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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List of the most influential people in Literature,

#7051

Carl E. Hazlewood

#177634

Overall Influence

Carl E. Hazlewood is an artist, writer, and curator currently residing in Brooklyn, New York. Hazlewood, along with Victor Davson, is a co-founder of Aljira Center for Contemporary Art in Newark, New Jersey. Hazlewood has taught at New Jersey City University and other institutions.

#7052

Andy Luckey

#133073

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Andrew A. Luckey is an American animator, artist, author, designer, director, illustrator and television producer, primarily of animated works. He also writes and illustrates children's books and Bible studies.

#7053

Gary Garrison

#187393

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Gary Wayne Garrison is an American playwright, screenwriter, and educator who has served as Executive Director of Creative Affairs for the Dramatists Guild of America, New York, from 2007 to 2016. He is the former Artistic Director and Division Head of Playwriting for the Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing at the Tisch School of the Arts, where he still serves on the adjunct faculty teaching graduate students.

#7054

Ruth Etchells

#89207

Overall Influence

1931 - 2012 (81 years)

Dorothea Ruth Etchells was an English poet and college principal who spent most of her working life in the University of Durham. Early life She was born on 17 April 1931. She attended Merchant Taylors’ School and the University of Liverpool. After graduation, she became an English teacher at Aigburth Vale High School in Liverpool and then a lecturer at the Chester College of Higher Education.

#7055

Fermín Chávez

#44793

Overall Influence

1924 - 2006 (82 years)

Fermín Chávez was an Argentine historian, poet and journalist, born in El Pueblito, a small town near Nogoyá, province of Entre Ríos. He studied humanities in Córdoba, philosophy in Buenos Aires, and devoted three years to the study of theology, canon law, archaeology and Ancient Hebrew in Cuzco, Peru.

#7056

Louis Renner

#102992

Overall Influence

1926 - 2015 (89 years)

Louis Lawrence Renner, S.J., was an American Jesuit priest, historian, writer and academic. Renner, a professor of German who founded the Latin language program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, specialized in the history of the Roman Catholic Church in Alaska. He authored several volumes and books on Alaska's Catholic history, including the extensive "Alaskana Catholica," which was published in 2005.

#7057

Jane E. Clarke

#65761

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Jane Elizabeth Clarke is an English writer of children's books and poetry. Her best known books include Gilbert the Greatillustrated by Charles Fuge, and Neon Leon illustrated by Britta Teckentrup. Jane has published more than 80 books, including the Dr. Kittycat series for Oxford University Press, and children's reading scheme books used in schools. CBeebies Bedtime Stories have featured two of Jane's books, Stuck in the Mud and Knight Time . Stuck in the Mud is also featured with a US Scholastic Book Club edition which includes a CD audio edition. This audio edition is produced by Beatstre...

#7058

Nicholas Williams

#181187

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Nicholas Jonathan Anselm Williams , sometimes credited as N. J. A. Williams, is a leading expert and poet in the Cornish language. Life While a pupil at Chigwell School, Essex, Williams taught himself Cornish and became a bard of the Cornish Gorseth while still in his teens, taking the bardic name Golvan . He read classical languages, English language and Celtic in Oxford. After short periods in the universities of Belfast and Liverpool, he was appointed lecturer in Irish in University College Dublin in 1977. In 2006 he was appointed Associate Professor in Celtic Languages there. He married ...

#7059

Richard Walter Thomas

#121875

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Richard Walter Thomas is a retired African-American professor of Michigan State University known for his work in black issues and race relations. He has published a number of scholarly works, his poetry has been gathered in various anthologies, and he has given a variety of talks, workshops, and interviews on issues of race and race relations.

#7060

Cynthia Arrieu-King

#190975

Overall Influence

Cynthia Arrieu-King is an American poet with Chinese heritage. Early life Cynthia Arrieu-King was raised in Louisville, KY. Career Cynthia Arrieu-King is the author of three collections of poetry, People are Tiny in Paintings of China ; Manifest ; and Futureless Languages . She also co-wrote a chapbook with Ariana-Sophia Kartsonis By a Year Lousy with Meteors and a book-length collaborative volume of poetry with the late Hillary Gravendyk, Unlikely Conditions .

