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,
#8151
Charles Goeller
1901 - 1955 (54 years)
Charles Goeller was an American artist best known for precise and detailed paintings and drawings in which, he once said, he aimed to achieve "emotion expressed by precision." Employing, as one critic wrote, an "exquisitely meticulous realism," he might take a full year to complete work on a single picture. Early in his career he achieved critical recognition for his still lifes, in which one critic saw an "acumen of genius" working to produce "truly superb achievement of team work between eyes that see and hands that do." Later, he also became known for cityscapes in which he employed precis...
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Heinrich von Rustige
1810 - 1900 (90 years)
Heinrich Franz Gaudenz von Rustige was a German painter specializing in historical subjects and genres. Life and work From 1828, he was a student of Wilhelm von Schadow at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. After 1832, he began participating in exhibitions there.
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Germán Valdés
1915 - 1973 (58 years)
Germán Genaro Cipriano Teodoro Gómez Valdés y Castillo , known professionally as Tin-Tan, was a Mexican actor, singer and comedian who was born in Mexico City but was raised and began his career in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua. He often displayed the pachuco dress and employed pachuco slang in many of his movies, some with his brothers Manuel "El Loco" Valdés and Ramón Valdés. He made the language of the border Mexican, known in Spanish as fronterizos pachucos, famous in Mexico. A "caló" based in Spanglish, it was a mixture of Spanish and English in speech based on that of Mexicans on the Mexican...
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Roslyn Brogue
1919 - 1981 (62 years)
Roslyn Brogue was an American pianist, violinist, music educator, classics scholar, poet, author and composer. She was born in Chicago, Illinois, and graduated from the University of Chicago in 1937, from Radcliffe College in 1943 and from Harvard University in 1947 with a Ph.D.
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Noé de la Flor Casanova
1904 - 1986 (82 years)
Noé de la Flor Casanova was a Mexican lawyer, cantautor, writer, poet and politician who served for four years as Governor of Tabasco, before being removed from office following a scandal. Life and work De la Flor y Casanova was the son of Manuel de la Flor Hernández, a master tailor, and Elodia Casanova de de la Flor, the family was extremely poor. After completing primary school in Teapa he moved to Villahermosa to attend the Instituto Juárez, a preparatory school founded by Manuel Sánchez Mármol. With a scholarship, obtained for him by José Vasconcelos at the request of fellow Tabascan Carlos Pellicer, De la Flor Casanova enrolled in the National Preparatory School in Mexico City.
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Józef Tretiak
1841 - 1923 (82 years)
Józef Tretiak was a Polish writer. Tretiak wrote a major critical biography of Józef Bohdan Zaleski . External links
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John North
1645 - 1683 (38 years)
John North was the fifth of fourteen children of Sir Dudley North, 4th Baron North. He was Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge from 1672 to 1674, and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge from 1677 to 1683.
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Ebenezer Alfred Johnson
1813 - 1891 (78 years)
Ebenezer Alfred Johnson was an American classical scholar. Johnson was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on August 18, 1813, the son of Ebenezer and Sarah B. Johnson, Johnson graduated from Yale College in 1833. After teaching for two years in New Canaan, Conn., he became a tutor in Yale College, and during his tutorship of two years he was also engaged in study at Yale Law School. He was then admitted to the New Haven bar, but a year later accepted a call to an assistant professorship of Greek and Latin in the University of the City of New York. In 1840 he was made full Professor of Latin, and this chair he retained until his death.
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James Scholefield
1789 - 1853 (64 years)
James Scholefield , English classical scholar, was born at Henley-on-Thames. He was educated at Christ's Hospital and Trinity College, Cambridge, and was in 1825 appointed professor of Greek in the university. He was for some time curate to Charles Simeon, the evangelical churchman, and his low church views involved him in disputes with his own parishioners at St Michael's, Cambridge, of which he was perpetual curate from 1823 till his death at Hastings on 4 April 1853. From 1849 until his death he was canon of Ely.
