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).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Literature,
#8401
Karol Wiktor Zawodziński
1890 - 1949 (59 years)
Karol Wiktor Zawodziński, pseudonym Karol de Johne, was highly acclaimed Polish literary critic, theoretist and historian of literature. Associated with a poetical group Skamander. Biography Zawodziński was born on 1 June 1890 in Warsaw. In the years of 1908–1913 he studied a Roman philology at the university of Saint Petersburg. In 1914 he joined Polish Legions and during the years of 1918–1932 was an officer in a Polish Army.
Go to Profile#8402
James Donaldson
1831 - 1915 (84 years)
Sir James Donaldson was a Scottish classical scholar, and educational and theological writer. Life Donaldson was born in Aberdeen on 26 April 1831. He was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School, Marischal College, Aberdeen, New College, London, and Berlin University. In 1854 he was appointed Rector of the Stirling High School where he remained for two years, before leaving for the Royal High School of Edinburgh, of which he was appointed Rector in 1866.
Go to Profile#8403
Dore Schary
1905 - 1980 (75 years)
Isadore "Dore" Schary was an American playwright, director, and producer for the stage and a prolific screenwriter and producer of motion pictures. He directed one feature film, Act One, the film biography of his friend, playwright and theater director Moss Hart. He became head of production at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and replaced Louis B. Mayer as president of the studio in 1951.
Go to Profile#8404
Pinchas Hacohen Peli
1930 - 1989 (59 years)
Pinchas Hacohen Peli was an Israeli modern Orthodox rabbi, essayist, poet, and scholar of Judaism and Jewish philosophy. Early life He was born in Jerusalem, Israel in 1930 to a Hasidic family named Hacohen.
Go to Profile#8405
Samuel Henley
1740 - 1815 (75 years)
Samuel Henley D.D. was an English clergyman, school teacher and college principal, antiquarian, and man of letters. Life Born in England, he began his career when he was recruited as a professor of moral philosophy for the College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia. He arrived in 1770. Well-connected there, he became a friend of Thomas Jefferson, who acquired some of his library. He clashed though in public debate with Robert Carter Nicholas, Sr. and John Page, and failed to become rector of Bruton Parish Church.
Go to Profile#8406
Amir Khusrau
1253 - 1325 (72 years)
Abu'l Hasan Yamīn ud-Dīn Khusrau , better known as Amīr Khusrau, was an Indo-Persian Sufi singer, musician, poet and scholar who lived during the period of the Delhi Sultanate. He is an iconic figure in the cultural history of South Asia. He was a mystic and a spiritual disciple of Nizamuddin Auliya of Delhi, India. He wrote poetry primarily in Persian, but also in Hindavi. A vocabulary in verse, the Ḳhāliq Bārī, containing Arabic, Persian and Hindavi terms is often attributed to him. Khusrau is sometimes referred to as the "voice of India" or "Parrot of India" , and has been called the "fathe...
Go to Profile#8407
André Roussin
1911 - 1987 (76 years)
André Roussin, , was a French playwright. Born in Marseille, he was elected to the Académie française on 12 April 1973. Bibliography 1933 Patiences et impatiences1944 Am Stram Gram1945 Une grande fille toute simple1945 Jean Baptiste le mal aimé1945 La Sainte Famille1947 La petite hutte1948 Les Œufs de l'autruche1949 Nina1950 Bobosse1951 La main de César1951 Lorsque l'enfant paraît1952 Hélène ou la joie de vivre1953 Patience et impatiences1954 Le Mari, la Femme et la Mort1955 L'Amour fou ou la première surprise1957 La Mamma1960 Les Glorieuses et une femme qui dit la vérité1962 ...
Go to Profile#8408
Norman Holmes Pearson
1909 - 1975 (66 years)
Norman Holmes Pearson was an American academic at Yale University, and a prominent counterintelligence agent during World War II. As a specialist on American literature and department chairman at Yale University he was active in establishing American Studies as an academic discipline.
