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,
#9651
Su Xuelin
1897 - 1999 (102 years)
Su Xuelin or Su Hsüeh-lin was a Chinese writer and scholar. Early life Su Xuelin was born to a family of officials native to Anhui province in 1897. Her grandfather, Su Jinxin, served as a magistrate in several counties in Zhejiang province, where Su Xuelin was born. Her mother was surnamed Tu, but had no formal first name, instead going by the nickname To-Ni. Su's father held a minor official position, first under the Qing dynasty and then the Republic of China. Su had three brothers and two sisters.
Go to Profile#9652
Okot p'Bitek
1931 - 1982 (51 years)
Okot p'Bitek was a Ugandan poet, who achieved wide international recognition for Song of Lawino, a long poem dealing with the tribulations of a rural African wife whose husband has taken up urban life and wishes everything to be westernised. Song of Lawino was originally written in the Acholi dialect of Southern Luo, translated by the author into English, and published in 1966. It was a breakthrough work, creating an audience among anglophone Africans for direct, topical poetry in English; and incorporating traditional attitudes and thinking in an accessible yet faithful literary vehicle. It ...
Go to Profile#9653
Joseph Paul Gaimard
1793 - 1858 (65 years)
Joseph Paul Gaimard was a French naval surgeon and naturalist. Biography Gaimard was born at Saint-Zacharie on January 31, 1793. He studied medicine at the naval medical school in Toulon, subsequently earning his qualifications as a naval surgeon. Along with Jean René Constant Quoy, he served as naturalist on the ships L'Uranie under Louis de Freycinet 1817–1820, and L'Astrolabe under Jules Dumont d'Urville 1826–1829. During this voyage they discovered the now extinct giant skink of Tonga, Tachygia microlepis.
Go to Profile#9654
William Warde Fowler
1847 - 1921 (74 years)
William Warde Fowler was an English historian and ornithologist, and tutor at Lincoln College, Oxford. He was best known for his works on ancient Roman religion. Among his most influential works was Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic . H. H. Scullard, in the introduction to his 1981 book on a similar topic, singled out Fowler's book as a particularly valuable resource despite its age, writing, "I have not been so presumptuous as to attempt to provide an alternative."
Go to Profile#9655
May Hill Arbuthnot
1884 - 1969 (85 years)
May Hill Arbuthnot was an American educator, editor, writer, and critic who devoted her career to the awareness and importance of children's literature. Her efforts expanded and enriched the selection of books for children, libraries, and children's librarians alike. She was selected for American Libraries article “100 Most Important Leaders we had for the 20th Century”.
Go to Profile#9656
Nariman Narimanov
1870 - 1925 (55 years)
Nariman Karbalayi Najaf oghlu Narimanov was an Azerbaijani Bolshevik revolutionary, writer, publicist, politician and statesman. For just over one year beginning in May 1920, Narimanov headed the government of Soviet Azerbaijan. He was subsequently elected chairman of the Union Council of the Transcaucasian SFSR. He was also Party Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union from 30 December 1922 until the day of his death.
Go to Profile#9657
Helen Adolf
1895 - 1998 (103 years)
Helen Adolf was an Austrian–American linguist and literature scholar. Early life and education Helen Adolf was born in 1895 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. Her family was Jewish. Her mother, Hedwig Adolf, was an artist, while her father, Jakob Adolf, was a lawyer. Adolf had one older sister, Anna Adolf Spiegel. She was a first cousin of writer Leonie Adele Spitzer.
Go to Profile#9658
Hermann Sauppe
1809 - 1893 (84 years)
Hermann Sauppe was a German classical philologist and epigraphist born in Weesenstein, near Dresden. In 1832 he earned his doctorate from the University of Leipzig, where he was a student of Gottfried Hermann , who was a profound influence to Sauppe's career. Beginning in 1833, he taught classes at a secondary school in Zurich, where in 1838 he became an associate professor at the university. In 1837 he was appointed chief librarian at the cantonal library at Zurich.
