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,
#8801
Joseph Quincy Adams Jr.
1880 - 1946 (66 years)
Joseph Quincy Adams Jr. was a prominent Shakespeare scholar and the first officially appointed director of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. Biography Adams, a scion of the famous Adams family that produced two American Presidents, John Adams and John Quincy Adams, was born in Greenville, South Carolina, the son of a Rev. Joseph Quincy Adams, a Baptist clergyman, and Mamie Fouchée Adams . He received his B.A. degree from Wake Forest College in 1900, and earned an M.A. degree from the same institution in 1901. He continued his education at the University of Chicago , and at the University of Berlin .
Go to Profile#8802
Jacob Isaacs
1896 - 1973 (77 years)
Jacob Isaacs was chair of English language and literature at Queen Mary College, University of London, from 1952 to 1964 and the author of more than thirty books and articles on the subject of English literature.
Go to Profile#8803
Johann Christian Wernsdorf
1723 - 1793 (70 years)
Johann Christian Wernsdorf I was a German writer, poet, and rhetorician. Life Born the son of Gottlieb Wernsdorf the Elder and his wife Magaretha Katharina , he lost his father at an early age. He was his mother's caregiver afterward. He was educated by private tutors visiting Wittenberg Latin school, and afterwards studying at the Pforta school.
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Robert Holmes
1765 - 1859 (94 years)
Robert Holmes was an Irish lawyer and nationalist. Early life Holmes was born in Dublin in 1765, the son of parents who were natives of Antrim and settled at Belfast, was born during a visit of his parents to Dublin in 1765. He entered Trinity College, Dublin in 1782, and graduated B.A. in 1787. He at first devoted himself to medicine, but he soon turned his attention to the law. In 1795 he was called to the bar. He spent a substantial period of his professional life travelling the north-east circuit in Ireland, where he gained a reputation for great ability and legal skill.
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Anwara Bahar Chowdhury
1919 - 1987 (68 years)
Anwara Bahar Chowdhury was a Bangladeshi social activist and writer. Background and education Chowdhury was admitted to Sakhawat Memorial Girls' High School, established by women rights activist Begum Rokeya. She passed matriculation in 1934. She completed her higher secondary school examination and BA degree from Bethune College of Kolkata. She passed Bachelor in Teaching from Scottish Church College in 1941.
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Edmund Hauler
1859 - 1941 (82 years)
Edmund Hauler was an Austrian classical philologist born in Ofen to a Danube Swabian German family. His father, Johann Hauler was also a classical philologist. Life and works In 1882 he earned his doctorate from the University of Vienna, and was awarded the sub auspiciis Imperatoris . In 1885 he continued his education at the University of Bonn with Hermann Usener and Franz Bücheler , and from 1885 to 1887 undertook study trips to France, England, Switzerland and Italy. From 1890 to 1893 he was a high school teacher in Vienna, and afterwards lectured at the University of Vienna, where in 18...
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Alexander Greendale
1910 - 1981 (71 years)
Alexander Greendale was an American playwright and civic leader. He was an adjunct professor at Adelphi University, the editor of two books about housing, and the author of over 70 plays. Early life Greendale was born on May 25, 1910, in Chicago. He graduated from the University of Hawaii, and he earned master's degrees from Stanford University and Adelphi University.
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Shahid Saber
1930 - 1971 (41 years)
Shahid Saber was the pen name of the writer and journalist AKM Shahidullah. He was killed by Pakistan Army when they burned down The Daily Sangbad office on 31 March 1971. Early life Saber was born in Eidgah, Cox's Bazar District, Chittagong Division on 18 December 1930. He studied in Eidgah Primary School after which he joined Hare School, Kolkata in the fourth grade. He joined Chittagong Collegiate School after the partition of India and graduated from that college in 1949. He got admitted to Chittagong College after that. As a student he was involved with various cultural organizations including Chhotader Asar and Mukul Fouj Movement.
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Walter Miller
1864 - 1949 (85 years)
Samuel Walter Miller, LL. D., Litt. D. was an American linguist, classics scholar and archaeologist responsible for the first American excavation in Greece and a founder of the Stanford University Classics department.
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William Thompson
1805 - 1852 (47 years)
William Thompson was an Irish naturalist celebrated for his founding studies of the natural history of Ireland, especially in ornithology and marine biology. Thompson published numerous notes on the distribution, breeding, eggs, habitat, song, plumage, behaviour, nesting and food of birds. These formed the basis of his four-volume The Natural History of Ireland, and were much used by contemporary and later authors such as Francis Orpen Morris.
