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,
#7401
John Abercrombie
1780 - 1844 (64 years)
John Abercrombie was a Scottish physician, author, philosopher and philanthropist. His Edinburgh practice became one of the most successful medical practices in Scotland. The Chambers Biographical Dictionary says of him that after James Gregory's death, he was "recognized as the first consulting physician in Scotland". As surgeon to The Royal Public Dispensary and the New Town Dispensary he provided free medical care for the poor of the town and taught medical students and apprentices. He published extensively on medical topics and latterly on metaphysics morality and religion. A devout Christian, he gave financial support to missionary work.
Go to Profile#7402
Johann Karl Zeune
1736 - 1788 (52 years)
Johann Karl Zeune was a German academic and philologist. External links
Go to Profile#7403
David Lewis
1682 - 1760 (78 years)
David Lewis was an 18th-century British poet. Life Lewis was the son of Roger Lewis of Llanddewi Felffre, in the county of Pembrokeshire, and was probably born in Wales. He studied at Jesus College, Oxford, matriculating in 1698 and obtaining his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1702. He was undermaster at Westminster School . During this time, he started to publish poetry, beginning in 1726 with Miscellaneous Poems by Several Hands, which mixed various styles of poetry from different London-based poets from Oxford and Cambridge. Some unidentified poems were by Lewis himself. The collection co...
Go to Profile#7404
John Wedderburn
1505 - 1556 (51 years)
John Wedderburn was a Scottish poet and theologian. Life The second son of James Wedderburn and Janet Barry, he was born in Dundee about 1500. He studied at the pædagogium , St Andrews, graduated B.A. in 1526 and M.A. in 1528. While at college he came under the teaching of John Mair and Patrick Hamilton the martyr, and, like his elder brother, became an ardent reformer. Returning to Dundee, he was placed under the tuition of Friar Hewat of the Dominican monastery there, and he took orders as a priest. He was chaplain of St Matthew's Chapel, Dundee, in 1532.
Go to Profile#7405
Zaheen Shah Taji
1902 - 1978 (76 years)
Baba Zaheen Shah Yousufi Taji , born Muhammad Tuaseen , was a great sufi of sub-continent as well as an Urdu poet, philosopher and scholar of high repute. Biography He was born in Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan India. He was in direct lineage from Caliph Umar Farooq and was adapted in Chishtia he was also part of family of Great sufi Saint Khawaja Hameed uddin Nagori who adopt order of Sufism by Syed Muhammad Moinuddin Chishti Ajmeri. Zaheen Shah Taji was the disciple of Baba Yousuf Shah Taji, who was disciple of Tajuddin Baba of Nagpur.
Go to Profile#7406
John of Schoonhoven
1356 - 1432 (76 years)
John of Schoonhoven was a Flemish theologian and writer. After a philosophical education at the University of Paris he entered the convent of the regular canons at Groenendaal near Brussels , where he met John of Ruysbroeck. In 1386 he became prior and master to the novices. After the accession Groenendaal to the Windesheimer congregation he wrote many sermons, some of which became the most well-known writings at the general chapter. Beside these and other sermons, spiritual writings and letters, he wrote the then celebrated Epistola responsalis super epistolam cancellarii.
Go to Profile#7407
Jonathan Carl Zenker
1799 - 1837 (38 years)
Jonathan Carl Zenker was a German naturalist born in Sundremda, located in the Saalfeld-Rudolstadt district. Originally a student of theology at the University of Jena, he subsequently devoted his energies to science and medicine. From 1823 he lived in Dresden, later returning to Jena, where on the basis of his dissertation "Batrachomyologia", he became a privat-docent of natural history. In 1828 he became an associate professor of botany and natural history, followed by a full professorship in 1836 .