Go to Profile#9659
John Latham
1740 - 1837 (97 years)
John Latham was an English physician, naturalist and author. His main works were A General Synopsis of Birds and General History of Birds . He was able to examine specimens of Australian birds which reached England in the last twenty years of the 18th century, and was responsible for providing English names for many of them. He named some of Australia's most famous birds, including the emu, sulphur-crested cockatoo, wedge-tailed eagle, superb lyrebird, Australian magpie, magpie-lark and pheasant coucal. He was also the first to describe the hyacinth macaw. Latham has been called the "grandfa...
Go to Profile#9660
Robert Hayden
1913 - 1980 (67 years)
Robert Hayden was an American poet, essayist, and educator. He served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1976 to 1978, a role today known as US Poet Laureate. He was the first African American writer to hold the office.
Go to Profile#9661
Albert Schultens
1686 - 1750 (64 years)
Albert Schultens was a Dutch philologist. Biography He was born at Groningen, where he studied for the church. He went on to the University of Leiden, applying himself specially to Hebrew and the cognate tongues. His thesis Dissertatio theologico-philologica de utilitate linguae Arabicae in interpretenda sacra lingua appeared in 1706. After a visit to Reland in Utrecht, he returned to Groningen ; then, having taken his degree in theology , he returned to Leiden, and devoted himself to the study of the manuscript collections there until 1711, when he became pastor at Wassenaer.
Go to Profile#9662
Thomas Southerne
1660 - 1746 (86 years)
Thomas Southerne was an Irish dramatist. Biography Thomas Southerne, born on 12 February 1660, in Oxmantown, near Dublin, was an Irish dramatist. He was the son of Francis Southerne and Margaret Southerne.
Go to Profile#9663
Adrian Ross
1859 - 1933 (74 years)
Arthur Reed Ropes , better known under the pseudonym Adrian Ross, was a prolific writer of lyrics, contributing songs to more than sixty British musical comedies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was the most important lyricist of the British stage during a career that spanned five decades. At a time when few shows had long runs, nineteen of his West End shows ran for over 400 performances.
Go to Profile#9664
Francisco Monterde
1894 - 1985 (91 years)
Francisco de Asís Monterde García Icazbalceta was a prolific and multifaceted Mexican writer whose career spanned over fifty years. He was an important promoter of the arts and culture in Mexico in the years following the Revolution.
Go to Profile#9665
Dorothy M. Johnson
1905 - 1984 (79 years)
Dorothy Marie Johnson was an American writer best known for her Western fiction. Biography Early life Dorothy Marie Johnson was born in McGregor, Iowa, the only daughter of Lester Eugene Johnson and Mary Louisa Barlow. Soon after her birth, the family moved to Montana.
Go to Profile#9666
Milan Bogdanović
1892 - 1964 (72 years)
Milan Bogdanović was a Serbian writer and literary critic. Biography He finished elementary school and gymnasium in Pozarevac where his father was the then administrator of the royal estate Ljubičevo . He was a volunteer in Serbian Army during the Balkan Wars in 1912-1913. He was wounded during the First World War and he subsequently received the Medal of Miloš Obilić.
Go to Profile#9667
Gustav Roethe
1859 - 1926 (67 years)
Gustav Roethe was a German philologist. Life Roethe studied classical and Germanic philology in Göttingen, Leipzig and Berlin, obtaining his PhD in 1881 . In 1888 he succeeded Karl Goedeke as an associate professor of German philology at the University of Göttingen, and two years later, succeeded Wilhelm Konrad Hermann Müller as a full professor of German language and literature. In 1902 he relocated to the University of Berlin, where in 1923/24 he served as rector.
