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.
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List of the most influential people in Literature,
#9601
Louis Figuier
1819 - 1894 (75 years)
Louis Figuier was a French scientist and writer. He was the nephew of Pierre-Oscar Figuier and became Professor of chemistry at L'Ecole de pharmacie of Montpellier. Louis Figuier was married to French writer Louise Juliette Bouscaren.
Go to Profile#9602
John Churton Collins
1848 - 1908 (60 years)
John Churton Collins was a British literary critic. Biography Churton Collins was born at Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire, England. From King Edward's School, Birmingham, he went to Balliol College, Oxford, where he graduated in 1872, and at once devoted himself to a literary career, as journalist, essayist and lecturer. His first book was a study of Sir Joshua Reynolds , and later he edited various classical English writers, and published volumes on Bolingbroke and Voltaire in England , The Study of English Literature , a study of Dean Swift , Essays and Studies , Ephemera Critica , Es...
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Johann Gottfried Gruber
1774 - 1851 (77 years)
Johann Gottfried Gruber was a German critic and literary historian. Biography Gruber was born at Naumburg on the Saale, in the Electorate of Saxony. He received his education at the town school of Naumburg and the University of Leipzig, after which he resided successively at Göttingen, Leipzig, Jena and Weimar, occupying himself partly in teaching and partly in various literary enterprises, and enjoying in Weimar the friendship of Herder, Wieland and Goethe.
Go to Profile#9604
John Taylor
1578 - 1653 (75 years)
John Taylor was an English poet who dubbed himself "The Water Poet". Biography John Taylor was born in the parish of St. Ewen's, near South Gate, Gloucester on 24 August 1578. His parentage is unknown, as the parish registers did not survive the Civil War. He did, however, attend elementary school and grammar school there. His grammar school education may have taken place at the Crypt School in Gloucester, however Taylor never finished his formal education due to difficulties with his Latin studies.
Go to Profile#9605
Francis Brinkley
1841 - 1912 (71 years)
Francis Brinkley was an Anglo-Irish newspaper owner, editor and scholar who resided in Meiji period Japan for over 40 years, where he was the author of numerous books on Japanese culture, art and architecture and an English-Japanese Dictionary. He was also known as Frank Brinkley or as Captain Francis Brinkley and was the great uncle of Cyril Connolly.
Go to Profile#9606
Paul Eldridge
1888 - 1982 (94 years)
Paul Eldridge was an American poet, novelist, short story writer and teacher. The son of Leon and Jeanette Eldridge , he was born in Bucharest, Romania on May 5, 1888 and immigrated with his family to the United States on August 15, 1900. He later married a fellow writer, Sylvette de Lamar . He received his B.S. from Temple University in 1909, his A.M. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1911, and a doctorate from the University of Paris in 1913. He was a teacher of romance languages at the high school level in New York until his retirement in 1945. He was a lecturer on American Literature at the Sorbonne in 1913 and at the University of Florence in 1923.
Go to Profile#9607
Mary Pix
1666 - 1709 (43 years)
Mary Pix was an English novelist and playwright. As an admirer of Aphra Behn and colleague of Susanna Centlivre, Pix has been called "a link between women writers of the Restoration and Augustan periods".
Go to Profile#9608
Alexander Belskiy
1921 - 1977 (56 years)
Alexander Andreevich Belskiy was a Soviet specialist in literary criticism, Anglicist . Alexander Belskiy founded Perm school of research in non-Russian Philology. Also, he founded the Faculty of Philology at Perm State University and he was its first Dean in 1960–1964 and 1971–1977. Moreover, he founded the Department of Foreign literature at Perm State University, and he was its Head in 1965–1977. His famous student is Boris Proskurnin, the Dean of Faculty of Foreign languages and Literature at Perm State University.
Go to Profile#9609
James Macpherson
1736 - 1796 (60 years)
James Macpherson was a Scottish writer, poet, literary collector, and politician. He is known for the Ossian cycle of epic poems, which he claimed to have discovered and translated from Gaelic. Early life and education Macpherson was born at Ruthven in the parish of Kingussie in Badenoch, Inverness-shire. This was a Scottish Gaelic-speaking area but near the Ruthven Barracks of the British Army, established in 1719 to enforce Whig rule from London after the Jacobite uprising of 1715. Macpherson's uncle, Ewen Macpherson joined the Jacobite army in the 1745 march south, when Macpherson was nine years old and after the Battle of Culloden, had had to remain in hiding for nine years.