Go to Profile#7408
Helena Theresa Goessmann
1868 - 1926 (58 years)
Helena Theresa Goessmann was an American lecturer, academic, and writer. During the course of 12 years, she gave over 1,000 lectures and talks on historical, educational, literary, and ethical subjects, in the US, including a period of four months in the winter of 1906, when she delivered in the leading Catholic girls' academies, between New York City, Saint Paul, Minnesota, Omaha, Nebraska, and New Orleans, Louisiana, a course, aggregating 125 lectures, on the "Ethics of Scholarship and Education Today". Goessmann served as the head of the department of History, Notre Dame College, Baltimore and professor of English at State College of Massachusetts .
Go to Profile#7409
Otto Walper
1546 - 1624 (78 years)
Otto Walper was a German theologian and philosopher. Otto Walper was born in Rotenburg an der Fulda, and studied at the University of Marburg, where he later became the main professor of Greek and Hebrew , having received a Ph.D. degree at the University of Basel in 1582. Being a Lutheran, Walper left Marburg in 1593 after the ruling Prince of Hesse-Kassel converted to Calvinism and professors at the territory's university were expected to follow suit. Walper went to Lübeck, where he became principal of the Catharineum Latin school.
Go to Profile#7410
George Edmond Pierce
1794 - 1871 (77 years)
Rev. George Edmond Pierce was an American minister and the second President of Western Reserve College, now Case Western Reserve University. Pierce was born in Southbury, Conn, September 9, 1794. His father was Samuel Pierce, and his mother Martha, daughter of Robert Edmond, from Ireland. He graduated from Yale College in 1816. After graduation, he taught in Fairfield Academy for two years, and was for the next three years a member of Andover Theological Seminary. He was ordained pastor of the Congregational Church in Harwinton, Conn., July 10, 1822, and continued so until June 1834, when he was dismissed to accept the Presidency of the Western Reserve College, in Hudson, Ohio.
Go to Profile#7411
J. R. E. Lee
1864 - 1944 (80 years)
John Robert Edward Lee Sr. was an early leader in African-American education. He served as the third President of Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, a historically black college, from 1924 to 1944.
Go to Profile#7412
Worth Tuttle Hedden
1896 - 1985 (89 years)
Worth Tuttle Hedden was an American writer who released four books between the 1940s and 1950s. Of her works, Wives of High Pasture became available in 1944 while The Other Room came out in 1947. The following year,The Other Room received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for fiction. After publishing Love is a Wound in 1952, Two and Three Make One was made public in 1956 under her pen name Winifred Woodley. Apart from books, Tuttle wrote for the Encyclopædia Britannica between 1927 and 1928 while also writing for magazines such as The World Tomorrow. She advocated for civil rights. She won a Sou...
Go to Profile#7413
Dennis Day
1916 - 1988 (72 years)
Dennis Day was an American actor, comedian and singer. He was of Irish descent. Early life Day was born and raised in the Throggs Neck Clason Point section of the Bronx, New York City, the second of five children born to Irish immigrants Patrick McNulty and Mary McNulty. His father was a factory electric power engineer. Day graduated from the Cathedral Preparatory School and Seminary and attended Manhattan College in the Bronx, where he sang in the glee club.
Go to Profile#7414
James Jamieson
1875 - 1966 (91 years)
James Dalgleish Hamilton Jamieson FRSE FDSE was a Scottish dentist and author. Life He was born on 10 September 1875 at 52 Rankeillor Street, a ground floor and basement flat in Edinburgh’s South Side, the son of Agnes Boyd and her husband, James Jamieson , a surgeon. He was educated at George Watsons College. He then studied dentistry at the University of Edinburgh, graduating in 1899.
Go to Profile#7415
John Hill
1747 - Present (279 years)
John Hill FRSE was a Scottish minister and classicist. In 1783 he was one of the joint founders of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Life He was born in St Andrews on 27 April 1747 the son of Rev John Hill , minister of St Andrews, and his wife Elizabeth Gowdie, daughter of John Gowdie. His mother died at or soon after his birth. His father remarried and had more children, including George Hill. He attended St Andrews Grammar School then the University of St Andrews where he graduated MA around 1767.
