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).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Literature,
#9601
Tomoji Abe
1903 - 1973 (70 years)
was a Japanese novelist, social critic, humanist, and translator of English and American literature. Although he began writing as a modernist, in his later works he represented the intellectual movement in Japanese literature. This movement departed from Japanese traditional thinking and from established forms of narration, which focused on esthetic values and emotional states of mind ; it also departed from modernist views, which continued to be popular in world literature and in Japan . Abe's intellectual approach was incompatible with the socio-political atmosphere of Japan in the early Shō...
Go to Profile#9602
Zenta Mauriņa
1897 - 1978 (81 years)
Zenta Mauriņa was a Latvian writer, essayist, translator, and researcher in philology. She was married to the Electronic Voice Phenomena researcher Konstantin Raudive. Biography Born to doctor Roberts Mauriņš, Zenta spent her childhood in Grobiņa, where, at the age of six, she contracted polio, leaving her confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. After studying at the Russian girl's high school in Liepaja , she studied philosophy at the Latvian University in Riga . After this, she studied philology of Baltic languages . She taught at the Latvian Teachers Institute and at the Latvian...
Go to Profile#9603
Frances Burney
1752 - 1840 (88 years)
Frances Burney , also known as Fanny Burney and later Madame d'Arblay, was an English satirical novelist, diarist and playwright. In 1786–1790 she held the post of "Keeper of the Robes" to Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, George III's queen. In 1793, aged 41, she married a French exile, General Alexandre d'Arblay. After a long writing career and wartime travels that stranded her in France for over a decade, she settled in Bath, England, where she died on 6 January 1840. The first of her four novels, Evelina , was the most successful and remains her most highly regarded. Most of her plays were not performed in her lifetime.
Go to Profile#9604
Wincenty Pol
1807 - 1872 (65 years)
Wincenty Pol was a Polish poet and geographer. Life Pol was born in Lublin , to Franz Pohl , a German in the Austrian service, and his wife Eleonora Longchamps de Berier, from a French family living in Poland. Pol fought in the Polish army in the November 1830 Uprising and participated in the 1848 revolution. In spite of his mixed family background, he considered himself a Pole, so much so that he changed his surname to Pol.
Go to Profile#9605
Mário de Andrade
1893 - 1945 (52 years)
Mário Raul de Morais Andrade was a Brazilian poet, novelist, musicologist, art historian and critic, and photographer. He wrote one of the first and most influential collections of modern Brazilian poetry, Paulicéia Desvairada , published in 1922. He has had considerable influence on modern Brazilian literature, and as a scholar and essayist—he was a pioneer of the field of ethnomusicology—his influence has reached far beyond Brazil.
Go to Profile#9606
John Evelyn
1620 - 1706 (86 years)
John Evelyn was an English writer, landowner, gardener, courtier and minor government official, who is now best known as a diarist. He was a founding Fellow of the Royal Society. John Evelyn's diary, or memoir, spanned the period of his adult life from 1640, when he was a student, to 1706, the year he died. He did not write daily at all times. The many volumes provide insight into life and events at a time before regular magazines or newspapers were published, making diaries of greater interest to modern historians than such works might have been at later periods. Evelyn's work covers art, ...
Go to Profile#9607
Matija Čop
1797 - 1835 (38 years)
Matija Čop , also known in German as Matthias Tschop, was a Slovene linguist, polyglot, literary historian and critic. Biography Čop was born in the small northern Carniolan town of Žirovnica, in what was then the Habsburg monarchy , into a relatively wealthy peasant family. He was sent to Ljubljana for primary and secondary schooling and then studied philosophy at the lyceums of Ljubljana and Vienna for three years. In 1817, he returned from Vienna and attended a priest seminary until 1820, when he left it to become a secondary school teacher in Rijeka, Croatia. In 1822 he moved to Lviv , whe...
Go to Profile#9608
Charles Wharton Stork
1881 - 1971 (90 years)
Charles Wharton Stork was an American literary author, poet, and translator. Early life and education Stork was born in Philadelphia on February 12, 1881 to Theophilus Baker and Hannah Stork. He graduated from Haverford College and Harvard University.
Go to Profile#9609
Anagarika Dharmapala
1864 - 1933 (69 years)
Anagārika Dharmapāla was a Sri Lankan Buddhist revivalist and a writer. Anagarika Dharmapāla is noted because he was:the first global Buddhist missionaryone of the founding contributors of non-violent Sinhalese Buddhist nationalisma leading figure in the Sri Lankan independence movement against British rulea pioneer in the revival of Buddhism in India after it had been virtually extinct for several centuriesthe first Buddhist in modern times to preach the Dhamma in three continents: Asia, North America, and Europe.Along with Henry Steel Olcott and Helena Blavatsky, the creators of the Theosop...
