The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Literature,
#7351
Ken'ichi Yoshida
1912 - 1977 (65 years)
Ken'ichi Yoshida was a Japanese author and literary critic in Shōwa period Japan. Early life Yoshida was born in Tokyo as the eldest son of future Prime Minister of Japan Shigeru Yoshida, who at the time was a Japanese diplomat in Rome. His mother Yukiko, a daughter of Count Makino Nobuaki, left Tokyo soon after Ken'ichi's birth to join her husband, so he was raised at the Makino household during the first few years of his life. He started living with his parents at the age of six, when his father was posted to Qingdao, China. Thereafter he lived in Paris, London, and Tianjin before moving back to Tokyo where he graduated from secondary school.
Go to Profile#7352
Richard Brome
1590 - 1653 (63 years)
Richard Brome ; was an English dramatist of the Caroline era. Life Virtually nothing is known about Brome's private life. Repeated allusions in contemporary works, like Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, indicate that Brome started out as a servant of Jonson, in some capacity. Scholars have interpreted the allusions to mean that Brome may have begun as a menial servant but later became a sort of secretary and general assistant to the older playwright. A single brief mention of his family's need seems to show that he had a wife and children and struggled to support them.
Go to Profile#7353
Faiz Ahmad Faiz
1911 - 1984 (73 years)
Faiz Ahmad Faiz was a Pakistani poet and author of Punjabi and Urdu literature. Faiz was one of the most celebrated, popular, and influential Urdu writers of his time and his works and ideas remain widely influential today in Pakistan and beyond. Outside of literature, he has been described as "a man of wide experience" having worked as a teacher, military officer, journalist, trade unionist, and broadcaster.
Go to Profile#7354
Hernán Núñez
1475 - 1553 (78 years)
Hernán Núñez de Toledo y Guzmán was a Spanish humanist, classicist, philologist, and paremiographer. He was called el Comendador Griego, el Pinciano or Fredenandus Nunius Pincianus. He earned his degree in 1490 from the Spanish College of San Clemente in Bologna. He returned to Spain in 1498 and served as a preceptor to the Mendoza family, in Granada. In this city, he studied classical languages as well as Hebrew and Arabic. Cardinal Gonzalo Ximénez de Cisneros hired him as censor of the cardinal's press at Alcalá de Henares. There, Nuñez worked on the Complutensian Polyglot Bible, specifically on the Septuagint.
Go to Profile#7355
Alexandru Philippide
1859 - 1933 (74 years)
Alexandru I. Philippide was a Romanian linguist and philologist. Educated in Iași and Halle, he taught high school for several years until 1893, when he secured a professorship at the University of Iași that he would hold until his death forty years later. He began publishing books on the Romanian language around the time he graduated from university, but it was not until he became a professor that he drew wider attention, thanks to a study of the language's history. Although not particularly ideological, he penned sharp, witty polemics directed at various intellectual figures, both at home a...
Go to Profile#7356
Richard Heinze
1867 - 1929 (62 years)
Richard Heinze was a German classical philologist. He was a younger brother to politician Rudolf Heinze . Heinze was born on 11 August 1867 in Naumburg, Province of Saxony, Kingdom of Prussia. He studied classical philology at the University of Leipzig under Otto Ribbeck , later relocating to the University of Bonn , where he had as instructors, Hermann Usener and Franz Bücheler . Afterwards, he studied in Berlin with Theodor Mommsen , earning his habilitation in 1893 at the University of Strasbourg with a treatise on the philosopher Xenocrates.
Go to Profile#7357
Jun Ishiwara
1881 - 1947 (66 years)
Jun Ishiwara or Atsushi Ishihara was a Japanese theoretical physicist, known for his works on the electronic theory of metals, the theory of relativity and quantum theory. Being the only Japanese scientist who made an original contribution to the old quantum theory, in 1915, independently of other scientists, he formulated quantization rules for systems with several degrees of freedom.
