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,
#7501
Babette Deutsch
1895 - 1982 (87 years)
Babette Deutsch was an American poet, critic, translator, and novelist. Background Babette Deutsch was born on September 22, 1895, in New York City. Her parents were of Michael Deutsch and Melanie Fisher Deutsch. She matriculated from the Ethical Culture School and Barnard College, graduating in 1917 with a B.A. She published poems in magazines such as the North American Review and the New Republic while she was still a student at Barnard.
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Václav Černý
1905 - 1987 (82 years)
Václav Černý was a Czechoslovak literary scholar, writer and philosopher. He was an enthusiast of Spanish literature and philosophy and translated into Czech a number of literary and philosophical works by Spanish writers as Ortega y Gasset, Unamuno and Cervantes.
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Henri Weil
1818 - 1909 (91 years)
Henri Weil was a French philologist. Biography Born to a Jewish family in Frankfurt, he was educated at the universities of Bonn, Berlin, and Leipzig. He went to France, and continued his studies at Paris, graduating as Docteur ès lettres in 1845, and becoming "agrégé" in 1848. Appointed professor of ancient literature at the University of Besançon, he was in 1872 elected dean of the faculty. In 1876 he was called to Paris to fill a vacancy as instructor at the École Normale Supérieure and to assume charge of the École Pratique des Hautes Études, both of which positions he resigned in 1891. I...
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Tristan Bernard
1866 - 1947 (81 years)
Tristan Bernard was a French playwright, novelist, journalist and lawyer. Life He studied law, and after his military service, he started his career as the manager of an aluminium smelter. In the 1890s, he managed the Vélodrome de la Seine at Levallois-Perret and the Vélodrome Buffalo, events that were an integral part of Parisian life, being regularly attended by personalities such as Toulouse-Lautrec. He reputedly introduced the bell to signify the last lap of a race.
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Rodolfo Oroz
1895 - 1997 (102 years)
Rodolfo Oroz was a Chilean writer, professor, and philologist. He won the Chilean National Prize for Literature in 1978.
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Jacob Geel
1789 - 1862 (73 years)
Jacob Geel was a Dutch scholar, critic and librarian. He was born in Amsterdam. In 1823 he was appointed as a librarian, and in 1833 as university librarian and honorary professor at Leiden University, where he remained until his death. Geel materially contributed to the development of classical studies in the Netherlands. He was the author of editions of Theocritus , of the Vatican fragments of Polybius , of the Olympikos of Dio Chrysostom and of numerous essays in the Rheinisches Museum and Bibliotheca critica nova, of which he was one of the founders. He also compiled a valuable catalogue...
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Vasile Conta
1845 - 1882 (37 years)
Vasile Conta was a Romanian philosopher, poet, and politician. The son of a priest, he was born in Ghindăoani, a village in Bălțătești commune, Neamț County. He attended primary school in Târgu Neamț , and graduated from the Academia Mihăileană in Iași in 1868. Beneficiary of a fellowship, he went to study in 1871 in Belgium, first in Antwerp, and then at the Free University of Bruxelles, from which he graduated with a law degree in 1872. Upon returning to Romania, he was appointed professor at the University of Iași's Law School.
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Alberto Lista
1775 - 1848 (73 years)
Alberto Rodríguez de Lista y Aragón , Spanish poet and educationalist, was born in Seville. Biography He began teaching at the age of fifteen, and when little over twenty was made professor of elocution and poetry at the University of Seville. In 1813 he was exiled, on political grounds, but pardoned in 1817. He then returned to Spain and, after teaching for three years at Bilbao, started a critical review at Madrid. Shortly afterwards he founded the celebrated college of San Mateo in that city. The liberal character of the San Mateo educational system was not favored by the government, and in...
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Otto Ribbeck
1827 - 1898 (71 years)
Johann Carl Otto Ribbeck was a German classical scholar. His works are mostly confined to criticisms of Latin poetry and to classical character sketches. Biography He was born at Erfurt in Saxony. In early life he went to Berlin, where he studied under Karl Lachmann, Franz Bopp and August Böckh, and from there to Bonn where he was a close student of the methods of Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker and Friedrich Ritschl. Having received his degree in Berlin and traveled for a year through Italy, in 1853 he returned to Berlin, where he entered Böckh's school. He then taught at Elberfeld and Bern. Hav...
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Nasif al-Yaziji
1800 - 1871 (71 years)
Nāṣīf bin ʻAbd Allāh bin Nāṣīf bin Janbulāṭ bin Saʻd al-Yāzijī was a Lebanese author at the times of the Ottoman Empire and father of Ibrahim al-Yaziji. He was one of the leading figures in the Nahda movement.
