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Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

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List of the most influential people in Literature,

#8001

William Ogilvie of Pittensear

1736 - 1819 (83 years)

William Ogilvie of Pittensear FRSE FSA , known as the Rebel Professor, was a Scottish classicist, numismatist and author of an influential historic land reform treatise. Published in London in 1781, An Essay on the Right of Property in Land was issued anonymously, necessarily it seems in a revolutionary age.

#8002

Jorge Guillermo Borges

1874 - 1938 (64 years)

Jorge Guillermo Borges Haslam was an Argentine lawyer, teacher, writer, philosopher and translator. He was also an anarchist and a follower of Herbert Spencer's philosophy of philosophical anarchism. He was Jorge Luis Borges's father.

#8003

Alice Werner

1859 - 1935 (76 years)

Alice Werner CBE was a writer, poet and teacher of the Bantu languages. Life Alice Werner was one of seven children in the family of Reinhardt Joseph Werner of Mainz, teacher of languages, and his wife, Harriett. Her father travelled extensively during the first fifteen years of her life, and she lived in New Zealand, Mexico, United States and throughout Europe, until the family settled in Tonbridge, England, in 1874.

#8004

Rachel Hunter

1754 - 1813 (59 years)

Rachel Hunter was an English woman novelist of the early 19th century who lived and worked in Norwich. She was a contemporary of Jane Austen. Literary setting Rachel Hunter wrote for the same circulating library readership as Jane Austen, and like the latter she might belittle standard novel conventions in writings like Letitia. Her writings were well known in the Austen circle, one acquaintance describing a state of well-being as "quite Palmerstone", after Hunter's Letters from Mrs Palmerstone.

#8005

Heinrich Körting

1859 - 1890 (31 years)

Heinrich Körting was a German philologist and a brother of Gustav Körting. Like his brother he was a Romance scholar. He was born in Leipzig, became Privatdozent in 1885, and in 1889 an associate professor at the University of Leipzig. He was co-editor of the journal Zeitschrift für neufranzösische Sprache und Literatur.

#8006

Victor Chauvin

1844 - 1913 (69 years)

Victor Chauvin , an Arabic and Hebrew professor at the University of Liège, wrote a number of notable books on Middle Eastern literature and folklore, orientalism, biblical history, and Sharia, including L`histoire de l`Islamisme and Bibliographie des Ouvrages Arabes Ou Relatifs Aux Arabes Publies Dans L'Europe Chretienne De 1810 a 1885.

#8007

C. P. Taylor

1929 - 1981 (52 years)

Cecil Philip Taylor usually credited as C. P. Taylor, was a Scottish playwright. He wrote almost 80 plays during his 16 years as a professional playwright, including several for radio and television. He also made a number of documentary programmes for the BBC. His plays tended to draw on his Jewish background and his Socialist Marxist viewpoint, and to be written in dialect.

#8008

Sidney Toler

1874 - 1947 (73 years)

Sidney Toler was an American actor, playwright, and theatre director. The second European-American actor to play the role of Charlie Chan on screen, he is best remembered for his portrayal of the Chinese-American detective in 22 films made between 1938 and 1946. Before becoming Chan, Toler played supporting roles in 50 motion pictures, and was a highly regarded comic actor on the Broadway stage.

#8009

Ferdinand Dümmler

Ferdinand Dümmler

1859 - 1896 (37 years)

Georg Ferdinand Dümmler was a German classical philologist and archaeologist born in Halle an der Saale. He was the son of historian Ernst Ludwig Dümmler . He was a student at the Universities of Halle, Strassburg and Bonn. At Strassburg, he studied under Adolf Michaelis , and in Bonn, he had as instructors Franz Bücheler , Hermann Usener and Reinhard Kekulé von Stradonitz . In 1882 he received his doctorate with a thesis on the philosopher Antisthenes.

#8010

Johann Gottfried Stallbaum

Johann Gottfried Stallbaum

1793 - 1861 (68 years)

Johann Gottfried Stallbaum , German classical scholar, was born at Zaasch, near Delitzsch in Saxony. From 1820 until his death Stallbaum was connected with Thomasschule zu Leipzig, from 1835 as rector. In 1840 he was also appointed extraordinary professor in the university.

#8011

Claudio Tolomei

1492 - 1556 (64 years)

Claudio Tolomei was an Italian philologist. His name in Italian is identical to that of Claudius Ptolemaeus, the 2nd-century Greek astronomer. He belonged to the prominent Tolomei family of Siena, and became a bishop attached to the court of Pope Paul III.

