The Most Influential People Across History
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 …
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List of the most influential people in Literature,
#6951
Carmen Giménez
#183869
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Carmen Giménez is an American poet, writer, and editor. Life Giménez earned a Bachelor of Arts from San José State University and a Master of Fine Arts from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was a Teaching-Writing Fellow. She was recently a professor in English at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and, prior to that, New Mexico State University. She teaches in Bennington College's Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing. Giménez is the founder and publisher of Noemi Press, and she is a founding fellow and co-director of CantoMundo. In the fall of 2017, Giménez became editor of The Nation's Poetry Section, alongside Stephanie Burt.
Go to Profile#6952
John Lazarus
#79939
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
John Lazarus is a Canadian playwright. He is author of Babel Rap, Dreaming and Duelling, The Late Blumer, Homework & Curtains, Genuine Fakes, The Trials of Eddy Haymour, Medea's Disgust, Village of Idiots, Rough Magic, Meltdown, ‘’Exposure’’ and Secrets.
Go to Profile#6953
Rüdiger Bernhardt
#168697
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Rüdiger Bernhardt is a German Germanist and Scandinavist. Born in Dresden, Bernhardt was a Germanist at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg until 1993. Among other things he dealt with works by , among them with the .
Go to Profile#6954
Aki Kondo
#115915
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Aki Kondo is a Japanese illustrator and character designer, and former staff of San-X. Biography After graduating from the Junior College of Art and Design at Joshibi University of Art and Design, Kondo was hired to work in the Design studio of San-X in 1997.
Go to Profile#6955
Mimi Thebo
#133124
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Mimi Thebo is an American author who lives and works in the United Kingdom. Her most recent and most successful books have been for children. Dreaming the Bear has been nominated for the 2017 Carnegie Medal named as a 'future classic' by Booktrust and long listed for the 2017 UKLA award. Dreaming the Bear was published by Oxford University Press in the UK in 2016 and would be later published by Wendy Lamb in the USA in 2017.
Go to Profile#6956
Jennifer Ziegler
#43966
Overall Influence
Jennifer Ziegler is an American writer and faculty member at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Biography Ziegler was raised in Texas and is of Mexican-American heritage. She received a Bachelor of Arts in English and a Bachelor of Journalism in magazine journalism from the University of Texas. She presently serves as the faculty co-chair of Vermont College of Fine Arts's Master of Fine Arts program in Writing for Children and Young Adults.
Go to Profile#6957
Alison Yarrington
#118889
Overall Influence
Alison Willow Yarrington FSA is professor of the history of art at the University of Loughborough and a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. She was formerly Richmond Professor of Fine Art at the University of Glasgow. She is chairperson of the editorial board of the Sculpture Journal.
Go to Profile#6958
Bob Gregory
#169421
Overall Influence
1921 - 2003 (82 years)
Robert P. Gregory was an American comics artist and writer best known for writing and drawing hundreds of Gold Key comics starring the Disney comics character Donald Duck. Biography Bob Gregory attended the Otis Art Institute and fought in World War II before working as a technical illustrator for an aircraft manufacturer. He began submitting art sketches to Western Publishing, for which he began freelancing on a steady basis in 1958 — first as a writer, then as a writer-artist both writer and artist — on many of Western's talking animal comics, including the Donald Duck comics produced under...
Go to Profile#6959
Jarle Bondevik
#177846
Overall Influence
1934 - 2016 (82 years)
Jarle Bondevik was a Norwegian philologist. He was born in Sogndal, and took the a cand.philol. degree at the University of Bergen in 1961. He worked as a lecturer at Aarhus University from 1961 to 1963, and at Bergen Teacher's College from 1963 to 1972. In 1972 he was appointed as a lecturer at the University of Bergen. The dr.philos. degree from the University of Bergen institution followed in 1988, and in 1993 he became a professor. From 1991 to 1999 he was also an assisting professor at Volda University College.
Go to Profile#6960
Dalia Judovitz
#182231
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Dalia Judovitz is National Endowment for the Humanities Professor in the Department of French and Italian at Emory University. She is known for her work in the fields of 17th-century French literature and philosophy and modern/postmodern aesthetics.