Go to Profile#8811
Wilhelm Adolf Becker
1796 - 1846 (50 years)
Wilhelm Adolf Becker was a German classical scholar. Biography Becker was born in Dresden, the son of German art historian, numismatist and author Wilhelm Gottlieb Becker. At first destined for a commercial life, he was in 1812 sent to the celebrated school at Pforta. In 1816 he entered the University of Leipzig, where he studied under Beck and Hermann. After holding subordinate posts at Zerbst and Meissen, he was in 1842 appointed professor of archaeology at Leipzig. He died at Meissen on 30 September 1846.
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George Burns
1896 - 1996 (100 years)
George Burns was an American comedian, actor, writer, and singer, and one of the few entertainers whose career successfully spanned vaudeville, radio, film and television. His arched eyebrow and cigar-smoke punctuation became familiar trademarks for over three-quarters of a century. He and his wife Gracie Allen appeared on radio, television and film as the comedy duo Burns and Allen.
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Henry Jackson
1839 - 1921 (82 years)
Henry Jackson was an English classicist. He served as the vice-master of Trinity College, Cambridge from 1914 to 1919, praelector in ancient philosophy from 1875 to 1906 and Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge from 1906 to 1921. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1903. He was awarded the Order of Merit on 26 June 1908. From 1882 to 1892 he sat on the Council of the Senate of the University of Cambridge, and was an active member of a number of the university boards. He lived within the walls of Trinity College for over 50 years. Born in Sheffield, he lived...
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James Gregory
1753 - 1821 (68 years)
James Gregory FRSE FRCPE was a Scottish physician and classicist. Early life and education The eldest son of John Gregory and Elizabeth Forbes , he was born in Aberdeen. He was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School, King's College, University of Aberdeen, the University of Edinburgh , the University of Oxford, and Leyden University.
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George Franklin Grant
1847 - 1910 (63 years)
George Franklin Grant was the first African-American professor at Harvard. He was also a Boston dentist, and an inventor of an early composite golf tee made from wood and natural rubber tubing. Biography Grant was born on September 15, 1846, in Oswego, New York, to Phillis Pitt and Tudor Elandor Grant. He attended the Bordentown School in Bordentown, New Jersey.
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John Chamberlain
1553 - 1628 (75 years)
John Chamberlain was the author of a series of letters written in England from 1597 to 1626, notable for their historical value and their literary qualities. In the view of historian Wallace Notestein, Chamberlain's letters "constitute the first considerable body of letters in English history and literature that the modern reader can easily follow". They are an essential source for scholars who study the period.
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Leonard Cox
1495 - 1549 (54 years)
Leonard Cox was an English humanist, author of the first book in English on rhetoric. He was a scholar of international reputation who found patronage in Poland, and was friend of Erasmus and Melanchthon. He was known to contemporaries as a grammarian, rhetorician, poet, and preacher, and was skilled in the modern as well as the classical languages.
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Charles Wolfe
1791 - 1823 (32 years)
Charles Wolfe was an Irish poet, chiefly remembered for "The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna" which achieved popularity in 19th century poetry anthologies. Family Born at Blackhall, County Kildare, the youngest son of Theobald Wolfe of Blackhall and his wife Frances , daughter of the Rev. Peter Lombard of Clooncorrick Castle, Carrigallen, County Leitrim. His father was the godfather – but widely believed to be the natural father – of Theobald Wolfe Tone. He was a brother of Peter Wolfe , High Sheriff of Kildare; and, their father's first cousin was Arthur Wolfe, 1st Viscount Kilwar...
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Gottlieb Mohnike
1781 - 1841 (60 years)
Gottlieb Christian Friedrich Mohnike was a German pastor and philologist who was a native of Grimmen. He was the father of physician Otto Gottlieb Mohnike . He studied theology at the Universities of Greifswald and Jena, afterwards spending several years as a private instructor on the island of Rügen. In 1813 he became pastor at St. Jakobi Church in Stralsund, and in 1824 was awarded an honorary doctorate of theology from the University of Greifswald.
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Ion Agârbiceanu
1882 - 1963 (81 years)
Ion Agârbiceanu was an Austro-Hungarian-born Romanian writer, journalist, politician, theologian and Greek-Catholic priest. Born among the Romanian peasant class of Transylvania, he was originally an Orthodox, but chose to embrace Eastern Catholicism. Assisted by the Catholic congregation of Blaj, he graduated from Budapest University, after which he was ordained. Agârbiceanu was initially assigned to a parish in the Apuseni Mountains, which form the backdrop to much of his fiction. Before 1910, Agârbiceanu had achieved literary fame in both Transylvania and the Kingdom of Romania, affiliatin...
