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).
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List of the most influential people in Literature,
#9901
Huib Luns
1881 - 1942 (61 years)
Huibert Marie Luns was a Dutch painter, sculptor and writer. He also designed book covers, posters and medals. Biography Shortly after his birth, his parents returned to Amsterdam. His interest in art was inspired by a visit to the studios of Lawrence Alma-Tadema, a Dutch painter who lived in London. He received his first drawing lessons from the brothers and Theo Molkenboer, then went to the for arts and crafts in Amsterdam and served an internship at the Rijksakademie.
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Fernan Perez de Oliva
1494 - 1531 (37 years)
Fernan Perez de Oliva was a Spanish man of letters. He was born in Córdoba. After studying at Salamanca, Alcalá, Paris and Rome, he was appointed rector at Salamanca, where he died in 1530 or 1531. His Dialogo de la dignidad del hombre , an unfinished work completed by Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, was written chiefly to prove the suitability of Spanish as a vehicle for philosophic discussion. He also published translations of the Amphitryon , the Electra and the Hecuba .
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Sergey Zvantsev
1893 - 1973 (80 years)
Sergey Zvantsev was a Soviet writer, playwright and feuilletonist. Biography Born as Alexander Shamkovich on November 2, 1893 in the city of Taganrog in the family of doctor Isaak Shamkovich. His father studied at Taganrog Boys' Gymnasium in the same class with Anton Chekhov and shared the same school desk. Alexander Shamkovich also studied at the Taganrog Boys' Gymnasium and entered the law faculty of Kharkiv University, which he graduated from in 1916. Alexander Shamkovich published his first feuilleton in the newspaper Priazovksy Kray in 1912. The first book published under the name of Sergey Zvantsev was the feature story Taganrog's Delegate on the famous steelworker Nikolai Dygai.
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Kenneth Porter
1905 - 1981 (76 years)
Kenneth Wiggins Porter was an American poet and historian. Life He graduated from Harvard University in history and business history. He taught at Southwestern College, and Vassar College. He worked for the National Archives from 1941 to 1943, and from 1948 to 1955, for the Business History Foundation. He married Annette MacDonald in 1946. In 1954, was a Fulbright lecturer at Melbourne University. From 1955 and 1958 he taught at the University of Illinois, and at the University of Oregon, from 1958 to 1972.
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William Wyse
1860 - 1929 (69 years)
William Wyse was a classical scholar, noted for his work on the Attic orator Isaeus, and a benefactor of the University of Cambridge. Life Wyse was born in Stratford, London. After education at the King Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon and as a scholar at King's School, Canterbury he graduated with first class honours in the Classical Tripos at Trinity College, Cambridge University in 1882, being placed fourth in class. He won the Browne Scholarship and Powis Medal in 1880 and the Waddington Scholarship in 1881. He was elected a member of the Apostles on 1 May 1880. After graduation he ...
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Barry Benefield
1877 - 1971 (94 years)
Barry Benefield was an American writer, some of whose books were adapted for the cinema. His being born and spending much of his life in Texas is more than a biographical detail: Benefield had been mentioned as "One of The Lone Star writers", who "Followed the Southern tradition".
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Li Ye
1192 - 1279 (87 years)
Li Ye , born Li Zhi , courtesy name Li Jingzhai , was a Chinese scientist and writer who published and improved the tian yuan shu method for solving polynomial equations of one variable. Along with the 4th-century Chinese astronomer Yu Xi, Li Ye proposed the idea of a spherical Earth instead of a flat one before the advances of European science in the 17th century.
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Gaspar Gil Polo
1530 - 1584 (54 years)
Gaspar Gil Polo , Spanish novelist and poet, was born at Valencia. He is often confused with Gil Polo, professor of Greek at Valencia University between 1566 and 1573; but this professor was not named Gaspar. He is also confused with his own son, Gaspar Gil Polo, the author of De origine et progressu juris romani and other legal treatises, who pleaded before the Cortes as late as 1626.
