The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
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List of the most influential people in Literature,
#8751
David Hughes Parry
1893 - 1973 (80 years)
Sir David Hughes Parry was a university administrator, Professor of Law and Vice-Chancellor of the University of London from 1945 to 1948. He was also founder of the university's Institute of Advanced Legal Studies in 1947.
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Guy Stanton Ford
1873 - 1962 (89 years)
Guy Stanton Ford was the sixth president of the University of Minnesota. Ford had originally come to the University of Minnesota in 1913, serving as the dean of the Graduate School and as a professor of history. He became president in 1938 after the sudden death of Lotus Coffman. He left the University of Minnesota in November 1941 to become the executive secretary of the American Historical Association in Washington, D.C., and Editor of American Historical Review .
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Edith Finch Russell
1900 - 1978 (78 years)
Edith Finch, Countess Russell was an American writer and biographer. She was the fourth and last wife of Bertrand Russell. Biography Finch was born to Edward Bronson Finch, a physician, and his wife, Delia. Raised in New York City, she graduated from Miss Chapin's School. She studied at Bryn Mawr College and St Hilda's College, Oxford where she was awarded degrees in 1925 and 1926.
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James Hearst
1900 - 1983 (83 years)
James Hearst , born James Schell Hearst, was an American poet, philosopher, and university professor, who was sometimes described as the "Robert Frost of the Midwest" . Early life James Hearst was the first child born to Charles E. Hearst and Katharine Hearst, on August 8, 1900. He was born on the family farm in Black Hawk County. His father was a farmer in rural Cedar Falls, Iowa, and a deacon in the Congregational Church. His mother was the first secretary at what is now known as the University of Northern Iowa. Hearst had three younger siblings: Robert Russell Hearst, Charles Joseph Hearst, and Helen Louise Speer.
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Émile Legouis
1861 - 1937 (76 years)
Émile Hyacinthe Legouis was a French scholar of English literature and translator. Biography Son of a haberdasher, member of a family of five children, he began his career teaching one year at the college in Avranches. He became a student at the École pratique des hautes études in 1883, he subsequently received first at the agrégation of English in 1885. He was then appointed lecturer in English language and literature at the University of Lyon. Between 1904 and 1932, he taught English language and literature at the Sorbonne , first as a lecturer in 1904, then as a professor in 1906 and he obtained the chair in 1919.
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Wytze Hellinga
1908 - 1985 (77 years)
Wytze Gerbens Hellinga was a Dutch professor of linguistics at the University of Amsterdam. Hellinga was the son of Gerben Hellinga, a school master and Taatske Zwart, a writer of children's books. Whilst his father adhered to the strict Dutch Reformed Church his mother was a militant socialist and friend of Nienke van Hichtum, who encouraged her in her career.
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Rosamund Bartlett
1900 - Present (126 years)
Rosamund Bartlett is a British writer, scholar, lecturer, and translator specializing in Russian literature. Bartlett graduated from Durham University with a first-class degree in Russian. She went on to complete a doctorate at Oxford.
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Ludwig Curtius
1874 - 1954 (80 years)
Ludwig Curtius was a German archaeologist born in Augsburg. He is remembered for his investigations involving the development of ancient Greek and Roman art. He studied classical archaeology in Munich under Adolf Furtwängler , of whom in 1899 he became tutor to Furtwängler's son, future famed conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler . From 1904 to 1907 Curtius participated in excavations at Aegina and Hattusa, afterwards becoming an associate professor at the University of Erlangen, where in 1913 he became professor ordinarius.
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Florence Bonime
1907 - 1990 (83 years)
Florence Bonime was an American novelist. She also published under the name Florence Cummings. Life Florence Bonime was born May 12, 1907 in the Bronx. When she was 16 she began working in advertising, eventually becoming a copywriter.
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Joseph Auslander
1897 - 1965 (68 years)
Joseph Auslander was an American poet, anthologist, translator of poems, and novelist. Auslander was appointed the first Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1937 and 1941.
