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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.

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List of the most influential people in Literature,

#10101

William Malone Baskervill

1850 - 1899 (49 years)

William Malone Baskervill was a writer and professor of the English language and literature at Vanderbilt University. Early life William Malone Baskerville was born in 1850 in Fayette County, Tennessee. He graduated from Randolph–Macon College in Ashland, Virginia. One of his teacher, Thomas Randoph Price, encouraged him to study in Germany. As a result, he attended the University of Leipzig in 1873–1874, where he became friends with Charles Forster Smith.

#10102

Paul Allen

1775 - 1826 (51 years)

Paul Allen was an American poet, historian, and editor. Biography Born in Providence, Rhode Island on February 15, 1775, Allen studied at Brown University, graduating in 1793. He later relocated to Philadelphia, where he served as editor of The Port Folio, the Gazette of the United States, and the Federal Republican.

#10103

Stefan Themerson

Stefan Themerson

1910 - 1988 (78 years)

Stefan Themerson was a Polish writer of children's literature, poet and inventor of Semantic Poetry, novelist, script writer filmmaker, composer and philosopher. He wrote in at least three languages. With his wife, Franciszka Themerson, they are regarded as leading husband-and-wife exponents of European Surrealism and publishers.

#10104

William Ogilvie of Pittensear

1736 - 1819 (83 years)

William Ogilvie of Pittensear FRSE FSA , known as the Rebel Professor, was a Scottish classicist, numismatist and author of an influential historic land reform treatise. Published in London in 1781, An Essay on the Right of Property in Land was issued anonymously, necessarily it seems in a revolutionary age.

#10105

Jorge Guillermo Borges

1874 - 1938 (64 years)

Jorge Guillermo Borges Haslam was an Argentine lawyer, teacher, writer, philosopher and translator. He was also an anarchist and a follower of Herbert Spencer's philosophy of philosophical anarchism. He was Jorge Luis Borges's father.

#10106

Alice Werner

1859 - 1935 (76 years)

Alice Werner CBE was a writer, poet and teacher of the Bantu languages. Life Alice Werner was one of seven children in the family of Reinhardt Joseph Werner of Mainz, teacher of languages, and his wife, Harriett. Her father travelled extensively during the first fifteen years of her life, and she lived in New Zealand, Mexico, United States and throughout Europe, until the family settled in Tonbridge, England, in 1874.

#10107

Rachel Hunter

1754 - 1813 (59 years)

Rachel Hunter was an English woman novelist of the early 19th century who lived and worked in Norwich. She was a contemporary of Jane Austen. Literary setting Rachel Hunter wrote for the same circulating library readership as Jane Austen, and like the latter she might belittle standard novel conventions in writings like Letitia. Her writings were well known in the Austen circle, one acquaintance describing a state of well-being as "quite Palmerstone", after Hunter's Letters from Mrs Palmerstone.

#10108

Heinrich Körting

1859 - 1890 (31 years)

Heinrich Körting was a German philologist and a brother of Gustav Körting. Like his brother he was a Romance scholar. He was born in Leipzig, became Privatdozent in 1885, and in 1889 an associate professor at the University of Leipzig. He was co-editor of the journal Zeitschrift für neufranzösische Sprache und Literatur.

#10109

Victor Chauvin

1844 - 1913 (69 years)

Victor Chauvin , an Arabic and Hebrew professor at the University of Liège, wrote a number of notable books on Middle Eastern literature and folklore, orientalism, biblical history, and Sharia, including L`histoire de l`Islamisme and Bibliographie des Ouvrages Arabes Ou Relatifs Aux Arabes Publies Dans L'Europe Chretienne De 1810 a 1885.

#10110

C. P. Taylor

1929 - 1981 (52 years)

Cecil Philip Taylor usually credited as C. P. Taylor, was a Scottish playwright. He wrote almost 80 plays during his 16 years as a professional playwright, including several for radio and television. He also made a number of documentary programmes for the BBC. His plays tended to draw on his Jewish background and his Socialist Marxist viewpoint, and to be written in dialect.

#10111

Sidney Toler

1874 - 1947 (73 years)

Sidney Toler was an American actor, playwright, and theatre director. The second European-American actor to play the role of Charlie Chan on screen, he is best remembered for his portrayal of the Chinese-American detective in 22 films made between 1938 and 1946. Before becoming Chan, Toler played supporting roles in 50 motion pictures, and was a highly regarded comic actor on the Broadway stage.