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Michelle Reale
1900 - Present (126 years)
Michelle Reale is an Italian-American poet, academic and ethnographer. Reale is an associate professor at Arcadia University in Glenside, Pennsylvania. She uses poetic inquiry to present her research among African refugees in Sicily and her poetry is mainly concerned with Italian-American life, ethnic identity, histories, family dynamics and remembrance and forgetting. Among master's degrees in English and library and information science, she has an MFA in creative writing with a concentration in poetry. She has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
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William Alexander, 1st Earl of Stirling
1570 - 1640 (70 years)
William Alexander, 1st Earl of Stirling was a Scottish courtier and poet who was involved in the Scottish colonisation of Charles Fort, later Port-Royal, Nova Scotia in 1629 and Long Island, New York. His literary works include Aurora , The Monarchick Tragedies and Doomes-Day .
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Giovanni Antonio Campani
1429 - 1477 (48 years)
Giovanni Antonio Campani called Campanus , a protégé of Cardinal Bessarion, was a Neapolitan-born humanist at the court of Pope Pius II, whose funeral oration he wrote, followed by a biography, flattering but filled with personal reminiscence, written ca 1470-77. Campanus was famous for his Latin orations, poems and letters. In addition to Bessarion's Academy, Campanus was a member of the Roman circle of Pomponius Leto. After the death of the Pope in 1464, Campani taught at the Florentine Academy.
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George Jackson
1941 - 1971 (30 years)
George Lester Jackson was an American author, activist and convicted felon. While serving an indeterminate sentence for stealing $70 from a gas station in 1961, Jackson became involved in revolutionary activity and co-founded the prison gang Black Guerrilla Family.
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Franciszek Mymer
1500 - 1564 (64 years)
Franciszek Mymer – translator, poet, and editor writing in Latin, Polish, and German, promoter of national languages and of education in Polish. Biography Franciszek Mymer came from a family of burghers. He studied at the Kraków Academy in 1519-1531, earning the title of magister of the seven liberal arts. In 1531 he lectured there on Ovid's Tristia. He mostly likely lived and worked in Kraków until 1540 or 1542. He later worked as a city writer in Kościan, spent time in Toruń, and also served as a churchwarden in Dohna, near Dresden. He knew several languages: Czech, Italian, and Greek, in ...
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John Collins
1742 - 1808 (66 years)
John Collins was an English entertainer and poet from Birmingham. Life He was born at Bath, and from some lines in his own collection of poems, entitled 'Scripscrapologia,' he would seem to have been a tailor's son. He was bred up to the business of a staymaker, but an occupation of that nature ill accorded with his disposition, and he very early in life made his appearance on the Bath stage, and filled many parts there, extending to 'tragedy, genteel comedy, low comedy, and old men and country boys in farces and operas,' a range of character which could not have been uniformly successful.
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Abu Bakr az-Zubaydi
928 - 989 (61 years)
Abū Bakr az-Zubaydī , also known as Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan ibn ‘Abd Allāh ibn Madḥīj al-Faqīh and Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan az-Zubaydī al-Ishbīlī , held the title Akhbār al-fuquhā and wrote books on topics including philology, biography, history, philosophy, law, lexicology, and hadith.
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V. Penelope Pelizzon
1900 - Present (126 years)
V. Penelope Pelizzon is an American poet and essayist. Her first poetry collection, Nostos , won the Hollis Summers Prize and the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award. Her second poetry collection, Whose Flesh Is Flame, Whose Bone Is Time , was a finalist for the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize. She is also co-author of Tabloid, Inc. , a critical study of film, photography, and crime narratives. She is a professor at the University of Connecticut.
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Asahel C. Kendrick
1809 - 1895 (86 years)
Asahel C. Kendrick was an American classicist, grammarian and exegete. He was the first professor of Greek at the University of Rochester. He was the author of textbooks on Greek grammar, and a contributor to the Revised Version of the New Testament.
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John Hunter
1745 - 1837 (92 years)
John Hunter FRSE was a Scottish classicist and horticulturalist. In 1783 he was a joint founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Life Hunter was born in Closeburn, Dumfries and Galloway on 7 September 1746. He was educated nearby at Wallace Hall School. He was then attended the University of Edinburgh, graduation with an MA in 1768.