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Franz Gehring
1838 - 1884 (46 years)
Franz Gehring was a German writer on music. Gehring was a lecturer on mathematics, at first in Bonn, then from 1871 at Vienna University, but became known for his writings on music, particularly his biographies. Among the most notable are his biography of Mozart published in Francis Hueffer's The Great Musicians series of books, and several articles contributed to the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.
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Moritz Hermann Eduard Meier
1796 - 1855 (59 years)
Moritz Hermann Eduard Meier was a German classical philologist, born at Glogau. At the age of 24, he became an associate professor at the University of Greifswald. In 1825, he was named professor of classical philology at the University of Halle, where he remained until his death.
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Nikolaos Kontopoulos
1889 - 1958 (69 years)
Nikolaos Kontopoulos was a Greek writer. He was born in the village of Lousika in Achaea, Greece. He studied in Athens and later studied as a student and as a professor at the polytechnical school. He wrote many books.
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Viktor Petrov
1894 - 1969 (75 years)
Viktor Platonovych Petrov was a prominent Ukrainian existentialist writer. Together with Valerian Pidmohylny, Petrov is considered to be the founder of the Ukrainian intellectual novel. Although Petrov is remembered as a writer today, during his life he was a scientist in the first place. He wrote papers on archaeology, anthropology, history, philosophy and literature.
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Christopher Okigbo
1930 - 1967 (37 years)
Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo was a Nigerian poet, teacher, and librarian, who died fighting for the independence of Biafra. He is today widely acknowledged as an outstanding postcolonial English-language African poet and one of the major modernist writers of the 20th century.
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Endre Ady
1877 - 1919 (42 years)
Endre Ady was a turn-of-the-century Hungarian poet and journalist. Regarded by many as the greatest Hungarian poet of the 20th century, he was noted for his steadfast belief in social progress and development and for his poetry's exploration of fundamental questions of the modern European experience: love, temporality, faith, individuality, and patriotism.
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William Barnes
1801 - 1886 (85 years)
William Barnes was an English polymath, writer, poet, philologist, priest, mathematician, engraving artist and inventor. He wrote over 800 poems, some in Dorset dialect, and much other work, including a comprehensive English grammar quoting from more than 70 different languages. A linguistic purist, Barnes strongly advocated against borrowing foreign words into English, and instead supported the use and proliferation of "strong old Anglo-Saxon speech".
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Maik Yohansen
1895 - 1937 (42 years)
Maik Hervasiiovych Yohansen or Mike Johansen – was a Ukrainian poet, prose writer, dramatist, translator, critic and linguist. He was one of the founders of VAPLITE. Biography Maik Yohansen was born on 16 October 1895 in Kharkiv. His father, a Latvian emigrant was a teacher of German, and made sure his son had a proper education. Maik Yohansen received his secondary education at the Kharkiv Third Gymnasium. There he studied along with Hryhoriy Petnikov and Bohdan Hordeev , who later became well-known poet-futurists, as well as with Yuriy Platonov – a geographer and prose writer. Afterwards, ...
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William Beebe
1877 - 1962 (85 years)
Charles William Beebe was an American naturalist, ornithologist, marine biologist, entomologist, explorer, and author. He is remembered for the numerous expeditions he conducted for the New York Zoological Society, his deep dives in the Bathysphere, and his prolific scientific writing for academic and popular audiences.
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Georg Friedrich Benecke
1762 - 1844 (82 years)
Georg Friedrich Benecke was a German philologist. Beginning in 1780, he was a student at the University of Göttingen, where he was a pupil of Christian Gottlob Heyne. In 1814 he became a full professor at Göttingen, and later on, acquired duties as a head librarian.
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Allan Ramsay
1684 - 1758 (74 years)
Allan Ramsay was a Scottish poet , playwright, publisher, librarian and impresario of early Enlightenment Edinburgh. Ramsay's influence extended to England, foreshadowing the reaction that followed the publication of Percy's Reliques. He was on close terms with the leading men of letters in Scotland and England. He corresponded with William Hamilton of Bangour, William Somervile, John Gay and Alexander Pope.
