Search People Result | Academic Influence

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

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

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

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

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List of the most influential people in Literature,

#6901

Viktorija Daujotytė

Viktorija Daujotytė

#92752

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Viktorija Daujotytė-Pakerienė is a Lithuanian literary critic and philologist. She has written more than 30 scientific monographs, as well as essays and Lithuanian language textbooks for general education and higher education. She has also written about culture, feminism, and society. She was awarded the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas, the fourth degree of the Order of the Lithuanian National Culture and Art, Unity, and National Progress, and other prizes.

#6902

Deborah Kamen

#176072

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Deborah Kamen is Chair and Professor of Classics at the University of Washington. Her research is on Greek cultural and social history, with a particular focus on ancient slavery. Career Deborah Kamen read for her BA in Classical Languages at Bryn Mawr College in 1998, where she began studying Greek after learning Latin in high school. This was followed by an MSt in Greek History at New College, Oxford University in 1999, and an MA in Greek at the University of California Berkeley in 2000. In 2005 she completed a PhD in Classics at Berkeley, with a thesis titled "Conceptualizing manumission in...

#6903

Yvette Christiansë

#120081

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Yvette Christiansë is a South African-born poet and novelist. She currently lives in New York City and teaches at Barnard College. She has also taught at Fordham University, also in New York City. Biography Yvette Christiansë was born in South Africa while it was still under Apartheid, and, despite poor access to education, was interested in language and becoming a writer from a young age. At the age of 18, she emigrated with her mother and sister to Mbabane in Swaziland, where she lived until 1973. Following the move to Swaziland, she and her family moved to Australia in order to place further distance between themselves and the South African government.

#6904

Dana Levin

#188948

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Dana Levin is a poet and teaches Creative Writing at Maryville University in St. Louis, where she serves as Distinguished Writer in Residence. She also teaches in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. She lives in Saint Louis, Missouri.

#6905

William C. Sharpe

#168800

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

William Chapman Sharpe is an American literary scholar. He is a professor of English at Barnard College, Columbia University. Biography Sharpe received his B.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University and M.A. from the University of Oxford. He joined the faculty of Barnard College in 1983, and his scholarship focuses on the art, culture, and literature of the modern cities, especially New York City. He has written about subjects such as shadows or nighttime environments of cities as depicted in literature and arts as well as a cultural history on walking.

#6906

Jacob Hassan

#98776

Overall Influence

1936 - 2006 (70 years)

Jacob Hassan, PhD was a Spanish philologist of Sephardic Jewish descent from Ceuta, North Africa. Biography Hassan was born to a Sephardic Jewish family in Ceuta. Hassan was a member of the Jewish Community of Madrid, a scientific researcher of the Higher Council for Scientific Research , and, among other things, founder and promoter of the Spanish School of Sephardic Studies, renowned in Spain and abroad. On 13 September 2012, a passageway near the town hall of Estella, Spain was officially named after him.

#6907

Maggie Greenwald

Maggie Greenwald

#178782

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Maggie Greenwald is an American filmmaker. Most recognized as an independent writer and director, Greenwald’s most notable films include Sophie and the Rising Sun , starring an ensemble cast that included Margo Martindale, Julianne Nicholson, Lorraine Toussaint and Diane Ladd, Songcatcher starring Aidan Quinn and Janet McTeer and introducing Emmy Rossum, and The Ballad of Little Jo , starring Suzy Amis and Ian McKellen. She also directed an adaptation of Jim Thompson's The Kill-Off featuring an ensemble cast that included Cathy Haase and the film debut of Jorja Fox.

#6908

Dominique Noguez

#175488

Overall Influence

1942 - 2019 (77 years)

Dominique Noguez, was a French writer. He won the Prix Femina in 1997, for Amour noir. He taught the history of film at the Sorbonne. He was an early defender of Michel Houellebecq.

