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,
#9851
August Reifferscheid
1835 - 1887 (52 years)
Karl Wilhelm August Reifferscheid was a German archaeologist and classical philologist. Biography He was born and educated in Bonn. He received a traveling fellowship in archaeology from the University of Bonn, and spent 1861–66 mostly in Italy, part of the time fulfilling a request by the Vienna Academy to do archival research for the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum. He was professor at Breslau , and beginning in 1885, a professor at the University of Strassburg .
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Johannes Valentinus Andreae
1586 - 1654 (68 years)
Johannes Valentinus Andreae , a.k.a. Johannes Valentinus Andreä or Johann Valentin Andreae, was a German theologian, who claimed to be the author of an ancient text known as the Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosencreutz anno 1459 . This became one of the three founding works of Rosicrucianism, which was both a legend and a fashionable cultural phenomenon across Europe in this period.
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Edward Capps
1866 - 1950 (84 years)
Edward Capps Sr. was an American diplomat, professor of Philology, and colonel. Biography Capps was born in Jacksonville, Illinois on December 21, 1866. He would go on to graduate from Illinois College in 1887 and later receive a PhD from Yale in 1891. In July of the following year, he would get married.
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Genevieve Taggard
1894 - 1948 (54 years)
Genevieve Taggard was an American poet. Biography Genevieve Taggard was born in Waitsburg, Washington, to James Taggard and Alta Arnold, both of whom were school teachers. Her parents were both active members of the Disciples of Christ, and at age two her parents moved to Honolulu, Hawaii, where they became missionaries and founded a school in which they also taught.
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John Davies of Hereford
1565 - 1618 (53 years)
John Davies of Hereford was a writing-master and an Anglo-Welsh poet. He referred to himself as John Davies of Hereford in order to distinguish himself from others of the same name, particularly the contemporary poet Sir John Davies .
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Sergei Zhebelev
1867 - 1941 (74 years)
Sergei Aleksandrovich Zhebelev was a Russian historian and archaeologist who was recognised as an authority on ancient Greek history. Zhebelev graduated from Saint Petersburg University in 1890 and was appointed professor there in 1904. He translated Plato, Aristotle, and other classical thinkers into Russian. In 1923 he produced a textbook on archaeology.
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Lauri Viljanen
1900 - 1984 (84 years)
Lauri Viljanen was a Finnish literary critic and writer. He was the leading critic of the literary group Tulenkantajat during the 1930s and 1940s. Published works Auringon purjeet, poetry collection. 1924Hurmioituneet kasvot, poetry collection. 1925 Tähtikeinu, poetry collection. 1926Merkkivaloja. 1929Musta runotar, poetry collection. 1932V.A.Koskenniemi. 1935Taisteleva humanismi, essay collection. 1936Näköala vuorelta, poetry collection. 1936Atlantis, poetry collection. 1940Sotatalvi. 1941 Illan ja aamun välillä, essey collection. 1941Runeberg ja hänen runoutensa I–III. 1944–1948Tuuli ja ihminen, poem collection.
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Charles Murray
1864 - 1941 (77 years)
Charles Murray was a poet who wrote in the Doric dialect of Scots. He was one of three rural poets from the north-east of Scotland, the others being Flora Garry and John C. Milne, who did much to validate the literary use of Scots.
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Ernst Bertram
1884 - 1957 (73 years)
Ernst August Bertram was a German professor of German studies at the University of Cologne, but also a poet and writer who was close to the George-Kreis and the lyricist Stefan George. Life Bertram was born the son of Evangelical Lutheran Church Overseas merchant Ernst Bertram and his wife Johanne Müller in Elberfeld . He passed the Abitur in the spring of 1903 at the in his hometown,. Bertram then studied German history of literature, modern history of art and philosophy in Berlin, Munich and Bonn. On 9 July 1907, he received his doctorate from the University of Bonn with a dissertation wri...
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Miloje Vasić
1869 - 1956 (87 years)
Miloje Vasić was a Serbian archaeologist, regarded as one of the most distinguished representatives of the humanistic studies in Serbia. Professor at the University of Belgrade and member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, he was the first educated Serbian archaeologist, and is considered as the founder of the modern archaeology in Serbia. Also known for his widely eclectic interests outside of archaeology, his most significant accomplishment was discovery of the Neolithic site of Vinča culture in 1905 and subsequent excavation, which began in 1908.
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Henry Goddard Leach
1880 - 1970 (90 years)
Henry Goddard Leach was an American Scandinavian studies scholar and civic leader. He is best known as President of The American-Scandinavian Foundation and Professor of Scandinavian Civilization at the University of Kansas.
