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.
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List of the most influential people in Literature,
#9751
D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson
1829 - 1902 (73 years)
D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson was an English scholar, from 1863 Professor of Greek at Queen's College, Galway. Life D'Arcy was the elder son of John Skelton Thompson, shipmaster, and his wife Mary Mitchell, both of Maryport, Cumberland; it was a seafaring family, and he was born at sea on board his father's barque Georgiana, off Van Diemen's Land, on 18 April 1829. After twelve years at Christ's Hospital, London, he matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, Michaelmas 1848, later migrating to Pembroke College. At Cambridge his main tutors were Augustus Arthur Vansittart and with Joseph Barber Lightfoot, both of Trinity; his closest friends were James Lempriere Hammond and Peter Guthrie Tait.
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Katharine Lambert Richards Rockwell
1891 - 1972 (81 years)
Katharine Lambert Richards Rockwell was an American theologian, writer, and professor. Rockwell served as national secretary for the YWCA and as a member of their Board of Trustees for two terms. She also chaired the YWCA's Department of Religious Education.
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Branca Edmée Marques
1899 - 1986 (87 years)
Branca Edmée Marques de Sousa Torres was a leading Portuguese specialist in the peaceful applications of nuclear technology who obtained a doctorate in Paris under the guidance of Marie Curie. Returning to Lisbon she founded the Radiochemistry Laboratory, where she continued her research for three decades.
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Trygve Heltveit
1913 - 1985 (72 years)
Harald Trygve Heltveit was a Norwegian philologist. He was born in Balestrand as a son of teacher Olav Heltveit and Petra Sættevik . In 1943 he married Erna Røisum. He became a student in 1936 and graduated with the cand.philol. degree from the University of Oslo in 1942. He was hired as a school teacher at Vestheim School in 1943 and Sinsen School in 1952, but received a research fellowship in 1947 and took the dr.philos. degree in 1954 with the thesis Studies in English Demonstrative Pronouns. He was hired as a lecturer in 1954, was promoted to docent in 1962 and professor in 1970. His field was English philology.
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Harry Ruby
1895 - 1974 (79 years)
Harry Rubenstein , known professionally as Harry Ruby, was an American actor, pianist, composer, songwriter and screenwriter, who was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. He was married to silent film actress Eileen Percy.
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Inna Meiman-Kitrossky
1932 - 1987 (55 years)
Inna Ilyinichna Meiman-Kitrossky was a refusenik, a member of a group of refuseniks-cancer patients, and an author of textbooks for the English language. Life Inna Meiman was born as Ina Fuxson in a Jewish family in Moscow, and graduated from Moscow State Linguistic University, where she worked for many years teaching English. This experience resulted in being awarded a Ph.D. and also in two textbooks: , , which was in usage in several Russian Universities. Meiman also translated from English to Russian and vice versa. She was married for several years and had a son.
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Judy Holliday
1921 - 1965 (44 years)
Judy Holliday was an American actress, comedian and singer. She began her career as part of a nightclub act before working in Broadway plays and musicals. Her success as Billie Dawn in the 1946 stage production of Born Yesterday led to her being cast in the 1950 film version for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. She was known for her performance on Broadway in the musical Bells Are Ringing, winning a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical and reprising her role in the 1960 fi...
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Raïssa Maritain
1883 - 1960 (77 years)
Raïssa Maritain was a French poet and philosopher. She was the wife of Jacques Maritain, with whom she worked and whose companion she was for more than half a century, at the center of a circle of French Catholic intellectuals. Her memoir, Les Grandes Amitiés, which won the prix du Renouveau français, chronicles this. Jacques Maritain, Raïssa and her sister Vera formed what would be called "the three Maritains".
