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,
#7751
Nathaniel Sheldon Wheaton
1792 - 1862 (70 years)
Nathaniel Sheldon Wheaton was an American priest. He was born in Washington, Connecticut. He graduated from Yale College in 1814. He pursued a course of theological study in Maryland, where he resided four years, and was ordained by Bishop Clagett, deacon and priest in the Protestant Episcopal Church. In 1818 he was chosen rector of Christ Church, Hartford, Connecticut, and for over twelve years he discharged with marked efficiency the duties of that post. He resigned the rectorship in 1831 to become the second President of Trinity College, then called Washington College, succeeding Bishop Thomas Church Brownell.
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Arthur Wallace Peach
1886 - 1956 (70 years)
Arthur Wallace Peach was an American poet, the first English chair at Norwich University, and the director of the Vermont Historical Society. His poetry has been covered extensively in scholarly sources, and have been published in many poetry collections.
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Richard Malcolm Johnston
1822 - 1898 (76 years)
Richard Malcolm Johnston was an American author. Biography Johnson was born in Powelton, Hancock County, Georgia. His father was a Baptist minister, and his early education was received at a country school and finished at Mercer University. After graduating there he spent a year teaching and then took up the study of law and was admitted to the bar in 1843. In 1857, he accepted an appointment to the chair of belles-lettres and oratory at the University of Georgia in Athens, retaining it until the opening of the Civil War, when he began a school for boys on his farm near Sparta. This he kept going during the war, serving also for a time on the staff of Confederate general Joseph E.
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James C. Greenough
1829 - 1924 (95 years)
James Carruthers Greenough was an American educator who served as the third principal of the Rhode Island Normal School, sixth president of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, and seventh principal of the Westfield State Normal School. He was also an outspoken advocate of Christian teachings in public academic institutions, a fellow of the American Institute of Instruction, and author of a treatise on the British education system.
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Walter Allen Jenkins
1891 - 1958 (67 years)
Walter Allen Jenkins was an English academic. He served as the 7th vice-chancellor of the University of Dhaka during 1953–1956. Education Jenkins graduated from Emmanuel College in London. Later he obtained a D.Sc. degree from Sheffield University in 1925 and Legum Doctor degree from Cambridge University.
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Liu Bowen
1311 - 1375 (64 years)
Liu Ji , courtesy name Bowen, better known as Liu Bowen, was a Chinese military strategist, philosopher, and politician who lived in the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties. He was born in Qingtian County . He served as a key advisor to Zhu Yuanzhang, the Hongwu Emperor, the founder of the Ming dynasty, in the latter's struggle to overthrow the Yuan dynasty and unify China proper under his rule. Liu is also known for his prophecies and has been described as the "Divine Chinese Nostradamus". He and Jiao Yu co-edited the military treatise known as the Huolongjing .
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Herbert Warren
1853 - 1930 (77 years)
Sir Thomas Herbert Warren, KCVO was a British academic and administrator who was president of Magdalen College, Oxford for 43 years and vice-chancellor of Oxford University . Early life and education Warren was born in Bristol, the eldest son of magistrate Algernon William Warren, , and Cecil Thomas, both born in Carmarthenshire, Wales. Architect Edward Prioleau Warren was his younger brother. His sister, Anna Letitia Warren, studied at Somerville College, Oxford. At age 15, he entered the newly opened Clifton College, under its first headmaster John Percival. At Clifton, he played rugby an...
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Benedetto Stay
1714 - 1801 (87 years)
Benedetto Stay was a Ragusan Roman Catholic clergyman, educated by Jesuits, he attended the academic assemblies of Marin Sorgo, beginning the composition of a poem on Alexander Farnese. Later on, he published "Saggio sull'uomo", based on the system of Descartes.
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Matija Grbić
1505 - 1559 (54 years)
Matthias Garbitius or Matija Grbić was a German humanist, classical philologist and translator. Born in Istria, he emigrated to Nuremberg. Between 1545 and 1557 he was the dean of the philosophical faculty at the University of Tübingen. He is the first known Protestant from the Balkans.
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N. E. Cameron
1903 - 1983 (80 years)
N. E. Cameron was a writer from Guyana who wrote on almost every topic from history and mathematics to politics. Biography Early years and education Norman Eustace Cameron was born in New Amsterdam, Guyana. He attended Queen's College in Georgetown, and in 1921 won the Guyana Scholarship, achieving First-Class Honours at the Oxford and Cambridge Higher Examination, with five distinctions in Latin, French, English, Mathematics and Religious Knowledge, placing him first among candidates from Barbados and Guyana.