#8012

Joseph Hiam Levy

1838 - 1913 (75 years)

Joseph Hiam Levy was an English author and economist. He was educated at the City of London School and joined the Civil Service. He later became a lecturer in economics at Birkbeck College and an important figure in the Personal Rights Association.

#8013

Victor Henry

1850 - 1907 (57 years)

Victor Henry was a French philologist, specializing in Indian languages. Biography Having held appointments at the University of Douai and the University of Lille, Henry was appointed professor of Sanskrit and comparative grammar at the University of Paris. A prolific and versatile writer, he is probably best known by the English translations of his Précis de Grammaire comparée de l'anglais et de l'allemand and Précis de Grammaire comparée du Grec et du Latin.

#8014

Leo Vaz

1890 - 1973 (83 years)

Leo Vaz , writer, teacher and journalist in Brazil. He was the author of novels and short stories in a satirical style Biography Leonel Vaz de Barros was born in Capivari. He graduated from the Normal School as a teacher in 1911 and taught in the cities of Sao Paulo and Recife until 1918.

#8015

Ronald Burrows

1867 - 1920 (53 years)

Ronald Montagu Burrows was a British archaeologist and academic, who served as Principal of King's College London from 1913 to 1920. Biography He was born on 16 August 1867 in Rugby, Warwickshire, England, the son of the Rev. Leonard Francis Burrows, a master at Rugby School, and his wife Mary Vicars. He was educated at Charterhouse School. and matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford in 1886, graduating in Greats in 1890.

#8016

Robert Montgomery

1807 - 1855 (48 years)

Robert Montgomery was an English poet and minister, the natural son of Robert Gomery , an actor and clown, and Elizabeth Medows Boyce, a schoolteacher. Born in Bath, Somerset, it is unknown why Robert Jnr. was baptised with the surname Montgomery. He was educated at a private school in the city. Later, he founded an unsuccessful weekly paper in that city. In 1828 he published The Omni-presence of the Deity, which hit popular religious sentiment so exactly that it ran through eight editions in as many months. In 1830 he followed it with The Puffiad , and Satan, or Intellect without God. An exh...

#8017

Campbell Bonner

1876 - 1954 (78 years)

Campbell Bonner was an American classicist notable for his research of amulets and ancient popular religion and superstitions of the late Graeco-Roman pagan and early Christian world. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1933 and the American Philosophical Society in 1938.

#8018

Wisse Alfred Pierre Smit

Wisse Alfred Pierre Smit

1903 - 1986 (83 years)

Wisse Alfred Pierre Smit was a poet and an influential Dutch literary historian. He was a specialist in Dutch literature of the Golden Age . W.A.P. Smit worked as a teacher for 17 years, before he accepted a professorship in Dutch literature at the University of Utrecht in 1945. He published various works of poetry and editions of a number of 16th and 17th century Dutch poets. He gained academic renown with a number of studies on various aspects of 17th century Dutch literature. Through his publications and his guidance to doctoral students, he had a considerable influence on the development...

#8019

Herman Clarence Nixon

1886 - 1967 (81 years)

Herman Clarence Nixon was an American political scientist and a member of the Southern Agrarians. Early life Herman Clarence Nixon was born in 1886 in Possum Trot, Alabama. He was educated in the public schools of Jacksonville, Alabama and attended the Jacksonville State normal school, graduating in 1907. He graduated from Alabama Polytechnic Institute, now known as Auburn University. He went to graduate school at University of Chicago. During World War I, he served in the United States Army in Europe.

#8020

Denis Dodart

1634 - 1707 (73 years)

Denis Dodart was a French physician, naturalist, and botanist who was born in 1634 in Paris and died on November 5, 1707, in the same city. Biography Childhood and humanist education Denis Dodart was born in 1634 in a Parisian middle class family that belonged to the bourgeoisie. He was a son of Jean Dodart, notary public with a passion for literature, and Marie Dubois, daughter of a lawyer at the Parlement of Paris. He was interested in art and science since young age. He was taught Latin, Greek, music, and drawing. Fontenelle mentioned in his Éloge of Monsieur Dodart the library of the Doda...

#8021

William Alexander Robb Kerr

1875 - 1945 (70 years)

William Alexander Robb Kerr, was a Canadian academic and the third president of the University of Alberta. Born in Toronto, Ontario, to Thomas and Maria Jane Kerr, Kerr received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1899 and a Master of Arts degree in 1901 from the University of Toronto. Continuing his education, he received an AM degree from Harvard University in 1902, an ET from the University of Paris in 1903, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1904. In 1904, he was appointed a professor of Romance languages and literature at Adelphi College in Brooklyn, New York. In 1909, he joined the University of Alberta as a professor of modern languages.