Go to Profile#8409
Fenwicke Holmes
1883 - 1973 (90 years)
Fenwicke Lindsay Holmes was an American author, former Congregational minister, and Religious Science leader. The brother of Ernest Holmes, Fenwicke is widely recognized for being an important factor in the establishment of Religious Science and the founding of the United Centers for Spiritual Living. Fenwicke is recognized as an important figure in the development of the New Thought movement in Japan in particular Seicho-no-Ie.
Go to Profile#8410
Victor Henri Rochefort, Marquis de Rochefort-Luçay
1831 - 1913 (82 years)
Victor Henri Rochefort, Marquis de Rochefort-Luçay was a French writer of vaudevilles and politician. He was born in Paris and died in Aix-les-Bains. Life His father was a Legitimist noble who, as Edmond Rochefort, was well known as a writer of ; his mother's views were republican. After experience as a medical student, a clerk at the Hôtel de Ville in Paris, a playwright and a journalist, he joined the staff of Le Figaro in 1863; but a series of his articles, afterwards published as Les Français de la décadence , brought the paper into collision with the authorities and caused the terminatio...
Go to Profile#8411
Morris H. Morgan
1859 - 1910 (51 years)
Morris Hicky Morgan was professor of classical philology at Harvard University. Life After graduating from Harvard College, Morgan was immediately after his graduation appointed to the teaching staff. After the death of Frederic D. Allen in 1899 he succeeded to the chair of classical philology. He was praised by his fellow classicists as an interpreter of Vitruvius. His translation of Vitruvius's The Ten Books of Architecture, based on an older translation by Valentine Rose , remains in print today, though he died before completing it, the final parts being translated by Albert A. Howard. In ...
Go to Profile#8412
Alfred Gercke
1860 - 1922 (62 years)
Karl Friedrich August Alfred Gercke was a German classical philologist. He is known for his research pertaining to the history of Greek philosophy, in particular, Hellenistic philosophy, and for his studies involving Seneca the Younger.
Go to Profile#8413
Rudolf Pfeiffer
1889 - 1979 (90 years)
Rudolf Carl Franz Otto Pfeiffer was a German classical philologist. He is known today primarily for his landmark, two-volume edition of Callimachus and the two volumes of his History of Classical Scholarship, in addition to numerous articles and lectures related to these projects and to the fragmentary satyr plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles.
Go to Profile#8414
N. P. van Wyk Louw
1906 - 1970 (64 years)
Nicolaas Petrus van Wyk Louw , almost universally known as N.P. van Wyk Louw, was an Afrikaans-language poet, playwright and scholar. He was the older brother of Afrikaans-language poet W.E.G. Louw. One of the Dertigers, or "Writers of the Thirties," N.P. van Wyk Louw produced among his most famous works his debut 1935 volume of poems, Alleenspraak , the 1937 poetry collection Die halwe kring , the verse epic Raka, and the 1956 tragedy Germanicus.
Go to Profile#8415
Edward Waldo Emerson
1844 - 1930 (86 years)
Edward Waldo Emerson was an American physician, writer and lecturer. Biography Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He was a son of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Lidian Jackson Emerson, and educated at Harvard, where he graduated in 1866. He graduated from the Harvard Medical School in 1874, and practiced medicine in Concord until 1882, when he received an inheritance and retired from his practice. He was an instructor in art anatomy at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts from 1885 to 1906. He was also an accomplished equestrian.
Go to Profile#8416
Walter Horace Bruford
1894 - 1988 (94 years)
Walter Horace Bruford, FBA was a British scholar of German literature. Walter Horace Bruford was born in Manchester in 1894. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School and then at St. John's College, Cambridge, and the University of Zurich. During World War I he served with the Royal Navy cryptographic intelligence division in Room 40 at the Admiralty. After the war he conducted research in Zurich, became a lecturer in German at Aberdeen University in 1920, and then a reader at Aberdeen in 1923. Bruford was then appointed professor of German at the University of Edinburgh in 1929. He was seconded to the Foreign Office during World War II, 1939–1943, to work at Bletchley Park.
