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,
#9301
Johan Peter Weisse
1832 - 1886 (54 years)
Johan Peter Weisse was a Norwegian philologist. Personal life He was born in Fluberg as a son of physician Joachim Frederik Weisse and his wife Grethe Fleischer. His grandfather had migrated to Norway from Brandenburg. The family moved to Trondhjem in 1833.
Go to Profile#9302
Richard Fariña
1937 - 1966 (29 years)
Richard George Fariña was an American folksinger, songwriter, poet and novelist. Early years and education Fariña was born in Brooklyn, New York, United States, the son of an Irish mother, Theresa Crozier, and a Cuban father of Galician origin, also named Richard Fariña. He grew up in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn and attended Brooklyn Technical High School. He earned an academic scholarship to Cornell University, starting as an engineering major, but later switching to English. While at Cornell he published short stories for local literary magazines and for national periodicals, including Transatlantic Review and Mademoiselle.
Go to Profile#9303
Marcus Musurus
1470 - 1517 (47 years)
Marcus Musurus was a Greek scholar and philosopher born in Candia, Venetian Crete . Life The son of a rich merchant, Musurus became at an early age a pupil of Janus Lascaris in Venice. In 1505, Musurus was made professor of Greek language at the University of Padua. Erasmus, who had attended his lectures there, testifies to his knowledge of Latin. However, when the university was closed in 1509 during the War of the League of Cambrai, he returned to Venice where he filled a similar post.
Go to Profile#9304
Ji Kang
223 - 262 (39 years)
Ji Kang , sometimes referred to as Xi Kang, courtesy name Shuye , was a Chinese writer, poet, Daoist philosopher, musician and alchemist of the Three Kingdoms period. He was one of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove who held aloof from the dangerous politics of third-century China to devote themselves to art and refinement.
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Catharine Trotter Cockburn
1674 - 1749 (75 years)
Catharine Trotter Cockburn was an English novelist, dramatist and philosopher who wrote on various subjects, including moral philosophy and theology, and maintained a prolific correspondence. Trotter's writings encompass a wide range of topics, such as necessity, the infinitude of space and substance. However, her primary focus was on moral issues. She believed that moral principles were not inherent but could be discovered by each individual through the use of reason, a faculty bestowed by God. In 1702, she published her first significant philosophical work, titled "A Defence of Mr. Lock's [...
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John of Garland
1195 - 1300 (105 years)
Johannes de Garlandia or John of Garland was a medieval grammarian and university teacher. His dates of birth and death are unknown, but he probably lived from about 1190 to about 1270. Life John of Garland was born in England, and studied at Oxford and then at the medieval University of Paris, where he was teaching by 1220. He lived and taught on the Left Bank at the Clos de Garlande, after which Rue Galande is named. This is the origin of the name by which he is usually known. The main facts of his life are stated in his long poem De triumphis ecclesiae .
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Tommaso Campailla
1668 - 1740 (72 years)
Tommaso Campailla was an Italian philosopher, physician, politician and poet. Life Tommaso Campailla was born in Modica, near Syracuse, in 1668. His family belonged to the local nobility. At sixteen he was sent to Catania to study law. He employed his leisure hours in the study of literature, philosophy, science, astronomy, and physics. He studied both neo-Scholastic and Cartesian philosophy, and adopted a mechanical view of the universe.
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Nathan Bodington
1848 - 1911 (63 years)
Sir Nathan Bodington was the first Vice Chancellor of the University of Leeds having been Principal and Professor of Greek at the Yorkshire College since 1883. From 1897 to 1901 he was also Vice-Chancellor of the Victoria University.