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Justus Hermann Lipsius
1834 - 1920 (86 years)
Justus Hermann Lipsius was a German classical philologist. He was the brother of theologian Richard Adelbert Lipsius. He studied theology and philology at the University of Leipzig , where he later served as an associate professor and full professor of classical philology. In 1891/92 he was university rector.
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Ted Ray
1905 - 1977 (72 years)
Ted Ray was an English comedian of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, on radio and television. His BBC radio show Ray's a Laugh ran for 12 years. Biography Ray was born Charles Olden in Wigan, Lancashire, England, to comic singer and mimic Charles Olden and his wife Margaret Ellen . His parents moved to Liverpool within days of his birth, and Liverpudlians regard him as a local. He was educated at Anfield council school and Liverpool Collegiate School, and as a youth wished to become a footballer. As a comedian of the 1940s and 1950s, he demonstrated his ad-libbing skills in his weekly radio show Ray's A Laugh from 1949 until 1961.
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Carl Michael Bellman
1740 - 1795 (55 years)
Carl Michael Bellman was a Swedish songwriter, composer, musician, poet, and entertainer. He is a central figure in the Swedish song tradition and remains a powerful influence in Swedish music, as well as in Scandinavian literature, to this day. He has been compared to Shakespeare, Beethoven, Mozart, and Hogarth, but his gift, using elegantly rococo classical references in comic contrast to sordid drinking and prostitution—at once regretted and celebrated in song—is unique.
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John McCarten
1911 - 1974 (63 years)
John McCarten was an American writer who contributed about 1,000 pieces for The New Yorker, serving as the magazine's film critic from 1945 to 1960 and Broadway theatre critic from 1960 to 1967. McCarten was born in Philadelphia into an Irish-American family. After serving in the Merchant Marine, he started writing for American Mercury, Fortune, and Time during the 1930s.
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Wilhelm Konrad Hermann Müller
1812 - 1890 (78 years)
Wilhelm Konrad Hermann Müller was a philologist of Germanic studies. From 1830 he studied philology and theology at the University of Göttingen as a student of Karl Otfried Müller. In 1841 he started work as a lecturer of German language and literature at Göttingen, becoming an associate professor in January 1845. From 1856 up until his death in 1890, he was a full professor of philology at Göttingen.
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Joseph Bosworth
1788 - 1876 (88 years)
Joseph Bosworth was an English scholar of the Anglo-Saxon language and compiler of the first major Anglo-Saxon dictionary. Biography Born in Derbyshire in 1788, Bosworth was educated at Repton School as a 'Poor Scholar' but left in his early teens and did not go to university. Despite the lack of a degree he somehow gained sufficient academic standing for the Church of England to allow him to become a priest. He became a curate in Bunny, Notts in 1814 and three years later became vicar of Little Horwood, Buckinghamshire. He was proficient in many European languages and made a particular study of Anglo-Saxon.
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Adolf Stern
1835 - 1907 (72 years)
Adolf Stern was a German literary historian and poet. He was born in Leipzig. He studied at the universities of Leipzig and Jena, and in 1868 was appointed professor of the history of literature in the Königlich-Sächsischen Polytechnikum of Dresden. His publications include the compilation Fünfzig Jahre deutscher Dichtung ; two collections of essays, Aus dem achtzehnten Jahrhundert , Geschichte der neuern Litteratur ; Grundriss der allgemeinen Literaturgeschichte ; and editing of Hauff, Herder, and Körner, Sr. His literary works include: Gedichte ; fourth edition, 19001866188018871911Leipzig...
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Jakob Bernays
1824 - 1881 (57 years)
Jacob Bernays was a German philologist and philosophical writer. Life Jacob Bernays was born in Hamburg to Jewish parents. His father, Isaac Bernays was a man of wide culture and the first orthodox German rabbi to preach in the vernacular; his brother, Michael Bernays, was also a distinguished scholar.
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Augustin Daly
1838 - 1899 (61 years)
John Augustin Daly was one of the most influential men in American theatre during his lifetime. Drama critic, theatre manager, playwright, and adapter, he became the first recognized stage director in America. He exercised a fierce and tyrannical control over all aspects of his productions. His rules of conduct for actors and actresses imposed heavy fines for late appearances and forgotten lines and earned him the title "the autocrat of the stage." He formed a permanent company in New York and opened Daly's Theatre in New York in 1879, and a second one in London in 1893.
