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,
#9451
Christopher Okigbo
1930 - 1967 (37 years)
Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo was a Nigerian poet, teacher, and librarian, who died fighting for the independence of Biafra. He is today widely acknowledged as an outstanding postcolonial English-language African poet and one of the major modernist writers of the 20th century.
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Endre Ady
1877 - 1919 (42 years)
Endre Ady was a turn-of-the-century Hungarian poet and journalist. Regarded by many as the greatest Hungarian poet of the 20th century, he was noted for his steadfast belief in social progress and development and for his poetry's exploration of fundamental questions of the modern European experience: love, temporality, faith, individuality, and patriotism.
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William Barnes
1801 - 1886 (85 years)
William Barnes was an English polymath, writer, poet, philologist, priest, mathematician, engraving artist and inventor. He wrote over 800 poems, some in Dorset dialect, and much other work, including a comprehensive English grammar quoting from more than 70 different languages. A linguistic purist, Barnes strongly advocated against borrowing foreign words into English, and instead supported the use and proliferation of "strong old Anglo-Saxon speech".
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Maik Yohansen
1895 - 1937 (42 years)
Maik Hervasiiovych Yohansen or Mike Johansen – was a Ukrainian poet, prose writer, dramatist, translator, critic and linguist. He was one of the founders of VAPLITE. Biography Maik Yohansen was born on 16 October 1895 in Kharkiv. His father, a Latvian emigrant was a teacher of German, and made sure his son had a proper education. Maik Yohansen received his secondary education at the Kharkiv Third Gymnasium. There he studied along with Hryhoriy Petnikov and Bohdan Hordeev , who later became well-known poet-futurists, as well as with Yuriy Platonov – a geographer and prose writer. Afterwards, ...
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William Beebe
1877 - 1962 (85 years)
Charles William Beebe was an American naturalist, ornithologist, marine biologist, entomologist, explorer, and author. He is remembered for the numerous expeditions he conducted for the New York Zoological Society, his deep dives in the Bathysphere, and his prolific scientific writing for academic and popular audiences.
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Georg Friedrich Benecke
1762 - 1844 (82 years)
Georg Friedrich Benecke was a German philologist. Beginning in 1780, he was a student at the University of Göttingen, where he was a pupil of Christian Gottlob Heyne. In 1814 he became a full professor at Göttingen, and later on, acquired duties as a head librarian.
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Allan Ramsay
1684 - 1758 (74 years)
Allan Ramsay was a Scottish poet , playwright, publisher, librarian and impresario of early Enlightenment Edinburgh. Ramsay's influence extended to England, foreshadowing the reaction that followed the publication of Percy's Reliques. He was on close terms with the leading men of letters in Scotland and England. He corresponded with William Hamilton of Bangour, William Somervile, John Gay and Alexander Pope.
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Ignacy Krasicki
1735 - 1801 (66 years)
Ignacy Błażej Franciszek Krasicki , from 1766 Prince-Bishop of Warmia and from 1795 Archbishop of Gniezno , was Poland's leading Enlightenment poet , a critic of the clergy, Poland's La Fontaine, author of the first Polish novel, playwright, journalist, encyclopedist, and translator from French and Greek.
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Elbert Hubbard
1856 - 1915 (59 years)
Elbert Green Hubbard was an American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher. Raised in Hudson, Illinois, he had early success as a traveling salesman for the Larkin Soap Company. Hubbard is known best as the founder of the Roycroft artisan community in East Aurora, New York, an influential exponent of the Arts and Crafts movement.
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Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay
1876 - 1938 (62 years)
Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay , was a Bengali novelist and short story writer of the early 20th century. He generally wrote about the lives of Bengali family and socity in cities and villages. However, his keen powers of observation, great sympathy for fellow human beings, a deep understanding of human psychology , an easy and natural writing style, and freedom from political biases and social prejudices enable his writing to transcend barriers and appeal to all Indians. He remains the most popular, translated, and adapted Indian author of all time.
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C. P. Snow
1905 - 1980 (75 years)
Charles Percy Snow, Baron Snow, was an English novelist and physical chemist who also served in several important positions in the British Civil Service and briefly in the UK government. He is best known for his series of novels known collectively as Strangers and Brothers, and for The Two Cultures, a 1959 lecture in which he laments the gulf between scientists and "literary intellectuals".
