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 …
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List of the most influential people in Literature,
#851
Svetlana Boym
#20875
Overall Influence
1959 - 2015 (56 years)
Svetlana Boym was a Russian-American cultural theorist, visual and media artist, playwright and novelist. She was the Curt Hugo Reisinger Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literatures at Harvard University. She was an associate of the Graduate School of Design and Architecture at Harvard University. Much of her work focused on developing the new theoretical concept of the off-modern.
Go to Profile#852
Philip Gabriel
#14810
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
James Philip Gabriel is an American translator and Japanologist. He is a full professor and former department chair of the University of Arizona's Department of East Asian Studies and is one of the major translators into English of the works of the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami.
Go to Profile#853
Walter Jens
#6281
Overall Influence
1923 - 2013 (90 years)
Walter Jens was a German philologist, literature historian, critic, university professor and writer. He was born in Hamburg, and attended the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums from 1933 to 1941, when he gained his Abitur, before studying at the University of Hamburg.
Go to Profile#854
Elizabeth Strout
#14638
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Elizabeth Strout is an American novelist and author. She is widely known for her works in literary fiction and her descriptive characterization. She was born and raised in Portland, Maine, and her experiences in her youth served as inspiration for her novels–the fictional "Shirley Falls, Maine" is the setting of four of her nine novels.
Go to Profile#855
Adam Michnik
#1639
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Adam Michnik is a Polish historian, essayist, former dissident, public intellectual, as well as co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Polish newspaper, . Reared in a family of committed communists, Michnik became an opponent of Poland's communist regime at the time of the party's anti-Jewish purges. He was imprisoned after the 1968 March Events and again after the imposition of martial law in 1981. He has been called "one of Poland's most famous political prisoners".
Go to Profile#856
Francisco Rodríguez Adrados
#26054
Overall Influence
1922 - 2020 (98 years)
Francisco Rodríguez Adrados was a Spanish Hellenist, linguist and translator. He worked most of his career at the Complutense University of Madrid. He was a member of the Real Academia Española and Real Academia de la Historia.
Go to Profile#857
Ruth Wisse
#12900
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Ruth Wisse is a Canadian academic and is the Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University emerita. She is a noted scholar of Yiddish literature and of Jewish history and culture.
Go to Profile#858
Robert Barnard
#7598
Overall Influence
1936 - 2013 (77 years)
Robert Barnard was an English crime writer, critic and lecturer. In addition to over 40 books published under his own name, he also published four books under the pseudonym Bernard Bastable. Life and work Robert Barnard was born on 23 November 1936 at Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex. He was educated at the Colchester Royal Grammar School and at Balliol College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#859
Zakes Mda
#12035
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Zakes Mda , legally Zanemvula Kizito Gatyeni Mda is a South African novelist, poet and playwright and he is the son of politician A. P. Mda. He has won major South African and British literary awards for his novels and plays.
Go to Profile#860
William F. Nolan
#19480
Overall Influence
1928 - 2021 (93 years)
William Francis Nolan was an American author who wrote hundreds of stories in the science fiction, fantasy, horror, and crime fiction genres. Career Nolan became involved in science-fiction fandom in the 1950s, and published several fanzines, including Ray Bradbury Review. During this time, Nolan befriended several science-fiction and fantasy writers, including Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, and Ray Russell. Nolan became a professional author in 1956. Nolan is perhaps best known for coauthoring the novel Logan's Run, with George Clayton Johnson, but wrote l...
Go to Profile#861
David Lindsay-Abaire
#10767
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
David Lindsay-Abaire is an American playwright, lyricist and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2007 for his play Rabbit Hole, which also earned several Tony Award nominations. Lindsay-Abaire won both the 2023 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical and Tony Award for Best Original Score for the musical adaptation of his play Kimberly Akimbo.
Go to Profile#862
Ann Beattie
#14749
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Ann Beattie is an American novelist and short story writer. She has received an award for excellence from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the short story form.