Go to Profile#7358
Robert Nichols
1893 - 1944 (51 years)
Robert Malise Bowyer Nichols was an English writer, known as a war poet of the First World War, and a playwright. Life and career The son of the poet John Bowyer Buchanan Nichols, Robert Nichols was educated at Winchester College and Trinity College, Oxford. Commissioned into the Royal Field Artillery in 1914, Nichols served on the Western Front, including the Battle of Loos and the Battle of the Somme, until invalided home with shell shock in August 1916.
Go to Profile#7359
Karl Zangemeister
1837 - 1902 (65 years)
Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Zangemeister was a German librarian and philologist. He studied classical philology at the universities of Berlin and Bonn, receiving his doctorate in 1862 with the thesis De Horatii vocibus singularibus dissertatio. Afterwards, he worked on the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum project in Italy, and from 1868 to 1873 was a librarian at the Ducal Library in Gotha. In 1873 he relocated to the University of Heidelberg as senior librarian, being named a professor of classical philology in 1875. From 1894 to 1902 he was associated with the Central Directorate of the Königliche...
Go to Profile#7360
Johann Georg Graevius
1632 - 1703 (71 years)
Johann Georg Graevius was a German classical scholar and critic. He was born in Naumburg, in the Electorate of Saxony. Life Graevius was originally intended for the law, but made the acquaintance of Johann Friedrich Gronovius during a casual visit to Deventer, under whose influence he abandoned jurisprudence for philology. He completed his studies under Daniel Heinsius at Leiden, and among others under the Protestant theologian David Blondel at Amsterdam.
Go to Profile#7361
Horace Howard Furness
1833 - 1912 (79 years)
Horace Howard Furness was an American Shakespearean scholar of the 19th century. Life and career Horace Furness was the son of the Unitarian minister and abolitionist William Henry Furness , and brother of the architect Frank Furness . He graduated from Harvard University in 1854, embarked on a journey to Europe with Atherton Blight, and then studied in Germany. After returning to the United States, he was admitted to the Philadelphia Bar in 1858, but his growing deafness interfered with the practice of law.
Go to Profile#7362
Wilson Follett
1887 - 1963 (76 years)
Roy Wilson Follett was an American writer known for writing the draft form of what became Follett's Modern American Usage, which was unfinished at his death and was completed and edited by his friend Jacques Barzun and published posthumously.
Go to Profile#7363
Christian Matras
1900 - 1988 (88 years)
Christian Matras was a Faroese poet and academic. He was the founding professor of the University of the Faroe Islands. He is one of the most important poets in Faroese literature. Life Christian Matras was born in the village Viðareiði, Viðoy, located at far northern end of the Faroe Islands. The surname Matras goes back to an immigrant from France. He attended primary school until he moved to Tórshavn in 1912, where he attended secondary school. He was in a class with Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen and William Heinesen. In 1920, Matras moved to Sorø, Denmark, where he completed his schooling
Go to Profile#7364
D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson
1860 - 1948 (88 years)
Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson CB FRS FRSE was a Scottish biologist, mathematician and classics scholar. He was a pioneer of mathematical and theoretical biology, travelled on expeditions to the Bering Strait and held the position of Professor of Natural History at University College, Dundee for 32 years, then at St Andrews for 31 years. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, was knighted, and received the Darwin Medal and the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal.
Go to Profile#7365
Frank Bigelow Tarbell
1853 - 1920 (67 years)
Frank Bigelow Tarbell was a professor of Classic Studies at the University of Chicago from 1893 until 1918. He was also an associate professor of Greek at that institution. A historian and archeologist, Tarbell published numerous books related to his field.
Go to Profile#7366
Robert Vivier
1894 - 1989 (95 years)
Robert Vivier was a French-speaking Belgian poet and writer. He published his first collection, Le Menetrier, in 1924. He then gave: Dechirures , Au bord du temps , Le Miracle enferme , Trace par l'oubli , Chronos reve . His anxious listening to everyday life, his nostalgia for the childhood of the world, his meditations on the "glory of life" and the "very sweet eternity that breathes the world" are expressed in free verses or very classical verses .