Go to Profile#9668
Jules Perrot
1810 - 1892 (82 years)
Jules-Joseph Perrot was a dancer and choreographer who later became Ballet Master of the Imperial Ballet in St. Petersburg, Russia. He created some of the most famous ballets of the 19th century including Pas de Quatre, La Esmeralda, Ondine, and Giselle with Jean Coralli.
Go to Profile#9669
Francisco Pérez Bayer
1711 - 1794 (83 years)
Francisco Pérez Bayer was a Spanish philologist, jurist and writer. Works Catalog of the Royal Library of El Escorial. Damaiuis et Laurentius Hispani, Rome, 1756.Alphabet and language of the Phoenicians and their colonies, 1772.Travel literature. Valencia: Institution Alfonso the Magnanimous, 1998.Etymology of the Spanish language.Archeological journey from Valencia to Andalusia and Portugal.De Numis Hebraeo-Samaritanis, 1781From Temple Hebraeorum ToletanoInstitutions of the Hebrew language.Origin of Spanish voices derived from Hebrew.
Go to Profile#9670
Robert Lowth
1710 - 1787 (77 years)
Robert Lowth was a Bishop of the Church of England, Oxford Professor of Poetry and the author of one of the most influential textbooks of English grammar. Life Lowth was born in Hampshire, England, Great Britain, the son of Dr William Lowth, a clergyman and Biblical commentator. He was educated at Winchester College and became a scholar of New College, Oxford in 1729. Lowth obtained his BA in 1733 and his Master of Arts degree in 1737. In 1735, while still at Oxford, Lowth took orders in the Anglican Church and was appointed vicar of Ovington, Hampshire, a position he retained until 1741, w...
Go to Profile#9671
Sudhindranath Dutta
1901 - 1960 (59 years)
Sudhindranath Dutta was an Indian poet, essayist, journalist and critic. Sudhindranath is one of the most notable poets after the Tagore-era in Bengali literature. Education Sudhindranath Dutt went to the Theosophical High School in Varanasi between 1914 and 1917, and later attended the Oriental Seminary in Kolkata. Later he graduated from the Scottish Church College. He later studied law at the Law College , while also simultaneously preparing for his finals for an MA in English literature from the University of Calcutta. However, he did not complete a degree in either subject.
Go to Profile#9672
Chiang Yee
1903 - 1977 (74 years)
Chiang Yee , self-styled as "The Silent Traveller" , was a Chinese poet, author, painter and calligrapher. The success of The Silent Traveller: A Chinese Artist in Lakeland was followed by a series of books in the same vein, all of which he illustrated himself.
Go to Profile#9673
Heinrich Keil
1822 - 1894 (72 years)
Theodor Heinrich Gottfried Keil was a German classical philologist. He was a son-in-law to educator Friedrich August Eckstein . He studied classical philology at the Universities of Göttingen and Bonn, receiving his doctorate in 1843 with a textual critique on the Roman poet Propertius. From 1844 to 1846 he conducted manuscript studies at libraries in Italy. After his return to Germany, he became an instructor at the Francke Foundation Pädagogium in Halle an der Saale.
Go to Profile#9674
Ants Oras
1900 - 1982 (82 years)
Ants Oras was an Estonian translator and writer. Oras was born in Tallinn and studied at the University of Tartu, graduating with a Master of Philosophy degree in 1923. He also obtained a Bachelor of Literature degree from Oxford University.
Go to Profile#9675
Yoshirō Nagayo
1888 - 1961 (73 years)
Yoshirō Nagayo was a novelist and playwright active during the Shōwa period in Japan. Biography Nagayo was born in Tokyo, the fifth son of the famous doctor, Nagayo Sensai. He attended the Gakushūin Peers' School, and went on to graduate from Tokyo Imperial University. Through his school connections, he made the acquaintance of Mushanokoji Saneatsu and Shiga Naoya, and he contributed works to the Shirakaba literary journal. He is considered a typical spokesman for the humanistic philosophy of the Shirakaba school.