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James Miller
1703 - 1744 (41 years)
James Miller was an English playwright, poet, librettist, and minister. Biography Miller was born in Bridport, Dorset on 11 August 1704, the son of a clergyman who possessed two considerable livings in the county. He studied at Wadham College, Oxford, and while there wrote part of his famous comedy, The Humours of Oxford, which contained music by Richard Charke and was first performed on 9 January 1730, to great success.
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Heinrich Petraeus
1589 - 1620 (31 years)
Heinrich Petraeus was a German physician and writer. He was Professor of Medicine at the University of Marburg. He was son-in-law of the chemist Johannes Hartmann . He is known for his Nosologia Harmonica Dogmatica et Hermetica. This was an attempt to find concord between rival medical theories of the time: those of the progressive chemical physicians and those of the tradition-based Galenists.
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John Brinkley
1763 - 1835 (72 years)
John Mortimer Brinkley was the first Royal Astronomer of Ireland and later Bishop of Cloyne. He was President of the Royal Irish Academy , President of the Royal Astronomical Society . He was awarded the Cunningham Medal in 1818, and the Copley Medal in 1824.
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Ted Snyder
1881 - 1965 (84 years)
Theodore Frank Snyder , was an American composer, lyricist, and music publisher. His hits include "The Sheik of Araby" and "Who's Sorry Now?" . In 1970, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. , his compositions have been used in more than twenty motion pictures.
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William Richardson
1743 - 1814 (71 years)
William Richardson FRSE was a Scottish classicist and literary scholar. In 1783 he was a joint founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Life Born in Aberfoyle, Perthshire, he was the son of Rev. James Richardson, the Church of Scotland parish minister of the same parish in which William was first educated. William attended the University of Glasgow in 1757 where he focused on his talent for learning languages. He graduated MA from the University in 1763 and was employed by Charles Cathcart, 9th Lord Cathcart, as tutor to his two sons.
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John Harris
1820 - 1884 (64 years)
John Harris FRHS was a Cornish poet. He became a fellow of the Royal Historical Society in April 1879 for being ″distinguished in letters″. Harris was born and raised in a two-bedroom cottage on the slopes of Bolenowe, a small hamlet near Camborne, Cornwall, in England. He was the eldest of nine children . At age twelve, he was sent to work at Dolcoath mine where he combined a life of painful labour with the production of poetry celebrating his native landscape around Carn Brea and the scenic splendours of Land's End and the Lizard. He could not afford pen and paper, so he improvised and used...
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Jack Wagner
1891 - 1963 (72 years)
Jack Wagner was an American Academy Award nominee screenwriter and cinematographer mostly during the silent era of motion pictures. Biography Born in Monterey, California, United States, Wagner was one of five children, all boys, of William Wallace Wagner, a railroad conductor, and Edith Wagner, a writer who provided dispatches for the Christian Science Monitor during the Mexican Revolution. He lived in Mexico from about 1895 to 1909 before moving to Los Angeles to work for D. W. Griffith on his early films. Between the years 1909 and 1912, Wagner worked mostly as a furniture painter, set designer and second unit cameraman.
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Elizabeth Williams Champney
1850 - 1922 (72 years)
Elizabeth Williams Champney was an American author of novels and juvenile literature, as well as travel writing, most of which featured foreign locations. Champney's observations and experiences during her European travels were published in Harper's Magazine, and also in The Century Magazine. She published eighty or more articles in Harper's and Century, including a series on Portugal, and papers entitled "A Neglected Corner of Europe", and "In the Footsteps of Futuney and Regnault". After her return to the United States, Champney wrote fifteen books; novels, stories for juveniles, and historical works under cover of stories, mostly adapted to young people.
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Charles Badham
1813 - 1884 (71 years)
Reverend Charles Badham was an English classical philologist, textual critic, headmaster, and university professor, active in England and even more so in Australia. Early life Badham was born at Ludlow, Shropshire, the fourth son of Charles Badham senior, a classical scholar and regius professor of physic at Glasgow; and Margaret Campbell, a cousin of Thomas Campbell, the poet. His elder brother, Rev. Dr Charles David Badham, became a physician and popular writer.
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Funahashi Seiichi
1904 - 1976 (72 years)
Seiichi Funahashi was a Japanese writer of short stories, novellas, novels and stage plays, active in the Shōwa period. Biography Funahashi was born in what is now part of Sumida, Tokyo, where his father was an assistant professor of engineering at Tokyo Imperial University. He had one sister and three younger brothers. As an infant, he suffered from pertussis, which developed into chronic asthma. When his father was transferred to Germany for further studies, Funahashi was entrusted to the care of his grandmother in the Koshigoe neighborhood of Kamakura, Kanagawa, where he spend most of his youth.