Go to Profile#863
Ntozake Shange
#10839
Overall Influence
1948 - 2018 (70 years)
Ntozake Shange was an American playwright and poet. As a Black feminist, she addressed issues relating to race and Black power in much of her work. She is best known for her Obie Award-winning play, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf . She also penned novels including Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo , Liliane , and Betsey Brown , about an African-American girl run away from home.
Go to Profile#864
Roberto González Echevarría
#17399
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Roberto González Echevarría is a Cuban-born critic of Latin American literature and culture. He is the Sterling Professor of Hispanic and Comparative Literature at Yale University. Early life, education, and career González Echevarría was born in Sagua La Grande in 1943; his family moved to Havana when he was 13, and after the Cuban Revolution, his family emigrated to Tampa in the US, where relatives on his father's side had already moved. His mother was a PhD and teacher of philosophy.
Go to Profile#865
Alain Mabanckou
#14826
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Alain Mabanckou is a novelist, journalist, poet, and academic, a French citizen born in the Republic of the Congo, he is currently a Professor of Literature at UCLA. He is best known for his novels and non-fiction writing depicting the experience of contemporary Africa and the African diaspora in France. He is among the best known and most successful writers in the French language, and one of the best known African writers in France. In some circles in Paris he is known as "the Samuel Beckett of Africa".
Go to Profile#866
Leo Bersani
#8372
Overall Influence
1931 - 2022 (91 years)
Leo Bersani was an American academic, known for his contributions to French literary criticism and queer theory. He was known for his 1987 essay "Is the Rectum a Grave?" and his 1995 book Homos. Bersani was born in the Bronx. He studied at Harvard University, graduating in 1952 with a bachelor’s in Romance languages, and with a Ph.D. in comparative literature in 1958. He taught at Wellesley College and Rutgers University before joining University of California, Berkeley in 1972, where he'd remain for the rest of his career, assuming emeritus status in 1996. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992.
Go to Profile#867
Per Bäckström
#13579
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Per Bäckström is a Swedish literary scholar and affiliated professor in comparative literature at the Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden. He has worked as professor in comparative Literature, Karlstad University 2010–2019, and as associate professor at the Department of Culture and Literature, University of Tromsø, Norway 1996–2010. He took part in the founding of European Network for Avant-garde and Modernism Studies in 2007, and was the leader of the Membership Commission 2007–2011. He has published studies on Bruno K. Öijer, Henri Michaux, Gunnar Ekelöf, Mikhail Bakhtin, intermediality, the grotesque, concrete poetry, performance, avant-garde and neo-avant-garde.
Go to Profile#868
Janet Frame
#8060
Overall Influence
1924 - 2004 (80 years)
Janet Paterson Frame was a New Zealand author. She is internationally renowned for her work, which includes novels, short stories, poetry, juvenile fiction, and an autobiography, and received numerous awards including being appointed to the Order of New Zealand, New Zealand's highest civil honour.
Go to Profile#869
Dimitra Fimi
#13252
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (46 years)
Dimitra Fimi is a Scottish academic and writer and since 2020 the Senior Lecturer in Fantasy and Children's Literature at the University of Glasgow. Her research includes that of the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien and children's fantasy literature.
Go to Profile#870
Harald Weinrich
#17934
Overall Influence
1927 - 2022 (95 years)
Harald Weinrich was a German classical scholar, scholar of Romance philology and philosopher, known for the breadth of his writings. Biography He was emeritus professor of the Collège de France, and held the chair of Romance literature from 1992 to 1998.
Go to Profile#871
J. D. McClatchy
#16038
Overall Influence
1945 - 2018 (73 years)
J. D. "Sandy" McClatchy was an American poet, opera librettist and literary critic. He was editor of the Yale Review and president of The American Academy of Arts and Letters. Life McClatchy was born Joseph Donald McClatchy Jr., in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, in 1945. He was educated at Georgetown and Yale, from which he received his Ph.D. in 1974. He lived in Stonington, Connecticut, and New York. His husband was graphic designer Chip Kidd. His partner from 1977 to 1989 was poet Alfred Corn.
Go to Profile#872
K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar
#21179
Overall Influence
1908 - 1999 (91 years)
Kodaganallur Ramaswami Srinivasa Iyengar , popularly known as K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar, was an Indian writer in English, former vice-chancellor of Andhra University. He was given the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Fellowship in 1985.