Go to Profile#9676
W. P. Ker
1855 - 1923 (68 years)
William Paton Ker, FBA , was a Scottish literary scholar and essayist. Life Born in Glasgow in 1855, Ker studied at Glasgow Academy, the University of Glasgow, and Balliol College, Oxford. He was appointed to a fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford, in 1879. He became Professor of English Literature and History at the University College of South Wales, Cardiff, in 1883, and moved to University College London as Quain Professor in 1889. However he retained his links with Oxford and was there almost every week during the 1910s, and available to keen students there. He was later the Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1920 to his death, at 67, of a heart attack while climbing the Pizzo Bianco .
Go to Profile#9677
A. N. Murthy Rao
1900 - 2003 (103 years)
Akkihebbalu Narasimha Murthy Rao was an Indian writer. He wrote in Kannada. Biography Kannadiga scholar and critic A. N. Murthy Rao, popularly known for his book "Devaru", was born on June 18, 1900, in Akkihebbal, Mandya district. He was born to M. Subbarao and Puttamma. He spent his childhood in Melukote and Nagamangala. After completing his early education at Wesley Mission School in Mysore in 1913, he joined Mysore Maharaja's College. He completed his B.A. in 1922 and M.A. in 1924.
Go to Profile#9678
Ton Satomi
1888 - 1983 (95 years)
is the pen-name of Japanese author Hideo Yamanouchi. Satomi was known for the craftsmanship of his dialogue and command of the Japanese language. His two elder brothers, Ikuma Arishima and Takeo Arishima, were also authors.
Go to Profile#9679
Joseph Ritson
1752 - 1803 (51 years)
Joseph Ritson was an English antiquary who is well known for editing the first scholarly collection of Robin Hood ballads . After a visit to France in 1791, he became a staunch supporter of the ideals of the French Revolution. He was also an influential vegetarianism activist. He is also known for his collections of English nursery rhymes, such as "Roses Are Red" and "Little Bo-Peep", in Gammer Gurton's Garland or The Nursery Parnassus, published in London by Joseph Johnson.
Go to Profile#9680
Martin Schanz
1842 - 1914 (72 years)
Martin Schanz was a German classicist and Plato scholar. He was a Dozent and Professor at the University of Würzburg from 1867 to 1912, and is especially known for his history of Roman literature and his ground-breaking, critical edition of Plato's dialogues.
Go to Profile#9681
John Home
1722 - 1808 (86 years)
Rev John Home was a Scottish minister, soldier and author. His play Douglas was a standard Scottish school text until the Second World War, but his work is now largely neglected. In 1783, he was one of the joint founders of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Go to Profile#9682
Theodore Prodromos
1115 - 1160 (45 years)
Theodore Prodromos or Prodromus , probably also the same person as the so-called Ptochoprodromos , was a Byzantine Greek writer, well known for his prose and poetry. Biography Very little is known about his life. Further developing a genre begun by Nicholas Kallikles, he wrote many occasional poems for a widespread circle of patrons at the Byzantine court. Some of the literary pieces attributed to him are unpublished, while still others may be wrongly attributed to him. Even so, there does emerge from these writings the figure of an author in reduced circumstances, with a marked inclination to...
Go to Profile#9683
William Rowley
1585 - 1626 (41 years)
William Rowley was an English Jacobean dramatist, best known for works written in collaboration with more successful writers. His date of birth is estimated to have been c. 1585; he was buried on 11 February 1626 in the graveyard of St James's, Clerkenwell in north London.
Go to Profile#9684
Henry Arthur Jones
1851 - 1929 (78 years)
Henry Arthur Jones was an English dramatist, who was first noted for his melodrama The Silver King , and went on to write prolifically, often appearing to mirror Ibsen from the opposite viewpoint. As a right-winger, he engaged in extensive debates with left-wing writers such as George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells.