#10112

Ferdinand Dümmler

Ferdinand Dümmler

1859 - 1896 (37 years)

Georg Ferdinand Dümmler was a German classical philologist and archaeologist born in Halle an der Saale. He was the son of historian Ernst Ludwig Dümmler . He was a student at the Universities of Halle, Strassburg and Bonn. At Strassburg, he studied under Adolf Michaelis , and in Bonn, he had as instructors Franz Bücheler , Hermann Usener and Reinhard Kekulé von Stradonitz . In 1882 he received his doctorate with a thesis on the philosopher Antisthenes.

#10113

Johann Gottfried Stallbaum

Johann Gottfried Stallbaum

1793 - 1861 (68 years)

Johann Gottfried Stallbaum , German classical scholar, was born at Zaasch, near Delitzsch in Saxony. From 1820 until his death Stallbaum was connected with Thomasschule zu Leipzig, from 1835 as rector. In 1840 he was also appointed extraordinary professor in the university.

#10114

Claudio Tolomei

1492 - 1556 (64 years)

Claudio Tolomei was an Italian philologist. His name in Italian is identical to that of Claudius Ptolemaeus, the 2nd-century Greek astronomer. He belonged to the prominent Tolomei family of Siena, and became a bishop attached to the court of Pope Paul III.

#10115

Joseph Hiam Levy

1838 - 1913 (75 years)

Joseph Hiam Levy was an English author and economist. He was educated at the City of London School and joined the Civil Service. He later became a lecturer in economics at Birkbeck College and an important figure in the Personal Rights Association.

#10116

Victor Henry

1850 - 1907 (57 years)

Victor Henry was a French philologist, specializing in Indian languages. Biography Having held appointments at the University of Douai and the University of Lille, Henry was appointed professor of Sanskrit and comparative grammar at the University of Paris. A prolific and versatile writer, he is probably best known by the English translations of his Précis de Grammaire comparée de l'anglais et de l'allemand and Précis de Grammaire comparée du Grec et du Latin.

#10117

Leo Vaz

1890 - 1973 (83 years)

Leo Vaz , writer, teacher and journalist in Brazil. He was the author of novels and short stories in a satirical style Biography Leonel Vaz de Barros was born in Capivari. He graduated from the Normal School as a teacher in 1911 and taught in the cities of Sao Paulo and Recife until 1918.

#10118

Ronald Burrows

1867 - 1920 (53 years)

Ronald Montagu Burrows was a British archaeologist and academic, who served as Principal of King's College London from 1913 to 1920. Biography He was born on 16 August 1867 in Rugby, Warwickshire, England, the son of the Rev. Leonard Francis Burrows, a master at Rugby School, and his wife Mary Vicars. He was educated at Charterhouse School. and matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford in 1886, graduating in Greats in 1890.

#10119

Robert Montgomery

1807 - 1855 (48 years)

Robert Montgomery was an English poet and minister, the natural son of Robert Gomery , an actor and clown, and Elizabeth Medows Boyce, a schoolteacher. Born in Bath, Somerset, it is unknown why Robert Jnr. was baptised with the surname Montgomery. He was educated at a private school in the city. Later, he founded an unsuccessful weekly paper in that city. In 1828 he published The Omni-presence of the Deity, which hit popular religious sentiment so exactly that it ran through eight editions in as many months. In 1830 he followed it with The Puffiad , and Satan, or Intellect without God. An exh...

#10120

Campbell Bonner

1876 - 1954 (78 years)

Campbell Bonner was an American classicist notable for his research of amulets and ancient popular religion and superstitions of the late Graeco-Roman pagan and early Christian world. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1933 and the American Philosophical Society in 1938.

#10121

Wisse Alfred Pierre Smit

Wisse Alfred Pierre Smit

1903 - 1986 (83 years)

Wisse Alfred Pierre Smit was a poet and an influential Dutch literary historian. He was a specialist in Dutch literature of the Golden Age . W.A.P. Smit worked as a teacher for 17 years, before he accepted a professorship in Dutch literature at the University of Utrecht in 1945. He published various works of poetry and editions of a number of 16th and 17th century Dutch poets. He gained academic renown with a number of studies on various aspects of 17th century Dutch literature. Through his publications and his guidance to doctoral students, he had a considerable influence on the development...

#10122

Herman Clarence Nixon

1886 - 1967 (81 years)

Herman Clarence Nixon was an American political scientist and a member of the Southern Agrarians. Early life Herman Clarence Nixon was born in 1886 in Possum Trot, Alabama. He was educated in the public schools of Jacksonville, Alabama and attended the Jacksonville State normal school, graduating in 1907. He graduated from Alabama Polytechnic Institute, now known as Auburn University. He went to graduate school at University of Chicago. During World War I, he served in the United States Army in Europe.

