The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
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List of the most influential people in Literature,
#7401
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#7402
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#7403
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.
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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.
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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#7406
Lyman Beecher Kellogg
1841 - 1918 (77 years)
Lyman Beecher Kellogg was the first president, as well as the first teacher, of Kansas State Normal , now known as Emporia State University, in Emporia, Kansas, United States. After serving as KSN's president, Kellogg went on to become an attorney, state representative and senator, and the Kansas Attorney General.
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Dorothy Thursby-Pelham
1884 - 1972 (88 years)
Dorothy Elizabeth Thursby-Pelham was a scientist at the Zoological Laboratory, University of Cambridge and subsequently at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food - Directorate of Fisheries laboratory in Lowestoft who has been called 'England's first female sea-going fisheries scientist' and was an active member of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea .
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James Phinney Munroe
1862 - 1929 (67 years)
James Phinney Munroe was an American author, businessman, professor and genealogist of the Clan Munro. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and graduated in 1882, although remained active in the affairs of the school. He published a number of mostly scholarly works. He was the father-in-law of Frederic Lansing Day who married his daughter Katharine. Munroe, who lived in Lexington, Massachusetts, was a president of the Lexington Historical Society and Treasurer and President of the Munroe Felt and Paper Company. He edited the second edition of Charles Hudson's History of Lexin...
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Walter Tobagi
1947 - 1980 (33 years)
Walter Tobagi was an Italian journalist and writer. He was killed in a terrorist attack by the Brigade XXVIII March, a left-wing terrorist group. Biography Youth Walter Tobagi was born on 18 March 1947 in San Brizio, a neighborhood of the Italian district of Spoleto in Umbria, Italy. As an eight-year-old child he moved with his family in Bresso, close to the Italian city of Milan, mainly because of his father's work as a railway worker. His career as a journalist began during his early high school years, as the editor of the Parini high school's newspaper La zanzara, which became notorious f...
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Virgínia Rau
1907 - 1973 (66 years)
Virgínia de Bivar Robertes Rau was a Portuguese archaeologist and historian. She was an expert on Portuguese and Portuguese colonial history and author of many history books. She was the daughter of Luís Rau, Jr. of German descent, and his wife Matilde de Bivar de Paula Robertes of Spanish descent, who married in Lisbon in 1902. She enrolled in the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon in 1927, but the following year went aboard, where she attended several courses including at the University of Toulouse. In 1939, due to the beginning of the Second World War, she returned to Lisbon, where she joined the Historical and Philosophical Sciences of the Faculty of Arts.
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Arthur R. M. Spaid
1866 - 1936 (70 years)
Arthur Rusmiselle Miller Spaid was an American educator, school administrator, lecturer, and writer. He served as principal of Alexis I. duPont High School in Wilmington, Delaware, superintendent of New Castle County Public Schools in Delaware, superintendent of Dorchester County Public Schools in Maryland, and Delaware State commissioner of Education .
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William Greenfield
1755 - 1827 (72 years)
William Greenfield FRSE was a Scottish minister, professor of rhetoric and belles lettres, literary critic, reviewer, and author whose clerical career ended in scandal, resulting in him being excommunicated from the Church of Scotland, having his university degrees withdrawn, and his family assuming his wife's patronymic Rutherfurd.
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Rufus King
1893 - 1966 (73 years)
Rufus Frederick King was an American author of whodunit crime novels. He created four series of detective stories: the first one with Reginald De Puyster, a sophisticated detective similar to Philo Vance; the second one with his more famous character, Lieutenant Valcour; the third with Colin Starr, who appeared in four stories in the Strand Magazine during 1940–41; and the fourth with Chief Bill Dugan, who appeared in three stories in The Saint Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 1956–57.