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Cattamanchi Ramalinga Reddy
1880 - 1951 (71 years)
Sir Cattamanchi Ramalinga Reddy , also popularly known as Sir C. R. Reddy, was an educationist and political thinker, essayist and economist, poet and literary critic. He was a prominent member of the Justice Party and an ardent champion of the non-Brahmin movement, joining the movement to unite the non-Brahmin communities. He wrote his works in Telugu and English; these reveal his deep love for Indian classics and his learning in these texts, as well as the modernity of his outlook.
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Charles Joret
1839 - 1914 (75 years)
Charles Joret was a French literary historian, philologist and botanical author. His name is associated with the so-called ligne Joret , a locative boundary used in the linguistics of the Langues d'oïl.
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Thomas Yalden
1670 - 1736 (66 years)
Thomas Yalden was an English poet and translator. Educated at Magdalen College, Yalden entered the Church of England, in which he obtained various preferments. His poems include A Hymn to Darkness, Pindaric Odes, and translations from the classics.
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Dorothy Scarborough
1878 - 1935 (57 years)
Emily Dorothy Scarborough was an American writer who wrote about Texas, folk culture, cotton farming, ghost stories and women's life in the Southwest. Early life Scarborough was born in Mount Carmel, Texas. At the age of four she moved to Sweetwater, Texas for her mother's health, as her mother needed the drier climate. The family soon left Sweetwater in 1887, so that the Scarborough children could get a good education at Baylor College.
Go to Profile#9614
Anton van Duinkerken
1903 - 1968 (65 years)
Wilhelmus Johannes Maria Antonius Asselbergs , better known under his pseudonym Anton van Duinkerken, was a Dutch poet, essayist, and academic. Asselbergs considered a career as a priest before becoming a journalist, editing De Gids. He was subsequently a professor in art history and the history of literature at the Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen. A Roman Catholic, he was active on behalf of the emancipation of the Catholic Church and wrote religious poetry.
Go to Profile#9615
Georg Friedrich Schömann
1793 - 1879 (86 years)
Georg Friedrich Schömann , was a German classical scholar of Swedish heritage. Background He was born at Stralsund in Pomerania. He studied at the Universities of Greifswald and Jena, earning his PhD at Greifswald in 1815. In 1820 he obtained his habilitation with the thesis "De sortitione iudicum apud Athenienses". In 1827 he was appointed professor of ancient literature and rhetoric at the University of Greifswald, where in 1844, he was named first librarian. He died in Greifswald on 25 March 1879.
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Arnold Drakenborch
1683 - 1748 (65 years)
Arnold Drakenborch was a Dutch classical scholar. Early life Drakenborch was born at Utrecht. Having studied philology under Graevius and Burmann the elder, and law under Cornelius Van Eck, in 1716 he succeeded Burmann in his professorship , which he continued to hold until his death. Although he obtained the degree of doctor of laws, and was intended for the legal profession, he decided to concentrate on philological studies.
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Martin Hertz
1818 - 1895 (77 years)
Martin Julius Hertz was a German classical philologist, a student and biographer of Karl Lachmann. He studied philology at the Universities of Bonn and Berlin, where his instructors included August Boeckh and Karl Lachmann , the latter being an important influence to Hertz' career. He earned his doctorate in 1842, followed by his habilitation a few years later . Afterwards, he embarked on an educational journey throughout Europe .
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Johann Georg Jacobi
1740 - 1814 (74 years)
Johann Georg Jacobi was a German poet. Biography The elder brother of the philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Johann Georg was born at Pempelfort near Düsseldorf. He studied theology at Göttingen and jurisprudence at Helmstedt, and in 1766 was appointed professor of philosophy in Halle. That year he made the acquaintance of J. W. L. Gleim, who, attracted by the young poet's Poetische Versuche , became his friend. A lively literary correspondence ensued between Gleim in Halberstadt and Jacobi in Halle. In order to have Jacobi near him, Gleim succeeded in procuring for him a prebendal stall ...
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Johann Heinrich Joseph Düntzer
1813 - 1901 (88 years)
Johann Heinrich Joseph Düntzer was a German philologist and historian of literature. Biography He was born at Cologne. After studying philology and especially ancient classics and Sanskrit at Bonn and Berlin , he took the degree of doctor of philosophy and established himself in 1837 at Bonn as privatdozent for classical philology. He had already, in his Goethes Faust in seiner Einheit und Ganzheit and Goethe als Dramatiker , advocated a new critical method in interpreting the German classics, which he wished to see treated like the ancient classics.
