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,
#8501
Alfred Gudeman
1862 - 1942 (80 years)
Alfred Gudeman was an American-German classical scholar. Biography He was born in Atlanta, Georgia and graduated from Columbia University in 1883 and studied under Johannes Vahlen and Hermann Diels at the University of Berlin. From 1890 to 1893 he was reader in classical philology at Johns Hopkins University, from 1893 to 1902 professor in the University of Pennsylvania, and from 1902 to 1904 professor in Cornell University.
Go to Profile#8502
Louis Kronenberger
1904 - 1980 (76 years)
Louis Kronenberger was an American literary critic , novelist, and biographer who wrote extensively on drama and the 18th century. Background Kronenberger was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Louis Kronenberger Sr., a merchant, and Mabel Newwitter. Kronenberger attended, but did not graduate from, the University of Cincinnati from 1921 to 1924.
Go to Profile#8503
Adolf Holtzmann
1810 - 1870 (60 years)
Adolf Holtzmann was a German professor and philologist. His name is associated with a Proto-Germanic sound law known as Holtzmann's Law. He studied theology at the universities of Halle and Berlin, where he was a student of Friedrich Schleiermacher. He later studied philology at the University of Munich, where his influences included Johann Andreas Schmeller. Holtzmann also attended classes in Paris given by Eugène Burnouf, and beginning in 1837, spent a number of years working as a tutor to members of Baden royalty. From 1852 he was a professor of German literature and Sanskrit at the Univer...
Go to Profile#8504
James McAuley
1917 - 1976 (59 years)
James Phillip McAuley was an Australian academic, poet, journalist, literary critic and a prominent convert to Roman Catholicism. He was involved in the Ern Malley poetry hoax. Life and career McAuley was born in Lakemba, a suburb of Sydney. He was educated at Fort Street High School and then attended Sydney University, where he majored in English, Latin and philosophy
Go to Profile#8505
May Swenson
1913 - 1989 (76 years)
Anna Thilda May "May" Swenson was an American poet and playwright. Harold Bloom considered her one of the most important and original poets of the 20th century. The first child of Margaret and Dan Arthur Swenson, she grew up as the eldest of 10 children in a Mormon household where Swedish was spoken regularly and English was a second language. Although her conservative family struggled to accept the fact that she was a lesbian, they remained close throughout her life. Much of her later poetry works were devoted to children . She also translated the work of contemporary Swedish poets, includi...
Go to Profile#8506
Eduard Fraenkel
1888 - 1970 (82 years)
Eduard David Mortier Fraenkel FBA was a German classical scholar who served as the Corpus Christi Professor of Latin at the University of Oxford from 1935 until 1953. Born to a family of assimilated Jews in the German Empire, he studied Classics at the universities of Berlin and Göttingen. In 1934, antisemitic legislation introduced by the Nazi Party forced him to seek refuge in the United Kingdom where he eventually settled at Corpus Christi College.
Go to Profile#8507
Toyohachi Fujita
1869 - 1929 (60 years)
Toyohachi Fujita was a Japanese writer and professor in East Asian History. He was from Tokushima Prefecture. His pen name was Jianfeng / Kenfou . He founded a school in Jiangsu, China. He was a teacher at Beijing University , author of Secondary Education East Asian history《中等教育東洋史》and Research on the History of East-West Interactions《東西交涉史之研究（東西交渉史の研究）》. He collected over 1700 Chinese books. After he died, those were sent to the Toyo Bunko and put into a section called Fujita's library .
Go to Profile#8508
Adolf Frey
1855 - 1920 (65 years)
Adolf Frey was a Swiss writer and literary historian. The son of popular writer Jakob Frey , he studied at various universities, including from 1879 to 1881 literature and history at the University of Leipzig.
Go to Profile#8509
Léonie Adams
1899 - 1988 (89 years)
Léonie Fuller Adams was an American poet. She was appointed the seventh Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1948. Biography Adams was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in an unusually strict environment. She was not allowed on the subway until she was eighteen, and even then, her father accompanied her. Her sister was the teacher and archaeologist Louise Holland and her brother-in-law the archaeologist Leicester Bodine Holland. She studied at Barnard College, where she was a contemporary and friend of roommate Margaret Mead. While still an undergraduate, she showed remarkable skill as a poet, and at this time her poems began to be published.
Go to Profile#8510
Renato Poggioli
1907 - 1963 (56 years)
Renato Poggioli , was an Italian academic specializing in comparative literature. After 1938, he lived in the United States. At the time of his death, he was the Curt Hugo Reisinger Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature at Harvard University. A prolific writer and translator, who was fluent in five languages, he is considered one of the founders of the academic discipline of comparative literature in the United States.