Go to Profile#9685
Charles Mackay
1814 - 1889 (75 years)
Charles Mackay was a Scottish poet, journalist, author, anthologist, novelist, and songwriter, remembered mainly for his book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Early life Charles Mackay was born in Perth. His father, George Mackay, was a bombardier in the Royal Artillery, and his mother Amelia Cargill died shortly after his birth.
Go to Profile#9686
Manuel Milà i Fontanals
1818 - 1884 (66 years)
Manuel Milà i Fontanals was a Spanish scholar. He was born at Vilafranca del Penedès, near Barcelona, and was educated first in Barcelona, and afterwards at the University of Cervera. In 1845, he became professor of literature at the University of Barcelona, and held this post until his death at Vilafranca del Penedès on the July 16, 1884. The type of the scholarly recluse, Milà i Fontanals was almost unknown outside the walls of the university until 1859, when he was appointed president of the jocs florals at Barcelona.
Go to Profile#9687
Ellen Glasgow
1873 - 1945 (72 years)
Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow was an American novelist who won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1942 for her novel In This Our Life. She published 20 novels, as well as short stories, to critical acclaim. A lifelong Virginian, Glasgow portrayed the changing world of the contemporary South in a realistic manner, differing from the idealistic escapism that characterized Southern literature after Reconstruction.
Go to Profile#9688
Johannes Vahlen
1830 - 1911 (81 years)
Johannes Vahlen was a German classical philologist. He was the father of mathematician Theodor Vahlen . In 1852 he graduated at the University of Bonn, where he studied classical philology. In 1856 he became an associate professor at the University of Breslau, and in 1858 a full professor at the University of Freiburg. Shortly afterwards, he relocated to Vienna, and in 1862 became a member of the Vienna Academy of Sciences. From 1874 onward, he taught classes as a professor of classical philology at the University of Berlin. He was a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#9689
Arsène Darmesteter
1846 - 1888 (42 years)
Arsène Darmesteter was a distinguished French philologist and man of letters. Biography He studied under Gaston Paris at the École pratique des hautes études, and became professor of Old French language and literature at the Sorbonne, where he met his wife, the painter Héléna Hartog. His Life of Words appeared in English in 1888. He also collaborated with Adolphe Hatzfeld in a Dictionnaire général de la langue française . Among his most important work was the elucidation of Old French by means of the many glosseses in the medieval writings of Rashi and other French Jews.
Go to Profile#9690
Marc Monnier
1827 - 1885 (58 years)
Marc Monnier was a Swiss writer. Life Monnier was born at Florence. His father was French, and his mother a Genevese; he received his early education in Naples, he then studied in Paris and Geneva, and he completed his education at Heidelberg and Berlin. He became professor of comparative literature at Geneva, and eventually vice-rector of the university. He died at Geneva on April 18, 1885.
Go to Profile#9691
Liviu Rebreanu
1885 - 1944 (59 years)
Liviu Rebreanu was a Romanian novelist, playwright, short story writer, and journalist. Life Born in Felsőilosva , then part of the Kingdom of Hungary, Austria-Hungary, he was the second of thirteen children born to Vasile Rebreanu, a schoolteacher, and Ludovica Diuganu, descendants of peasants. His father had been a classmate of George Coșbuc's and was an amateur folklorist. Liviu Rebreanu went to primary school in Major , where he was taught by his father, and then in Naszód and Beszterce , to military school at Sopron and then to the Ludovica Military Academy in Budapest. He worked as an ...
Go to Profile#9692
Thomas Moore
1779 - 1852 (73 years)
Thomas Moore , also known as Tom Moore, was an Irish writer, poet, and lyricist celebrated for his Irish Melodies. His setting of English-language verse to old Irish tunes marked the transition in popular Irish culture from Irish to English. Politically, Moore was recognised in England as a press, or "squib", writer for the aristocratic Whigs; in Ireland he was accounted a Catholic patriot.