Go to Profile#873
Shi Zhecun
#16761
Overall Influence
1905 - 2003 (98 years)
Shi Zhecun was a Chinese essayist, poet, short story writer, and translator in Shanghai during the 1930s. He was known for his poetry and essays, but is most known for his modernist short stories exploring the psychological conditions of Shanghai urbanites . From the 1940s onwards, he translated western novels into Chinese and worked as a scholar of classical Chinese literature.
Go to Profile#874
James McBride
#10449
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
James McBride is an American writer and musician. He is the recipient of the 2013 National Book Award for fiction for his novel The Good Lord Bird. Early life McBride's father, Rev. Andrew D. McBride was African-American; he died of cancer at the age of 45. His mother, Ruchel Dwajra Zylska , was a Jewish immigrant from Poland. James was raised in Brooklyn's Red Hook housing projects until he was seven years old and was the last child Ruth had from her first marriage, the last child of Rev. Andrew McBride, and the eighth of 12 children.
Go to Profile#875
Alan Hollinghurst
#17407
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Alan James Hollinghurst is an English novelist, poet, short story writer and translator. He won the 1989 Somerset Maugham Award, the 1994 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and for his novel The Line of Beauty the 2004 Booker Prize. Hollinghurst is credited with having helped gay-themed fiction to break into the literary mainstream through his six novels since 1988.
Go to Profile#876
Conor McPherson
#8190
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Conor McPherson is an Irish playwright, screenwriter and director of stage and film. In recognition of his contribution to world theatre, McPherson was awarded a doctorate of Literature, Honoris Causa, in June 2013 by the University College Dublin.
Go to Profile#877
Frank McGuinness
#6758
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Professor Frank McGuinness is an Irish writer. As well as his own plays, which include The Factory Girls, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, Someone Who'll Watch Over Me and Dolly West's Kitchen, he is recognised for a "strong record of adapting literary classics, having translated the plays of Racine, Sophocles, Ibsen, Garcia Lorca, and Strindberg to critical acclaim". He has also published six collections of poetry, and two novels. McGuinness was Professor of Creative Writing at University College Dublin from 2007 to 2018.
Go to Profile#878
Karen Tei Yamashita
#17790
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Karen Tei Yamashita is a Japanese American writer. Early life Yamashita was born on January 8, 1951, in Oakland, California. Career Yamashita is Professor of Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she teaches creative writing and Asian American literature. Her works, several of which contain elements of magic realism, include novels I Hotel , Circle K Cycles , Tropic of Orange , Brazil-Maru , and Through the Arc of the Rain Forest . Yamashita's novels emphasize the necessity of polyglot, multicultural communities in an increasingly globalized age, even as they destabi...
Go to Profile#879
Nedim Gürsel
#19192
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Nedim Gürsel is a Turkish writer. In the late 1960s, he published novellas and essays in Turkish magazines. After graduating from Galatasaray High School in 1970, he studied at the Sorbonne. In 1974, he graduated from the Sorbonne's Department of Modern French Literature. In 1979, he received his doctorate in comparative literature after completing his dissertation on Louis Aragon and Nazim Hikmet. He returned to Turkey, but the unrest there in 1980 persuaded him to go back to France.
Go to Profile#880
David Almond
#15135
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
David Almond is a British author who has written many novels for children and young adults from 1998, each one receiving critical acclaim. He is one of thirty children's writers, and one of three from the UK, to win the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award. For the 70th anniversary of the British Carnegie Medal in 2007, his debut novel Skellig was named one of the top ten Medal-winning works, selected by a panel to compose the ballot for a public election of the all-time favourite. It ranked third in the public vote from that shortlist.
Go to Profile#881
Philip Reeve
#9580
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Philip Reeve is a British author and illustrator of children's books, primarily known for the 2001 book Mortal Engines and its sequels . His 2007 novel, Here Lies Arthur, based on the legendary King Arthur, won the Carnegie Medal.