Go to Profile#8511
Radu Gyr
1905 - 1975 (70 years)
Radu Gyr was a Romanian poet, essayist, playwright and journalist. Biography Early life Born in Câmpulung-Muscel, Gyr was the son of actor Ștefan "Coco" Dumitrescu. When he was 3, his family moved to Craiova, where he did his secondary studies at the Carol I High School. Starting in 1924, he studied at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the University of Bucharest, where he received his Ph.D. in Literature and became a Senior Lecturer. He made his literary debut in 1924 with the well-received volume Liniști de schituri . In 1927 he married Flora, with whom he had a daughter, Simona Lum...
Go to Profile#8512
Adolphe d'Ennery
1811 - 1899 (88 years)
Adolphe Philippe d'Ennery or Dennery was a French playwright and novelist. Life Born in Paris, his real surname was Philippe. He obtained his first success in collaboration with Charles Desnoyer in Émile, ou le fils d'un pair de France , a drama which was the first of a series of some two hundred pieces written alone or in collaboration with other dramatists. He died in Paris in 1899.
Go to Profile#8513
Paul Laurence Dunbar
1872 - 1906 (34 years)
Paul Laurence Dunbar was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in Dayton, Ohio, to parents who had been enslaved in Kentucky before the American Civil War, Dunbar began writing stories and verse when he was a child. He published his first poems at the age of 16 in a Dayton newspaper, and served as president of his high school's literary society.
Go to Profile#8514
Samuel Foote
1720 - 1777 (57 years)
Samuel Foote was a British dramatist, actor and theatre manager. He was known for his comedic acting and writing, and for turning the loss of a leg in a riding accident in 1766 to comedic opportunity.
Go to Profile#8515
F. M. Cornford
1874 - 1943 (69 years)
Francis Macdonald Cornford was an English classical scholar and translator known for work on ancient philosophy, notably Plato, Parmenides, Thucydides, and ancient Greek religion. Frances Cornford, his wife, was a noted poet. Due to the similarity in their names, he was known in the family as "FMC" and his wife as "FCC".
Go to Profile#8516
August Bournonville
1805 - 1879 (74 years)
August Bournonville was a Danish ballet master and choreographer. He was the son of Antoine Bournonville, a dancer and choreographer trained under the French choreographer, Jean Georges Noverre, and the nephew of Julie Alix de la Fay, née Bournonville, of the Royal Swedish Ballet.
Go to Profile#8517
Georg Goetz
1849 - 1932 (83 years)
Georg Goetz was a German classical philologist, known for his scholarly treatment of Plautus and Varro. From 1870 to 1873 he studied at the University of Leipzig, where his influences included Friedrich Ritschl. In 1873 he received his doctorate with the dissertation De temporibus Ecclesiazuson Aristophanis, and following graduation, worked as a tutor in St. Petersburg. In 1877 he obtained his habilitation for classical philology at Leipzig, and two years later, became an associate professor at the University of Jena. From 1880 to 1924 he was a full professor of classical philology at Jena, s...
Go to Profile#8518
Jens Baggesen
1764 - 1826 (62 years)
Jens Immanuel Baggesen was a major Danish poet, librettist, critic, and comic writer. Life Baggesen was born at Korsør on the Danish island of Zealand on February 15, 1764. His parents were very poor, and he was sent to copy documents at the office of the clerk of Hornsherred District before he was twelve. He was a melancholy, feeble child, and he attempted suicide more than once. By dint of indomitable perseverance, he managed to gain an education; in 1782, he entered the University of Copenhagen.
Go to Profile#8519
Ludwig Traube
1861 - 1907 (46 years)
Ludwig Traube was a German paleographer and held the first chair of Medieval Latin in Germany while at the University of Munich. He was a son of the physician Ludwig Traube , and the brother of the chemist Margarete Traube .
Go to Profile#8520
Robert Holmes
1926 - 1986 (60 years)
Robert Colin Holmes was a British television scriptwriter. For over 25 years he contributed to some of the most popular programmes screened in the UK. He is particularly remembered for his work on science fiction programmes, most notably his extensive contributions to Doctor Who, which included working as its script editor from 1974 to 1977.
Go to Profile#8521
Yakov Grot
1812 - 1893 (81 years)
Yakov Karlovich Grot was a nineteenth-century Russian philologist of German extraction who worked at the University of Helsinki. Grot was a graduate of the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. In his lifetime, he gained fame for his translations of German and Scandinavian poetry, his work on the theory of Russian orthography, lexicography, and grammar, and his approach to literary editing and criticism, exemplified in a full edition of the works of Derzhavin . His Russkoye Pravopisaniye became the standard textbook of Russian spelling and punctuation until superseded by the decrees of 1917–1918, although his definition of the theoretical foundations remains little changed to this day.
