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).

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List of the most influential people in Literature,

#7151

Francisco Franco del Amo

#91475
Overall Influence
1960 - 2021 (61 years)
Francisco José Franco del Amo was a Spanish academic and author. Franco del Amo earned his PhD in Biology at the University of Santiago de Compostela in 1990. From 1990 to 1992 he worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology . Upon his return to Spain, he joined the University of Santiago de Compostela as Associated Researcher and Assistant Professor . In 1995 he joined the technical team in the Museos Científicos Coruñeses , an institution where he then took on different roles. He was part of the team of museologists who designed the Aquarium Finisterrae and of the group of technicians who directed its setup.
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#7152

Robert Merritt

#187982
Overall Influence
1936 - 1999 (63 years)
Robert Gray Merritt was a Nova Scotia playwright, film critic, and educator. Personal life Merritt was born in Yonkers, NY, the son of John Gray and Mildred Merritt. Merritt died in 1999 of complications arising from congestive heart failure and cancer, five years after taking early retirement.
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#7153

Suzanne Prou

#102178
Overall Influence
1920 - 1995 (75 years)
Suzanne Prou was a French novelist. She won the 1973 Prix Renaudot, for The Bernardini Terrace. She is buried in Montparnasse Cemetery. Works Les Patapharis 1966The Patapharis affair: a novel, H. Regnery Co., 1970Les Demoiselles sous les ébéniers 1967Mlle. Savelli?, Harper & Row, 1971L'Été jaune 1968The yellow summer, Harper & Row, 1972La Ville sur la mer 1970Méchamment les oiseaux 1972 Prix CazesLa Terrasse des Bernardini 1973 Prix RenaudotThe Bernardinis' terrace, A. Ellis, 1975La petite boutique 1973The paperhanger , Harper & Row, 1974, Miroirs d'Edmée 1976La belle Edmée, Harper &...
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#7154

Joseph Pope

#67851
Overall Influence
1914 - 2013 (99 years)
Sir Joseph Albert Pope was a British engineer and academic administrator. He was educated at King's College London . He was an Assistant Lecturer in Engineering at Queen's University Belfast and the University of Manchester, then Senior Lecturer at the University of Sheffield from 1945 to 1949 and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Nottingham from 1949 to 1960. He later served as Vice-Chancellor of Aston University from 1969 to 1979. He was knighted in 1980. He died on 24 March 2013 at the age of 98.
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#7155

Lise Hannestad

#171756
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Lise Hannestad née Budolfsen is a Danish classicist, archaeologist and writer. She joined the staff of Aarhus University in 1971, heading the classical archaeology department from 1989 until her retirement in 2004. She has published many articles and books in English on Greece and Rome in antiquity. Her most recent work is Nicator - Seleucus I and His Empire .
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#7156

Michael Davis

#171383
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Michael Davis is an American comics artist, writer, and one of the co-founders of Milestone Media. Career Davis wrote an advice column for the Comic Buyer's Guide in the late 1980s. He founded Bad Boy Studios to mentor younger creators. In 1989, he collaborated as an artist with Tim Conrad on the series Etc. for DC Comics' Piranha Press.
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#7157

Beata Szymańska

#82061
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Beata Szymańska is a Polish poet, writer and philosopher. Biography Beata Szymańska left the philosophy department of the Jagiellonian University and received her doctorate in philosophy in 1977. Several years she worked as research associate at the Jagiellonian University. In 1987, she published her book ‘’Berkeley znany i nieznany’’ that was focused
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#7158

Marian Robertson Wilson

#186683
Overall Influence
1926 - 2013 (87 years)
Alice Marian Robertson Wilson was an American cellist, linguist and teacher most notable role as music editor of the eight-volume Coptic Encyclopedia. She was a daughter of Leroy Robertson and has written scholarly analyses of his works.
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#7159

Pascual Venegas Filardo

Pascual Venegas Filardo
#171277
Overall Influence
1911 - 2003 (92 years)
Pascual Venegas Filardo was a Venezuelan poet, writer, and journalist.
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#7160

Mate Matišić

#190511
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Mate Matišić is a Croatian playwright, screenwriter, composer and musician. His plays have been staged in Croatian theaters as well as internationally, and some of them have been adapted into feature films. As a composer, he is best known for his film and theatrical music. He has won five Golden Arena awards at the Pula Film Festival.
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#7161