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Murray Leinster
1896 - 1975 (79 years)
Murray Leinster was a pen name of William Fitzgerald Jenkins, an American writer of genre fiction, particularly of science fiction. He wrote and published more than 1,500 short stories and articles, 14 movie scripts, and hundreds of radio scripts and television plays.
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Per Daniel Amadeus Atterbom
1790 - 1855 (65 years)
Per Daniel Amadeus Atterbom was a Swedish romantic poet, and a member of the Swedish Academy. Life He was son of a country parson, was born in the province of Ostergotland on 19 January 1790. He studied in the university of Uppsala from 1805 to 1815, and became professor of philosophy there in 1828.
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Hans Sachs
1494 - 1576 (82 years)
Hans Sachs was a German Meistersinger , poet, playwright, and shoemaker. Biography Hans Sachs was born in Nuremberg . As a child he attended a singing school that was held in the church of Nuremberg. This helped to awaken in him a taste for poetry and music. His father was a tailor. He attended Latin school in Nuremberg . When he was 14 he took up an apprenticeship as a shoemaker.
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Wilhelm Raabe
1831 - 1910 (79 years)
Wilhelm Raabe was a German novelist. His early works were published under the pseudonym of Jakob Corvinus. Biography He was born in Eschershausen . After attending gymnasia in Holzminden and Wolfenbüttel, he entered a bookstore in Magdeburg as apprentice in 1849. He used this opportunity for wide reading and enriched himself with the tales and folklore of his own and other countries. He remained an apprentice until 1854.
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Robert Williams Buchanan
1841 - 1901 (60 years)
Robert Williams Buchanan was a Scottish poet, novelist and dramatist. Early life and education He was the son of Robert Buchanan , Owenite lecturer and journalist, and was born at Caverswall, Staffordshire, England. Buchanan senior, a native of Ayr, Scotland, lived for some years in Manchester, then moved to Glasgow, where Buchanan junior was educated, at the high school and the university, one of his fellow-students being the poet David Gray. His essay on Gray, originally published in the Cornhill Magazine, tells the story of their close friendship, and of their journey to London in 1860 in...
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Richard Crashaw
1612 - 1649 (37 years)
Richard Crashaw was an English poet, teacher, High Church Anglican cleric and Roman Catholic convert, who was one of the major metaphysical poets in 17th-century English literature. Crashaw was the son of a famous Anglican divine with Puritan beliefs who earned a reputation as a hard-hitting pamphleteer and polemicist against Catholicism. After his father's death, Crashaw was educated at Charterhouse School and Pembroke College, Cambridge. After taking a degree, Crashaw taught as a fellow at Peterhouse, Cambridge and began to publish religious poetry that expressed a distinct mystical natur...
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Friedrich von Bodenstedt
1819 - 1892 (73 years)
Friedrich Martin von Bodenstedt was a German author. Biography Bodenstedt was born at Peine, in the Kingdom of Hanover. He was trained as a merchant in Braunschweig and studied in Göttingen, Munich and Berlin.
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Józef Ignacy Kraszewski
1812 - 1887 (75 years)
Józef Ignacy Kraszewski was a Polish writer, publisher, historian, journalist, scholar, painter, and author who produced more than 200 novels and 150 novellas, short stories, and art reviews, which makes him the most prolific writer in the history of Polish literature. He is best known for his epic series on the history of Poland, comprising twenty-nine novels in seventy-nine parts.
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Joel Elias Spingarn
1875 - 1939 (64 years)
Joel Elias Spingarn was an American educator, literary critic, civil rights activist, military intelligence officer, and horticulturalist. Biography Spingarn was born in New York City to an upper middle-class Jewish family. His younger brother was Arthur B. Spingarn. He graduated from Columbia College in 1895. He grew committed to the importance of the study of comparative literature as a discipline distinct from the study of English or any other language-based literary studies.