Go to Profile#882
Ben Lerner
#11899
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (45 years)
Benjamin S. Lerner is an American poet, novelist, essayist, critic and teacher. The recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Foundations, Lerner has been a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Lerner teaches at Brooklyn College, where he was named a Distinguished Professor of English in 2016.
Go to Profile#883
Benjamin Zephaniah
#4514
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah is a British writer and dub poet. He was included in The Times list of Britain's top 50 post-war writers in 2008. Early life and education Zephaniah was born and raised in the Handsworth district of Birmingham, England, which he has called the "Jamaican capital of Europe". He is the son of a Barbadian postman and a Jamaican nurse. A dyslexic, he attended an approved school but left aged 13 unable to read or write. During his childhood he was given an old, manual typewriter which he says inspired him to become a writer. It is now in the collection of Birmingham...
Go to Profile#884
Hideo Levy
#22040
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Ian Hideo Levy is an American-born Japanese language author. Levy was born in California and educated in Taiwan, the US, and Japan. He is one of the first Americans to write modern literature in Japanese, and his work has won the Noma Literary New Face Prize and the Yomiuri Prize, among other literary prizes.
Go to Profile#885
Stephen Flowers
#13092
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Stephen Edred Flowers, commonly known as Stephen E. Flowers, and also by the pen-names Edred Thorsson, and Darban-i-Den, is an American runologist, university lecturer, and proponent of occultism, especially of Neo-Germanic paganism and Odinism. He helped establish the Germanic Neopagan movement in North America and has also been active in left-hand path occult organizations. He has over three dozen published books and hundreds of published papers and translations on a disparate range of subjects. Flowers is still an active representative of heathenry and Odinism, and has appeared online in s...
Go to Profile#886
Maureen Corrigan
#13720
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Maureen Corrigan is an American author, scholar, and literary critic. She is the book critic on the NPR radio program Fresh Air and writes for the "Book World" section of The Washington Post. In 2014, she wrote So We Read On, a book on the origins and power of The Great Gatsby. In 2005, she published a literary memoir Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books. Corrigan was awarded the 2018 Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing by the National Book Critics Circle for her reviews on Fresh Air on NPR and in The Washington Post, and the 1999 Edgar Award for Criticism by the Mystery Writers of America for her book, Mystery & Suspense Writers, with Robin W.
Go to Profile#887
Arthur Kopit
#8281
Overall Influence
1937 - 2021 (84 years)
Arthur Lee Kopit was an American playwright. He was a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist for Indians and Wings. He was also nominated for three Tony Awards: Best Play for Indians and Wings , as well as Best Book of a Musical for Nine . He won the Vernon Rice Award in 1962 for Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad and was nominated for another Drama Desk Award in 1979 for Wings.
Go to Profile#888
Heinz Insu Fenkl
#14765
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Heinz Insu Fenkl is an author, editor, translator, and folklorist. His autobiographical novels Memories of My Ghost Brother and Skull Water are widely taught at colleges and universities. He is known internationally for his collection of Korean Folktales and is also an expert on Asian American and Korean literature, including North Korean comics and literature.
Go to Profile#889
Stephen Jones
#20672
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Stephen Jones is an English editor of horror anthologies, and the author of several book-length studies of horror and fantasy films as well as an account of H. P. Lovecraft's early British publications.
Go to Profile#890
Susan Griffin
#7396
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Susan Griffin is a radical feminist philosopher, essayist and playwright particularly known for her innovative, hybrid-form ecofeminist works. Life Griffin was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1943 and has resided in California since then. Following her father's death when she was 16, she bounced around the family but was eventually taken into the home and family of noted artist Morton Dimondstein. Her biological family were of Irish, Scottish, Welsh and German ancestry. Having spent a year in a post-War Jewish home, her German heritage wasn't openly spoken of and she initially demonized Germans, but later made several trips to Germany to reconcile her Jewish and German heritages.
Go to Profile#891
Keith Johnstone
#10376
Overall Influence
1933 - 2023 (90 years)
Donald Keith Johnstone was a British-Canadian educator and theatre director. A pioneer of improvisational theatre, he was best known for inventing the Impro System, part of which are the Theatresports. He was also an educator, playwright, actor and theatre director.
