.

#6568

Marilyn Horowitz

Marilyn Horowitz

#178578

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Marilyn Horowitz is an American writer, TV creator, script doctor, writing coach, and producer. She is also the creator of the Horowitz System, a system for screenwriting, and author of several books.

#6569

Kaye Ballard

#141529

Overall Influence

1925 - 2019 (94 years)

Kaye Ballard was an American actress, comedian, and singer. Early life Ballard was born Catherine Gloria Balotta in Cleveland, Ohio, one of four children born to Italian immigrant parents, Lena and Vincenzo Balotta. Her parents immigrated to the United States from Calabria, a region of southern Italy.

#6570

Raúl Hernández Garrido

#125499

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Raúl Hernández Garrido is a Spanish playwright. He won the Calderon de la Barca Prize in 1994 for his play Los Malditos ; the Lope de Vega Prize in 1997 for his play Los engranajes and the Born Theatre Prize in 2000 for his play Si un dia me olvidaras .

#6571

Takeshi Kitano

#128626

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

, also known as in Japan, is a Japanese comedian, actor, and filmmaker. While he is known primarily as a comedian and TV host in his native Japan, he is better known abroad for his work as a filmmaker and actor as well as TV host.

#6572

Jeanetta Calhoun Mish

#170359

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Jeanetta Calhoun Mish is an American poet and served as Oklahoma's twenty-first poet laureate. Biography Born in Hobart, Oklahoma in 1961, Mish was educated at the University of Houston, the University of Texas of the Permian Basin, and the University of Oklahoma, where she earned her doctorate in 2009. She is a faculty member in the Red Earth MFA in creative writing at Oklahoma City University, which she also serves as program director. Mish is the founder and editor of Mongrel Empire Press, based in Norman, Oklahoma. She edited the 2011 anthology Ain't Nobody Can Sing like Me: New Oklahoma Writing which also features a poem by fellow Oklahoma Poet Laureate Nathan Brown.

#6573

William Stobb

#124531

Overall Influence

William Stobb is an American poet and professor. He is the author of the National Poetry Series selection, Nervous Systems , Absentia , and You Are Still Alive as well as three chapbooks. Life William Stobb was born in Little Falls, Minnesota. He graduated from the University of North Dakota and the University of Nevada. He teaches at University of Wisconsin–La Crosse.

#6574

Catherine Brady

#134188

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Catherine Brady is an American short story writer. Life She graduated from Hollins College with an MA, and from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with an MFA. She was on the board, served as Vice-President and President of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs. She teaches at the University of San Francisco.

#6575

Rebecca Reynolds

#146646

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Rebecca Reynolds is an American poet. Life Reynolds was born in Washington D.C., United States, in which city she also grew up. She graduated from Vassar College, Rutgers University , and the University of Michigan . Since 1991, she has worked as an administrator at Douglass College, and has also taught Creative Writing at Rutgers University.

#6576

Aminul Hoque

#119124

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Aminul Hoque, MBE is a Bangladeshi-born British lecturer and writer. Early life Aminul Hoque was born to a Bengali Muslim family in the village of Bagir Ghat in Golapganj Upazila, Sylhet, Bangladesh. Aminul Hoque's father had been living and working in Britain since the early 1960s so the rest of his family joined him in 1980.

#6577

Óscar Sambrano Urdaneta

Óscar Sambrano Urdaneta

#160426

Overall Influence

1929 - 2011 (82 years)

Oscar Sambrano Urdaneta was a Venezuelan writer, essayist and literary critic, specialized in the life and work of Andrés Bello. In 1978, he won the Municipal Prize of Literature for the work Poesía contemporánea de Venezuela. He served as the president of the Venezuelan Academy of Language, is an honorary member of the Caro y Cuervo Institute, and was president of the National Council of Culture in the late 1990s. He also has hosted the television show Valores .

#6578

Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa

Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa

#169648

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa is an American playwright, screenwriter, and comic book writer best known for his work for Marvel Comics and for the television series Glee, Big Love, Riverdale, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin. He is Chief Creative Officer of Archie Comics.

#6579

John Rea

#172483

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

John Rowland Rea, FBA is a British papyrologist. He was Lecturer in Documentary Papyrology at the University of Oxford from 1965 to 1996. Born in 1933, Rea completed his undergraduate degree at Queen's University Belfast and his doctorate at the University of London. In 1957, he was appointed an assistant keeper of the Public Record Office and in 1961 moved to Christ Church, Oxford, to be a resident lecturer. He left Christ Church in 1965 and was then employed by the University of Oxford as Lecturer in Documentary Papyrology from 1965 to 1996. He was elected to a senior research fellowship at Balliol College, Oxford, in 1969, also retiring in 1996.