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Coy Cornelius Carpenter
1900 - 1971 (71 years)
Coy Cornelius Carpenter M.D. , was first dean of the School of Medicine of Wake Forest University from 1936 to 1967 and vice president for health affairs from 1963 to 1967. He guided the school through the transition from a two-year to a four-year program and the move from Wake Forest to Winston-Salem in 1941. He also authored The Story of Medicine at Wake Forest University . He resided in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
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Anton Constandse
1899 - 1985 (86 years)
Anton Levien Constandse was a Dutch anarchist author and journalist. Biography The son of a Baptist hotelier, Constandse completed the normal school between 1914 and 1918 and in this period came into contact with the teetotalers' movement. In response to World War I, he developed anti-militarist ideas. He joined the Social-Anarchist Youth Organisation in 1919. Within this organisation, he chose the side of the individualist faction when factional struggles erupted, denouncing even trade organizations as counterrevolutionary. Instead of taking a job as a teacher, Constandse devoted himself to spreading anarchist ideas.
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Austin Morris Harmon
1878 - 1950 (72 years)
Austin Morris Harmon Ph.D., LL.D. was an American classical scholar. He published bilingual editions of Lucian's works in the Loeb Classical Library between 1913 and 1936 in a 5-volume series. Biography His parents were George B. and Catharine Crowe Harmon. Harmon received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Williams College in 1903 and his Masters of Arts from Yale University in 1904. Additionally he studied in Göttingen in 1903-4. He received his PhD in 1908 and LL.D. in 1927.
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Albert Köster
1862 - 1924 (62 years)
Albert Johannes Köster was a German Germanist and theater scholar. Life Born in the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg as the son of a wine wholesaler, Köster attended the Johanneum in Hamburg, where he passed the Abitur in 1882. He then studied at the Universities of Tübingen and Leipzig Law and Berlin Philology and History of Literature. In 1887, he received his doctorate in history from Wilhelm Maurenbrecher and Georg Voigt in Leipzig. The subject of his dissertation was: "Die Wormser Annalen. An investigation of the sources".
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Albert Léon Guérard
1880 - 1959 (79 years)
Albert Léon Guérard was a prominent scholar of comparative literature. Guérard taught at Stanford University for many years. A prolific author, he published works on French and European civilization, world literature, and international languages, also holding the position of protector of the Occidental language's Occidental-Academie in 1936.
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Julia Bastin
1888 - 1968 (80 years)
Julia Bastin was a Belgian academic, educator and novelist. Biography She was born in Liège and grew up there. Bastin studied at The Hague, earning a diploma that allowed her to teach Dutch. From 1912 to 1914, she taught at a middle school in Braine-le-Comte. Bastin spent World War I in England and studied languages at Bedford College, particularly French literature from the Middle Ages. She was also a teaching assistant for French conversation and composition courses at the college. Afterwards, she taught in secondary schools in Derbyshire and then Yorkshire. From 1920 to 1931, she lived in ...
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Louis Hasley
1906 - 1986 (80 years)
Louis Leonard Hasley was an American writer, poet, essayist, editor, and critic. He was also a professor of English at the University of Notre Dame from 1931 to 1973. He was married to the writer Lucile Hasley.
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Buddhadeva Bose
1908 - 1974 (66 years)
Buddhadeva Bose , also spelt Buddhadeb Bosu, was an Indian Bengali writer of the 20th century. Frequently referred to as a poet, he was a versatile writer who wrote novels, short stories, plays and essays in addition to poetry. He was an influential critic and editor of his time. He is recognised as one of the five poets who moved to introduce modernity into Bengali poetry. It is said that since Rabindranath Tagore, there has not been a more versatile talent in Bengali literature.
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Félix-Antoine Savard
1896 - 1982 (86 years)
Félix-Antoine Savard, was a Canadian priest, academic, poet, novelist and folklorist. Born in Quebec City, he grew up in Chicoutimi, Quebec. He received a Bachelor of Arts in 1918 and was ordained a priest in 1922. He occupied several ecclesiastical positions in Charlevoix and Saguenay before founding the parish of Clermont in Charlevoix.
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Maurice Piron
1914 - 1986 (72 years)
Maurice Piron was a Belgian academic and philologist.