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Klaus Wittkugel
1910 - 1985 (75 years)
Klaus Wittkugel was one of the most important commercial and poster artists in the German Democratic Republic . For many years he was also a professor at the Berlin-Weißensee Arts Academy. Life Wittkugel was born in Kiel in the extreme north of the country. His father was a businessman. Klaus Wittkugel himself undertook a commercial training in Hamburg between 1927 and 1929, while also attending the Hamburg State Arts Academy, and then studied in Essen at the Folkwang University of the Arts till 1932. Here he was a master-scholar of Max Burchartz. He then relocated to Berlin where between 1932 and 1935 he was employed as a commercial artist by a retail chain.
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Adam of Dryburgh
1140 - 1212 (72 years)
Adam of Dryburgh , in later times also known as Adam the Carthusian, Adam Anglicus and Adam Scotus, was an Anglo-Scottish theologian, writer and Premonstratensian and Carthusian monk. Life He was born around 1140 in the Anglo-Scottish border area to parents whose names and identities are unknown. The details of his earliest education are not known. He is known to have rejected a clerical life in favour of monasticism, entering the Premonstratensian house of Dryburgh Abbey as a young man and becoming a priest there in 1165 at the age of twenty-five.
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Heinrich Landesmann
1821 - 1902 (81 years)
Heinrich Landesmann , more commonly known by his pseudonym, Hieronymus Lorm, was an Austrian poet and philosophical writer. From his earliest childhood he was very sickly; at the age of fifteen his sight and hearing were almost completely destroyed; and later in life he became totally blind. He developed the Lorm alphabet, a form of tactile signing named after him.
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Luigi Chiarini
1900 - 1975 (75 years)
Luigi Chiarini was an Italian film theorist, essayist, screenwriter and film director. Life and career Born in Rome, Chiarini wrote extensively about film theory and in 1935 he founded the drama school Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome. He later founded and directed the Centro's official journal Bianco e Nero and the magazine Rivista del cinema italiano. In 1961 he was appointed the first chair of film studies in Italy, at the University of Pisa.
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Edwin Whitfield Fay
1865 - 1920 (55 years)
Edwin Whitfield Fay was a United States philologist. Biography He graduated from Southwestern Presbyterian University in 1883, received the degree of Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University in 1890, and studied at the University of Leipzig in 1891–92. In 1890-91 he was instructor in Sanskrit and classics at the University of Michigan, in 1892-93 he was acting associate professor of Latin at the University of Texas, in 1893-99 professor of Latin at Washington and Lee College, and beginning 1899 professor of Latin at the University of Texas until his death in Pittsburgh while visiting his sister.
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Martin R. P. McGuire
1897 - 1969 (72 years)
Martin Rawson Patrick McGuire was an American classicist and the senior editor of The New Catholic Encyclopedia, for which he wrote 114 articles. Early life Martin Rawson Patrick McGuire was born in 1897.
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Judy Canova
1913 - 1983 (70 years)
Judy Canova , born Juliette Canova , was an American comedienne, actress, singer, and radio personality. She appeared on Broadway and in films. She hosted her own self-titled network radio program, a popular series broadcast from 1943 to 1955.
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Leopoldo Maggi
1840 - 1905 (65 years)
Leopoldo Maggi was an Italian physician, craniologist and naturalist. He completed his studies in the University of Pavia. In 1863 he obtained two degrees: in Natural sciences and in Medicine and surgery and became assistant first to Paolo Panceri the teacher of several other outstanding Italian zoologists of the end of the 19th century and then to Giuseppe Balsamo Crivelli. In 1864 he was appointed lecturer in Mineralogy and Geology at Pavia, where from 1874 he held the professorship of Zoology and Comparative anatomy. When zoology became a separate subject in 1875 he held the chair of Com...
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Thomas Jordan
1614 - 1685 (71 years)
Thomas Jordan was an English poet, playwright and actor, born possibly in London or Eynsham in Oxfordshire about 1612 or 1614. Early career Jordan was a boy actor in the King's Revels Company, which played at the Salisbury Court and Fortune theatres, and continued with the company as an adult. He is known to have performed the part of Lepida, the mother of Messalina, in Thomas Rawlins's Messalina some time between 1634 and 1636. In 1637, Jordan published his earliest known work, Poeticall Varieties, or Variety of Fancies, which shows his theatrical background. It was dedicated to John Ford of Gray's Inn, a cousin of John Ford the dramatist.
