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,
#7401
Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
1886 - 1965 (79 years)
Jun'ichirō Tanizaki was a Japanese author who is considered to be one of the most prominent figures in modern Japanese literature. The tone and subject matter of his work ranges from shocking depictions of sexuality and destructive erotic obsessions to subtle portrayals of the dynamics of family life within the context of the rapid changes in 20th-century Japanese society. Frequently, his stories are narrated in the context of a search for cultural identity in which constructions of the West and Japanese tradition are juxtaposed.
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George Stephens
1813 - 1895 (82 years)
George Stephens was an English archeologist and philologist, who worked in Scandinavia, especially on interpreting runic inscriptions. Born at Liverpool, Stephens studied at University College London. In 1834, he married Mary Bennett and moved to Sweden, studying Scandinavian medieval literature and folklore. His collection of fairy tales together with Gunnar Olof Hyltén-Cavallius was often reprinted. Stephens moved to Denmark, became a lecturer in English at Copenhagen University in 1851, and a professor in 1855. He published regularly in The Gentleman's Magazine. In 1860, he published the first edition of the Waldere fragments.
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Frederic Prokosch
1906 - 1989 (83 years)
Frederic Prokosch was an American writer, known for his novels, poetry, memoirs and criticism. He was also a distinguished translator. Biography Prokosch was born in Madison, Wisconsin, into an intellectual family that travelled widely. His father, Eduard Prokosch, an Austrian immigrant, was Professor of Germanic Languages at Yale University at the time of his death in 1938, and his sister Gertrude Prokosch Kurath was a dancer and a prominent ethnomusicologist. Prokosch was graduated from Haverford College in 1925 and received a Ph.D. in English in 1932 from Yale University. In his youth, he...
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James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose
1612 - 1650 (38 years)
James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose was a Scottish nobleman, poet, soldier and later viceroy and captain general of Scotland. Montrose initially joined the Covenanters in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, but subsequently supported King Charles I as the English Civil War developed. From 1644 to 1646, and again in 1650, he fought in the civil war in Scotland on behalf of the King. He is referred to as the Great Montrose.
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Johann Christian Felix Baehr
1798 - 1872 (74 years)
Johann Christian Felix Baehr or Bähr was a German philologist. Life Born at Darmstadt, he studied at the Gymnasium and the University of Heidelberg, where he was appointed professor of classical philology in 1823, chief librarian in 1832, and on the retirement of G. F. Creuzer, became director of the philological seminary. He died at Heidelberg.
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Dalton Trumbo
1905 - 1976 (71 years)
James Dalton Trumbo was an American screenwriter who scripted many award-winning films, including Roman Holiday , Exodus, Spartacus , and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo . One of the Hollywood Ten, he refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947 during the committee's investigation of alleged Communist influences in the motion picture industry.
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Giacomo Zanella
1820 - 1888 (68 years)
Giacomo Zanella was an Italian poet. Biography He was born at Chiampo, near Vicenza, and was educated for the priesthood. After his ordination he became professor at the lyceum of his native place, but his patriotic sympathies excited the jealousy of the Austrian authorities, and although protected by his diocesan, he was compelled to resign in 1853. After the liberation of Venetia, the Italian government conferred upon him a professorship at Padua, and he achieved distinction as a poet on the publication of his first volume of poems in 1868.
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Octavian Goga
1881 - 1938 (57 years)
Octavian Goga was a Romanian far-right politician, poet, playwright, journalist, and translator. Life and politics Goga was born in Rășinari, near Sibiu. Goga was an active member in the Romanian nationalistic movement in Transylvania and of its leading group, the Romanian National Party in Austro-Hungary. Before World War I, Goga was arrested by the Hungarian authorities. At various intervals before the union of Transylvania with Romania in 1918, Goga took refuge in Romania, becoming active in literary and political circles. Because of his political activity in Romania, the Hungarian state...