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Nicolaus Delius
1813 - 1888 (75 years)
Nicolaus Delius was a German philologist. Delius was born at Bremen; he was distinguished especially as a student of Shakespeare and for his edition of Shakespeare's works. Life and work Nikolaus Delius went to school in Bremen. After passing his A-levels he read philosophy, history, Greek literature, and Sanskrit at the universities of Bonn and Berlin. In 1838 Delius finished his studies with a promotion in Bonn and taught at Berlin University afterwards. In 1844/1845 he wrote articles amongst others for the new Weser-Zeitung in Bremen. About a year later he made up his mind to work as a private lecturer at Bonn University.
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Hermann Fränkel
1888 - 1977 (89 years)
Hermann Ferdinand Fränkel was a German American classical scholar. He served as professor of Ancient Greek philology at Stanford University until 1953. Son of professor Max Fränkel and younger brother of Charlotte Fränkel, Fränkel studied classics at Berlin, Bonn and Göttingen. He later lectured at Göttingen, but was denied a professorship after the Machtergreifung. Eluding increasing racial discrimination by the Nazis, Fränkel immigrated to the United States in 1935. He was offered a professorship at Stanford shortly after. He also held guest professorships at University of California, Berke...
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Enid Starkie
1897 - 1970 (73 years)
Enid Mary Starkie CBE , was an Irish literary critic, known for her biographical works on French poets. She was a Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford, and Lecturer and then Reader in the University.
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Alexander Adam
1741 - 1809 (68 years)
Alexander Adam was a Scottish teacher and writer on Roman antiquities. Life Alexander Adam was born near Forres, in Moray, the son of a farmer. From his earliest years he showed uncommon diligence and perseverance in classical studies, notwithstanding many difficulties and privations. In 1757 he went to Edinburgh, where he studied at the University of Edinburgh. During this period he lodged with a Mr Watson on Restalrig.
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Paul Lehmann
1884 - 1964 (80 years)
Paul Lehmann was a German paleographer and philologist. Biography Paul Lehmann was the son of businessman Gustav Lehmann and his wife Louisa Meyer. After attending school in his hometown, Lehmann started studying at the University of Göttingen. A successor to Ludwig Traube, Paul Lehmann began as docent at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in 1911 and became professor of medieval Latin philology there in 1917. Author of a dissertation on Franciscus Modius and a Habilitationsschrift on Johannes Sichardus, he made numerous contributions to the Sitzungsberichte der bayerischen Akademie. He is best known for Parodie im Mittelalter .
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Stuart Sherman
1881 - 1926 (45 years)
Stuart Pratt Sherman was an American literary critic, educator and journalist known for his philosophical "feud" with H. L. Mencken. The two men were very close in age, and their career paths have sometimes been compared, but Mencken outlived Sherman by three decades.
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Lal Shahbaz Qalandar
1177 - 1274 (97 years)
Sayyid Usman Marwandi, popularly known as Lal Shahbaz Qalandar , was a Sufi saint and poet who is revered in South Asia. Born in Marwand, Sistan, Lal Shahbaz Qalandar eventually settled in Sindh and is revered by the local Sindhi population.
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Christina Stead
1902 - 1983 (81 years)
Christina Stead was an Australian novelist and short-story writer acclaimed for her satirical wit and penetrating psychological characterisations. Christina Stead was a committed Marxist, although she was never a member of the Communist Party. She spent much of her life outside Australia, although she returned before her death.
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Khalil Mardam Bey
1895 - 1959 (64 years)
Khalil Mardam Bey was a Syrian poet and critic who is most notable for composing the lyrics of the Syrian National Anthem. Early life and career Mardam Bey was born in Ottoman Damascus to a well-known family of Turkish origin. His father was Ahmed Mukhtar Mardam Bey and his mother was Fatima Mahmoud Hamzaoui; they had six children - of which Mardam Bey was the only son. He was one of the descendants of the Ottoman general, statesman, and Grand Vizier Lala Kara Mustafa Pasha. He was chosen as the leader of the Syrian Literature Association, which was founded in 1926 and annulled by the French.
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Rod Serling
1924 - 1975 (51 years)
Rodman Edward Serling was an American screenwriter, playwright, television producer, and narrator/on-screen host, best known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his anthology television series The Twilight Zone. Serling was active in politics, both on and off the screen, and helped form television industry standards. He was known as the "angry young man" of Hollywood, clashing with television executives and sponsors over a wide range of issues, including censorship, racism, and war.
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Giuseppe Giacosa
1847 - 1906 (59 years)
Giuseppe Giacosa was an Italian poet, playwright and librettist. Life He was born in Colleretto Parella, now Colleretto Giacosa, near Turin. His father was a magistrate. Giuseppe went to the University of Turin, studying in the University of Turin, Faculty of Law. Though he gained a degree in law, he did not pursue a legal career.