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Leo Kiacheli
1884 - 1963 (79 years)
Leo Kiacheli was a Soviet and Georgian writer. He is noted for the novels Gvadi Bigva, Tavadis Kali Maya , Almasgir Kibulan, and Haki Adzba. Major works Novels and novellas Tariel Golua Almazgir Kibulan Blood Tavadis Kali Maya Haki Adzba Gvadi Bigva Man of Mountain
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John Logan
1923 - 1987 (64 years)
John B. Logan was an American poet and teacher. Logan was born in Red Oak, Iowa. He earned a bachelor's degree from Coe College, his master's degree from the Iowa University, and did graduate work at Georgetown University and the University of Notre Dame in philosophy.
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Mehdi Bayani
1906 - 1968 (62 years)
Mehdi Bayani was the founder and the first head of the National Library of Iran, specialist in Persian manuscripts and calligraphy, writer, researcher, and professor at the University of Tehran. Life and careers Mehdi Bayani was born in 1906 in Hamedan, Iran. His father, "Mirza Mohammad Khan Mostofi Farahani", was from the succession of teachers and accountant of Farahan and his maternal ancestor was "Mirza Soleimaan Bayan ol-Saltaneh Farahani", the head of the royal exchequer and the author of "the treatise on the rules of clerking and accounting". At the age of two, his father died and his mother came to Tehran with him and other children.
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Mohammed Abdul-Hayy
1944 - 1989 (45 years)
Mohammed Abdul-Hayy or Muhammad Abd al-Hayy was a member of the first generation of post-colonial Sudanese writers and academics. Together with Ali El-Mak and Salah Ahmed Ibrahim, he is regarded as a pioneer of modern poetry in Sudan.
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Nicolau Tolentino de Almeida
1740 - 1811 (71 years)
Nicolau Tolentino de Almeida , from Lisbon, was the foremost Portuguese satirical poet of the 18th century. Beginning at age 20, Tolentino studied law for three years at the University of Coimbra; he then ended those studies to teach rhetoric. He was sent to Lisbon in 1776 to fill a post, and was named professor of rhetoric a year later. His interests soon shifted once again, from teaching, to public office. He wrote against the Marquis of Pombal, and therefore gained the favor of Pombal's successor. He was awarded with a sinecure office in the royal administration. In 1790, he was honored wit...
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Georgiana Simpson
1866 - 1944 (78 years)
Georgiana Rose Simpson was a philologist and the first African-American woman to receive a PhD in the United States. Simpson received her doctoral degree in German from the University of Chicago in 1921.
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August Rossbach
1823 - 1898 (75 years)
August Rossbach was a German classical philologist and archaeologist. He is known for his investigations of ancient Greek metrics, defined as a discipline that studies the patterns and arrangements of syllables and words that characterize Greek poetry.
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Marguerite Merington
1857 - 1951 (94 years)
Marguerite Merington was an English-born American author of short stories, essays, dramatic works, and biographies. For several years, she taught in Greek and Latin at the Normal College in New York before pursuing a career as an author.
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Fran Bradač
1885 - 1970 (85 years)
Fran Bradač was a Slovene classical philologist and translator. Life and work Bradač was born in Jama pri Dvoru. He studied classical philology in Vienna from 1905 to 1910, and then continued his education in Zagreb, where he received his doctorate in 1920, followed by further study in Prague and Berlin. He taught classical philology at the University of Ljubljana's Faculty of Arts from 1923 until 1945, when he was forced to retire by the new communist regime. Together with Josip Osana, he published the only grammar of Greek in Slovene to date. He also wrote a Greek textbook, compiled a dictionary of foreign vocabulary, and authored several dictionaries of Czech, Latin, and German.
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Johann Friedrich Reichardt
1752 - 1814 (62 years)
Johann Friedrich Reichardt was a German composer, writer and music critic. Early life Reichardt was born in Königsberg, East Prussia, to lutenist and Stadtmusiker Johann Reichardt . Johann Friedrich began his musical training, in violin, keyboard, and lute, as a child. He was a student of Timofey Belogradsky, who in turn was a student of Sylvius Leopold Weiss. When Reichardt was ten years old, his father took the choir in which he sang, the "Wunderknaben", on a concert tour in East Prussia.