Go to Profile#7416
Thomas Morong
1827 - 1894 (67 years)
Rev. Thomas Morong was an American botanist and clergyman. Biography Morong was born in Cahawba, Alabama to a Massachusetts-born father, Thomas Morong, and a Maryland-born mother Jane Travers. His father owned a store and a plantation. After the death of his father, 15-year-old Morong and his family moved to Woburn, Massachusetts.
Go to Profile#7417
Nathaniel Sheldon Wheaton
1792 - 1862 (70 years)
Nathaniel Sheldon Wheaton was an American priest. He was born in Washington, Connecticut. He graduated from Yale College in 1814. He pursued a course of theological study in Maryland, where he resided four years, and was ordained by Bishop Clagett, deacon and priest in the Protestant Episcopal Church. In 1818 he was chosen rector of Christ Church, Hartford, Connecticut, and for over twelve years he discharged with marked efficiency the duties of that post. He resigned the rectorship in 1831 to become the second President of Trinity College, then called Washington College, succeeding Bishop Thomas Church Brownell.
Go to Profile#7418
Arthur Wallace Peach
1886 - 1956 (70 years)
Arthur Wallace Peach was an American poet, the first English chair at Norwich University, and the director of the Vermont Historical Society. His poetry has been covered extensively in scholarly sources, and have been published in many poetry collections.
Go to Profile#7419
Richard Malcolm Johnston
1822 - 1898 (76 years)
Richard Malcolm Johnston was an American author. Biography Johnson was born in Powelton, Hancock County, Georgia. His father was a Baptist minister, and his early education was received at a country school and finished at Mercer University. After graduating there he spent a year teaching and then took up the study of law and was admitted to the bar in 1843. In 1857, he accepted an appointment to the chair of belles-lettres and oratory at the University of Georgia in Athens, retaining it until the opening of the Civil War, when he began a school for boys on his farm near Sparta. This he kept going during the war, serving also for a time on the staff of Confederate general Joseph E.
Go to Profile#7420
James C. Greenough
1829 - 1924 (95 years)
James Carruthers Greenough was an American educator who served as the third principal of the Rhode Island Normal School, sixth president of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, and seventh principal of the Westfield State Normal School. He was also an outspoken advocate of Christian teachings in public academic institutions, a fellow of the American Institute of Instruction, and author of a treatise on the British education system.
Go to Profile#7421
Walter Allen Jenkins
1891 - 1958 (67 years)
Walter Allen Jenkins was an English academic. He served as the 7th vice-chancellor of the University of Dhaka during 1953–1956. Education Jenkins graduated from Emmanuel College in London. Later he obtained a D.Sc. degree from Sheffield University in 1925 and Legum Doctor degree from Cambridge University.
Go to Profile#7422
Liu Bowen
1311 - 1375 (64 years)
Liu Ji , courtesy name Bowen, better known as Liu Bowen, was a Chinese military strategist, philosopher, and politician who lived in the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties. He was born in Qingtian County . He served as a key advisor to Zhu Yuanzhang, the Hongwu Emperor, the founder of the Ming dynasty, in the latter's struggle to overthrow the Yuan dynasty and unify China proper under his rule. Liu is also known for his prophecies and has been described as the "Divine Chinese Nostradamus". He and Jiao Yu co-edited the military treatise known as the Huolongjing .
Go to Profile#7423
Herbert Warren
1853 - 1930 (77 years)
Sir Thomas Herbert Warren, KCVO was a British academic and administrator who was president of Magdalen College, Oxford for 43 years and vice-chancellor of Oxford University . Early life and education Warren was born in Bristol, the eldest son of magistrate Algernon William Warren, , and Cecil Thomas, both born in Carmarthenshire, Wales. Architect Edward Prioleau Warren was his younger brother. His sister, Anna Letitia Warren, studied at Somerville College, Oxford. At age 15, he entered the newly opened Clifton College, under its first headmaster John Percival. At Clifton, he played rugby an...
