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,
#8451
Andrew Fleming West
1853 - 1943 (90 years)
Andrew Fleming West was an American classicist, and first dean of the Graduate School at Princeton University. Biography West was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania on May 17, 1853. He studied at Princeton University from 1870 to 1874. In his final year at Princeton he founded the Princeton Glee Club. After graduating, he taught Latin at a high school in Cincinnati for six years. He then went to Europe to carry out academic study, before taking up a position as principal of the Morris Academy in Morristown, New Jersey.
Go to Profile#8452
Albert Harkness
1822 - 1907 (85 years)
Albert Harkness was an American classical scholar and educator. He was professor of Greek at Brown University, and helped found the American Philological Association and the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
Go to Profile#8453
Albert Schinz
1870 - 1943 (73 years)
Albert Schinz was an American French and philosophical scholar, editor, and professor of French literature. Although he was born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, Schinz died in the United States at an Iowa State University Hospital, in Iowa City, of pneumonia.
Go to Profile#8454
Lewis Campbell
1830 - 1908 (78 years)
Lewis Campbell was a Scottish classical scholar. Biography Campbell was born in Edinburgh. His father, Robert Campbell, RN, was a first cousin of Thomas Campbell, the poet. His mother was the author Eliza Constantia Campbell. His father died when he was two years of age. In 1844 his mother married Colonel Morrieson.
Go to Profile#8455
Vasile Alecsandri
1821 - 1890 (69 years)
Vasile Alecsandri was a Romanian patriot, poet, dramatist, politician and diplomat. He was one of the key figures during the 1848 revolutions in Moldavia and Wallachia. He fought for the unification of the Romanian Principalities, writing "Hora Unirii" in 1856 and giving up his candidacy for the title of prince of Moldavia, in favor of Alexandru Ioan Cuza. He became the first minister of foreign affairs of Romania and was one of the founding members of the Romanian Academy. Alecsandri was a prolific writer, contributing to Romanian literature with poetry, prose, several plays, and collections...
Go to Profile#8456
Arthur Hübner
1885 - 1937 (52 years)
Arthur Hübner was a German philologist. He specialized in research of German literature from the Middle Ages . From 1904 to 1909, he studied classical and German philology at the Universities of Graz and Berlin, where he was influenced by the work of Germanist Gustav Roethe. In 1918 he became an associate professor in Berlin, later relocating to Münster as a full professor of medieval Germanic studies . In 1927 he succeeded Roethe as professor at the University of Berlin.
Go to Profile#8457
James K. Baxter
1926 - 1972 (46 years)
James Keir Baxter was a New Zealand poet and playwright. He was also known as an activist for the preservation of Māori culture. He is one of New Zealand's most well-known and controversial literary figures. He was a prolific writer who produced numerous poems, plays and articles in his short life, and was regarded as the preeminent writer of his generation. He suffered from alcoholism until the late 1950s. He converted to Catholicism and established a controversial commune at Jerusalem, New Zealand, in 1969. He was married to writer Jacquie Sturm.
Go to Profile#8458
Ferdinand Gotthelf Hand
1786 - 1851 (65 years)
Ferdinand Gotthelf Hand , German classical scholar, was born at Plauen in Saxony. He studied at Leipzig. In 1810 he became professor at the Weimar gymnasium, and in 1817 professor of philosophy and Greek literature at the University of Jena, where he remained till his death.
Go to Profile#8459
John Ogilby
1600 - 1676 (76 years)
John Ogilby was a Scottish translator, impresario, publisher and cartographer. He was probably at least a half-brother to James Ogilvy, 1st Earl of Airlie, though neither overtly acknowledged this. Ogilby's most-noted works include translations of the works of Virgil and Homer, and his version of the Fables of Aesop.
Go to Profile#8460
Cecil Bendall
1856 - 1906 (50 years)
Cecil Bendall was an English scholar, a professor of Sanskrit at University College London and later at the University of Cambridge. Bendall was educated at the City of London School and at the University of Cambridge, achieving first-class honours in the Classical Tripos in 1879 and the Indian Languages Tripos in 1881. He was elected to a fellowship at Gonville and Caius College.