Go to Profile#8417
Daniel Albert Wyttenbach
1746 - 1820 (74 years)
Daniel Albert Wyttenbach was a German Swiss classical scholar. A student of Hemsterhuis, Valckenaer and Ruhnken, he was an exponent of the methods of criticism which they established, and with them he laid the foundations of modern Greek scholarship.
Go to Profile#8418
Frederick William Thomas
1867 - 1956 (89 years)
Frederick William Thomas , usually cited as F. W. Thomas, was an English Indologist and Tibetologist. Life Thomas was born on 21 March 1867 in Tamworth, Staffordshire. After schooling at King Edward's School, Birmingham, he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1885, graduating with a first class degree in both classics and Indian languages and being awarded a Browne medal in both 1888 and 1889. At Cambridge he studied Sanskrit under the influential Orientalist Edward Byles Cowell.
Go to Profile#8419
Harry Behn
1898 - 1973 (75 years)
Harry Behn was an American screenwriter and children's author. He was involved in writing scenes and continuities for a number of screenplays, including the war film The Big Parade in 1925, and Hell's Angels. He graduated from Harvard University in 1922.
Go to Profile#8420
Johann August Nauck
1822 - 1892 (70 years)
Johann August Nauck was a German classical scholar and critic. His chief work was the Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta . Biography Nauck was born at Auerstedt in present-day Thuringia. He studied at the University of Halle as a student of Gottfried Bernhardy and Moritz Hermann Eduard Meier. In 1853 he became an adjunct under August Meineke at the Joachimsthal Gymnasium in Berlin. After a brief stint as an educator at the Grauen Kloster , he relocated to St. Petersburg, where in 1869, he was appointed professor of Greek at the historical-philological institute.
Go to Profile#8421
Frank Oliver Call
1878 - 1956 (78 years)
Frank Oliver Call was a Canadian poet and academic. Born in Brome Lake, Quebec, Call was educated at Bishop's University in Paris and Marburg and at McGill University, and was subsequently a professor of languages at Bishop's and McGill.
Go to Profile#8422
Otto Lagercrantz
1868 - 1938 (70 years)
Carl Otto Lagercrantz was a Swedish classical philologist and rector of Uppsala University. Biography Otto Lagercrantz was born at Näsby in Jönköping County, Sweden. Lagercrantz graduated from high school in Uppsala in 1887. He then studied at Uppsala University, earning his bachelor's degree in 1890 and his licentiate degree in 1895. He completed his Ph.D. in 1898 with a dissertation titled Zur griechischen Lautgeschichte. He then served as professor of Greek, first at the Gothenburg University College and then at Uppsala University. He was appointed prorector of Uppsala University in 1929 ...
Go to Profile#8423
August Reifferscheid
1835 - 1887 (52 years)
Karl Wilhelm August Reifferscheid was a German archaeologist and classical philologist. Biography He was born and educated in Bonn. He received a traveling fellowship in archaeology from the University of Bonn, and spent 1861–66 mostly in Italy, part of the time fulfilling a request by the Vienna Academy to do archival research for the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum. He was professor at Breslau , and beginning in 1885, a professor at the University of Strassburg .
Go to Profile#8424
Johannes Valentinus Andreae
1586 - 1654 (68 years)
Johannes Valentinus Andreae , a.k.a. Johannes Valentinus Andreä or Johann Valentin Andreae, was a German theologian, who claimed to be the author of an ancient text known as the Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosencreutz anno 1459 . This became one of the three founding works of Rosicrucianism, which was both a legend and a fashionable cultural phenomenon across Europe in this period.
Go to Profile#8425
Edward Capps
1866 - 1950 (84 years)
Edward Capps Sr. was an American diplomat, professor of Philology, and colonel. Biography Capps was born in Jacksonville, Illinois on December 21, 1866. He would go on to graduate from Illinois College in 1887 and later receive a PhD from Yale in 1891. In July of the following year, he would get married.