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Johann Jacob Grasser
1579 - 1627 (48 years)
Johann Jacob Grasser was a scholar and polyhistor of Basel. He studied theology and was active as a poet, in the sciences and in geography. He was Magister Artium and Poeta laureatus in Basel in 1601. He travelled across Switzerland and in Europe during 1603 to 1608. When he was in Nîmes, he wrote a treatise on the Roman antiquities there which was reprinted several times. In 1607, he was given the title of Count Palatine by the Imperial Commissioner in Padua, from which time he styled himself as Ioannes Iacobus Grasserus, Civis Romanus, Comes Palatinus.
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George Gibb Nicholson
1875 - 1948 (73 years)
George Gibb Nicholson , often referred to as G. G. Nicholson, was an English-born Australian philologist and professor of French. He was the inaugural McCaughey Professor of French at University of Sydney.
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Sigurd Høst
1866 - 1939 (73 years)
Sigurd Høst was a Norwegian educationalist and textbook writer. Biography Høst was born in Flora to physician Ude Jacob Høst and Lorentze Schulrud . He graduated as philologist in 1891, and worked as teacher and lecture at several private schools in Kristiania . He served as headmaster of the Bergen Cathedral School from 1907, and of the Christiania Cathedral School from 1915. From 1921 to 1922 he lectured at the University of Sorbonne in Paris, and from 1923 to 1926 he lectured at the University of Oslo.
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David Thomas
1828 - 1909 (81 years)
David Thomas was a Welsh poet and teacher. Life Thomas was born in Llanwenog, Cardiganshire, south Wales. He went to school in Cribyn and later ran schools in various places in Cardiganshire until his retirement in 1883. His pupils in Cribyn included John Islan Jones, who went on to become a distinguished Unitarian minister and writer. His poems were published in four volumes: in 1854, in 1859, in 1866, and in 1883.
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Richard Carle
1871 - 1941 (70 years)
Richard Carle was an American stage and film actor as well as a playwright and stage director. He appeared in more than 130 films between 1915 and 1941. Carle was born in Somerville, Massachusetts. He was on the stage for many years, appearing in important roles in London, New York and Chicago including as J. Offenbach Gaggs in The Casino Girl and Algy Cuffs in The Belle of Bohemia in London in 1901 before making his screen debut. In 1941 he died in North Hollywood, California from a heart attack.
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Johannes Munnicks
1652 - 1711 (59 years)
Johannes Munnicks or Jean Munniks, Munnix, Munnicx, Munnigk, Munick, Jan Munnickius was a Dutch Golden Age medical doctor and writer from the Northern Netherlands. Biography Munnicks was born in Utrecht. He was the son of a pharmacist who attended the University of Utrecht and who later became a rector there. On 13 December 1670 he graduated with the thesis de Fluore muliebri under Isbrand van Diemerbroeck and became Doctor of Medicine. He wrote Tractatus de urinus, earumque inspectione . In 1677 he wrote De utilitate anatomiae and became Lector of Anatomy in Utrecht. In 1678 he became profe...
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Girolamo Zoppio
1516 - 1591 (75 years)
Girolamo Zoppio was a 16th-century Bolognese writer. A street in Bologna and a lecture hall in the University of Bologna both bear his name. Life He was born in Bologna, and began his career as a doctor and joined the medical faculty, where he assisted Vesalius in his dissections. His son, Melchiorre Zoppio, would follow him into a dual academic and medical career. In his spare time, Girolamo cultivated scholarship and philosophy, becoming a professor of both. He taught logic and morality for some years in Macerata, where he set up the Accademia di Catenati, which taught in Italian not Latin....
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George J. Adler
1821 - 1868 (47 years)
George J. Adler was a noted philologist and linguist. Early years Adler was born to John J. Adler and an unnamed mother in Germany in 1821. He arrived in the United States in 1833, with his parents, who settled in New York city, where the boy attended the public schools and entered the university of the city of New York, from which he was graduated valedictorian in 1844. Two years later he became a professor of German language at New York University, which position he filled for eight years.