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Karl Hoeck
1794 - 1877 (83 years)
Karl Friedrich Christian Hoeck was a German classical historian and philologist as well as a librarian. Life After attending the gymnasium at Wolfenbüttel, Hoeck studied classical studies in Göttingen from 1812 until 1816. During his period as a student he was already connecting to the university library; in 1814 he became accessist, and in 1815 secretary. Towards the end of his studies he was a member, together with Christian Karl Josias von Bunsen, Karl Lachmann and Ernst Schulze, of the Philological Seminary and specialized in ancient history under the direction of Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren.
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Saadi Shirazi
1210 - 1291 (81 years)
Saadi Shīrāzī, better known by his pen name Saadi , also known as Sadi of Shiraz , was a Persian poet and prose writer of the medieval period. He is recognized for the quality of his writings and for the depth of his social and moral thoughts.
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José Antonio Ramos Sucre
1890 - 1930 (40 years)
José Antonio Ramos Sucre was a Venezuelan poet, professor, diplomat and scholar. He was a member of the Sucre family of Venezuela and the great-great-nephew of Antonio José de Sucre. He was educated at the Colegio Nacional, and then at the Universidad Central de Venezuela where he studied Law, Letters and Languages .
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John Carew Rolfe
1859 - 1943 (84 years)
John Carew Rolfe, Ph.D. was an American classical scholar, the son of William J. Rolfe. Rolfe graduated from Harvard University in 1881 and from Cornell University in 1885. Rolfe taught at Cornell , at Harvard , at the University of Michigan, and at the University of Pennsylvania.
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Otto Roquette
1824 - 1896 (72 years)
Otto Roquette was a German author. Life and work Roquette was born in Krotoschin, Prussian Province of Posen. The son of a district court councillor, he first went to Bromberg in 1834, and from 1846 to 1850 studied Philology and History in Heidelberg, Berlin, and Halle. After tours in Switzerland and Italy, he moved to in Berlin in 1852. He became a teacher in Dresden in 1853. He returned to Berlin in 1857 and in 1862 became a professor of literary history at the War Academy until he changed to the Vocational Academy in 1867. In 1868 he joined the Vandalia-Teutonia Berlin. From 1869 he taught at the Polytechnic in Darmstadt .
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Jakob Baechtold
1848 - 1897 (49 years)
Jakob Baechtold, surname sometimes spelled as Bächtold was a Swiss literary scholar. He studied German philology under Adolf Holtzmann at the University of Heidelberg, then continued his education at the University of Munich and in 1870 received his doctorate from the University of Tübingen with a thesis on the Lanzelet of Ulrich von Zatzikhoven. From 1872 he worked as a schoolteacher in Solothurn and Zürich, and from 1879 to 1884 he headed the feuilleton of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung .
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Behçet Necatigil
1916 - 1979 (63 years)
Behçet Necatigil was a leading Turkish author, poet and translator. Biography Behçet was born in Istanbul, Ottoman Empire, in 1916. He graduated from the Teachers' High School in Istanbul in 1940, and served as a teacher of literature at Kabatas Erkek Lisesi until the year 1972. His first poem was published in Varlık journal during his high school years in 1935. From then on, he continued to write poetry for over 40 years. Behçet is also well known for his radio dramas.
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Rabindranath Datta
1883 - 1918 (35 years)
Rabindranath Datta was an Indian Poet and educator. He mostly wrote in English. He was born in a renowned Bengali family on 1 October 1883 in Sankar Ghosh Lane, Calcutta. His father was Gyanendra Nath Dutt a member of the Hatkhola Dutt family.
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Manuel Sanchis i Guarner
1911 - 1981 (70 years)
Manuel Sanchís Guarner was a Spanish philologist, historian and writer. He was an author of a vast work ranging from studies of linguistics, literature, history, ethnography to popular culture, basically centered on the Valencian Community, but also on the rest of the territories of the ancient Crown of Aragon and the whole Iberian peninsula.
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F. P. Wilson
1889 - 1963 (74 years)
Frank Percy Wilson was a British literary scholar and bibliographer. Author of many works on Elizabethan drama and general editor of the Oxford History of English Literature, Wilson was Merton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford from 1947 to 1957.
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Vaclovas Biržiška
1884 - 1956 (72 years)
Vaclovas Biržiška was a Lithuanian attorney, bibliographer, and educator. He was a member of a notable Lithuanian family; his great-grandfather Mykolas Biržiška was a representative in the Sejm of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth when the Constitution of 3 May 1791 was accepted; his grandfather Leonardas Biržiška was an active participant in the November Uprising; and his brothers, Mykolas Biržiška and Viktoras Biržiška, were also leaders of the Lithuanian community. His father, the physician Antanas Biržiška, declined a professorship at the University of Moscow to practice medicine in the ...