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Elia Levita
1469 - 1549 (80 years)
Elia Levita , also known as Elijah Levita, Elias Levita, Élie Lévita, Elia Levita Ashkenazi, Eliahu Levita, Eliyahu haBahur , Elye Bokher, was a Renaissance Hebrew grammarian, scholar, and poet. He was the author of the Bovo-Bukh , the most popular chivalric romance written in Yiddish. Living for a decade in the house of Cardinal Giles of Viterbo, he was one of the foremost teachers of Christian clergy, nobility, and intellectuals in Hebrew and in Jewish mysticism during the Renaissance.
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Carsten Hauch
1790 - 1872 (82 years)
Johannes Carsten Hauch was a Danish poet. Biography Hauch was born in Frederikshald in Norway. His father was the Danish bailiff in Smaalenene, Frederik Hauch. His mother, Karen Tank was sister of Norwegian ship merchant and parliament president Carsten Tank. In 1802 Hauch lost his mother, and in 1803 returned with his father to Denmark. In 1807 he fought as a volunteer against the English invasion. He entered the university of Copenhagen in 1808, and in 1821 took his doctors degree. He became the friend and associate of Steffens and Oehlenschläger, warmly adopting the romantic views about po...
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Atanasije Stojković
1775 - 1832 (57 years)
Atanasije Stojković was a Serbian, Austrian and Russian writer, pedagogue, scholar, physicist, mathematician and astronomer. He is considered the founder of Russian meteoritics. Stojković was the president of the Imperial University of Kharkov from 1807 to 1809 and from 1811 to 1813.
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Albert Rehm
1871 - 1949 (78 years)
Albert Rehm was a German philologist best known for his work on the Antikythera mechanism - he was the first to propose that it was an astronomical calculator. Services Albert Rehm has made numerous contributions to both education and science. He has made important contributions to realism in particular: the volume Precise Sciences in the Introduction to Classical Philology by Alfred Gercke and Eduard Norden, as well as numerous essays and articles for the Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft. He also wrote valuable works in epigraphy and archeology .
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James Baldwin
1841 - 1925 (84 years)
James Baldwin was an American educator and administrator. He served as the superintendent of Indiana's school system for 18 years and then went on to become a widely published textbook editor and children's author in the subjects of legends, mythology, biography, and literature, among others.
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Josephine Preston Peabody
1874 - 1922 (48 years)
Josephine Preston Peabody was an American poet and dramatist. Biography Peabody was born in New York and educated at the Girls' Latin School, Boston, and at Radcliffe College. In 1898, she was introduced to fifteen-year-old Khalil Gibran by Fred Holland Day, the American photographer and co-founder of the Copeland-Day publishing house, at an art exhibition. Shortly thereafter Gibran returned to Lebanon but the pair continued to correspond.
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Robert Faesi
1883 - 1972 (89 years)
Robert Faesi was a Swiss writer and academic concerned with Literature and language Life Son of the businessman Heinrich Friedrich Faesi, Robert Faesi was born into a well established and affluent Zürich family. After successfully completing his schooling, he initially studied Law, before switching to German studies. In 1907 he obtained his doctorate with a dissertation on Abraham Emanuel Fröhlich, a nineteenth century poet-theologian. Faesi then took a position as a high school teacher in Zürich, also undertaking several extended educational tours, before ending up in 1911 at the University ...
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Christian Cornelius Jensen
1883 - 1940 (57 years)
Christian Cornelius Jensen was a German classical philologist and papyrologist. His father, Christian Jensen , was a local historian and teacher. He studied classical philology at the universities of Marburg and Kiel, where he was influenced by the work of Siegfried Sudhaus. He worked as a gymnasium teacher in Kiel and Wandsbek, and in 1910 obtained his habilitation for classical philology at the University of Marburg.
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Jessie Eldridge Southwick
1865 - 1957 (92 years)
Jessie Eldridge Southwick was an American elocutionist, teacher, author and poet. She was active in the Chautauqua and Lyceum movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, performing around the United States as well as internationally. She influenced oratory through active involvement in emerging organizations, writing textbooks and teaching expressive voice culture and platform performance at Emerson College and elsewhere.
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Friedrich Gotthilf Osann
1794 - 1858 (64 years)
Friedrich Gotthilf Osann was a German classical philologist. He was a brother to physician Emil Osann and chemist Gottfried Osann . He received his education at the Universities of Jena and Berlin, where he was a student of August Boeckh. In 1816 he obtained his PhD, and during the following year undertook an educational journey through Germany, France, Italy and England. In 1821 he was appointed an associate professor of philology at Jena, followed by a full professorship at the University of Giessen in 1825.
