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,
#7851
Janus Cornarius
1500 - 1558 (58 years)
Janus Cornarius was a Saxon humanist and friend of Erasmus. A gifted philologist, Cornarius specialized in editing and translating Greek and Latin medical writers with "prodigious industry," taking a particular interest in botanical pharmacology and the effects of environment on illness and the body. Early in his career, Cornarius also worked with Greek poetry, and later in his life Greek philosophy; he was, in the words of Friedrich August Wolf, "a great lover of the Greeks." Patristic texts of the 4th century were another of his interests. Some of his own writing is extant, including a book...
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Victor Cherbuliez
1829 - 1899 (70 years)
Charles Victor Cherbuliez was a Swiss, and then French novelist and author. He was born at Geneva, Switzerland and died at Combs-la-Ville. He was the eleventh member elected to occupy seat 3 of the Académie Française in 1881.
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Acharya Aatreya
1921 - 1989 (68 years)
Acharya Aatreya was an Indian poet, lyricist, playwright, and screenwriter known for his works in Telugu cinema and Telugu theatre. He received the state Nandi Award for Best Lyricist in 1981 for "Andamaina Lokamani" from the film Tholikoodi Koosindi. He is popularly known as Manasu Kavi .
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Carl Foreman
1914 - 1984 (70 years)
Carl Foreman, CBE was an American screenwriter and film producer who wrote the award-winning films The Bridge on the River Kwai and High Noon, among others. He was one of the screenwriters who were blacklisted in Hollywood in the 1950s because of their suspected communist sympathy or membership in the Communist Party.
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Daniel Curley
1918 - 1988 (70 years)
Daniel Curley was an American novelist and short story writer. Life He was a native of East Bridgewater, Massachusetts. He was accepted and matriculated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , but transferred to, and graduated from the University of Alabama. He taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He lived in Urbana, Illinois. Roger Ebert was a student, and recalled that Curley "introduced me to many of the cornerstones of my life's reading: 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock', Crime and Punishment, Madame Bovary, The Ambassadors, Nostromo, The Professor's House, The Great Gatsby, The Sound and the Fury.
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Heinrich Glarean
1488 - 1563 (75 years)
Heinrich Glarean also styled Glareanus was a Swiss music theorist, poet and humanist. He was born in Mollis and died in Freiburg im Breisgau. Biography Glarean was born as Heinrich Loriti in Mollis in Canton Glarus to a politician. As a boy, he took care of cattle and received a good education. After a thorough early training in music, Glarean enrolled in the University of Cologne, where he studied theology, philosophy, and mathematics as well as music. It was in Cologne where he held a poem as a tribute to Emperor Maximilian I. Since 1514 he was a teacher for Greek and Latin in Basel, where he met Erasmus and the two humanists became lifelong friends.
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Husayn Muruwwa
1910 - 1987 (77 years)
Husayn Muruwwa was a Lebanese Marxist philosopher, journalist, author, and literary critic. His longest and most famous work, "Materialist Tendencies in Arabic-Islamic Philosophy" , was a Marxist interpretation of traditional Arab texts. Muruwwa was born in Haddatha, a small village in Lebanon, studied in Iraq, taught in Syria, completed his higher education in the USSR, and was martyred in Lebanon. Up to his adulthood, he was groomed to be a sheikh like many generations of men before him, but after years, even decades, of intellectual reconciliation, he converted to Marxism which led to his expulsion from Iraq.
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Ernst Schulze
1789 - 1817 (28 years)
Ernst Conrad Friedrich Schulze was a German Romantic poet. He was born and died in Celle. Early life and education The son of the Mayor of Celle, his mother died while he was only two years old and much of his early education was overseen by his two grandfathers, who were a Celle bookseller and a minister.