Go to Profile#8461
E. N. Tigerstedt
1907 - 1979 (72 years)
Eugène Napoleon Tigerstedt was a Finnish-Swedish academic. In his lifetime, Tigerstedt was one of the leading and most respected literary historians in Scandinavia and is best known internationally for his contributions to Plato scholarship.
Go to Profile#8462
Emil Ermatinger
1873 - 1953 (80 years)
Emil Ermatinger was a Swiss professor for Germanic philology. Ermatinger studied classical philology in Zurich and Berlin. 1897 he wrote his Ph.D. thesis at the University of Zurich. His doctoral advisor was the classical archaeologist and philologist Hugo Blümner. 1909 Ermatinger became a professor for Germanic philology at ETH Zurich. 1912 till 1943 he was professor at the University of Zurich. 1939 he was visiting professor at the Columbia University in New York City.
Go to Profile#8463
Friedrich Wilhelm Schneidewin
1810 - 1856 (46 years)
Friedrich Wilhelm Schneidewin , was a German classical scholar. Biography He was born on 6 June 1810 at Helmstedt. In 1833, he became a teacher at the Braunschweig gymnasium. In 1837 he was appointed an associate professor, and in 1842, a full professor of classical languages and literature at the University of Göttingen where he died on 11 January 1856.
Go to Profile#8464
Tirso de Molina
1579 - 1649 (70 years)
Gabriel Téllez , better known as Tirso de Molina, was a Spanish Baroque dramatist, poet and Roman Catholic monk. He is primarily known for writing The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest, the play from which the popular character of Don Juan originates. His work is also of particular significance due to the abundance of female protagonists, as well as the exploration of sexual issues.
Go to Profile#8465
Terence Rattigan
1911 - 1977 (66 years)
Sir Terence Mervyn Rattigan was a British dramatist and screenwriter. He was one of England's most popular mid-20th-century dramatists. His plays are typically set in an upper-middle-class background. He wrote The Winslow Boy , The Browning Version , The Deep Blue Sea and Separate Tables , among many others.
Go to Profile#8466
Andrew Marvell
1621 - 1678 (57 years)
Andrew Marvell was an English metaphysical poet, satirist and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1659 and 1678. During the Commonwealth period he was a colleague and friend of John Milton. His poems range from the love-song "To His Coy Mistress", to evocations of an aristocratic country house and garden in "Upon Appleton House" and "The Garden", the political address "An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland", and the later personal and political satires "Flecknoe" and "The Character of Holland".
Go to Profile#8467
Johan Ludvig Heiberg
1854 - 1928 (74 years)
Johan Ludvig Heiberg was a Danish philologist and historian. He is best known for his discovery of previously unknown texts in the Archimedes Palimpsest, and for his edition of Euclid's Elements that T. L. Heath translated into English. He also published an edition of Ptolemy's Almagest.
Go to Profile#8468
Simon Kaukhchishvili
1895 - 1981 (86 years)
Simon Kaukhchishvili was a Georgian historian and philologist known for his critical editions of old Georgian chronicles; Doctor of Historical Sciences , Professor , Academician of the Georgian National Academy of Sciences .
Go to Profile#8469
Joshua Logan
1908 - 1988 (80 years)
Joshua Lockwood Logan III was an American theatre and film director, playwright and screenwriter, and actor. He shared a Pulitzer Prize for co-writing the musical South Pacific and was involved in writing other musicals.
Go to Profile#8470
Francis Turner Palgrave
1824 - 1897 (73 years)
Francis Turner Palgrave was a British critic, anthologist and poet. Life He was born at Great Yarmouth, the eldest son of Sir Francis Palgrave, the historian to his wife Elizabeth, daughter of the banker Dawson Turner. His brothers were William Gifford Palgrave, Robert Harry Inglis Palgrave and Reginald Palgrave. His childhood was spent at Yarmouth and at his father's house in Hampstead. At fourteen he was sent as a day-boy to Charterhouse; and in 1843, having in the meanwhile travelled extensively in Italy and other parts of the continent, he won a scholarship at Balliol College, Oxford. ...