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William Jane
1645 - 1707 (62 years)
William Jane was an English academic and clergyman, Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford from 1680. Life The son of Joseph Jane, he was born at Liskeard, Cornwall, where he was baptised on 22 October 1645. He was educated at Westminster School, elected student of Christ Church, Oxford, in 1660, and graduated B.A. in June 1664, M.A. in 1667, and D.D. in November 1674. After his ordination he was appointed lecturer at Carfax Church, Oxford.
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Arthur Ripley
1897 - 1961 (64 years)
Arthur DeWitt Ripley was an American film screenwriter, editor, producer, and director. Biography In 1923, he joined the Mack Sennett studio as a comedy writer. In the 1920s, he worked closely with Frank Capra churning out screenplays for many movies. After breaking with Capra and the Sennett studio, Ripley again returned to being a gag-writer, screenwriter, and occasional director, making short films with such comedians as W. C. Fields and Edgar Kennedy. His directorial work in the 1940s, Voice in the Wind and The Chase , were both critical successes, but neither film was a box office hit.
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Edgar McInnis
1899 - 1973 (74 years)
Edgar Wardell McInnis was a Canadian poet and historian, best known for his Oxford Periodical History of the War, a six-volume year-by-year history of World War II, and for Canada: A Political and Social History, which was an important and influential textbook in Canadian history classes in its era. A longtime professor at the University of Toronto and York University, he was a two-time winner of the Governor General's Award for English-language non-fiction, winning for The Unguarded Frontier: A History of American-Canadian Relations at the 1942 Governor General's Awards and for The War: Four...
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Georg Ludwig Walch
1785 - 1838 (53 years)
Georg Ludwig Walch was a German classical philologist largely known for his edition and analysis of works by the Roman historian Tacitus. He was the grandson of theologian Johann Georg Walch . Beginning in 1805, he studied at the University of Jena, where he subsequently worked as a librarian. In 1808 he obtained his habilitation at Jena. Since 1811 he served as an instructor of Latin and Greek languages at the Grauen Kloster in Berlin. In 1830 he succeeded Christian Wilhelm Ahlwardt as a professor of ancient languages at the University of Greifswald.
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Thomas Fowler
1832 - 1904 (72 years)
Thomas Fowler was an English academic and academic administrator, acting as President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford. Early life Fowler was born 1832 in Burton upon Stather, Lincolnshire, son of William Henry Fowler and his wife, Mary Anne Welch. He was educated at King William's College on the Isle of Man, and obtained a Postmastership at Merton College, Oxford. In 1852, he took a second class in Classical moderations and a first class in mathematics, but he bettered that position in the final schools by taking a first class in classics f...
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William Wordsworth
1908 - 1988 (80 years)
William Brocklesby Wordsworth was an English composer. His works, which number over 100, were tonal and romantic in style in the widest sense and include eight symphonies and six string quartets. Life Wordsworth was born in London, the son of a clergyman and a descendant of the poet Wordsworth's brother. He studied harmony and counterpoint under George Oldroyd at St Michael's Church, Croydon from 1921 to 1931, continuing his study with Donald Tovey at Edinburgh University from 1934 to 1936. In anticipation of conscientious objection, he was an active member of the Peace Pledge Union, and vol...
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Pier Jacopo Martello
1665 - 1727 (62 years)
Pier or Pietro Jacopo Martello was an Italian poet, playwright and dramatic theorist. Biography Martello enjoyed a thorough education in grammar and rhetoric under the Jesuits; later he studied theology and law at the University of Bologna; he also read Greek, Latin and French dramas. Under the pastoral name of Mirtilo Dianidio, Martello helped to establish the Arcadian "colony" in his native city of Bologna in 1698. A member of the Bolognese legation in Rome from 1708 to 1716, he was Secretary of the Bolognese Senate from 1717 until his death in 1727.
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John Galt
1779 - 1839 (60 years)
John Galt was a Scottish novelist, entrepreneur, and political and social commentator. Galt has been called the first political novelist in the English language, due to being the first novelist to deal with issues of the Industrial Revolution.
