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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School

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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Literature,

#6651

Max Lüthi

#119449

Overall Influence

1909 - 1991 (82 years)

Max Lüthi was a Swiss literary theorist. He is considered the founder of formalist research on folk tales. His first book is the field's foundational text, "a classic, a definitive statement about the nature, style, and form of the folktale genre in its European variety."

#6652

Charles Fraser Beckingham

#70307

Overall Influence

1914 - 1998 (84 years)

Charles Fraser Beckingham, was a professor of Islamic studies at Manchester University and London University . Early life Beckingham was born in Houghton, Huntingdonshire. His father was artist Arthur Beckingham. Beckingham read English at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he was a friend of Cyril Bibby. He worked for the Department of Printed Books in the British Museum from 1936 until 1946, interrupted by military and naval Intelligence service during World War II from 1942 until 1946. During that time he added to the Admiralty Handbook of Western Arabia.

#6653

Rudy Ray Moore

#160597

Overall Influence

1927 - 2008 (81 years)

Rudolph Frank Moore , known as Rudy Ray Moore, was an American comedian, singer, actor, and film producer. He created the character Dolemite, the pimp from the 1975 film Dolemite and its sequels, The Human Tornado and The Dolemite Explosion . The persona was developed during his early comedy records. The recordings often featured Moore delivering profanity-filled rhyming poetry, which later earned Moore the nickname "the Godfather of Rap." Actor and comedian Eddie Murphy portrayed Moore in the 2019 film Dolemite Is My Name.

#6654

Linda Macaulay

#154256

Overall Influence

Linda Ann Macaulay is the Emeritus Professor of System Design at the University of Manchester, specialising in Human–computer interaction, Requirements engineering and Service science, management and engineering.

#6655

Guido Aristarco

#170773

Overall Influence

1918 - 1996 (78 years)

Guido Aristarco was an Italian film critic and author. Biography Born in Fossacesia, Chieti, at very young age Aristarco debuted as a film critic for the newspapers La Gazzetta di Mantova and Il Corriere Padano and then for the magazine Cinema.

#6656

Karla Pollmann

#135904

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Karla Pollmann is the President at the University of Tübingen in Germany, an office she has held since October 1, 2022. Previously she was the Dean of Arts at the University of Bristol, where she worked in both the department of Classics and Ancient History and the department of Religion and Theology. Her research covers Classical to Late Antiquity, patristics, the history of exegesis and hermeneutics, and the thought of Augustine of Hippo and its reception.

#6657

Tom Smith

#87655

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Tom Smith is an American playwright, theatre director, and professor of theatre arts. Originally trained as an improvisational comedian, Smith founded Walla Walla TheatreSports in 1988. Smith's published plays include Drinking Habits, Drinking Habits 2: Caught in the Act, The Odyssey, The Pathmaker, A Christmas Carol, Dangerous , Gray, and Marguerita's Secret Diary in addition to edited versions of Much Ado About Nothing, The Comedy of Errors, The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Love's Labours Lost. Additionally, he has many plays published by YouthPLAYS, including Johnny and Sally Ann: the true...

#6658

Thomas Pinney

#184649

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

Thomas Pinney is an American English scholar known for his work collecting the letters of Thomas Babington Macaulay and Rudyard Kipling, as well as a wine scholar known for his two-volume history of wine in the U.S. He is an emeritus professor of English at Pomona College in Claremont, California, having previously held the Spalding Professor and William M. Keck Distinguished Service Professor endowed chair and been chair of the department.

#6659

Erin Courtney

#165993

Overall Influence

Erin Courtney is an American playwright and visual artist from Hermosa Beach, California. Courtney is known for employing nontraditional structures in her plays, with reviewers and collaborators describing her work as "[a] delicate gem," "a visual and aural kaleidoscope," and "within a structure that is less linear than collage-like."

#6660

Gordon Henry

#175602

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Gordon Henry Jr. is a poet and fiction writer. Life and work Henry was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is an enrolled member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe of Minnesota. He received his PhD in literature from the University of North Dakota and is currently a professor of English at Michigan State University.