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Robert Francis
1901 - 1987 (86 years)
Robert Francis was an American poet who lived most of his life in Amherst, Massachusetts. His 1953 poem, “The Pitcher”, is a classic work among coaches, athletes, baseball players —- and pitchers and artists. It demonstrates brilliantly an example of how any physical action is not just acting on the environment, but also an interactive communication with all elements of it, including the people.
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Otto Immisch
1862 - 1936 (74 years)
Otto Immisch was a German classical scholar. Biography He received his education at the University of Leipzig, was appointed lecturer there in 1889 and professor in 1896. From 1907 to 1913 he was professor at Giessen and in the latter year was appointed to a chair at Königsberg.
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Grete Wiesenthal
1885 - 1970 (85 years)
Grete Wiesenthal was an Austrian dancer, actor, choreographer, and dance teacher. She transformed the Viennese Waltz from a staple of the ballroom into a wildly ecstatic dance. She was trained at the Vienna Court Opera, but left to develop her own more expressive approach, creating ballets to music by Franz Schreker, Clemens von Franckenstein, and Franz Salmhofer, as well as dancing in her own style to the waltzes of Johann Strauss II. She is considered a leading figure in modern dance in Austria.
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Ibrahim Tuqan
1905 - 1941 (36 years)
Ibrahim Abd al-Fattah Tuqan was a Palestinian nationalist poet whose work rallied Arabs during their revolt against the British mandate. Tuqan was born in Nablus, Palestine. He was the brother of poet Fadwa Tuqan and he tutored and influenced her to write poetry. Ibrahim belonged to the prominent Tuqan family that governed Nablus during the 18th and 19th centuries.
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W. C. Fields
1880 - 1946 (66 years)
William Claude Dukenfield , better known as W. C. Fields, was an American actor, comedian, juggler, and writer. Fields's comic persona was a comedically crude and hard-drinking egotist who remained a sympathetic character despite his supposed contempt for children and dogs.
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John Celivergos Zachos
1820 - 1898 (78 years)
John Celivergos Zachos was a Greek-American physician, literary scholar, elocutionist, author, lecturer, inventor, and educational pioneer. He was an early proponent of equal education rights for African Americans and women. During the American Civil War, he was the superintendent at Port Royal and a main figure in the Port Royal Experiment. In his book, Phonic Primer and Reader he developed a special system to educate freed slaves. He advocated and expanded the oratory systems of François Delsarte and James Rush.
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Oğuz Atay
1934 - 1977 (43 years)
Oğuz Atay was a pioneer of the modern novel in Turkey. His first novel, Tutunamayanlar , appeared in 1971–72. Never reprinted in his lifetime and controversial among critics, it has become a best-seller since a new edition came out in 1984. It has been described as “probably the most eminent novel of twentieth-century Turkish literature”: this reference is due to a UNESCO survey, which goes on: “it poses an earnest challenge to even the most skilled translator with its kaleidoscope of colloquialisms and sheer size.” In fact four translations have so far been published: into Dutch, as Het leve...
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David Turner
1927 - 1990 (63 years)
David Turner was a British playwright. Turner was born in Birmingham and came from a working-class background. He studied French at Birmingham University and later worked as a school teacher in that city. He is best remembered for his stage play Semi-Detached, first performed during 1962, which reached Broadway and was adapted for the film All the Way Up . He prepared modern versions of classic plays including John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, a version seen in London in 1968, and The Miser by Molière, which was performed at the Birmingham Rep in 1973.
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James B. Greenough
1833 - 1901 (68 years)
James Bradstreet Greenough was an American classical scholar. Life James B. Greenough was born in Portland, Maine on May 4, 1833. He graduated at Harvard in 1856, studied one year at the Harvard Law School, was admitted to the Michigan bar and practised in Marshall, Michigan, until 1865, when he was appointed tutor in Latin at Harvard. In 1873 he became assistant professor.
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Nathaniel Fish Moore
1782 - 1872 (90 years)
Nathaniel Fish Moore was the eighth president of Columbia College; he had earlier been a lawyer and served on the faculty. He was the nephew of the college's former president Benjamin Moore. In 1820, Moore began his career at Columbia College as a professor of Greek and Latin, which in 1830 became titled the Jay Professor of the Greek Language and Literature. He was appointed the first full-time Librarian of the College in 1838. Four years later, Moore was elected the eighth president of the college, resigning under unremarkable circumstances in 1849.