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Louise Holland
1893 - 1990 (97 years)
Louise Adams Holland was a philologist, university teacher, academic and archaeologist. Early life and education Born in Brooklyn in New York State in 1893 as Louise Elizabeth Whetenhall Adams, she was the third child but first daughter of six children of Henrietta and Charles Frederick Adams, a lawyer. Her younger sister was the United States Poet Laureate Léonie Adams. Louise Holland graduated from Barnard College in 1914 having specialised in Greek, and was awarded her M. A. from Columbia University and her Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr College in 1920, where she studied Latin. She studied at the...
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Michael Shaara
1928 - 1988 (60 years)
Michael Shaara was an American author of science fiction, sports fiction, and historical fiction. He was born to an Italian immigrant father in Jersey City, New Jersey, graduated in 1951 from Rutgers University, where he joined Theta Chi, and served as a sergeant in the 82nd Airborne Division prior to the Korean War.
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Nicholas Monsarrat
1910 - 1979 (69 years)
Lieutenant Commander Nicholas John Turney Monsarrat FRSL RNVR was a British novelist known for his sea stories, particularly The Cruel Sea and Three Corvettes , but perhaps known best internationally for his novels, The Tribe That Lost Its Head and its sequel, Richer Than All His Tribe.
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Carl Robert
1850 - 1922 (72 years)
Carl Georg Ludwig Theodor Herwig Joseph Robert was a German classical philologist and archaeologist. He began his studies of ancient philology and archaeology at the University of Bonn, where he was a student of Otto Jahn, Reinhard Kekulé von Stradonitz and Anton Springer. In 1870 he began service as a volunteer in the Hessian Infantry Battalion No. 11 during the Franco-Prussian War. Afterwards, he resumed his studies at the University of Berlin under Theodor Mommsen, Adolf Kirchhoff and Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff. In 1873 he obtained his doctorate in Berlin with the thesis De Apollodori bibliotheca.
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Joseph Gregor
1888 - 1960 (72 years)
Joseph Gregor was an Austrian writer, theater historian and librettist. He served as director of the Austrian National Library. Life and career Joseph Gregor was born in Czernowitz. He studied musicology and philosophy at Vienna University, graduating in 1911. He worked under Max Reinhardt as assistant director and from 1912-1914 as a lecturer in music at the Franz-Josephs-University of Chernivtsi. He was employed at the Austrian National Library in Vienna in 1918. There he founded the Theater Collection in 1922, in which he included film after 1929. He also taught from 1932–1938 and 1943–1945 at the Max-Reinhardt-Seminar for actors, being granted the title "Professor" in 1933.
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Shane Leslie
1885 - 1971 (86 years)
Sir John Randolph Leslie, 3rd Baronet , commonly known as Sir Shane Leslie, was an Anglo-Irish diplomat and writer. He was a first cousin of Sir Winston Churchill. In 1908, Leslie became a Roman Catholic and supported Irish Home Rule.
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Anthony Munday
1560 - 1633 (73 years)
Anthony Munday was an English playwright and miscellaneous writer. He was baptized on 13 October 1560 in St Gregory by St Paul's, London, and was the son of Christopher Munday, a stationer, and Jane Munday. He was one of the chief predecessors of Shakespeare in English dramatic composition, and wrote plays about Robin Hood. He is believed to be the primary author of Sir Thomas More, on which he is believed to have collaborated with Henry Chettle, Thomas Heywood, William Shakespeare, and Thomas Dekker.
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Oskar Schade
1826 - 1906 (80 years)
Oskar Schade was a German philologist and Germanist born in Erfurt. In 1860, he received his habilitation at Halle, and from 1863 to 1906 was a professor at the University of Königsberg. He was the author of the influential Altdeutsches Wörterbuch , and with August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben , was co-editor of the Weimarisches Jahrbuch für deutsche Sprache, Literatur und Kunst . Other noted works by Schade include:Geistliche Gedichte des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts vom Niederrhein , 1854.Satiren und Pasquille aus der Reformationszeit , 1863.Deutsche Handwerkslieder, 1865.