Go to Profile#9610
Walter Besant
1836 - 1901 (65 years)
Sir Walter Besant was an English novelist and historian. William Henry Besant was his brother, and another brother, Frank, was the husband of Annie Besant. Early life and education The son of wine merchant William Besant , he was born at Portsmouth, Hampshire and attended school at St Paul's, Southsea, Stockwell Grammar, London and King's College London. In 1855, he was admitted as a pensioner to Christ's College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1859 as 18th wrangler.
Go to Profile#9611
Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon
1675 - 1755 (80 years)
Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon, GE , was a French soldier, diplomat, and memoirist. He was born in Paris at the Hôtel Selvois, 6 rue Taranne . The family's ducal peerage , granted in 1635 to his father Claude de Rouvroy , served as both perspective and theme in Saint-Simon's life and writings. He was the second and last Duke of Saint-Simon.
Go to Profile#9612
Eugenio d'Ors
1881 - 1954 (73 years)
Eugenio d'Ors Rovira was a Spanish writer, essayist, journalist, philosopher and art critic. He wrote in both Catalan and Spanish, sometimes under the pseudonym of Xènius . Biography Born in Barcelona in 1882, Eugenio d'Ors initiated himself in the modernist literary environments. He participated in his younger years, between nineteen and twenty-five years, in this aesthetic. He studied law in Barcelona and received his PhD degree in Madrid.
Go to Profile#9613
Friedrich Kluge
1856 - 1926 (70 years)
Friedrich Kluge was a German philologist and educator. He is known for the Etymological Dictionary of the German Language , which was first published in 1883. Biography Kluge was born in Cologne. He studied comparative linguistics and classical and modern philologies at the universities of Leipzig, Strasbourg and Freiburg. As a student, his instructors were August Leskien, Georg Curtius, Friedrich Zarncke and Rudolf Hildebrand at Leipzig and Heinrich Hübschmann, Bernhard ten Brink and Erich Schmidt at the University of Strasbourg.
Go to Profile#9614
William Davenant
1606 - 1668 (62 years)
Sir William Davenant , also spelled D'Avenant, was an English poet and playwright. Along with Thomas Killigrew, Davenant was one of the rare figures in English Renaissance theatre whose career spanned both the Caroline and Restoration eras and who was active both before and after the English Civil War and during the Interregnum.
Go to Profile#9615
Vayalar Ramavarma
1928 - 1975 (47 years)
Vayalar Ramavarma , also known as Vayalar, was an Indian poet and lyricist of Malayalam language. He was known for his poems which include Sargasangeetham, Mulankaadu, Padamudrakal, Aayisha and Oru Judas janikkunnu and for around 1300 songs he penned for 256 Malayalam films. He received the National Film Award for Best Lyrics in 1972 and was the winner of the Kerala State Film Award for Best Lyrics in its year of inception which he received three more times. He was also a recipient of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for Poetry in 1962. His collaborations with G. Devarajan produced the golden ...
Go to Profile#9616
Cornelius Ryan
1920 - 1974 (54 years)
Cornelius Ryan was an Irish journalist and author known mainly for writing popular military history. He was especially known for his histories of World War II events: The Longest Day: 6 June 1944 D-Day , The Last Battle , and A Bridge Too Far .
Go to Profile#9617
Erich Schmidt
1853 - 1913 (60 years)
Erich Schmidt was a German historian of literature. Biography He was the son of a zoologist Oskar Schmidt. He studied Germanic philology and literary history at Graz, Jena, and Strassburg, established himself as privatdozent at Würzburg in 1875, became a professor at Strassburg in 1877, at Vienna in 1880, and director of the Goethe archive at Weimar in 1885. Thence he was called to Berlin in 1887, to succeed Wilhelm Scherer in the chair of German language and literature. From 1907 onward, he served as president of the Goethe Society.
Go to Profile#9618
Kuriyagawa Hakuson
1880 - 1923 (43 years)
Kuriyagawa Hakuson was the pen-name of a Japanese literary critic, active in Taishō period Japan. His real name was Kuriyagawa Tatsuo. Early life Kuriyagawa Hakuson was born in Kyoto. He graduated from Tokyo Imperial University, where he had studied under Koizumi Yakumo and Natsume Sōseki, and later became a professor at Kumamoto University and Kyoto Imperial University. He lectured on 19th century Western literature, and criticized traditional Japanese writing on naturalism and romanticism. His writings include: Kindai bungaku jikko , Zoge no to o dete and Kindai no ren-aikan .