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Dietrich Kralik
1884 - 1959 (75 years)
Dietrich Ritter Kralik von Meyrswalden was an Austrian philologist who specialized in Germanic studies. Biography Dietrich Kralik was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary on 15 August 1884. He belonged to the family of Bohemian nobility, and was the son of philosopher and brother of musician . He received his Ph.D. in Germanic philology at the University of Vienna under the supervision of Rudolf Much.
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Antonio Oliver
1903 - 1968 (65 years)
Antonio Oliver was a Spanish writer, poet, literary critic and historian of Spanish art. He was also a part of the Generation of '27, a group of artists and poets that specialized in the avant-garde.
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Ernst Wilhelm Eschmann
1904 - 1987 (83 years)
Ernst Wilhelm Eschmann was a German writer, sociologist and playwright. Bibliography Some works Der faschistische Staat in Italien Vom Sinn der Revolution Die Aussenpolitik des Faschismus Griechisches Tagebuch Im Amerika der Griechen Tessiner Episteln
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Ignacio González-Llubera
1893 - 1962 (69 years)
Ignacio Miguel González-Llubera was a Spanish literary scholar, specialising in Judaeo-Spanish literature. Born in Barcelona, he was educated at the Colegio del Sagrado Corazón, the University of Barcelona and the University of Madrid . He then studied in Madrid, Paris, London and Cambridge before he was appointed the first lecturer in Spanish at Queen's University Belfast in 1920. He was appointed its first Professor of Spanish in 1926, a chair he held until he retired in 1960.
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Erhard Lommatzsch
1886 - 1975 (89 years)
Erhard Lommatzsch was a German Romance philologist. From 1905 to 1910 he studied classical, German and Romance philology at the University of Berlin, where his teachers included Eduard Norden, Gustav Roethe, Erich Schmidt and Adolf Tobler. In 1913 he obtained his habilitation, and in 1917 was named an associate professor at Berlin University. Later on, he served as a full professor of Romance philology at the universities of Greifswald and Frankfurt am Main .
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Harry Hess Reichard
1878 - 1956 (78 years)
Harry Hess Reichard was a Pennsylvania German writer and scholar. Biography Reichard was born in Lower Saucon Township, Pennsylvania. In 1901, he graduated from Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. In 1911, he received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
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Ella E. Clark
1896 - 1984 (88 years)
Ella Elizabeth Clark was an American educator, writer, and Professor Emerita of English. Although Clark was not a trained anthropologist or folklorist, she collected large numbers of American Indian and First Nations oral traditions and made them available to a wide readership.
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Henry Kuttner
1915 - 1958 (43 years)
Henry Kuttner was an American author of science fiction, fantasy and horror. Early life Henry Kuttner was born in Los Angeles, California in 1915. Kuttner and Amelia Bush , the parents of his father, the bookseller Henry Kuttner , had come from Leszno in Prussia and lived in San Francisco since 1859; the parents of his mother, Annie Levy , were from Great Britain. Henry Kuttner's great-grandfather was the scholar Josua Heschel Kuttner. Kuttner grew up in relative poverty following the death of his father. As a young man he worked in his spare time for the literary agency of his uncle, Laure...
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Alice Henson Ernst
1880 - 1980 (100 years)
Alice Henson Ernst was an American playwright, professor and author. She conducted anthropological work among the Native Americans in Oregon. Ernst was also well-known for her history and research of pioneer theater in the northwest. Ernst taught English and drama at the University of Washington and the University of Oregon.
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Thomas Lounsbury
1838 - 1915 (77 years)
Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury was an American literary historian and critic. He was born in Ovid, New York on January 1, 1838. He graduated from Yale College in 1859 with a B.A. and received a M.A. from Yale University in 1887. He later received honorary degrees from Yale University , Harvard University , Lafayette College, Princeton University, and Aberdeen College. He enlisted in the 126th New York Volunteers in 1862 and served in the Civil War as a first lieutenant.