Mary Elizabeth Carnegie

#57996
Overall Influence
1916 - 2008 (92 years)
Mary Elizabeth Carnegie was an educator and author in the field of nursing. Known for breaking down racial barriers, she was the first black nurse to serve as a voting member on the board of a state nursing association. She was later president of the American Academy of Nursing and edited the journal Nursing Research.
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#7162

Ulla-Britta Lagerroth

#186987
Overall Influence
1927 - 2021 (94 years)
Ulla-Britta Lagerroth was a Swedish literary critic. Biography Lagerroth was born in Malmö to Carl Holmström and Ingeborg Asp, and was married to . Her academic career includes professorship at the University of Lund.
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#7163

Bernard Sesé

#122856
Overall Influence
1929 - 2020 (91 years)
Bernard Sesé was a French academic, essayist, translator, and poet. Biography In 1956, Sesé earned an agrégation in Spanish. From 1958 to 1964, he taught Spanish at Mohammed V University in Rabat. He then taught at the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne and Paris Nanterre University. He founded the Iberian collection at Corti and directed biographies for Éditions Desclée de Brouwer. He became a member of the Royal Spanish Academy and published writings on Teresa of Ávila and Luis de León at Éditions Arfuyen.
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#7164

Marcela Nari

#153597
Overall Influence
1965 - 2000 (35 years)
Marcela Nari was an Argentine historian and writer who is remembered for her work at the University of Buenos Aires on the history of women and feminism in Argentina. Biography Nari was a writer on the history of feminism in Argentina. The author of Políticas de Maternidad y Maternalismo Político. Buenos Aires, 1890–1940 on political motherhood in Argentina, she had a PhD in History and was a specialist in women's studies at the National University in Buenos Aires. In addition to founding the Instituto Interdisciplinario de Estudios de Género , she promoted research and coordination at other academic centres.
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#7165

Gerhard Wohlgemuth

#191401
Overall Influence
1920 - 2001 (81 years)
Gerhard Wohlgemuth was a German composer and literary editor. He wrote several film scores. Film scores Der kleine Kuno Doctor Ahrendt's Decision Mord an Rathenau The Adventures of Werner Holt Die Ohrfeige Rotkäppchen Rüpel Das Tal der sieben Monde Turlis Abenteuer Die Toten bleiben jung Mann gegen Mann
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#7166

Kevin Klose

Kevin Klose
#177961
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Kevin Klose is an American journalist, author, broadcast executive, and academic administrator, who served as president of National Public Radio for almost a decade, overseeing a major growth era for the service.
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#7167

Jane Unrue

#191833
Overall Influence
Jane Unrue is an American writer and educator. She was born in Columbus, Ohio, grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada, and graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Brown University . She has taught at Emerson College, Boston College, and Wellesley College, and currently teaches at Harvard University, where she directs the Harvard Scholars at Risk Program and chairs the Freedom to Write Committee board for PEN New England.
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#7168

Peter Lebrecht Schmidt

#141385
Overall Influence
1933 - 2019 (86 years)
Peter Lebrecht Schmidt was a German classical scholar. He was an authority on Cicero. Publications Handbuch der lateinischen Literatur der Antike by Reinhart Herzog and Peter Lebrecht Schmidt Die Uberlieferung von Ciceros Schrift 'De Legibus' in Mittelalter und Renaissance . Peter Lebrecht Schmidt
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#7169

Zora Dirnbach

#119768
Overall Influence
1929 - 2019 (90 years)
Zora Dirnbach was a Croatian-Jewish journalist and writer, born in Osijek on 22 August 1929 to a Jewish father and Austrian-born Catholic mother who converted to Judaism in 1922. She was raised with her sister Gertruda.
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#7170

Teresa de Dios Unanue

Teresa de Dios Unanue
#190905
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Dr. Teresa de Dios Unanue is an educator, civic leader, the author of several essays published in Puerto Rico and the United States, the co-author of the book Educación Personalizada , and the co-founder and Executive President of Atlantic University College, a university institution specializing in digital arts in Puerto Rico and Caribbean.
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#7171