Go to Profile#8522
J. Slauerhoff
1898 - 1936 (38 years)
Jan Jacob Slauerhoff , who published as J. Slauerhoff, was a Dutch poet and novelist. He is considered one of the most important Dutch language writers. Youth Slauerhoff attended HBS in Leeuwarden, where he first met fellow future writer Simon Vestdijk, who was from Harlingen. In 1916, Slauerhoff and Vestdijk both moved to Amsterdam to read medicine. While at the university, Slauerhoff wrote his first poems; his debut as a poet was in the Communist magazine De Nieuwe Tijd. He edited the Amsterdam student magazine Propria Cures from 1919 to 1920. In 1919, Slauerhoff became engaged to a Dutch language student, Truus de Ruyter.
Go to Profile#8523
Uladzimir Dubouka
1901 - 1976 (75 years)
Uladzimir Mikalahevič Dubouka was a Belarusian poet, prose writer, linguist, and a literary critic. Early life Dubouka was born on 15 July 1900 into a working family in a Vilna Governorate, his grandfather was a farmer and his father was a fabric worker. He went to school in 1905-1912, in 1912 he entered the specialized school, in 1914 he enrolled to New Vilejka Teachers' Seminary, that was later moved to Nevel. In 1918 he graduated and joined his family in Moscow, where they had moved in 1915. he tried to receive higher education and enrolled to the MSU History and Philology Faculty, but aft...
Go to Profile#8524
Mariano Picón Salas
1901 - 1965 (64 years)
Mariano Federico Picón Salas was a Venezuelan diplomatic, cultural critic and writer of the 20th century, born in Mérida on January 26, 1901, and died in Caracas on January 1, 1965. Career Among his books, his collection of essays on history, literary criticism and cultural history are remarkable. He travelled a lot through the Americas. His work is also important because of his wide perspective, studying the culture of the entire continent. He left Venezuela, under the political persecution of dictator Juan Vicente Gómez. Living for a large period in Chile, he studied history, gaining the d...
Go to Profile#8525
Simon Dach
1605 - 1659 (54 years)
Simon Dach was a German lyrical poet and hymnwriter, born in Memel, Duchy of Prussia . Early life Although brought up in humble circumstances , he received a classical education in the Domschule of Königsberg and in the Latin schools of Wittenberg and Magdeburg, and entered the University of Königsberg in 1626 where he was a student of theology and philosophy. In 1626, he left Magdeburg to escape both the plague and the Thirty Years' War, and returned to his Prussian homeland, settling in Königsberg, where he remained for the rest of his life.
Go to Profile#8526
Fernando Ortiz Fernández
1881 - 1969 (88 years)
Fernando Ortiz Fernández was a Cuban essayist, anthropologist, ethnomusicologist and scholar of Afro-Cuban culture. Ortiz was a prolific polymath dedicated to exploring, recording, and understanding all aspects of indigenous Cuban culture. Ortiz coined the term "transculturation," the notion of converging cultures.
Go to Profile#8527
Dumitru Caracostea
1879 - 1964 (85 years)
Dumitru Caracostea was a Romanian folklorist, literary historian and critic. Biography Origins and early career He was born in Slatina, Olt County to Nicolae Caracostea, a magistrate of Aromanian descent, and his wife Eufrosina , a French teacher. His father's family had become wealthy through engaging in commerce, which opened the possibility of higher education for its members. He attended primary school and one year of high school in his native town, completing his secondary education at Saint Sava High School in Bucharest in 1900. That year, he enrolled in the literature and philosophy f...
Go to Profile#8528
Anatole Le Braz
1859 - 1926 (67 years)
Anatole le Braz, the "Bard of Brittany" , was a Breton poet, folklore collector, and translator. He was highly regarded amongst both European and American scholars, and was known for his warmth and charm.
Go to Profile#8529
Hovhannes Hovhannisyan
1864 - 1929 (65 years)
Hovhannes Hovhannisyan was an Armenian poet, linguist, translator and educator. He was a key contributor to the Ashkharabar literature movement and a promoter of literacy in Armenia. He has been called the founder of Classic Armenian poetry.
Go to Profile#8530
John Gray
1866 - 1934 (68 years)
Reverend Canon John Gray was an English poet and Catholic priest whose works include Silverpoints, The Long Road and Park: A Fantastic Story. It has often been suggested that he was the inspiration behind Oscar Wilde's fictional Dorian Gray despite evidence to the contrary. His great nephew is the alternative rock musician Crispin Gray.