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J.-H. Rosny aîné
1856 - 1940 (84 years)
J.-H. Rosny aîné was the pseudonym of Joseph Henri Honoré Boex , a French author of Belgian origin, who is considered one of the founding figures of modern science fiction. Born in Brussels in 1856, he wrote in the French language, together with his younger-brother Séraphin Justin François Boex under the pen name J.-H. Rosny until 1909. After they ended their collaboration Joseph Boex continued to write under the name "Rosny aîné" while his brother used J.-H. Rosny jeune . Married to Gertrude Emma Holmes, when she was 16 and he was 24 in London on 22/11/1880. They had 4 children together.
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Jean Passerat
1534 - 1602 (68 years)
Jean Passerat was a 16th-century French political satirist and poet. Life Passerat was born at Troyes, on 18 October 1534. He studied at the University of Paris, and is said to have had some curious adventures at one time working in a mine. He was, however, a scholar by natural taste, and became eventually a teacher at the Collège de Plessis, and on the death of Ramus was made professor of Latin in 1572 in the Collège de France.
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John Fletcher Hurst
1834 - 1903 (69 years)
John Fletcher Hurst was an American bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church and the first Chancellor of the American University in Washington, D.C. Biography Born on August 17, 1834, in Salem, Dorchester County, Maryland. Hurst graduated from Dickinson College in 1854 and in 1856 went to Germany to study at the University of Halle and the University of Heidelberg.
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David Bates
1809 - 1870 (61 years)
David Bates was an American poet. He was born in Indian Hill, Ohio, and educated in Buffalo, New York, before working in first Indianapolis then Philadelphia. In 1849, he published a volume of poetry, Eolian.
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Paul-Louis Couchoud
1879 - 1959 (80 years)
Paul-Louis Couchoud was a French philosopher, a graduate from the prestigious École Normale Supérieure in Paris, a physician, a man of letters, and a poet. He became well known as an adapter of Japanese haiku into French, an editor of Reviews, a translator, and a writer promoting the German thesis of the non-historicity of Jesus Christ.
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Johann Joachim Eschenburg
1743 - 1820 (77 years)
Johann Joachim Eschenburg was a German critic and literary historian. He was born and educated at Hamburg, going on to study at the University of Leipzig and University of Göttingen. In 1767 he was appointed tutor, and subsequently professor, at the Collegium Carolinum in Braunschweig . The title of Hofrat was conferred on him in 1786, and in 1814 he was made one of the directors of the Carolinum.
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Igor Terentiev
1892 - 1937 (45 years)
Igor Gerasimovich Terentiev was a Russian poet, artist, stage director, representative of Russian avant-garde. Biography and creative work Terentiev was born in Pavlograd into the family of lieutenant Gerasim Lvovich Terentiev and Elizabeth von Derfelden, daughter of a resigned cavalry captain. He had a brother and two sisters: Vladimir , Olga and Tatiana .
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Terrence Des Pres
1939 - 1987 (48 years)
Terrence Des Pres was an American writer and Holocaust scholar. Life Terrence Des Pres graduated from Southeast Missouri State College in 1962. He went on to complete graduate degrees in philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis. He spent time with John Nathan at Harvard University as Harvard Junior Fellows, where Des Pres was the society's sommelier and they formed a friendship.
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John Cheever
1912 - 1982 (70 years)
John William Cheever was an American short story writer and novelist. He is sometimes called "the Chekhov of the suburbs". His fiction is mostly set in the Upper East Side of Manhattan; the Westchester suburbs; old New England villages based on various South Shore towns around Quincy, Massachusetts, where he was born; and Italy, especially Rome. His short stories included "The Enormous Radio", "Goodbye, My Brother", "The Five-Forty-Eight", "The Country Husband", and "The Swimmer", and he also wrote five novels: The Wapshot Chronicle , The Wapshot Scandal , Bullet Park , Falconer and a novell...