#6909

Elizabeth Kuti

#185242

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Elizabeth Kuti is an English actress and playwright. Life English-born Kuti graduated from Balliol College, Oxford with a degree in English, and completed her MA at King's College London. She is of partial Hungarian descent through her paternal grandfather, whose original surname Kipslinger was adapted to 'Kuti' to disguise its Germanic origins. In 1993 she moved to Ireland to study at Trinity College Dublin, where she wrote her doctoral thesis on eighteenth-century women playwrights. In October 2004, she joined the Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies, University of Essex.

#6910

Stanton Garner

#174872

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Stanton B. Garner Jr. is an American scholar of drama, theater, and performance who specializes in modern and contemporary drama, theatre and performance theory, and medical humanities. A graduate of the Pennsylvania State University and Princeton University, he is currently James Douglas Bruce Professor of English and Theater at the University of Tennessee. With J. Ellen Gainor and Martin Puchner, he is co-editor of the Norton Anthology of Drama and The Shorter Norton Anthology of Drama .

#6911

Moelwyn Merchant

#69446

Overall Influence

1913 - 1997 (84 years)

William Moelwyn Merchant was an academic, novelist, sculptor, poet and Anglican priest. He was born in Port Talbot, Glamorgan, Wales, and his first language was Welsh. He was educated at University College, Cardiff . He died in retirement at Leamington Spa.

#6912

Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen

#110966

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen is a Danish philologist and gender studies scholar. She was Professor of Gender Studies at the University of Oslo, and was Director of its Centre for Gender Research from 1993 to 2000 and from 2005 to 2009. Nielsen retired in 2017/2018. Her fields of expertise are gender and identity, subjectivity, gender socialization, and children and youth.

#6913

Paul Schneider

#162494

Overall Influence

1923 - 2008 (85 years)

Paul Schneider was an American screenwriter who worked in television and film between the 1950s and the 1980s. Star Trek Schneider is probably best remembered for two episodes of the original Star Trek series: "Balance of Terror" and "The Squire of Gothos". The first of these introduced the Romulans – which became one of the main alien races in the Star Trek universe. The second episode introduces a "Q"-like lifeform which terrorizes the crew. He also wrote the episode "The Terratin Incident" for the animated Star Trek series.

#6914

Jill Hoffman

#152303

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Jill Hoffman is an American poet, and editor. She graduated from Bennington College with a B.A., from Columbia University with an M. A., and from Cornell University with a Ph.D. She taught at Bard College, Brooklyn College, Columbia University, and The New School.

#6915

Elaine Macmann Willoughby

Elaine Macmann Willoughby

#114598

Overall Influence

1926 - 2012 (86 years)

Elaine Macmann "Mac" Willoughby was an American educator and writer of children's books. Life Elaine Maybelle Macmann, known as "Mac", was born in Lexington, Massachusetts, and was the only child of Walter and Mabel Macmann. She received a B.S. of Education from Wheelock College, graduating in 1949 as vice-president of her class. In the summer of 1951 she also attended the University of Rhode Island, and in the summer of 1953 attended the Breadloaf School of English at Middlebury College. She received her MA and PhD in Education from the Teachers College, Columbia University, from 1954 to 195...

#6916

Ross Yockey

#177233

Overall Influence

1943 - 2008 (65 years)

Ross Yockey was a writer, producer, author, and television journalist. He authored 21 books, most notably best selling business book McColl, the Man with America's Money, a biography about banker Hugh McColl. Yockey has written nonfiction, among them biographies of Zubin Mehta and André Previn, and fiction, including three novels about the New Kids on the Block.

#6917

Julia Haig Gaisser

#188404

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Julia Haig Gaisser is an American classical scholar. She is Eugenia Chase Guild Professor Emeritus of the Humanities and Professor of Latin at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania. She specializes in Latin poetry and its reception by Renaissance humanists.

#6918

Karen Lynn Davidson

#81048

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Karen Lynn Davidson was a Latter-day Saint hymn writer, author, and literary critic. Davidson wrote widely on the hymns of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and of the Community of Christ.