Xie Mian

#115351
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Xie Mian is a contemporary Chinese writer and literary scholar based in Beijing. His piece "People that Read are Happy People" included in his 1997 book Eternal Campus and originally published in the July 19, 1995 edition of the China Reader's Report is one of the potential reading selections for Putonghua Proficiency Test test-takers.
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#7172

Debra Spark

#192242
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Debra Spark is an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and editor. She teaches at Colby College and at Warren Wilson College. Biography Debra Spark was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1962. She graduated from Yale University. Her work has appeared in AGNI, Esquire, Narrative, Ploughshares, The New York Times, Food and Wine, Yankee, Down East, The Washington Post, Maine Home + Design and The San Francisco Chronicle.
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#7173

Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller

Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller
#26532
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller is a Mexican writer, journalist, researcher, and the wife of the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Personal life and education Gutiérrez Müller was born in Mexico City, the daughter of Juan Gutiérrez Canet and Nora Beatriz Müller Bentjerodt, a German Chilean. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in communications from the Ibero-American University Puebla in 1998, with her thesis Regulación del uso de los medios de comunicación en leyes electorales federales . She also graduated with a master's degree from the same university in 2002 with her thesis El arte de la memoria en la Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España .
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#7174

Carlos Blanco

#101300
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Carlos Alberto Blanco Pérez is a Spanish writer, academic and former child prodigy. He is the author of "Conciencia y Mismidad", "Athanasius" and "La integración del conocimiento". In 2015 he was elected to the World Academy of Art and Science. and he is a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts.
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#7175

Vilen Galstyan

#190055
Overall Influence
1941 - 2021 (80 years)
Vilen Galstyan was an Armenian ballet dancer and actor who was popular in the former U.S.S.R. and especially in Armenia. He was awarded by the People's Artist of Armenia honorary title. Biography Galstyan was born on 12 February 1941 in Yerevan. He trained at Yerevan Choreographic School, before he began performing with Spendiaryan Opera and Ballet Theater. He also performed internationally, including at the Bolshoi Theatre. He took part in a Canadian tour with Mikhail Baryshnikov, during which Baryshnikov defected. Galstyan stated that he was questioned by the KGB as a result. He won gold me...
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#7176

João Paulo Borges Coelho

#70081
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
João Paulo Borges Coelho is a Mozambican historian and writer. He studied history in Maputo and was awarded a PhD in economic and social history from the University of Bradford. He is professor of contemporary history at the Eduardo Mondlane University, Maputo, and editor of Arquivo, the journal of the Mozambican National Archive in Maputo, a specialist in military history and has acted as an academic adviser to the Mozambican Ministry of Defence. He is also a writer; in 2009 he won the LEYA Novel Prize.
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#7177

Rose Moss

#172563
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Rose Rappoport Moss is an American writer born in South Africa. She emigrated to America in 1961. She has published novels, short stories, words for music and nonfiction. In addition, she was a teacher at Wellesley College. Along with Barney Simon and Rose Zwi, she was one of the so-called Johannesburg group of writers. Her work has been analysed for its powerful use of language.
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#7178

Aleksandr Dyukov

Aleksandr Dyukov
#119062
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Aleksandr Reshideovich Dyukov , is a Russian author and blogger. Dyukov is considered by critics to be a historical negationist downplaying Soviet repressions. He is persona non grata in Latvia, Lithuania and other Schengen member-states.
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#7179

Simonetta Agnello Hornby

#89026
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Simonetta Agnello Hornby is an Italian novelist and food writer. Her novels are international bestsellers, translated in more than twenty languages. Biography Born in Palermo, Sicily, in 1945, Simonetta Agnello Hornby has spent most of her adult life in England where she worked as a solicitor for a community legal aid firm specialized in domestic violence that she co-founded in 1979. She has been lecturing for many years, and was a part-time judge at the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal for eight years.
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#7180

Tu Fu

#192319
Overall Influence
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#7181

Alicia Galaz Vivar

#187597
Overall Influence
1936 - 2003 (67 years)
Alicia Galaz Vivar was a Chilean poet and literary researcher. She was the founder and director of the poetry magazine Tebaida. Biography Galaz Vivar was born in Valparaiso and was a professor at the University of Chile of Arica . Along with her husband, fellow poet Oliver Welden, she became a key figure in Tebaida, a culture magazine founded in 1968. They were forced into exile in 1975 in the aftermath of the Chilean military coup of 1973.
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#7182