Go to Profile#7424
Benedetto Stay
1714 - 1801 (87 years)
Benedetto Stay was a Ragusan Roman Catholic clergyman, educated by Jesuits, he attended the academic assemblies of Marin Sorgo, beginning the composition of a poem on Alexander Farnese. Later on, he published "Saggio sull'uomo", based on the system of Descartes.
Go to Profile#7425
Matija Grbić
1505 - 1559 (54 years)
Matthias Garbitius or Matija Grbić was a German humanist, classical philologist and translator. Born in Istria, he emigrated to Nuremberg. Between 1545 and 1557 he was the dean of the philosophical faculty at the University of Tübingen. He is the first known Protestant from the Balkans.
Go to Profile#7426
N. E. Cameron
1903 - 1983 (80 years)
N. E. Cameron was a writer from Guyana who wrote on almost every topic from history and mathematics to politics. Biography Early years and education Norman Eustace Cameron was born in New Amsterdam, Guyana. He attended Queen's College in Georgetown, and in 1921 won the Guyana Scholarship, achieving First-Class Honours at the Oxford and Cambridge Higher Examination, with five distinctions in Latin, French, English, Mathematics and Religious Knowledge, placing him first among candidates from Barbados and Guyana.
Go to Profile#7427
Klaus Wittkugel
1910 - 1985 (75 years)
Klaus Wittkugel was one of the most important commercial and poster artists in the German Democratic Republic . For many years he was also a professor at the Berlin-Weißensee Arts Academy. Life Wittkugel was born in Kiel in the extreme north of the country. His father was a businessman. Klaus Wittkugel himself undertook a commercial training in Hamburg between 1927 and 1929, while also attending the Hamburg State Arts Academy, and then studied in Essen at the Folkwang University of the Arts till 1932. Here he was a master-scholar of Max Burchartz. He then relocated to Berlin where between 1932 and 1935 he was employed as a commercial artist by a retail chain.
Go to Profile#7428
Adam of Dryburgh
1140 - 1212 (72 years)
Adam of Dryburgh , in later times also known as Adam the Carthusian, Adam Anglicus and Adam Scotus, was an Anglo-Scottish theologian, writer and Premonstratensian and Carthusian monk. Life He was born around 1140 in the Anglo-Scottish border area to parents whose names and identities are unknown. The details of his earliest education are not known. He is known to have rejected a clerical life in favour of monasticism, entering the Premonstratensian house of Dryburgh Abbey as a young man and becoming a priest there in 1165 at the age of twenty-five.
Go to Profile#7429
Heinrich Landesmann
1821 - 1902 (81 years)
Heinrich Landesmann , more commonly known by his pseudonym, Hieronymus Lorm, was an Austrian poet and philosophical writer. From his earliest childhood he was very sickly; at the age of fifteen his sight and hearing were almost completely destroyed; and later in life he became totally blind. He developed the Lorm alphabet, a form of tactile signing named after him.
Go to Profile#7430
Luigi Chiarini
1900 - 1975 (75 years)
Luigi Chiarini was an Italian film theorist, essayist, screenwriter and film director. Life and career Born in Rome, Chiarini wrote extensively about film theory and in 1935 he founded the drama school Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome. He later founded and directed the Centro's official journal Bianco e Nero and the magazine Rivista del cinema italiano. In 1961 he was appointed the first chair of film studies in Italy, at the University of Pisa.
Go to Profile#7431
Edwin Whitfield Fay
1865 - 1920 (55 years)
Edwin Whitfield Fay was a United States philologist. Biography He graduated from Southwestern Presbyterian University in 1883, received the degree of Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University in 1890, and studied at the University of Leipzig in 1891–92. In 1890-91 he was instructor in Sanskrit and classics at the University of Michigan, in 1892-93 he was acting associate professor of Latin at the University of Texas, in 1893-99 professor of Latin at Washington and Lee College, and beginning 1899 professor of Latin at the University of Texas until his death in Pittsburgh while visiting his sister.