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Georges Perec
1936 - 1982 (46 years)
Georges Perec was a French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist, and essayist. He was a member of the Oulipo group. His father died as a soldier early in the Second World War and his mother was killed in the Holocaust. Many of his works deal with absence, loss, and identity, often through word play.
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Juozas Tumas-Vaižgantas
1869 - 1933 (64 years)
Juozas Tumas also known by the pen name Vaižgantas was a Lithuanian Roman Catholic priest and an activist during the Lithuanian National Revival. He was a prolific writer, editor of nine periodicals, university professor, and member of numerous societies and organizations. His most notable works of fiction include the novel Pragiedruliai and the narrative Dėdės ir dėdienės about the ordinary village folk.
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María Rosa Lida de Malkiel
1910 - 1962 (52 years)
María Rosa Lida de Malkiel, born Maria Rosa Lida , was an Argentine philologist. Notable as an Hispanist medievalist, she came to the United States on a Rockefeller Foundation program of study. Beginning in 1947, Lida de Malkiel lectured for many years in the US, including at Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley, and Stanford. An advisor to the editorial boards of two professional journals, in the 1950s she was admitted to the Real Academia Española and the Academia Argentina de Letras.
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Franz Passow
1786 - 1833 (47 years)
Franz Ludwig Carl Friedrich Passow was a German classical scholar and lexicographer. Biography He was born at Ludwigslust in the Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. In 1807 he was appointed to the professorship of Greek literature at the Weimar gymnasium by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose acquaintance he had made during a holiday tour; his lessons were attended by the young Arthur Schopenhauer. In 1815 he became professor of ancient literature at the University of Breslau, where he continued to live until his death. His endorsement of gymnastic exercises, in which he himself took part, caused a ...
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John Gardner
1933 - 1982 (49 years)
John Champlin Gardner Jr. was an American novelist, essayist, literary critic, and university professor. He is best known for his 1971 novel Grendel, a retelling of the Beowulf myth from the monster's point of view.
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Giovanni Meli
1740 - 1815 (75 years)
Giovanni Meli was an Italian poet. Meli was born in Palermo. After studying philosophy and medicine he worked as a doctor in Cinisi in the province of Palermo. It was during this early period of his life that he discovered the bucolic poets and the poetic value of his native Sicilian language, which he used thereafter in all of his literary works.
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Francesco Novati
1859 - 1915 (56 years)
Francesco Novati was an Italian historian and philologist. Novati taught in the University of Palermo and Genoa, and in 1890 he became a professor of history and comparative literature at the Regia Accademia Scientifico-Letteraria of Milan. In 1883, he founded the Giornale Storico delle Letteratura Italiana with Rodolfo Renier and Arturo Graf. He also collaborated with many other magazines and newspapers: La Perseveranza, Il Libro e la stampa, La lettura, and Il Corriere della Sera e l’Archivio Storico Lombardo, a publication of the Società Storica Lombarda which Novati joined in 1879, later to become adviser, vice president, and finally president in 1899.
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Giovanni Battista Giraldi
1504 - 1573 (69 years)
Giovanni Battista Giraldi was an Italian novelist and poet. He appended the nickname Cinthio to his name and is commonly referred to by that name . Biography Cinthio was born in Ferrara, then the capital of the Duchy of Ferrara, and educated at the University of Ferrara. In 1525, he became a professor of natural philosophy there. Twelve years later, he succeeded Celio Calcagnini in the chair of belles-lettres.
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Henry Kendall
1839 - 1882 (43 years)
Thomas Henry Kendall , was an Australian author and bush poet, who was particularly known for his poems and tales set in a natural environment. He appears never to have used his first name — his three volumes of verse were all published under the name of "Henry Kendall".