Go to Profile#7367
Frans Michael Franzén
1772 - 1847 (75 years)
Frans Michael Franzén was a Swedish-Finnish poet and clergyman. He served as the Bishop of the Diocese of Härnösand. Biography Franzén was born in Oulu , Northern Ostrobothnia, Sweden . At thirteen he entered the Royal Academy of Turku, where he attended the lectures of Henrik Gabriel Porthan , a pioneer in the study of Finnish history and folklore. He graduated in 1789, and became eloquentiae docens in 1792.
Go to Profile#7368
Francesco Dall'Ongaro
1808 - 1873 (65 years)
Francesco Dall'Ongaro was an Italian writer, poet and dramatist. Biography Born in Mansuè, on 19 June 1808, Dall'Ongaro was educated for the priesthood, but abandoned his orders, and taking to political journalism founded the Favilla at Trieste in the Liberal interest.
Go to Profile#7369
Guillaume Budé
1467 - 1540 (73 years)
Guillaume Budé was a French scholar and humanist. He was involved in the founding of Collegium Trilingue, which later became the Collège de France. Budé was also the first keeper of the royal library at the Palace of Fontainebleau, which was later moved to Paris, where it became the Bibliothèque nationale de France. He was an ambassador to Rome and held several important judicial and civil administrative posts.
Go to Profile#7370
Albrecht von Blumenthal
1889 - 1945 (56 years)
Albrecht von Blumenthal was a Classicist professor and soldier. Early life Albrecht von Blumenthal was born in Staffelde in Vorpommern, the son of Rittmeister Vally von Blumenthal and Cornelia Kayser. His father was a Prussian nobleman, his mother a descendant of the painters Lucas Cranach the elder and younger. He was educated by a private tutor PWG Gutzke, the Wilhelmsgymnasium at Eberswalde and then nominated by the Kaiser Wilhelm I as a Rhodes Scholar reading Philosophy at Lincoln College from 1907 to 1909. He returned to Berlin University to switch to Classics and complete his degree in 1911.
Go to Profile#7371
John Davidson
1857 - 1909 (52 years)
John Davidson was a Scottish poet, playwright and novelist, best known for his ballads. He also did translations from French and German. In 1909, financial difficulties, as well as physical and mental health problems, led to his suicide.
Go to Profile#7372
Wilhelm Schmid
1859 - 1951 (92 years)
Wilhelm Schmid was a German classical scholar, born at Künzelsau. After studies at the universities of Tübingen and Strassburg, he taught at Tübingen and became a professor there in 1893. His publications include:Kulturgeschichtliche Zusammenhang und Bedeutung der griechischen Renaissance in der Römerzeit – On the cultural and historical context, and the importance of the Greek Renaissance in the Roman period.Zur Geschichte des griechischen Dithyrambus – The history of the Greek dithyramb.Verzeichniss der griechischen Handschriften der Königlichen Universitäts-Bibliothek Tübingen – Direct...
Go to Profile#7373
George Stuart Gordon
1881 - 1942 (61 years)
George Stuart Gordon was a British literary scholar. Life Gordon was educated at the University of Glasgow and Oriel College, Oxford, where he received a First Class in Classical Moderations in 1904, Literae Humaniores in 1906, and the Stanhope Prize in 1905. He was a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1907 to 1915.
Go to Profile#7374
Adolf Kiessling
1837 - 1893 (56 years)
Adolf Kiessling was a German philologist born in Culm . He was a specialist in the field of Roman literature. Biography He obtained his classical education at the University of Bonn as a student of Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker, Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl, Franz Bücheler and Otto Jahn. In 1863, he became a professor of classical philology at the University of Basel, and in 1869 began teaching classes at the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums in Hamburg. In 1872 he relocated to the University of Greifswald, where from a scientific standpoint, he spent the most important years of his life. In 1889 he b...