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Anne Sexton
1928 - 1974 (46 years)
Anne Sexton was an American poet known for her highly personal, confessional verse. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for her book Live or Die. Her poetry details her long battle with bipolar disorder, suicidal tendencies, and intimate details from her private life, including relationships with her husband and children, whom it was later alleged she physically and sexually assaulted.
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Christian Gauss
1878 - 1951 (73 years)
Christian Gauss was a literary critic and professor of literature. Biography Gauss was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His father had fled Württemberg when Prussia began to dominate it in the 1860s. The son graduated from the University of Michigan at 20, worked as a newspaper correspondent in Paris, covering the Dreyfus case during which time he met Oscar Wilde who dedicated one of his poems to Gauss.
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Gladys Schmitt
1909 - 1972 (63 years)
Gladys Leonore Schmitt was an American writer, editor, and professor. Described by the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph in 1942 as one of the city's "literary lights, her second novel, David the King became a Literary Guild selection which rose to number one on national bestseller lists.
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V. Raymond Edman
1900 - 1967 (67 years)
Victor Raymond Edman was an American minister and author who served as the fourth president of Wheaton College in Illinois from 1941 to 1965. Edman was born in Chicago, Illinois, as one of six children to Swedish immigrants Anders and Alma Edman. He attended Columbia University, but left to serve in World War I in 1918–1919. After the War, Edman returned to attend the University of Illinois, Nyack College, and then Boston University where he received his B.A. Edman served as a missionary to the Quichua people in Ecuador from 1923 to 1927. While serving as a missionary, Edman married Edith Olson, also an American.
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Taijun Takeda
1912 - 1976 (64 years)
Taijun Takeda was a Japanese novelist active as one of the first post-war generation writers, and a noted influencer on Chinese literature. His Dharma name was . Biography Takeda was the second son of a Buddhist priest of the Pure Land Sect, and was raised in a temple. He developed an early interest in both Chinese literature and left-wing politics and, on graduating from high school, he chose to major in Sinology at Tokyo University in 1931. He did not complete his degree, for he withdrew from the university after being arrested for distributing leaflets critical of imperialism, which cost him a month’s imprisonment.
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Charles Saroléa
1870 - 1953 (83 years)
Charles Louis-Camille Saroléa FRSE DLitt was a Belgian philologist and author. Life Saroléa was born in Tongeren on 24 October 1870 the son of Dr Jean Pierre Sarolea MD. He was educated at Lycee Athenee at Hasselt. He then studied at the University of Liège.
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Marcus Eli Ravage
1884 - 1965 (81 years)
Marcus Eli Ravage was a Jewish American immigrant writer who wrote many books and articles about immigration in America and Europe between the world wars. Best known for his autobiographical book An American in the Making , he is also known for his 1928 article, "A Real Case Against the Jews.”
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Maximilian Lambertz
1882 - 1963 (81 years)
Maximilian Lambertz was an Austrian linguist, folklorist, and a major personality of Albanology. Biography In the years 1900 to 1905, he studied comparative linguistics and classical philology in Vienna, and subsequently received his doctorate with a dissertation on the "Greek slave name" . A government scholarship enabled him to travel to Italy and Greece. While in Greece, he overheard the conversation of some fishermen from Attica. He got curious when he was told that it was the Arvanitika dialect of the Albanian .This would change his course of work from that moment on. After his return h...
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Pavle Popović
1868 - 1939 (71 years)
Pavle Popović was a Serbian literary critic and historian, a professor and rector at the University of Belgrade. He is the brother of Bogdan Popović, also a well-known and equally influential literary critic and university professor.
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John Henry Salter
1862 - 1942 (80 years)
John Henry Salter was an English naturalist and ornithologist. He was a professor of botany at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. Additionally, he published a book about the birds of Wales.
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John McCrae
1872 - 1918 (46 years)
Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae was a Canadian poet, physician, author, artist and soldier during the First World War and a surgeon during the Second Battle of Ypres, in Belgium. He is best known for writing the famous war memorial poem "In Flanders Fields". McCrae died of pneumonia near the end of the war. His famous poem is a threnody, a genre of lament.
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Kyle Meredith Phillips Jr.