Go to Profile#6961
İbrahim Halil Baran
#100986
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
İbrahim Halil Baran is a Kurdish poet, politician, writer and designer. He is the party chairman for Partiya Kurdistani . Baran studied at Dicle University before receiving a master's degree at Bilkent University. He was then the editor of Yom Sanat magazine. In 2015, he wrote an article for Rudaw Media Network.
Go to Profile#6962
Dimitri Nakassis
#82093
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Dimitri Nakassis is an American classicist and archaeologist, and is a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is also co-director of the Western Argolid Regional Project. He was awarded a MacArthur fellowship in 2015.
Go to Profile#6963
Tibor Wlassics
#189032
Overall Influence
1936 - 1998 (62 years)
Tibor Ivan Wlassics was a Hungarian scholar of Italian literature. He fled Hungary after the 1956 revolution and eventually settled in the United States, becoming a professor at the University of Virginia. He is most remembered for his research on the poet Dante Alighieri, though he also wrote about Italian figures such as Galileo Galilei and Cesare Pavese.
Go to Profile#6964
Mark Blagrave
#183341
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Mark Blagrave is a Canadian writer of plays, short stories, and novels, and a former university professor and administrator. Born in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Blagrave was raised in Southern Ontario and Bermuda before finishing high school in Saint John, New Brunswick. After earning his BA at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, and his MA and PhD from the University of Toronto, he returned to teach at the University of New Brunswick in Saint John and then, for twenty years, at Mount Allison University. In 2009, he returned to Ontario as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Scie...
Go to Profile#6965
Patricia Baker
#142133
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Patricia "Patty" Anne Baker is an American archaeologist and academic. She is Head of the Department of Classical & Archaeological Studies at the University of Kent and Senior Lecturer in Classical & Archaeological Studies.
Go to Profile#6966
Daniel Lusk
#185903
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Daniel Lusk is an American poet, writer, editor, and teacher. He has authored six collections of poetry, most recently The Shower Scene from Hamlet . He lives in Burlington, Vermont, with his wife, the poet Angela Patten.
Go to Profile#6967
John Moore
#147480
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
John Sanford Moore , better known as John Moore, is a Canadian radio and television broadcaster, film critic, voice actor and comedian. He works for the CFRB 1010 radio station in Toronto, Ontario. Early life Moore was born in Montreal, Quebec, and grew up in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, a predominantly English-speaking area of Montreal. He attended West Hill High School, where he served as student body president. Moore began his post-secondary studies at Vanier College. While attending university he taught pre-school and worked in corporate public relations. He graduated with dual degrees in Commun...
Go to Profile#6968
Michaël Trahan
#182498
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Michaël Trahan is a Canadian poet from Quebec. Born and raised in Acton Vale, he moved to Montreal in the early 2000s. His first book of poetry, Nœud coulant, won the Prix Émile-Nelligan, the Prix Alain-Grandbois and the Prix du Festival de la poésie de Montréal in 2014. His second book, La raison des fleurs, won the Governor General's Award for French-language poetry at the 2018 Governor General's Awards.
Go to Profile#6969
Intan Paramaditha
#183230
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Intan Paramaditha is an Indonesian author and noted feminist academic. Her work has been described as focusing on "the intersection between gender and sexuality, culture and politics". Literary works Paramaditha's works have been described as "gothic feminist". In 2005, Intan Paramaditha's short-story collection Sihir Perempuan was shortlisted for the Khatulistiwa Literary Award. In 2010 Intan co-authored horror anthology Kumpulan Budak Setan with Eka Kurniawan and Ugoran Prasad, and in 2013 her short story Klub Solidaritas Suami Hilang won the Kompas Best Short Story Award.
Go to Profile#6970
Omar Lara
#183623
Overall Influence
1941 - 2021 (80 years)
Luis Omar Lara Mendoza was a Chilean poet, translator, and editor. Awards 2007, Premio Casa de América de Poesía Americana
Go to Profile#6971
Ely Shipley
#187606
Overall Influence
Ely Shipley is an author and poet who has been featured in multiple literary journals. He has additionally published his own works and has received several awards for those works. Biography Ely Shipley received an MFA from Purdue University and a PhD from the University of Utah. He is currently a professor at Western Washington University. He was previously an assistant professor at Baruch College.