#6661

Jack Ridl

#178702

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Jack Ridl is an American poet, and was a professor of English at Hope College. Life and career Ridl's father, Charles "Buzz" Ridl, coached basketball at Westminster College, Pennsylvania and the University of Pittsburgh. Ridl graduated from Westminster College, Pennsylvania with a BA in 1967 and M.Ed., in 1970. He lives in Laketown Township, Michigan, with his wife, Julie.

#6662

Salcia Landmann

#65350

Overall Influence

1911 - 2002 (91 years)

Salcia Landmann, born Salcia Passweg , was a Jewish writer. She was born in Zhovkva, Galicia, and died in St. Gallen, Switzerland. She worked on preserving the Yiddish language, and she wrote the important work Der Jüdische Witz . She was one of the founders of the International PEN in Liechtenstein. She had one son and was married to philosopher Michael Landmann since 1939.

#6663

Brenton G. Yorgason

#119901

Overall Influence

1945 - 2016 (71 years)

Brenton G. "Brent" Yorgason was an American novelist and writer who used themes about members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the United States. Many of his works were written in cooperation with his brother, Blaine M. Yorgason.

#6664

Ikhlas Fakhri

#178812

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Ikhlas Fakhri Imarah is an Egyptian poet and university teacher. She was born in the town of Al Qalaj in Qalyubia Governorate, and self-educated, then attended the Dar al-Ulum, Cairo University. She then worked as a professor at Faiyum Branch of Cairo University. Published some poetic collections and historical and critical literary studies.

#6665

Elissa Washuta

#177340

Overall Influence

Elissa Washuta is a Native American author from the Cowlitz people of Washington State. She has written two memoirs about her young adulthood, Starvation Mode: a Memoir of Food, Consumption and Control and My Body is a Book of Rules, about her personal history with eating disorders and body dysmorphia. She writes about sexual assault, mental health issues as a young adult, and struggling with her identity within the Indigenous community of the Pacific Northwest Coast.

#6666

Lester L. Faigley

#131612

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Lester L. Faigley is an American literary scholar, currently Robert Adger Law and Thos H. Law Centennial Professor at University of Texas at Austin. Education University of Washington, Ph.D. , English.Miami University, M.A. , English, linguistics.North Carolina State University, B.A. .

#6667

Charlie Murphy

#89676

Overall Influence

1959 - 2017 (58 years)

Charles Quinton Murphy was an American comedian, actor, and writer. He was best known as a writer and cast member of the Comedy Central sketch-comedy series Chappelle's Show as well as the co-star of the sitcom Black Jesus. He was the older brother of actor and comedian Eddie Murphy.

#6668

Norma Goldman

#76372

Overall Influence

1922 - 2011 (89 years)

Norma Wynick Goldman was an American classics scholar, author, professor at Wayne State University, and president of the Detroit Classical Association. Her works include textbooks of the Latin language as well as studies of Roman lamps, the architecture of the Janiculum Hill in Rome, and Roman costumes.

#6669

John Rich

#91700

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Professor John Rich is emeritus professor in the department of Classics at The University of Nottingham. He graduated with an MA and MPhil from Cambridge University, before gaining a PhD from Nottingham.

#6670

Jack Mitchell

#71740

Overall Influence

1925 - 2013 (88 years)

Jack Mitchell was an American photographer. He photographed American artists, dancers, film and theatre performers, musicians and writers. His portraiture, lighting skill, and ability to capture dancers in what he termed "moving stills" made him one of the most important dance photographers of the 20th century.

#6671

Ma Kwang-soo

#177349

Overall Influence

1951 - 2017 (66 years)

Ma Kwang-soo was a South Korean poet, professor in Korean literature, novelist and essayist. He died in an apparent suicide in September 2017. For most of his life, he taught at Yonsei University. He was imprisoned for eight months, and discharged from his university for six years, for publishing 'sexually explicit' novels in 1995. His novel, Happy Sara was deemed obscene by the Supreme Court and is banned for teenagers.