Go to Profile#7432
Martin R. P. McGuire
1897 - 1969 (72 years)
Martin Rawson Patrick McGuire was an American classicist and the senior editor of The New Catholic Encyclopedia, for which he wrote 114 articles. Early life Martin Rawson Patrick McGuire was born in 1897.
Go to Profile#7433
Judy Canova
1913 - 1983 (70 years)
Judy Canova , born Juliette Canova , was an American comedienne, actress, singer, and radio personality. She appeared on Broadway and in films. She hosted her own self-titled network radio program, a popular series broadcast from 1943 to 1955.
Go to Profile#7434
Leopoldo Maggi
1840 - 1905 (65 years)
Leopoldo Maggi was an Italian physician, craniologist and naturalist. He completed his studies in the University of Pavia. In 1863 he obtained two degrees: in Natural sciences and in Medicine and surgery and became assistant first to Paolo Panceri the teacher of several other outstanding Italian zoologists of the end of the 19th century and then to Giuseppe Balsamo Crivelli. In 1864 he was appointed lecturer in Mineralogy and Geology at Pavia, where from 1874 he held the professorship of Zoology and Comparative anatomy. When zoology became a separate subject in 1875 he held the chair of Com...
Go to Profile#7435
Thomas Jordan
1614 - 1685 (71 years)
Thomas Jordan was an English poet, playwright and actor, born possibly in London or Eynsham in Oxfordshire about 1612 or 1614. Early career Jordan was a boy actor in the King's Revels Company, which played at the Salisbury Court and Fortune theatres, and continued with the company as an adult. He is known to have performed the part of Lepida, the mother of Messalina, in Thomas Rawlins's Messalina some time between 1634 and 1636. In 1637, Jordan published his earliest known work, Poeticall Varieties, or Variety of Fancies, which shows his theatrical background. It was dedicated to John Ford of Gray's Inn, a cousin of John Ford the dramatist.
Go to Profile#7436
Harold Winston Rhodes
1905 - 1987 (82 years)
Harold Winston Rhodes was a New Zealand university professor of English, writer and editor. He was born in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia in 1905.
Go to Profile#7437
Jerry Wald
1911 - 1962 (51 years)
Jerome Irving Wald was an American screenwriter and a producer of films and radio programs. Life and career Early life Born to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, he had a brother and sons who were active in show business. He attended James Madison High School.
Go to Profile#7438
Georg Thym
1520 - 1560 (40 years)
Georg Thym was a German teacher, poet and writer. Life Thym attended school in his home town and then, from 1540, attended the University of Wittenberg, where he met Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon, who remained his lifelong friends. After graduating from his "Grundstudium", in 1544 Thym took up a post as under-teacher in Magdeburg, where he was a colleague of Martin Agricola.
Go to Profile#7439
John Abercrombie
1726 - 1806 (80 years)
#7440
Herbert Baker
1920 - 1983 (63 years)
Herbert Baker was a songwriter and screenwriter for television and films. Biography The only son of composer Maurice Abrahams and singer Belle Baker, Herbert attended Yale School of Drama, receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts. His first Broadway credit was in 1944 as the lyricist of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's arrangement of Offenbach's La Belle Helene as well as other songs and musical pieces for the Broadway musical,Goes to Troy
Go to Profile#7441
Gustav Anton von Seckendorff
1775 - 1823 (48 years)
Gustav Anton von Seckendorff was a German author, actor and declaimer. Life Gustav Anton Freiherr von Seckendorff was an offspring of the Gudent branch of the House of Seckendorff, which had its residence at Meuselwitz, Thuringia. Gustav Anton was born at Meuselwitz as the seventh child of Friedrich Carl von Seckendorff , a colonel in the service of the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg. His brother Adolf Christian , who had a military career, also became known as a writer, and his works are sometimes confused with those of Gustav Anton.
