Search People Result | Academic Influence

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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School

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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Literature,

#1001

Alexander Theroux

#15815

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Alexander Louis Theroux is an American novelist and poet. He is known for his novel Darconville's Cat , which was selected by Anthony Burgess for his book-length essay Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English Since 1939 – A Personal Choice in 1984 and by Larry McCaffery for his 20th Century's Greatest Hits list.

#1002

Howard Waldrop

#18480

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Howard Waldrop is a science fiction author who works primarily in short fiction. He received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2021. Personal life Though born in Houston, Mississippi, Waldrop has spent most of his life in Texas. He moved to Washington state for several years, but has since returned to Austin. As a child, he corresponded with Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin about their shared love of comic books. He is an avid fly fisherman. He is a member of the Turkey City Writer's Workshop, has attended the Rio Hondo Writing Workshop, and has taught at the Clarion Wo...

#1003

Charles Frazier

#10821

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Charles Frazier is an American novelist. He won the 1997 National Book Award for Fiction for Cold Mountain. Biography Early life Frazier was born in Asheville, North Carolina, grew up in Andrews and Franklin, North Carolina, and graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1973. He earned an M.A. from Appalachian State University in the mid-1970s, and received his Ph.D. in English from the University of South Carolina in 1986. A 1985 published work by Frazier was a trail guide to the Andes and environs for the Sierra Club.

#1004

Frederick Luis Aldama

Frederick Luis Aldama

#16296

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Frederick Luis Aldama is an American author, editor, and academic. He is the Jacob & Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and founder and director of the Latinx Pop Lab at the University of Texas, Austin. At UT Austin is also affiliate faculty in Latino Media Arts & Studies and LGBTQ Studies. He continues to hold the title Distinguished University Professor as Adjunct Professor at The Ohio State University. He teaches courses on Latinx pop culture, especially focused on the areas of comics, tv, film, animation, and video games in the departments of English and Radio-Television-Film at UT Austin.

#1005

Stuart Moulthrop

#25055

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Stuart Moulthrop is an innovator of electronic literature and hypertext fiction, both as a theoretician and as a writer. He is author of the hypertext fiction works Victory Garden , which was on the front-page of the New York Times Book Review in 1993, Reagan Library , and Hegirascope , amongst many others. Moulthrop is currently a Professor of Digital Humanities in the Department of English, at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. He also became a founding board member of the Electronic Literature Organization in 1999.

#1006

Keith Waldrop

#10327

Overall Influence

1932 - 2023 (91 years)

Bernard Keith Waldrop was an American poet, translator, publisher, and academic. He won the National Book Award for Poetry for his 2009 collection Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy. Early life and education Bernard Keith Waldrop was born in Emporia, Kansas, to Arthur Waldrop, a railroad worker, and Opal , a piano teacher. He received his bachelor's degree from the Kansas State Teachers College and his M.A. and Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Michigan .

#1007

Jon Robin Baitz

#13958

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Jon Robin Baitz is an American playwright, screenwriter and television producer. He is a two time Pulitzer Prize finalist, as well as a Guggenheim, American Academy of Arts and Letters, and National Endowment for the Arts Fellow.

#1008

Gary Saul Morson

Gary Saul Morson

#15737

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Gary Saul Morson is an American literary critic and Slavist. He is particularly known for his scholarly work on the great Russian novelists Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. Morson is Lawrence B. Dumas Professor of the Arts and Humanities at Northwestern University. Prior to this he was chair of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pennsylvania for many years.

#1009

Rafael Cadenas

#27552

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (94 years)

Rafael Cadenas is a Venezuelan poet and essayist. Career He taught for many years at the Central University of Venezuela. He received the National Prize for Literature , Guadalajara's International Book Fair prize of literature and García Lorca Prize . Cadenas was awarded the Miguel de Cervantes Prize in 2022, the first Venezuelan to receive the award. On April 24, 2023, he received the 2022 Cervantes Prize, the highest recognition for contributions to literature in the Spanish language.

#1010

Moshe Idel

#7109

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Moshe Idel is a Romanian-born Israeli historian and philosopher of Jewish mysticism. He is Emeritus Max Cooper Professor in Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and a Senior Researcher at the Shalom Hartman Institute.