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Mary Bigelow Ingham
1832 - 1923 (91 years)
Mary Bigelow Ingham was an American author, educator, and religious worker. Dedicated to teaching, missionary work, and temperance reform, she served as professor of French and belles-lettres in the Ohio Wesleyan College; presided over and addressed the first public meeting ever held in Cleveland conducted exclusively by religious women; co-founded the Western Reserve School of Design ; and was a charter member of the order of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
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August Gottlieb Meißner
1753 - 1807 (54 years)
August Gottlieb Meissner was a German writer of the Enlightenment and is considered the founder of the German detective story. Life Meissner was born in Bautzen. His father was a government quartermaster. From 1764 to 1772 he attended the school in Löbau and graduated in law at the University of Wittenberg on 18 September 1772. In 1774 he moved to the University of Leipzig, where he finished his studies in 1776. During his studies he developed a passion for the theater and poetry. At the urging of his mother he went to Dresden, where he joined the Federation of Free Masons. After a journey ...
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Beatrice White
1902 - 1986 (84 years)
Beatrice Mary Irene White was a British literary scholar. She had a long association with Westfield College and the English Association. Life White was born in Ely in 1902. In 1919 she started her studies at King's College, London and four years later she graduated with a first class honours degree in English. Three years after that she obtained her master's degree at King's with a thesis about the life and works of the English poet Alexander Barclay. White went on for an extra two years to create an edition of Barclay's "Eclogues" in 1928. She dedicated this book to Professor A. W. Reed who ...
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Robinson Ellis
1834 - 1913 (79 years)
Robinson Ellis, FBA was an English classical scholar. Biography Ellis was born at Barming, near Maidstone, and was educated at Elizabeth College, Guernsey, Rugby School, and Balliol College, Oxford. He took a First in Classical Moderations in 1854 and a First in Literae Humaniores in 1856. In 1858 he became fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, and in 1870 professor of Latin at University College London. In 1876 he returned to Oxford, where from 1883 to 1893 he held the university readership in Latin. In 1893 he succeeded Henry Nettleship as Corpus Professor of Latin.
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Con Leventhal
1896 - 1979 (83 years)
A.J. Con Leventhal was an Irish lecturer, essayist, and critic. Early life and education Leventhal was born Abraham Jacob Leventhal in Lower Clanbrassil Street, Dublin on 9 May 1896. His parents were Rosa and Moses Leventhal. His father was a draper, and his mother was a poet. She was a Zionist, who was a founding member of the Women's Zionist Society. He lived in the "Little Jerusalem" of Dublin, the area around the South Circular Road, in his youth. He attended Wesley College, Dublin, and then Trinity College Dublin to study modern languages. He edited the TCD student magazine in 1918. I...
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Frederic M. Wheelock
1902 - 1987 (85 years)
Frederic Melvin Wheelock was an American Latin professor, best known for his authorship of Wheelock's Latin. Early life He was the son of Franklin M. and Etta R. Wheelock. He graduated cum laude from Harvard University in 1925 and later received both M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University.
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Ernst Moritz Ludwig Ettmüller
1802 - 1877 (75 years)
Ernst Moritz Ludwig Ettmüller , German philologist, was born at Gersdorf near Löbau, in Saxony. Biography He was privately educated by his father, the Protestant pastor of the village. He entered the gymnasium at Zittau in 1816, and studied from 1823 to 1826 at the University of Leipzig. After a period of about two years during which he was partly abroad and partly at Gersdorf, he proceeded to Jena, where in 1830 he delivered, under the auspices of the university, a course of lectures on the old Norse poets. Three years later he was called to occupy the mastership of German language and litera...
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Carlo Amoretti
1741 - 1816 (75 years)
Carlo Amoretti was an ecclesiastic, scholar, writer, and scientist. He entered the Augustinian order in 1757. To further his studies, he went to Pavia and Parma where he also taught ecclesiastical law.
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John Addington Symonds
1807 - 1871 (64 years)
John Addington Symonds was an English physician and author. Life He was born in Oxford, where his father John Symonds was a medical practitioner. His mother was Mary Williams, of Aston, Oxfordshire. Symonds was educated at Magdalen College School; at the age of sixteen he went to the University of Edinburgh for medical training, and graduated M.D. in 1828.