#6919

Elizabeth Craik

#178732

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Elizabeth Mary Craik is a Scottish classical scholar, who is Honorary Professor of Classics at the University of St Andrews. Education Elizabeth Craik studied for an MA at the University of St Andrews , an MLitt at Girton College, University of Cambridge and was awarded an honorary DLitt from the University of St Andrews in 2000.

#6920

Erik Nielson

#86223

Overall Influence

Erik Nielson is Professor of Liberal Arts at the University of Richmond who has become well known as an expert in the use of rap music as evidence in criminal trials. His book Rap on Trial: Race, Lyrics, and Guilt in America, with co-author Andrea Dennis, was published in November 2019 and received the Hugh Hefner Foundation First Amendment Award in October 2020. Nielson's research focuses on the relationship between African-American culture and policing, as well as the relationship between hip hop and politics. He has written for the New York Times and other mainstream news outlets on these issues.

#6921

Catherine Steel

#163473

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Catherine Elizabeth Wannan Steel, is a British classical scholar. She is Professor of Classics at the University of Glasgow. Steel is an expert on the Roman Republic, the writings of Cicero, and Roman oratory.

#6922

Nicholas St. John

#182881

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Nicodemo Oliverio, better known as Nicholas St. John, is an American screenwriter. He has collaborated with film director Abel Ferrara in nine films together including The Driller Killer , Body Snatchers and The Addiction , as well as Ms. 45 and King of New York . For his work in the film The Funeral , St. John was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay.

#6923

Maggy Corrêa

#189207

Overall Influence

Maggy Corrêa is a Rwandan Swiss autobiographical writer. In her memoir Tutsie, etc. she recounts how she rescued her mother from the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi in July 1994. Life Corrêa was born in Rwanda, to a Portuguese father and a Rwandan Tutsi mother. Swiss by adoption, she was educated in Rwanda, Belgian Congo and Burundi.

#6924

Choi Dong-ho

#187408

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Choi Dong-ho is a South Korean poet, critic, and professor. He studied Korean literature at Korea University at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. He taught Korean literature until his retirement at Korea University, where he is a professor emeritus. He published his first poetry collection in 1976 and debuted as a critic when his critical essay won the Joongang Ilbo New Writer’s Contest in 1979. He has written a number of monographs on the spirit of poetry, Eastern poetics, and geukseojeongsi , a term he coined to describe short, easy to understand, and highly evocative poetry. He won the Park Dujin Literary Award in 2009 and the Yushim Award in 2013.

#6925

Marc Nieson

#188849

Overall Influence

Marc Nieson is an American screenwriter and professor. His writings span fiction, creative nonfiction, and screenwriting. He has been awarded the Literal Latte Fiction Award and a Raymond Carver Short Story Award.

#6926

Rebecca Wanzo

#181127

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Rebecca Ann Wanzo is an American academic specializing in African-American literature and culture, critical race theory, fan studies, and feminist theory. She is a professor and chair of the women, gender, and sexuality studies department at Washington University in St. Louis. Wanzo's 2020 book, The Content of Our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging, won the Eisner Award for Best Academic/Scholarly Work.

#6927

Jayantanuja Bandyopadhyaya

#174668

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

Jayantanuja Bandyopadhyaya was a former Bengali diplomat and scholar of International relations. He is best known for his classic study The Making of Indian Foreign Policy , which is considered a classic in Indian scholarship in International Relations.

#6928

Robert Sandberg

#150293

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Robert Neil Sandberg, known professionally as R. N. Sandberg, is an American playwright and was a lecturer in the Princeton University Lewis Center for the Arts and Department of English. from 1995-2022

#6929

Sarah Harder

#100135

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Sarah Jane Harder is an American feminist and associate professor emerita of English at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire. She started the women's studies program at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire and served as president of the American Association of University Women.