#6672

Kirsten Moana Thompson

#131570

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Kirsten Moana Thompson is an interdisciplinary scholar of American and New Zealand/Pacific cinema and visual culture. Thompson's work in American film has focused on classical American cel animation and the introduction of three strip Technicolor, on contemporary crime films and blockbuster and special effects cinema. Her work on Pacific cinema situates film production by American and Pacific filmmakers in broader cultural and visual contexts. She has also published on American horror film and German cinema.

#6673

Mireille Levert

#162083

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Mireille Levert is a Canadian writer and illustrator of children's books, living in Quebec. She was born in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and studied plastic arts at the Université du Québec à Montréal, graduating in 1979. She was a founding member of the Association des illustrateurs et illustratrices du Québec. Levert taught illustration at the Université du Québec à Montréal from 1997 to 2002. She lives and works in Montreal.

#6674

Russell Celyn Jones

#184920

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Russell Celyn Jones is a British writer and Emeritus Professor, Birkbeck, University of London. Jones was born in London and brought up in Swansea, Wales. He has written novels, mostly focused on crime and issues of guilt and morality, and also teaches creative writing. He may be best known for Ten Seconds from the Sun about the rehabilitation of a child murderer. Jones received his B.A. degree from University College London and his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. He has three children: Rebecca, Rachel, and Benjamin.

#6675

Henriette Harich-Schwarzbauer

#176734

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Henriette Harich-Schwarzbauer is a professor and head of the department of Latin philology at the University of Basel, Switzerland. Life Henriette Harich-Schwarzbauer was born in 1955 in Mürzzuschlag, Austria. She studied Classical Philology and Romance at the universities of Graz and Paris.

#6676

Jernail Singh Anand

Jernail Singh Anand

#169140

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Dr. Jernail Singh Anand is an Indian poet, columnist, and environmental activist. He has written 140 books of English poetry, fiction, non-fiction and spiritual writing. He retired as Principal and is now the Honorary Professor Emeritus at the Institute of European Roma Studies and Research, Crimes Against Humanity and International Law, Belgrade, Serbia. He is also an honorary member of the Association of Serbian Writers. Dr. Anand co-developed the theory of Bio-Text in Critical Theory, along with Iranian scholar Dr. Roghayeh Farsi, chief coordinator of a research project on the Anand's poetry initiated by the University of Neyshabur, Iran.

#6677

Wayne Dodd

#178834

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (96 years)

Wayne D. Dodd is an American poet and teacher of poetry from Oklahoma. Dodd was born on September 23, 1930, in Clarita, Oklahoma to Homer Dewey and Maggie Matilda Dodd. As both poet and teacher of poetry , he has worked, read his poems, and lectured at many colleges, universities, and art centers. He was educated at the University of Oklahoma, receiving his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. there.

#6678

Richard Walter

#172775

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Richard Walter is an American author, educator, screenwriter, commentator, consultant, and chairman of the University of California, Los Angeles graduate program in screenwriting. He has written several works, including the Essentials of Screenwriting, published in June 2010, and the novels Escape from Film School and Barry and the Persuasions. Other publications include screenwriting books The Whole Picture: Strategies for Screenwriting Success in the New Hollywood and Screenwriting: The Art, Craft and Business of Film and Television Writing.

#6679

Jim Allen

#121344

Overall Influence

1926 - 1999 (73 years)

James Allen was an English socialist playwright, best known for his collaborations with Ken Loach. Early life Allen was born in the Miles Platting area of Manchester, Lancashire, on 7 October 1926, the second child of Kitty and Jack Allen, Roman Catholics of Irish descent. At the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Allen left school at the age of 13 to work in a wire factory. He had various jobs during the war, before being called up into the Army in 1944. He joined the Seaforth Highlanders, and served with the British occupation forces in Germany. After leaving the Army in 1947, he worked at a...

#6680

Jacqueline Fahey

Jacqueline Fahey

#146549

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (97 years)

Jacqueline Mary Fahey is a New Zealand painter and writer. Biography Of Irish Catholic ancestry, Fahey was born in Timaru in 1929. Fahey had strong female role models in her life: her mother was a pianist who attended the Melbourne Conservatoire of Music and worked as a professional pianist for 8 years before returning to New Zealand, and her grandmother taught at a Dominican Convent and was "very good at languages and loved history". "These two women were my role models, really," Fahey has commented. "They gave me the idea that women were supposed to excel even if it was primarily in the ar...