Go to Profile#8426
Genevieve Taggard
1894 - 1948 (54 years)
Genevieve Taggard was an American poet. Biography Genevieve Taggard was born in Waitsburg, Washington, to James Taggard and Alta Arnold, both of whom were school teachers. Her parents were both active members of the Disciples of Christ, and at age two her parents moved to Honolulu, Hawaii, where they became missionaries and founded a school in which they also taught.
Go to Profile#8427
John Davies of Hereford
1565 - 1618 (53 years)
John Davies of Hereford was a writing-master and an Anglo-Welsh poet. He referred to himself as John Davies of Hereford in order to distinguish himself from others of the same name, particularly the contemporary poet Sir John Davies .
Go to Profile#8428
Sergei Zhebelev
1867 - 1941 (74 years)
Sergei Aleksandrovich Zhebelev was a Russian historian and archaeologist who was recognised as an authority on ancient Greek history. Zhebelev graduated from Saint Petersburg University in 1890 and was appointed professor there in 1904. He translated Plato, Aristotle, and other classical thinkers into Russian. In 1923 he produced a textbook on archaeology.
Go to Profile#8429
Lauri Viljanen
1900 - 1984 (84 years)
Lauri Viljanen was a Finnish literary critic and writer. He was the leading critic of the literary group Tulenkantajat during the 1930s and 1940s. Published works Auringon purjeet, poetry collection. 1924Hurmioituneet kasvot, poetry collection. 1925 Tähtikeinu, poetry collection. 1926Merkkivaloja. 1929Musta runotar, poetry collection. 1932V.A.Koskenniemi. 1935Taisteleva humanismi, essay collection. 1936Näköala vuorelta, poetry collection. 1936Atlantis, poetry collection. 1940Sotatalvi. 1941 Illan ja aamun välillä, essey collection. 1941Runeberg ja hänen runoutensa I–III. 1944–1948Tuuli ja ihminen, poem collection.
Go to Profile#8430
Charles Murray
1864 - 1941 (77 years)
Charles Murray was a poet who wrote in the Doric dialect of Scots. He was one of three rural poets from the north-east of Scotland, the others being Flora Garry and John C. Milne, who did much to validate the literary use of Scots.
Go to Profile#8431
Ernst Bertram
1884 - 1957 (73 years)
Ernst August Bertram was a German professor of German studies at the University of Cologne, but also a poet and writer who was close to the George-Kreis and the lyricist Stefan George. Life Bertram was born the son of Evangelical Lutheran Church Overseas merchant Ernst Bertram and his wife Johanne Müller in Elberfeld . He passed the Abitur in the spring of 1903 at the in his hometown,. Bertram then studied German history of literature, modern history of art and philosophy in Berlin, Munich and Bonn. On 9 July 1907, he received his doctorate from the University of Bonn with a dissertation wri...
Go to Profile#8432
Miloje Vasić
1869 - 1956 (87 years)
Miloje Vasić was a Serbian archaeologist, regarded as one of the most distinguished representatives of the humanistic studies in Serbia. Professor at the University of Belgrade and member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, he was the first educated Serbian archaeologist, and is considered as the founder of the modern archaeology in Serbia. Also known for his widely eclectic interests outside of archaeology, his most significant accomplishment was discovery of the Neolithic site of Vinča culture in 1905 and subsequent excavation, which began in 1908.
Go to Profile#8433
Henry Goddard Leach
1880 - 1970 (90 years)
Henry Goddard Leach was an American Scandinavian studies scholar and civic leader. He is best known as President of The American-Scandinavian Foundation and Professor of Scandinavian Civilization at the University of Kansas.