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John Savage
1828 - 1888 (60 years)
John Savage was a poet, journalist and author. He was a member of both the Young Irelanders and the Fenians. Early life John Savage, who was born in Dublin on 13 December 1828. As a young art student in Dublin he was drawn into the insurrectionary movement in '48. On 11 March 1848 he wrote a letter which appeared in The Nation newspaper stating: "A the period, I trust, is rapidly approaching when the skill and valour of our citizen soldiers will be put to the test, I am induced, on the part of a large number of students of the different professions, to suggest the immediate organisation in D...
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Nancy Barr Mavity
1890 - 1959 (69 years)
Nann "Nancy" Barr Mavity was an American crime mystery author. Early life Nann "Nancy" Clark Barr was born on October 22, 1890, in Lawrenceville, Illinois, the daughter of Dr. Granville Walter Barr and Annabelle Applegate.
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Peter Paul Dobrée
1782 - 1825 (43 years)
Peter Paul Dobrée was a British classical scholar and critic. Early life and education He was born in 1782 in Guernsey, the Channel Islands to the Reverend William Dobrée. He was educated at Reading School under Richard Valpy and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was elected fellow.
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William Gillan Waddell
1884 - 1945 (61 years)
William Gillan Waddell was a Scottish Professor of Classics at what is now Cairo University. Life Waddell was born in Neilston, Scotland. In 1906 he obtained his M.A. from the University of Glasgow. He was Professor of Classics at Fuad el Awal University in Cairo, Egypt . Waddell was a translator of ancient Greek and Latin into English.
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George Smith Gibbes
1771 - 1851 (80 years)
Sir George Smith Gibbes M.D. was an English physician and writer. Life He was the son of George Gibbes, D.D., rector of Woodborough, Wiltshire. From the King Edward VI School, Southampton under Richard Mant, he went to Exeter College, Oxford, and graduated B.A. in 1792. He was elected a fellow of Magdalen College, and graduated M.B. in 1796 and M.D. in 1799.
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Harold North Fowler
1859 - 1955 (96 years)
Harold North Fowler was an American classicist. He was married to Mary Blackford Fowler. He was the original translator of a number of Plato's works for the Loeb Classical Library collection. External links
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Bellamkonda Ramaraya Kavindrulu
1875 - 1914 (39 years)
Bellamkonda Ramaraya Kavindrulu was an Indian poet, author, yogi, Sanskrit scholar and a philosopher. Ramaraya Kavi wrote nearly 148 classic works in Sanskrit . All but 45 are missing. While some are available in part, the remaining are available full length.
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Bettina Linn
1905 - 1962 (57 years)
Mary Bettina Linn was an American writer and college professor. She wrote three published novels, and was on the faculty at Bryn Mawr College. She worked with the Office of Strategic Services during World War II.
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Jerónimo Bermúdez
1530 - 1599 (69 years)
Jerónimo Bermúdez de Castro was a playwright of the Spanish Golden Age. Biography He belonged to the order of St. Dominic, and was professor of theology at Salamanca. Works He published at Madrid in 1577, under the name of Antonio de Silva, two tragedies upon the subject of Inez de Castro, Nise Lastimosa and Nise Laureada. He also published a poem originally written in Latin, and translated by himself into Spanish, entitled La Hesperoida, of which the duke of Alva was the hero.
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Ion G. Sbiera
1836 - 1916 (80 years)
Ion G. Sbiera was a Romanian folklorist. He was one of the founding members of the Romanian Academy.
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Sir Gilbert Elliot, 3rd Baronet, of Minto
1722 - 1777 (55 years)
Sir Gilbert Elliot, 3rd Baronet, was born at Minto, Roxburghshire, and was a Scottish statesman, philosopher and poet. Early life Elliot was born in September 1722 in Minto, Roxburghshire. He was one of nine children born to Helen Steuart and Sir Gilbert Elliot, 2nd Baronet, of Minto.
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Kaoru Maruyama
1899 - 1974 (75 years)
Kaoru Maruyama was a Japanese poet. His collected works were translated by Robert Epp. He was the professor first in Tokyo and later at Aichi University. He was the editor of Four Seasons Literary Magazine. Ten Years, Fairy Country, and Heart of flowers are his best-known books. He is sometimes called "the poet of the sea".