Go to Profile#6972
Tom Cole
#176503
Overall Influence
1933 - 2009 (76 years)
Charles Thomas Cole was a playwright and screenwriter. He wrote the screenplay for Smooth Talk. Biography Charles Thomas Cole was born in 1933 in Paterson, New Jersey. His father, David L. Cole, the son of Russian immigrants, was one of the early pioneers in arbitrating labor disputes, serving under every US President from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Richard Nixon. Tom Cole attended public schools in Paterson then went on to receive his undergraduate degree from Harvard University in American History & Literature. After graduating in 1954, he enlisted in the United States Army where he was assigned to study Russian at the Army Language School in Monterey, California.
Go to Profile#6973
Gretchen Reydams-Schils
#166370
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Gretchen Reydams-Schils is Professor in the Program of Liberal Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and holds concurrent appointments in Classics, Philosophy, and Theology. She is a specialist in Plato and the traditions of Platonism and Stoicism.
Go to Profile#6974
Martha Andresen Wilder
#171593
Overall Influence
1944 - 2018 (74 years)
Martha Elizabeth Andresen Wilder was an American scholar of Renaissance literature. She taught at Pomona College, where she was the Phebe Estelle Spalding Professor of English.
Go to Profile#6975
Esther Jansma
#188391
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Esther Jansma is a Dutch writer and academic. She was born in Amsterdam and works as an archaeologist. Jansma published her first collection of poetry Stem onder mijn bed in 1988. In 1990, she published Bloem, steen , which reflected her feelings after her first child died at birth.
Go to Profile#6976
Tim Slover
#134203
Overall Influence
Tim Slover is an American playwright and professor of theatre studies at the University of Utah. Slover has a bachelor's degree in English from Brigham Young University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.
Go to Profile#6977
Raphaël Granier de Cassagnac
#93304
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Raphaël Granier de Cassagnac is a French physicist and writer. He is specialized in nuclear and particle physics. He is a member of the PHENIX experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory and of the CMS experiment at CERN where he is involved in studying the Quark-Gluon Plasma in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions.
Go to Profile#6978
Nina Sorokina
#170996
Overall Influence
1942 - 2011 (69 years)
Nina Sorokina was a Russian principal dancer of the Bolshoi Ballet and a 1987 People's Artist of the USSR recipient. Biography Sorokina was born on 13 May 1942 in Elektrostal, Russia. She studied in Bolshoi Ballet school under a guidance of Sofia Golovkina and became a soloist of the Bolshoi Theatre by 1961. Five years later she received her first gold medal at the International Ballet Competition in Varna and was named a People’s Artist of the U.S.S.R. by 1987. During her career she played in such plays as Icarus and Asel and even participated in a balled called Cheeky Rhymes. She also part...
Go to Profile#6979
Peter Rolfe Vaughan
#98614
Overall Influence
1935 - 2008 (73 years)
Peter Rolfe Vaughan ACGI, DIC, FREng, FICE, FCGI, MASCE, FGS, was Emeritus Professor of Ground Engineering in the Geotechnics department of Imperial College London. Biography Vaughan was born in Limbury near Luton, Bedfordshire in the UK on 10 March 1935, the son of Ernest Alfred Vaughan, a civil servant, and Clarise Marjory Ward, a school teacher, and was educated at Luton Grammar School before going on to do a BSc at Imperial College. He played rugby for his school, the college and for the Luton Grammar School old boys team.
Go to Profile#6980
Lytton Smith
#179759
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Lytton Smith is an Anglo-American poet. His most recent poetry collection is The All-Purpose Magical Tent , which was selected by Terrance Hayes for the Nightboat Books Poetry Prize in 2009, and was praised by Publishers Weekly in a starred review as "...fantastic and earthy, strange and inherited, classical and idiosyncratic, at once." He also has a previous chapbook, Monster Theory, selected by Kevin Young for the Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship in 2008. Smith's poetry has appeared in a number of prominent literary journals and magazines such as The Atlantic, Bateau, Boston Review, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Tin House, and many others.