#10123

Denis Dodart

1634 - 1707 (73 years)

Denis Dodart was a French physician, naturalist, and botanist who was born in 1634 in Paris and died on November 5, 1707, in the same city. Biography Childhood and humanist education Denis Dodart was born in 1634 in a Parisian middle class family that belonged to the bourgeoisie. He was a son of Jean Dodart, notary public with a passion for literature, and Marie Dubois, daughter of a lawyer at the Parlement of Paris. He was interested in art and science since young age. He was taught Latin, Greek, music, and drawing. Fontenelle mentioned in his Éloge of Monsieur Dodart the library of the Doda...

#10124

William Alexander Robb Kerr

1875 - 1945 (70 years)

William Alexander Robb Kerr, was a Canadian academic and the third president of the University of Alberta. Born in Toronto, Ontario, to Thomas and Maria Jane Kerr, Kerr received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1899 and a Master of Arts degree in 1901 from the University of Toronto. Continuing his education, he received an AM degree from Harvard University in 1902, an ET from the University of Paris in 1903, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1904. In 1904, he was appointed a professor of Romance languages and literature at Adelphi College in Brooklyn, New York. In 1909, he joined the University of Alberta as a professor of modern languages.

#10125

William Ireland Knapp

1835 - 1908 (73 years)

William Ireland Knapp , was an American Spanish scholar. Biography Knapp received his Bachelor of Arts in 1860, and taught at Colgate University. He was Professor of Ancient and Modern Languages at Vassar College from 1865 to 1867. After which time he travelled through England, France and Spain. In 1877 he was appointed Knight of the Order of Isabella the Catholic. That year he returned to America to teach at Yale University. While at Yale he taught at the renowned Spanish scholar Archer Milton Huntington, founder of the Hispanic Society of America. In 1892 he was appointed Professor of Spanis...

#10126

Jean-Louis Burnouf

1775 - 1844 (69 years)

Jean-Louis Burnouf was a French philologist and translator. The son of a poor weaver who died early in Burnouf's life, leaving him an orphan, he was admitted to the collège d'Harcourt in Paris on a scholarship and in 1792 won its Université prix d'honneur. During the French Revolution, he made his living as a merchant. Entering the Université in 1808, he was the professor of rhetoric at the lycée Charlemagne, and professor of Latin eloquence at the Collège de France, from 1817 to 1844, then inspector of the Université. He was elected a member of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lett...

#10127

Friedrich Kauffmann

1863 - 1941 (78 years)

Friedrich Kauffmann was a German philologist who specialized in Germanic studies. Biography Friedrich Kaufmann was born in Stuttgart, Germany on 14 September 1863. Kaufmann enrolled at the University of Tübingen in 1881, where he studied classical philology under Alfred von Gutschmid and Erwin Rohde, and Germanic philology under Eduard Sievers. He received his Ph.D. in 1886 with a thesis on the Old Saxon poem Heliand. During the work for his thesis, Kauffmann came in contact with Hermann Paul, who was to have a major impact on his future career.

#10128

James Bridie

1888 - 1951 (63 years)

James Bridie was the pseudonym of a Scottish playwright, screenwriter and physician whose real name was Osborne Henry Mavor. He took his pen-name from his paternal grandfather's first name and his grandmother's maiden name.

#10129

Felix Pollak

1909 - 1987 (78 years)

Felix Pollak was an American librarian, translator, and poet. Pollak was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1909 to Geza Pollak and Helene Schneider Pollak. A Jew and liberal anti-fascist, he studied law and theater at the University of Vienna before emigrating to the United States in 1938 following the annexation of Austria by the Third Reich. He briefly worked as a door-to-door salesman in New York City before enrolling at the University of Buffalo, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in library science in 1941.

#10130

Giacinto Scelsi

1905 - 1988 (83 years)

Giacinto Francesco Maria Scelsi was an Italian composer who also wrote surrealist poetry in French. He is best known for having composed music based around only one pitch, altered in all manners through microtonal oscillations, harmonic allusions, and changes in timbre and dynamics, as paradigmatically exemplified in his Quattro pezzi su una nota sola . This composition remains his most famous work and one of the few performed to significant recognition during his lifetime. His musical output, which encompassed all Western classical genres except scenic music, remained largely undiscovered even within contemporary musical circles during most of his life.