Go to Profile#8471
Johannes Vodnianus Campanus
1565 - 1622 (57 years)
Johannes Vodnianus Campanus was a Czech humanist, composer, pedagogue, poet, and dramatist. He was born in Vodňany , in southern Bohemia. He studied at the University of Prague and in 1596 and was made Master of Liberal Arts there. He became a teacher in Prague and Kutná Hora. From 1603 he taught Greek and Latin at the University of Prague. He also taught history and Latin poetry. He was repeatedly appointed as dean, prorector, and rector of this university.
Go to Profile#8472
Narushima Ryūhoku
1837 - 1884 (47 years)
Narushima Ryūhoku was a Japanese author and scholar born in Asakusa. His given name was Korehiro . The Narushima family were okujusha , or Confucian tutors to the Tokugawa shōguns, who were also involved in editing the Tokugawa jikki and other historical annals, including the Nochikagami . Ryuhoku participated in these editing projects as a young man.
Go to Profile#8473
Magzhan Zhumabayev
1893 - 1938 (45 years)
Magzhan Zhumabayev , was a Kazakh poet and writer who revolutionized the Kazakh language. Biography He was born in 1893 into a Kazakh Muslim family in modern-day Astana and was given the name Muhammedjan Jumabayev at birth. For much of his childhood, Muhammedjan was exposed to Islamic poetry as his family was deeply religious. In his teenage years, he shortened his name from "Muhammedjan" to "Magjan". From 1905 until 1910, Muhammedjan Jumabayev studied in a madrasah in the town of Petropavl, where he learned the Arabic, Turkish, and Persian languages. In 1911, He moved away from his home ...
Go to Profile#8474
Georg Freytag
1788 - 1861 (73 years)
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Freytag was a German philologist. Background Freytag was born in Lüneburg. He studied philology and theology at the University of Göttingen, where from 1811 to 1813 he worked as a theological tutor. In the latter year he accepted an appointment as a sub-librarian at Königsberg. In 1815 he became a chaplain in the Prussian army, and in that capacity visited Paris.
Go to Profile#8475
John Huston Finley
1863 - 1940 (77 years)
John Huston Finley was Professor of Polities at Princeton University from 1900 to 1903, and President of the City College of New York from 1903 until 1913, when he was appointed President of the University of the State of New York and Commissioner of Education of the State of New York. A promenade along the western bank of the East River between 63rd Street and 125th Street in Manhattan was named the John Finley Walk in 1940 because he had often walked the perimeter of Manhattan.
Go to Profile#8476
George Colman the Younger
1762 - 1836 (74 years)
George Colman , known as "the Younger", was an English dramatist and miscellaneous writer. He was the son of George Colman the Elder. Life He passed from Westminster School to Christ Church, Oxford, and King's College, University of Aberdeen, and was finally entered as a student of law at Lincoln's Inn, London. While in Aberdeen, he published a poem satirizing Charles James Fox, called The Man of the People. In 1782 he produced his first play, The Female Dramatist,at his father's playhouse in the Haymarket.
Go to Profile#8477
Albert Béguin
1901 - 1957 (56 years)
Albert Béguin was a Swiss academic and translator. He married the French writer Raymonde Vincent , winner of the Prix Femina in 1937. See also StructuralismNew Criticism
Go to Profile#8478
Karl Wilhelm Göttling
1793 - 1869 (76 years)
Karl Wilhelm Göttling was a German philologist and classical scholar. Biography He was born in Jena, the son of chemist Johann Friedrich August Göttling . He attended the Wilhelm-Ernst-Gymnasium in Weimar, and then, beginning in 1811, studied philology at the universities of Jena and Berlin. He volunteered in the war against France in 1814, and after the peace continued his studies at Berlin under Friedrich August Wolf, August Boeckh and Philipp Buttmann.