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Stephen Murray-Smith
1922 - 1988 (66 years)
Stephen Murray-Smith AM was an Australian writer, editor and educator. Early life and education Murray-Smith's father ran a lucrative business shipping Australian horses to India for the armed forces. It enabled the family to live in Toorak, one of Melbourne's wealthiest suburbs, and to send Stephen to board at Geelong Grammar School from 1934. He described his home as "bookless", adding however that his mother was "a voracious reader all her life", getting her books from the circulating and public libraries.
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Peter Friedrich Röding
1767 - 1846 (79 years)
Peter Friedrich Röding was a German malacologist who lived in Hamburg. Very little is known about this naturalist. Many of Röding's descriptions are of species which were first named by earlier authors such as Johann Hieronymus Chemnitz, Friedrich Wilhelm Martini and Martin Lister. Röding's references to pre-existing descriptions and figures make these names also valid, since they are unequivocally recognizable, and were subsequently adopted by many later authors.
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Thomas Anthony Thacher
1815 - 1886 (71 years)
Thomas Anthony Thacher was an American classicist and college administrator. Early life Thomas A. Thacher was born January 11, 1815, in Hartford, Connecticut, the son of Anne and Peter Thacher. His first American ancestor on his father's side was Thomas Thacher who emigrated from England to Massachusetts in 1635, and later became minister of the Old South Meeting House in Boston; on his mother's side he was descended from the Rev. Thomas Buckingham of Saybrook, one of the founders of the Collegiate School of Connecticut, since known as Yale College. He had his preparatory training at the Hop...
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Remigio Sabbadini
1850 - 1934 (84 years)
Remigio Sabbadini was an Italian classical philologist. Biography Born in Sarego, Province of Vicenza to Giuseppe and Luigia Allegro, a peasant couple, Sabbadini began studying in Veneto before moving to Florence, where he graduated in Latin literature with a thesis on Virgil . Qualified as a lecturer in high schools, in 1886 he became a professor of Latin literature at the University of Catania , and then at the Accademia scientifico-letteraria di Milano from 1900 . He was retired due to his age in 1926, when he was appointed professor emeritus.
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Chang Man-yong
1914 - 1975 (61 years)
Chang Man-yong was a Korean poet and journalist associated with the modernist movement of the 1930s. He was born in Yeonbaek in Hwanghae province, under Japanese rule; he attended Gyeongseong High School in Seoul and later the Mijakki English School in Tokyo.
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Albert Wijuk Kojałowicz
1609 - 1677 (68 years)
Albert Wijuk Kojałowicz was a Lithuanian historian, theologian and translator. He was devoted Jesuit and religious polemicist, interested in genealogy and heraldry. He served as a censor, bishops advisor and Deputy Chancellor of Lithuania.
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Johann Karl Eduard Buschmann
1805 - 1880 (75 years)
Johann Karl Eduard Buschmann was a German philologist. His research in comparative philology was directed chiefly toward the dialects of Malaysia and Polynesia and those of Central and Northwestern America. He worked closely with Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt.
Go to Profile#9326
Albert Lewin
1894 - 1968 (74 years)
Albert Lewin was an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. Personal life Lewin was born in Brooklyn, New York and raised in Newark, New Jersey. He earned a master's degree at Harvard and taught English at the University of Missouri. During World War I, he served in the military and was afterwards appointed assistant national director of the American Jewish Relief Committee. He later became a drama and film critic for the Jewish Tribune until the early 1920s, when he went to Hollywood to become a reader for Samuel Goldwyn. Later he worked as a script clerk for directors King Vidor...
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Alpheus Spring Packard Sr.