Go to Profile#9619
Horatio Alger
1832 - 1899 (67 years)
Horatio Alger Jr. was an American author who wrote young adult novels about impoverished boys and their rise from humble backgrounds to middle-class security and comfort through good works. His writings were characterized by the "rags-to-riches" narrative, which had a formative effect on the United States from 1868 through to his death in 1899.
Go to Profile#9620
Ban Gu
32 - 92 (60 years)
Ban Gu was a Chinese historian, poet, and politician best known for his part in compiling the Book of Han, the second of China's 24 dynastic histories. He also wrote a number of fu, a major literary form, part prose and part poetry, which is particularly associated with the Han era. A number of Ban's fu were collected by Xiao Tong in the Wen Xuan.
Go to Profile#9621
Marko Marulić
1450 - 1524 (74 years)
Marko Marulić Splićanin , in Latin Marcus Marulus Spalatensis , was a Croatian poet, lawyer, judge, and Renaissance humanist who coined the term "psychology". He is the national poet of Croatia. According to George J. Gutsche, Marulic's epic poem Judita "is the first long poem in Croatian", and "gives Marulić a position in his own literature comparable to Dante in Italian literature." Furthermore, Marulić's Latin poetry is of such high quality that his contemporaries dubbed him "The Christian Virgil."
Go to Profile#9622
John Landquist
1881 - 1974 (93 years)
John Landquist was a Swedish literary critic, literary scholar, writer and professor of pedagogy and psychology at Lund University from 1936 to 1946. When Landquist studied at Uppsala University, he was a member of the student organization Les quatre diables together with Sven Lidman, Sigurd Agrell and Harald Brising. Landquist was engaged in Strindbergsfejden and released August Strindberg's works. In 1916 he wrote a monograph on Gustaf Fröding and was ready to introduce Sigmund Freud's theory of manners into Swedish literary history. He also translated Freud's works into Swedish.
Go to Profile#9623
Wilhelm Braune
1850 - 1926 (76 years)
Theodor Wilhelm Braune was a German philologist and Germanist. Biography In 1869 Braune entered the University of Leipzig, where he was approved as an instructor in 1874. In 1877 he was appointed as extraordinary professor at the University of Giessen and became an ordinary professor of German language and literature there in 1880. He later served as a professor at the University of Heidelberg. He is an important representative of the Neogrammarians.
Go to Profile#9624
Lady Caroline Lamb
1785 - 1828 (43 years)
Lady Caroline Lamb was an Anglo-Irish aristocrat and novelist, best known for Glenarvon, a Gothic novel. In 1812, she had an affair with Lord Byron, whom she described as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know". Her husband was the Honourable William Lamb, who after her death became 2nd Viscount Melbourne and British prime minister.
Go to Profile#9625
Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex
1565 - 1601 (36 years)
Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, KG, PC was an English nobleman and a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I. Politically ambitious, and a committed general, he was placed under house arrest following a poor campaign in Ireland during the Nine Years' War in 1599. In 1601, he led an abortive coup d'état against the government of Elizabeth I and was executed for treason.
Go to Profile#9626
Philip Massinger
1583 - 1640 (57 years)
Philip Massinger was an English dramatist. His finely plotted plays, including A New Way to Pay Old Debts, The City Madam, and The Roman Actor, are noted for their satire and realism, and their political and social themes.
Go to Profile#9627
Joachim du Bellay
1522 - 1560 (38 years)
Joachim du Bellay was a French poet, critic, and a founder of La Pléiade. He notably wrote the manifesto of the group: Défense et illustration de la langue française, which aimed at promoting French as an artistic language, equal to Greek and Latin.
Go to Profile#9628
Herbert Weir Smyth
1857 - 1937 (80 years)
Herbert Weir Smyth was an American classical scholar. His comprehensive grammar of Ancient Greek has become a standard reference on the subject in English, comparable to that of William Watson Goodwin, whom he succeeded as Eliott Professor of Greek Literature at Harvard University.
Go to Profile#9629
Fannie Hurst
1889 - 1968 (79 years)
Fannie Hurst was an American novelist and short-story writer whose works were highly popular during the post-World War I era. Her work combined sentimental, romantic themes with social issues of the day, such as women's rights and race relations. She was one of the most widely read female authors of the 20th century, and for a time in the 1920s she was one of the highest-paid American writers. Hurst also actively supported a number of social causes, including feminism, African American equality, and New Deal programs.