Go to Profile#7442
John Owen
1821 - 1883 (62 years)
John Owen, also known by his bardic name Owain Alaw Pencerdd , was a Welsh-language poet and also a musician. Early life Owen was born and raised in Chester, England, just across the border from Wales. He was apprenticed as a young man to a cutler, but he also studied music and the organ, and became the organist at the Countess of Huntingdon's Chapel, as well as conductor of the Octagon Orchestral Society. He married a Miss Williams in 1842, and in 1844 gave up his business to devote himself to music full time.
Go to Profile#7443
Arthur E. Sutherland Jr.
1920 - 1973 (53 years)
Arthur Eugene Sutherland Jr. was an American lawyer, law professor, and author. Biography Arthur E. Sutherland Jr. was the youngest son of Arthur E. Sutherland a Justice of the New York State Supreme Court. He was born and raised in Rochester New York.
Go to Profile#7444
Jérémie-Jacques Oberlin
1735 - 1806 (71 years)
Jérémie-Jacques Oberlin was an Alsatian philologist and archaeologist. He was also known as Jeremias Jakob Oberlin in German. The brother of Jean Frédéric Oberlin, he was born at Strasbourg. While studying theology at the university he devoted special attention to Biblical archaeology. In 1755 he was chosen professor at the gymnasium of his native town, in 1763 librarian to the university, in 1770 professor of rhetoric, and in 1782 of logic and metaphysics.
Go to Profile#7445
Georg Forster
1510 - 1568 (58 years)
Georg Forster was a German editor, composer and physician. Forster was born at Amberg, in the Upper Palatinate. While a chorister at Elector Ludwig V’s court in Heidelberg around 1521, he was a colleague of Caspar Othmayr who would also become a composer of renown. Forster received his first instruction in composition from the Kapellmeister Lorenz Lemlin. Forster died at Nuremberg.
Go to Profile#7446
Johan Jakob Nervander
1805 - 1848 (43 years)
Johan Jakob Nervander was a Finnish poet, physicist and meteorologist. He was born to Johan Nervander, a pharmacist in Uusikaupunki, and his wife Beata Bergbom. In 1820 Nervander became a student at the Royal Academy of Turku where he was a friend of Johan Ludvig Runeberg.
Go to Profile#7447
Richard S. Morse
1911 - 1988 (77 years)
Richard S. Morse was an American inventor and scientist credited with the invention of orange juice concentrate, the founder of the Minute Maid, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, Assistant Secretary of the Army, and senior lecturer at Sloan School of Management of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#7448
Ippolit Sokolov
1902 - 1974 (72 years)
Ippolit Vasilevich Sokolov was a Soviet theatre critic, screenwriter and poet. He became involved with the Moscow-based Central Institute of Labour. Ippolit Sokolov was born into a working-class family. He started his literary activity when he was 14. In 1918 he moved to Moscow where he studied at the Socialist Academy in the political and legal department.
Go to Profile#7449
Johann Frischmuth
1619 - 1687 (68 years)
Johann Frischmuth was a German Orientalist. Life Johann Frischmuth was born in Wertheim a small town and regional centre in the hills to the west of Würzburg. His father, a baker, was also called Johann Frischmuth: his mother was born Margaretha Buttel. The years 1618 to 1648 were dominated by the Thirty Years' War, as a result of which during his childhood he was moved from one place to another. It was to avoid the plague that the marauding armies brought in their wake that the family made their first move and left Wertheim. While they were living in the village of Reichenholz Frischmuth obtained schooling from the local priest.
Go to Profile#7450
Richard Smith
1886 - 1937 (51 years)
Richard Smith , also known as Dick Smith, was a screenwriter, actor, and film director. Smith was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and became a comedian active in the vaudeville era. He met his wife Alice Howell in 1910 and the two performed together as Howell and Howell. After working under direction of Mack Sennett at the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company in New York City, Smith moved to Los Angeles, California. Smith and his wife starred in reels together produced by L-KO Kompany.
Go to Profile