1798 - 1884 (86 years)
Alpheus Spring Packard was an American academic who was a professor for more than 40 years at Bowdoin College. Trained as a minister, he was an educator, librarian, and acting President of Bowdoin College for the year 1883–84 until his death . He was the father of four sons and one daughter by his first wife: Alpheus Spring Packard Jr. , Bowdoin class of 1861, Civil War surgeon, entomologist who corresponded with Darwin, and a professor at Brown University with 25 publications; William Alfred Packard , Bowdoin class of 1851; Charles A. Packard, Bowdoin class of 1848; George Packard; and Franc...
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Kiril Hristov
1875 - 1944 (69 years)
Kiril Genchev Hristov was a Bulgarian poet, fiction writer, playwright and translator. Biography Kiril Genchev Hristov was born on 29 June 1875 in Stara Zagora. He studied in his hometown, in Samokov, Tarnovo and Sofia. He was orphaned as a young boy, his two uncles, officer Georgi Abadjiev and lawyer Stefan Kirov, a law professor at Sofia State University, helped raise him. In 1895 he was sent on a scholarship from the Ministry of War to the Naval Academy in Trieste, where he became acquainted with the works of classical and modern Italian poets, such as Dante Alighieri, Giacomo Leopardi, Jo...
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Aizu Yaichi
1881 - 1956 (75 years)
Aizu Yaichi was a Japanese poet, calligrapher and historian. Biography Yaichi was born in the Furumachi area of Niigata, Niigata, and was a professor emeritus of ancient Chinese and Japanese art at Waseda University. His focus was mostly on Buddhist art of the Asuka and Nara eras.
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Axel Gabriel Sjöström
1794 - 1846 (52 years)
Axel Gabriel Sjöström was a Finnish educator and poet. Biography He was born in Janakkala, and became professor of Greek Literature at the Imperial Alexander University in Helsinki in 1833. He married Margareta Sofia Helsberg in 1828. During his lifetime a few of his poems earned him a high, but short-lived, reputation in Finnish literary circles. Aside from original poetry, Sjöström also did translations from Greek and German .
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Robert Eugen Zachrisson
1880 - 1937 (57 years)
Robert Eugen Zachrisson, born 15 January 1880 in Karlskrona, Sweden and died 28 July 1937, was a Swedish philologist. Zachrisson became a student in 1900, Bachelor of Arts in 1902, Licentiate of Philosophy in 1908, PhD and Associate Professor in the English language in 1909, all at the University of Lund. He was from 1910 to 1921 a Lecturer in German and English at the Högre lärarinneseminariet in Stockholm, and was named to the professorship of English in Uppsala in 1911 and in Gothenburg in 1913 as the professor of English at the University of Uppsala. There his students included Rune Forsberg.
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Salem Bouhageb
1827 - 1924 (97 years)
Salem Bouhageb was a Tunisian reformer, jurist, and poet. He was considered one of the leading Tunisian reformers of his era; among his many disciples were Béchir Sfar, Abdelaziz Thâalbi, Ali Bach Hamba, Mohamed Nakhli, Mahmoud Messadi, Mohamed Snoussi and Mohamed Tahar Ben Achour. His son Khelil Bouhageb was Prime Minister of Tunisia for a time; another son, Hassine Bouhageb, was a doctor.
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R. P. Sethu Pillai
1896 - 1961 (65 years)
R. P. Sethu Pillai , was a Tamil scholar, writer and professor of Tamil at the University of Madras. Biography Sethu pillai was born at Rajavallipuram, Tirunelveli District in 1896. He was educated and practiced as a lawyer. He became interested in Tamil after listening to a speech of Maraimalai Adigal at Palayamkottai in June 1912. After a brief career in politics , he became a teacher. During 1930-36, he taught at Annamalai University. In 1936, he became a senior lecturer at the Madras University. In 1946, he succeeded Prof. Vaiyapuri Pillai as the Reader of Tamil and the Head of the Tamil department in the University.