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Kalki Krishnamurthy
1899 - 1954 (55 years)
Ramaswamy Krishnamurthy , better known by his pen name Kalki, was an Indian writer, journalist, poet, critic and Indian independence activist who wrote in Tamil. He chose the pen-name "Kalki", the future incarnation of the Hindu God Vishnu. He founded a magazine, which was also named Kalki, with T Sadasivam being the co-founder, in 1941. Krishnamurthy‘s writings include over 120 short stories, 10 novellas, 5 novels, 3 historical romances, editorial and political writings and hundreds of film and music reviews.
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Ouyang Xiu
1007 - 1072 (65 years)
Ouyang Xiu , courtesy name Yongshu, also known by his art names Zuiweng and Liu Yi Jushi , was a Chinese historian, calligrapher, epigrapher, essayist, poet, and politician of the Song dynasty. He was a renowned writer among his contemporaries and is considered the central figure of the Eight Masters of the Tang and Song. He revived the Classical Prose Movement and promoted it in imperial examinations, paving the way for future masters like Su Shi and Su Zhe.
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Denis Johnston
1901 - 1984 (83 years)
Denis Johnston was an Irish writer. Born in Dublin, he wrote mostly plays, but also works of literary criticism, a book-length biographical essay of Jonathan Swift, a memoir and an eccentric work on cosmology and philosophy. He also worked as a war correspondent, and as both a radio and television producer for the BBC. His first play, The Old Lady Says "No!", helped establish the worldwide reputation of the Dublin Gate Theatre; his second, The Moon in the Yellow River, has been performed around the globe in numerous productions featuring such storied names as James Mason, Jack Hawkins, Claude Rains, Barry Fitzgerald, James Coco and Errol Flynn.
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Terence
185 BC - 159 BC (26 years)
Publius Terentius Afer , better known in English as Terence , was an African Roman playwright during the Roman Republic. His comedies were performed for the first time around 166–160 BC. Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator, brought Terence to Rome as a slave, educated him and later on, impressed by his abilities, freed him. It is thought that Terence abruptly died, around the age of 25, likely in Greece or on his way back to Rome, due to shipwreck or disease. He was supposedly on his way to explore and find inspiration for his comedies. His plays were heavily used to learn to speak and write in...
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Shrimad Rajchandra
1867 - 1901 (34 years)
Shrimad Rajchandra was a Jain poet, mystic, philosopher, scholar, and reformer. Born in Vavaniya, a village near Morbi, he claimed to have recollection of his past lives at the age of seven. He performed Avadhāna, a memory retention and recollection test that gained him popularity, but he later discouraged it in favour of his spiritual pursuits. He wrote much philosophical poetry including Atma Siddhi. He also wrote many letters and commentaries and translated some religious texts. He is best known for his teachings on Jainism and his spiritual guidance to Mahatma Gandhi.
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Saunders Lewis
1893 - 1985 (92 years)
Saunders Lewis was a Welsh politician, poet, dramatist, Medievalist, and literary critic. He was a prominent Welsh nationalist, supporter of Welsh independence and was a co-founder of Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru , later known as Plaid Cymru. Lewis is usually acknowledged as one of the most prominent figures of 20th century Welsh literature. In 1970, Lewis was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature. Lewis was voted the tenth greatest Welsh hero in the '100 Welsh Heroes' poll, released on St. David's Day 2004.
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Gabrielle Roy
1909 - 1983 (74 years)
Gabrielle Roy was a Canadian author from St. Boniface, Manitoba and one of the major figures in French Canadian literature. Early life Roy was born in 1909 in Saint-Boniface , Manitoba, and was educated at the Académie Saint-Joseph. She was born into a family of eleven children and reportedly began to write at an early age. She lived on rue Deschambault, a house and neighbourhood in Saint-Boniface that would later inspire one of her most famous works. The house is now a National Historic Site and museum in Winnipeg.
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Ion Barbu
1895 - 1961 (66 years)
Ion Barbu was a Romanian mathematician and poet. His name is associated with the Mathematics Subject Classification number 51C05, which is a major posthumous recognition reserved only to pioneers of investigations in an area of mathematical inquiry.
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Terry Carr
1937 - 1987 (50 years)
Terry Gene Carr was an American science fiction fan, author, editor, and writing instructor. Background and discovery of fandom Carr was born in Grants Pass, Oregon. He attended the City College of San Francisco and the University of California, Berkeley from 1954 to 1959.