#6930

Rebecca Langlands

#179921

Overall Influence

Rebecca Langlands is Professor of Classics at the University of Exeter. She is known in particular for her work on the history of sexuality and ethics in the Roman world. Career Langlands studied at the University of Cambridge and wrote her PhD dissertation on Valerius Maximus at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge funded by the British Academy and examined by Susanna Morton Braund.

#6931

Miodrag Kojadinović

#168405

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Miodrag Kojadinović is a Canadian-Serbian linguist, interpreter, translator, writer, anthropologist, and theoretician of gender and sexuality. Academic involvement Born in Negotin, he completed his academic education in Canada, Serbia, and Hungary, worked in three embassies , in the media in Canada and the Netherlands, carried out research at Utrecht University, the University of Amsterdam , and, under the mentorship of Eduardo P. Archetti, at Oslo University. Since 2005 he has been teaching in the People’s Republic of China, where he also uses an unofficial Chinese version of his name: 妙谠 , ...

#6932

Kim Dong-yeon

#66911

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Kim Dong-yeon is a South Korean playwright and theater director. Kim, is nicknamed Blue Chip Director of Daehak-ro, made his directorial debut in 2003 through the play Fantasy Fairy Tale . South Korean Musical Maybe Happy Ending that was premiered in 2017 is his most famous work as director. He is known for his two military musicals, The Shinheung Military Academy and Return . He is also known as director of South Korean adaptation of stage play Human , The Pride , M. Butterfly , and Shakespeare R&J .

#6933

Allen Rucker

#166748

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Allen Rucker is an American writer and author. Born in Wichita Falls, Texas, and raised in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, he earned a B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis , an M.A. in American Culture from the University of Michigan , and another M.A. in communication from Stanford University .

#6934

Sanaa Shaalan

#186267

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Sanaa Shalan is a Jordanian contemporary writer, from the Arab novelty generation. She writes novels, short stories, theater, scenario and children's literature. She holds a doctorate degree in modern literature. Shalan works as an instructor at the University of Jordan.

#6935

Verdel Kolve

#141523

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Verdel Amos Kolve was an honorary fellow at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford and a retired professor of English. Verdel was born in Wisconsin in 1934 to Amos and Gunda Kolve. He had a younger sister, Lois. Kolve gained his first degree at the University of Wisconsin, following which he went to Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar in 1955. He stayed on as a post graduate and was supervised by J. R. R. Tolkien.

#6936

Masaaki Tanaka

#121531

Overall Influence

1911 - 2006 (95 years)

Masaaki Tanaka was a Japanese author notable for his book What Really Happened in Nanking: The Refutation of a Common Myth, which denies that the Nanking Massacre as traditionally understood took place. Originally written in Japanese in 1987, an English version was published in 2000 in response to Iris Chang's book, The Rape of Nanking.

#6937

Neferti Tadiar

#181026

Overall Influence

Neferti X. M. Tadiar is a Filipino scholar and critical theorist. She is a professor of women's, gender, and sexuality studies at Barnard College, chair of the Barnard department of women's, gender, and sexuality studies, and director of the Columbia University Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity.

#6938

Saros Cowasjee

#160799

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (95 years)

Saros Dara Cowasjee was an Indian-born Canadian novelist, short story writer, commentator, critic, anthologist, and screenwriter, as well as a professor emeritus at University of Regina. Early life and education Cowasjee was born in Secunderabad, India on 12 July 1931, to Dara and Meher Cowasjee. He had a sister and a brother. He earned a B.A. from St. John's College, Agra in 1951. He completed a M.A. from Agra College in 1955. In 1960, Cowasjee completed a Ph.D. from University of Leeds. He researched Seán O'Casey under the supervision of G. Wilson Knight.

#6939

Arietta Papaconstantinou

#175578

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Arietta Papaconstantinou is Reader in Classics at the University of Reading and Associate Faculty Member in the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford. She is an expert in the religious, social and economic history of Egypt and the Near East during the transition from the Roman Empire to the Caliphate.