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Heinrich Theodor Rötscher
1803 - 1871 (68 years)
Heinrich Theodor Rötscher was a German theatre critic and theorist. One strong influence on his writing was Hegel. Biography Rötscher was born in Mittenwalde, and studied philology and philosophy at the University of Berlin. From 1828 he was a gymnasium teacher in Bromberg . In 1842 he moved back to Berlin and dedicated himself to writing and theorizing about theatre. In Berlin, he was the dramatic critic for the Spenersche Zeitung.
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William Wilkie
1721 - 1772 (51 years)
William Wilkie was a Scottish Church of Scotland minister and Professor of Natural Philosophy primarily remembered as a poet nicknamed Potato Willie, known more respectfully as the "Scottish Homer". The son of a farmer, he was born in West Lothian and educated at Edinburgh. In 1757 he produced the Epigoniad, dealing with the Epigoni, sons of seven heroes who fought against Thebes. He also wrote Moral Fables in Verse.
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John Burnet
1863 - 1928 (65 years)
John Burnet, FBA was a Scottish classicist. He was born in Edinburgh and died in St Andrews. Life and work Burnet was educated at the Royal High School, Edinburgh, the University of Edinburgh, and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he obtained first-class honours in Classical Moderations in 1885 and in Literae Humaniores in 1887. In the course of his undergraduate academic career at Oxford he won the Taylorian Scholarship in French and came second for the Boden Sanskrit Scholarship
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Friedrich Leo
1851 - 1914 (63 years)
Friedrich Leo was a German classical philologist born in Regenwalde, in the then-province of Pomerania . Academic career From 1868 he was a student at the University of Göttingen, and following military duty in the Franco-Prussian War, he continued his education at the University of Bonn, where he had as instructors Franz Bücheler and Hermann Usener. At Bonn his fellow students included Georg Kaibel, Friedrich von Duhn, Georg Dehio and Hans Delbrück. After graduation in 1873 he toured countries of the Mediterranean extensively.
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Peter Alexander
1893 - 1969 (76 years)
Peter Alexander, was a Scottish literary scholar. He was Regius Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Glasgow and a noted Shakespearean scholar. His collected works of Shakespeare are known as "the Alexander text". In 1914, he joined the army as a private in the Cameron Highlanders but left in 1918 after he became an artillery officer. Alexander returned to the University of Glasgow to finish his studies and graduated in 1920 with an MA degree.
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Leopold Cohn
1856 - 1915 (59 years)
Leopold Cohn was a German author and philologist. He was also the father of Israeli politician and supreme court jurist Haim Cohn. He received his education at the gymnasium at Culm, West Prussia, and at the University of Breslau, whence he graduated as doctor of philosophy in 1878. In 1884 he became privatdozent at the Breslau University, in 1889 he was appointed librarian, and in 1897 he received the title of professor.
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Syed Zahoor Shah Hashmi
1926 - 1978 (52 years)
Syed Zahoor Shah Hashmi , commonly known as Syed Hashmi , was a Pakistani poet, academic, writer and philosopher who is widely considered one of the most important figures in Balochi language literature. He wrote in Balochi, Urdu, Persian and Arabic. Syed Hashmi was awarded Pride of Performance by the Government of Pakistan for his contribution in the field of literature.
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Eugene O'Neill Jr.
1910 - 1950 (40 years)
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill Jr. was an American professor of Greek literature and the only child of Nobel Prize-winning playwright Eugene O'Neill and his first wife, Kathleen Jenkins. Early life O'Neill Jr.'s parents divorced in 1912, when he was a toddler. O'Neill once said he did not even meet his father until age 12. He entered Yale in 1928; in his freshman year a poem he had written was widely reprinted. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale in 1932, where he was a member of Skull and Bones secret student society. After studying abroad for a year, he earned a PhD in philosophy from Yale in...
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Heinrich Morf
1854 - 1921 (67 years)
Heinrich Morf was a Swiss linguist and literary historian. He studied Indo-Germanic and classical philology at the University of Zürich and Romance philology at the University of Strasbourg , receiving his doctorate in 1877 with the dissertation Die Wortstellung im altfranzösischen Rolandslied. Following graduation, he continued his education in Spain and Paris , where he was a student of Gaston Paris. In 1879 he was named an associate professor of Romance philology at the University of Bern. Later on, he served as a professor at the University of Zürich , the Akademie für Sozial- und Hande...