Marie Lee

#192337
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Marie Lee may refer to:Marie Lee Marie Madeleine Lee , Mauritian politician and diplomatVanessa Marie Lee , Singaporean netball player See also Mary Lee
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#7183

Judith McCormack

#188250
Overall Influence
Judith McCormack is a Canadian author of literary fiction. Biography McCormack's first short story was nominated for the Journey Prize, and her next three were selected for the Coming Attractions Anthology. Her collection of stories, The Rule of Last Clear Chance, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and was named one of the best books of the year by The Globe and Mail. Her work has been published in the Harvard Review, Descant and The Fiddlehead, and one of her stories has been turned into a short film by her twin sister Naomi McCormack, an award-winning filmmaker.
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#7184

Fausto Zevi

#192355
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Fausto Zevi is a contemporary Italian classical archaeologist. Presently he is professor of Archaeology and Greco-Roman art history at the University of Rome La Sapienza and has previously held posts at the University of Naples Federico II and as archaeological superintendent at Ostia, Naples, and Rome. He is a prolific scholar with more than 200 publications on archaic Rome, Roman hellenism, the topography and urban plan of Pompeii, Ostia, and Rome. He is a member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, the German Archaeological Institute, and an honorary fellow of the British School at Rom...
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#7185

Ali Akbar Entezami

#92171
Overall Influence
1943 - 2015 (72 years)
Ali Akbar Entezami was an Iranian chemist and professor at the University of Tabriz. He received a PhD in Polymer Chemistry from Louis Pasteur University. Life Entezami was born 1943 in Khoy, West Azerbaijan, Iran. He died 18 July 2015 in Tabriz. Mohammad-Reza Pour-Mohammadi, President of Tabriz University, Hamid Mirzadeh, President of Islamic Azad University, and Esmaeil Jabbarzadeh, Governor of East Azerbaijan said condolences for his death.
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#7186

Andrea Spofford

#189968
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Andrea Spofford is an American poet, essayist, and professor. Her most recent chapbook is Qikiqtagruk: Almost An Island . Her poems and essays have appeared in Vela Magazine, The Citron Review, Blood Orange Review, Red Paint Hill Poetry Journal, Sugar House Review, Composite Arts Review, The Coachella Review, The Oklahoma Review, and elsewhere. She is the poetry editor for Zone 3 Magazine.
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#7187

Brett Riley

#192410
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Brett Riley may refer to:Brett Riley Brett Riley Brett Riley
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#7188

Thomas G. Osenton

#188082
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Thomas George Osenton, nicknamed Tom, is an American publisher and author. He was president, chief executive officer and publisher of The Sporting News Publishing Company. Personal Osenton was born April 9, 1953, in Boston, Massachusetts. He is a graduate of the University of New Hampshire, Brookline High School and Phillips Exeter Academy.
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#7189

Terri Te Tau

#95223
Overall Influence
Terri Te Tau is a New Zealand contemporary artist and writer. She is a member of the Mata Aho Collective. In 2017, the collective represented New Zealand at documenta, a quinquennial contemporary-art exhibition held in Kassel, Germany. This was the first time New Zealand artists had been invited to present their work at the event.
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#7190

Zack Rogow

#158657
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Zack Rogow is an American poet, playwright, translator, and critic. He was born in New York City, and currently resides in Berkeley, California. Rogow is the author of nine books of poetry, including "Irreverent Litanies," from Regal House Publishing; and "Talking with the Radio: poems inspired by jazz and popular music" and My Mother and the Ceiling Dancers, both published by Kattywompus Press; and The Number Before Infinity, published by Scarlet Tanager Books. His translations from the French include works by George Sand, André Breton, Colette, and Marcel Pagnol. His co-translation of Earthlight by André Breton received the 1994 PEN Translation Prize.
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#7191

Paul de Man

1919 - 1983 (64 years)
Paul de Man , born Paul Adolph Michel Deman, was a Belgian-born literary critic and literary theorist. At the time of his death, de Man was one of the most prominent literary critics in the United States—known particularly for his importation of German and French philosophical approaches into Anglo-American literary studies and critical theory. Along with Jacques Derrida, he was part of an influential critical movement that went beyond traditional interpretation of literary texts to reflect on the epistemological difficulties inherent in any textual, literary, or critical activity. This approa...
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#7192