#10131

John Johnston

1570 - 1611 (41 years)

John Johnston was a Scottish poet. Life He was born not later than 1570. He styled himself Aberdonensis, i.e. "from Aberdeen". After studying at King's College, Aberdeen, he spent eight years at continental universities, sending home in 1587 from the University of Helmstadt a manuscript copy of George Buchanan's Sphæra, along with two of his own epigrams. At the University of Rostock he formed a lasting friendship with Justus Lipsius.

#10132

Thomas Stangl

1854 - 1921 (67 years)

Thomas Stangl was a German classical scholar and text critic. He is found referenced most often for his edition of scholia to Cicero's speeches , especially for his work on Asconius and the Bobbio Scholiast.

#10133

Edward Adolf Sonnenschein

1851 - 1929 (78 years)

Edward Adolf Sonnenschein was an English classical scholar and writer on Latin grammar and verse. Career Sonnenschein was educated at University College School and then in 1868 at University College London.

#10134

Author.

#10135

Daniël Heinsius

Daniël Heinsius

1580 - 1655 (75 years)

Daniel Heinsius was one of the most famous scholars of the Dutch Renaissance. His youth and student years Heinsius was born in Ghent. The troubles of the Spanish war drove his parents to settle first at Veere in Zeeland, then to England, next at Rijwijk and lastly at Vlissingen. In 1596, being already remarkable for his attainments, he was sent to the University of Franeker to study law under Henricus Schotanus. In 1598, he settled at Leiden for the nearly sixty remaining years of his life. There he studied under Joseph Scaliger, and there he met Marnix de St Aldegonde, Janus Dousa, Paulus ...

#10136

Einar Høigård

1907 - 1943 (36 years)

Einar Musæus Høigård was a Norwegian educator and civil resistance member. Biography Høigård was born in Stavanger, the son of Jonas Bernhard Høigård and Caroline Hansine Musæus. Among his works is a dissertation on Henrik Anker Bjerregaard from 1934 and a monograph on the history of Oslo Cathedral School from 1942. During the German occupation of Norway he played a central role in the teachers' resistance against Nazification of schools and youth organizations. He was arrested in 1943 during an escape attempt to Sweden, tortured by the Gestapo and committed suicide during interrogation.

#10137

Brian Higgins

1930 - 1965 (35 years)

Brian Higgins was an Irish poet, mathematician and professional rugby league footballer. ‘Born at Batley in 1930, bored at Bradford in 1940, in 1950 he had an affair with the gamma function. He was educated in 1960 at the "York Minster", Soho.’ Thus states the biographical note on the endpaper of Brian Higgins's first book of poems, "The Only Need". Brian Higgins died in 1965, before his third book of poems "The Northern Fiddler" appeared. In an introduction to this book the poet George Barker wrote that Higgins "had perceived that the secret at the heart of affairs constituted the most in...

#10138

John Hennig

1911 - 1986 (75 years)

John Hennig was a German theologian, businessman and scholar of Irish and German Literature. Origins Hennig was born in Leipzig on 3 March 1911, the son of a teacher, Max Hennig, and his wife Johanna Clemen. Like his brother Karl , later to be a theologian and pastor, Hans, as he was known, frequented the Thomasschule in Leipzig. The family was Lutheran. Hennig's mother was a deaconess at her marriage and his father had a doctorate in the psychology of religious perception and was an ordained minister, though he had chosen to become a high-school religion teacher rather than a pastor. A brot...

#10139

Einar Löfstedt

1880 - 1955 (75 years)

Haimon Einar Harald Löfstedt was a Swedish Latinist and classical philologist. His father, also named Einar Löfstedt, was a scholar of Greek. He was Professor of Roman Oratory and Poetry at Lund University from 1913. Löfstedt was a member of the Swedish Academy, of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences, a corresponding fellow of the British Academy, and a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and of the Prussian Academy of Sciences.

#10140

John Henry Whyte

1928 - 1990 (62 years)

John Henry Whyte was an Irish historian, political scientist and author of books on Northern Ireland, divided societies and church-state affairs in Ireland. Early life Whyte was born in 1928 in Penang, Malaya. His father was manager of a rubber plantation on the mainland. Whyte's family left Malaya, and returned to Europe when he was three, eventually settling in Rostrevor, County Down, Northern Ireland. The Whytes are a well known County Down family recorded in the area since at least 1713. The Whyte family is said to have come to Ireland from South Wales with Strongbow in 1170 and settled in Leinster.