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Alexis Rannit
1914 - 1985 (71 years)
Alexis Rannit was an Estonian poet, critic and literature researcher. Biography He was born in Kallaste, in the Governorate of Livonia of the Russian Empire . He spent his childhood in Saint Petersburg. In 1939, he graduated from the University of Tartu. He studied applied arts. He did research on Lithuanian literature and knew personally many Lithuanian authors. From 1938 to 1940 he worked as a correspondent of the Riga newspaper Segodnya.
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James Thomson
1834 - 1882 (48 years)
James Thomson , who wrote under the pen name Bysshe Vanolis, was a Scottish journalist, poet, and translator. He is most often remembered for The City of Dreadful Night , a poetic allegory of urban suffering and despair. Thomson's pen name derives from the names of the poets Shelley and Novalis, both strong influences on him as a writer. Thomson's essays were written mainly for National Reformer, Secular Review, and Cope's Tobacco Plant. His longer poems include "The Doom of a City" , "Vane's Story" , and the Orientalist ballad "Weddah and Om-El-Bonain". He admired and translated the works of the Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi and Heinrich Heine.
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Abbas Eqbal Ashtiani
1896 - 1956 (60 years)
Abbas Eqbal Ashtiani was an Iranian literary scholar, historian, translator, and man of letters. Eqbal Ashtiani was born in Ashtian. He was educated at Dar ul-Funun in Tehran and University of Paris. In 1944 Eqbal founded the monthly periodical Yādgār. Eqbal Ashtiani died in Rome, Italy and was buried at the Shah-Abdol-Azim shrine in Rey, Iran.
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John Le Gay Brereton
1871 - 1933 (62 years)
John Le Gay Brereton was an Australian poet, critic and professor of English at the University of Sydney. He was the first president of the Fellowship of Australian Writers when it was formed in Sydney in 1928.
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Euenus
450 BC - 500 BC (-50 years)
Euenus of Paros, , was a 5th-century BC poet who was roughly contemporary with Socrates. Euenus is mentioned several times in Plato's Phaedo, Phaedrus, and Apology of Socrates. According to Maximus Tyre, Evenus was the instructor of Socrates in poetry, a statement which derives some countenance from a passage in Plato from which it may also be inferred that Euenus was alive at the time of Socrates's death, but at such an advanced age that he was likely soon to follow him. Eusebius places him at the 30th Olympiad and onwards. His poetry was gnomic, that is, it formed the vehicle for expressing philosophic maxims and opinions.
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Leigh Brackett
1915 - 1978 (63 years)
Leigh Douglass Brackett was an American science fiction writer known as "the Queen of Space Opera." She was also a screenwriter, known for The Big Sleep , Rio Bravo , and The Long Goodbye . She worked on an early draft of The Empire Strikes Back , elements of which remained in the film; she died before it went into production. In 1956, her book The Long Tomorrow made her the first woman ever shortlisted for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, and, along with C. L. Moore, one of the first two women ever nominated for a Hugo Award. In 2020, she posthumously won a Retro Hugo for her novel The Nemesis...
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Clifford Odets
1906 - 1963 (57 years)
Clifford Odets was an American playwright, screenwriter, and actor. In the mid-1930s, he was widely seen as the potential successor to Nobel Prize–winning playwright Eugene O'Neill, as O'Neill began to withdraw from Broadway's commercial pressures and increasing critical backlash. From January 1935, Odets's socially relevant dramas were extremely influential, particularly for the remainder of the Great Depression. His works inspired the next several generations of playwrights, including Arthur Miller, Paddy Chayefsky, Neil Simon, and David Mamet. After the production of his play Clash by Nigh...
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Graham Chapman
1941 - 1989 (48 years)
Graham Chapman was a British actor, comedian and writer. He was one of the six members of the surreal comedy group Monty Python. He portrayed authority figures such as The Colonel and the lead role in two Python films, Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Life of Brian .