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Aristides Phoutrides
1887 - 1923 (36 years)
Aristides Evangelus Phoutrides was an Ottoman Greek and later Greek-American classical philologist and Neo-Hellenist born on 17 April 1887, on the Greek island of Ikaria, then under the Ottoman Empire. He taught at Harvard, Yale and the University of Athens.
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George Martin Lane
1823 - 1897 (74 years)
George Martin Lane was an American scholar. Life and career Lane was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts. He graduated in 1846 from Harvard, and from 1847 to 1851 studied at the universities of Berlin, Bonn, Heidelberg, and Göttingen. In 1851, he received his doctorate at Göttingen for his dissertation Smyrnaeorum Res Gestae et Antiquitates and upon returning to America was appointed university professor of Latin at Harvard College.
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Frank Justus Miller
1858 - 1938 (80 years)
Frank Justus Miller was a leading American classicist, translator, and university administrator in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He authored the Loeb Classical Library translations of Seneca and of Ovid's Metamorphoses, and was president of the American Classical League for more than a decade, from 1922 to 1934.
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Mariano Velazquez de la Cadena
1778 - 1860 (82 years)
Mariano Velázquez , was a Mexican accomplished grammarian, scholar, and author in the 19th century. He was appointed Professor of Spanish Language and Literature at Columbia College in 1830, a position that he held until his death in 1861.
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James Chidester Egbert Jr.
1859 - 1948 (89 years)
James Chidester Egbert Jr., Ph. D. was an American classical scholar and educator. He was born in New York City. He graduated at Columbia University in 1881, and took a doctorate there in 1884. He then became a professor of Classical studies and was dean of the School of Business there from 1916 to 1932. In 1911 he became active in the American Academy in Rome, serving on various committees and becoming vice president from 1940-1944.
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Heinrich Bebel
1472 - 1518 (46 years)
Heinrich Bebel was a German humanist. Biography He was an alumnus of Kraków and Basel universities, and from 1497 professor of poetry and rhetoric at the University of Tübingen. His fame rests principally on his Facetiae , a curious collection of bits of homely and rather coarse-grained humor and anecdote, directed mainly against the clergy; on Proverbia Germanica ; and on his Triumph of Venus, a keen satire on the depravity of his time. He was a friend of Erasmus.
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Eric Taylor
1897 - 1952 (55 years)
Eric Taylor was an American screenwriter with over fifty titles to his credit. He began writing crime fiction for the pulps before working in Hollywood. He contributed scripts to The Crime Club, Crime Doctor, Dick Tracy, Ellery Queen, and The Whistler series, as well as six Universal monster movies.
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William Crawford Williamson
1816 - 1895 (79 years)
William Crawford Williamson was an English Naturalist and Palaeobotanist. Early life Williamson was born at Scarborough, North Yorkshire, the son of John Williamson, and Elizabeth Crawford. His father, after beginning life as a gardener, became a well-known local naturalist, who, in conjunction with William Bean, first explored the rich fossiliferous beds of the Yorkshire coast. He was for many years first curator of the Scarborough natural history museum . William Smith, the "father of English geology," lived for two years in the Williamsons' house. Young Williamson's maternal grandfather w...
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James Duncan
1804 - 1861 (57 years)
James Duncan was a Scottish naturalist. After his education in Edinburgh, he followed the family tradition to work in the Scottish church. He however retired and worked with publishing firms, and among other works helping produce an index of Encyclopaedia Britannica.
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Johann Ernst Hebenstreit
1703 - 1757 (54 years)
Johann Ernst Hebenstreit was a German physician and naturalist born in Neustadt an der Orla. He was a student at the University of Leipzig, where in 1728 he earned his philosophy degree, and one year later obtaining his medical doctorate with the dissertation "De viribus minerarum et Mineralium medicamentosis". In 1731, he became a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.
