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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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,
#7551
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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Arthur W. Ryder
1877 - 1938 (61 years)
Arthur William Ryder was a professor of Sanskrit at the University of California, Berkeley. He is best known for translating a number of Sanskrit works into English, including the Panchatantra and the Bhagavad Gita.
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Len Lye
1901 - 1980 (79 years)
Leonard Charles Huia Lye was a New Zealand artist known primarily for his experimental films and kinetic sculpture. His films are held in archives including the New Zealand Film Archive, British Film Institute, Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and the Pacific Film Archive at University of California, Berkeley. Lye's sculptures are found in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the Berkeley Art Museum. Although he became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1950, much of his work went to New Zealand after his death, where it is housed at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth.
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Barbara Sleigh
1906 - 1982 (76 years)
Barbara Grace de Riemer Sleigh was an English children's writer and broadcaster. She is remembered most for her Carbonel series about a king of cats. Family and career Barbara Sleigh was born on 9 January 1906 in Birmingham, the daughter of an artist, Bernard Sleigh, and his wife Stella, née Phillp, who had married in 1901. Both parents came from a Methodist background, but she was brought up an Anglican. The family moved to Chesham for a time, then back to Birmingham. Their marriage broke up in about 1914. Her older brother, Brocas Linwood Sleigh , would also become a writer.
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Chen Wangdao
1891 - 1977 (86 years)
Chen Wangdao was a Chinese scholar and educator. He is recognized as the first and only person to translate the Communist Manifesto into Chinese completely so far. He also served as president of Fudan University from 1949 to 1977.
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Richard Lovelace
1617 - 1658 (41 years)
Richard Lovelace was an English poet in the seventeenth century. He was a cavalier poet who fought on behalf of Charles I during the English Civil War. His best known works are "To Althea, from Prison", and "To Lucasta, Going to the Warres".
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Madeline Gleason
1903 - 1979 (76 years)
Madeline Gleason was a United States poet and dramatist. She was the founder of the San Francisco Poetry Guild. In 1947, she became the director of the first poetry festival in the United States, laying the groundwork for what became known as the San Francisco Renaissance. She was, with Helen Adam, Barbara Guest, and Denise Levertov, one of only four women whose work was included in Donald Allen's landmark anthology, The New American Poetry 1945-1960 .
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France Balantič
1921 - 1943 (22 years)
France Balantič was a Slovene poet. His works were banned from schools and libraries during the Titoist regime in Slovenia, but since the late 1980s he has been re-evaluated as one of the foremost Slovene poets of the 20th century.
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Samuel Madden
1686 - 1765 (79 years)
Samuel Madden was an Irish author. His works include Themistocles; The Lover of His Country, Reflections and Resolutions Proper for the Gentlemen of Ireland, and Memoirs of the Twentieth Century. Dr. Samuel Johnson wrote of him, "His was a name which Ireland ought to honour". He suggested that the Royal Dublin Society initiate a scheme to fund improvements in agriculture and arts in Ireland via the use of premiums – the source of his nickname Premium.
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Leonard William King
1869 - 1919 (50 years)
Leonard William King, FSA was an English archaeologist and Assyriologist educated at Rugby School and King's College, Cambridge. He collected stone inscriptions widely in the Near East, taught Assyrian and Babylonian archaeology at King's College for a number of years, and published a large number of works on these subjects. He is also known for his translations of ancient works such as the Code of Hammurabi. He became Assistant Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities at the British Museum.
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