Go to Profile#892
Joanne Kyger
#11548
Overall Influence
1934 - 2017 (83 years)
Joanne Kyger was an American poet. The author of over 30 books of poetry and prose, Kyger was associated with the poets of the San Francisco Renaissance, the Beat Generation, Black Mountain, and the New York School.
Go to Profile#893
André Aciman
#12392
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
André Aciman is an Italian-American writer. Born and raised in Alexandria, Egypt, he is currently a distinguished professor at the Graduate Center of City University of New York, where he teaches the history of literary theory and the works of Marcel Proust. Aciman previously taught creative writing at New York University and French literature at Princeton and Bard College.
Go to Profile#894
Mark Doty
#21036
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Mark Doty is an American poet and memoirist best known for his work My Alexandria. He was the winner of the National Book Award for Poetry in 2008. Early life Mark Doty was born in Maryville, Tennessee, to Lawrence and Ruth Doty, with an older sister, Sarah Alice Doty. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and received his Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont.
Go to Profile#895
Javier Marías
#13303
Overall Influence
1951 - 2022 (71 years)
Javier Marías Franco was a Spanish author, translator, and columnist. Marías published fifteen novels, including A Heart So White and Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me . In addition to his novels, he also published three collections of short stories and various essays. As one of Spain's most celebrated novelists, his books have been translated into forty-six languages and were sold close to nine million times internationally. He received several awards for his work, such as the Rómulo Gallegos Prize , the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award , the International Nonino Prize , and the A...
Go to Profile#896
John Edward Williams
#17635
Overall Influence
1922 - 1994 (72 years)
John Edward Williams was an American author, editor and professor. He was best known for his novels Butcher's Crossing , Stoner , and Augustus , which won a U.S. National Book Award. Life Williams was born in Clarksville, Texas. Shortly thereafter, his family moved to Wichita Falls, Texas, in pursuit of the Texas oil boom. His grandparents were farmers; his father, J. E. Jewell, worked in a feed store. Jewell disappeared in mysterious circumstances when Williams was two years old, and his mother remarried to George Williams, a local shift worker in Wichita Falls. John Williams attended a loc...
Go to Profile#897
Carolyn Forché
#7149
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Carolyn Forché is an American poet, editor, professor, translator, and human rights advocate. She has received many awards for her literary work. Biography Forché was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Michael Joseph and Louise Nada Blackford Sidlosky. Forché earned a bachelor's degree in Creative Writing at Michigan State University in 1972, and Master of Fine Arts at Bowling Green State University in 1975.
Go to Profile#898
Amy Hempel
#17895
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Amy Hempel is an American short story writer and journalist. She teaches creative writing at the Michener Center for Writers. Life Hempel was born in Chicago, Illinois. She moved to California at age 16, which is where much of her early fiction takes place. She moved to New York City in the mid-seventies. There, she connected with writer and editor Gordon Lish, with whom she maintained a long professional relationship. She formerly was professor of creative writing at the University of Florida. She was the Briggs-Copeland Lecturer of English at Harvard University from 2009 to 2014. Additionally, she taught fiction in the Low-Residency MFA Program in Writing at Bennington College.
Go to Profile#899
Nancy Armstrong
#15092
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Nancy Armstrong is a scholar, critic and professor of English at Duke University. Overview Before moving to Duke, Armstrong was the Nancy Duke Lewis Professor of Comparative Literature, English, Modern Culture & Media, and Gender Studies at Brown University. She is currently the Gilbert, Louis & Edward Lehrman Professor of English at Duke. She is interested in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British and American fiction, empire and sexuality, narrative and critical theory, visual culture, and scientific discourses at work in literary forms. She is best known for her groundbreaking book o...
Go to Profile#900
Walter Höllerer
#29331
Overall Influence
1922 - 2003 (81 years)
Walter Höllerer was a German writer, literary critic, and literature academic. He was professor of literary studies at the Technical University of Berlin from 1959 to 1988. Höllerer was a member of the Group 47, founder of the German literary magazine Akzente and the Literary Colloquium of Berlin .
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