Go to Profile#9630
Chen Hengzhe
1890 - 1976 (86 years)
Chen Hengzhe , pen name Sophia H. Z. Chen , was a pioneering writer in modern vernacular Chinese literature, a leader in the New Culture Movement, and the first female professor at a Chinese university. Chen is known for aiming to educate Chinese people by incorporating values from both Western culture and Chinese culture, producing many works reflecting these values.
Go to Profile#9631
Pietro Bembo
1470 - 1547 (77 years)
Pietro Bembo, was an Italian scholar, poet, and literary theorist who also was a member of the Knights Hospitaller, and a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. As an intellectual of the Italian Renaissance , Pietro Bembo greatly influenced the development of the Tuscan dialect as a literary language for poetry and prose, which, by later codification into a standard language, became the modern Italian language. In the 16th century, Bembo's poetry, essays and books proved basic to reviving interest in the literary works of Petrarch. In the field of music, Bembo's literary writing techniques ...
Go to Profile#9632
Kamini Roy
1864 - 1933 (69 years)
Kamini Roy was a Bengali poet, social worker and feminist in British India. She was the first woman honours graduate in British India. Early life Born on 12 October 1864 in the village of Basunda, then in Bakerganj District of Bengal Presidency and now in Jhalokati District of Bangladesh, Roy joined Bethune School in 1883. One of the first girls to attend school in British India, she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with Sanskrit honours from Bethune College of the University of Calcutta in 1886 and started teaching there in the same year. Kadambini Ganguly, the country's second female honour...
Go to Profile#9633
Oscar Micheaux
1884 - 1951 (67 years)
Oscar Devereaux Micheaux Early life and education Micheaux was born on a farm in Metropolis, Illinois, on January 2, 1884. He was the fifth child born to Calvin S. and Belle Michaux, who had a total of 13 children. In his later years, Micheaux added an "e" to his last name. His father was born a slave in Kentucky. Because of his surname, his father's family appears to have been enslaved by French-descended settlers. French Huguenot refugees had settled in Virginia in 1700; their descendants took slaves west when they migrated into Kentucky after the American Revolutionary War.
Go to Profile#9634
Helen Gardner
1908 - 1986 (78 years)
Dame Helen Louise Gardner, was an English literary critic and academic. Gardner began her teaching career at the University of Birmingham, and from 1966 to 1975 was a Merton Professor of English Literature, the first woman to have that position. She was best known for her work on the poets John Donne and T. S. Eliot, but also published on John Milton and William Shakespeare. She published over a dozen books, and received multiple honours.
Go to Profile#9635
Atsushi Nakajima
1909 - 1942 (33 years)
Atsushi Nakajima was a Japanese author known for his unique style and self-introspective themes. His major works include "The Moon Over the Mountain" and "Light, Wind and Dreams" with the former being published in many Japanese textbooks.
Go to Profile#9636
André Chénier
1762 - 1794 (32 years)
André Marie Chénier was a French poet of Greek and Franco-Levantine origin, associated with the events of the French Revolution of which he was a victim. His sensual, emotive poetry marks him as one of the precursors of the Romantic movement. His career was brought to an abrupt end when he was guillotined for supposed "crimes against the state", just three days before the end of the Reign of Terror. Chénier's life has been the subject of Umberto Giordano's opera Andrea Chénier and other works of art.
Go to Profile#9637
Richard Livingstone
1880 - 1960 (80 years)
Sir Richard Winn Livingstone was a British classical scholar, educationist, and academic administrator. He promoted the classical liberal arts. Life Livingstone was born on 23 January 1880 in Liverpool. His father was an Anglican vicar; his mother the daughter of an Irish baron. He was educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford. He remained at the University of Oxford until 1924 as fellow, tutor, and librarian at Corpus Christi College. In 1920, he served on the Prime Minister's committee on the classics. During 1920–22, he was co-editor of the Classical Review.
Go to Profile#9638
Andreas Heusler
1865 - 1940 (75 years)
Andreas Heusler was a Swiss philologist who specialized in Germanic studies. He was a Professor of Germanic Philology at the University of Berlin and a renowned authority on early Germanic literature.