Go to Profile#7375
Richard Steele
1671 - 1729 (58 years)
Sir Richard Steele was an Anglo-Irish writer, playwright, and politician, remembered as co-founder, with his friend Joseph Addison, of the magazine The Spectator. Early life Steele was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1671 to Richard Steele, a wealthy attorney, and Elinor Symes ; his sister Katherine was born the previous year. He was the grandson of Sir William Steele, Lord Chancellor of Ireland and his first wife Elizabeth Godfrey. His father lived at Mountown House, Monkstown, County Dublin. His mother, of whose family background little is known, was described as a woman of "great beauty and no...
Go to Profile#7376
Guo Moruo
1892 - 1978 (86 years)
Guo Moruo , courtesy name Dingtang , was a Chinese author, poet, historian, archaeologist, and government official. Biography Family history Guo Moruo, originally named Guo Kaizhen, was born on November 10 or 16, in the small town of Shawan, located on the Dadu River some southwest from what was then called the city of Jiading , and now is the central urban area of the prefecture level city of Leshan in Sichuan Province.
Go to Profile#7377
Shen Congwen
1902 - 1988 (86 years)
Shen Congwen , formerly romanized as Shen Ts'ung-wen, was a Chinese writer who is considered one of the greatest modern Chinese writers, on par with Lu Xun. Regional culture and identity plays a much bigger role in his writing than that of other major early modern Chinese writers. He was known for combining the vernacular style with classical Chinese writing techniques. Shen is the most important of the "native soil" writers in modern Chinese literature. Shen Congwen published many excellent compositions in his life, the most famous of which is the novella Border Town. This story is about the old ferryman and his granddaughter Cuicui's love story.
Go to Profile#7378
Elias von Steinmeyer
1848 - 1922 (74 years)
Elias von Steinmeyer was a German philologist. He studied philology at the University of Berlin, and from 1870 worked as an assistant in the private state archives in Berlin. In 1873 he was named an associate professor at the University of Strasbourg, and in 1877 became a full professor of German philology at the University of Erlangen. From 1874 to 1890 he was the editor of the Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum. He is best known for Die kleineren althochdeutschen Sprachdenkmaler and the Althochdeutsche Glossen .
Go to Profile#7379
Ilia Abuladze
1901 - 1968 (67 years)
Ilia Vladimiri dze Abuladze was a distinguished Georgian historian, philologist and public figure, a Corresponding Member of the Georgian Academy of Sciences , Meritorious Science Worker of Georgia , Doctor of Philological Sciences , and professor .
Go to Profile#7380
Ludwig Uhland
1787 - 1862 (75 years)
Johann Ludwig Uhland was a German poet, philologist and literary historian. Biography He was born in Tübingen, Württemberg, and studied jurisprudence at the university there, but also took an interest in medieval literature, especially old German and French poetry. Having graduated as a doctor of laws in 1810, he went to Paris for eight months to continue his studies of poetry; and from 1812 to 1814 he worked as a lawyer in Stuttgart, in the bureau of the minister of justice.
Go to Profile#7381
Alfred John Church
1829 - 1912 (83 years)
Alfred John Church was an English classical scholar. Church was born in London and was educated at King's College, London, and Lincoln College, Oxford. He took holy orders and was an assistant-master at Merchant Taylors' School from 1857 to 1870. He subsequently served as headmaster of Henley-on-Thames Royal Grammar School from 1870 to 1873, and then of King Edward VI School, Retford, from 1873 to 1880. From 1880 until 1888 he was professor of Latin at University College, London.
Go to Profile#7382
Rudolf Schöll
1844 - 1893 (49 years)
Rudolf Schöll was a German classical scholar. He specialized in the fields of Greek and Roman legal history, classical archaeology and Greek epigraphy. He received his education at the University of Göttingen as a student of Hermann Sauppe and Ernst Curtius, followed by studies in Bonn, where his instructors included Friedrich Ritschl and Otto Jahn. In 1865 he obtained his doctorate of philosophy. Later on, he worked in Italy and Greece , first as an aide to Theodor Mommsen in the development of inscriptions and manuscripts, afterwards as a private secretary to Guido von Usedom, the Prussian ...