#1011

P. H. Newby

#10477

Overall Influence

1918 - 1997 (79 years)

Percy Howard Newby CBE was an English novelist and broadcasting administrator. He was the first winner of the Booker Prize, his novel Something to Answer For having received the inaugural award in 1969.

#1012

Theresa Rebeck

#9023

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Theresa Rebeck is an American playwright, television writer, and novelist. Her work has appeared on the Broadway and Off-Broadway stage, in film, and on television. Among her awards are the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award. In 2012, she received the Athena Film Festival Award for Excellence as a Playwright and Author of Films, Books, and Television. She is a 2009 recipient of the Alex Awards. Her works have influenced American playwrights by bringing a feminist edge in her old works.

#1013

Walter Allen

#15952

Overall Influence

1911 - 1995 (84 years)

Walter Ernest Allen was an English literary critic and novelist and one of the Birmingham Group of authors. He is best known for his classic study The English Novel: a Short Critical History . Life and career Allen was born in Aston, Birmingham; he drew on his working-class roots for All in a Lifetime , generally considered his best novel. He was educated at King Edward's Grammar School and the University of Birmingham, graduating in 1932—his friends at that period included Henry Reed and Louis MacNeice.

#1014

Wayne G. Hammond

#18223

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Wayne Gordon Hammond is an American scholar known for his research and writings on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. Biography Wayne Hammond was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and then raised in Brooklyn, Ohio. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with Honors as an English major at Baldwin-Wallace College in 1975. He gained his Master of Arts degree in Library Science from the University of Michigan in 1976. From August 1976 to June 2015, he was Assistant Librarian of the Chapin Library of Rare Books at Williams College, and in July 2015 was promoted to Chapin Librarian.

#1015

Robert Tally

#20934

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Robert T. Tally Jr. is a professor of English at Texas State University. His research and teaching focuses on the relations among space, narrative, and representation, particularly in U.S. and comparative literature, and he is active in the emerging scholarly fields of geocriticism, literary geography, and the spatial humanities. Tally is the editor of "Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies," a Palgrave Macmillan book series established in 2013. The translator of Bertrand Westphal's Geocriticism: Real and Fictional Spaces and the editor of Geocritical Explorations, In addition to his nume...

#1016

Sebastian Barry

#12404

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Sebastian Barry is an Irish novelist, playwright and poet. He was named Laureate for Irish Fiction, 2019–2021. Barry has been twice shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for his novels A Long Long Way and The Secret Scripture , the latter of which won the 2008 Costa Book of the Year and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. His 2011 novel, On Canaan's Side, was longlisted for the Booker. In January 2017, Barry was awarded the Costa Book of the Year prize for Days Without End, becoming the first novelist to win the prestigious prize twice.

#1017

Gopalakrishna Adiga

Gopalakrishna Adiga

#19006

Overall Influence

1918 - 1992 (74 years)

Mogeri Gopalakrishna Adiga was a modern Kannada poet. He is known by some commentators as the "pioneer of New style" poetry. Biography He was born in the coastal village of Mogeri, Udupi district, in Karnataka State. After primary education in Mogeri and Baindooru, he went to high school in Kundapur. As editor of Saakshi magazine he helped bring Kannada literature to the masses.

#1018

Lisa Appignanesi

#15569

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Lisa Appignanesi is a British-Canadian writer, novelist, and campaigner for free expression. Until 2021, she was the Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, and is a former President of English PEN and Chair of the Freud Museum London. She chaired the 2017 Booker International Prize won by Olga Tokarczuk.

#1019

Syed Ali Ahsan

#8853

Overall Influence

1920 - 2002 (82 years)

Syed Ali Ahsan was a Bangladeshi poet, writer and university academic. He was awarded Ekushey Padak and Independence Day Award by the Government of Bangladesh. In 1987, he was selected as the National Professor of Bangladesh. He was credited as the official English translator of the National Anthem of Bangladesh.

#1020

Pierre Berton

#4269

Overall Influence

1920 - 2004 (84 years)

Pierre Francis de Marigny Berton, CC, O.Ont. was a Canadian writer, journalist and broadcaster. Berton wrote 50 best-selling books, mainly about Canadiana, Canadian history and popular culture. He also wrote critiques of mainstream religion, anthologies, children's books and historical works for youth. He was a reporter and war correspondent, an editor at Maclean's Magazine and The Toronto Star and, for 39 years, a guest on Front Page Challenge. He was a founder of the Writers' Trust of Canada, and won many honours and awards.