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Julian Trevelyan
1910 - 1988 (78 years)
Julian Otto Trevelyan was an English artist and poet. Early life Trevelyan was the only child to survive to adulthood of Robert Calverley Trevelyan and his wife Elizabeth van der Hoeven. His grandfather was the liberal politician Sir George Trevelyan, 2nd Baronet, and his uncle the historian George Macaulay Trevelyan; he is the great-uncle of his namesake, Julian Trevelyan the pianist.
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Wilhelm Nestle
1865 - 1959 (94 years)
Wilhelm Nestle was a German philologist and philosopher. Biography Wilhelm Nestle was the only child of High Court Attorney Christian Gottlieb Nestle and Maria Christiane Steudel , who had had other children in previous marriages. Following his school years, Nestle studied classical philology, philosophy, and history at the University of Tübingen and at the Humboldt University of Berlin. He was a student, among others, of Alfred von Gutschmid and Erwin Rohde. In 1888 he passed the teacher's exam and in 1889 he obtained his doctorate in Philosophy in Tübingen. Then he entered the school service in Württemberg, frequently changing posts.
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William Seymour Tyler
1810 - 1897 (87 years)
William Seymour Tyler was the Amherst College, Massachusetts, historian during his tenure as professor of Latin, Greek, and Greek literature from 1832 to 1893. Biography He was born September 2, 1810, in Harford, Pennsylvania, the son of Joab and Nabby née Seymour Tyler. He matriculated at Amherst in 1829, graduated in 1830 , and completed his M.A. in . He tutored at Amherst from 1832 to 1834 and in 1836. He was a professor of Latin and Greek at Amherst from 1836 to 1847, and professor of Greek from 1847 to 1893. He was named professor emeritus in 1893 . From 1835 to 1836 he studied theology under Dr.
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Albert Ulrik Bååth
1853 - 1912 (59 years)
Albert Ulrik Bååth, often mentioned as A.U. Bååth was a Swedish poet, translator, lecturer and author. He was a senior lecturer in Old Norse literature at Gothenburg University College from 1881 until 1911. He was the brother of Cecilia Bååth-Holmberg.
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Jean Grenier
1898 - 1971 (73 years)
Jean Grenier was a French philosopher and writer. He taught for a time in Algiers, where he became a significant influence on the young Albert Camus. Biography Born in Paris, Grenier spent his childhood and adolescence in Saint-Brieuc, Brittany, the birthplace of Jules Lequier, the visionary philosopher to whom Grenier would eventually dedicate his doctoral thesis. These early years, during which he became acquainted with Louis Guilloux, Edmond Lambert and Max Jacob, are documented in his autobiographical novel Les grèves . In 1922 Grenier gained a teaching qualification in philosophy and began his academic career at the Institut français in Naples, alongside Henri Bosco.
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Hermann Sudermann
1857 - 1928 (71 years)
Hermann Sudermann was a German dramatist and novelist. Life Early career Sudermann was born at Matzicken, a village to the east of Heydekrug in the Province of Prussia , close to the Russian frontier. The Sudermanns were a Mennonite family from the Vistula delta Mennonite communities near the former Elbing, East Prussia, .
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Karl Gottlob Zumpt
1792 - 1849 (57 years)
Karl or Carl Gottlob Zumpt was a German classical scholar known for his work in the field of Latin philology. Life Karl Gottlob Zumpt was born at Berlin on 20 March 1792. Educated at Heidelberg and Berlin, he was from 1812 onward, a schoolteacher at Friedrich Werder Gymnasium in Berlin. In 1821 he transferred as a professor to the Joachimsthal Gymnasium, also in Berlin. In 1827 he was appointed professor of classical philology at the University of Berlin.
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Zygmunt Zaleski
1882 - 1967 (85 years)
Zygmunt Zaleski of Lubicz coat of arms , pseudonymes R. de Bron, R. Debron, was a Polish literature historian, literary critic, poet, publicist, and translator. Awarded the Légion d'honneur. Zaleski was an editor of Polak, magazine of Polish Army in France . He was a co-editor of Collection Polonaise, a series of French language translations of Polish literature. Awarded the Golden Laurel of Polish Academy of Literature . He was also an editor of Życie Sztuki .