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Jacob Bryant
1715 - 1804 (89 years)
Jacob Bryant was an English scholar and mythographer, who has been described as "the outstanding figure among the mythagogues who flourished in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries." Life Bryant was born at Plymouth. His father worked in the customs there, but was afterwards moved to Chatham. Bryant was first sent to a school near Rochester, and then to Eton College. In 1736 he was elected to a scholarship at King's College, Cambridge, where he took his degrees of B.A. and M.A. , later being elected a fellow. He returned to Eton as private tutor to the Duke of Marlborough. In 1...
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Safvet-beg Bašagić
1870 - 1934 (64 years)
Dr. Safvet-beg Bašagić , also known as Mirza Safvet, was a Bosnian writer who is often described by Bosniak historians as the "father of Bosnian Renaissance", and one of the most renowned poets of Bosnia and Herzegovina at the turn of the 20th century. Bašagić co-founded the political journal Behar and was a founder of the cultural society and magazine Gajret, and was elected President of the Bosnian council in 1910. He is also well known for his oeuvre that exceeded seven hundred biographies he compiled over decades.
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Kenji Miyazawa
1896 - 1933 (37 years)
Kenji Miyazawa was a Japanese novelist and poet of children's literature from Hanamaki, Iwate, in the late Taishō and early Shōwa periods. He was also known as an agricultural science teacher, a vegetarian, cellist, devout Buddhist, and utopian social activist.
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George Farquhar
1677 - 1707 (30 years)
George Farquhar was an Irish dramatist. He is noted for his contributions to late Restoration comedy, particularly for his plays The Constant Couple , The Recruiting Officer and The Beaux' Stratagem .
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Georg Kaibel
1849 - 1901 (52 years)
Georg Kaibel was a German classical philologist born in Lübeck. He was a leading authority of Greek epigraphy and epigrammatics He studied classical philology at the Universities of Göttingen and Bonn. At Bonn he was a pupil of Hermann Usener and Franz Bücheler. In 1872–74 he was a member of the German Archaeological Institute in Rome, where he became a close associate of Theodor Mommsen and Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff. Afterwards, he taught classes in Elberfeld and at the Askanische Oberschule in Berlin.
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Thomas Blackwell
1701 - 1757 (56 years)
Thomas Blackwell the younger was a classical scholar, historian and "one of the major figures in the Scottish Enlightenment." Life He was born on 4 August 1701 in the city of Aberdeen, son of Rev Dr Thomas Blackwell , ministers of the Kirk of St Nicholas in Aberdeen and later Principal of Marischal College and his wife Christian Johnston . His father was Patron of the Seven Incorporated Trades of Aberdeen from 1714 to 1728.
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Philip Barry
1896 - 1949 (53 years)
Philip Jerome Quinn Barry was an American dramatist best known for his plays Holiday and The Philadelphia Story , which were both made into films starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. Biography
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Eugene Field
1850 - 1895 (45 years)
Eugene Field Sr. was an American writer, best known for his children's poetry and humorous essays. He was known as the "poet of childhood". Early life and education Field was born in St. Louis, Missouri at 634 S. Broadway where today his boyhood home is open to the public as The Eugene Field House and St. Louis Toy Museum. After the death of his mother in 1856, he was raised by an aunt, Mary Field French, in Amherst, Massachusetts.
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Friedrich Marx
1859 - 1941 (82 years)
Friedrich Marx was a German classical philologist born in Bessungen — today part of the city of Darmstadt. In 1877 he began his study of classical philology at the University of Giessen, then continued his education at the University of Bonn under Franz Bücheler and Hermann Usener . In 1887 he achieved his habilitation in Berlin with Johannes Vahlen , afterwards working as a professor at the Universities of Rostock , Greifswald , Breslau , Vienna , Leipzig and finally at Bonn , where in 1917-18 he served as university rector.
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Yamamoto Kenkichi
1907 - 1988 (81 years)
was the pen-name of Ishibashi Teikichi, a Japanese writer and literary critic. As a critic he wrote notable studies of Shishōsetsu as well as of the poet Kakinomoto no Hitomaro. He has been referred to as supportive of Shishōsetsu in an orthodox way.