#1021

Eleanor Coerr

#29784

Overall Influence

1922 - 2010 (88 years)

Eleanor Coerr was a Canadian-born American writer of children's books, including Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes and many picture books. Biography She was born in Kamsack, Saskatchewan, Canada, and raised in Saskatoon. As a child, she liked to think up and read new stories. Through her best friend in high school, who was born to Japanese immigrants, Coerr developed an interest in calligraphy, Japanese food, and origami. She was exposed to Japanese scenery and told her friend that she wished to visit Japan one day, a request which Coerr fulfilled during the writing of Sadako and the Thou...

#1022

Françoise Sagan

Françoise Sagan

#7959

Overall Influence

1935 - 2004 (69 years)

Françoise Sagan was a French playwright, novelist, and screenwriter. Sagan was known for works with strong romantic themes involving wealthy and disillusioned bourgeois characters. Her best-known novel was her first – Bonjour Tristesse – which was written when she was a teenager.

#1023

James Alan McPherson

James Alan McPherson

#13831

Overall Influence

1943 - 2016 (73 years)

James Alan McPherson was an American essayist and short-story writer. He was the first African-American writer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and was included among the first group of artists who received a MacArthur Fellowship. At the time of his death, McPherson was a professor emeritus of fiction at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

#1024

Ivan Klíma

#12770

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (93 years)

Ivan Klíma is a Czech novelist and playwright. He has received the Magnesia Litera award and the Franz Kafka Prize, among other honors. Biography Klíma's early childhood in Prague was happy and uneventful, but this all changed with the German invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938, after the Munich Agreement. He had been unaware that both his parents had Jewish ancestry; neither were observant Jews, but this was immaterial to the Germans.

#1025

Teju Cole

#15107

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Teju Cole is a Nigerian-American writer, photographer, and art historian. He is the author of a novella, Every Day Is for the Thief , a novel, Open City , an essay collection, Known and Strange Things , a photobook Punto d'Ombra , and a second novel, Tremor . Critics have praised his work as having "opened a new path in African literature."

#1026

Timothy Findley

Timothy Findley

#14385

Overall Influence

1930 - 2002 (72 years)

Timothy Irving Frederick Findley was a Canadian novelist and playwright. He was also informally known by the nickname Tiff or Tiffy, an acronym of his initials. Biography Early life One of three sons, Findley was born in Toronto, Ontario, to Allan Gilmour Findley, a stockbroker, and his wife, the former Margaret Maude Bull. His paternal grandfather was president of Massey-Harris, the farm-machinery company. He was raised in the upper class Rosedale district of the city, attending boarding school at St. Andrew's College . He pursued a career in the arts, studying dance and acting, and had significant success as an actor before turning to writing.

#1027

Jean Craighead George

Jean Craighead George

#24420

Overall Influence

1919 - 2012 (93 years)

Jean Carolyn Craighead George was an American writer of more than one hundred books for children and young adults, including the Newbery Medal-winning Julie of the Wolves and Newbery runner-up My Side of the Mountain. Common themes in George's works are the environment and the natural world. Beside children's fiction, she wrote at least two guides to cooking with wild foods and one autobiography published 30 years before her death, Journey Inward.

#1028

David Lehman

#22794

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

David Lehman is an American poet, non-fiction writer, and literary critic, and the founder and series editor for The Best American Poetry. He was a writer and freelance journalist for fifteen years, writing for such publications as Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. In 2006, Lehman served as Editor for the new Oxford Book of American Poetry. He taught and was the Poetry Coordinator at The New School in New York City until May 2018.

#1029

Robie Macauley

#16335

Overall Influence

1919 - 1995 (76 years)

Robie Mayhew Macauley was an American editor, novelist and critic whose literary career spanned more than 50 years. Biography Early life Robie Mayhew Macauley was born on May 31, 1919, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He was the older brother of the noted photographer and movie producer C. Cameron Macauley. His uncle owned and published the Hudsonville newspaper, The Ottawa Times , and Macauley used the printing press to publish his first books of fiction and poetry. At age 18 he printed and bound a limited edition of Solomon's Cat, a previously unpublished poem by Walter Duranty, setting the type...