Go to Profile#8531
Richard Harding Davis
1864 - 1916 (52 years)
Richard Harding Davis was an American journalist and writer of fiction and drama, known foremost as the first American war correspondent to cover the Spanish–American War, the Second Boer War, and World War I. His writing greatly assisted the political career of Theodore Roosevelt. He also played a major role in the evolution of the American magazine. His influence extended to the world of fashion, and he is credited with making the clean-shaven look popular among men at the turn of the 20th century.
Go to Profile#8532
Moriz Haupt
1808 - 1874 (66 years)
Moriz or Moritz Haupt , was a German philologist. Biography He was born at Zittau, Lusatia, Saxony. His early education was mainly conducted by his father, Ernst Friedrich Haupt, burgomaster of Zittau, a man of learning who took pleasure in translating German hymns or Goethe's poems into Latin, and whose memoranda were employed by Gustav Freytag in his Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit. From the Zittau gymnasium, where he spent the five years 1821–1826, Haupt moved to the University of Leipzig intending to study theology; but his own inclinations and the influence of Professor Gottfried ...
Go to Profile#8533
George Colman the Elder
1732 - 1794 (62 years)
George Colman was an English dramatist and essayist, usually called "the Elder", and sometimes "George the First", to distinguish him from his son, George Colman the Younger. He also owned a theatre.
Go to Profile#8534
Georg Ludolf Dissen
1784 - 1837 (53 years)
Georg Ludolf Dissen was a German classical philologist who was a native of Groß Schneen, a village in the District of Göttingen. He studied classical philology at the University of Göttingen, where one of his instructors was Christian Gottlob Heyne . After graduation, he was a lecturer at Göttingen, and in 1812 relocated to the University of Marburg as an associate professor. The following year he returned to Göttingen, where he was a colleague to Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker , Ernst Karl Friedrich Wunderlich and Karl Otfried Müller . In 1817 he was appointed "full professor", and in 1833 bec...
Go to Profile#8535
James Pillans
1778 - 1864 (86 years)
James Pillans FRSE was a Scottish classical scholar and educational reformer. He is credited with inventing the blackboard, but more correctly was the inventor of coloured chalk. Early life The son of James Pillans, he was born at Sheriff Brae in Leith in April 1778. His father was a merchant and then a printer in Edinburgh, creating Pillans & Wilson. He was also an elder in the Anti-Burgher branch of the Scottish Secession Church, of Adam Gib, and a liberal in politics. Pillans was educated at the Royal High School, Edinburgh, under Alexander Adam, of whom he subsequently contributed a biography to the Encyclopædia Britannica.
Go to Profile#8536
Elise Richter
1865 - 1943 (78 years)
Elise Richter was an Austrian philologist, specialising in Romance studies, and university professor. She was the first woman to achieve the habilitation at the University of Vienna, the first female associate professor and the only woman at any Austrian university before World War I to hold an academic appointment. Persecuted by Nazi officials during World War II, she was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in German-occupied Czechoslovakia in October 1942, and died there in June 1943.
Go to Profile#8537
Eugen Mogk
1854 - 1939 (85 years)
Eugen Mogk was a German academic specialising in Old Norse literature and Germanic mythology. He held a professorship at the University of Leipzig. Life and career Mogk was born in Döbeln. He studied Germanic studies and history at the University of Leipzig from 1875 to 1883, earning his doctorate in 1878 with a dissertation on the Gylfaginning section of the Prose Edda. In 1889 he earned his habilitation in Scandinavian philology with an edition and translation of "The So-Called Second Grammatical Tractate of the Snorra Edda". He taught Scandinavian philology at the university from 1888 unt...
Go to Profile#8538
Felix Braun
1885 - 1973 (88 years)
Felix Braun was an Austrian writer. Life Braun was born in Vienna, then capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to a Jewish family. His mother died in 1888 during the birth of his younger sister, Käthe, who would also become a famous writer. In 1904, he enrolled in German studies, as well as art history, at the University of Vienna, and took his doctorate four years later. His literary publications began to appear in 1905 in the Neue Freie Presse, the Österreichische Rundschau, and in Die neue Rundschau. He was appointed arts editor of the Berliner National-Zeitung in 1910.
Go to Profile#8539
Clyde S. Kilby
1902 - 1986 (84 years)
Clyde Samuel Kilby was an American writer and English professor, best known for his scholarship on the Inklings, especially J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. A professor at Wheaton College for most of his life, Kilby founded the Marion E. Wade Center there, making it a center for the study of the Inklings, their friends , and their influences .