#10141

Antranig Dzarugian

Antranig Dzarugian

1913 - 1989 (76 years)

Antranig Dzarugian was an influential diasporan Armenian writer, poet, educator, and journalist in the 20th century. Antranig Dzarugian was born in Gürün, Sivas Vilayet, Ottoman Empire in 1913. He was related to Chello Toros , one of the fighters of the Armenian irregular units against the Ottoman Empire. During the years of the Armenian genocide, Dzarugian separated from his mother as a result of the death marches in the Syrian desert and spent his childhood in the Armenian Orphanage of Aleppo. In 1921, he met his own mother in Aleppo and moved to the local Haygazian Armenian School to receive his elementary education.

#10142

David Bell

1915 - 1959 (44 years)

Ernest David Bell was an English-born writer and curator, who was a controversial figure in Welsh arts by challenging the country's artistic heritage, but was also a supporter of young Welsh talent in the field of contemporary arts in the 20th century.

#10143

Charles Rann Kennedy

1808 - 1867 (59 years)

Charles Rann Kennedy was an English lawyer and classicist, best remembered for his involvement in the Swinfen will case and the issues of contingency fee agreements and legal ethics that it involved.

#10144

Lewis Packard

1836 - 1884 (48 years)

Lewis Richard Packard was an American scholar best known for his work, ‘’Morality and Religion of the Greeks’’. Early life He was born on August 22, 1836 in Philadelphia. His father was Friedrich Adolphus Packard. He graduated from Yale in 1856 with the intention of entering the ministry, but following a year of study at Berlin in 1857-8, a tour of Greece confirmed him as a Hellenist.

#10145

William Wadden Turner

William Wadden Turner

1810 - 1859 (49 years)

William Wadden Turner was an English-born American philologist and librarian. Turner was born in London, England, October 23, 1810; died in Washington, D.C., 29 November 29, 1859. He came to New York in 1818, and, after a public-school education, was apprenticed to the carpenter's trade, but subsequently became a printer. At the age of twenty-six he was master of French, Latin, German, and Hebrew. Afterward he studied Arabic with Professor Isaac Nordheimer, and they proposed to write together an Arabic grammar, but, receiving no encouragement, they prepared instead A Critical Grammar of the H...

#10146

Zachary Boyd

1585 - 1653 (68 years)

Zachary Boyd was a Scottish minister and university administrator who wrote many sermons, scriptural versifications and other devotional works. He served as Dean of Faculties, Rector and Vice-Chancellor at the University of Glasgow during the 1630s and 1640s, and bequeathed a generous legacy to the university including his library and large manuscript collection of unpublished sermons and verse.

#10147

Dewi Havhesp

1831 - 1884 (53 years)

David Roberts was a British poet known as ‘Dewi Havhesp’. Profession David Roberts was a successful tailor with a comfortable income. His family were wealthy landowners and obtained revenue from numerous farms and land. Roberts eventually died in penury at the workhouse at Bala.

#10148

Bjarne Berulfsen

Bjarne Berulfsen

1906 - 1970 (64 years)

Bjarne Berulfsen was a Norwegian philologist and professor, best known for establishing the Friends of Folk Song Club in 1946 and for writing many books translated into several languages. Berulfsen was born in Solum, Norway . He passed his university admission exam in 1925 and then received a candidatus philologiæ degree in historical linguistics in 1932. He taught at Christian High School in Oslo, and then became the principal of the Oslo Commerce School in 1936. He received his PhD in 1949 with the dissertation Kulturtradisjon fra en storhetstid , which was based on private correspondence from the 15th century, and he was also hosted at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1958.

#10149

Oscar Levant

1906 - 1972 (66 years)

Oscar Levant was an American concert pianist, composer, conductor, author, radio game show panelist, television talk show host, comedian, and actor. He was known for his performances in the films Rhapsody in Blue , The Barkleys of Broadway , An American in Paris , and The Band Wagon . He was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960 for recordings featuring his piano performances. He was as equally famous for his mordant character and witticisms, on radio and later in movies and television, as for his music. He was portrayed by Sean Hayes in the Broadway play Good Night, Oscar, written by Doug Wright.

#10150

Harvey Oxenhorn

1952 - 1990 (38 years)

Harvey Oxenhorn was an American academic and author most famous for writing the book, Tuning the Rig. He was the Director of the Public Policy Communications Program at Harvard University. Oxenhorn was born in New York City. He got a Bachelor of Arts degree at Swarthmore College and a Doctorate in English from Stanford University. His thesis was entitled "Elemental Things: The Poetry of Hugh MacDiarmid". He taught at both Stanford and Tufts University before accepting a position at Harvard, first as an instructor, and then as Director in 1983. In addition to nonfiction, he also wrote poetry. ...

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