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Alfred Philpott
1870 - 1930 (60 years)
Alfred Philpott was a New Zealand museum curator, entomologist and writer. He was born in Tysoe, Warwickshire, England, on 15 December 1870. He became the first person to describe Zelleria maculata in 1930.
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Robert Thomas
1927 - 1989 (62 years)
Robert Thomas was a French writer, actor and film director. As a writer, almost from the beginning, he was fascinated by a curious genre that he helped invent: the comédie policière or comedy thriller, of which Eight Women is an example. In 1960, Thomas had a hit with Trap for a Lonely Man, a humorous murder mystery which was an overnight success in Paris. Alfred Hitchcock bought the rights and the play established Thomas as a writer of psychological crime dramas with a distinctively Gallic comic twist. The following year the second outing of Eight Women was far more successful as it won the ...
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Ernest Gottlieb Sihler
1853 - 1942 (89 years)
Ernest Gottlieb Sihler was a professor of classics at New York University. Born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, he was the son of Lutheran missionary Wilhelm Sihler and great-uncle to Andrew Sihler. Sihler's professional name was Ernest G. Sihler, but within the Sihler family he was always known as Gottlieb.
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Thomas Ward
1652 - 1708 (56 years)
Thomas Ward was an English author who converted to Catholicism. Biography Ward was born at Danby Castle near Guisborough in the North Riding of Yorkshire, just south of the River Tees, in 1652, as the son of a farmer and educated as a Presbyterian at Pickering School. Henry Wharton asserted that he had been a Cambridge scholar, but this is not certain.
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Fotios Malleros
1914 - 1986 (72 years)
Fotios Malleros Kasimatis was a Greek historian, philologist and scholar specialist in Byzantinology. His academic career was mainly developed in Chile. Biography He studied at University of Athens, graduating there as a philologist and historian. Juan Gómez Millas, a Chilean politician then Universidad de Chile Faculty of Philosophy and Letters Dean, arrived his country in 1947. Initially he taught there, at the Pedagogical Institute, teaching courses on Greek language, history and literature. Although in Chile there was already, since colonial times, a remarkable academic dedication around ...
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Jean Petit
1360 - 1411 (51 years)
Jean Petit was a French theologian and professor in the University of Paris. He is known for his public defence of a political killing as tyrannicide. Life Some historians say he was a Franciscan, others that he was a Dominican: as a matter of fact, he never was a member of any religious order. He owed his education to the generosity of the Duke of Burgundy, who granted him a pension. In the first extant document that records his name, he is called Master of Arts . Two years later his name occurs in the list sent by the University of Paris to Pope Clement VII, recommending its masters for ...
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William Evans
1883 - 1968 (85 years)
William Evans , better known by his bardic name of Wil Ifan, was a Welsh poet who served as Archdruid of the National Eisteddfod of Wales from 1947 to 1950. He was the son of Dan Evans, a Congregationalist minister, and Mary . He was born in Cwmbach, near Llanwinio, Carmarthenshire, but later moved with his family to Cwmafan and attended grammar school in Port Talbot. He was educated at University of Wales, Bangor, and Mansfield College, Oxford.
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Emily Huntington Miller
1833 - 1913 (80 years)
Emily Clark Huntington Miller was an American author, editor, poet, and educator who co-founded St. Nicholas Magazine, a publication for children. Earlier in her career, she served as the Assistant Editor of The Little Corporal, a children's magazine and Associate Editor of the Ladies' Home Journal. Miller and Jennie Fowler Willing were involved with organizing a convention in Cleveland in 1874, at which the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union was formed. In September 1891, Miller was appointed Dean of Women at Northwestern University in Illinois.
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Al-Sharif al-Jurjani
1340 - 1413 (73 years)
Ali ibn Mohammed al-Jurjani was a Persian encyclopedic writer, scientist, and traditionalist theologian. He is referred to as "al-Sayyid al-Sharif" in sources due to his alleged descent from Ali ibn Abi Taleb. He was born in the village of Ṭāḡu near Astarabad in Gorgan , and became a professor in Shiraz. When this city was plundered by Timur in 1387, he moved to Samarkand, but returned to Shiraz in 1405, and remained there until his death.
