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,
#7451
Vardis Fisher
1895 - 1968 (73 years)
Vardis Alvero Fisher was an American writer from Idaho who wrote popular historical novels of the Old West. After studying at the University of Utah and the University of Chicago, Fisher taught English at the University of Utah and then at the Washington Square College of New York University until 1931. He worked with the Federal Writers' Project to write the Works Project Administration The Idaho Guide, which was published in 1937. In 1939, Fisher wrote Children of God, a historical novel concerning the early Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . The novel won the Harper Prize. In 19...
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Ben Edwin Perry
1892 - 1968 (76 years)
Ben Edwin Perry was an American professor of classics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1924 to 1960. He held Guggenheim Fellowships in the years 1930-1931 and 1954-1955. He developed the Perry Index.
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Ivan Morris
1925 - 1976 (51 years)
Ivan Ira Esme Morris was an English writer, translator and editor in the field of Japanese studies. Biography Ivan Morris was born in London, of mixed American and Swedish parentage to Edita Morris and Ira Victor Morris . He studied at Gordonstoun, before graduating from Phillips Academy. He graduated with magna cum laude at Harvard University and received a doctorate at the SOAS University of London, specializing in Oriental languages. As an intelligence officer for the U.S. Navy, Morris was one of the first interpreters sent into Hiroshima after the dropping of the atomic bomb.
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Israel Edward Drabkin
1905 - 1965 (60 years)
Israel E. Drabkin was an American classicist and historian of science, medicine, and mathematics. He spent much of his career at the City College of New York. He is known for his studies of Caelius Aurelianus and Galileo.
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Gregory Tschebotarioff
1899 - 1985 (86 years)
Gregory P. Tschebotarioff, , was a Russian-born civil engineer and prolific author. His memoir Russia, My Native Land recounted his experiences as a boy and young man in Russia, where he served in the military during World War I.
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James Runcieman Sutherland
1900 - 1996 (96 years)
Sir James Runcieman Sutherland, FBA was an English literary scholar, Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern Literature at London University. Life Sutherland was born on 26 April 1900 in Aberdeen. He was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School and Aberdeen University before studying at Merton College, Oxford. From 1930 to 1936 he was Senior Lecturer at University College London. He married Helen Dircks in 1931. From 1936 to 1944 he was Professor of English Literature, and from 1944 to 1951 Professor of English Language and Literature at Queen Mary College. In 1951 he was appointed Lord Northcliffe P...
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J. Seelye Bixler
1894 - 1985 (91 years)
Julius Seelye Bixler was the 16th President of Colby College, Maine, United States, from 1942–1960. Early life Born Julius Seelye Bixler in New London, CT, to James William Bixler and Elizabeth J. Seelye Bixler. His father was a clergyman who was elected to the New Hampshire House of Representatives and Senate. His maternal grandfather was Julius Hawley Seelye, president of Amherst College from 1876–90, and his grand-uncle was Laurenus Clark Seelye, the first president of Smith College.
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Lawrance Thompson
1906 - 1973 (67 years)
Lawrance Roger Thompson 3 April 1906 — 15 April 1973 Early life and education Thompson was born on 3 April 1906 in Franklin, New Hampshire. For his post-secondary education, Thompson received a Bachelor of Arts from Wesleyan University in 1928 and a Doctor of Philosophy from Columbia University in 1939.
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Wolfgang Schadewaldt
1900 - 1974 (74 years)
Wolfgang Schadewaldt was a German classical philologist working mostly in the field of Greek philology and a translator. He also was a professor of University of Tübingen and University of Freiburg.
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Lewis Thorpe
1913 - 1977 (64 years)
Lewis Guy Melville Thorpe FRSA FRHistS was a British philologist and translator. He was married to the Italian scholar and lexicographer Barbara Reynolds. After service in Italy in the Second World War, Lewis Thorpe joined the staff of the University of Nottingham in 1946. He was Professor of French there from 1958 to 1977. He served as President of the British Branch of the International Arthurian Society and was a member of the Marylebone Cricket Club.