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Frederic de Forest Allen
1844 - 1897 (53 years)
Frederic de Forest Allen was an American classical scholar. Early life Frederick Forest Allen was born in 1844 in Oberlin, Ohio. He graduated at Oberlin College in 1863. Allen taught Greek and Latin at the University of Tennessee from 1866 to 1868. He attended the University of Leipzig in Germany from 1868 to 1870, where his thesis supervisor was Georg Curtius. He earned his Ph.D. there with his thesis De Dialecto Locrensium.
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Hans Diller
1905 - 1977 (72 years)
Hans Diller was a German classical scholar and historian of ancient Greek medicine. Life and work Diller obtained a doctorate in 1930 in Hamburg, and later studied in Leipzig in 1932 before returning to Hamburg as a lecturer.
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Wendelin Förster
1844 - 1915 (71 years)
Wendelin Förster was an Austrian philologist and Romance scholar. Biography Förster was born in Wildschütz in Silesia and educated in Vienna, where he obtained his doctorate in 1872, as a student of Johannes Vahlen. Following a study trip to Paris, he received his habilitation in Vienna with a dissertation involving Romance philology. In 1874, he became an associate professor at the University of Prague, and two years later was named a full professor at the University of Bonn as successor to Friedrich Christian Diez. One of his noteworthy achievements was the definite establishment of the Br...
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Sayyid Qutb
1906 - 1966 (60 years)
Sayyid Ibrahim Husayn Qutb was an Egyptian author, educator, Islamic scholar, theorist, revolutionary, poet, and a leading member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1966, he was convicted of plotting the assassination of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and was executed by hanging. He is considered as "the Father of Salafi jihadism", the religio-political doctrine that underpins the ideological roots of global jihadist organisations such as al-Qaeda and ISIL.
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Moritz Hermann Eduard Meier
1796 - 1855 (59 years)
Moritz Hermann Eduard Meier was a German classical philologist, born at Glogau. At the age of 24, he became an associate professor at the University of Greifswald. In 1825, he was named professor of classical philology at the University of Halle, where he remained until his death.
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William Francis Allen
1830 - 1889 (59 years)
William Francis Allen was an American classical scholar and an editor of the first book of American slave songs, Slave Songs of the United States. Allen was born in Northborough, Massachusetts in 1830, the son of Joseph Allen. He graduated Harvard College in 1851; later he traveled and studied in Europe. A Unitarian, he considered the ministry before deciding to pursue a literary and scholarly career. In 1856, he became assistant principal at the West Newton English and Classical School in Massachusetts, headed by his cousin Nathaniel Topliff Allen. In 1862 he married a former student of t...
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Bonamy Dobrée
1891 - 1974 (83 years)
Bonamy Dobrée , British academic, was Professor of English Literature at the University of Leeds from 1936 to 1955. Dobrée declared himself a Channel Islander, and was rather proud that both his Bonamy and Dobrée ancestors, bankers, had been mentioned by Thackeray. His father, who had the same name, was born in 1862 and married Violet Gordon Chase. He had two daughters before his son was born, then died at St. Moritz of tuberculosis on 30 August 1891. His grandfather was the Bonamy Dobrée who was Governor of the Bank of England in 1859–1861.
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John J. Winkler
1943 - 1990 (47 years)
John Jack Winkler was an American philologist and Benedictine monk. Winkler studied classical studies at Saint Louis University from 1960 to 1963 and then went to England, where he joined a Benedictine order. In 1966 he returned to the United States and taught at Saint Louis Priory School until 1970. In 1970, he left the Benedictines and participated in a graduate program in Ancient Philology at the University of Texas, Austin. In 1974 he graduated with the thesis In Pursuit of Nymphs: Comedy and Sex in Nonnos' "Tales of Dionysos". He then served as assistant professor at Yale University. In 1979 Winkler was appointed to a professorship at Stanford University.
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Henry Augustin Beers
1847 - 1926 (79 years)
Henry Augustin Beers was an author, literary historian, poet, and professor at Yale University. Beers practiced law and worked as tutor before joining the Yale Department of English in 1875, where he produced numerous works, including scholarly studies of literature, volumes of poetry, and biographies. He is probably best known for his works on the historical development of literature.
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Franz Ernst Heinrich Spitzner
1787 - 1841 (54 years)
Franz Ernst Heinrich Spitzner was a German educator and philologist who specialized in Homeric studies. He was born in Trebitz, Saxony-Anhalt. He studied theology and philology at the University of Wittenberg, where he was student of Christian Lobeck . In 1811 he became conrector at the Lyceum at Wittenberg, where two years later he was appointed rector. In 1820 he relocated to the Gymnasium at Erfurt, and in 1824 returned to his former position at the Wittenberg Lyceum.
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