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Alan Jay Lerner
1918 - 1986 (68 years)
Alan Jay Lerner was an American lyricist and librettist. In collaboration with Frederick Loewe, and later Burton Lane, he created some of the world's most popular and enduring works of musical theatre both for the stage and on film. Lerner won three Tony Awards and three Academy Awards, among other honors.
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Franciscus Junius
1591 - 1677 (86 years)
Franciscus Junius , also known as François du Jon, was a pioneer of Germanic philology. As a collector of ancient manuscripts, he published the first modern editions of a number of important texts. In addition, he wrote the first comprehensive overview of ancient writings on the visual arts, which became a cornerstone of classical art theories throughout Europe.
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Rudolf Tschudi
1884 - 1960 (76 years)
Rudolf Tschudi was a Swiss philologist, historian, and Orientalist. Life Tschudi studied classical philology as well as eastern philology in Basel, Erlangen , and Tübingen and was a member of the Schwizerhüsli Basel, Erlanger, and Tübingen Wingolf fraternities. He then became an assistant professor in 1910 and a professor at the Hamburgisches Kolonialinstitut in 1914.
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Julius Zupitza
1844 - 1895 (51 years)
Julius Zupitza was a German philologist and one of the founders of English philology in Germany. Biography Zupitza was the son of Major Andreas Zupitza and his wife, Adelheid, née Albrecht. He received his Gymnasium education in Oppeln.
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Aurel Baranga
1913 - 1979 (66 years)
Aurel Baranga was a Romanian playwright and poet. Born into a Jewish family in Bucharest, his parents were company clerk Jean Leibovici and his wife Paulina. He graduated from Matei Basarab High School in 1931 and from the University of Bucharest's medical faculty in 1938. His first published work appeared in 1929 in Bilete de Papagal. Together with Gherasim Luca, he edited Alge magazine in 1930-1931, and also contributed to Unu. His Poeme cu orbi, a volume of avant-garde poetry, appeared in 1933. Between 1934 and 1940, he submitted reportages, satirical pieces and drama reviews to Facla, Cuvântul liber, Reporter, Azi and Lumea românească.
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Otto Schrader
1855 - 1919 (64 years)
Otto Schrader was a German philologist best known for his work on the history of German and Proto-Indo-European vocabulary dealing with various aspects of material culture, such as the names of domesticated plants and animals, the names of the metals, etc.
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Tang Xianzu
1550 - 1616 (66 years)
Tang Xianzu , courtesy name Yireng , was a Chinese playwright of the Ming Dynasty. Biography Tang was a native of Linchuan, Jiangxi and his career as an official consisted principally of low-level positions. He successfully participated in the provincial examinations at the age of 21 and at the imperial examinations at the age of 34. He held official positions in Nanjing, Zhejiang province, Guangdong province etc.
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Carlo Innocenzo Frugoni
1692 - 1768 (76 years)
Carlo Innocenzo Frugoni was an Italian poet and librettist. As a poet Frugoni was one of the best of the school of the Arcadian Academy, and his lyrics and pastorals had great facility and elegance. His collected works were published at Parma in 10 volumes in 1799, and a more complete edition appeared at Lucca in the same year in 15 volumes.
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Victor Aimé Huber
1800 - 1869 (69 years)
Victor Aimé Huber was a German social reformer, travel writer and a literature historian. Huber was born in Stuttgart, Germany. His parents, Ludwig Ferdinand and Therese Huber, née Heyne, were both writers. After the early death of his father, Victor was sent to live with friends of his parents in Hofwil, Switzerland. Victor was just six years old at the time.