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Susan Wood
1948 - 1980 (32 years)
Susan Joan Wood was a Canadian literary critic, professor, author and science fiction fan and editor. She was born in Ottawa, Ontario. Biography Wood discovered science fiction fandom while she was studying at Carleton University in the 1960s. Wood met fellow fan Mike Glicksohn of Toronto at Boskone VI in 1969. Wood and Glicksohn married in 1970 , and they published the fanzine Energumen together until 1973. Energumen won the 1973 Hugo for Best Fanzine. Wood and Glicksohn were co-guests of honor at the 1975 World Science Fiction Convention. Wood published a great deal of trenchant criticism of the field, both in fanzines and in more formal venues.
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Mahdi Amel
1936 - 1987 (51 years)
Hassan Abdullah Hamdan , more commonly known by his pseudonym Mahdi 'Amel , was a Lebanese Marxist philosopher and militant in the second half of the 20th century. 'Amel was a professor of philosophy at the Lebanese University in Beirut, and a prominent member of both the Lebanese Communist Party and the Union of Lebanese Writers. He also contributed to the magazine al-Tariq, the mouthpiece of the Lebanese Communist Party.
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J. S. P. Tatlock
1876 - 1948 (72 years)
John Strong Perry Tatlock , known as J. S. P. Tatlock, was an American literary scholar and medievalist. Biography Tatlock was born in Stamford, Connecticut, in February 1876, the son of Florence and The Rev. William Tatlock. He attended Harvard University, receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1896 and his Ph.D. in 1903. He began his academic career at the University of Michigan . He later joined the faculties of Stanford University , Harvard , and the University of California, Berkeley . He specialized in the literature of medieval Britain, focusing especially on the works of Geoffrey Chaucer and Geoffrey of Monmouth.
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Stephen Gilman
1917 - 1986 (69 years)
Stephen Gilman was an American Hispanist, known for his work on the 15th-century novel La Celestina. Biography Gilman studied at Princeton University under Américo Castro and received his doctorate in 1943 with the work A critical analysis of the "Quijote apocrifo" of Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda . After 2 years of military service, he was a Princeton assistant professor from 1946 to 1948. He went to Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio and was first an associate professor, then a full professor from 1950 to 1956. For the academic year 1950–1951 he was a Guggenheim Fellow. From 1957 until his retirement in 1985, he taught at Harvard University as a professor of Romance languages.
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Henry Clay Brockmeyer
1826 - 1906 (80 years)
Henry Clay Brockmeyer was a German-American poet, philosopher, and politician. Early life Brockmeyer was born Heinrich Conrad Brokmeyer in Westphalia, near Petershagen, to a well-to-do family. On his mother's side he was a nephew of Friedrich Wilhelm von Bismarck, a Napoleonic-era general and diplomat in Württemberg. He emigrated to the United States at the age of sixteen, reputedly after his religious mother burned his copy of Goethe's poems. Brockmeyer arrived in St. Louis around age 20 and worked in a tannery and in other trades. He built a prosperous shoe-making business in Oktibbeha County, Mississippi and sold it when his health declined.
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Evgeny Markov
1835 - 1903 (68 years)
Evgeny Lvovich Markov was a Russian writer, critic and ethnographer. Originally a liberal author who contributed to Otechestvennye Zapiski, Delo and Vestnik Evropy among other magazines, Evgeny Markov gradually drifted towards the conservative camp, became part of the Slavophile movement and gained notoriety by being arguably the fiercest critic of Nikolai Nekrasov.