Go to Profile#8434
Elia Levita
1469 - 1549 (80 years)
Elia Levita , also known as Elijah Levita, Elias Levita, Élie Lévita, Elia Levita Ashkenazi, Eliahu Levita, Eliyahu haBahur , Elye Bokher, was a Renaissance Hebrew grammarian, scholar, and poet. He was the author of the Bovo-Bukh , the most popular chivalric romance written in Yiddish. Living for a decade in the house of Cardinal Giles of Viterbo, he was one of the foremost teachers of Christian clergy, nobility, and intellectuals in Hebrew and in Jewish mysticism during the Renaissance.
Go to Profile#8435
Carsten Hauch
1790 - 1872 (82 years)
Johannes Carsten Hauch was a Danish poet. Biography Hauch was born in Frederikshald in Norway. His father was the Danish bailiff in Smaalenene, Frederik Hauch. His mother, Karen Tank was sister of Norwegian ship merchant and parliament president Carsten Tank. In 1802 Hauch lost his mother, and in 1803 returned with his father to Denmark. In 1807 he fought as a volunteer against the English invasion. He entered the university of Copenhagen in 1808, and in 1821 took his doctors degree. He became the friend and associate of Steffens and Oehlenschläger, warmly adopting the romantic views about po...
Go to Profile#8436
Atanasije Stojković
1775 - 1832 (57 years)
Atanasije Stojković was a Serbian, Austrian and Russian writer, pedagogue, scholar, physicist, mathematician and astronomer. He is considered the founder of Russian meteoritics. Stojković was the president of the Imperial University of Kharkov from 1807 to 1809 and from 1811 to 1813.
Go to Profile#8437
Albert Rehm
1871 - 1949 (78 years)
Albert Rehm was a German philologist best known for his work on the Antikythera mechanism - he was the first to propose that it was an astronomical calculator. Services Albert Rehm has made numerous contributions to both education and science. He has made important contributions to realism in particular: the volume Precise Sciences in the Introduction to Classical Philology by Alfred Gercke and Eduard Norden, as well as numerous essays and articles for the Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft. He also wrote valuable works in epigraphy and archeology .
Go to Profile#8438
James Baldwin
1841 - 1925 (84 years)
James Baldwin was an American educator and administrator. He served as the superintendent of Indiana's school system for 18 years and then went on to become a widely published textbook editor and children's author in the subjects of legends, mythology, biography, and literature, among others.
Go to Profile#8439
Josephine Preston Peabody
1874 - 1922 (48 years)
Josephine Preston Peabody was an American poet and dramatist. Biography Peabody was born in New York and educated at the Girls' Latin School, Boston, and at Radcliffe College. In 1898, she was introduced to fifteen-year-old Khalil Gibran by Fred Holland Day, the American photographer and co-founder of the Copeland-Day publishing house, at an art exhibition. Shortly thereafter Gibran returned to Lebanon but the pair continued to correspond.
Go to Profile#8440
Robert Faesi
1883 - 1972 (89 years)
Robert Faesi was a Swiss writer and academic concerned with Literature and language Life Son of the businessman Heinrich Friedrich Faesi, Robert Faesi was born into a well established and affluent Zürich family. After successfully completing his schooling, he initially studied Law, before switching to German studies. In 1907 he obtained his doctorate with a dissertation on Abraham Emanuel Fröhlich, a nineteenth century poet-theologian. Faesi then took a position as a high school teacher in Zürich, also undertaking several extended educational tours, before ending up in 1911 at the University ...
Go to Profile#8441
Christian Cornelius Jensen
1883 - 1940 (57 years)
Christian Cornelius Jensen was a German classical philologist and papyrologist. His father, Christian Jensen , was a local historian and teacher. He studied classical philology at the universities of Marburg and Kiel, where he was influenced by the work of Siegfried Sudhaus. He worked as a gymnasium teacher in Kiel and Wandsbek, and in 1910 obtained his habilitation for classical philology at the University of Marburg.