#7061

Thomas Rickman

#182811

Overall Influence

1940 - 2018 (78 years)

Thomas "Tom" Rickman was an American film director, playwright, and screenwriter best known for his work on Coal Miner's Daughter, Hooper, Tuesdays with Morrie and Truman. Well known for other major movies such as Everybody's All-American as per IMDb.

#7062

Barbara Cully

#189487

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Barbara Cully is an American poet. Life She has taught at the Prague Summer Writers' Program, and teaches at the University of Arizona. She is a contributing editor of Cue. Awards 1996 National Poetry Series Open Competition, for The New IntimacyArizona Commission on the Arts FellowshipWriter-in-Residence for the YMCA Writer's Voice.

#7063

Sergei Alexandrovsky

#152592

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Sergei A. Alexandrovsky is a Ukrainian poet and translator who writes in Russian language. Background From 1977 to 1982, Alexandrovsky studied English at the University of Kharkiv and continues to reside in Kharkiv, Ukraine. His full-time literary career as a translator of poetry from the English, Spanish and Portuguese started in 1989. Since then Alexandrovsky rendered into Russian numerous lyrics and long poems by Fernando Pessoa, Julián del Casal, José Martí, John Lydgate, Francis Bacon, Fulke Greville, John Milton, Allan Ramsey, Robert Burns, Robert Fergusson, Robert Southey, John Keats, Rudyard Kipling, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, many other English and Scottish authors.

#7064

Graham Petrie

#190157

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Graham Petrie is a retired Scottish-Canadian academic and writer, most notably a literature and film studies professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He was born in Penang, Malaya to Scottish parents, and was raised and educated primarily in Scotland. He initially joined McMaster as a professor of English, with his academic focus evolving toward film during his time with the institution.

#7065

Jean Gascou

#131012

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Jean Gascou is a French scholar and papyrologist. He is a professor at the University Paris-Sorbonne, director of the Institute of papyrology and a member of the Institut Universitaire de France. Selected publications Jean Gascou is the author of several works:

#7066

Andreas Bjørkum

#118765

Overall Influence

1932 - 2014 (82 years)

Andreas Aarskog Bjørkum was a Norwegian philologist who specialized in dialectology. Early life and education He was born in Årdal and grew up in Nattvik. He finished his secondary education at Eidsvoll in 1953 and graduated from the University of Oslo with the cand.philol. degree in 1962. He worked for the Norsk Ordbok project, then as a research assistant at the Norwegian Dialect Archive . After a research fellowship from 1968 to 1972, he issued his doctoral thesis Generasjonsskilnad i indresognsmål in 1974.

#7067

Renée Poznanski

#93203

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Renée Poznanski is a French-born Israeli historian, specialist in the Holocaust, and the Jewish Resistance in France during the Second World War, who teaches at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Beersheba, in Israel.

#7068

Temple Hauptfleisch

#191133

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Temple Hauptfleisch is a South African playwright and academic, a professor emeritus of drama at Stellenbosch University. Haupfleisch did his undergraduate studies at the University of the Orange Free State, graduating in 1966, and then went on to graduate studies at the University of South Africa, earning a master's degree in 1972 and a doctorate in 1978. At Stellenbosch, he chaired the drama department from 1995 to 2005. He is a co-founder and editor-in-chief of the South African Theatre Journal.

#7069

Elizabeth Azcona Cranwell

Elizabeth Azcona Cranwell

#118142

Overall Influence

1933 - 2004 (71 years)

Elizabeth Azcona Cranwell was an Argentine poet, storyteller, writer, translator, and literary critic. She was born and died in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She was on the faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the University of Buenos Aires. She was a teacher, teaching workshops and seminars. She was also a literary critic for the newspaper La Nación and a translator. She translated the poems of William Shand, the collected poems of Dylan Thomas, and the tales of Edgar Allan Poe.