Go to Profile#7414
Hryhoriy Tiutiunnyk
1920 - 1961 (41 years)
Hryhoriy Mykhailovych Tiutiunnyk was a Ukrainian lyric poet, writer. His brother was the writer Hryhir Tiutiunnyk. External links Hryhoriy Tiutiunyk in the Ukrainian Soviet EncyclopediaNakonechna, S. And their pines still make noise. Ukrayina Moloda. 20 September 2006
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Giuseppe Gené
1780 - 1847 (67 years)
Carlo Giuseppe Gené was an Italian naturalist and author. Gené was born at Turbigo in Lombardy and studied at the University of Pavia. He published a number of papers on natural history, particularly entomology. In 1828 he became an assistant lecturer in natural history at the university, and in the following year he traveled to Hungary, returning with a collection of insect specimens. Between 1833 and 1838 he made four trips to Sardinia collecting insects.
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Ernest L. Hettich
1897 - 1973 (76 years)
Ernest Leopold Hettich was an American scholar of classics. Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., the son of Dr. Leonhard Hettich and his wife Ella Elfriede Helene von Dobschütz. He graduated from Brooklyn Boys High School. He graduated from Cornell University in 1919. He earned an M.A. from Cornell in 1920 and worked for seven years at the New York Public Library. In 1933 he earned his PhD at Columbia University. Hettich joined the faculty of New York University in 1927 as Professor of Classics, taught there for many years, and served as Director of Libraries.
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John Wallace
1842 - 1908 (66 years)
John Wallace was a teacher, lawyer, political leader and judge in Florida. Wallace served in the Union Army after being freed by federal soldiers during the American Civil War. He served in the Florida Legislature during the Reconstruction era. He also became a lawyer and argued cases before the Florida Supreme Court. He putatively wrote "Carpetbag Rule in Florida: The Inside Workings of Civil Government in Florida After the Close of the Civil War". At the time of his death, he had held public office longer than any other Black elected official.
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Luis Martín
1846 - 1906 (60 years)
Luis Martín García was a Spanish Jesuit, elected the twenty-fourth Superior General of the Society of Jesus. Early years and formation The third of six brothers, Martín was born of humble parentage in Melgar de Fernamental. After primary education in his own village he entered the seminary of Burgos in 1858, where he spent six years. His intellectual inclination led him to join the Society of Jesus in 1864. He began his philosophy studies in Léon, but revolution in Spain and anti-clericalism forced him to move to France where he completed his courses, first in Vals, and then in Poyanne. There, he also taught humanities and rhetoric before doing his theology .
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Martin Routh
1755 - 1854 (99 years)
Martin Joseph Routh was an English classical scholar and President of Magdalen College, Oxford . Birthplace and Oxford career Routh was born at South Elmham, Suffolk, son of the Rev. Peter Routh, rector there, and his wife, Mary Reynolds. He matriculated at The Queen's College, Oxford, on 31 May 1770 and on 24 July 1771, was elected to a demyship at Magdalen College. He graduated B.A. on 5 February 1774 and was elected on 25 July 1775 to a fellowship of his college. On 23 October 1776 he took an MA, proceeding B.D. in 1786, and D.D. on 6 July 1790. On 21 December 1777, he received deacon's orders from Philip Yonge, Bishop of Norwich; but did not take priest's orders until 1810.
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Daniel Seltzer
1933 - 1980 (47 years)
Daniel Seltzer was a professor of English at Princeton University, an actor and a Shakespeareanan scholar. He was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play in 1976 for his performance in Jules Feiffer's Knock Knock and had a role in director Paul Mazursky's 1978 film An Unmarried Woman starring Jill Clayburgh.
Go to Profile#7421
Fortunat Strowski
1866 - 1952 (86 years)
Fortunat Joseph Strowski de Robkowa was a French literary historian, essayist and critic. A specialist on Pascal and Montaigne, he superintended the first critical edition of Montaigne's Essays. Life Fortunat Strowski was born in Carcassonne to a Jewish family from Galicia, then a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was educated in France, where he was a student of Ferdinand Brunetière.
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Cecil Peabody
1855 - 1934 (79 years)
Cecil Hobart Peabody was an American mechanical engineer, born on August 9 in Burlington, Vermont. He was very influential in the development of the Mechanical Engineering Department and in founding the Department of Naval Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology .
Go to Profile#7423
Percy Heath
1884 - 1933 (49 years)
Percy Heath was an American screenwriter and playwright. He was nominated at the 5th Academy Awards in the category of Best Adapted Screenplay for his work on the 1931 version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. His nomination was shared with Samuel Hoffenstein.
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Samuel A. Derieux
1881 - 1922 (41 years)
Samuel Arthur Derieux was an American writer, known especially for short stories, set in the South, about dogs, hunting, or both. He was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1881. His undergraduate education was in the South, at Wofford College from 1897 to 1899, and at Richmond College , where he received his B.A. in 1904. He spent two years of graduate work at Johns Hopkins, and received his M.A. at University of Chicago in 1910.
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John Richardson
1667 - 1753 (86 years)
John Richardson was an English Quaker minister and autobiographer. Early life John Richardson was born in 1667, probably in the village of North Cave, East Riding of Yorkshire, where his father, William Richardson , a shepherd, had been converted to Quakerism by William Dewsberry or Dewsbury in about 1652. He was twelve when his father died, leaving his mother with a livestock farm to run and five children. John had one older sister, who died about 1682, and three younger brothers, of whom the youngest was born about 1676.
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Henry Thirkill
1886 - 1971 (85 years)
Sir Henry Thirkill was an English physicist and academic administrator. Thirkill was born in Bradford and spent his whole career at Clare College, Cambridge. After completing his degree he was appointed Fellow in 1910; and Demonstrator in Experimental Physics in 1912. He was an officer with the Royal Engineers during World War I, and won the Military Cross during the East African Campaign. On his return he was appointed Lecturer in Experimental Physics in 1918. He was Tutor at Clare from 1920 to 1939; President from 1920 to 1939; and its Master from 1939 to 1958; and Fellow again from 1959 until his death.
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Charles Goeller
1901 - 1955 (54 years)
Charles Goeller was an American artist best known for precise and detailed paintings and drawings in which, he once said, he aimed to achieve "emotion expressed by precision." Employing, as one critic wrote, an "exquisitely meticulous realism," he might take a full year to complete work on a single picture. Early in his career he achieved critical recognition for his still lifes, in which one critic saw an "acumen of genius" working to produce "truly superb achievement of team work between eyes that see and hands that do." Later, he also became known for cityscapes in which he employed precis...
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Heinrich von Rustige
1810 - 1900 (90 years)
Heinrich Franz Gaudenz von Rustige was a German painter specializing in historical subjects and genres. Life and work From 1828, he was a student of Wilhelm von Schadow at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. After 1832, he began participating in exhibitions there.
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Germán Valdés
1915 - 1973 (58 years)
Germán Genaro Cipriano Teodoro Gómez Valdés y Castillo , known professionally as Tin-Tan, was a Mexican actor, singer and comedian who was born in Mexico City but was raised and began his career in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua. He often displayed the pachuco dress and employed pachuco slang in many of his movies, some with his brothers Manuel "El Loco" Valdés and Ramón Valdés. He made the language of the border Mexican, known in Spanish as fronterizos pachucos, famous in Mexico. A "caló" based in Spanglish, it was a mixture of Spanish and English in speech based on that of Mexicans on the Mexican...
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Roslyn Brogue
1919 - 1981 (62 years)
Roslyn Brogue was an American pianist, violinist, music educator, classics scholar, poet, author and composer. She was born in Chicago, Illinois, and graduated from the University of Chicago in 1937, from Radcliffe College in 1943 and from Harvard University in 1947 with a Ph.D.
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Noé de la Flor Casanova
1904 - 1986 (82 years)
Noé de la Flor Casanova was a Mexican lawyer, cantautor, writer, poet and politician who served for four years as Governor of Tabasco, before being removed from office following a scandal. Life and work De la Flor y Casanova was the son of Manuel de la Flor Hernández, a master tailor, and Elodia Casanova de de la Flor, the family was extremely poor. After completing primary school in Teapa he moved to Villahermosa to attend the Instituto Juárez, a preparatory school founded by Manuel Sánchez Mármol. With a scholarship, obtained for him by José Vasconcelos at the request of fellow Tabascan Carlos Pellicer, De la Flor Casanova enrolled in the National Preparatory School in Mexico City.