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Fredrik Hasselqvist
1722 - 1752 (30 years)
Fredrik Hasselquist was a Swedish traveller and naturalist. Hasselquist was born at Törnevalla, which is two kilometers east of Linghem, Östergötland. He studied under Carl Linnaeus at Uppsala University and became one of the "Apostles of Linnaeus". On account of the frequently expressed regrets of Carl Linnaeus at the lack of information regarding the natural history of the Levant, Hasselquist resolved to undertake a journey to that country. With a sufficient subscription having been obtained to defray expenses, he reached Smyrna towards the end of 1749.
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Ernest Hamel
1826 - 1898 (72 years)
Ernest Hamel was a French lawyer, poet, historian, journalist and politician. He served as a member of the French Senate from 1892 to 1898, representing Seine-et-Oise. Early life Ernest Hamel was born on 2 July 1826 in Paris, France. His great-uncle, Charles François Lhomond, was a grammarian.
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Sabahattin Eyüboğlu
1908 - 1973 (65 years)
Sabahattin Eyüboğlu was a Turkish writer, essayist, translator and film producer. Biography Sabahatttin Eyüboğlu was born in 1908 on the Black Sea coast town of Akçaabat near Trabzon. His father Mehmet Rahmi was governor of Trabzon and was chosen by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk as a member of parliament.
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Edward Henry Blakeney
1869 - 1955 (86 years)
Edward Henry Blakeney was an English classical scholar and poet, born in Mitcham. He died in his hometown Winchester. Life Edward Henry Blakeney was the son of William Blakeney of Westward Ho!, a Paymaster-in-Chief in the Navy. He was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1891 and M.A. in 1895. From 1895 to 1901 he was headmaster of Sir Roger Manwood's School in Sandwich, from 1901 to 1904 headmaster of Sir William Borlase's Grammar School in Marlow, and from 1904 to 1918 headmaster of King's Ely. He was an Assistant Master at Winchester College fro...
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John Kearsley Mitchell
1798 - 1858 (60 years)
John Kearsley Mitchell was an American physician and writer, born in Shepherdstown, Virginia . Orphaned at the age of eight, and sent to his late father's family in Scotland at the age of thirteen, Kearsley was educated at Ayr Academy and the University of Edinburgh.
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Franz Volkmar Fritzsche
1806 - 1887 (81 years)
Franz Volkmar Fritzsche was a German classical philologist. He was the son of theologian Christian Friedrich Fritzsche . He studied under philologist Gottfried Hermann at the University of Leipzig, where in 1825 he received his habilitation. In 1828, he succeeded Immanuel Gottlieb Huschke as professor of rhetoric and belles-lettres at the University of Rostock. At Rostock, he founded a philological seminar, and in 1836/37, he served as university rector.
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Edward Tyrrel Channing
1790 - 1856 (66 years)
Edward Tyrrel Channing was an American rhetorician. He was a professor at Harvard College, brother to William Ellery Channing and Walter Channing, and cousin of Richard Henry Dana Sr. Biography Channing was born in Newport, Rhode Island, the son of William and Lucy Channing. In 1807 he graduated from Harvard College, and began the practice of law in Boston, but devoted his attention chiefly to literature. From 1818–1819 he was the second editor of the North American Review after William Tudor , and remained a regular contributor through much of his life.
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Gholamreza Ghodsi
1925 - 1989 (64 years)
Gholamreza Ghodsi was a belletrist and poet from Mashhad, Iran. Early life and education Ghodsi was born in 1925 in Mashhad, Iran. His genealogy goes back to Mirza Mohammad Jan Ghodsi Mashhadi, the celebrated poet of Safavid era who was the head of Astan Quds treasury and traveled there at the era of Shah Jahan which was the era of Persian poetry prosperity. After completing the primary school, Ghodsi initiated Qadimeh studies. He learned Arabic literature, principles of Islamic jurisprudence and logic and philosophy from great scholars of Khorassan like and and then studied at Faculty of ...