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Helius Eobanus Hessus
1488 - 1540 (52 years)
Helius Eobanus Hessus was a German Latin poet and later a Lutheran humanist. He was born at Halgehausen in Hesse-Kassel . His family name is said to have been Koch; Eoban was the name of a local saint; Hessus indicates the land of his birth, Helius the fact that he was born on Sunday. He visited a Latin school in Frankenberg, Hesse. His teacher and travel guide was Ludwig Stippius , confidant of Martin Luther, to whom Hessus dedicated his first idyl in 1509. In 1504 Hessus entered the university of Erfurt, and soon after his graduation was appointed rector of the school of St Severus. This po...
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Nelson Bentley
1918 - 1990 (72 years)
Nelson Bentley was an American poet and professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. He was born in Elm, Michigan. He graduated from the University of Michigan, receiving his bachelor's and then his master's degree from that university.
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Bourvil
1917 - 1970 (53 years)
André Robert Raimbourg , better known as André Bourvil , and mononymously as Bourvil, was a French actor and singer best known for his roles in comedy films, most notably in his collaboration with Louis de Funès in the films Le Corniaud and La Grande Vadrouille . For his performance in Le Corniaud, he won a Special Diploma at the 4th Moscow International Film Festival.
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Rudolf Ernst Brünnow
1858 - 1917 (59 years)
Rudolph Ernst Brünnow was a German-American orientalist and philologist. Life The son of the Berlin-born astronomer Franz Friedrich Ernst Brünnow, Rudolph Ernst was born during the period his father was living in the United States. In 1863 the father and son returned to Europe. In 1882 he was awarded a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Strasbourg.
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Julia Harwood Caverno
1862 - 1949 (87 years)
Julia Harwood Caverno was an American classical philologist. Biography Julia Harwood Caverno was born on 19 December 1862 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to the Reverend Charles and Abbie H. S. Caverno. While at school she wrote to the Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier, whose poem Snow-Bound she and a friend had memorized . She was educated at Smith College for both her BA and MA degrees, graduating in 1887 and 1890 respectively. Her MA thesis examined the similes of Homer in relation to those found in Virgil, Dante, Milton and Tennyson's works.
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Giacomo Castelvetro
1546 - 1616 (70 years)
Giacomo Castelvetro was an Italian expatriate in Europe and England, humanist, teacher and travel writer. Life Giacomo Castelvetro was born in Modena in 1546 to the banker Niccolò Castelvetro and his wife Liberata Tassoni. Not much is known of his early life. He was smuggled out of Modena with his older brother when he was eighteen years old. He stayed in Geneva with his uncle, the humanist critic, Ludovico Castelvetro. He traveled widely for several years, living in the towns of Lyon and Basel before his uncle died. In 1587 in Basel he married Isotta de Canonici, the widow of Thomas Erastus. In 1613 he was living at Charlton House the home of Adam Newton, tutor to Prince Henry.
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Georg Sabinus
1508 - 1560 (52 years)
Georg Sabinus or Georg Schuler was a German poet, diplomat and academic. Sabinus was born at Brandenburg an der Havel. He served as Professor of Poetry and Eloquence and first-ever rector of the Albertina . He died, aged 52, in Frankfurt .
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Edward Southey Joynes
1834 - 1917 (83 years)
Edward Southey Joynes was an American textbook author and university professor of modern languages, especially German and French. Although he taught at the College of William & Mary before the American Civil War, the bulk of his career was spent teaching foreign languages at other Southern universities during the Reconstruction Era.
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George Smith
1713 - 1776 (63 years)
George Smith was an English landscape painter and poet, known as "George Smith of Chichester". He and his two brothers, all artists, are known as the "Smiths of Chichester". Life and work George was born at Chichester in Sussex, where his father, William Smith, was a tradesman and Baptist minister. He was the second and most gifted of three brothers, who all practised painting and were known as 'the Smiths of Chichester.' When a boy he was placed with his uncle, a cooper, but, preferring art, became a pupil of his brother William, whom he accompanied to Gloucester; there and in other places ...
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