Go to Profile#6981
Robert Peters
#184016
Overall Influence
1924 - 2014 (90 years)
Robert Louis Peters was an American poet, critic, scholar, playwright, editor, and actor. He held a PhD in Victorian literature. Born in an impoverished rural area of northern Wisconsin in 1924, his poetry career began in 1967 when his young son Richard died unexpectedly of spinal meningitis. The book commemorating this loss, Songs for a Son, was selected by poet Denise Levertov to be published by W. W. Norton in 1967. Songs for a Son began a flood of poetry.
Go to Profile#6982
Carol Jacobs
#189300
Overall Influence
Carol Jacobs is a literary scholar and Birgit Baldwin Professor Emeritus of German and Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at Yale University. Her research interests include modern German, English, and French literature, literary theory from the 18th to 20th centuries, and film.
Go to Profile#6983
William E. Coles Jr.
#160431
Overall Influence
1932 - 2005 (73 years)
William E. Coles Jr. was an American novelist and professor. Born in Summit, New Jersey, Coles earned degrees from Lehigh University, the University of Connecticut, the University of Minnesota. From 1974 to 1998 he served as a professor and director of composition at the University of Pittsburgh. Previously he taught at Amherst College and at Case Western Reserve University.
Go to Profile#6984
Anya Krugovoy Silver
#100948
Overall Influence
1968 - 2018 (50 years)
Anya Krugovoy Silver was an American poet. She won a Guggenheim fellowship, and a Georgia Author of the Year Award. Biography Silver was born in 1968 in Media, Pennsylvania, but raised in Swarthmore, and graduated from Haverford College, and Emory University. She then became a professor at Mercer University. Her work has appeared in The Christian Century, among other publications.
Go to Profile#6985
Graham Allen
#84055
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Graham Allen is a writer and academic from Cork city, Ireland. He is the author of two collections of poetry, The Madhouse System and The One That Got Away . He is a former recipient of the Listowel Single Poem Prize, awarded each year at Listowel Writers' Week. As a literary critic, he has published numerous books, including Harold Bloom: Towards a Poetics of Conflict , Intertextuality , and Roland Barthes .
Go to Profile#6986
Ayanna Thompson
#104820
Overall Influence
Ayanna Thompson is Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University and Director of the Arizona Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies . She was the 2018–19 president of the Shakespeare Association of America. She specializes in Renaissance drama and issues of race in performance.
Go to Profile#6987
Libby Hart
#187034
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Libby Hart is a poet from Victoria, Australia. She was awarded the 2003 D. J. O'Hearn Memorial Fellowship and its artist-in-residence appointment from the Australian Centre at the University of Melbourne.
Go to Profile#6988
Kaithapram Damodaran Namboothiri
#178274
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Padma Shri Kaithapram Damodaran Namboothiri, popularly known as Kaithapram, is a Malayalam lyricist, poet, music director, actor, singer, screenwriter, music therapist and performer of Carnatic music. He debuted with the movie Ennennum Kannettante in 1986. He won the Kerala State Film Award for Best Lyricist two times. He was awarded India's fourth-highest civilian honor Padma Shri in 2021 by the Government of India for his contribution to the field of art.
Go to Profile#6989
Brooke Holmes
#189100
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Brooke Holmes is an American classicist. She is the Susan Dod Brown Professor of Classics at Princeton University. She is the author of two books, and a co-editor of a third book about Heinrich von Staden. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2018.
Go to Profile#6990
Bryan Peter Reardon
#179393
Overall Influence
1928 - 2009 (81 years)
Bryan Peter Reardon was the Chairman of the Department of Classics at the University of California at Irvine, and a noted scholar of the ancient Greek novel. Early life and education Born in Manchester, England on December 30, 1928, Bryan Peter Reardon received his Master of Arts from Glasgow University in Scotland in 1951. He earned his Bachelor's from St. John's College of Cambridge University in England in 1953. He then received his PhD from the Université de Nantes in France, in 1968.
