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.
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List of the most influential people in Literature,
#7251
John Landquist
1881 - 1974 (93 years)
John Landquist was a Swedish literary critic, literary scholar, writer and professor of pedagogy and psychology at Lund University from 1936 to 1946. When Landquist studied at Uppsala University, he was a member of the student organization Les quatre diables together with Sven Lidman, Sigurd Agrell and Harald Brising. Landquist was engaged in Strindbergsfejden and released August Strindberg's works. In 1916 he wrote a monograph on Gustaf Fröding and was ready to introduce Sigmund Freud's theory of manners into Swedish literary history. He also translated Freud's works into Swedish.
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Wilhelm Braune
1850 - 1926 (76 years)
Theodor Wilhelm Braune was a German philologist and Germanist. Biography In 1869 Braune entered the University of Leipzig, where he was approved as an instructor in 1874. In 1877 he was appointed as extraordinary professor at the University of Giessen and became an ordinary professor of German language and literature there in 1880. He later served as a professor at the University of Heidelberg. He is an important representative of the Neogrammarians.
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Lady Caroline Lamb
1785 - 1828 (43 years)
Lady Caroline Lamb was an Anglo-Irish aristocrat and novelist, best known for Glenarvon, a Gothic novel. In 1812, she had an affair with Lord Byron, whom she described as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know". Her husband was the Honourable William Lamb, who after her death became 2nd Viscount Melbourne and British prime minister.
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Thomas McGrath
1916 - 1990 (74 years)
Thomas Matthew McGrath, was a celebrated American poet and screenwriter of documentary films. McGrath grew up on a farm in Ransom County, North Dakota. He earned a B.A. from the University of North Dakota at Grand Forks. He served in the Aleutian Islands with the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II. He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, at Oxford. McGrath also pursued postgraduate studies at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. He taught at Colby College in Maine and at Los Angeles State College, from which he was dismissed in connection with his appearance, as an unfriendly witness, before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1953.
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Nakamura Kusatao
1901 - 1983 (82 years)
Nakamura Kusatao was a Japanese haiku poet. Nakamura was born on July 27, 1901, in Amoy, Fujian Province, China, the son of a Japanese diplomat. A few years later his mother brought him to Japan, where he was educated in various schools in Matsuyama and Tokyo. One of those schools was Seinan Elementary School in Tokyo. When returning to that school twenty years later, he wrote perhaps his most famous haiku, reflecting on the falling snow and the passing of the Meiji era:In 1977, the haiku was inscribed on a stone monument at the school unveiled by Nakamura. In 1925, he attended Tokyo Univer...
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Johann Gottlob Theaenus Schneider
1750 - 1822 (72 years)
Johann Gottlob Theaenus Schneider was a German classicist and naturalist. Biography Schneider was born at Collm in Saxony. In 1774, on the recommendation of Christian Gottlob Heine, he became secretary to the famous Strasbourg scholar Richard François Brunck, and in 1811 became professor of ancient languages and eloquence at Breslau where he died in 1822.
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Su Xuelin
1897 - 1999 (102 years)
Su Xuelin or Su Hsüeh-lin was a Chinese writer and scholar. Early life Su Xuelin was born to a family of officials native to Anhui province in 1897. Her grandfather, Su Jinxin, served as a magistrate in several counties in Zhejiang province, where Su Xuelin was born. Her mother was surnamed Tu, but had no formal first name, instead going by the nickname To-Ni. Su's father held a minor official position, first under the Qing dynasty and then the Republic of China. Su had three brothers and two sisters.
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Okot p'Bitek
1931 - 1982 (51 years)
Okot p'Bitek was a Ugandan poet, who achieved wide international recognition for Song of Lawino, a long poem dealing with the tribulations of a rural African wife whose husband has taken up urban life and wishes everything to be westernised. Song of Lawino was originally written in the Acholi dialect of Southern Luo, translated by the author into English, and published in 1966. It was a breakthrough work, creating an audience among anglophone Africans for direct, topical poetry in English; and incorporating traditional attitudes and thinking in an accessible yet faithful literary vehicle. It ...
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Joseph Paul Gaimard
1793 - 1858 (65 years)
Joseph Paul Gaimard was a French naval surgeon and naturalist. Biography Gaimard was born at Saint-Zacharie on January 31, 1793. He studied medicine at the naval medical school in Toulon, subsequently earning his qualifications as a naval surgeon. Along with Jean René Constant Quoy, he served as naturalist on the ships L'Uranie under Louis de Freycinet 1817–1820, and L'Astrolabe under Jules Dumont d'Urville 1826–1829. During this voyage they discovered the now extinct giant skink of Tonga, Tachygia microlepis.
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William Warde Fowler
1847 - 1921 (74 years)
William Warde Fowler was an English historian and ornithologist, and tutor at Lincoln College, Oxford. He was best known for his works on ancient Roman religion. Among his most influential works was Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic . H. H. Scullard, in the introduction to his 1981 book on a similar topic, singled out Fowler's book as a particularly valuable resource despite its age, writing, "I have not been so presumptuous as to attempt to provide an alternative."
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May Hill Arbuthnot
1884 - 1969 (85 years)
May Hill Arbuthnot was an American educator, editor, writer, and critic who devoted her career to the awareness and importance of children's literature. Her efforts expanded and enriched the selection of books for children, libraries, and children's librarians alike. She was selected for American Libraries article “100 Most Important Leaders we had for the 20th Century”.
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Nariman Narimanov
1870 - 1925 (55 years)
Nariman Karbalayi Najaf oghlu Narimanov was an Azerbaijani Bolshevik revolutionary, writer, publicist, politician and statesman. For just over one year beginning in May 1920, Narimanov headed the government of Soviet Azerbaijan. He was subsequently elected chairman of the Union Council of the Transcaucasian SFSR. He was also Party Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union from 30 December 1922 until the day of his death.
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Helen Adolf
1895 - 1998 (103 years)
Helen Adolf was an Austrian–American linguist and literature scholar. Early life and education Helen Adolf was born in 1895 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. Her family was Jewish. Her mother, Hedwig Adolf, was an artist, while her father, Jakob Adolf, was a lawyer. Adolf had one older sister, Anna Adolf Spiegel. She was a first cousin of writer Leonie Adele Spitzer.
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Hermann Sauppe
1809 - 1893 (84 years)
Hermann Sauppe was a German classical philologist and epigraphist born in Weesenstein, near Dresden. In 1832 he earned his doctorate from the University of Leipzig, where he was a student of Gottfried Hermann , who was a profound influence to Sauppe's career. Beginning in 1833, he taught classes at a secondary school in Zurich, where in 1838 he became an associate professor at the university. In 1837 he was appointed chief librarian at the cantonal library at Zurich.
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John Latham
1740 - 1837 (97 years)
John Latham was an English physician, naturalist and author. His main works were A General Synopsis of Birds and General History of Birds . He was able to examine specimens of Australian birds which reached England in the last twenty years of the 18th century, and was responsible for providing English names for many of them. He named some of Australia's most famous birds, including the emu, sulphur-crested cockatoo, wedge-tailed eagle, superb lyrebird, Australian magpie, magpie-lark and pheasant coucal. He was also the first to describe the hyacinth macaw. Latham has been called the "grandfa...
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Robert Hayden
1913 - 1980 (67 years)
Robert Hayden was an American poet, essayist, and educator. He served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1976 to 1978, a role today known as US Poet Laureate. He was the first African American writer to hold the office.
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Albert Schultens
1686 - 1750 (64 years)
Albert Schultens was a Dutch philologist. Biography He was born at Groningen, where he studied for the church. He went on to the University of Leiden, applying himself specially to Hebrew and the cognate tongues. His thesis Dissertatio theologico-philologica de utilitate linguae Arabicae in interpretenda sacra lingua appeared in 1706. After a visit to Reland in Utrecht, he returned to Groningen ; then, having taken his degree in theology , he returned to Leiden, and devoted himself to the study of the manuscript collections there until 1711, when he became pastor at Wassenaer.
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Thomas Southerne
1660 - 1746 (86 years)
Thomas Southerne was an Irish dramatist. Biography Thomas Southerne, born on 12 February 1660, in Oxmantown, near Dublin, was an Irish dramatist. He was the son of Francis Southerne and Margaret Southerne.
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Adrian Ross
1859 - 1933 (74 years)
Arthur Reed Ropes , better known under the pseudonym Adrian Ross, was a prolific writer of lyrics, contributing songs to more than sixty British musical comedies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was the most important lyricist of the British stage during a career that spanned five decades. At a time when few shows had long runs, nineteen of his West End shows ran for over 400 performances.
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Francisco Monterde
1894 - 1985 (91 years)
Francisco de Asís Monterde García Icazbalceta was a prolific and multifaceted Mexican writer whose career spanned over fifty years. He was an important promoter of the arts and culture in Mexico in the years following the Revolution.
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Dorothy M. Johnson
1905 - 1984 (79 years)
Dorothy Marie Johnson was an American writer best known for her Western fiction. Biography Early life Dorothy Marie Johnson was born in McGregor, Iowa, the only daughter of Lester Eugene Johnson and Mary Louisa Barlow. Soon after her birth, the family moved to Montana.
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Milan Bogdanović
1892 - 1964 (72 years)
Milan Bogdanović was a Serbian writer and literary critic. Biography He finished elementary school and gymnasium in Pozarevac where his father was the then administrator of the royal estate Ljubičevo . He was a volunteer in Serbian Army during the Balkan Wars in 1912-1913. He was wounded during the First World War and he subsequently received the Medal of Miloš Obilić.
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Gustav Roethe
1859 - 1926 (67 years)
Gustav Roethe was a German philologist. Life Roethe studied classical and Germanic philology in Göttingen, Leipzig and Berlin, obtaining his PhD in 1881 . In 1888 he succeeded Karl Goedeke as an associate professor of German philology at the University of Göttingen, and two years later, succeeded Wilhelm Konrad Hermann Müller as a full professor of German language and literature. In 1902 he relocated to the University of Berlin, where in 1923/24 he served as rector.
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Jules Perrot
1810 - 1892 (82 years)
Jules-Joseph Perrot was a dancer and choreographer who later became Ballet Master of the Imperial Ballet in St. Petersburg, Russia. He created some of the most famous ballets of the 19th century including Pas de Quatre, La Esmeralda, Ondine, and Giselle with Jean Coralli.
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Francisco Pérez Bayer
1711 - 1794 (83 years)
Francisco Pérez Bayer was a Spanish philologist, jurist and writer. Works Catalog of the Royal Library of El Escorial. Damaiuis et Laurentius Hispani, Rome, 1756.Alphabet and language of the Phoenicians and their colonies, 1772.Travel literature. Valencia: Institution Alfonso the Magnanimous, 1998.Etymology of the Spanish language.Archeological journey from Valencia to Andalusia and Portugal.De Numis Hebraeo-Samaritanis, 1781From Temple Hebraeorum ToletanoInstitutions of the Hebrew language.Origin of Spanish voices derived from Hebrew.
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Robert Lowth
1710 - 1787 (77 years)
Robert Lowth was a Bishop of the Church of England, Oxford Professor of Poetry and the author of one of the most influential textbooks of English grammar. Life Lowth was born in Hampshire, England, Great Britain, the son of Dr William Lowth, a clergyman and Biblical commentator. He was educated at Winchester College and became a scholar of New College, Oxford in 1729. Lowth obtained his BA in 1733 and his Master of Arts degree in 1737. In 1735, while still at Oxford, Lowth took orders in the Anglican Church and was appointed vicar of Ovington, Hampshire, a position he retained until 1741, w...
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Sudhindranath Dutta
1901 - 1960 (59 years)
Sudhindranath Dutta was an Indian poet, essayist, journalist and critic. Sudhindranath is one of the most notable poets after the Tagore-era in Bengali literature. Education Sudhindranath Dutt went to the Theosophical High School in Varanasi between 1914 and 1917, and later attended the Oriental Seminary in Kolkata. Later he graduated from the Scottish Church College. He later studied law at the Law College , while also simultaneously preparing for his finals for an MA in English literature from the University of Calcutta. However, he did not complete a degree in either subject.
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Chiang Yee
1903 - 1977 (74 years)
Chiang Yee , self-styled as "The Silent Traveller" , was a Chinese poet, author, painter and calligrapher. The success of The Silent Traveller: A Chinese Artist in Lakeland was followed by a series of books in the same vein, all of which he illustrated himself.
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Heinrich Keil
1822 - 1894 (72 years)
Theodor Heinrich Gottfried Keil was a German classical philologist. He was a son-in-law to educator Friedrich August Eckstein . He studied classical philology at the Universities of Göttingen and Bonn, receiving his doctorate in 1843 with a textual critique on the Roman poet Propertius. From 1844 to 1846 he conducted manuscript studies at libraries in Italy. After his return to Germany, he became an instructor at the Francke Foundation Pädagogium in Halle an der Saale.
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Ants Oras
1900 - 1982 (82 years)
Ants Oras was an Estonian translator and writer. Oras was born in Tallinn and studied at the University of Tartu, graduating with a Master of Philosophy degree in 1923. He also obtained a Bachelor of Literature degree from Oxford University.
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Yoshirō Nagayo
1888 - 1961 (73 years)
Yoshirō Nagayo was a novelist and playwright active during the Shōwa period in Japan. Biography Nagayo was born in Tokyo, the fifth son of the famous doctor, Nagayo Sensai. He attended the Gakushūin Peers' School, and went on to graduate from Tokyo Imperial University. Through his school connections, he made the acquaintance of Mushanokoji Saneatsu and Shiga Naoya, and he contributed works to the Shirakaba literary journal. He is considered a typical spokesman for the humanistic philosophy of the Shirakaba school.
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W. P. Ker
1855 - 1923 (68 years)
William Paton Ker, FBA , was a Scottish literary scholar and essayist. Life Born in Glasgow in 1855, Ker studied at Glasgow Academy, the University of Glasgow, and Balliol College, Oxford. He was appointed to a fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford, in 1879. He became Professor of English Literature and History at the University College of South Wales, Cardiff, in 1883, and moved to University College London as Quain Professor in 1889. However he retained his links with Oxford and was there almost every week during the 1910s, and available to keen students there. He was later the Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1920 to his death, at 67, of a heart attack while climbing the Pizzo Bianco .
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A. N. Murthy Rao
1900 - 2003 (103 years)
Akkihebbalu Narasimha Murthy Rao was an Indian writer. He wrote in Kannada. Biography Kannadiga scholar and critic A. N. Murthy Rao, popularly known for his book "Devaru", was born on June 18, 1900, in Akkihebbal, Mandya district. He was born to M. Subbarao and Puttamma. He spent his childhood in Melukote and Nagamangala. After completing his early education at Wesley Mission School in Mysore in 1913, he joined Mysore Maharaja's College. He completed his B.A. in 1922 and M.A. in 1924.
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Samuel Daniel
1562 - 1619 (57 years)
Samuel Daniel was an English poet, playwright and historian in the late-Elizabethan and early-Jacobean eras. He was an innovator in a wide range of literary genres. His best-known works are the sonnet cycle Delia, the epic poem The Civil Wars Between the Houses of Lancaster and York, the dialogue in verse Musophilus, and the essay on English poetry A Defense of Rhyme. He was considered one of the preeminent authors of his time and his works had a significant influence on contemporary writers, including William Shakespeare. Daniel's writings continued to influence authors for centuries after his death, especially the Romantic poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth.
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Rudolf Helm
1872 - 1966 (94 years)
Rudolf Helm was a German classical philologist. Life Born Rudolf Wilhelm Oskar Helm in Berlin, he studied at the University of Berlin. After completing his studies, Helm traveled through Italy and Greece on a travel grant from the German Archaeological Institute. He was an assistant teacher for a short while. In 1897, he accepted the position of assistant to the Professor of Classical Philology at the Institute for Ancient Studies of the University of Berlin. As an assistant, Helm gave lectures, managed the institute's library, and assisted students. In 1899, he became a private lecturer unti...
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Jane Taylor
1783 - 1824 (41 years)
Jane Taylor was an English poet and novelist best known for the lyrics of the widely known "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star". The sisters Jane and Ann Taylor and their authorship of various works have often been confused, partly because their early ones were published together. Ann Taylor's son, Josiah Gilbert, wrote in her biography, "Two little poems – 'My Mother,' and 'Twinkle, twinkle, little Star' – are perhaps more frequently quoted than any; the first, a lyric of life, was by Ann, the second, of nature, by Jane; and they illustrate this difference between the sisters."
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John Suckling
1609 - 1642 (33 years)
Sir John Suckling was an English poet, prominent among those renowned for careless gaiety and wit – the accomplishments of a cavalier poet. He also invented the card game cribbage. He is best known for his poem "Ballade upon a Wedding".
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Marcel Achard
1899 - 1974 (75 years)
Marcel Achard was a French playwright and screenwriter whose popular sentimental comedies maintained his position as a highly recognizable name in his country's theatrical and literary circles for five decades. He was elected to the Académie française in 1959.
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Zenmaro Toki
1885 - 1980 (95 years)
Zenmaro Toki was a Japanese Naturalist tanka poet. After initially taking up tanka in his teens, he studied under Kun'en Kaneko, and when in attendance at Waseda University he socialized with other notable Naturalist poets such as Bokusui Wakayama. Later, he earned the respect of the famous poet Takuboku Ishikawa, with whom he corresponded until the latter's death in 1912.
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Nicholas Rowe
1674 - 1718 (44 years)
Nicholas Rowe , English dramatist, poet and miscellaneous writer, was appointed Poet Laureate in 1715. His plays and poems were well-received during his lifetime, with one of his translations described as one of the greatest productions in English poetry. He was also considered the first editor of the works of William Shakespeare.
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Veikko Antero Koskenniemi
1885 - 1962 (77 years)
Veikko Antero Koskenniemi was a Finnish poet born in Oulu. From 1921 to 1948, Koskenniemi served as Professor of Literary History at the University of Turku. He was the university's rector from 1924 to 1932. In 1948 he became a member of the Finnish Academy. He died in Turku.
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George Meredith
1828 - 1909 (81 years)
George Meredith was an English novelist and poet of the Victorian era. At first, his focus was poetry, influenced by John Keats among others, but Meredith gradually established a reputation as a novelist. The Ordeal of Richard Feverel briefly scandalised Victorian literary circles. Of his later novels, the most enduring is The Egoist , though in his lifetime his greatest success was Diana of the Crossways . His novels were innovative in their attention to characters' psychology, and also took a close interest in social change. His style, in both poetry and prose, was noted for its syntactic complexity; Oscar Wilde likened it to "chaos illumined by brilliant flashes of lightning".
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William Peterfield Trent
1862 - 1939 (77 years)
William Peterfield Trent, LL.D., D.C.L. was an American academic and the author/editor of many books. He was a professor of English literature at Sewanee: The University of the South and Columbia University. While at Sewanee, he founded the Sewanee Review in 1892, a literary journal that continues to operate.
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D. J. Opperman
1914 - 1985 (71 years)
Diederik Johannes Opperman, commonly referred to as D.J. Opperman was an Afrikaans poet. Biography He was born on 29 September 1914 in Dundee in Natal, where he grew up. He went to school in the towns of Estcourt and Vryheid, and afterwards received an M.A. degree from the University of Natal. He taught at schools in Pietermaritzburg and Johannesburg, and later on became editor of Die Huisgenoot. In 1949 he became a lecturer at the University of Cape Town. During this period he completed one of his most important publications – Digters van Dertig – in 1953.
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Yusuf al-Khal
1917 - 1987 (70 years)
Yusuf al-Khal was a Lebanese-Syrian poet, journalist, and publisher. He is considered the greatest exponent of avantgardist prose poetry as well one of the pioneers of Arabic surrealist poetry. With fellow poets Adonis and Ounsi el-Hajj, al-Khal founded the magazine Shi'r in Beirut in 1957, initiating a movement to modernize Arabic literature. His poetry has also been recognized in Near East poetry collections. He published many volumes of avant-garde poetry and translated Whitman, Eliot, Frost, and others.
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Jan Rypka
1886 - 1968 (82 years)
Jan Rypka, PhDr., Dr.Sc. was a prominent Czech orientalist, translator, professor of Iranology and Turkology at Charles University, Prague. Jan Rypka was a participant in Ferdowsi Millenary Celebration in Tehran in 1934.
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Jack Spicer
1925 - 1965 (40 years)
Jack Spicer was an American poet often identified with the San Francisco Renaissance. In 2009, My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer won the American Book Award for poetry. He spent most of his writing-life in San Francisco.
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Michael Stewart
1924 - 1987 (63 years)
Michael Stewart was an American playwright and dramatist, librettist, lyricist, screenwriter and novelist. Life and career Born Myron Stuart Rubin in Manhattan, Stewart attended Queens College, and graduated from the Yale School of Drama with a Master of Fine Arts in 1953.
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Eugène Vinaver
1899 - 1979 (80 years)
Eugène Vinaver was a Russian-born British literary scholar who is best known today for his edition of the works of Sir Thomas Malory. Early life Vinaver was born in Saint Petersburg, the son of Jewish-Russian lawyer, national politician, and Jewish community leader Maxim Vinaver, who emigrated to France in 1919.
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Jan Sztaudynger
1904 - 1970 (66 years)
Jan Izydor Sztaudynger was a Polish poet and satirist who enjoyed enormous popularity after World War II. Life Jan Sztaudynger studied Polish and German philology at Kraków's Jagiellonian University.
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