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Karl Schenkl
1827 - 1900 (73 years)
Karl Schenkl was an Austrian classical philologist. Biography Schenkl studied classical philology and law from 1845 to 1849 at the University of Vienna. After 1850 he taught at various gymnasiums, and in 1858 was appointed professor of classical philology at the University of Innsbruck, where he founded the Philological Institute in 1860. In 1863 he left for the University of Graz, and in the same year started a philological seminar and became a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences; in 1868 he became a full member. Schenkl was rector at Graz from 1869 to 1870, and in 1870 became a member of the Gymnasialreformkommission .
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Julien Louis Geoffroy
1743 - 1814 (71 years)
Julien Louis Geoffroy was a French literary critic. He was born at Rennes, and educated there and at the Collège Louis le Grand in Paris. He took orders and for some time was a mere usher, eventually becoming professor of rhetoric at the Collège des Quatre-Nations. His tragedy, Caton, was accepted at the Théâtre Français, but was never performed. On the death of Élie Fréron in 1776 the other collaborators in the Année littéraire asked Geoffroy to succeed him, and he conducted the journal until its closure in 1792.
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Arthur W. Ryder
1877 - 1938 (61 years)
Arthur William Ryder was a professor of Sanskrit at the University of California, Berkeley. He is best known for translating a number of Sanskrit works into English, including the Panchatantra and the Bhagavad Gita.
Go to Profile#9623
Len Lye
1901 - 1980 (79 years)
Leonard Charles Huia Lye was a New Zealand artist known primarily for his experimental films and kinetic sculpture. His films are held in archives including the New Zealand Film Archive, British Film Institute, Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and the Pacific Film Archive at University of California, Berkeley. Lye's sculptures are found in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the Berkeley Art Museum. Although he became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1950, much of his work went to New Zealand after his death, where it is housed at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth.
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Barbara Sleigh
1906 - 1982 (76 years)
Barbara Grace de Riemer Sleigh was an English children's writer and broadcaster. She is remembered most for her Carbonel series about a king of cats. Family and career Barbara Sleigh was born on 9 January 1906 in Birmingham, the daughter of an artist, Bernard Sleigh, and his wife Stella, née Phillp, who had married in 1901. Both parents came from a Methodist background, but she was brought up an Anglican. The family moved to Chesham for a time, then back to Birmingham. Their marriage broke up in about 1914. Her older brother, Brocas Linwood Sleigh , would also become a writer.
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Chen Wangdao
1891 - 1977 (86 years)
Chen Wangdao was a Chinese scholar and educator. He is recognized as the first and only person to translate the Communist Manifesto into Chinese completely so far. He also served as president of Fudan University from 1949 to 1977.
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Richard Lovelace
1617 - 1658 (41 years)
Richard Lovelace was an English poet in the seventeenth century. He was a cavalier poet who fought on behalf of Charles I during the English Civil War. His best known works are "To Althea, from Prison", and "To Lucasta, Going to the Warres".
Go to Profile#9627
Madeline Gleason
1903 - 1979 (76 years)
Madeline Gleason was a United States poet and dramatist. She was the founder of the San Francisco Poetry Guild. In 1947, she became the director of the first poetry festival in the United States, laying the groundwork for what became known as the San Francisco Renaissance. She was, with Helen Adam, Barbara Guest, and Denise Levertov, one of only four women whose work was included in Donald Allen's landmark anthology, The New American Poetry 1945-1960 .
Go to Profile#9628
France Balantič
1921 - 1943 (22 years)
France Balantič was a Slovene poet. His works were banned from schools and libraries during the Titoist regime in Slovenia, but since the late 1980s he has been re-evaluated as one of the foremost Slovene poets of the 20th century.
Go to Profile#9629
Samuel Madden
1686 - 1765 (79 years)
Samuel Madden was an Irish author. His works include Themistocles; The Lover of His Country, Reflections and Resolutions Proper for the Gentlemen of Ireland, and Memoirs of the Twentieth Century. Dr. Samuel Johnson wrote of him, "His was a name which Ireland ought to honour". He suggested that the Royal Dublin Society initiate a scheme to fund improvements in agriculture and arts in Ireland via the use of premiums – the source of his nickname Premium.