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Harold Winston Rhodes
1905 - 1987 (82 years)
Harold Winston Rhodes was a New Zealand university professor of English, writer and editor. He was born in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia in 1905.
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Jerry Wald
1911 - 1962 (51 years)
Jerome Irving Wald was an American screenwriter and a producer of films and radio programs. Life and career Early life Born to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, he had a brother and sons who were active in show business. He attended James Madison High School.
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Georg Thym
1520 - 1560 (40 years)
Georg Thym was a German teacher, poet and writer. Life Thym attended school in his home town and then, from 1540, attended the University of Wittenberg, where he met Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon, who remained his lifelong friends. After graduating from his "Grundstudium", in 1544 Thym took up a post as under-teacher in Magdeburg, where he was a colleague of Martin Agricola.
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John Abercrombie
1726 - 1806 (80 years)
#7774
Herbert Baker
1920 - 1983 (63 years)
Herbert Baker was a songwriter and screenwriter for television and films. Biography The only son of composer Maurice Abrahams and singer Belle Baker, Herbert attended Yale School of Drama, receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts. His first Broadway credit was in 1944 as the lyricist of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's arrangement of Offenbach's La Belle Helene as well as other songs and musical pieces for the Broadway musical,Goes to Troy
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Gustav Anton von Seckendorff
1775 - 1823 (48 years)
Gustav Anton von Seckendorff was a German author, actor and declaimer. Life Gustav Anton Freiherr von Seckendorff was an offspring of the Gudent branch of the House of Seckendorff, which had its residence at Meuselwitz, Thuringia. Gustav Anton was born at Meuselwitz as the seventh child of Friedrich Carl von Seckendorff , a colonel in the service of the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg. His brother Adolf Christian , who had a military career, also became known as a writer, and his works are sometimes confused with those of Gustav Anton.
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John Owen
1821 - 1883 (62 years)
John Owen, also known by his bardic name Owain Alaw Pencerdd , was a Welsh-language poet and also a musician. Early life Owen was born and raised in Chester, England, just across the border from Wales. He was apprenticed as a young man to a cutler, but he also studied music and the organ, and became the organist at the Countess of Huntingdon's Chapel, as well as conductor of the Octagon Orchestral Society. He married a Miss Williams in 1842, and in 1844 gave up his business to devote himself to music full time.
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Arthur E. Sutherland Jr.
1920 - 1973 (53 years)
Arthur Eugene Sutherland Jr. was an American lawyer, law professor, and author. Biography Arthur E. Sutherland Jr. was the youngest son of Arthur E. Sutherland a Justice of the New York State Supreme Court. He was born and raised in Rochester New York.
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Jérémie-Jacques Oberlin
1735 - 1806 (71 years)
Jérémie-Jacques Oberlin was an Alsatian philologist and archaeologist. He was also known as Jeremias Jakob Oberlin in German. The brother of Jean Frédéric Oberlin, he was born at Strasbourg. While studying theology at the university he devoted special attention to Biblical archaeology. In 1755 he was chosen professor at the gymnasium of his native town, in 1763 librarian to the university, in 1770 professor of rhetoric, and in 1782 of logic and metaphysics.
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Georg Forster
1510 - 1568 (58 years)
Georg Forster was a German editor, composer and physician. Forster was born at Amberg, in the Upper Palatinate. While a chorister at Elector Ludwig V’s court in Heidelberg around 1521, he was a colleague of Caspar Othmayr who would also become a composer of renown. Forster received his first instruction in composition from the Kapellmeister Lorenz Lemlin. Forster died at Nuremberg.
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Johan Jakob Nervander
1805 - 1848 (43 years)
Johan Jakob Nervander was a Finnish poet, physicist and meteorologist. He was born to Johan Nervander, a pharmacist in Uusikaupunki, and his wife Beata Bergbom. In 1820 Nervander became a student at the Royal Academy of Turku where he was a friend of Johan Ludvig Runeberg.
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Richard S. Morse
1911 - 1988 (77 years)
Richard S. Morse was an American inventor and scientist credited with the invention of orange juice concentrate, the founder of the Minute Maid, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, Assistant Secretary of the Army, and senior lecturer at Sloan School of Management of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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Ippolit Sokolov
1902 - 1974 (72 years)
Ippolit Vasilevich Sokolov was a Soviet theatre critic, screenwriter and poet. He became involved with the Moscow-based Central Institute of Labour. Ippolit Sokolov was born into a working-class family. He started his literary activity when he was 14. In 1918 he moved to Moscow where he studied at the Socialist Academy in the political and legal department.