#8022

William Ireland Knapp

1835 - 1908 (73 years)

William Ireland Knapp , was an American Spanish scholar. Biography Knapp received his Bachelor of Arts in 1860, and taught at Colgate University. He was Professor of Ancient and Modern Languages at Vassar College from 1865 to 1867. After which time he travelled through England, France and Spain. In 1877 he was appointed Knight of the Order of Isabella the Catholic. That year he returned to America to teach at Yale University. While at Yale he taught at the renowned Spanish scholar Archer Milton Huntington, founder of the Hispanic Society of America. In 1892 he was appointed Professor of Spanis...

#8023

Jean-Louis Burnouf

1775 - 1844 (69 years)

Jean-Louis Burnouf was a French philologist and translator. The son of a poor weaver who died early in Burnouf's life, leaving him an orphan, he was admitted to the collège d'Harcourt in Paris on a scholarship and in 1792 won its Université prix d'honneur. During the French Revolution, he made his living as a merchant. Entering the Université in 1808, he was the professor of rhetoric at the lycée Charlemagne, and professor of Latin eloquence at the Collège de France, from 1817 to 1844, then inspector of the Université. He was elected a member of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lett...

#8024

Friedrich Kauffmann

1863 - 1941 (78 years)

Friedrich Kauffmann was a German philologist who specialized in Germanic studies. Biography Friedrich Kaufmann was born in Stuttgart, Germany on 14 September 1863. Kaufmann enrolled at the University of Tübingen in 1881, where he studied classical philology under Alfred von Gutschmid and Erwin Rohde, and Germanic philology under Eduard Sievers. He received his Ph.D. in 1886 with a thesis on the Old Saxon poem Heliand. During the work for his thesis, Kauffmann came in contact with Hermann Paul, who was to have a major impact on his future career.

#8025

James Bridie

1888 - 1951 (63 years)

James Bridie was the pseudonym of a Scottish playwright, screenwriter and physician whose real name was Osborne Henry Mavor. He took his pen-name from his paternal grandfather's first name and his grandmother's maiden name.

#8026

Felix Pollak

1909 - 1987 (78 years)

Felix Pollak was an American librarian, translator, and poet. Pollak was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1909 to Geza Pollak and Helene Schneider Pollak. A Jew and liberal anti-fascist, he studied law and theater at the University of Vienna before emigrating to the United States in 1938 following the annexation of Austria by the Third Reich. He briefly worked as a door-to-door salesman in New York City before enrolling at the University of Buffalo, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in library science in 1941.

#8027

Giacinto Scelsi

1905 - 1988 (83 years)

Giacinto Francesco Maria Scelsi was an Italian composer who also wrote surrealist poetry in French. He is best known for having composed music based around only one pitch, altered in all manners through microtonal oscillations, harmonic allusions, and changes in timbre and dynamics, as paradigmatically exemplified in his Quattro pezzi su una nota sola . This composition remains his most famous work and one of the few performed to significant recognition during his lifetime. His musical output, which encompassed all Western classical genres except scenic music, remained largely undiscovered even within contemporary musical circles during most of his life.

#8028

John Johnston

1570 - 1611 (41 years)

John Johnston was a Scottish poet. Life He was born not later than 1570. He styled himself Aberdonensis, i.e. "from Aberdeen". After studying at King's College, Aberdeen, he spent eight years at continental universities, sending home in 1587 from the University of Helmstadt a manuscript copy of George Buchanan's Sphæra, along with two of his own epigrams. At the University of Rostock he formed a lasting friendship with Justus Lipsius.

#8029

Thomas Stangl

1854 - 1921 (67 years)

Thomas Stangl was a German classical scholar and text critic. He is found referenced most often for his edition of scholia to Cicero's speeches , especially for his work on Asconius and the Bobbio Scholiast.

#8030

Edward Adolf Sonnenschein

1851 - 1929 (78 years)

Edward Adolf Sonnenschein was an English classical scholar and writer on Latin grammar and verse. Career Sonnenschein was educated at University College School and then in 1868 at University College London.

#8031

Author.