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Leonard William King
1869 - 1919 (50 years)
Leonard William King, FSA was an English archaeologist and Assyriologist educated at Rugby School and King's College, Cambridge. He collected stone inscriptions widely in the Near East, taught Assyrian and Babylonian archaeology at King's College for a number of years, and published a large number of works on these subjects. He is also known for his translations of ancient works such as the Code of Hammurabi. He became Assistant Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities at the British Museum.
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Barbara Leonard Reynolds
1915 - 1990 (75 years)
Barbara Leonard Reynolds , was an American author who became a Quaker, peace activist and educator. In 1951, Reynolds moved with her husband to Hiroshima where he conducted a three-year study on the effects of radiation on children who had survived the first atomic bomb. She and her family then became peace activists, sailing around the world to protest nuclear weapons. In the early 1960s, she traveled around the world with atomic bomb survivors to show world leaders, first-hand, the horrors of nuclear warfare. She then established the World Friendship Center, devoting 13 years to it, and don...
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William of Moerbeke
1215 - 1286 (71 years)
William of Moerbeke, O.P. , was a prolific medieval translator of philosophical, medical, and scientific texts from Greek into Latin, enabled by the period of Latin rule of the Byzantine Empire. His translations were influential in his day, when few competing translations were available, and are still respected by modern scholars.
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Archibald Campbell Jordan
1906 - 1968 (62 years)
Archibald Campbell Mzolisa "A.C." Jordan was a novelist, literary historian and intellectual pioneer of African studies in South Africa. Early life He was born at the Mbokothwane Mission in the Tsolo district, Pondoland , the son of an Anglican church minister. Jordan trained as a teacher at St John's College, Mthatha, completed his junior certificate at Lovedale College, Alice, and then won a scholarship to Fort Hare University College. His literary and linguistic training consisted in a BA Degree , followed by a Master's thesis, submitted to the University of Cape Town in 1942, entitled "S...
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Huang Kan
1886 - 1935 (49 years)
Huang Kan , courtesy name Jigang , born into a family of Hubei ancestry in Chengdu, Sichuan province, was a Chinese phonologist, philologist and revolutionary. As a teen, he tested into Wuchang School, a prestigious secondary school, but then was expelled for spreading anti-Qing sentiments. He then went to study in Japan and became a student of the Chinese scholar and philologist Zhang Taiyan. Huang was regarded as the most important phonologist since the high Qing and gained recognition at first through his literary criticism of the sixth century. Later on, he taught at a number of universit...
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William Vaughn Moody
1869 - 1910 (41 years)
William Vaughn Moody was an American dramatist and poet. Moody was author of The Great Divide, first presented under the title of The Sabine Woman at the Garrick Theatre in Chicago on April 12, 1906, and then on Broadway at the Princess Theatre, running for 238 performances from October 3, 1906, to March 24, 1907. His poetic dramas are The Masque of Judgment , The Fire Bringer , and The Death of Eve . His best-known poem is "An Ode in Time of Hesitation," on the Spanish-American War; others include "Gloucester Moor," "On a Soldier Fallen in the Philippines," "The Brute," "Harmonics" , "Until...
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Lao She
1899 - 1966 (67 years)
Shu Qingchun , known by his pen name Lao She, was a Chinese novelist and dramatist. He was a writer of 20th-century Chinese literature, known for his novel Rickshaw Boy and the play Teahouse . He was of Manchu ethnicity, and his works are known for their vivid use of the Beijing dialect.
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Pier Paolo Pasolini
1922 - 1975 (53 years)
Pier Paolo Pasolini was an Italian poet, film director, writer, screenwriter, actor and playwright. He is considered one of the defining public intellectuals in 20th-century Italian history, influential both as an artist and a political figure.
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J. V. Cunningham
1911 - 1985 (74 years)
James Vincent Cunningham was an Americann poet, literary critic and teacher. Background Cunningham is described as a neo-classicist or anti-modernist. His poetry was distinguished by its clarity, brevity and traditional formality of rhyme and rhythm at a time when many American poets were breaking away from traditional fixed meters.
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Monty Banks
1897 - 1950 (53 years)
Montague Banks was a 20th century Italian-born American comedian, film actor, director and producer who achieved success in the United States and Britain. Career Banks was born Mario Bianchi in Cesena, Italy. In 1914, Bianchi emigrated to the United States, first trying his luck on the New York stage. By 1918, he was an actor in Hollywood with the Arbuckle Company, performing in over 35 silent short comedies by the early 1920s, and then, starring in feature-length action comedy-thrillers as Play Safe . .