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Ivan Mortimer Linforth
1879 - 1976 (97 years)
Ivan Mortimer Linforth was an American scholar, Professor of Greek at University of California, Berkeley. According to the Biographical Dictionary of North American Classicists he was "one of the great Hellenists of his time". He is best known for his book The Arts of Orpheus , in which he analysed a large number of sources for Orphism and Orphic literature. His work is noted for its thoroughly sceptical approach to the evidence, attempting to the repudiate the notions of a coherent Orphism put forward by earlier scholars. His conclusion was that there was no exclusively "Orphic" system of belief in Ancient Greece.
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Theodore Spencer
1902 - 1949 (47 years)
Theodore Spencer was an American poet and academic. Life He graduated from Princeton University in 1923, and a Ph.D from Harvard University in 1928. He then taught there, from 1927 to 1949. He was appointed lecturer in English literature at Cambridge University, England, in 1939. In 1942, Spencer gave the Lowell lectures on Shakespeare, published as Shakespeare and the Nature of Man, his most important work. Spencer also published essays, short stories, and poetry.
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E. Talbot Donaldson
1910 - 1987 (77 years)
Ethelbert Talbot Donaldson was a scholar of medieval English literature, known for his 1966 translation of Beowulf and his writings on Chaucer's poetry. Biography Ethelbert Talbot Donaldson was born on 18 March 1910 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He was educated at Harvard University, gaining his BA in 1932. He began his career by teaching languages at the Kent School in Connecticut. He was awarded a fellowship at Yale University in 1942, rising to become the George E. Bodman Professor of English there. During the Second World War he served in the United States Air Force, rising through the ranks from private to captain.
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Frederick Rees
1883 - 1967 (84 years)
Sir James Frederick Rees , known as Frederick Rees, was a Welsh historian and academic born in Milford Haven, who specialised in economic history and the history of Wales. From 1929 to 1949, he was Principal of University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire. He was additionally Vice-Chancellor of the University of Wales from 1935 to 1937 and also from 1944 to 1946. He had previously lectured at University College, Bangor, Queen's University Belfast, the University of Edinburgh, and the University of Birmingham. He served as High Sheriff of Pembrokeshire for 1955.
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R. P. Blackmur
1904 - 1965 (61 years)
Richard Palmer Blackmur was an American literary critic and poet. Life Blackmur was born and grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts. He attended Cambridge High and Latin School, but was expelled in 1918. An autodidact, Blackmur worked in a bookshop after high school, and attended lectures at Harvard University without enrolling. He was managing editor of the literary quarterly Hound & Horn from 1928 to 1930, at which time he resigned, although he continued to contribute to the magazine until its demise in 1934.
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Ernest Weekley
1865 - 1954 (89 years)
Ernest Weekley was a British philologist, best known as the author of a number of works on etymology. His An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English has been cited as a source by most authors of similar books over the 90 years since it was published. From 1898 to 1938, he was Professor of Modern Languages at the University of Nottingham.
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Robert J. Getty
1908 - 1963 (55 years)
Robert John Getty was a Classicist and expert on the ancient author Lucan. Getty earned an A.B. from Queens University, Belfast, in 1928 and a master's degree from St John's College, Cambridge in 1930, where he was lecturer from 1937–1947. He became professor of Latin at the University of Toronto in 1947. In 1958 he became the first George L. Paddison Professor of Latin at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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Ángel Rosenblat
1902 - 1984 (82 years)
Ángel Rosenblat was a Poland-born Venezuelan philologist, essayist and hispanist of Jewish descent. Life He and his family moved to Argentina when he was six and he spent his whole education there, including at the University of Buenos Aires, where his classmates included Amado Alonso, and in its Institute of Philology, where his teachers included Pedro Henríquez Ureña.
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Nicoletta Momigliano
1900 - Present (126 years)
Nicoletta Momigliano is an archaeologist specialising in Minoan Crete and its modern reception. Early life and education Momigliano was born in Milan, Italy, in 1960, where she attended primary and secondary school. She read Classics at the University of Pisa, where she graduated in 1982. She obtained her MA from the Institute of Archaeology of the University of London , and her PhD from University College London , under the supervision of John Nicolas Coldstream. From 1990 to 1993 she was a non-stipendiary Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford and a Research Assistant to Ann Br...