#8032

Daniël Heinsius

Daniël Heinsius

1580 - 1655 (75 years)

Daniel Heinsius was one of the most famous scholars of the Dutch Renaissance. His youth and student years Heinsius was born in Ghent. The troubles of the Spanish war drove his parents to settle first at Veere in Zeeland, then to England, next at Rijwijk and lastly at Vlissingen. In 1596, being already remarkable for his attainments, he was sent to the University of Franeker to study law under Henricus Schotanus. In 1598, he settled at Leiden for the nearly sixty remaining years of his life. There he studied under Joseph Scaliger, and there he met Marnix de St Aldegonde, Janus Dousa, Paulus ...

#8033

Janet Spens

1876 - 1963 (87 years)

Janet Spens was a Scottish literary scholar specialising in Elizabethan literature. She was the assistant to Regius Professor Macneile Dixon in the Department of English Language and Literature and "tutor to the women students in Arts" at the University of Glasgow, before joining Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford as a fellow and tutor in English . In 1910, she became the first woman to be awarded a Doctor of Letters degree by the University of Glasgow.

#8034

Lazarus Geiger

1829 - 1870 (41 years)

Lazarus Geiger was a German-Jewish philosopher and philologist. Life He was born at Frankfurt-on-Main, was destined to commerce, but soon gave himself up to scholarship and studied at Marburg, Bonn and Heidelberg. From 1861 till his sudden death in 1870 he was professor in the Jewish high school at Frankfurt. His chief aim was to prove that the evolution of human reason is closely bound up with that of language. He further maintained that the origin of the Indo-Germanic language is to be sought not in Asia but in central . He was a convinced opponent of rationalism in religion.

#8035

John Belushi

1949 - 1982 (33 years)

John Adam Belushi was an Albanian and American comedian, actor, and musician. He was one of the seven original cast members of the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live . Throughout his career, Belushi had a personal and artistic partnership with his fellow SNL star Dan Aykroyd, whom he met while they were both working at Chicago's Second City comedy club.

#8036

Percy Stafford Allen

1869 - 1933 (64 years)

Percy Stafford Allen, FBA was a British classical scholar, best known for his writings on Desiderius Erasmus. Life Percy Stafford Allen was born on 7 July 1869 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England. He was a son of Joseph Allen and Mary Mason Satow . He received his early education in Rottingdean. From 1882, he studied Latin and Greek at Clifton College and after 1888 at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. One of his Oxford tutors was the historian and biographer James Anthony Froude. In 1892 he received his BA, and his MA in 1896.

#8037

Henry Beeching

1859 - 1919 (60 years)

Henry Charles Beeching was a British clergyman, author and poet, who was Dean of Norwich from 1911 to 1919. Biography H.C Beeching was born on 15 May 1859 in Sussex, the son of J. P. G. Beeching of Bexhill. He was educated at the City of London School and at Balliol College, Oxford. He took holy orders in 1882, and began work in a Liverpool parish at Mossley Hill. He was Rector of Yattendon from 1885 to 1900; Clark Lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1900; professor of Pastoral Theology at King's College London from 1900 to 1903; Chaplain of Lincoln's Inn from 1900 to 1903; Canon of Westminster Abbey from October 1902 until 1911 and Dean of Norwich from 1911 until his death.

#8038

Jiang Biwei

1899 - 1978 (79 years)

Jiang Biwei was influential in the lives of the painter Xu Beihong and the politician Chang Tao-fan. She published her memoirs and she is portrayed in Chinese historical dramas. Life Early life Jiang was born as Jiang Tangzhen in Yixing, Jiangsu province on 9 April 1899. Her father Jiang Meisheng was a scholar and poet who wrote a book on the Zhuangzi, and her mother Dai Qingbo was a poet. She attended the Young Girls Normal School in Changzhou. In 1911, her parents betrothed her to Zha Zihan, who came from an influential family of Haining, Zhejiang.

#8039

Benjamin Lawrence Reid

1918 - 1990 (72 years)

Benjamin Lawrence Reid was an American professor in English from the 1940s to 1980s. During his career, Reid primarily taught at Sweet Briar College from 1951 to 1957 and Mount Holyoke College from 1957 to 1983. Outside of academics, Reid wrote multiple books, and won a Pulitzer Prize and other honors.

#8040

Jeremiah Markland

1693 - 1776 (83 years)

Jeremiah Markland was an English classical scholar. Life He was born in Childwall in Lancashire on 29 October 1693. He was educated at Christ's Hospital and Peterhouse, Cambridge. He left Cambridge in 1728 to act as private tutor to the son of W. Strode of Punsbourn, Hertfordshire, returning to the university in 1733. At a later date he lived at Twyford, and in 1744 went to Uckfield, Sussex, in order to superintend the education of the son of his former pupil, Mr. Strode. In 1752 he fixed his abode at Milton Court, near Dorking, Surrey, and remained there, living in great privacy, to the...