Go to Profile#9639
Mokichi Saitō
1882 - 1953 (71 years)
Mokichi Saitō was a Japanese poet of the Taishō period, a member of the Araragi school of tanka, and a psychiatrist. Mokichi was born in the village of Kanakame, now part of Kaminoyama, Yamagata in 1882. He attended Tokyo Imperial University Medical School and, upon graduation in 1911, joined the staff of Sugamo Hospital where he began his study of psychiatry. He later directed Aoyama Hospital, a psychiatric facility.
Go to Profile#9640
Ovid Densusianu
1873 - 1938 (65 years)
Ovid Densusianu was a Romanian poet, philologist, linguist, folklorist, literary historian and critic, chief of a poetry school, university professor and journalist. He is known for introducing new trends of European modernism into Romanian literature.
Go to Profile#9641
Roger Ascham
1515 - 1568 (53 years)
Roger Ascham was an English scholar and didactic writer, famous for his prose style, his promotion of the vernacular, and his theories of education. He served in the administrations of Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I, having earlier acted as Elizabeth's tutor in Greek and Latin between 1548 and 1550.
Go to Profile#9642
Paul Green
1894 - 1981 (87 years)
Paul Eliot Green was an American playwright whose work includes historical dramas of life in North Carolina during the first decades of the twentieth century. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his 1927 play, In Abraham's Bosom, which was included in Burns Mantle's The Best Plays of 1926-1927.
Go to Profile#9643
George Ticknor
1791 - 1871 (80 years)
George Ticknor was an American academician and Hispanist, specializing in the subject areas of languages and literature. He is known for his scholarly work on the history and criticism of Spanish literature.
Go to Profile#9644
George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham
1628 - 1687 (59 years)
George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, 20th Baron de Ros, was an English statesman and poet who exerted considerable political power during the reign of Charles II of England. A Royalist during the English Civil War, in 1651 he joined Charles II's court-in-exile in France. He returned to England in 1657 after a disagreement with the king, but subsequently supported the Stuart Restoration in 1660. Buckingham was imprisoned by Charles on several occasions before rising to be one of his most influential advisors, becoming a key member of the Cabal ministry in 1668. In 1674 he was dismissed an...
Go to Profile#9645
Wu Cheng'en
1500 - 1582 (82 years)
Wu Cheng'en , courtesy name Ruzhong , was a Chinese novelist, poet, and politician during the Ming dynasty. He is considered by many to be the author of Journey to the West, one of the Classic Chinese Novels.
Go to Profile#9646
Alfred Noyes
1880 - 1958 (78 years)
Alfred Noyes CBE was an English poet, short-story writer and playwright. Early years Noyes was born in Wolverhampton, England the son of Alfred and Amelia Adams Noyes. When he was four, the family moved to Aberystwyth, Wales, where his father taught Latin and Greek. The Welsh coast and mountains were an inspiration to Noyes.
Go to Profile#9647
Arthur Wing Pinero
1855 - 1934 (79 years)
Sir Arthur Wing Pinero was an English playwright and, early in his career, actor. Pinero was drawn to the theatre from an early age, and became a professional actor at the age of 19. He gained experience as a supporting actor in British provincial theatres, and from 1876 to 1881 was a member of Henry Irving's company, based at the Lyceum Theatre, London.
Go to Profile#9648
Johannes Trithemius
1462 - 1516 (54 years)
Johannes Trithemius , born Johann Heidenberg, was a German Benedictine abbot and a polymath who was active in the German Renaissance as a lexicographer, chronicler, cryptographer, and occultist. He is considered the founder of modern cryptography and steganography, as well as the founder of bibliography and literary studies as branches of knowledge. He had considerable influence on the development of early modern and modern occultism. His students included Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus.
Go to Profile#9649
Thomas Otway
1652 - 1685 (33 years)
Thomas Otway was an English dramatist of the Restoration period, best known for Venice Preserv'd, or A Plot Discover'd . Life Otway was born at Trotton near Midhurst, the parish of which his father, Humphrey Otway, was at that time curate. Humphrey later became rector of Woolbeding, a neighbouring parish, where Thomas Otway was brought up and expected to commit to priesthood. He was educated at Winchester College, and in 1669 entered Christ Church, Oxford, as a commoner, but left the university without a degree in the autumn of 1672. At Oxford he made the acquaintance of Anthony Cary, 5th Vis...
Go to Profile#9650
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez
1867 - 1928 (61 years)
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez was a journalist, politician and bestselling Spanish novelist in various genres whose most widespread and lasting fame in the English-speaking world is from Hollywood films that were adapted from his works.
Go to Profile