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Caroline Spurgeon
1869 - 1942 (73 years)
Caroline Frances Eleanor Spurgeon was an English literary critic. In 1913, she was appointed Hildred Carlisle Professor of English at the University of London and became head of the Department of English at Bedford College, London. She was the first woman to be awarded a chair at the University of London, and only the third in Britain . She co-founded the International Federation of University Women with Virginia Gildersleeve.
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Gleb Struve
1898 - 1985 (87 years)
Gleb Petrovich Struve was a Russian poet and literary historian. Biography Gleb Petrovich Struve was born on 1 May 1898. His father was the political theorist Peter Berngardovich Struve. Struve came from St. Petersburg and joined the Volunteer Army in 1918. Later that year he fled to Finland, then to Britain, where he studied at the University of Oxford until 1921. It was there that he met Vladimir Nabokov, with whom he remained on friendly terms and corresponded until the novelist's death.
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John Neihardt
1881 - 1973 (92 years)
John Gneisenau Neihardt was an American writer and poet, amateur historian and ethnographer. Born at the end of the American settlement of the Plains, he became interested in the lives of those who had been a part of the European-American migration, as well as the Indigenous peoples whom they had displaced.
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Gilbert Norwood
1880 - 1954 (74 years)
Gilbert Norwood was a British classical philologist and essayist. Life Gilbert Norwood studied at St John's College of Cambridge University with John Edwin Sandys and Richard Claverhouse Jebb. After completing his Bachelor's degree , he was employed as an Assistant Lecturer in Classics at the University of Manchester. He also completed his master's at Cambridge and was a Fellow at St. John's College from 1906 to 1909.
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Frank Aydelotte
1880 - 1956 (76 years)
Franklin Ridgeway Aydelotte was a U.S. educator. He became the first non-Quaker president of Swarthmore College and between 1921 and 1940 redefined the institution. He was active in the Rhodes Scholar program, helped evacuate intellectuals persecuted by the Nazis during the 1930s and served as director of the Institute for Advanced Study during World War II.
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John Berryman
1914 - 1972 (58 years)
John Allyn McAlpin Berryman was an American poet and scholar. He was a major figure in American poetry in the second half of the 20th century and is considered a key figure in the "confessional" school of poetry. His best-known work is The Dream Songs.
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Edith Morley
1875 - 1964 (89 years)
Edith Julia Morley, was a literary scholar and activist. She was the main twentieth century editor of the works of Henry Crabb Robinson. She was a Professor of English Language at University College, Reading, now the University of Reading, from 1908 to 1940, making her the first woman to be appointed to a chair at a British university-level institution. She was a socialist and member of the Fabian society, active in various suffrage campaigns, and received an OBE for her efforts coordinating Reading's refugee programme during the Second World War.
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Florence Bonime
1907 - 1990 (83 years)
Florence Bonime was an American novelist. She also published under the name Florence Cummings. Life Florence Bonime was born May 12, 1907 in the Bronx. When she was 16 she began working in advertising, eventually becoming a copywriter.
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Joseph Auslander
1897 - 1965 (68 years)
Joseph Auslander was an American poet, anthologist, translator of poems, and novelist. Auslander was appointed the first Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1937 and 1941.
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Coy Cornelius Carpenter
1900 - 1971 (71 years)
Coy Cornelius Carpenter M.D. , was first dean of the School of Medicine of Wake Forest University from 1936 to 1967 and vice president for health affairs from 1963 to 1967. He guided the school through the transition from a two-year to a four-year program and the move from Wake Forest to Winston-Salem in 1941. He also authored The Story of Medicine at Wake Forest University . He resided in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
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Anton Constandse
1899 - 1985 (86 years)
Anton Levien Constandse was a Dutch anarchist author and journalist. Biography The son of a Baptist hotelier, Constandse completed the normal school between 1914 and 1918 and in this period came into contact with the teetotalers' movement. In response to World War I, he developed anti-militarist ideas. He joined the Social-Anarchist Youth Organisation in 1919. Within this organisation, he chose the side of the individualist faction when factional struggles erupted, denouncing even trade organizations as counterrevolutionary. Instead of taking a job as a teacher, Constandse devoted himself to spreading anarchist ideas.