#1030

Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Benjamin Alire Sáenz

#18147

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Benjamin Alire Sáenz is an American poet, novelist, and writer of children's books. Early life and education Sáenz was raised near Las Cruces, New Mexico. He earned a BA in Humanities and Philosophy from St. Thomas Seminary in Denver, Colorado and a MA in creative writing from the University of Texas at El Paso. He continues to live and work in El Paso, Texas. After 15 years of marriage to his wife, an El Paso family court judge, he came out as gay, and they filed for divorce in 2009.

#1031

Werner Hamacher

#8781

Overall Influence

1948 - 2017 (69 years)

Werner Hamacher was a German literary critic and theorist influenced by deconstruction. Hamacher studied philosophy, comparative literature and religious studies at the Free University of Berlin and the École Normale Supérieure , where he met and came to know Jacques Derrida. From 1998 to 2013 he was a Professor in the University of Frankfurt's Institute for General and Comparative Literature , and since 2003 he was on the faculty of the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.

#1032

Nobuko Takagi

#34561

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Nobuko Takagi is the professional name of Nobuko Tsuruta, a Japanese author. She has won the Akutagawa Prize and the Tanizaki Prize, she has been named a Person of Cultural Merit, and her work has been adapted for film.

#1033

Christopher Durang

#6750

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Christopher Ferdinand Durang is an American playwright known for works of outrageous and often absurd comedy. His work was especially popular in the 1980s, though his career seemed to get a second wind in the late 1990s.

#1034

Grant Morrison

#9891

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Grant Morrison MBE is a Scottish comic book writer, screenwriter, and producer. Their work is known for its nonlinear narratives, humanist philosophy and countercultural leanings. Morrison has written extensively for the American comic book publisher DC Comics, penning lengthy runs on Animal Man, Doom Patrol, JLA, Action Comics, and The Green Lantern as well as the graphic novels Arkham Asylum, JLA: Earth 2, and Wonder Woman: Earth One, the meta-series Seven Soldiers and The Multiversity, the mini-series DC One Million and Final Crisis, both of which served as centrepieces for the eponymous company-wide crossover storylines, and the maxi-series All-Star Superman.

#1035

Niall Lucy

#14869

Overall Influence

1956 - 2014 (58 years)

Niall Lucy was an Australian writer and scholar best known for his work in deconstruction. Career Niall Lucy served as a professor in the School of Media, Culture & Creative Arts at Curtin University, and a former Head of the School of Arts at Murdoch University. In 1997, he was a visiting scholar in the School of English, Communication and Philosophy at the University of Wales, Cardiff. He worked mainly in the fields of deconstruction, literary theory and cultural criticism.

#1036

Ruth Klüger

#19829

Overall Influence

1931 - 2020 (89 years)

Ruth Klüger was Professor Emerita of German Studies at the University of California, Irvine and a Holocaust survivor. She was the author of the bestseller about her childhood in Vienna and in Nazi concentration camps.

#1037

Timberlake Wertenbaker

#10560

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Timberlake Wertenbaker is a British-based playwright, screenplay writer, and translator who has written plays for the Royal Court, the Royal Shakespeare Company and others. She has been described in The Washington Post as "the doyenne of political theatre of the 1980s and 1990s".

#1038

Hugh Leonard

#11418

Overall Influence

1926 - 2009 (83 years)

Hugh Leonard was an Irish dramatist, television writer, and essayist. In a career that spanned 50 years, Leonard wrote nearly 30 full-length plays, 10 one-act plays, three volumes of essay, two autobiographies, three novels, numerous screenplays and teleplays, and a regular newspaper column.

#1039

George Alec Effinger

#10180

Overall Influence

1947 - 2002 (55 years)

George Alec Effinger was an American science fiction author, born in Cleveland, Ohio. Writing career Effinger was a part of the Clarion class of 1970 and had three stories in the first Clarion anthology. His first published story was "The Eight-Thirty to Nine Slot" in Fantastic in 1971. During his early period, he also published under a variety of pseudonyms.

#1040

Joe Hill

#22162

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Joseph Hillström King , better known by the pen name Joe Hill, is an American writer. His work includes the novels Heart-Shaped Box , Horns , NOS4A2 , and The Fireman ; the short story collections 20th Century Ghosts and Strange Weather ; and the comic book series Locke & Key . He has won awards including Bram Stoker Awards, British Fantasy Awards, and an Eisner Award.