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Józef Tretiak
1841 - 1923 (82 years)
Józef Tretiak was a Polish writer. Tretiak wrote a major critical biography of Józef Bohdan Zaleski . External links
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John North
1645 - 1683 (38 years)
John North was the fifth of fourteen children of Sir Dudley North, 4th Baron North. He was Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge from 1672 to 1674, and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge from 1677 to 1683.
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Ebenezer Alfred Johnson
1813 - 1891 (78 years)
Ebenezer Alfred Johnson was an American classical scholar. Johnson was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on August 18, 1813, the son of Ebenezer and Sarah B. Johnson, Johnson graduated from Yale College in 1833. After teaching for two years in New Canaan, Conn., he became a tutor in Yale College, and during his tutorship of two years he was also engaged in study at Yale Law School. He was then admitted to the New Haven bar, but a year later accepted a call to an assistant professorship of Greek and Latin in the University of the City of New York. In 1840 he was made full Professor of Latin, and this chair he retained until his death.
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James Scholefield
1789 - 1853 (64 years)
James Scholefield , English classical scholar, was born at Henley-on-Thames. He was educated at Christ's Hospital and Trinity College, Cambridge, and was in 1825 appointed professor of Greek in the university. He was for some time curate to Charles Simeon, the evangelical churchman, and his low church views involved him in disputes with his own parishioners at St Michael's, Cambridge, of which he was perpetual curate from 1823 till his death at Hastings on 4 April 1853. From 1849 until his death he was canon of Ely.
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Franz Gehring
1838 - 1884 (46 years)
Franz Gehring was a German writer on music. Gehring was a lecturer on mathematics, at first in Bonn, then from 1871 at Vienna University, but became known for his writings on music, particularly his biographies. Among the most notable are his biography of Mozart published in Francis Hueffer's The Great Musicians series of books, and several articles contributed to the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.
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Janis Mayes
Dr. Janis Alene Mayes is an American author, literary critic and translator and a professor in Africana literature. Early life Mayes gained her undergraduate degree in French literature at Fisk University. She was a Fulbright Scholar. She had additional study as a scholar at the University of Paris-Sorbonne. In the 1980s she moved to Syracuse, New York, where she began teaching at Syracuse University in the Department of African American Studies; she is currently a professor there. She teaches in the Department of African American Studies at Syracuse University.
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Nikolaos Kontopoulos
1889 - 1958 (69 years)
Nikolaos Kontopoulos was a Greek writer. He was born in the village of Lousika in Achaea, Greece. He studied in Athens and later studied as a student and as a professor at the polytechnical school. He wrote many books.
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Jakob Larsen
1888 - 1974 (86 years)
Jakob Aall Ottesen Larsen was an American classical scholar. He was known principally for his research on the political status of Ancient Greece. Biography Jakob Aall Ottesen Larsen was born in Decorah, Iowa. He was the son of Peter Laurentius Larsen, founding president of Luther College, and his second wife Ingeborg Astrup He received a BA from Luther College in 1908 and MA from Yale in 1911. In 1914, he earned a Rhodes scholarship. He studied at Oxford University from 1914 to 1920. In 1928, Larsen received his Ph.D. from Harvard. The University of Vermont awarded him the LL.D. in 1953, and Luther College presented him with his D.Litt.
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Jonathan Powell
Jonathan Powell is Emeritus Professor of Latin at Royal Holloway, University of London. Selected publications From Antiphon to Autocue: Aspects of Speechwriting Ancient and Modern, Powell, J. G. F., Rubinstein, L. & Kremmydas, C. 2016 Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.Profession and Performance: Aspects of Oratory in the Greco-Roman World, Kremmydas, C. , Rubinstein, L. & Powell, J. 11 Oct 2013 London: Institute of Classical Studies."Horace, Scythia, and the East", Powell, J. 2010 in : Proceedings of the Langford Latin Seminar. 14, pp. 137–190.M. Tulli Ciceronis De Re Publica, De Legibus, Cato...