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Austin Morris Harmon
1878 - 1950 (72 years)
Austin Morris Harmon Ph.D., LL.D. was an American classical scholar. He published bilingual editions of Lucian's works in the Loeb Classical Library between 1913 and 1936 in a 5-volume series. Biography His parents were George B. and Catharine Crowe Harmon. Harmon received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Williams College in 1903 and his Masters of Arts from Yale University in 1904. Additionally he studied in Göttingen in 1903-4. He received his PhD in 1908 and LL.D. in 1927.
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Albert Köster
1862 - 1924 (62 years)
Albert Johannes Köster was a German Germanist and theater scholar. Life Born in the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg as the son of a wine wholesaler, Köster attended the Johanneum in Hamburg, where he passed the Abitur in 1882. He then studied at the Universities of Tübingen and Leipzig Law and Berlin Philology and History of Literature. In 1887, he received his doctorate in history from Wilhelm Maurenbrecher and Georg Voigt in Leipzig. The subject of his dissertation was: "Die Wormser Annalen. An investigation of the sources".
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Albert Léon Guérard
1880 - 1959 (79 years)
Albert Léon Guérard was a prominent scholar of comparative literature. Guérard taught at Stanford University for many years. A prolific author, he published works on French and European civilization, world literature, and international languages, also holding the position of protector of the Occidental language's Occidental-Academie in 1936.
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Julia Bastin
1888 - 1968 (80 years)
Julia Bastin was a Belgian academic, educator and novelist. Biography She was born in Liège and grew up there. Bastin studied at The Hague, earning a diploma that allowed her to teach Dutch. From 1912 to 1914, she taught at a middle school in Braine-le-Comte. Bastin spent World War I in England and studied languages at Bedford College, particularly French literature from the Middle Ages. She was also a teaching assistant for French conversation and composition courses at the college. Afterwards, she taught in secondary schools in Derbyshire and then Yorkshire. From 1920 to 1931, she lived in ...
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Louis Hasley
1906 - 1986 (80 years)
Louis Leonard Hasley was an American writer, poet, essayist, editor, and critic. He was also a professor of English at the University of Notre Dame from 1931 to 1973. He was married to the writer Lucile Hasley.
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Buddhadeva Bose
1908 - 1974 (66 years)
Buddhadeva Bose , also spelt Buddhadeb Bosu, was an Indian Bengali writer of the 20th century. Frequently referred to as a poet, he was a versatile writer who wrote novels, short stories, plays and essays in addition to poetry. He was an influential critic and editor of his time. He is recognised as one of the five poets who moved to introduce modernity into Bengali poetry. It is said that since Rabindranath Tagore, there has not been a more versatile talent in Bengali literature.
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Félix-Antoine Savard
1896 - 1982 (86 years)
Félix-Antoine Savard, was a Canadian priest, academic, poet, novelist and folklorist. Born in Quebec City, he grew up in Chicoutimi, Quebec. He received a Bachelor of Arts in 1918 and was ordained a priest in 1922. He occupied several ecclesiastical positions in Charlevoix and Saguenay before founding the parish of Clermont in Charlevoix.
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Maurice Piron
1914 - 1986 (72 years)
Maurice Piron was a Belgian academic and philologist.
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Dietrich Kralik
1884 - 1959 (75 years)
Dietrich Ritter Kralik von Meyrswalden was an Austrian philologist who specialized in Germanic studies. Biography Dietrich Kralik was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary on 15 August 1884. He belonged to the family of Bohemian nobility, and was the son of philosopher and brother of musician . He received his Ph.D. in Germanic philology at the University of Vienna under the supervision of Rudolf Much.
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Antonio Oliver
1903 - 1968 (65 years)
Antonio Oliver was a Spanish writer, poet, literary critic and historian of Spanish art. He was also a part of the Generation of '27, a group of artists and poets that specialized in the avant-garde.