#6940

Islam Issa

#109083

Overall Influence

Islam Issa is an Egyptian-British scholar and author, a Professor in the School of English at Birmingham City University whose research has specialized in Early Modern English literature and the reception of Renaissance.

#6941

John Acorn

#58288

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

John Acorn is a Canadian naturalist. He is a lecturer at the University of Alberta, a research associate at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology, and a research associate at the E.H. Strickland Entomology Museum. He is also a local Edmonton celebrity, combining folk music with educational lyrics about the natural world.

#6942

Nathalie Anderson

#182008

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Nathalie F. Anderson is an American poet and librettist. She is a 1993 Pew Fellow, and author of several books of poetry: Following Fred Astaire, Crawlers, Quiver, Held and Firmly Bound , and Stain. In collaboration with composer Thomas Whitman, she authored four libretti: The Black Swan, Sukey in the Dark, Babylon and A Scandal in Bohemia.

#6943

Reg Saner

#186534

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (95 years)

Reg Saner was an American poet and professor. Life He graduated from St. Norbert College, near Green Bay, Wisconsin. He served as an infantry platoon leader in the Korean War. He studied at University of Illinois, an received a Fulbright Scholarship to study at University of Florence.

#6944

Erwin Wagenhofer

Erwin Wagenhofer

#164278

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Erwin Wagenhofer is an Austrian author and film director. In 1981 he presented his first short film Endstation normal. Two years later his short film Das Loch was shown at the Kraków Film Festival. From that year until 1987 he worked as a directing and camera assistant for several ORF productions as well as for movies and documentaries. Since 1987 he is a freelance author and film director. In 1988 he portrayed the artist Oswald Oberhuber in Das Fragmentarische in der Kunst.

#6945

Carol Bachofner

#189645

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Carol Willette Bachofner is an American poet of Abenaki descent. She currently resides in Rockland, Maine. She is the co-founder and editor of the online literary journal, Pulse, established in 1997. She has also published several collections of her own poetry, including Native Moons, Native Days, as well as Drink from Your Own Wells: a guide to richer writing.

#6946

Laird Boswell

#111825

Overall Influence

Laird Boswell is Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, specializing in the history of modern France. He was previous Assistant and then Associate Professor there, and before that, Instructor at the California Institute of Technology. He was visiting professor at Institut d’études politiques de Paris in 2008.

#6947

Abbas El-Zein

#180141

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Abbas El-Zein is an Australian writer and academic. He is the author of two acclaimed works of fiction – a novel, Tell the Running Water and a collection of short stories, The Secret Maker of the World – as well as an award-winning memoir, Leave to Remain, about growing up in civil-war Lebanon and migrating to Europe and Australia. He has published essays and articles on war, displacement and environmental decline. His work has appeared in the New York Times the Guardian the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, as well as literary magazines Meanjin, Heat and Overland. His work is a manifestation o...

#6948

Andrea Polli

#119950

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Andrea Polli is an environmental artist and writer. Polli blends art and science to create widely varied media and technology artworks related to environmental issues. Her works are presented in various forms, she uses interactive websites, digital broadcasting, mobile applications, and performances, which allows her to reach a wider audience.

#6949

Jinx

#189693

Overall Influence

1994 - Present (32 years)

Gabriel McClure , known professionally as Gigi McQueen and Jinx, is an American actress and author. She is known for writing the Get Spooky series, Mr. Macabre Presents, and Vicious Vile Venom, which was a 2016 Watty award recipient in the new voices category.

#6950

Anne Fraïsse

#180306

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Anne Fraïsse is a French Latinist and academic. She is a professor of Latin patristics at the Paul Valéry University Montpellier . She served two terms as president of the UPVM, from 2008 to 2016, and was re-elected in 2020. She was also vice-president of the France Universités from December 2010 to December 2012.

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