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Carlo Maria Maggi
1630 - 1699 (69 years)
Carlo Maria Maggi was an Italian scholar, writer and poet. Despite being an Accademia della Crusca affiliate, he gained his fame as an author of "dialectal" works in Milanese language, for which he is considered the father of Milanese literature. Maggi's work was a major inspiration source for later Milanese scholars such as Carlo Porta and Giuseppe Parini.
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Robert Prutz
1816 - 1872 (56 years)
Robert Eduard Prutz was a German poet and prose writer. He was born at Stettin, modern day Szczecin. He studied philology, philosophy and history at Berlin, Breslau, and Halle, and in the last-named became associated, after taking his degree, with Arnold Ruge in the publication of the Hallesche Jahrbücher. Subjected on account of his advanced political views to police surveillance, he removed to Jena, where, on the strength of an excellent monograph, Der Göttinger Dichterbund , he hoped to obtain an academic appointment. He was, however, expelled from the town for offending against the press laws, and it was not until 1846 that he received permission to lecture in Berlin.
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Villem Grünthal-Ridala
1885 - 1942 (57 years)
Villem Grünthal-Ridala, born Wilhelm Grünthal was an Estonian poet, translator, linguist and folklorist. Life Villem Grünthal-Ridala was the son of an inn keeper on the island of Muhu. He first attended Hellamaa parish school, then Eisenschmidt private school, as well as the national high school of Kuressaare. Beginning in 1905, he studied Finnish Literature at the University of Helsinki. In 1911 he completed his doctorate.
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Karl David Ilgen
1763 - 1834 (71 years)
Karl David Ilgen was a German Protestant Old Testament scholar and classical philologist. He studied theology and philology at the University of Leipzig, and was later appointed rector at the munincipal gymnasium in Naumburg . In 1794 he became a professor of oriental languages at the University of Jena. From 1802 to 1831, he was rector of the Landesschule Pforta.
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Louis Figuier
1819 - 1894 (75 years)
Louis Figuier was a French scientist and writer. He was the nephew of Pierre-Oscar Figuier and became Professor of chemistry at L'Ecole de pharmacie of Montpellier. Louis Figuier was married to French writer Louise Juliette Bouscaren.
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John Churton Collins
1848 - 1908 (60 years)
John Churton Collins was a British literary critic. Biography Churton Collins was born at Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire, England. From King Edward's School, Birmingham, he went to Balliol College, Oxford, where he graduated in 1872, and at once devoted himself to a literary career, as journalist, essayist and lecturer. His first book was a study of Sir Joshua Reynolds , and later he edited various classical English writers, and published volumes on Bolingbroke and Voltaire in England , The Study of English Literature , a study of Dean Swift , Essays and Studies , Ephemera Critica , Es...
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Johann Gottfried Gruber
1774 - 1851 (77 years)
Johann Gottfried Gruber was a German critic and literary historian. Biography Gruber was born at Naumburg on the Saale, in the Electorate of Saxony. He received his education at the town school of Naumburg and the University of Leipzig, after which he resided successively at Göttingen, Leipzig, Jena and Weimar, occupying himself partly in teaching and partly in various literary enterprises, and enjoying in Weimar the friendship of Herder, Wieland and Goethe.
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John Taylor
1578 - 1653 (75 years)
John Taylor was an English poet who dubbed himself "The Water Poet". Biography John Taylor was born in the parish of St. Ewen's, near South Gate, Gloucester on 24 August 1578. His parentage is unknown, as the parish registers did not survive the Civil War. He did, however, attend elementary school and grammar school there. His grammar school education may have taken place at the Crypt School in Gloucester, however Taylor never finished his formal education due to difficulties with his Latin studies.
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Francis Brinkley
1841 - 1912 (71 years)
Francis Brinkley was an Anglo-Irish newspaper owner, editor and scholar who resided in Meiji period Japan for over 40 years, where he was the author of numerous books on Japanese culture, art and architecture and an English-Japanese Dictionary. He was also known as Frank Brinkley or as Captain Francis Brinkley and was the great uncle of Cyril Connolly.