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Vasily Anisimoff
1878 - 1938 (60 years)
Vasily Onisimovich Afanasiev was a revolutionary and a propagandist of Marxism as well as a prominent activist and supporter of the Russian and international Socialist movement. He was among the active members of the RSDLP and was a Menshevik. In 1925, Anisimoff became the deputy head of the economic department of the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy of the RSFSR, managing the "Exportles" trust.
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John Russell
1885 - 1956 (71 years)
John Russell was an American writer and screenwriter. Biography Born in Davenport, Iowa, in 1885, Russell wrote for the New York City News Association news agency, and then for the New York Tribune. The Pagan was based on one of his stories, and he wrote the screenplay for Beau Geste.
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Antoine-Léonard Thomas
1732 - 1785 (53 years)
Antoine Léonard Thomas was a French poet and literary critic, best known in his time for his great eloquence, especially for éloges in praise of past luminaries. It was in recognition of this that he was elected to Académie Française.
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Clyde R. Miller
1888 - 1958 (70 years)
Clyde Raymond Miller was an associate professor of education at Teachers College, Columbia University who co-founded the Institute for Propaganda Analysis with Edward A. Filene and Kirtley F. Mather in 1937.
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John Wilson
1626 - 1696 (70 years)
John Wilson was an English playwright and lawyer. Life and work He was son of Aaron Wilson, a royalist divine, and was born in London in 1626. He matriculated from Exeter College, Oxford, in 1644, and entered Lincoln's Inn two years later, being called to the bar in 1649. His unswerving support of the royal pretensions recommended him to James, duke of York, through whose influence he became Recorder of Derry about 1681. His Discourse of Monarchy , a tract in favour of the succession of the duke of York, was followed by a "Pindarique" on his coronation. In 1688 he wrote Jus regium Coronae, a learned defence of James's action in dispensing with the penal statutes.
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C. Violet Butler
1884 - 1982 (98 years)
Christina Violet Butler was a social researcher and educator active in Oxford. She was known for her 1912 study Social Conditions in Oxford which recorded the lives of working class citizens in the Edwardian city. She also taught economics, women's studies, and trained social workers in Oxford.
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Arkadi Kuleshov
1914 - 1978 (64 years)
Arkadź Aljaksandravič Kulašoǔ was a Soviet and Belarusian poet, translator and screenwriter. He was best known for his poems, Brigade Flag and Cymbalon, as well as his translations of poetry into Belarusian.
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Clarice Short
1910 - 1977 (67 years)
Clarice Short was an American poet and academic. Early life and education Clarice Short was born in Ellinwood, Kansas, and grew up in the Arkansas Ozarks, and later near Taos, New Mexico. She attended the University of Kansas, where she earned her B. A. and M. A., She received her PhD from Cornell University in 1941.
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William Moir Calder
1881 - 1960 (79 years)
Sir William Moir Calder, FBA was a Scottish archaeologist, epigraphist, classicist, and academic. He was Hulme Professor of Greek at the University of Manchester from 1913 to 1930, and Professor of Greek at the University of Edinburgh from 1930 to 1951.
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James Lindsay
1852 - 1923 (71 years)
James Lindsay FRSE FGS was a Scottish minister, theologian and writer. Life He was born in Ayrshire in 1852, where his father, John Cowan Lindsay, was headmaster of Kilmarnock Grammar School, where he was later educated. He studied divinity at Glasgow University, graduating MA in 1878. In 1889 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, John Gray McKendrick, James Thomson Bottomley, and Sir James David Marwick. He gained a doctorate in 1899.
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Joseph Waltl
1805 - 1888 (83 years)
Dr. Joseph Waltl was a German physician and naturalist. Waltl was born in Wasserburg am Bodensee and studied at Landshut and Munich, graduating in medicine in 1819. He then travelled in Austria, France and Spain. In 1833 he became a teacher in Passau, and in 1835 a professor of natural history at the university.
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Hazel Hutchins Wilson
1898 - 1992 (94 years)
Hazel Hutchins Wilson was an American writer of children's books who turned to writing after a career as a school and university librarian. Biography Born in Portland, Maine, she attended Bates College in Lewiston, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1919. In 1920 she received a Bachelor of Science degree in library science from Simmons College in Boston.
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