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Ignacy Krasicki
1735 - 1801 (66 years)
Ignacy Błażej Franciszek Krasicki , from 1766 Prince-Bishop of Warmia and from 1795 Archbishop of Gniezno , was Poland's leading Enlightenment poet , a critic of the clergy, Poland's La Fontaine, author of the first Polish novel, playwright, journalist, encyclopedist, and translator from French and Greek.
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Elbert Hubbard
1856 - 1915 (59 years)
Elbert Green Hubbard was an American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher. Raised in Hudson, Illinois, he had early success as a traveling salesman for the Larkin Soap Company. Hubbard is known best as the founder of the Roycroft artisan community in East Aurora, New York, an influential exponent of the Arts and Crafts movement.
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Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay
1876 - 1938 (62 years)
Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay , was a Bengali novelist and short story writer of the early 20th century. He generally wrote about the lives of Bengali family and socity in cities and villages. However, his keen powers of observation, great sympathy for fellow human beings, a deep understanding of human psychology , an easy and natural writing style, and freedom from political biases and social prejudices enable his writing to transcend barriers and appeal to all Indians. He remains the most popular, translated, and adapted Indian author of all time.
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C. P. Snow
1905 - 1980 (75 years)
Charles Percy Snow, Baron Snow, was an English novelist and physical chemist who also served in several important positions in the British Civil Service and briefly in the UK government. He is best known for his series of novels known collectively as Strangers and Brothers, and for The Two Cultures, a 1959 lecture in which he laments the gulf between scientists and "literary intellectuals".
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Murray Leinster
1896 - 1975 (79 years)
Murray Leinster was a pen name of William Fitzgerald Jenkins, an American writer of genre fiction, particularly of science fiction. He wrote and published more than 1,500 short stories and articles, 14 movie scripts, and hundreds of radio scripts and television plays.
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Per Daniel Amadeus Atterbom
1790 - 1855 (65 years)
Per Daniel Amadeus Atterbom was a Swedish romantic poet, and a member of the Swedish Academy. Life He was son of a country parson, was born in the province of Ostergotland on 19 January 1790. He studied in the university of Uppsala from 1805 to 1815, and became professor of philosophy there in 1828.
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Hans Sachs
1494 - 1576 (82 years)
Hans Sachs was a German Meistersinger , poet, playwright, and shoemaker. Biography Hans Sachs was born in Nuremberg . As a child he attended a singing school that was held in the church of Nuremberg. This helped to awaken in him a taste for poetry and music. His father was a tailor. He attended Latin school in Nuremberg . When he was 14 he took up an apprenticeship as a shoemaker.
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Wilhelm Raabe
1831 - 1910 (79 years)
Wilhelm Raabe was a German novelist. His early works were published under the pseudonym of Jakob Corvinus. Biography He was born in Eschershausen . After attending gymnasia in Holzminden and Wolfenbüttel, he entered a bookstore in Magdeburg as apprentice in 1849. He used this opportunity for wide reading and enriched himself with the tales and folklore of his own and other countries. He remained an apprentice until 1854.
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Robert Williams Buchanan
1841 - 1901 (60 years)
Robert Williams Buchanan was a Scottish poet, novelist and dramatist. Early life and education He was the son of Robert Buchanan , Owenite lecturer and journalist, and was born at Caverswall, Staffordshire, England. Buchanan senior, a native of Ayr, Scotland, lived for some years in Manchester, then moved to Glasgow, where Buchanan junior was educated, at the high school and the university, one of his fellow-students being the poet David Gray. His essay on Gray, originally published in the Cornhill Magazine, tells the story of their close friendship, and of their journey to London in 1860 in...
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Richard Crashaw
1612 - 1649 (37 years)
Richard Crashaw was an English poet, teacher, High Church Anglican cleric and Roman Catholic convert, who was one of the major metaphysical poets in 17th-century English literature. Crashaw was the son of a famous Anglican divine with Puritan beliefs who earned a reputation as a hard-hitting pamphleteer and polemicist against Catholicism. After his father's death, Crashaw was educated at Charterhouse School and Pembroke College, Cambridge. After taking a degree, Crashaw taught as a fellow at Peterhouse, Cambridge and began to publish religious poetry that expressed a distinct mystical natur...