#6681

Shih Shou-chien

#93398

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Shih Shou-chien is a Taiwanese scholar, writer, and professor at National Taiwan University. He served as Director of National Palace Museum from May 2004 to January 2006. He is an academician of Academia Sinica.

#6682

Thomas Sancton Sr.

#71136

Overall Influence

1915 - 2012 (97 years)

Thomas Sancton was an American novelist and journalist. Biography Sancton was born in the Panama Canal Zone. His family later returned to New Orleans, Louisiana, where he was raised and where he resided for most of his adult life. His two novels, By Starlight and Count Roller Skates, are set in Louisiana. Sancton graduated from Tulane University in 1935 and became a reporter at The Times-Picayune. He studied at Harvard University as a Nieman Fellow in 1941 and 1942. He wrote extensively on civil rights and the South while serving as the managing editor of The New Republic and, later, as Washington editor of The Nation.

#6683

Kevin Goodan

#177792

Overall Influence

Kevin Goodan is an American poet and professor. His most recent book is Spot Weather Forecast . His first book, In the Ghost-House Acquainted, won a New England/New York Award from Alice James Books, as well as the 2005 L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award. His poems have been published in Ploughshares, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Mid-American Review, American Poet Magazine, Cutbank, and other journals.

#6684

Jason Keller

#172371

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Jason Keller is an American playwright and screenwriter. He has also been credited under the anagram pen name of Arnell Jesko. Keller is a New Harmony Writing Fellowship recipient, a two time Bronx New Voices nominee, a Satellite Award nominee for Best Original Screenplay, an Oglethorpe Award nominee and the recipient of an IFJA Hoosier Award.

#6685

Thierno Abdourahmane Bah

#113442

Overall Influence

1916 - 2013 (97 years)

Thierno Abdourahmane Bah was Guinean writer, poet, Muslim theologian and Fula political personality of Fouta Djallon. He is regarded as one of the most important representatives of Islamic science and Fula culture of Fouta Djallon.

#6686

John Fitzgerald

#131146

Overall Influence

1927 - 2007 (80 years)

Fr John FitzGerald was a Carmelite friar, priest, poet and philosopher. Life John FitzGerald was a Carmelite friar and priest of Irish parentage, brought up in England, who learned Welsh and made it the language of his religious, intellectual and social life. He was born Michael FitzGerald in Ludlow, Shropshire in 1927 to parents from County Kerry and spent his childhood in Chesterfield and Sheffield.

#6687

Fernande Saint-Martin

#116109

Overall Influence

1927 - 2019 (92 years)

Fernande Saint-Martin was a Canadian art critic, museologist, semiologist, visual arts theorist and writer. A graduate of the Université de Montréal and McGill University, her career began at La Presse in 1954 before being made editor-in-chief of Châtelaine magazine in 1960. Saint-Martin left the magazine in 1972 and was made director of the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. She was a professor and researcher at Université Laval and later Université du Québec à Montréal from 1979 to 1996. Saint-Martin wrote several books and essays, contributed to various art publications and was awarded...

#6688

Malou Jacob

#147950

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Malou Leviste Jacob is a Filipino playwright. She was a recipient of the S.E.A. Write Award. Biography Jacob has been a resident playwright of Philippine Educational Theater Association . She finished Bachelor of Arts in Communication in Maryknoll College . She continued her studies in the field of TV production and Direction in City University of New York; and Film production in New York University. She has written and directed a lot of dramas for television and documentary films. Her works include Pagod na Ako, Irog, and a TV special about the National Artist Amado V. Hernandez. She has been...

#6689

Angie Estes

#115547

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Angie Estes is an American poet, and professor at Ashland University. She graduated from the University of Oregon with an M.A. and Ph.D. in English. She taught at California Polytechnic State University, Oberlin College, and Ohio State University. Her work has appeared in Boston Review, Paris Review, Ploughshares, and TriQuarterly.