Go to Profile#8540
Ferenc Toldy
1805 - 1875 (70 years)
Ferenc Toldy was a Hungarian literary critic. Biography As a small boy, he lived with his parents, Franz Schedel and Josepha Thalherr, in Buda. He was sent to school in Cegléd. He studied medicine and practised as a doctor in Pest, but his interest in literature absorbed his attention, and he published a handbook on Hungarian poetry in 1828. He travelled to Berlin, London, and Paris, returning in 1830. From 1833 to 1844 he was a professor of dietetics at Pest University, and in 1836 helped found the Kisfaludy Society. He changed his name to Toldy in 1846. He had used it as a pseudonym from th...
Go to Profile#8541
George Long
1800 - 1879 (79 years)
George Long was an English classical scholar. Life Long was born at Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire, the son of James Long, West India merchant. He was educated at Macclesfield Grammar School, St John's College, Cambridge and later Trinity College, Cambridge.
Go to Profile#8542
David Mallet
David Mallet was a Scottish poet and dramatist. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh, and went to London in 1723 to work as a private tutor. There he became friendly with Alexander Pope, James Thomson, and other literary figures including Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke.
Go to Profile#8543
Abd Allah ibn Umar ibn al-Khattab
610 - 693 (83 years)
ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb , commonly known as Ibn Umar, was a companion of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and a son of the second Caliph Umar. He was a prominent authority in hadith and law. He remained neutral during the events of the first Fitna .
Go to Profile#8544
Gabriele Rossetti
1783 - 1854 (71 years)
Gabriele Pasquale Giuseppe Rossetti was an Italian nobleman, poet, constitutionalist, scholar, and founder of the secret society Carbonari. Rossetti was born in Vasto in the Kingdom of Naples. He was Roman Catholic. His support for Italian revolutionary nationalism forced him into political exile in England in 1821.
Go to Profile#8545
José Antonio Ramos Sucre
1890 - 1930 (40 years)
José Antonio Ramos Sucre was a Venezuelan poet, professor, diplomat and scholar. He was a member of the Sucre family of Venezuela and the great-great-nephew of Antonio José de Sucre. He was educated at the Colegio Nacional, and then at the Universidad Central de Venezuela where he studied Law, Letters and Languages .
Go to Profile#8546
John Carew Rolfe
1859 - 1943 (84 years)
John Carew Rolfe, Ph.D. was an American classical scholar, the son of William J. Rolfe. Rolfe graduated from Harvard University in 1881 and from Cornell University in 1885. Rolfe taught at Cornell , at Harvard , at the University of Michigan, and at the University of Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#8547
Otto Roquette
1824 - 1896 (72 years)
Otto Roquette was a German author. Life and work Roquette was born in Krotoschin, Prussian Province of Posen. The son of a district court councillor, he first went to Bromberg in 1834, and from 1846 to 1850 studied Philology and History in Heidelberg, Berlin, and Halle. After tours in Switzerland and Italy, he moved to in Berlin in 1852. He became a teacher in Dresden in 1853. He returned to Berlin in 1857 and in 1862 became a professor of literary history at the War Academy until he changed to the Vocational Academy in 1867. In 1868 he joined the Vandalia-Teutonia Berlin. From 1869 he taught at the Polytechnic in Darmstadt .
Go to Profile#8548
Jakob Baechtold
1848 - 1897 (49 years)
Jakob Baechtold, surname sometimes spelled as Bächtold was a Swiss literary scholar. He studied German philology under Adolf Holtzmann at the University of Heidelberg, then continued his education at the University of Munich and in 1870 received his doctorate from the University of Tübingen with a thesis on the Lanzelet of Ulrich von Zatzikhoven. From 1872 he worked as a schoolteacher in Solothurn and Zürich, and from 1879 to 1884 he headed the feuilleton of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung .
Go to Profile#8549
Behçet Necatigil
1916 - 1979 (63 years)
Behçet Necatigil was a leading Turkish author, poet and translator. Biography Behçet was born in Istanbul, Ottoman Empire, in 1916. He graduated from the Teachers' High School in Istanbul in 1940, and served as a teacher of literature at Kabatas Erkek Lisesi until the year 1972. His first poem was published in Varlık journal during his high school years in 1935. From then on, he continued to write poetry for over 40 years. Behçet is also well known for his radio dramas.
Go to Profile#8550
Rabindranath Datta
1883 - 1918 (35 years)
Rabindranath Datta was an Indian Poet and educator. He mostly wrote in English. He was born in a renowned Bengali family on 1 October 1883 in Sankar Ghosh Lane, Calcutta. His father was Gyanendra Nath Dutt a member of the Hatkhola Dutt family.
Go to Profile