1934 - 1988 (54 years)
Kyle Meredith Phillips Jr. was a leading American Etruscologist. Phillips was educated at Bowdoin College and Princeton University . At Princeton he studied with Erik Sjöqvist. In 1962 he joined the faculty of Bryn Mawr College. Having excavated with the Princeton team at Morgantina in Sicily, Phillips decided to start a new project. Based on advice from Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, Phillips embarked on the excavation of an Etruscan center at Poggio Civitate near Murlo, Siena in 1966. Here Phillips discovered a monumental complex whose interpretation remains controversial, despite ongoing fieldwork.
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Kshetresa Chandra Chattopadhyaya
1896 - 1974 (78 years)
Kshetresa Chandra Chattopadhyaya was a distinguished scholar of Sanskrit from India. A scholar of Sanskrit, Veda, grammar, Pali, Prakrit and philology, he was born on 27 October 1896 in village Nimta of North 24 Parganas in what was then Bengal. He came from an illustrious family of Kulina Brahmans of Deshmukho in District Hooghly. The Indian writer Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay belonged to the same family and Kshetresa Chandra Chattopadhyaya inherited the spirit of Indian renaissance from him.
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Helen Hull Law
1890 - 1966 (76 years)
Helen Hull Law was a professor of Latin and Greek at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina from 1914 until 1927 where her "depth and breadth of scholarship would have frightened the freshmen had not her charming shyness made them feel that they must put her at ease." In 1923 she founded and organized the Kappa Nu Sigma honor society on campus. Law later became professor of Greek at Wellesley College and retired in 1954 after 28 years.
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Léonie Villard
1878 - 1970 (92 years)
Léonie Villard was a French literary critic and professor at the Université de Lyon. She was the first woman to be a professor of literature at a French university. In 1917 she received the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize for her book, Jane Austen: Sa Vie et Son Oeuvre. She was also a member of the faculty of Mount Holyoke College in 1937 and 1950–1951. The college holds her diary of life in Vichy France during the Second World War.
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Junzaburō Nishiwaki
1894 - 1982 (88 years)
Junzaburō Nishiwaki was a contemporary Japanese poet and literary critic, active in Shōwa period Japan, specializing in modernism, Dadaism and surrealism. He was also a noted painter of watercolors.
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Petre Strihan
1899 - 1990 (91 years)
Petre Strihan was a Romanian poet. Born in Mizil, his parents were Ion Constantinescu, a lawyer, and his wife Steliana . From 1910 to 1918, he attended high school in Ploiești and Buzău. He then studied law at the University of Bucharest from 1918 to 1921, during which time he worked as a copyist within his faculty. He earned a doctorate in 1925, and worked as an instructor , associate professor and professor . From 1942 to 1944, under the regime of Ion Antonescu, he was a deputy state secretary. He was active as a lawyer from 1921 to 1945, at which point he was suspended. Between 1956 and 1...
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James Wreford Watson
1915 - 1990 (75 years)
Prof James Wreford Watson FRSE FRSC IBG LLD was a Scottish Canadian geographer and cartographer, who served as the Chief Geographer of Canada and the first president of the Canadian Association of Geographers. He was also a poet who wrote under the name James Wreford and was the recipient of Canada's top literary honor, the Governor General's Award, for his poetry.
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Alexander Miller
1908 - 1960 (52 years)
Alexander "Lex" Miller was a New Zealand Presbyterian minister, author, and Stanford University theologian. Violence towards black activists during the Montgomery bus boycott led Miller to question commitments to nonviolence as noted by Martin Luther King Jr. himself in letter sent April 1957.
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Amado Alonso
1896 - 1952 (56 years)
Amado Alonso was a Spanish philologist, linguist and literary critic, who became a naturalised citizen of Argentina and one of the founders of stylistics. He was a pupil of Ramón Menéndez Pidal at the Center for Historical Studies in Madrid, where he worked on phonetic and geographical linguistics. Between 1927 and 1946 he lived in Buenos Aires, where he headed the Institute of Philology. He then went to Harvard University and lived in America until his death.
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