Go to Profile#9693
Isaac Rosenberg
1890 - 1918 (28 years)
Isaac Rosenberg was an English poet and artist. His Poems from the Trenches are recognized as some of the most outstanding poetry written during the First World War. Early life Isaac Rosenberg was born in Bristol on 25 November 1890 at 5 Adelaide Place near St. Mary Redcliffe. He was the second of six children and the eldest son of his parents, Barnett and Hacha Rosenberg, who were Lithuanian Jewish immigrants to Britain from Dvinsk . In 1897, the family moved to Stepney, a poor district of the East End of London, and one with a large Jewish community. Isaac Rosenberg attended St. Paul's Primary School at Wellclose Square, St George in the East parish.
Go to Profile#9694
Antonin Artaud
1896 - 1948 (52 years)
Antoine Marie Joseph Paul Artaud, better known as Antonin Artaud , was a French writer, poet, dramatist, visual artist, essayist, actor and theatre director. He is widely recognized as a major figure of the European avant-garde. In particular, he had a profound influence on twentieth-century theatre through his conceptualization of the Theatre of Cruelty. Known for his raw, surreal and transgressive work, his texts explored themes from the cosmologies of ancient cultures, philosophy, the occult, mysticism and indigenous Mexican and Balinese practices.
Go to Profile#9695
Masamune Atsuo
1881 - 1958 (77 years)
Masamune Atsuo was a researcher of Japanese literature and a poet. Biography Masamune Atsuo was born in Wake District Honami , Okayama Prefecture, he was the younger brother of novelist and literary critic Masamune Hakuchō. While his brother moved to Tokyo to work, Atsuo remained home and ran the family business. He studied waka under the guidance of Inoue Michiyasu, and was friends with Shimaki Akahiko and Saitō Mokichi. In addition to work, he wrote waka and researched Japanese literature. Due to his achievements, in 1952 he became a professor at Notre Dame Seishin University in Okayama.
Go to Profile#9696
Justus Lipsius
1547 - 1606 (59 years)
Justus Lipsius was a Flemish Catholic philologist, philosopher, and humanist. Lipsius wrote a series of works designed to revive ancient Stoicism in a form that would be compatible with Christianity. The most famous of these is De Constantia . His form of Stoicism influenced a number of contemporary thinkers, creating the intellectual movement of Neostoicism. He taught at the universities in Jena, Leiden, and Leuven.
Go to Profile#9697
John Trumbull
1750 - 1831 (81 years)
John Trumbull was an American poet. Biography Trumbull was born in what is now Watertown, Connecticut, where his father was a Congregational preacher. At the age of seven he passed his entrance examinations at Yale University, but did not enter until 1763; he graduated in 1767, studied law there, and in 1771–1773 was a tutor .
Go to Profile#9698
Adelaide Crapsey
1878 - 1914 (36 years)
Adelaide Crapsey was an American poet. She was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Rochester, New York. Her parents were the businesswoman Adelaide T. Crapsey and the Episcopal priest Algernon Sidney Crapsey, who moved from New York City to Rochester.
Go to Profile#9699
Charles Williams
1886 - 1945 (59 years)
Charles Walter Stansby Williams was a British poet, novelist, playwright, theologian and literary critic. Most of his life was spent in London, where he was born, but in 1939 he moved to Oxford with the university press for which he worked and was buried there following his early death.
Go to Profile#9700
Johan Ihre
1707 - 1780 (73 years)
Johan Ihre was a Swedish philologist and historical linguist. Life Ihre was born in Lund, son of the theologian Thomas Ihre and his spouse Brita Steuchia. After his father's death in 1720, Johan Ihre was raised in the house of his grandfather Archbishop Mattias Stechius in Uppsala, and studied at Uppsala University, where he completed his magister degree in 1730. In 1730-1733 he studied abroad, in Oxford, London and Paris. He was in 1734 appointed docent in Uppsala, 1735 librarian at the University Library, and was from 1737 until his death holder of the Skyttean professorship in Eloquence and Government.
Go to Profile