Hippolyte Taine

Hippolyte Taine
1828 - 1893 (65 years)
Hippolyte Adolphe Taine was a French historian, critic and philosopher. He was the chief theoretical influence on French naturalism, a major proponent of sociological positivism and one of the first practitioners of historicist criticism. Literary historicism as a critical movement has been said to originate with him. Taine is also remembered for his attempts to provide a scientific account of literature.
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#7193

Lope de Vega

Lope de Vega
1562 - 1635 (73 years)
Félix Lope de Vega y Carpio was a Spanish playwright, poet, and novelist who was a key figure in the Spanish Golden Age of Baroque literature. In the literature of Spain, Lope de Vega is second to Miguel de Cervantes. Cervantes said that Lope de Vega was “The Phoenix of Wits” and “Monster of Nature”
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#7194

George Sand

George Sand
1804 - 1876 (72 years)
Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Francueil , best known by her pen name George Sand , was a French novelist, memoirist and journalist. One of the most popular writers in Europe in her lifetime, being more renowned than either Victor Hugo or Honoré de Balzac in England in the 1830s and 1840s, Sand is recognised as one of the most notable writers of the European Romantic era, with more than 50 volumes of various works to her credit, including tales, plays and political texts, alongside her 70 novels.
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#7195

Tibullus

Tibullus
50 BC - 15 BC (35 years)
Albius Tibullus was a Latin poet and writer of elegies. His first and second books of poetry are extant; many other texts attributed to him are of questionable origins. Little is known about the life of Tibullus. There are only a few references to him by later writers and a short Life of doubtful authority. Neither his praenomen nor his birthplace is known, and his gentile name has been questioned. His status was probably that of a Roman eques , and he had inherited a considerable estate. Like Virgil and Propertius, he seems to have lost most of it in 41 BC in the confiscations of Mark Antony...
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#7196

Beatrix Potter

Beatrix Potter
1866 - 1943 (77 years)
Helen Beatrix Potter was an English writer, illustrator, natural scientist, and conservationist. She is best known for her children's books featuring animals, such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit, which was her first commercially published work in 1902. Her books, including 23 Tales, have sold more than 250 million copies. An entrepreneur, Potter was a pioneer of character merchandising. In 1903, Peter Rabbit was the first fictional character to be made into a patented stuffed toy, making him the oldest licensed character.
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#7197

Anatole France

Anatole France
1844 - 1924 (80 years)
was a French poet, journalist, and novelist with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters. He was a member of the Académie Française, and won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his brilliant literary achievements, characterized as they are by a nobility of style, a profound human sympathy, grace, and a true Gallic temperament".
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#7198

Valery Bryusov

Valery Bryusov
1873 - 1924 (51 years)
Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov was a Russian poet, prose writer, dramatist, translator, critic and historian. He was one of the principal members of the Russian Symbolist movement. Background Valery Bryusov was born on 13 December 1873 into a merchant's family in Moscow. His parents were educated for their class and had some literary associations, but had little to do with his upbringing, leaving the boy largely to himself. He spent a great deal of time reading "everything that fell into [his] hands", including the works of Charles Darwin and Jules Verne, as well as various materialistic and scientific essays.
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#7199

Eugenio Montale

Eugenio Montale
1896 - 1981 (85 years)
Eugenio Montale was an Italian poet, prose writer, editor and translator, and recipient of the 1975 Nobel Prize in Literature. Life and works Early years Montale was born in Genoa. His family were chemical products traders . Montale was the youngest of six sons.
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#7200

Ernst Jünger

Ernst Jünger
1895 - 1998 (103 years)
Ernst Jünger was a German author, highly decorated soldier, philosopher, and entomologist who became publicly known for his World War I memoir Storm of Steel. The son of a successful businessman and chemist, Jünger rebelled against an affluent upbringing and sought adventure in the Wandervogel German youth movement, before running away to briefly serve in the French Foreign Legion, an illegal act. Because he escaped prosecution in Germany due to his father's efforts, Jünger was able to enlist in the German Army on the outbreak of World War I in 1914. During an ill-fated offensive in 1918 Jüng...
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