Go to Profile#8479
Shabdar Osyp
1898 - 1937 (39 years)
Shabdar Osyp was a Mari author. He was born as Iosif Arkhipovich Shabdarov in the village of Izi Luzhalu in Mari El. He started writing poetry in 1918. He studied at a pedagogical college in Kazan.
Go to Profile#8480
Wacław Cimochowski
1912 - 1982 (70 years)
Wacław Cimochowski was a Polish philologist who specialized in Indo-European linguistics, especially in Albanology. Career Cimochowski studied linguistics at Stefan Batory University, where his teacher was among others Jan Otrębski. He also studied in Vienna, where he was specialized in Albanian and in Sanskrit.
Go to Profile#8481
Hermann Güntert
1886 - 1948 (62 years)
Hermann Güntert was a German linguist who specialized in Germanic and Indo-European linguistics. Biography Hermann Güntert was born in Worms, Germany on 5 November 1886. His father was a Roman Catholic merchant, and his mother was a Huguenot. Güntert became fluent in Sanskrit and Hebrew as a high school student, graduating at the top of his class in 1905.
Go to Profile#8482
Willy Theiler
1899 - 1977 (78 years)
Max Wilhelm Theiler was a Swiss classical philologist who specialized in ancient philosophy. Born in Adliswil, Theiler was the son of Gottfried Theiler and d'Emma Weidmann. He was educated at the universities of Zurich, Basel, Göttingen, and Berlin. He obtained his doctorate from Basel in 1924, He was appointed Privatdozent in 1927, extraordinary professor at Kiel University in 1930, ordinary professor at Königsberg University in 1932, extraordinary , then ordinary professor of philology at Bern. He died in Bern.
Go to Profile#8483
Lida Shaw King
1868 - 1932 (64 years)
Lida Shaw King was an American classical scholar and college dean. Biography Lida Shaw King was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Her parents were Henry Melville King and Susan Ellen Fogg King. She graduated from Vassar College in 1890 and from Brown University in 1894 and continued her graduate studies at Vassar , Radcliffe , Bryn Mawr , and at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens where she was awarded the Agnes Hoppin Memorial Fellowship. She taught the classics at Vassar and at the Packer Collegiate Institute , and at Brown was assistant professor of classical philology , dea...
Go to Profile#8484
Blanche Colton Williams
1879 - 1944 (65 years)
Blanche Colton Williams was an American author, editor, department head and professor of English literature, and pioneer in women’s higher education. She was known for her “groundbreaking work on structure and analysis of the short story” and is credited with having done more for the short story genre than anyone in her lifetime. An 1898 graduate of Industrial Institute and College in Columbus, Mississippi, the first public women’s university in the United States, Williams went on to a three-decade career at Hunter College, a women’s college in New York City.
Go to Profile#8485
Georg Heinrich Ferdinand Nesselmann
1811 - 1881 (70 years)
Georg Heinrich Ferdinand Nesselmann was a German orientalist, a philologist with interests in Baltic languages, and a mathematics historian. At the University of Königsberg he studied mathematics under Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi and Friedrich Julius Richelot, and oriental philology under Peter von Bohlen. In 1837 he received his PhD at Königsberg, where in 1859 he became a full professor of Arabic and Sanskrit.
Go to Profile#8486
Gustav Weigand
1860 - 1930 (70 years)
Gustav Weigand , was a German linguist and specialist in Balkan languages, especially Romanian and Aromanian. He is known for his seminal contributions to the dialectology of the Romance languages of the Balkans and to the study of the relationships between the languages of the Balkan sprachbund. He has also provided substantial contribution to Aromanian studies, an example of this being the discovery and publication of the contents of the Codex Dimonie.
Go to Profile#8487
Wilmer Cave Wright
1868 - 1951 (83 years)
Emily Wilmer Cave Wright was a British-born American classical philologist, and a contributor to the culture and history of medicine. She was a professor at Bryn Mawr College, where she taught Greek. Wright's works include, The Emperor Julian’s relation to the new sophistic and neo-Platonism , A Short History of Greek Literature, from Homer to Julian , Julian , Philostratus and Eunapius: The Lives of the Sophists , Against the Galilaeans , Hieronymi Fracastorii de contagione et contagiosis morbis et eorum curatione libri III , and De morbis artificum Bernardini Ramazini diatriba . Giovanni Ma...