#7070

Jan W. Dietrichson

#191148

Overall Influence

1927 - 2019 (92 years)

Jan Waldemar Dietrichson was a Norwegian philologist. Biography Jan W. Dietrichson was born in Oslo, and his Bachelor of Arts degree at the Cornell University in 1949. He followed with a Master of Arts degree at Harvard University in 1950, the cand.philol. degree at the University of Oslo in 1953. He worked as a secretary in the publishing house Gyldendal Norsk Forlag from 1952 to 1962. Then, after two years as a lecturer, he was a research fellow at the University of Oslo from 1962 to 1964. In 1969 he took the dr.philos. degree on the thesis The Image of Money in the American Novel of the Gilded Age.

#7071

Shaista Wahab

#57493

Overall Influence

Shaista Wahab has written Dari language books. Her book A Brief History of Afghanistan was published in 2007. Wahab was a librarian and professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha where she coordinated the Arthur Paul Afghanistan Collection in the Dr. C.C. and Mabel L. Criss Library Archives & Special Collections. An oral history specialist, she served as a consultant to the Afghanistan Unveiled film project by Independent Lens, which was later picked up by PBS.

#7072

Amy Jephta

#189621

Overall Influence

Amy Jephta is a South African playwright, screenwriter and theatre director. Works include Kristalvlakte, Ellen: The Ellen Pakkies Story, Other People's Lives, Sonskyn Beperk, and While You Weren't Looking. She is a lecturer at the University of Cape Town and the first recipient of the Emerging Theatre Director's Bursary in South Africa. Her work has been staged at The Fugard Theatre, The Bush Theatre, The Royal Court Theatre, Jermyn Street Theatre, Theatre503 and the Edinburgh International Festival. Jephta is an alumnus of the Lincoln Center Theatre Directors Lab and was one of the Mail & Guardian 200 Young South Africans in 2013.

#7073

Aldona Jonaitis

#125657

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Aldona Jonaitis is the director of the University of Alaska Museum of the North, a professor of anthropology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and an author who has published widely on Native American art.

#7074

Julie Cassiday

#191194

Overall Influence

Julie A. Cassiday is an American literary scholar and Willcox B. and Harriet M. Adsit Professor of Russian at Williams College. She is known for her expertise in comparative literature. Cassiday is a former president of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies.

#7075

Jay Carson

#126520

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (125 years)

Jay Carson is an American screenwriter and producer. Carson worked in domestic and international politics for Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean, Bill Bradley, Chuck Schumer, Mike Bloomberg, and Tom Daschle before his career in film and television. He was Hillary Clinton's press secretary in her 2008 presidential campaign. He is the former Chief Deputy Mayor of Los Angeles, serving under Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

#7076

Pavlo Hai-Nyzhnyk

#73484

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Pavlo Hai-Nyzhnyk was born on May 28, 1971, in Dunaivtsi of Western Podillya , Soviet Union and is a Ukrainian historian, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Academician of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences , Academician of the Academy of Political Sciences and Ukrainian poet . Deputy Director, Scientific Research Institute of Ukrainian Studies, Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine

#7077

Anna Livia

#175085

Overall Influence

1955 - 2007 (52 years)

Anna Livia was a lesbian feminist author and linguist, well known for her fiction and non-fiction regarding sexuality. From 1999 until shortly before the time of her death she was a member of staff at University of California, Berkeley.

#7078

Laurent Mailhot

Laurent Mailhot

#124355

Overall Influence

1931 - 2021 (90 years)

Laurent Mailhot was a Canadian historian, writer, professor, essayist, and literary critic. Biography Born in Saint-Alexis on 22 September 1931, Mailhot studied at the Séminaire de Joliette. He earned a master's degree from the Université de Montréal and a doctorate from the University of Grenoble. He began teaching at the Université de Montréal in 1963. He was an editor at the journal Études françaises from 1979 to 1987.

#7079

Mary Claire Engstrom

#184108

Overall Influence

1906 - 1997 (91 years)

Mary Claire Engstrom was an American writer and historian. She is best known for her active role in preserving the historic town of Hillsborough, North Carolina. Biography Mary was born in Kansas City, and was the daughter of Lester L. Randolph and Florence Alberta Toynbee Randolph. She earned a PhD at University of North Carolina in English literature in 1939, and did postdoctoral research at Harvard and Yale, specializing in 18-century satire.