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Eric P. Kelly
1884 - 1960 (76 years)
Eric Philbrook Kelly was an American journalist, academic and author of children's books. He was a professor of English at Dartmouth College and briefly a lecturer at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. He won the 1929 Newbery Medal recognizing his first published book, The Trumpeter of Krakow, as the preceding year's most distinguished contribution to American children's literature.
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James Beattie
1735 - 1803 (68 years)
James Beattie was a Scottish poet, moralist, and philosopher. Career He became schoolmaster of the parish of Fordoun in 1753. He took the position of usher at the grammar-school of Aberdeen in 1758.
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Erich Bethe
1863 - 1940 (77 years)
Erich Julius Adolf Bethe was a German classical philologist who was a native of Stettin. In 1887, he earned his doctorate from the University of Göttingen, later receiving his habilitation at Bonn in 1891. From 1893 to 1897, he was an associate professor at the University of Rostock, afterwards serving as a professor of classical philology at the Universities of Basel , Giessen and Leipzig . In 1927–28, he was rector at the University of Leipzig.
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Hergé
1907 - 1983 (76 years)
Georges Prosper Remi , known by the pen name Hergé , from the French pronunciation of his reversed initials RG, was a Belgian comic strip artist. He is best known for creating The Adventures of Tintin, the series of comic albums which are considered one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century. He was also responsible for two other well-known series, Quick & Flupke and The Adventures of Jo, Zette and Jocko . His works were executed in his distinctive ligne claire drawing style.
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Hector Munro Chadwick
1870 - 1947 (77 years)
Hector Munro Chadwick was an English philologist. Chadwick was the Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and the founder and head of the Department for Anglo-Saxon and Kindred Studies at the University of Cambridge. Chadwick was well known for his encouragement of interdisciplinary research on Celts and Germanic peoples, and for his theories on the Heroic Age in the history of human societies. Chadwick was a tutor of many notable students and the author of numerous influential works in his fields of study. Much of his research and teaching was conducted in cooperation with his wife...
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E. T. A. Hoffmann
1776 - 1822 (46 years)
Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann was a German Romantic author of fantasy and Gothic horror, a jurist, composer, music critic and artist. His stories form the basis of Jacques Offenbach's opera The Tales of Hoffmann, in which Hoffmann appears as the hero. He is also the author of the novella The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, on which Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker is based. The ballet Coppélia is based on two other stories that Hoffmann wrote, while Schumann's Kreisleriana is based on Hoffmann's character Johannes Kreisler.
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Ramendra Sundar Tribedi
1864 - 1919 (55 years)
Ramendra Sundar Tribedi was a Bengali writer. He is known for his works in Bengali poems, and stories. He is one of the most popular poets of India. Life Ramendra Sundar Tribedi was born at Kandi, Murshidabad in West Bengal on 22 August 1864. His father's name was Govindasundar and his mother's name was Chandra Kamini. From his childhood, Tribedi was a successful student. After obtaining his B.Sc. degree , he competed for the prestigious Premchand Roychand Scholarship with physics and chemistry as his subjects. He won the scholarship . The examiners' report said:
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Santa Rita Durão
1722 - 1784 (62 years)
José de Santa Rita Durão , known simply as Santa Rita Durão, was a Colonial Brazilian Neoclassic poet, orator and Augustinian friar. He is considered a forerunner of "Indianism" in Brazilian literature, with his epic poem Caramuru.
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Kate L. Turabian
1893 - 1987 (94 years)
Kate Ledgerwood Turabian was an Armenian-American educator who is best known for her book A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. In 2018, the University of Chicago Press published the 9th edition of the book. The University of Chicago Press estimates that the various editions of this book have sold more than 9 million copies since its publication in 1937. A 2016 analysis of over one million college course syllabi found that Turabian was the most commonly assigned female author due to this book.
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Patrick Hamilton
1904 - 1962 (58 years)
Anthony Walter Patrick Hamilton was an English playwright and novelist. He was well regarded by Graham Greene and J. B. Priestley, and study of his novels has been revived because of their distinctive style, deploying a Dickensian narrative voice to convey aspects of inter-war London street culture. They display a strong sympathy for the poor, as well as an acerbic black humour. Doris Lessing wrote in The Times in 1968: "Hamilton was a marvellous novelist who's grossly neglected".
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