Go to Profile#7383
Charu Chandra Bhattacharya
1883 - 1961 (78 years)
Charu Chandra Bhattacharya was a prominent science teacher and writer of various scientific articles mainly for children in Bengali. Early life and career Bhattacharya was born to Basanta Kumar Bhattacharya and Menaka Devi on 29 June 1883 . His ancestral house was at Harinavi, South 24 Parganas, West Bengal, India. From childhood, he was an extraordinary student. He passed the "Entrance Examination" with first class from Metropolitan Institution, Calcutta in 1899. In 1901, Bhattacharya stood 12th place in the F. A. examination. He did his graduation with an Honours from Presidency College ...
Go to Profile#7384
Samuel Stehman Haldeman
1812 - 1880 (68 years)
Samuel Stehman Haldeman was an American naturalist and philologist. During a long and varied career he studied, published, and lectured on geology, conchology, entomology and philology. He once confided, "I never pursue one branch of science more than ten years, but lay it aside and go into new fields."
Go to Profile#7385
Hasuda Zenmei
1904 - 1945 (41 years)
was a Japanese nationalist, Shinto fundamentalist, and scholar of kokugaku as well as classical Japanese literature. He was also a historian, author, and military officer. Biography Hasuda was born in 1904 into the family of , abbot of the Ōtani Jōdo temple in the town of Ueki. His father possessed a sword that once belonged to Katō Kiyomasa.
Go to Profile#7386
Alberto Moravia
1907 - 1990 (83 years)
Alberto Moravia was an Italian novelist and journalist. His novels explored matters of modern sexuality, social alienation and existentialism. Moravia is best known for his debut novel Gli indifferenti and for the anti-fascist novel Il Conformista , the basis for the film The Conformist directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. Other novels of his adapted for the cinema are Agostino, filmed with the same title by Mauro Bolognini in 1962; Il disprezzo , filmed by Jean-Luc Godard as Le Mépris ; La Noia , filmed with that title by Damiano Damiani in 1963 and released in the US as The Empty Canvas in 1964 and La ciociara, filmed by Vittorio De Sica as Two Women .
Go to Profile#7387
Son Sohui
1917 - 1987 (70 years)
Son Sohui was a South Korean writer of novels and short stories. A leading woman writer in the colonial and postwar periods, she is considered one of the first Korean authors to address women's psychological struggles in fiction.
Go to Profile#7388
Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg
1802 - 1872 (70 years)
Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg was a German philosopher and philologist. Life He was born at Eutin, near Lübeck. He was placed in a gymnasium in Eutin, which was under the direction of , a philologist influenced by Immanuel Kant.
Go to Profile#7389
Joseph Campbell
1879 - 1944 (65 years)
Joseph Campbell was an Irish poet and lyricist. He wrote under the Gaelic form of his name Seosamh Mac Cathmhaoil Campbell being a common anglicization of the old Irish name MacCathmhaoil. He is now remembered best for words he supplied to traditional airs, such as My Lagan Love and Gartan Mother's Lullaby; his verse was also set to music by Arnold Bax and Ivor Gurney.
Go to Profile#7390
Arthur Ludwich
1840 - 1920 (80 years)
Arthur Ludwich was a German classical philologist who specialized in Homeric studies. He is remembered for his observations involving the metric and prosody of Homer. He studied theology and classical philology at the University of Königsberg, where his instructors included Karl Lehrs and Ludwig Friedlander. In 1874–75 he conducted Homeric research in Italy, and during the following year, became an associate professor at the University of Breslau. In 1878 he succeeded Lehrs as professor of Greek philology at Königsberg.
Go to Profile#7391
Josef Pekař
1870 - 1937 (67 years)
Josef Pekař was a prominent Czech historian of the turn of 19th and 20th century, professor and rector of Charles University in Prague. Life and work After graduating at high school in Mladá Boleslav, which now bears his name, Pekař studied history in Prague. He started the career of historian already during studies, when his article, published in 1890 in Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk's magazine Athenaeum, proved by historical findings, that so called "Manuscript of Králův Dvůr" , allegedly from the 13th century, whose authenticity has long led disputes in the Czech society, is a counterfeit. Pekař ...