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Friedrich von Bodenstedt
1819 - 1892 (73 years)
Friedrich Martin von Bodenstedt was a German author. Biography Bodenstedt was born at Peine, in the Kingdom of Hanover. He was trained as a merchant in Braunschweig and studied in Göttingen, Munich and Berlin.
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Józef Ignacy Kraszewski
1812 - 1887 (75 years)
Józef Ignacy Kraszewski was a Polish writer, publisher, historian, journalist, scholar, painter, and author who produced more than 200 novels and 150 novellas, short stories, and art reviews, which makes him the most prolific writer in the history of Polish literature. He is best known for his epic series on the history of Poland, comprising twenty-nine novels in seventy-nine parts.
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Joel Elias Spingarn
1875 - 1939 (64 years)
Joel Elias Spingarn was an American educator, literary critic, civil rights activist, military intelligence officer, and horticulturalist. Biography Spingarn was born in New York City to an upper middle-class Jewish family. His younger brother was Arthur B. Spingarn. He graduated from Columbia College in 1895. He grew committed to the importance of the study of comparative literature as a discipline distinct from the study of English or any other language-based literary studies.
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Kalki Krishnamurthy
1899 - 1954 (55 years)
Ramaswamy Krishnamurthy , better known by his pen name Kalki, was an Indian writer, journalist, poet, critic and Indian independence activist who wrote in Tamil. He chose the pen-name "Kalki", the future incarnation of the Hindu God Vishnu. He founded a magazine, which was also named Kalki, with T Sadasivam being the co-founder, in 1941. Krishnamurthy‘s writings include over 120 short stories, 10 novellas, 5 novels, 3 historical romances, editorial and political writings and hundreds of film and music reviews.
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Ouyang Xiu
1007 - 1072 (65 years)
Ouyang Xiu , courtesy name Yongshu, also known by his art names Zuiweng and Liu Yi Jushi , was a Chinese historian, calligrapher, epigrapher, essayist, poet, and politician of the Song dynasty. He was a renowned writer among his contemporaries and is considered the central figure of the Eight Masters of the Tang and Song. He revived the Classical Prose Movement and promoted it in imperial examinations, paving the way for future masters like Su Shi and Su Zhe.
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Denis Johnston
1901 - 1984 (83 years)
Denis Johnston was an Irish writer. Born in Dublin, he wrote mostly plays, but also works of literary criticism, a book-length biographical essay of Jonathan Swift, a memoir and an eccentric work on cosmology and philosophy. He also worked as a war correspondent, and as both a radio and television producer for the BBC. His first play, The Old Lady Says "No!", helped establish the worldwide reputation of the Dublin Gate Theatre; his second, The Moon in the Yellow River, has been performed around the globe in numerous productions featuring such storied names as James Mason, Jack Hawkins, Claude Rains, Barry Fitzgerald, James Coco and Errol Flynn.
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Terence
185 BC - 159 BC (26 years)
Publius Terentius Afer , better known in English as Terence , was an African Roman playwright during the Roman Republic. His comedies were performed for the first time around 166–160 BC. Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator, brought Terence to Rome as a slave, educated him and later on, impressed by his abilities, freed him. It is thought that Terence abruptly died, around the age of 25, likely in Greece or on his way back to Rome, due to shipwreck or disease. He was supposedly on his way to explore and find inspiration for his comedies. His plays were heavily used to learn to speak and write in...
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Shrimad Rajchandra
1867 - 1901 (34 years)
Shrimad Rajchandra was a Jain poet, mystic, philosopher, scholar, and reformer. Born in Vavaniya, a village near Morbi, he claimed to have recollection of his past lives at the age of seven. He performed Avadhāna, a memory retention and recollection test that gained him popularity, but he later discouraged it in favour of his spiritual pursuits. He wrote much philosophical poetry including Atma Siddhi. He also wrote many letters and commentaries and translated some religious texts. He is best known for his teachings on Jainism and his spiritual guidance to Mahatma Gandhi.