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Abdullah Goran
1904 - 1962 (58 years)
Abdulla Goran was a leading Kurdish poet and translator of the 20th century. Biography Abdulla was born in Halabja in 1904 and received his education in local schools and the pedagogical institute in Kirkuk. As a teacher in Kirkuk, he continued his self-education by learning new languages and studying Turkish and Western literature. He took part in radical political and social causes in the 1930s and was frequently arrested until the 14 July Revolution in 1958. He spent much effort on creating a single Kurdish literary language by merging the two Kurdish dialects Kurmanji and Sorani. He was m...
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Anton Dolin
1904 - 1983 (79 years)
Sir Anton Dolin was an English ballet dancer and choreographer. Biography Dolin was born in Slinfold in Sussex as Sydney Francis Patrick Chippendall Healey-Kay . He was the second of three sons of Henry George Kay and his wife, Helen Maude Chippendall Healey , from Dublin. He trained at Serafina Astafieva's school at The Pheasantry in London's King's Road. He joined Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in 1921, was a principal there from 1924. It was Diaghilev who gave Patrick his stage name: at that time the most powerful impresario in world ballet, Diaghilev 'russified' names of his star dan...
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Bernhard Linde
1886 - 1954 (68 years)
Bernhard Linde was an Estonian literary and theatre personnel, critic and essayist. In 1927 he graduated from Tartu University in Slavic philology. He was related to Young Estonia movement. 1912-1915 he was the chief of Young Estonia's publishing house. 1919-1924 he was the executive director of the publishing house Varrak. 1940-1941 and 1944-1949 he taught at Tallinn University of Technology.
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Thea von Harbou
1888 - 1954 (66 years)
Thea Gabriele von Harbou was a German screenwriter, novelist, film director, and actress. She is remembered as the screenwriter of the science fiction film classic Metropolis and for the 1925 novel on which it was based. von Harbou collaborated as a screenwriter with film director Fritz Lang, her husband, during the period of transition from silent to sound films.
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Henry Rago
1915 - 1969 (54 years)
Henry Rago was a poet, educator, and editor. Overview Rago was editor of Poetry Magazine for 14 years from 1955-1969. He was also a Professor of Theology and Literature at the University of Chicago jointly in the Divinity School and in the New Collegiate Division. His seminars and research explored the relations between poetry and religion, among other interdisciplinary concerns. He was co-chairman of the program in the History and Philosophy of Religion in the New Collegiate Division.
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Jay Williams
1914 - 1978 (64 years)
Jay Williams was an American author of science fiction , fantasy, historical fiction, non-fiction, and radical theatre. Early life Williams was born in Buffalo, New York, the son of Max and Lillian Jacobson. He cited the experience of growing up as the son of a vaudeville show producer as leading him to pursue his acting career as early as college.
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Ivan von Müller
1830 - 1917 (87 years)
Ivan von Müller was a German classical philologist. Biography He studied philology at the University of Erlangen as a pupil of Ludwig Döderlein and Carl Friedrich Nagelsbach. Following graduation , he worked as a secondary schoolteacher in Ansbach, Zweibrücken and Erlangen. In 1864 he succeeded Döderlein as chair of classical philology and pedagogy at the University of Erlangen, where as he also served as dean and vice-rector . In 1893 he succeeded Rudolf Schöll as professor of classical philology at the University of Munich.
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Angelo Anelli
1761 - 1820 (59 years)
Angelo Anelli was an Italian poet and librettist who also wrote under the pseudonyms Marco Landi and Niccolò Liprandi. He was born in Desenzano del Garda and studied literature and poetry at a seminary in Verona. In 1793 he enrolled in the University of Padua, receiving a degree in Canon and Civil Law two years later. Active in the politics of the Cisalpine Republic in his youth, he was imprisoned twice. His 1789 sonnet on the vicissitudes of Italy under Austrian domination, "La calamità d'Italia" , was for a long time incorrectly attributed to Ugo Foscolo.
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