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Simon Henry Gage
1851 - 1944 (93 years)
Simon Henry Gage was a professor of anatomy, Histology, and Embryology at Cornell University and an important figure in the history of American microscopy. His book, The Microscope, appeared in seventeen editions. In 1931, a volume of the American Journal of Anatomy was dedicated to Gage on the occasion of his eightieth birthday.
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Francis X. Shea
1926 - 1977 (51 years)
Francis Xavier "Frank" Shea was an American Jesuit priest and educator who served as president of the College of St. Scholastica and, after leaving the Jesuit order, as chancellor of Antioch College.
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John Murray
1906 - 1984 (78 years)
John Murray was an American playwright best known for writing the 1937 play Room Service with Allen Boretz. Murray was born in New York and attended DeWitt Clinton High School, City College of New York, and Columbia University. His 1937 play, Room Service ran for 500 performances on Broadway and was turned into two films, the first, Room Service, starred the Marx Brothers, the second, Step Lively, starred Frank Sinatra. The play was also adapted for two television productions.
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Pierre de Labriolle
1874 - 1940 (66 years)
Pierre Champagne de Labriolle was a French philologist, Latinist and historian. Biography Pierre Champagne de Labriolle, conventionally known as Pierre de Labriolle, was born in Asnières-sur-Seine, Île-de-France on 18 June 1874. He was educated at the University of Paris. He was employed as a professor of French literature at the Université Laval in Montreal in 1898–1901, and of Latin language and literature at the University of Fribourg in 1904–1919, University of Poitiers in 1919–1926 and University of Paris from 1926 until May 1940.
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Helen Rose Hull
1888 - 1971 (83 years)
Helen Rose Hull was born in Albion, Michigan. She is remembered as a novelist, feminist, and English professor. Beginning her teaching career at Wellesley College and Barnard College, she went on to teach creative writing at the Ivy League institution, Columbia University for forty years with her lifelong partner, Mabel Louise Robinson.
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Olaus Verelius
1618 - 1682 (64 years)
Olaus or Olof Verelius was a Swedish scholar of Northern antiquities who published the first edition of a saga and the first Old Norse-Swedish dictionary and is held to have been the founder of the Hyperborean School which led to Gothicism.
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Thomas Hawkins
1729 - 1772 (43 years)
Thomas Hawkins was an English Anglican priest, academic and literary editor. He edited the second edition of the Hanmer Shakespeare—Sir Thomas Hanmer's Shakespeare edition—which appeared in 1771. His historical work The Origin of the English Drama appeared shortly after his death, in 1773.
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Friedrich August Wilhelm Spohn
1792 - 1824 (32 years)
Friedrich August Wilhelm Spohn was a German classical philologist. He was the son of theologian Gottlieb Lebrecht Spohn . In 1818 he became an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Leipzig, where during the following year he was appointed professor of Greek and Roman literature. He died in Leipzig on 17 January 1824, aged 31.
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Pak Mok-wol
1916 - 1978 (62 years)
Pak Mok-wol was an influential Korean poet and academic. Personal life He was born Pak Yeongjong on January 6, 1916, in Moryang Village, Seo-myeon, Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province, in present-day South Korea, to parents Pak Jun-pil and Pak In-jae . He had a younger brother and two younger sisters. He graduated from Keisung Middle School in Daegu in 1935. He lived in Tokyo from April 1937 until late 1939, during which period he devoted his time to writing. From September 1939 to September 1940, he had several of his poems published in the magazine . Afterwards, due to increasing wartime ...
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Alessandro Politi
1679 - 1752 (73 years)
Alessandro Politi , was an Italian philologist. Biography Alessandro Politi was born July 10, 1679, at Florence. After studying under the Jesuits, he entered at the age of fifteen the Order of Poor Clerics Regular of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools, and was conspicuous among its members by his rare erudition. He was called upon to teach rhetoric and peripatetic philosophy at Florence in 1700. Barring a period of about three years, during which he was a professor of theology at Genoa , he spent the greatest part of his life in his native city, availing himself of the manifold resources he could find there to improve his knowledge of Greek literature, his favorite study.
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Arthur Adams
1820 - 1878 (58 years)
Arthur Adams was an English physician and naturalist. Adams was assistant surgeon Royal Navy on board HMS Samarang during the survey of the islands of the Eastern Archipelago, from 1843 to 1846. He edited the Zoology of the voyage of H.M.S. Samarang . Adam White collaborated with him in the descriptions of the Crustacea from the voyage. In 1857, during the Second China War whilst serving as Surgeon on HMS Actaeon, he was present at the storming of Canton and awarded the China War Medal. He retired as Staff Surgeon aboard flagship HMS Royal Adelaide at Plymouth in 1870.
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