Go to Profile#8488
Vance Palmer
1885 - 1959 (74 years)
Edward Vivian "Vance" Palmer was an Australian novelist, dramatist, essayist and critic. Early life Vance Palmer was born in Bundaberg, Queensland, on 28 August 1885 and attended the Ipswich Grammar School. With no university in Queensland, he studied contemporary Australian writing at the intellectual hub in Brisbane at the time, the School of Arts, following the work of A. G. Stephens. Working in various jobs, he took a position as a tutor at Abbieglassie cattle station, west of Brisbane in the 'back of beyond'. He also worked as a manager: at that time there was a large Aboriginal population with whom he both worked and celebrated, attending their frequent corroborrees.
Go to Profile#8489
Ernest Bernbaum
1879 - 1958 (79 years)
Ernest Bernbaum was an American educator, scholar, writer and an opponent of the Suffragette movement. Biography Ernest Bernbaum was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Ole Kruse Bernbaum and Dorothea Bernbaum. He was educated at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. He attended Harvard University, where he was awarded a Ph.D. in philology in 1907. He taught English at Harvard from 1907 to 1916, then joined the staff of the University of Illinois. From 1917 to 1919, he was chair of the Committee on War Lectures at Illinois. In 1921 he married Ruth Guenther. He remained at the University of Illi...
Go to Profile#8490
Otto Heller
1863 - 1941 (78 years)
Otto Heller author and academic. Heller wrote Prophets of Dissent. Career Heller was born in Karlsbad, Bohemia . He attended the University of Prague, followed by the universities of Munich, Vienna, and Berlin. He came to the United States in 1883 as a tutor and secured the post of instructor in Greek at La Salle College in Philadelphia in 1887. Heller received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1890.
Go to Profile#8491
Karl Reinhardt
1886 - 1958 (72 years)
Karl Ludwig Reinhardt was a German classical philologist. Life Reinhardt was born in Detmold, and grew up in Frankfurt, the city to which his father, the educational reformer Karl Reinhardt, Sr., had been called in 1886 to serve as head of the Lessing-Gymnasium. In Frankfurt the younger Reinhardt studied at the Goethe-Gymnasium, a secondary school founded in 1897 on the principles of his father's Frankfurter Lehrplan , and directed by him from 1897 to 1904.
Go to Profile#8492
Antoine Meyer
1801 - 1857 (56 years)
Antoine Meyer, also known as Antun or Tun Meyer was a Luxembourg-born mathematician and poet who later adopted Belgian nationality. Sometimes referred to as the father of Luxembourgish literature, he is remembered for publishing the very first book in Luxembourgish, a collection of six poems entitled "E' Schrek ob de' lezeburger Parnassus" .
Go to Profile#8493
Ernst Christian Walz
1802 - 1857 (55 years)
Ernst Christian Walz was a German classical philologist and archaeologist born in Münklingen, in present-day Baden-Württemberg. He was a student and later a teacher at Tübinger Stift in Tübingen. In 1832 he became an associate professor, and in 1836 a full professor of classical philology at the University of Tübingen as well as director of the archaeological collection of the Philological Seminar.
Go to Profile#8494
Otto Hense
1845 - 1931 (86 years)
Kurt Otto Friedrich Hense was a German classical philologist known for his investigations of Sophocles and the anthologist Stobaeus. In 1868 he obtained his doctorate from the University of Halle with the dissertation thesis, Exercitationes criticae imprimis in Euripidis fragmentis. After graduation, he worked as a gymnasium teacher, and in 1872 received his habilitation for classical philology at the University of Halle. From 1876 to 1909 he was a professor at the University of Freiburg, where in 1893/94 he served as university vice-rector.
Go to Profile#8495
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...
Go to Profile#8496
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.
Go to Profile#8497
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 .
Go to Profile#8498
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.
Go to Profile#8499
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.
Go to Profile#8500
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.
Go to Profile