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Paul Eldridge
1888 - 1982 (94 years)
Paul Eldridge was an American poet, novelist, short story writer and teacher. The son of Leon and Jeanette Eldridge , he was born in Bucharest, Romania on May 5, 1888 and immigrated with his family to the United States on August 15, 1900. He later married a fellow writer, Sylvette de Lamar . He received his B.S. from Temple University in 1909, his A.M. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1911, and a doctorate from the University of Paris in 1913. He was a teacher of romance languages at the high school level in New York until his retirement in 1945. He was a lecturer on American Literature at the Sorbonne in 1913 and at the University of Florence in 1923.
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Mary Pix
1666 - 1709 (43 years)
Mary Pix was an English novelist and playwright. As an admirer of Aphra Behn and colleague of Susanna Centlivre, Pix has been called "a link between women writers of the Restoration and Augustan periods".
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Alexander Belskiy
1921 - 1977 (56 years)
Alexander Andreevich Belskiy was a Soviet specialist in literary criticism, Anglicist . Alexander Belskiy founded Perm school of research in non-Russian Philology. Also, he founded the Faculty of Philology at Perm State University and he was its first Dean in 1960–1964 and 1971–1977. Moreover, he founded the Department of Foreign literature at Perm State University, and he was its Head in 1965–1977. His famous student is Boris Proskurnin, the Dean of Faculty of Foreign languages and Literature at Perm State University.
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James Macpherson
1736 - 1796 (60 years)
James Macpherson was a Scottish writer, poet, literary collector, and politician. He is known for the Ossian cycle of epic poems, which he claimed to have discovered and translated from Gaelic. Early life and education Macpherson was born at Ruthven in the parish of Kingussie in Badenoch, Inverness-shire. This was a Scottish Gaelic-speaking area but near the Ruthven Barracks of the British Army, established in 1719 to enforce Whig rule from London after the Jacobite uprising of 1715. Macpherson's uncle, Ewen Macpherson joined the Jacobite army in the 1745 march south, when Macpherson was nine years old and after the Battle of Culloden, had had to remain in hiding for nine years.
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Cattamanchi Ramalinga Reddy
1880 - 1951 (71 years)
Sir Cattamanchi Ramalinga Reddy , also popularly known as Sir C. R. Reddy, was an educationist and political thinker, essayist and economist, poet and literary critic. He was a prominent member of the Justice Party and an ardent champion of the non-Brahmin movement, joining the movement to unite the non-Brahmin communities. He wrote his works in Telugu and English; these reveal his deep love for Indian classics and his learning in these texts, as well as the modernity of his outlook.
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Charles Joret
1839 - 1914 (75 years)
Charles Joret was a French literary historian, philologist and botanical author. His name is associated with the so-called ligne Joret , a locative boundary used in the linguistics of the Langues d'oïl.
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Thomas Yalden
1670 - 1736 (66 years)
Thomas Yalden was an English poet and translator. Educated at Magdalen College, Yalden entered the Church of England, in which he obtained various preferments. His poems include A Hymn to Darkness, Pindaric Odes, and translations from the classics.
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Dorothy Scarborough
1878 - 1935 (57 years)
Emily Dorothy Scarborough was an American writer who wrote about Texas, folk culture, cotton farming, ghost stories and women's life in the Southwest. Early life Scarborough was born in Mount Carmel, Texas. At the age of four she moved to Sweetwater, Texas for her mother's health, as her mother needed the drier climate. The family soon left Sweetwater in 1887, so that the Scarborough children could get a good education at Baylor College.
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Anton van Duinkerken
1903 - 1968 (65 years)
Wilhelmus Johannes Maria Antonius Asselbergs , better known under his pseudonym Anton van Duinkerken, was a Dutch poet, essayist, and academic. Asselbergs considered a career as a priest before becoming a journalist, editing De Gids. He was subsequently a professor in art history and the history of literature at the Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen. A Roman Catholic, he was active on behalf of the emancipation of the Catholic Church and wrote religious poetry.