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Johann Frischmuth
1619 - 1687 (68 years)
Johann Frischmuth was a German Orientalist. Life Johann Frischmuth was born in Wertheim a small town and regional centre in the hills to the west of Würzburg. His father, a baker, was also called Johann Frischmuth: his mother was born Margaretha Buttel. The years 1618 to 1648 were dominated by the Thirty Years' War, as a result of which during his childhood he was moved from one place to another. It was to avoid the plague that the marauding armies brought in their wake that the family made their first move and left Wertheim. While they were living in the village of Reichenholz Frischmuth obtained schooling from the local priest.
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Richard Smith
1886 - 1937 (51 years)
Richard Smith , also known as Dick Smith, was a screenwriter, actor, and film director. Smith was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and became a comedian active in the vaudeville era. He met his wife Alice Howell in 1910 and the two performed together as Howell and Howell. After working under direction of Mack Sennett at the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company in New York City, Smith moved to Los Angeles, California. Smith and his wife starred in reels together produced by L-KO Kompany.
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Lyman Beecher Kellogg
1841 - 1918 (77 years)
Lyman Beecher Kellogg was the first president, as well as the first teacher, of Kansas State Normal , now known as Emporia State University, in Emporia, Kansas, United States. After serving as KSN's president, Kellogg went on to become an attorney, state representative and senator, and the Kansas Attorney General.
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Dorothy Thursby-Pelham
1884 - 1972 (88 years)
Dorothy Elizabeth Thursby-Pelham was a scientist at the Zoological Laboratory, University of Cambridge and subsequently at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food - Directorate of Fisheries laboratory in Lowestoft who has been called 'England's first female sea-going fisheries scientist' and was an active member of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea .
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James Phinney Munroe
1862 - 1929 (67 years)
James Phinney Munroe was an American author, businessman, professor and genealogist of the Clan Munro. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and graduated in 1882, although remained active in the affairs of the school. He published a number of mostly scholarly works. He was the father-in-law of Frederic Lansing Day who married his daughter Katharine. Munroe, who lived in Lexington, Massachusetts, was a president of the Lexington Historical Society and Treasurer and President of the Munroe Felt and Paper Company. He edited the second edition of Charles Hudson's History of Lexin...
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Walter Tobagi
1947 - 1980 (33 years)
Walter Tobagi was an Italian journalist and writer. He was killed in a terrorist attack by the Brigade XXVIII March, a left-wing terrorist group. Biography Youth Walter Tobagi was born on 18 March 1947 in San Brizio, a neighborhood of the Italian district of Spoleto in Umbria, Italy. As an eight-year-old child he moved with his family in Bresso, close to the Italian city of Milan, mainly because of his father's work as a railway worker. His career as a journalist began during his early high school years, as the editor of the Parini high school's newspaper La zanzara, which became notorious f...
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Virgínia Rau
1907 - 1973 (66 years)
Virgínia de Bivar Robertes Rau was a Portuguese archaeologist and historian. She was an expert on Portuguese and Portuguese colonial history and author of many history books. She was the daughter of Luís Rau, Jr. of German descent, and his wife Matilde de Bivar de Paula Robertes of Spanish descent, who married in Lisbon in 1902. She enrolled in the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon in 1927, but the following year went aboard, where she attended several courses including at the University of Toulouse. In 1939, due to the beginning of the Second World War, she returned to Lisbon, where she joined the Historical and Philosophical Sciences of the Faculty of Arts.
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Arthur R. M. Spaid
1866 - 1936 (70 years)
Arthur Rusmiselle Miller Spaid was an American educator, school administrator, lecturer, and writer. He served as principal of Alexis I. duPont High School in Wilmington, Delaware, superintendent of New Castle County Public Schools in Delaware, superintendent of Dorchester County Public Schools in Maryland, and Delaware State commissioner of Education .
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William Greenfield
1755 - 1827 (72 years)
William Greenfield FRSE was a Scottish minister, professor of rhetoric and belles lettres, literary critic, reviewer, and author whose clerical career ended in scandal, resulting in him being excommunicated from the Church of Scotland, having his university degrees withdrawn, and his family assuming his wife's patronymic Rutherfurd.