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Israel Gollancz
1863 - 1930 (67 years)
Sir Israel Gollancz, FBA was a scholar of early English literature and of Shakespeare. He was Professor of English Language and Literature at King's College, London, from 1903 to 1930. Life and career Gollancz was born 13 July 1863, in London, sixth of seven children of Rabbi Samuel Marcus Gollancz , cantor of the Hambro Synagogue, London, and his wife, Johanna Koppell. He was the younger brother of Sir Hermann Gollancz and the uncle of the publisher Victor Gollancz. As a Jew, Gollancz faced significant anti-semitism in his life and career, which was reflected in his academic work through hi...
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Karl Vollmöller
1848 - 1922 (74 years)
Karl Vollmöller was a German philologist. He was educated in Tübingen, Bonn, Munich, Berlin, and Paris. He traveled in Spain in 1874-75 and became a lecturer in Strassburg in 1875. He was professor at Erlangen , and then at Göttingen until 1891, when he retired, settled in Dresden, and devoted himself to Romance philology.
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Jack A. W. Bennett
1911 - 1981 (70 years)
Jack Arthur Walter Bennett was a New Zealand–born literary scholar. Early life and education Jack Arthur Walter Bennett was born at Mount Eden, Auckland, New Zealand, the eldest son of Ernest Bennett, a foreman for a shoe manufacturer, where he was a "shoe clicker and pattern cutter", and Alexandra, née Corrall, both born in Leicester, England. The Bennetts lived in a "suburban bungalow" called "Rocky Nook". Bennett attended Mount Albert Grammar School in Auckland, New Zealand. He notably wrote the Mount Albert Grammar School hymn, which is sung at school assemblies to this day.
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Sarojini Naidu
1879 - 1949 (70 years)
Sarojini Naidu was an Indian political activist and poet who served as the first Governor of United Provinces, after India's independence. She played an important role in the Indian independence movement against the British Raj. She was the first woman to be president of the Indian National Congress and to be appointed as governor of a state.
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Ludwig Gotthard Kosegarten
1758 - 1818 (60 years)
Ludwig Gotthard Kosegarten , also known as Ludwig Theobul or Ludwig Theoboul, was a German poet and Lutheran preacher. Kosegarten was born in Grevesmühlen, in the Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. After studying theology at the University of Greifswald, he served as the pastor of Altenkirchen on the island of Rügen, then part of Swedish Pomerania.
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Daniel Georg Morhof
1639 - 1691 (52 years)
Daniel Georg Morhof was a German writer and scholar. Bibliography Morhof was born at Wismar. He first studied jurisprudence and then literae humaniores at the University of Rostock, where his elegant Latin versification procured for him in 1660 the chair of poetry. In 1665 he moved to the University of Kiel as professor of eloquence and poetry; this chair he exchanged for that of history in 1673. He died at Lübeck.
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Friedrich Hultsch
1833 - 1906 (73 years)
Friedrich Otto Hultsch was a German classical philologist and historian of mathematics in antiquity. Biography After graduating from the Dresden Kreuzschule, Friedrich Hultsch studied classical philology at the University of Leipzig from 1851 to 1855. After a probationary year at the Kreuzschule, he was employed in 1857 as a second Adjunkt at the Alte Nikolaischule in Leipzig. In 1858 he became a teacher at the Zwickau Gymnasium. In 1861 Hultsch was again employed at the Kreuzschule, where he was the rector from 1868 until his retirement in 1889. From 1879 to 1882 he also headed the newly fou...
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Clifford Herschel Moore
1866 - 1931 (65 years)
Clifford Herschel Moore was an American Latin scholar. Biography Clifford Herschel Moore was born in Sudbury, Massachusetts on March 11, 1866. He married Lorena Leadbetter on July 23, 1890. He was educated at Harvard and in Europe at Munich . He taught classics in California and Massachusetts, at Phillips Academy in Andover .
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Elkanah Settle
1648 - 1724 (76 years)
Elkanah Settle was an English poet and playwright. Biography He was born at Dunstable, and entered Trinity College, Oxford, in 1666, but left without taking a degree. His first tragedy, Cambyses, King of Persia, was produced at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1667. The success of this play led the Earl of Rochester to encourage the new writer as a rival to John Dryden. Through his influence, Settle's The Empress of Morocco was twice performed at Whitehall, and proved a great success. It is said by John Dennis to have been "the first play that was ever sold in England for two shillings, and the first...
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