#8041

William Jones

1726 - 1795 (69 years)

William Jones was a Welsh antiquary, poet, scholar and radical. Jones was an ardent supporter of both the American and French Revolutions – his strong support of the Patriot and Jacobin causes earned him the nicknames "the rural Voltaire", the "Welsh Voltaire", and accusations of being, "a rank Republican and a Leveller". Despite his vocal support for foreign revolutions, however, Jones never advocated a violent Welsh republican uprising against the House of Hanover and instead encouraged the Welsh people to emigrate en masse to "The Promised Land"; in the newly founded United States of America.

#8042

Chadraabalyn Lodoidamba

1917 - 1970 (53 years)

Chadraabalyn Lodoidamba was a Mongolian writer. He was born in Govi-Altai Province in 1917. In 1954 he graduated from National University of Mongolia, the same year that his first story "Malgaitai Chono" was published.

#8043

August Lange

1907 - 1970 (63 years)

Christian August Manthey Lange was a Norwegian educator, non-fiction writer and cultural attaché. Personal life Lange was born in Kristiania, the son of politician and Nobel Laureate Christian Lous Lange and his wife Bertha Manthey . He was a brother of politician and Minister of Foreign Affairs Halvard Lange, and of Parliament of Norway member Carl Viggo Manthey Lange. He spent part of his childhood in Brussels, where his father had a position as secretary-general of the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

#8044

Josef Kohler

1849 - 1919 (70 years)

Josef Kohler was a German jurist, author and poet. Biography Kohler was born in Offenburg. He studied at Offenburg and Rastatt gymnasiums and Freiburg and Heidelberg universities. He became Doctor of Laws and was appointed judge at Mannheim . He was a professor at Würzburg and Berlin . Through his many contributions to the Zeitschrift für vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft and other law journals he aided much in advancing the comparative history of law.

#8045

Susanna Centlivre

Susanna Centlivre

1667 - 1723 (56 years)

Susanna Centlivre , born Susanna Freeman, and also known professionally as Susanna Carroll, was an English poet, actress, and "the most successful female playwright of the eighteenth century". Centlivre's "pieces continued to be acted after the theatre managers had forgotten most of her contemporaries." During a long career at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, she became known as the second woman of the English stage, after Aphra Behn.

#8046

Cora Lenore Williams

1865 - 1937 (72 years)

Cora Lenore Williams was a writer and educator known for pioneering new approaches to small-group instruction for children. She founded the A-Zed School and the Institute for Creative Development, later renamed Williams College, in Berkeley, California.

#8047

Geoffrey T. Hellman

1907 - 1977 (70 years)

Geoffrey Theodore Hellman was an American journalist and staff writer for The New Yorker. Early life Hellman was the son of writer and rare-books dealer, George S. Hellman. Born in New York City, he was also the great-grandson of banking titan Joseph Seligman, and thus, by ancestry, part of the city's German-Jewish elite who referred to themselves as Our Crowd.

#8048

George Hermonymus

1452 - 1508 (56 years)

George Hermonymus , also known as Hermonymus of Sparta, was a 15th-century Greek scribe, diplomat, scholar and lecturer. He was the first person to teach Greek at the Collège de Sorbonne in Paris. Life Although he claimed to originally be from Sparta, that city no longer existed in the 15th century, so it most likely referred to Mystra, the second largest city in the rapidly decaying Byzantine Empire of the time. Mystra was located in the hills overlooking the ancient ruins of Sparta, was the centre of a major revival in Greek literature at the time, and was the home of Gemistus Pletho.

#8049

Alexander Souter

1873 - 1949 (76 years)

Alexander Souter was a Scottish biblical scholar and university professor Biography Souter was born in Perth, and studied at the University of Aberdeen and the University of Cambridge. He subsequently became a Latin assistant at Aberdeen. While at Cambridge he studied under J. E. B. Mayor, whom Souter would credit with influence on his later scholarship.

#8050

Byeon Yeong-ro

1898 - 1961 (63 years)

Byeon Yeong-ro , also known by the art name Suju , was a Korean poet and English literature scholar. His original name was Byeon Yeong-bok , but he changed his name in 1958. He is considered a pioneer of modern Korean poetry and is well known for the poem, "Nongae" , which was included in South Korean government-issued textbooks from 1953 to 2003.

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