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Bruno Migliorini
1896 - 1975 (79 years)
Bruno Migliorini was an Italian linguist and philologist. He was the author of one of the first scientific histories of Italian language and was president of the Accademia della Crusca. Biography Migliorini was born in Rovigo.
Go to Profile#9641
Wilhelm von Christ
1831 - 1906 (75 years)
Wilhelm von Christ was a German classical scholar. Biography The son of a baker and a miller's daughter, Christ was born in Geisenheim in Hesse-Nassau. He attended the Gymnasium in Hadamar and studied in Munich from 1850 under Karl Halm, Friedrich Thiersch, Karl von Prantl, and Leonhard Spengel, then in Berlin under Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg, August Boeckh und Franz Bopp. In 1853 he received his doctorate at Berlin for a work on Aristotle and the next year he became a teacher at the in Munich. In 1860, Christ was appointed extraordinary profossor of Classical philology at the University of Munich; he became an ordinary professor in 1863.
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Arrigo Boito
1842 - 1918 (76 years)
Arrigo Boito was an Italian librettist, composer, poet and critic whose only completed opera was Mefistofele. Among the operas for which he wrote the libretti are Giuseppe Verdi's monumental last two operas Otello and Falstaff as well as Amilcare Ponchielli's La Gioconda.
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John Hughes
1677 - 1720 (43 years)
John Hughes was an English poet, essayist and translator. Various of his works remained in print for a century after his death, but if he is remembered at all today it is for the use others made of his work. Texts of his were set by the foremost composers of the day and his translation of the Letters of Abelard and Heloise was a major source for Alexander Pope's Eloisa to Abelard.
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Oliver Elton
1861 - 1945 (84 years)
Oliver Elton, FBA was an English literary scholar whose works include A Survey of English Literature in six volumes, criticism, biography, and translations from several languages including Icelandic and Russian. He was King Alfred Professor of English at Liverpool University. He also helped set up the Department of English at the University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan.
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Jacques Prévert
1900 - 1977 (77 years)
Jacques Prévert was a French poet and screenwriter. His poems became and remain popular in the French-speaking world, particularly in schools. His best-regarded films formed part of the poetic realist movement, and include . He published his first book in 1946.
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René Clair
1898 - 1981 (83 years)
René Clair , born René-Lucien Chomette, was a French filmmaker and writer. He first established his reputation in the 1920s as a director of silent films in which comedy was often mingled with fantasy. He went on to make some of the most innovative early sound films in France, before going abroad to work in the UK and USA for more than a decade. Returning to France after World War II, he continued to make films that were characterised by their elegance and wit, often presenting a nostalgic view of French life in earlier years. He was elected to the Académie Française in 1960. Clair's best know...
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Clarence Budington Kelland
1881 - 1964 (83 years)
Clarence Budington "Bud" Kelland was an American writer. Prolific and versatile, he was a prominent literary figure in his heyday, and he described himself as "the best second-rate writer in America".
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Wilhelm Wackernagel
1806 - 1869 (63 years)
Wilhelm Wackernagel was a German-Swiss philologist specializing in Germanic studies. He was the father of Indo-Europeanist Jacob Wackernagel. He studied Classical and Germanic literature at the University of Berlin as a pupil of August Boeckh and Karl Lachmann. In 1833 he moved to Basel, where from 1835 to 1869, he was a professor of German language and literature at the university. While at Basel, he turned down offers for professorships in Berlin, Munich, Tübingen and Vienna.
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Hiram Corson
1828 - 1911 (83 years)
Hiram Corson was an American professor of literature. Life Corson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He held a position in the library of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. , was a lecturer on English literature in Philadelphia , and was professor of English at Girard College, Philadelphia , and in St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland . In 1870-1871 he was professor of rhetoric and oratory at Cornell University, where he was professor of Anglo-Saxon and English literature , of English literature and rhetoric , and from 1890 to 1903 of English literature, a chair formed for him.
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August Fick
1833 - 1916 (83 years)
Friedrich Conrad August Fick was a German philologist. He spent his life chiefly at Göttingen, where he first studied philology under Theodor Benfey; became a teacher in the Gymnasium, and eventually in 1876 professor of comparative philology at the university; in 1887 accepted a professorship in Breslau, but retired four years later; author of a variety of learned works on philology.
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