Go to Profile#8442
Jessie Eldridge Southwick
1865 - 1957 (92 years)
Jessie Eldridge Southwick was an American elocutionist, teacher, author and poet. She was active in the Chautauqua and Lyceum movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, performing around the United States as well as internationally. She influenced oratory through active involvement in emerging organizations, writing textbooks and teaching expressive voice culture and platform performance at Emerson College and elsewhere.
Go to Profile#8443
Friedrich Gotthilf Osann
1794 - 1858 (64 years)
Friedrich Gotthilf Osann was a German classical philologist. He was a brother to physician Emil Osann and chemist Gottfried Osann . He received his education at the Universities of Jena and Berlin, where he was a student of August Boeckh. In 1816 he obtained his PhD, and during the following year undertook an educational journey through Germany, France, Italy and England. In 1821 he was appointed an associate professor of philology at Jena, followed by a full professorship at the University of Giessen in 1825.
Go to Profile#8444
Robert Francis
1901 - 1987 (86 years)
Robert Francis was an American poet who lived most of his life in Amherst, Massachusetts. His 1953 poem, “The Pitcher”, is a classic work among coaches, athletes, baseball players —- and pitchers and artists. It demonstrates brilliantly an example of how any physical action is not just acting on the environment, but also an interactive communication with all elements of it, including the people.
Go to Profile#8445
Otto Immisch
1862 - 1936 (74 years)
Otto Immisch was a German classical scholar. Biography He received his education at the University of Leipzig, was appointed lecturer there in 1889 and professor in 1896. From 1907 to 1913 he was professor at Giessen and in the latter year was appointed to a chair at Königsberg.
Go to Profile#8446
Grete Wiesenthal
1885 - 1970 (85 years)
Grete Wiesenthal was an Austrian dancer, actor, choreographer, and dance teacher. She transformed the Viennese Waltz from a staple of the ballroom into a wildly ecstatic dance. She was trained at the Vienna Court Opera, but left to develop her own more expressive approach, creating ballets to music by Franz Schreker, Clemens von Franckenstein, and Franz Salmhofer, as well as dancing in her own style to the waltzes of Johann Strauss II. She is considered a leading figure in modern dance in Austria.
Go to Profile#8447
Ibrahim Tuqan
1905 - 1941 (36 years)
Ibrahim Abd al-Fattah Tuqan was a Palestinian nationalist poet whose work rallied Arabs during their revolt against the British mandate. Tuqan was born in Nablus, Palestine. He was the brother of poet Fadwa Tuqan and he tutored and influenced her to write poetry. Ibrahim belonged to the prominent Tuqan family that governed Nablus during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Go to Profile#8448
W. C. Fields
1880 - 1946 (66 years)
William Claude Dukenfield , better known as W. C. Fields, was an American actor, comedian, juggler, and writer. Fields's comic persona was a comedically crude and hard-drinking egotist who remained a sympathetic character despite his supposed contempt for children and dogs.
Go to Profile#8449
John Celivergos Zachos
1820 - 1898 (78 years)
John Celivergos Zachos was a Greek-American physician, literary scholar, elocutionist, author, lecturer, inventor, and educational pioneer. He was an early proponent of equal education rights for African Americans and women. During the American Civil War, he was the superintendent at Port Royal and a main figure in the Port Royal Experiment. In his book, Phonic Primer and Reader he developed a special system to educate freed slaves. He advocated and expanded the oratory systems of François Delsarte and James Rush.
Go to Profile#8450
Oğuz Atay
1934 - 1977 (43 years)
Oğuz Atay was a pioneer of the modern novel in Turkey. His first novel, Tutunamayanlar , appeared in 1971–72. Never reprinted in his lifetime and controversial among critics, it has become a best-seller since a new edition came out in 1984. It has been described as “probably the most eminent novel of twentieth-century Turkish literature”: this reference is due to a UNESCO survey, which goes on: “it poses an earnest challenge to even the most skilled translator with its kaleidoscope of colloquialisms and sheer size.” In fact four translations have so far been published: into Dutch, as Het leve...
Go to Profile