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Ernst Wilhelm Eschmann
1904 - 1987 (83 years)
Ernst Wilhelm Eschmann was a German writer, sociologist and playwright. Bibliography Some works Der faschistische Staat in Italien Vom Sinn der Revolution Die Aussenpolitik des Faschismus Griechisches Tagebuch Im Amerika der Griechen Tessiner Episteln
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Ignacio González-Llubera
1893 - 1962 (69 years)
Ignacio Miguel González-Llubera was a Spanish literary scholar, specialising in Judaeo-Spanish literature. Born in Barcelona, he was educated at the Colegio del Sagrado Corazón, the University of Barcelona and the University of Madrid . He then studied in Madrid, Paris, London and Cambridge before he was appointed the first lecturer in Spanish at Queen's University Belfast in 1920. He was appointed its first Professor of Spanish in 1926, a chair he held until he retired in 1960.
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Erhard Lommatzsch
1886 - 1975 (89 years)
Erhard Lommatzsch was a German Romance philologist. From 1905 to 1910 he studied classical, German and Romance philology at the University of Berlin, where his teachers included Eduard Norden, Gustav Roethe, Erich Schmidt and Adolf Tobler. In 1913 he obtained his habilitation, and in 1917 was named an associate professor at Berlin University. Later on, he served as a full professor of Romance philology at the universities of Greifswald and Frankfurt am Main .
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Harry Hess Reichard
1878 - 1956 (78 years)
Harry Hess Reichard was a Pennsylvania German writer and scholar. Biography Reichard was born in Lower Saucon Township, Pennsylvania. In 1901, he graduated from Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. In 1911, he received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
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Ella E. Clark
1896 - 1984 (88 years)
Ella Elizabeth Clark was an American educator, writer, and Professor Emerita of English. Although Clark was not a trained anthropologist or folklorist, she collected large numbers of American Indian and First Nations oral traditions and made them available to a wide readership.
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Henry Kuttner
1915 - 1958 (43 years)
Henry Kuttner was an American author of science fiction, fantasy and horror. Early life Henry Kuttner was born in Los Angeles, California in 1915. Kuttner and Amelia Bush , the parents of his father, the bookseller Henry Kuttner , had come from Leszno in Prussia and lived in San Francisco since 1859; the parents of his mother, Annie Levy , were from Great Britain. Henry Kuttner's great-grandfather was the scholar Josua Heschel Kuttner. Kuttner grew up in relative poverty following the death of his father. As a young man he worked in his spare time for the literary agency of his uncle, Laure...
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Alice Henson Ernst
1880 - 1980 (100 years)
Alice Henson Ernst was an American playwright, professor and author. She conducted anthropological work among the Native Americans in Oregon. Ernst was also well-known for her history and research of pioneer theater in the northwest. Ernst taught English and drama at the University of Washington and the University of Oregon.
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Thomas Lounsbury
1838 - 1915 (77 years)
Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury was an American literary historian and critic. He was born in Ovid, New York on January 1, 1838. He graduated from Yale College in 1859 with a B.A. and received a M.A. from Yale University in 1887. He later received honorary degrees from Yale University , Harvard University , Lafayette College, Princeton University, and Aberdeen College. He enlisted in the 126th New York Volunteers in 1862 and served in the Civil War as a first lieutenant.
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Anne Sexton
1928 - 1974 (46 years)
Anne Sexton was an American poet known for her highly personal, confessional verse. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for her book Live or Die. Her poetry details her long battle with bipolar disorder, suicidal tendencies, and intimate details from her private life, including relationships with her husband and children, whom it was later alleged she physically and sexually assaulted.
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Christian Gauss
1878 - 1951 (73 years)
Christian Gauss was a literary critic and professor of literature. Biography Gauss was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His father had fled Württemberg when Prussia began to dominate it in the 1860s. The son graduated from the University of Michigan at 20, worked as a newspaper correspondent in Paris, covering the Dreyfus case during which time he met Oscar Wilde who dedicated one of his poems to Gauss.
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