#7080

Cody Walker

#175710

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Cody Walker is an American poet, essayist, and educator. Family His brother Clay Walker is the Mayor of Denali Borough, Alaska. Academic studies Walker holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Wisconsin, a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Arkansas, and a Ph.D. from the University of Washington.

#7081

Sonya Voumard

#187725

Overall Influence

Sonya Voumard is an Australian writer and lecturer who has taught non-fiction for many years at the University of Technology Sydney and most recently at Southern Cross University. Voumard has published one work of fiction , two book length works of non-fiction and several articles for Australian newspapers, magazines and literary journals. Prior to academia, Voumard spent over 20 years as a journalist working for major newspapers and magazines in Australia such as The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Voumard's academic articles have also been published in Meanjin, Griffith Review and Island...

#7082

Marisa Cleveland

#111997

Overall Influence

Marisa Cleveland is an American author and educator, an executive director for The Seymour Agency, and a managing partner for Simeris Alliance. Her debut teen novel, Accidental Butterfly, hit the New York Times and USA Today bestsellers list as part of an anthology in June 2015.

#7083

Asghar Seyed-Gohrab

#191274

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Ali-Asghar Seyed-Ghorab is an Iranian literary scholar and Professor of Persian and Iranian Studies at Utrecht University. Previously, he was Associate Professor of Persian Language and Literature in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Leiden University. He is a fellow of the Young Academy of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

#7084

Tim Cahill

#187634

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Tim Cahill is an American producer, writer, director, and animator who co-created the Cartoon Network series My Gym Partner's a Monkey with his wife Julie McNally Cahill. He, along with his wife, have co-developed and are story editors for the 2012 Littlest Pet Shop series, and is a writer for The High Fructose Adventures of Annoying Orange. He and his wife also worked for Warner Bros. on Histeria, Detention, Animaniacs, The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries, Baby Looney Tunes, Mucha Lucha, and Krypto the Superdog.

#7085

Marcela Iacub

#52520

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Marcela Iacub is an Argentine writer and jurist specializing in bioethics research, living in France. In 2013, Iacub was successfully sued for invasion of privacy by Dominique Strauss-Kahn: her novel Belle et Bête included a character based on him.

#7086

Caitríona Ní Chléirchín

#190420

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Caitríona Ní Chléirchín is an Irish writer. Biography Ní Chléirchín was born in Emyvale, County Monaghan. Her first collection, Crithloinnir, was published in 2010. It won first prize in the Oireachtas competition for new writers 2010. An Bhrídeach Sí, her second collection of poetry, received the Michael Hartnett Prize in 2015. She is an Irish-language lecturer at Dublin City University.

#7087

Mercer Simpson

#158403

Overall Influence

1926 - 2007 (81 years)

Mercer Frederick Hampson Simpson , was an English-born writer who spent most of his life in Wales. He was born in Fulham, London, and educated at King Edward VI School, Bury St Edmunds. He served in the Royal Marines during World War II, and afterwards studied at Magdalene College, Cambridge. In 1950, having trained as a teacher, he moved to Cardiff, where he spent most of the rest of his life. In 1967 he was appointed a lecturer at what later became the University of Glamorgan. He was active in Welsh literary circles, and was a contributor and editor of several anthologies.East Anglian Wo...

#7088

Carl-Henning Wijkmark

Carl-Henning Wijkmark

#76471

Overall Influence

1934 - 2020 (86 years)

Carl-Henning Wijkmark was a Swedish novelist and translator. He made his literary debut in 1972, with the novel Jägarna på Karinhall. Among his other novels are Dressinen from 1983 and Sista dagar from 1986. He was awarded the Dobloug Prize in 1986. He received the August Prize in 2007, for his novel Stundande natten.

#7089

Jerald Walker

#110278

Overall Influence

Jerald Walker is an American writer and professor of creative writing and African American literature at Emerson College. Early life and education Walker was born in Chicago, he received his MFA in Fiction Writing from the Iowa Writer's Workshop, as well as a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Iowa.