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Moses Hadas
1900 - 1966 (66 years)
Moses Hadas was an American teacher, a classical scholar, and a translator of numerous works from Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and German. Life Raised in Atlanta in a Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Jewish household, his early studies included rabbinical training. He graduated from Jewish Theological Seminary of America and took his doctorate in classics in 1930. He was fluent in Yiddish, German, ancient Hebrew, ancient Greek, Latin, French, and Italian, and well-versed in other languages.
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Lyle H. Lanier
1903 - 1988 (85 years)
Lyle H. Lanier was an American experimental psychologist and writer. As a faculty member at Vanderbilt University from 1929 to 1938, Lanier published research comparing the mental abilities of whites and blacks, alleging whites were superior. A member of the Southern Agrarians, he was a contributor to I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition.
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Vernon Watkins
1906 - 1967 (61 years)
Vernon Phillips Watkins was a Welsh poet and translator. He was a close friend of fellow poet Dylan Thomas, who described him as "the most profound and greatly accomplished Welshman writing poems in English".
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Frederic Ewen
1899 - 1988 (89 years)
Frederic Ewen was an English professor at Brooklyn College from 1930 to 1952. During the height of the McCarthy period Ewen was forced to resign his teaching position after refusing to cooperate with a Senate Internal Security Committee investigation of communism and higher education.
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Walter de Haas
1886 - 1969 (83 years)
Walter de Haas , who wrote under the pseudonym Hanns Günther, was a prolific German author, translator, and editor of popular science books. He began to publish books in 1912, including introductions to topics in electrical engineering under the Franckh'schen Verlagshandlung imprint and popular science works in the same publisher's Kosmos series. His books remain exemplary for their combination of exactness and ease of understanding.
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Margaret Ashmun
1875 - 1940 (65 years)
Margaret Eliza Ashmun was an American writer from Rural, Wisconsin. She trained as a teacher and taught for a few years then concentrated on her writing. She edited collections of short stories and writing textbooks, and wrote dozens of poems, essays, and stories that were published in the popular magazines and newspapers of her day. She was the author of more than 18 novels for both adults and young readers, especially girls.
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James Taft Hatfield
1862 - 1945 (83 years)
James Taft Hatfield was an American philologist and professor at Northwestern University where for many years he was the head of the German Department. Although he also published works on comparative linguistics, Sanskrit, church music, and American folklore, he was primarily known for his contributions to German studies, and in particular his studies on the writings of Goethe and Wilhelm Müller and on the influence of German culture in the works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
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Richard von Kienle
1908 - 1985 (77 years)
Richard von Kienle was a German linguist who specialized in Germanic and Indo-European linguistics. Biography Richard von Kienle was born in Freiburg, Germany on 9 February 1908. He gained his Ph.D. at the University of Heidelberg in 1931 under the supervision of Hermann Güntert. von Kienle subsequently served as an assistant at the Deutsches Rechtswörterbuch under . Since the summer of 1938 he was an acting professor at the University of Heidelberg, having stepped in for Güntert, who was in poor health at the time. He was later an acting professor at the University of Jena under . Since 1940...
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Randall V. Mills
1907 - 1952 (45 years)
Randall V. Mills was a professor of literature with a variety of interests related to the Pacific Northwest, including steamboats, railroads and folklore. Early life and education Randall was born in Wisconsin in 1907. In 1929 Mills received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, Los Angeles . His master's degree was received from University of California, Berkeley in 1932.
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Juho August Hollo
1885 - 1967 (82 years)
Juho August Hollo , also known as J. A. Hollo, was a Finnish scholar and professor of education at the University of Helsinki from 1930 to 1954. He was one of the most prolific translators into Finnish, translating a range of genres and from several languages. He himself said in 1953 that he had translated 170 books; some sources list over 300. Among the authors he translated were Miguel de Cervantes, Anatole France, Gustave Flaubert, Stendhal, Voltaire, Charles Dickens, Jonathan Swift, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Knut Hamsun and Friedrich Nietzsche. He was als...
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