#6690

Dixon Hearne

#110629

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Dixon Hearne is an American educator and writer of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. He has published an education text , four short story collections: Delta Flats: Stories in the Key of Blues and Hope; Plantatia: High-toned and Lowdown Stories of the South; Native Voices, Native Lands; and When Christmas was Real, and edited several anthologies. His novella, From Tickfaw to Shongaloo is forthcoming from Southeast Missouri State University Press. It was previously named the sole runner-up in the international creative writing competition sponsored by the Pirates Alley Faulkner Society in New Orleans.

#6691

Michael Hollinger

#96340

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Michael Hollinger is an American playwright who is currently an associate professor of theatre at Villanova University and an alumnus of New Dramatists. He received a Bachelor of Music in viola performance from Oberlin Conservatory in 1984 and a Master of Arts in theatre from Villanova in 1989. He has been married to Megan Bellwoar since 1990.

#6692

Tom Abrams

#164937

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Tom Abrams is an American screenwriter and director whose work has been recognized in both the United States and Europe. Early life and education Abrams was born and raised in North Carolina. His father was Richard Abrams, a Chief Master Sergeant in the US Air Force, who did three tours of duty in Vietnam and received the Bronze Star. His mother Pegge Abrams, was a Civil Rights activist and Director of the Language Laboratory at Duke University.

#6693

Motti Lerner

#173938

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Motti Lerner is an Israeli playwright and screenwriter. Early life He was born in Zikhron Ya'akov, a village south of Haifa, in Israel. His great-grandparents immigrated to Palestine in 1882 from Romania and Russia, and became farmers.

#6694

Christine Montross

#104414

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Christine Elaine Montross is an American medical doctor and writer. First a published poet and a high school teacher, she later took up medical studies, and became an assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University's Alpert Medical School. She is the recipient of a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship.

#6695

Yolanda Broyles-Gonzalez

#102200

Overall Influence

Yolanda Broyles-González is a Yaqui-Chicana professor, writer, and activist. Her teaching and research focus on Native American culture in addition the popular performance genres of the US-Mexico borderlands.

#6696

Ana-Maurine Lara

#111415

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Ana-Maurine Lara is a Dominican American lesbian poet, novelist and black feminist scholar. Lara is a long-time LGBT human rights activist and supporter, having served on the board of directors for the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission and the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice.

#6697

James Fox

#83896

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

James Fox is a British journalist best known for his book, White Mischief, and for co-authoring Life, the best-selling memoir of Rolling Stones' guitarist Keith Richards. Life and career Fox was born in Washington, D.C., U.S. and worked as a journalist in Africa as well as reporting for London's Sunday Times. His first book, White Mischief, is an account of the Happy Valley murder case in Kenya in 1941. He researched the book with Cyril Connolly in 1969 and it was later adapted into a film by Michael Radford in the 1980s. Fox also wrote The Langhorne Sisters, also known as Five Sisters: The ...

#6698

Elyssa East

#173620

Overall Influence

Elyssa East is an American nonfiction writer. She is the author of the creative nonfiction book Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town, which chronicles a murder that occurred in an area known as Dogtown, Massachusetts, just outside Gloucester, in 1984. As part of her research for the book, East interviewed the murderer, Peter Hodgkins, in prison. This nonfiction book won the 2010 L. L. Winship/P.E.N. New England Award and has been critically reviewed. According to East, the book was inspired in part by the paintings of Dogtown by Marsden Hartley.

#6699

Ann Downer

#148280

Overall Influence

1960 - 2015 (55 years)

Ann Downer was an American writer, principally of fantasy novels for children and young adults, as well as short fiction and poetry. Biography Ann Downer was born in Arlington, Virginia in 1960 and grew up in Manila and Bangkok and recalled avidly reading fantasy fiction.

#6700

Betty Shamieh

#113785

Overall Influence

Betty Shamieh is an American playwright, author, screenwriter, and actor of Palestinian descent. She has written 15 plays. Background Shamieh was born in San Francisco, California. She holds degrees from Harvard University and the Yale School of Drama.

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