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Antiphon
Antiphon of Athens, according to the Suda, was an interpreter of signs, epic poet and sophist, surnamed Logomageiros , which means both "Word-cook" and "Word-butcher." None of his works are extant, and he is only attested in the Suda.
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Zygmunt Czerny
1888 - 1975 (87 years)
Zygmunt Bronisław Czerny was a Polish romance philologist who specialized in the French language. Before World War II, he was a faculty member at the Lviv University and Academy of Foreign Trade in Lwów. During World War II, he was engaged in the underground education in Poland. After the war, he briefly worked at the Adam Mickiewicz University and University of Wrocław, was one of the initial faculty involved in the creation of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, and finally, from 1952, he was a faculty member of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków.
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Friedrich Vollmer
1867 - 1923 (56 years)
Friedrich Karl Vollmer was a German classical philologist who specialized in Latin studies. He studied classical philology at the universities of Bonn and Berlin, receiving his doctorate in 1892. After graduation, he worked as a gymnasium teacher in Düsseldorf and Bonn and, in 1895, was named director of the German School in Brussels. In 1899, he relocated to Munich, where he was appointed head of the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, a project that was initiated by Eduard Wölfflin. In 1905, he became a full professor of classical philology at the University of Munich and, during the following year,...
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Joshua Barnes
1654 - 1712 (58 years)
Joshua Barnes FRS , was an English scholar. His work Gerania; a New Discovery of a Little Sort of People, anciently discoursed of, called Pygmies was an Utopian romance. Life and work Barnes was born in London, the son of Edward Barnes, a merchant taylor. Educated at Christ's Hospital and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, he was chosen in 1695 as Regius Professor of Greek, a language which he wrote and spoke with facility.
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Heinrich Gottfried von Bretschneider
1739 - 1810 (71 years)
Heinrich Gottfried von Bretschneider was a German satirical writer. Bretschneider led a bohemian life, served in the army, and held various political posts. Later he was bibliothecary at Lemberg. He was closely linked to the writers of the enlightenment, especially Friedrich Nicolai. Bretschneider composed, besides satirical writings, Almanach der Heiligen auf das Jahr, 1788, Wallers Leben und Sitten, and the comic epic, Graf Esau.
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Alexander Aigner
1909 - 1988 (79 years)
Alexander Aigner was a number theorist and a full university professor for mathematics at the Karl Franzens University in Graz. During World War II he was part of a group of five mathematicians, which was recruited by the military cryptanalyst Wilhelm Fenner, and which included Ernst Witt, Georg Aumann, Oswald Teichmueller and Johann Friedrich Schultze, to form the backbone of the new mathematical research department in the late 1930s, which would eventually be called Section IVc of Cipher Department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht. . The group was led by the German professor of mathe...
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David McCord
1897 - 1997 (100 years)
David Thompson Watson McCord was an American poet and college fundraiser. Life He grew up in Portland, Oregon and graduated from Harvard University. His work appeared in Harper's. He raised millions of dollars as executive director of the Harvard College Fund.
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John Owen
1564 - 1622 (58 years)
John Owen was a Welsh epigrammatist, most known for his Latin epigrams, collected in his Epigrammata. He is also cited by various Latinizations including Ioannes Owen, Joannes Oweni, Ovenus and Audoenus.
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Stefanos Koumanoudis
1818 - 1899 (81 years)
Stefanos Koumanoudis was a Greek archaeologist, teacher and writer of the 19th century. Biography He was born in 1818 in Adrianople to a rich merchant family. In an early age, his family settled in Bucharest, and later in Silistra where he spent most of his childhood. He graduated from the Humboldt University of Berlin and the University of Paris. Fellow university students of Koumanoudis were Efthymios Kastorchis, Iraklis Mitsopoulos, Lysandros Kavtantzoglou and Emmanuel Kokkinos, who became notable teachers and archaeologists as well.
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