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Rufus King
1893 - 1966 (73 years)
Rufus Frederick King was an American author of whodunit crime novels. He created four series of detective stories: the first one with Reginald De Puyster, a sophisticated detective similar to Philo Vance; the second one with his more famous character, Lieutenant Valcour; the third with Colin Starr, who appeared in four stories in the Strand Magazine during 1940–41; and the fourth with Chief Bill Dugan, who appeared in three stories in The Saint Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 1956–57.
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Hryhoriy Tiutiunnyk
1920 - 1961 (41 years)
Hryhoriy Mykhailovych Tiutiunnyk was a Ukrainian lyric poet, writer. His brother was the writer Hryhir Tiutiunnyk. External links Hryhoriy Tiutiunyk in the Ukrainian Soviet EncyclopediaNakonechna, S. And their pines still make noise. Ukrayina Moloda. 20 September 2006
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Giuseppe Gené
1780 - 1847 (67 years)
Carlo Giuseppe Gené was an Italian naturalist and author. Gené was born at Turbigo in Lombardy and studied at the University of Pavia. He published a number of papers on natural history, particularly entomology. In 1828 he became an assistant lecturer in natural history at the university, and in the following year he traveled to Hungary, returning with a collection of insect specimens. Between 1833 and 1838 he made four trips to Sardinia collecting insects.
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Ernest L. Hettich
1897 - 1973 (76 years)
Ernest Leopold Hettich was an American scholar of classics. Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., the son of Dr. Leonhard Hettich and his wife Ella Elfriede Helene von Dobschütz. He graduated from Brooklyn Boys High School. He graduated from Cornell University in 1919. He earned an M.A. from Cornell in 1920 and worked for seven years at the New York Public Library. In 1933 he earned his PhD at Columbia University. Hettich joined the faculty of New York University in 1927 as Professor of Classics, taught there for many years, and served as Director of Libraries.
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John Wallace
1842 - 1908 (66 years)
John Wallace was a teacher, lawyer, political leader and judge in Florida. Wallace served in the Union Army after being freed by federal soldiers during the American Civil War. He served in the Florida Legislature during the Reconstruction era. He also became a lawyer and argued cases before the Florida Supreme Court. He putatively wrote "Carpetbag Rule in Florida: The Inside Workings of Civil Government in Florida After the Close of the Civil War". At the time of his death, he had held public office longer than any other Black elected official.
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Luis Martín
1846 - 1906 (60 years)
Luis Martín García was a Spanish Jesuit, elected the twenty-fourth Superior General of the Society of Jesus. Early years and formation The third of six brothers, Martín was born of humble parentage in Melgar de Fernamental. After primary education in his own village he entered the seminary of Burgos in 1858, where he spent six years. His intellectual inclination led him to join the Society of Jesus in 1864. He began his philosophy studies in Léon, but revolution in Spain and anti-clericalism forced him to move to France where he completed his courses, first in Vals, and then in Poyanne. There, he also taught humanities and rhetoric before doing his theology .
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Martin Routh
1755 - 1854 (99 years)
Martin Joseph Routh was an English classical scholar and President of Magdalen College, Oxford . Birthplace and Oxford career Routh was born at South Elmham, Suffolk, son of the Rev. Peter Routh, rector there, and his wife, Mary Reynolds. He matriculated at The Queen's College, Oxford, on 31 May 1770 and on 24 July 1771, was elected to a demyship at Magdalen College. He graduated B.A. on 5 February 1774 and was elected on 25 July 1775 to a fellowship of his college. On 23 October 1776 he took an MA, proceeding B.D. in 1786, and D.D. on 6 July 1790. On 21 December 1777, he received deacon's orders from Philip Yonge, Bishop of Norwich; but did not take priest's orders until 1810.
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Daniel Seltzer
1933 - 1980 (47 years)
Daniel Seltzer was a professor of English at Princeton University, an actor and a Shakespeareanan scholar. He was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play in 1976 for his performance in Jules Feiffer's Knock Knock and had a role in director Paul Mazursky's 1978 film An Unmarried Woman starring Jill Clayburgh.
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Fortunat Strowski
1866 - 1952 (86 years)
Fortunat Joseph Strowski de Robkowa was a French literary historian, essayist and critic. A specialist on Pascal and Montaigne, he superintended the first critical edition of Montaigne's Essays. Life Fortunat Strowski was born in Carcassonne to a Jewish family from Galicia, then a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was educated in France, where he was a student of Ferdinand Brunetière.
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