Go to Profile#7392
Victor Serge
1890 - 1947 (57 years)
Victor Serge , born Victor Lvovich Kibalchich , was a Russian revolutionary Marxist, novelist, poet and historian. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks five months after arriving in Petrograd in January 1919 and later worked for the Comintern as a journalist, editor and translator. He was critical of the Stalinist regime and remained a revolutionary Marxist until his death. He is best remembered for his Memoirs of a Revolutionary and series of seven "witness-novels" chronicling the lives of Soviet people and revolutionaries and of the first half of the 20th century.
Go to Profile#7393
Peter Paul Maria Alberdingk Thijm
1827 - 1904 (77 years)
Peter Paul Maria Alberdingk Thijm was a Dutch academic and writer. Life He made his studies in his home city, at first at the Gymnasium and later at the Athenaeum, from which he graduated in letters and history in 1857. For some years he was instructor in history in Maastricht. After being called to a professorship in the Catholic University of Leuven in 1870, he succeeded in establishing a chair for the special study of the history of the literature of the Netherlands.
Go to Profile#7394
J. Dover Wilson
1881 - 1969 (88 years)
John Dover Wilson CH was a professor and scholar of Renaissance drama, focusing particularly on the work of William Shakespeare. Born at Mortlake , he attended Lancing College, Sussex, and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He taught at King's College London before becoming Regius Professor of English literature at the University of Edinburgh.
Go to Profile#7395
Ali-Shir Nava'i
1441 - 1501 (60 years)
'Ali-Shir Nava'i , also known as Nizām-al-Din ʿAli-Shir Herawī was a Timurid poet, writer, statesman, linguist, Hanafi Maturidi mystic and painter who was the greatest representative of Chagatai literature.
Go to Profile#7396
Nicholas Moore
1918 - 1986 (68 years)
Nicholas Moore was an English poet, associated with the New Apocalyptics in the 1940s, whose reputation stood as high as Dylan Thomas’s. He later dropped out of the literary world. Biography Moore was born in Cambridge, England, the elder child of the philosopher G. E. Moore and Dorothy Ely. His paternal uncle was the poet, artist and critic Thomas Sturge Moore, his maternal grandfather was OUP editor and author George Herbert Ely and his brother was the composer Timothy Moore .
Go to Profile#7397
William Whitehead
1715 - 1785 (70 years)
William Whitehead was an English poet and playwright. He became Poet Laureate in December 1757 after Thomas Gray declined the position. Life The son of a baker, Whitehead was born in Cambridge and through the patronage of Henry Bromley, afterwards Baron Montfort, was admitted to Winchester College aged fourteen.
Go to Profile#7398
Bin Ueda
1874 - 1916 (42 years)
Bin Ueda was a Japanese writer. Born in Tsukiji, Tokyo, he graduated from Tokyo Imperial University. His major work is Kaichoon 海潮音 , a collection of translations from Western poets by Ueda himself.
Go to Profile#7399
Robert Dwyer Joyce
1830 - 1883 (53 years)
Robert Dwyer Joyce was an Irish poet, writer, and collector of traditional Irish music. Life He was born in County Limerick, Ireland, where his parents, Garret and Elizabeth Joyce, lived in the northern foothills of the Ballyhoura Mountains, west of Ballyorgan. Robert had three brothers: Michael, John and Patrick, a noted scholar. The family claimed descent from one Seán Mór Seoighe , a stonemason from Connemara, County Galway.
Go to Profile#7400
Charles, Duke of Orléans
1394 - 1465 (71 years)
Charles of Orléans was Duke of Orléans from 1407, following the murder of his father, Louis I, Duke of Orléans. He was also Duke of Valois, Count of Beaumont-sur-Oise and of Blois, Lord of Coucy, and the inheritor of Asti in Italy via his mother Valentina Visconti.
Go to Profile