#6580

Don Gutteridge

#110056

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Donald George Gutteridge is a Canadian author of poetry, fiction and scholarly works. He is also professor emeritus at the University of Western Ontario. Biography Don Gutteridge was born in Sarnia, Ontario in 1937, and was raised in the nearby village of Point Edward, Ontario. His high schooling took place in Sarnia and Chatham, Ontario. He attended the University of Western Ontario , where he graduated with a BA Honours in English in 1960. After graduating, Gutteridge taught high school English for seven years before joining the Faculty of Education at UWO in 1969. He is currently Professor Emeritus.

#6581

Agnes Latham

#89510

Overall Influence

1905 - 1996 (91 years)

Agnes Mary Christabel Latham was a British academic, Professor of English at Bedford College. She is remembered for her lifelong project of editing the letters of Sir Walter Raleigh and for her edition of As You Like It for the Arden Shakespeare.

#6582

Catherine Heath

#111378

Overall Influence

1924 - 1991 (67 years)

Catherine Heath was a British novelist. An obituary in The Daily Telegraph called her work "gentle and witty, full of cool observations about human behaviour." Biography Heath was born Catherine Hirsch in Hendon, Middlesex, the daughter of Dutch immigrants Samuel and Anna de Boer Hirsch. She was educated at Henda County School then St Hilda's College, Oxford, where she studied English under Helen Gardner. In 1948, she married Denis Heath; they were divorced in 1980. Also in 1948, she became an assistant lecturer in the University of Wales.

#6583

Emanuel Fried

#182477

Overall Influence

1913 - 2011 (98 years)

Emanuel "Manny" Fried was a playwright, actor, and union organizer. Born in New York City to a working-class background, Fried married into a prominent upper-class Buffalo, NY family. At the onset of World War II, Fried worked for Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company. There, Fried became involved in the company's union and was fired for subversive activities. From 1944-1946, Fried served in the US Army. After the war, Fried again worked as a labor organizer, and was fired after an FBI investigation into Communist ties.

#6584

Eric Robertson

#84254

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Eric Robertson is a British academic, Professor of Modern French Literary and Visual Culture at Royal Holloway, University of London. Work Robertson's research focuses on 20th century French literature, especially poetry, and the visual arts, with particular emphasis on European Modernism and the avant-gardes. He is the author of Arp: Painter, Poet, Sculptor , Writing Between the Lines , a study of the bilingual novelist and essayist René Schickele, and various articles and chapters on 20th century French literature, especially poetry, and visual arts. He is also the co-editor of Yvan Goll - C...

#6585

Gayatri Gopinath

#169134

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Gayatri Gopinath is an associate professor of Social and Cultural Analysis and director of the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at New York University. Gopinath is perhaps best known for her book Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures, which received article-length reviews in a number of journals.

#6586

Carin Franzén

#174866

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Carin Franzén is a Swedish literary scholar. She graduated as dr.philos. in literary science in 1995, and is professor of language and literature at the Linköping University. Her works include the essay collection Till det omöjligas konst from 2010, Jag gav honom inte min kärlek. Om hövisk kärlek som kvinnlig strategi from 2012, and När vi talar om oss själva from 2018. She has also translated works from French into Swedish language, including psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and philosopher Michel Foucault.

#6587

Deanne Williams

Deanne Williams

#170127

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Deanne Williams is a Canadian author and literary scholar. She is a Professor in York University's Department of English. A pioneer in early modern Girls' studies, she has published research on Shakespeare's girl characters and girl performers in medieval and early modern England, as well as on the influence of French culture on English literature.

#6588

Alex Caldiero

#167940

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Alissandru Francesco "Alex" Caldiero is a poet, and intermedia. Life Caldiero was born in the ancient town of Licodia Eubea, near Catania, Sicily, in 1949. He immigrated to the United States at age nine and was raised in Manhattan and Brooklyn, New York. He attended Queens College in Flushing, New York, and was apprenticed to the sculptor Michael Lekakis and the poet-bard Ignazio Buttitta. Caldiero has traveled through Sicily, Sardinia, Turkey, and Greece collecting proverbs, tales, and folk instruments. He is co-founder of Arba Sicula, the society for the preservation of the Sicilian languag...

#6589

Barbara Nicolosi

#181479

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Barbara Nicolosi is an American screenwriter, script consultant and university professor of cinema and Great Books. Early life and education Nicolosi was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, to Anthony and Hilda Nicolosi. She is the second of four daughters. Her youngest sister is the professional opera singer Valerie Nicolosi. When Barbara was five years old, the family moved to Newport, Rhode Island, where her father took a job as the archivist for the Naval War College. Anthony Nicolosi would go on to found the Naval War College Museum. She has a B.A. from the Great Books program at The Col...