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Georg Friedrich Schömann
1793 - 1879 (86 years)
Georg Friedrich Schömann , was a German classical scholar of Swedish heritage. Background He was born at Stralsund in Pomerania. He studied at the Universities of Greifswald and Jena, earning his PhD at Greifswald in 1815. In 1820 he obtained his habilitation with the thesis "De sortitione iudicum apud Athenienses". In 1827 he was appointed professor of ancient literature and rhetoric at the University of Greifswald, where in 1844, he was named first librarian. He died in Greifswald on 25 March 1879.
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Arnold Drakenborch
1683 - 1748 (65 years)
Arnold Drakenborch was a Dutch classical scholar. Early life Drakenborch was born at Utrecht. Having studied philology under Graevius and Burmann the elder, and law under Cornelius Van Eck, in 1716 he succeeded Burmann in his professorship , which he continued to hold until his death. Although he obtained the degree of doctor of laws, and was intended for the legal profession, he decided to concentrate on philological studies.
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Martin Hertz
1818 - 1895 (77 years)
Martin Julius Hertz was a German classical philologist, a student and biographer of Karl Lachmann. He studied philology at the Universities of Bonn and Berlin, where his instructors included August Boeckh and Karl Lachmann , the latter being an important influence to Hertz' career. He earned his doctorate in 1842, followed by his habilitation a few years later . Afterwards, he embarked on an educational journey throughout Europe .
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Johann Georg Jacobi
1740 - 1814 (74 years)
Johann Georg Jacobi was a German poet. Biography The elder brother of the philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Johann Georg was born at Pempelfort near Düsseldorf. He studied theology at Göttingen and jurisprudence at Helmstedt, and in 1766 was appointed professor of philosophy in Halle. That year he made the acquaintance of J. W. L. Gleim, who, attracted by the young poet's Poetische Versuche , became his friend. A lively literary correspondence ensued between Gleim in Halberstadt and Jacobi in Halle. In order to have Jacobi near him, Gleim succeeded in procuring for him a prebendal stall ...
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Johann Heinrich Joseph Düntzer
1813 - 1901 (88 years)
Johann Heinrich Joseph Düntzer was a German philologist and historian of literature. Biography He was born at Cologne. After studying philology and especially ancient classics and Sanskrit at Bonn and Berlin , he took the degree of doctor of philosophy and established himself in 1837 at Bonn as privatdozent for classical philology. He had already, in his Goethes Faust in seiner Einheit und Ganzheit and Goethe als Dramatiker , advocated a new critical method in interpreting the German classics, which he wished to see treated like the ancient classics.
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Karl Schenkl
1827 - 1900 (73 years)
Karl Schenkl was an Austrian classical philologist. Biography Schenkl studied classical philology and law from 1845 to 1849 at the University of Vienna. After 1850 he taught at various gymnasiums, and in 1858 was appointed professor of classical philology at the University of Innsbruck, where he founded the Philological Institute in 1860. In 1863 he left for the University of Graz, and in the same year started a philological seminar and became a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences; in 1868 he became a full member. Schenkl was rector at Graz from 1869 to 1870, and in 1870 became a member of the Gymnasialreformkommission .
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Julien Louis Geoffroy
1743 - 1814 (71 years)
Julien Louis Geoffroy was a French literary critic. He was born at Rennes, and educated there and at the Collège Louis le Grand in Paris. He took orders and for some time was a mere usher, eventually becoming professor of rhetoric at the Collège des Quatre-Nations. His tragedy, Caton, was accepted at the Théâtre Français, but was never performed. On the death of Élie Fréron in 1776 the other collaborators in the Année littéraire asked Geoffroy to succeed him, and he conducted the journal until its closure in 1792.
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