#1041

AnaLouise Keating

#14027

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

AnaLouise Keating is an American academic who is professor of Multicultural Women's and Gender Studies at Texas Woman's University in Denton, Texas. She is also the director of the department's PhD program. Keating's multiple books, essays, and edited collections primarily focus on transformation studies, U.S. women-of-color theories, Gloria Anzaldúa and pedagogy.

#1042

Donald Pizer

#22614

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (95 years)

Donald Pizer was an American academic and literary critic who was regarded as one of the principal authorities on the American naturalism literary movement. He was the Pierce Butler Professor of English Emeritus at Tulane University, and the author of numerous books on naturalism. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1962.

#1043

Elif Shafak

#13232

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Elif Shafak is a Turkish-British novelist, essayist, public speaker, political scientist and activist. Shafak writes in Turkish and English, and has published 19 books. She is best known for her novels, which include The Bastard of Istanbul, The Forty Rules of Love, Three Daughters of Eve and 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World. Her works have been translated into 55 languages and have been nominated for several literary awards. She has been described by the Financial Times as "Turkey's leading female novelist", with several of her works having been bestsellers in Turkey and internat...

#1044

Ataol Behramoğlu

Ataol Behramoğlu

#33922

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Ataol Behramoğlu is a prominent Turkish poet, author, and Russian-into-Turkish literary translator. Life Ataol Behramoğlu was born on April 13, 1942, in Istanbul. He wrote poems in honour of his father Hikmet Bahramoglu, originally from Azerbaijan, under the name "Bahramoglu". However, his first name was Ataol Gorus in honour of the Goris region where his father grew up.

#1045

Ernest Emenyonu

#18186

Overall Influence

Chief Sir Ernest Emenyonu is a Nigerian academic, who is an African literature critic and professor. He was formerly head of the department of English and Literary Studies, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, and Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Calabar, in that order, through the 1980s and 1990s. He was also Provost of Alvan Ikoku College of Education now Alvan Ikoku Federal College of Educationˌ Owerri in Imo stateˌ Nigeria .

#1046

Agha Shahid Ali

Agha Shahid Ali

#17116

Overall Influence

1949 - 2001 (52 years)

Agha Shahid Ali was an Indian-born American poet, from Jammu and Kashmir, who immigrated to the United States, and became affiliated with the literary movement known as New Formalism in American poetry. His collections include A Walk Through the Yellow Pages, The Half-Inch Himalayas, A Nostalgist's Map of America, The Country Without a Post Office, and Rooms Are Never Finished, the latter a finalist for the National Book Award in 2001.

#1047

Blue Balliett

#19926

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Blue Balliett is an American author, who lives with her husband, three children, a grandson, and a cat. She is best known for her award-winning novel for children, Chasing Vermeer. She was born Elizabeth Balliett, but her family started calling her Blue shortly after her birth.

#1048

Eiji Ōtsuka

#9345

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Eiji Ōtsuka is a Japanese social critic, folklorist, media theorist, and novelist. He is currently a professor at International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Kyoto. He graduated from University of Tsukuba with a degree in anthropology, women's folklore, human sacrifice and post-war manga. In addition to his work with manga he is a critic, essayist, and author of several successful non-fiction books on Japanese popular and otaku subcultures. He has written the Multiple Personality Detective Psycho and The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service manga series. One of his first animation script works was Mahō no Rouge Lipstick, an adult lolicon OVA.

#1049

John Worthen

#20367

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

John Worthen taught at universities in North America and Wales before becoming Professor of D.H. Lawrence Studies at the University of Nottingham, where he remains Emeritus Professor. His inaugural lecture as Professor of D.H. Lawrence Studies was published under the title Cold Hearts and Coronets. His career as Lawrence’s biographer began in the 1980s and culminated in the celebrated D.H. Lawrence: The Early Years 1885–1912, the first part of the definitive three-volume Cambridge biography . Material from this project later formed the foundation of Worthen's single-volume study, D.H. Lawren...

#1050

Lan Samantha Chang

Lan Samantha Chang

#21512

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Lan Samantha Chang is an American writer of novels and short stories. She is the author of The Family Chao and Hunger. For her fiction, which explores Chinese American experiences, she is a recipient of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Berlin Prize, the PEN/Open Book Award and the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award.

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