#6590

Hiroshi Shima

#172270

Overall Influence

1918 - 2003 (85 years)

Hiroshi Shima was a Japanese novelist, Hansen's disease patient and the chief editor of a literary coterie journal Kazan Chitai . He is famous for his letter which prompted a lawsuit resulting in compensation on account of the unconstitutionality of the Japanese leprosy prevention law.

#6591

Shirley Hill Witt

#165812

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Shirley Hill Witt is an anthropologist, educator, author, civil rights activist, and former foreign service officer. A member of the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation, Wolf Clan, Witt was one of the first Native American women to earn a Ph.D. She obtained her Ph.D. in evolutionary anthropology from the University of New Mexico in 1969. Witt has published extensively on Native Americans in addition to being a poet and fiction writer. She was a founding member of the National Indian Youth Council and worked with them from 1961 to 1964. She also served on the United States Commission on Civil Rights.

#6592

Alexander Negris

#103504

Overall Influence

Alexander Negris was a military colonel, author, philologist, and professor. He participated in the Greek War of Independence with other members of his family; indeed, he was a member of the phanariots family's Negris and Ypsilanti. He was the first lecturer of Modern Greek at Harvard University and set the framework for Evangelinos Apostolides Sophocles. He was a Greek language philologist and linguist and wrote countless books in Greek for the education of the English-speaking world. Negris was a member of different organizations all over the world and honorary member of the Archaeological Society of Athens.

#6593

Brikena Smajli

#185038

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Brikena Smajli is an Albanian writer, and a lecturer at the European University of Tirana. Smajli was born in Shkodra, where she still lives. She has been described as "a fine representative of a new generation of female writers in Albania".

#6594

Tracy Sorensen

#128349

Overall Influence

Tracy Sorensen is an Australian novelist, filmmaker and academic. Career Sorensen is a tutor and lecturer at Charles Sturt University and has published five academic papers. In February 2018 her debut novel The Lucky Galah was published through Pan MacMillan. It has been shortlisted and longlisted in multiple awards . It is narrated by a flightless pet galah observing characters from a family's back verandah in a small Western Australian town.

#6595

Kellie Wells

#105543

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Kellie Wells is an American professor of English, novelist, and short story writer. Life Kellie Wells graduated from the University of Kansas with a BS in journalism and a BA in English. She received MFAs from the University of Montana and the University of Pittsburgh, and a PhD from Western Michigan University. Previously the director of the graduate writing program at Washington University in St. Louis, Wells now teaches at the University of Alabama, where she is also a member of the advisory board for The Tusculum Review. She also teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Pacific University.

#6596

Marta Segarra

#162798

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Marta Segarra Montaner is a Spanish philologist, university professor, and CNRS researcher who develops her work mainly in the fields of gender and sexuality studies, biopolitics and posthumanism, and cultural studies . In 2009, Segarra was awarded the Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats Acadèmia award for research excellence in the Catalan field.

#6597

Shintaro Ishihara

Shintaro Ishihara

#129395

Overall Influence

1932 - 2022 (90 years)

Shintaro Ishihara was a Japanese politician and writer who was Governor of Tokyo from 1999 to 2012. Being the former leader of the radical right Sunrise Party, later merged with Toru Hashimoto's Japan Restoration Party out of which he split his faction into the Party for Japanese Kokoro, he was one of the most prominent ultranationalists in modern Japanese politics. An ultranationalist, he was infamous for his misogynistic comments, racist remarks, xenophobic views and hatred of Chinese and Koreans, including using the antiquated pejorative term "sangokujin". He was also a denier of the Nanji...

#6598

Marcelo Moraes Caetano

Marcelo Moraes Caetano

#171759

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Marcelo Caetano Moraes is a writer, professor and pianist from Brazil., critic, journalist. He received degrees in Portuguese and Greek from the State University of Rio de Janeiro in the Portuguese language and corresponding literature by the UNESA; specialist in education by Pierre-and-Marie-Curie University , specialist in planning, implementation and management of distance education by the Universidade Federal Fluminense, Professor of Language Studies and master's degree by the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, a researcher with dedication by the CNPq, Marcelo is also a literary crit...

#6599

Terrence Holt

#183685

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Terrence "Terry" E. Holt M.D. is an American Geriatric Internal doctor, and writer as well as a former professor of literature at Rutgers University and Swarthmore College. Biography He graduated from Cornell University, and from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

#6600

Kathleen McCracken

#174705

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Kathleen McCracken is a Canadian poet, who was a shortlisted nominee for the Governor General's Award for English-language poetry at the 1992 Governor General's Awards for her collection Blue Light, Bay and College.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions