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,
#7351
Leonard William King
1869 - 1919 (50 years)
Leonard William King, FSA was an English archaeologist and Assyriologist educated at Rugby School and King's College, Cambridge. He collected stone inscriptions widely in the Near East, taught Assyrian and Babylonian archaeology at King's College for a number of years, and published a large number of works on these subjects. He is also known for his translations of ancient works such as the Code of Hammurabi. He became Assistant Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities at the British Museum.
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Barbara Leonard Reynolds
1915 - 1990 (75 years)
Barbara Leonard Reynolds , was an American author who became a Quaker, peace activist and educator. In 1951, Reynolds moved with her husband to Hiroshima where he conducted a three-year study on the effects of radiation on children who had survived the first atomic bomb. She and her family then became peace activists, sailing around the world to protest nuclear weapons. In the early 1960s, she traveled around the world with atomic bomb survivors to show world leaders, first-hand, the horrors of nuclear warfare. She then established the World Friendship Center, devoting 13 years to it, and don...
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William of Moerbeke
1215 - 1286 (71 years)
William of Moerbeke, O.P. , was a prolific medieval translator of philosophical, medical, and scientific texts from Greek into Latin, enabled by the period of Latin rule of the Byzantine Empire. His translations were influential in his day, when few competing translations were available, and are still respected by modern scholars.
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Archibald Campbell Jordan
1906 - 1968 (62 years)
Archibald Campbell Mzolisa "A.C." Jordan was a novelist, literary historian and intellectual pioneer of African studies in South Africa. Early life He was born at the Mbokothwane Mission in the Tsolo district, Pondoland , the son of an Anglican church minister. Jordan trained as a teacher at St John's College, Mthatha, completed his junior certificate at Lovedale College, Alice, and then won a scholarship to Fort Hare University College. His literary and linguistic training consisted in a BA Degree , followed by a Master's thesis, submitted to the University of Cape Town in 1942, entitled "S...
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Huang Kan
1886 - 1935 (49 years)
Huang Kan , courtesy name Jigang , born into a family of Hubei ancestry in Chengdu, Sichuan province, was a Chinese phonologist, philologist and revolutionary. As a teen, he tested into Wuchang School, a prestigious secondary school, but then was expelled for spreading anti-Qing sentiments. He then went to study in Japan and became a student of the Chinese scholar and philologist Zhang Taiyan. Huang was regarded as the most important phonologist since the high Qing and gained recognition at first through his literary criticism of the sixth century. Later on, he taught at a number of universit...
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William Vaughn Moody
1869 - 1910 (41 years)
William Vaughn Moody was an American dramatist and poet. Moody was author of The Great Divide, first presented under the title of The Sabine Woman at the Garrick Theatre in Chicago on April 12, 1906, and then on Broadway at the Princess Theatre, running for 238 performances from October 3, 1906, to March 24, 1907. His poetic dramas are The Masque of Judgment , The Fire Bringer , and The Death of Eve . His best-known poem is "An Ode in Time of Hesitation," on the Spanish-American War; others include "Gloucester Moor," "On a Soldier Fallen in the Philippines," "The Brute," "Harmonics" , "Until...
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Lao She
1899 - 1966 (67 years)
Shu Qingchun , known by his pen name Lao She, was a Chinese novelist and dramatist. He was a writer of 20th-century Chinese literature, known for his novel Rickshaw Boy and the play Teahouse . He was of Manchu ethnicity, and his works are known for their vivid use of the Beijing dialect.
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Pier Paolo Pasolini
1922 - 1975 (53 years)
Pier Paolo Pasolini was an Italian poet, film director, writer, screenwriter, actor and playwright. He is considered one of the defining public intellectuals in 20th-century Italian history, influential both as an artist and a political figure.
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J. V. Cunningham
1911 - 1985 (74 years)
James Vincent Cunningham was an Americann poet, literary critic and teacher. Background Cunningham is described as a neo-classicist or anti-modernist. His poetry was distinguished by its clarity, brevity and traditional formality of rhyme and rhythm at a time when many American poets were breaking away from traditional fixed meters.
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Monty Banks
1897 - 1950 (53 years)
Montague Banks was a 20th century Italian-born American comedian, film actor, director and producer who achieved success in the United States and Britain. Career Banks was born Mario Bianchi in Cesena, Italy. In 1914, Bianchi emigrated to the United States, first trying his luck on the New York stage. By 1918, he was an actor in Hollywood with the Arbuckle Company, performing in over 35 silent short comedies by the early 1920s, and then, starring in feature-length action comedy-thrillers as Play Safe . .
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Bruno Migliorini
1896 - 1975 (79 years)
Bruno Migliorini was an Italian linguist and philologist. He was the author of one of the first scientific histories of Italian language and was president of the Accademia della Crusca. Biography Migliorini was born in Rovigo.
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Wilhelm von Christ
1831 - 1906 (75 years)
Wilhelm von Christ was a German classical scholar. Biography The son of a baker and a miller's daughter, Christ was born in Geisenheim in Hesse-Nassau. He attended the Gymnasium in Hadamar and studied in Munich from 1850 under Karl Halm, Friedrich Thiersch, Karl von Prantl, and Leonhard Spengel, then in Berlin under Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg, August Boeckh und Franz Bopp. In 1853 he received his doctorate at Berlin for a work on Aristotle and the next year he became a teacher at the in Munich. In 1860, Christ was appointed extraordinary profossor of Classical philology at the University of Munich; he became an ordinary professor in 1863.
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Arrigo Boito
1842 - 1918 (76 years)
Arrigo Boito was an Italian librettist, composer, poet and critic whose only completed opera was Mefistofele. Among the operas for which he wrote the libretti are Giuseppe Verdi's monumental last two operas Otello and Falstaff as well as Amilcare Ponchielli's La Gioconda.
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John Hughes
1677 - 1720 (43 years)
John Hughes was an English poet, essayist and translator. Various of his works remained in print for a century after his death, but if he is remembered at all today it is for the use others made of his work. Texts of his were set by the foremost composers of the day and his translation of the Letters of Abelard and Heloise was a major source for Alexander Pope's Eloisa to Abelard.
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Oliver Elton
1861 - 1945 (84 years)
Oliver Elton, FBA was an English literary scholar whose works include A Survey of English Literature in six volumes, criticism, biography, and translations from several languages including Icelandic and Russian. He was King Alfred Professor of English at Liverpool University. He also helped set up the Department of English at the University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan.
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Jacques Prévert
1900 - 1977 (77 years)
Jacques Prévert was a French poet and screenwriter. His poems became and remain popular in the French-speaking world, particularly in schools. His best-regarded films formed part of the poetic realist movement, and include . He published his first book in 1946.
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René Clair
1898 - 1981 (83 years)
René Clair , born René-Lucien Chomette, was a French filmmaker and writer. He first established his reputation in the 1920s as a director of silent films in which comedy was often mingled with fantasy. He went on to make some of the most innovative early sound films in France, before going abroad to work in the UK and USA for more than a decade. Returning to France after World War II, he continued to make films that were characterised by their elegance and wit, often presenting a nostalgic view of French life in earlier years. He was elected to the Académie Française in 1960. Clair's best know...
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Clarence Budington Kelland
1881 - 1964 (83 years)
Clarence Budington "Bud" Kelland was an American writer. Prolific and versatile, he was a prominent literary figure in his heyday, and he described himself as "the best second-rate writer in America".
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Wilhelm Wackernagel
1806 - 1869 (63 years)
Wilhelm Wackernagel was a German-Swiss philologist specializing in Germanic studies. He was the father of Indo-Europeanist Jacob Wackernagel. He studied Classical and Germanic literature at the University of Berlin as a pupil of August Boeckh and Karl Lachmann. In 1833 he moved to Basel, where from 1835 to 1869, he was a professor of German language and literature at the university. While at Basel, he turned down offers for professorships in Berlin, Munich, Tübingen and Vienna.
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Hiram Corson
1828 - 1911 (83 years)
Hiram Corson was an American professor of literature. Life Corson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He held a position in the library of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. , was a lecturer on English literature in Philadelphia , and was professor of English at Girard College, Philadelphia , and in St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland . In 1870-1871 he was professor of rhetoric and oratory at Cornell University, where he was professor of Anglo-Saxon and English literature , of English literature and rhetoric , and from 1890 to 1903 of English literature, a chair formed for him.
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August Fick
1833 - 1916 (83 years)
Friedrich Conrad August Fick was a German philologist. He spent his life chiefly at Göttingen, where he first studied philology under Theodor Benfey; became a teacher in the Gymnasium, and eventually in 1876 professor of comparative philology at the university; in 1887 accepted a professorship in Breslau, but retired four years later; author of a variety of learned works on philology.
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James A. Blaisdell
1867 - 1957 (90 years)
James Arnold Blaisdell was an American minister, theologian, and academic administrator. He was the fourth president of Pomona College and founder and "head fellow" of the Claremont Colleges . Life and career He was born in Beloit, Wisconsin; his father was a philosophy professor at Beloit College. Blaisdell graduated from Beloit College in 1889, and went on to become a minister in Waukesha, Wisconsin for a time, until he went back to Beloit College to be the Chair of the Bible Department, as well as the director of the library, in 1903.
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Robert P. T. Coffin
1892 - 1955 (63 years)
Robert Peter Tristram Coffin was an American poet, educator, writer, editor and literary critic. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1936, he was the poetry editor for Yankee magazine. Early life Born Robert Peter Coffin, the youngest of ten children to James William Coffin, a descendant of Tristram Coffin and Alice Mary Coombs on a saltwater farm on Sebascodegan Island he earned his undergraduate degree from Bowdoin College in 1913 and then his Masters of Arts from Princeton University in 1918. In 1922 Coffin was awarded the degree of Doctor of Literature by Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
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Theodor Panofka
1800 - 1858 (58 years)
Theodor Sigismund Panofka was a German archaeologist, art historian, and philologist. He was one of the first scholars to make a systematic study of the pottery of Ancient Greece, and one of the founders of the institution later to become the German Archaeological Institute .
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José Antonio Ramos Sucre
1890 - 1930 (40 years)
José Antonio Ramos Sucre was a Venezuelan poet, professor, diplomat and scholar. He was a member of the Sucre family of Venezuela and the great-great-nephew of Antonio José de Sucre. He was educated at the Colegio Nacional, and then at the Universidad Central de Venezuela where he studied Law, Letters and Languages .
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John Carew Rolfe
1859 - 1943 (84 years)
John Carew Rolfe, Ph.D. was an American classical scholar, the son of William J. Rolfe. Rolfe graduated from Harvard University in 1881 and from Cornell University in 1885. Rolfe taught at Cornell , at Harvard , at the University of Michigan, and at the University of Pennsylvania.
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Otto Roquette
1824 - 1896 (72 years)
Otto Roquette was a German author. Life and work Roquette was born in Krotoschin, Prussian Province of Posen. The son of a district court councillor, he first went to Bromberg in 1834, and from 1846 to 1850 studied Philology and History in Heidelberg, Berlin, and Halle. After tours in Switzerland and Italy, he moved to in Berlin in 1852. He became a teacher in Dresden in 1853. He returned to Berlin in 1857 and in 1862 became a professor of literary history at the War Academy until he changed to the Vocational Academy in 1867. In 1868 he joined the Vandalia-Teutonia Berlin. From 1869 he taught at the Polytechnic in Darmstadt .
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Jakob Baechtold
1848 - 1897 (49 years)
Jakob Baechtold, surname sometimes spelled as Bächtold was a Swiss literary scholar. He studied German philology under Adolf Holtzmann at the University of Heidelberg, then continued his education at the University of Munich and in 1870 received his doctorate from the University of Tübingen with a thesis on the Lanzelet of Ulrich von Zatzikhoven. From 1872 he worked as a schoolteacher in Solothurn and Zürich, and from 1879 to 1884 he headed the feuilleton of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung .
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Behçet Necatigil
1916 - 1979 (63 years)
Behçet Necatigil was a leading Turkish author, poet and translator. Biography Behçet was born in Istanbul, Ottoman Empire, in 1916. He graduated from the Teachers' High School in Istanbul in 1940, and served as a teacher of literature at Kabatas Erkek Lisesi until the year 1972. His first poem was published in Varlık journal during his high school years in 1935. From then on, he continued to write poetry for over 40 years. Behçet is also well known for his radio dramas.
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Rabindranath Datta
1883 - 1918 (35 years)
Rabindranath Datta was an Indian Poet and educator. He mostly wrote in English. He was born in a renowned Bengali family on 1 October 1883 in Sankar Ghosh Lane, Calcutta. His father was Gyanendra Nath Dutt a member of the Hatkhola Dutt family.
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Manuel Sanchis i Guarner
1911 - 1981 (70 years)
Manuel Sanchís Guarner was a Spanish philologist, historian and writer. He was an author of a vast work ranging from studies of linguistics, literature, history, ethnography to popular culture, basically centered on the Valencian Community, but also on the rest of the territories of the ancient Crown of Aragon and the whole Iberian peninsula.
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F. P. Wilson
1889 - 1963 (74 years)
Frank Percy Wilson was a British literary scholar and bibliographer. Author of many works on Elizabethan drama and general editor of the Oxford History of English Literature, Wilson was Merton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford from 1947 to 1957.
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Vaclovas Biržiška
1884 - 1956 (72 years)
Vaclovas Biržiška was a Lithuanian attorney, bibliographer, and educator. He was a member of a notable Lithuanian family; his great-grandfather Mykolas Biržiška was a representative in the Sejm of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth when the Constitution of 3 May 1791 was accepted; his grandfather Leonardas Biržiška was an active participant in the November Uprising; and his brothers, Mykolas Biržiška and Viktoras Biržiška, were also leaders of the Lithuanian community. His father, the physician Antanas Biržiška, declined a professorship at the University of Moscow to practice medicine in the ...
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Israel Gollancz
1863 - 1930 (67 years)
Sir Israel Gollancz, FBA was a scholar of early English literature and of Shakespeare. He was Professor of English Language and Literature at King's College, London, from 1903 to 1930. Life and career Gollancz was born 13 July 1863, in London, sixth of seven children of Rabbi Samuel Marcus Gollancz , cantor of the Hambro Synagogue, London, and his wife, Johanna Koppell. He was the younger brother of Sir Hermann Gollancz and the uncle of the publisher Victor Gollancz. As a Jew, Gollancz faced significant anti-semitism in his life and career, which was reflected in his academic work through hi...
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Karl Vollmöller
1848 - 1922 (74 years)
Karl Vollmöller was a German philologist. He was educated in Tübingen, Bonn, Munich, Berlin, and Paris. He traveled in Spain in 1874-75 and became a lecturer in Strassburg in 1875. He was professor at Erlangen , and then at Göttingen until 1891, when he retired, settled in Dresden, and devoted himself to Romance philology.
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Jack A. W. Bennett
1911 - 1981 (70 years)
Jack Arthur Walter Bennett was a New Zealand–born literary scholar. Early life and education Jack Arthur Walter Bennett was born at Mount Eden, Auckland, New Zealand, the eldest son of Ernest Bennett, a foreman for a shoe manufacturer, where he was a "shoe clicker and pattern cutter", and Alexandra, née Corrall, both born in Leicester, England. The Bennetts lived in a "suburban bungalow" called "Rocky Nook". Bennett attended Mount Albert Grammar School in Auckland, New Zealand. He notably wrote the Mount Albert Grammar School hymn, which is sung at school assemblies to this day.
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Sarojini Naidu
1879 - 1949 (70 years)
Sarojini Naidu was an Indian political activist and poet who served as the first Governor of United Provinces, after India's independence. She played an important role in the Indian independence movement against the British Raj. She was the first woman to be president of the Indian National Congress and to be appointed as governor of a state.
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Ludwig Gotthard Kosegarten
1758 - 1818 (60 years)
Ludwig Gotthard Kosegarten , also known as Ludwig Theobul or Ludwig Theoboul, was a German poet and Lutheran preacher. Kosegarten was born in Grevesmühlen, in the Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. After studying theology at the University of Greifswald, he served as the pastor of Altenkirchen on the island of Rügen, then part of Swedish Pomerania.
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Daniel Georg Morhof
1639 - 1691 (52 years)
Daniel Georg Morhof was a German writer and scholar. Bibliography Morhof was born at Wismar. He first studied jurisprudence and then literae humaniores at the University of Rostock, where his elegant Latin versification procured for him in 1660 the chair of poetry. In 1665 he moved to the University of Kiel as professor of eloquence and poetry; this chair he exchanged for that of history in 1673. He died at Lübeck.
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Friedrich Hultsch
1833 - 1906 (73 years)
Friedrich Otto Hultsch was a German classical philologist and historian of mathematics in antiquity. Biography After graduating from the Dresden Kreuzschule, Friedrich Hultsch studied classical philology at the University of Leipzig from 1851 to 1855. After a probationary year at the Kreuzschule, he was employed in 1857 as a second Adjunkt at the Alte Nikolaischule in Leipzig. In 1858 he became a teacher at the Zwickau Gymnasium. In 1861 Hultsch was again employed at the Kreuzschule, where he was the rector from 1868 until his retirement in 1889. From 1879 to 1882 he also headed the newly fou...
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Clifford Herschel Moore
1866 - 1931 (65 years)
Clifford Herschel Moore was an American Latin scholar. Biography Clifford Herschel Moore was born in Sudbury, Massachusetts on March 11, 1866. He married Lorena Leadbetter on July 23, 1890. He was educated at Harvard and in Europe at Munich . He taught classics in California and Massachusetts, at Phillips Academy in Andover .
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Elkanah Settle
1648 - 1724 (76 years)
Elkanah Settle was an English poet and playwright. Biography He was born at Dunstable, and entered Trinity College, Oxford, in 1666, but left without taking a degree. His first tragedy, Cambyses, King of Persia, was produced at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1667. The success of this play led the Earl of Rochester to encourage the new writer as a rival to John Dryden. Through his influence, Settle's The Empress of Morocco was twice performed at Whitehall, and proved a great success. It is said by John Dennis to have been "the first play that was ever sold in England for two shillings, and the first...
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James Burrill Angell
1829 - 1916 (87 years)
James Burrill Angell was an American educator and diplomat. He is best known for being the longest-serving president of the University of Michigan, from 1871 to 1909. He represented the transition from small college life to nationally oriented universities. Under his energetic leadership, Michigan gained prominence as an elite public university. Angell is often cited by school administrators for providing the vision that the university should provide "an uncommon education for the common man." Angell was also president of the University of Vermont from 1866 to 1871 and helped that small school recover from its financial difficulties brought on by the Civil War.
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John Taylor
1781 - 1864 (83 years)
John Taylor was an English publisher, essayist, and writer. He is noted as the publisher of the poets John Keats and John Clare. Life He was born in East Retford, Nottinghamshire, the son of James Taylor and Sarah Drury; his father was a printer and bookseller. He attended school first at Lincoln Grammar School and then he went to the local grammar school in Retford. He was originally apprenticed to his father, but eventually he moved to London and worked for James Lackington in 1803. Taylor left after a short while because of low pay.
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John Banks
1652 - 1706 (54 years)
John Banks was an English playwright of the Restoration era. His works concentrated on historical dramas, and his plays were twice suppressed because of their implications, or supposed implications, for the contemporaneous political situation.
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Kazimierz Andrzej Jaworski
1897 - 1973 (76 years)
Kazimierz Andrzej Jaworski was a Polish philologist, teacher, poet, translator and publisher. He used the pseudonym KAJ. He was born in Siedliszcze. His parents were Edward Jaworski and Maria Jaworska née Smoleńska. He lived in Chełm. During World War I he was deported to Kharkiv, where he started studying medicine in the years 1917–1918. After he had come back to Poland, he studied Polish philology at Catholic University of Lublin
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Hyam Plutzik
1911 - 1962 (51 years)
Hyam Plutzik , a Pulitzer prize finalist, was a poet and Professor of English at the University of Rochester. Books The Three . New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1933. Death at the Purple Rim . Brooklyn: The Artisan Press, 1941. 37ppAspects of Proteus, a book of poems. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949. 94pp.Apples from Shinar: A book of poems. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1959. 59pp.Horatio. New York: Atheneum, 1961. 89pp.Hyam Plutzik: The Collected Poems, with a foreword by Anthony Hecht. Brockport, N.Y..: BOA Editions, 1987. 313pp.Apples from Shinar: Special Edition, with an afterword by David Scott Kastan.
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Arthur Freed
1894 - 1973 (79 years)
Arthur Freed was an American lyricist and Hollywood film producer. He won the Academy Award for Best Picture twice, in 1951 for An American in Paris and in 1958 for Gigi. Both films were musicals, and both were directed by Vincente Minnelli. In addition, he produced and was a co-lyricist for the film Singin' in the Rain.
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Karol Wiktor Zawodziński
1890 - 1949 (59 years)
Karol Wiktor Zawodziński, pseudonym Karol de Johne, was highly acclaimed Polish literary critic, theoretist and historian of literature. Associated with a poetical group Skamander. Biography Zawodziński was born on 1 June 1890 in Warsaw. In the years of 1908–1913 he studied a Roman philology at the university of Saint Petersburg. In 1914 he joined Polish Legions and during the years of 1918–1932 was an officer in a Polish Army.
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James Donaldson
1831 - 1915 (84 years)
Sir James Donaldson was a Scottish classical scholar, and educational and theological writer. Life Donaldson was born in Aberdeen on 26 April 1831. He was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School, Marischal College, Aberdeen, New College, London, and Berlin University. In 1854 he was appointed Rector of the Stirling High School where he remained for two years, before leaving for the Royal High School of Edinburgh, of which he was appointed Rector in 1866.
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