#7090

Miyako Yoshida

#45379

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Miyako Yoshida is a Japanese ballet dancer. She was a Principal Guest Artist of The Royal Ballet as well as a principal dancer with K-ballet, Japan. Life and career Born and trained in Tokyo, Yoshida won the Prix de Lausanne in 1983 and joined Royal Ballet School in England. In 1984, she joined then Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet, the present Birmingham Royal Ballet and was promoted to principal in 1988. In following year, she was awarded the Global Award and the Arts Encouragement Prize for Artists of the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture, Japan.

#7091

Giacomo Scarpelli

Giacomo Scarpelli

#159467

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Giacomo Scarpelli , son of Furio Scarpelli, is an Italian scholar in History of Philosophy and screenwriter. Early life Scarpelli was born in Rome, Italy. He obtained a Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of Florence, and carried out further research and studies in England and the United States.

#7092

Richard Murphy

#179418

Overall Influence

1912 - 1993 (81 years)

Richard Murphy was an American screenwriter, film director and producer. His screenplays for Boomerang and The Desert Rats were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Screenplay, respectively.

#7093

Mahesh Champaklal

Mahesh Champaklal

#191392

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Mahesh Champaklal is an Indian dramatist, stage actor and director from Gujarat, India. After working for some years in the commercial Gujarati theatre, he joined and taught dramatics at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda.

#7094

Jean E. Howard

#133668

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Jean Elizabeth Howard is an American professor in English studies and a Shakespeare scholar. She is George Delacorte Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University and a former trustee of Brown University.

#7095

Bart van Es

#179188

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Bart van Es is a literary critic and writer. He is a professor of English at the University of Oxford, where he is also a senior tutor and fellow of St Catherine's College. Van Es was born in the Netherlands and lived in Norway, Dubai and Indonesia before his family settled in the United Kingdom in 1986. He studied English at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, and gained his doctorate from Cambridge in 2000; his thesis title was "Forms of history in the works of Edmund Spenser".

#7096

Harry Shannon

#132535

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Harry Shannon is an American novelist, songwriter and entertainer. He was born Harry Rivard Siebert in Reno, Nevada, to Dr. William L. Siebert and Belle Elizabeth Cazier. He has a brother, Dwight W. Siebert, and a sister, Marsha Desiderio. Shannon was married from 1978 to 1988 to Swiss singer Suzanne Klee. In 1994 he married songwriter Wendy Kramer. They have one child, Paige Emerson Shannon, born 1999.

#7097

Virgia Brocks-Shedd

#185128

Overall Influence

1943 - 1992 (49 years)

Virgia Brocks-Shedd was an American librarian and poet. She was the head librarian at the Tougaloo College library and was a founding member of multiple library associations, working to ensure African-Americans were represented in libraries. Brocks-Shedd published poetry in multiple venues and inspired an appreciation for literature in generations of students.

#7098

Benedict T. Viviano

Benedict T. Viviano

#89343

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Benedict Thomas Viviano a New Testament scholar and author, was a member of the Chicago Province of the Dominican Order of the Roman Catholic Church. He was on the faculty of the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, as a full professor of New Testament, teaching in the French language. Before teaching in Fribourg, he taught for 11 years at the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem , and 12 years at Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis. He was vice president of the Tantur Ecumenical Institute for Theological Studies in Jerusalem.

#7099

Nicola Ziadeh

#78957

Overall Influence

1907 - 2006 (99 years)

Nicola Ziadeh was historian and author of Palestinian origin, Lebanese nationality, born in Syria. Early life Nicola Ziadeh was born in Bab Musalla neighborhood, one of the neighborhoods of Al-Midan area in Damascus. His parents were Palestinian from Nazareth. His father was an employee in the engineering department in the General Administration of the Hejaz railway in Damascus. At the beginning of the World War I, when he was 8 years old, his father was recruited to fight with the Ottoman Army, and while his father was staying in one of the soldiers' gathering centers waiting to be sent to ...

#7100

Marco Di Meco

#190377

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (44 years)

Marco Di Meco is an Italian flute player, composer, music producer writer and teacher. Biography His interest in music began with a traditional musical instrument handed down to him by his paternal grandmother. He then decided to study the transverse flute and after a year of private study, he was admitted to the "L. D'Annunzio" Academy of Music in Pescara where he studied the instrument with Sandro Carbone and obtained a diploma. In the same year he began his career as a solo artist playing W.A. Mozart's KV313 concert.

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