Go to Profile#6991
Ronnie Barker
#180403
Overall Influence
1929 - 2005 (76 years)
Ronald William George Barker was an English actor, comedian and writer. He was known for roles in British comedy television series such as Porridge, The Two Ronnies, and Open All Hours. Barker began acting in Oxford amateur dramatics while working as a bank clerk, having dropped out of higher education. He moved into repertory theatre with the Manchester Repertory Company at Aylesbury and decided he was best suited to comic roles. He had his first success at the Oxford Playhouse and in roles in the West End including Tom Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound. During this period, he was in the cast of BBC radio and television comedies such as The Navy Lark.
Go to Profile#6992
James Ragan
#188337
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
James Ragan is an American poet, screenwriter, and educator. He has traveled and worked around the world and was the director of the Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California for 25 years as well as a book reviewer for the Los Angeles Times. In 1996, BUZZ Magazine named Ragan one of the “100 Coolest People in Los Angeles: Those Who Make a Difference.”
Go to Profile#6993
Timothy Bond
#175633
Overall Influence
Timothy Bond is the Artist Director of the Ashland Shakespeare Festival as of September 1, 2023. His previous role was as the Head of the Professional Actor Training Program and professor at the University of Washington School of Drama.
Go to Profile#6994
Lisa Bird-Wilson
#189063
Overall Influence
Lisa Bird-Wilson is a Métis and nêhiyaw writer from Saskatchewan. Biography A survivor of the Sixties Scoop, as a child Bird-Wilson was adopted, disconnecting her from her Cree and Métis heritage. This experience informs much of her writing.
Go to Profile#6995
Alf Hellevik
#176427
Overall Influence
1909 - 2001 (92 years)
Alf Hellevik was a Norwegian philologist. He was born in Fjaler. He graduated as cand.philol. from the University of Oslo in 1938. He was the principal editor of the multi-volume dictionary Norsk Ordbok from 1948 to 1978. He lectured at the University of Oslo from 1972 until his retirement in 1977. He edited several editions of Nynorsk Ordliste. From 1952 to 1970 he was a member of Norsk Språknemnd, and a member of the Norwegian Language Council from 1972 to 1988.
Go to Profile#6996
Nathalia Crane
#116642
Overall Influence
1913 - 1998 (85 years)
Nathalia Clara Ruth Crane was an American poet and novelist who became famous as a child prodigy after the publication of her first book of poetry, The Janitor's Boy, written at age 10 and published two years later. Her poetry was first published in The New York Sun when she was only 9 years old, the paper unaware that she was a child. She was elected into the British Society of Authors, Playwrights, and Composers in 1925, written up in The American Mercury and later became a professor of English at San Diego State University.
Go to Profile#6997
John Fraser
#133716
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
John Fraser is an English professor, novelist, and poet. Academic career He was born in London and educated at St Paul's School, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, King's College, London and the University of Leicester. He taught History in 1961–66 at the Cambridgeshire College of Arts & Technology, Cambridge, then Political Science at the University of Leicester . From 1968 to 1971 he was assistant professor, then Acting Chairman, Department of Political Science, Laurentian University, Ontario, Canada. From 1971 to 1984 he was assistant professor, then Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
Go to Profile#6998
Matthew Nicholls
#189588
Overall Influence
Matthew C. Nicholls is visiting professor of classics at the University of Reading and senior tutor at St John's College, University of Oxford. He is a specialist in libraries in the Roman empire and the history of the city of Rome. He has also created a large scale digital reconstruction of the ancient city of Rome, which is the basis of a popular Massive Open Online Course or MOOC.
Go to Profile#6999
Zachary Pincus-Roth
#149981
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Zachary Pincus-Roth is an American entertainment journalist, author, and TV writer. In January 2016, he joined the Washington Post as pop culture editor. Education Pincus-Roth was raised in Chevy Chase, Maryland and attended Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville, Maryland, where he graduated in 1998 and received a Lazarus Leadership Fellowship. At Richard Montgomery he was sports editor, news editor, and editor-in-chief of The Tide and authored an op-ed column entitled "Can I Say One Thing."
Go to Profile#7000
William Fox
#176010
Overall Influence
1911 - 2008 (97 years)
William Hubert Fox TD was a British character actor and writer. He enjoyed early success on the stage playing juvenile roles. After a six-year interruption for military service in the Second World War, his acting career did not reach the heights of his early years.
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