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Saunders Lewis
1893 - 1985 (92 years)
Saunders Lewis was a Welsh politician, poet, dramatist, Medievalist, and literary critic. He was a prominent Welsh nationalist, supporter of Welsh independence and was a co-founder of Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru , later known as Plaid Cymru. Lewis is usually acknowledged as one of the most prominent figures of 20th century Welsh literature. In 1970, Lewis was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature. Lewis was voted the tenth greatest Welsh hero in the '100 Welsh Heroes' poll, released on St. David's Day 2004.
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Gabrielle Roy
1909 - 1983 (74 years)
Gabrielle Roy was a Canadian author from St. Boniface, Manitoba and one of the major figures in French Canadian literature. Early life Roy was born in 1909 in Saint-Boniface , Manitoba, and was educated at the Académie Saint-Joseph. She was born into a family of eleven children and reportedly began to write at an early age. She lived on rue Deschambault, a house and neighbourhood in Saint-Boniface that would later inspire one of her most famous works. The house is now a National Historic Site and museum in Winnipeg.
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Ion Barbu
1895 - 1961 (66 years)
Ion Barbu was a Romanian mathematician and poet. His name is associated with the Mathematics Subject Classification number 51C05, which is a major posthumous recognition reserved only to pioneers of investigations in an area of mathematical inquiry.
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Terry Carr
1937 - 1987 (50 years)
Terry Gene Carr was an American science fiction fan, author, editor, and writing instructor. Background and discovery of fandom Carr was born in Grants Pass, Oregon. He attended the City College of San Francisco and the University of California, Berkeley from 1954 to 1959.
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Jacob Bryant
1715 - 1804 (89 years)
Jacob Bryant was an English scholar and mythographer, who has been described as "the outstanding figure among the mythagogues who flourished in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries." Life Bryant was born at Plymouth. His father worked in the customs there, but was afterwards moved to Chatham. Bryant was first sent to a school near Rochester, and then to Eton College. In 1736 he was elected to a scholarship at King's College, Cambridge, where he took his degrees of B.A. and M.A. , later being elected a fellow. He returned to Eton as private tutor to the Duke of Marlborough. In 1...
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Safvet-beg Bašagić
1870 - 1934 (64 years)
Dr. Safvet-beg Bašagić , also known as Mirza Safvet, was a Bosnian writer who is often described by Bosniak historians as the "father of Bosnian Renaissance", and one of the most renowned poets of Bosnia and Herzegovina at the turn of the 20th century. Bašagić co-founded the political journal Behar and was a founder of the cultural society and magazine Gajret, and was elected President of the Bosnian council in 1910. He is also well known for his oeuvre that exceeded seven hundred biographies he compiled over decades.
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Kenji Miyazawa
1896 - 1933 (37 years)
Kenji Miyazawa was a Japanese novelist and poet of children's literature from Hanamaki, Iwate, in the late Taishō and early Shōwa periods. He was also known as an agricultural science teacher, a vegetarian, cellist, devout Buddhist, and utopian social activist.
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George Farquhar
1677 - 1707 (30 years)
George Farquhar was an Irish dramatist. He is noted for his contributions to late Restoration comedy, particularly for his plays The Constant Couple , The Recruiting Officer and The Beaux' Stratagem .
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Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex
1565 - 1601 (36 years)
Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, KG, PC was an English nobleman and a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I. Politically ambitious, and a committed general, he was placed under house arrest following a poor campaign in Ireland during the Nine Years' War in 1599. In 1601, he led an abortive coup d'état against the government of Elizabeth I and was executed for treason.
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Philip Massinger
1583 - 1640 (57 years)
Philip Massinger was an English dramatist. His finely plotted plays, including A New Way to Pay Old Debts, The City Madam, and The Roman Actor, are noted for their satire and realism, and their political and social themes.
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Joachim du Bellay
1522 - 1560 (38 years)
Joachim du Bellay was a French poet, critic, and a founder of La Pléiade. He notably wrote the manifesto of the group: Défense et illustration de la langue française, which aimed at promoting French as an artistic language, equal to Greek and Latin.
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