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,
#10651
Victor Eftimiu
1889 - 1972 (83 years)
Victor Eftimiu was a Romanian poet and playwright. He was a contributor to Sburătorul, a Romanian literary magazine. His works have been performed in the State Jewish Theater of Romania. Eftimiu was of Albanian origin, but also had Aromanian descent through his father Gheorghe Eftimiu, a merchant. Eftimiu's mother was Maria Eftimiu, née Cociu. Victor Eftimiu was born in Boboshticë near Korçë. In 1905, he emigrated from Albania to Romania, where he found work as a theatre manager in 1913. He published several books of poetry, and wrote comedies and satirical pieces for the theatre. He also wrote a volume of Romanian fairy tales, and several children's books.
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Otto Kern
1863 - 1942 (79 years)
Otto Ferdinand Georg Kern was a German classical philologist, archaeologist and epigraphist. He specialized in the field of ancient Greek religion, being known for his investigations of Greek mystery cults and Orphism, as well as the ancient city of Magnesia on the Maeander and later also the history of ancient studies. In 1907 he became professor at the University of Halle-Wittenberg, where he became rector in 1915/16.
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Robert Hillyer
1895 - 1961 (66 years)
Robert Silliman Hillyer was an American poet and professor of English literature. He won a Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1934. Early life Hillyer was born in East Orange, New Jersey to an old Connecticut family. He attended Kent School in Kent, Connecticut. After high school, he attended Harvard University, graduating cum laude in 1917. While there, he was the editor of the literary magazine The Harvard Advocate, and was affiliated with the group known as the Harvard Aesthetes.
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Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
1848 - 1895 (47 years)
Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen was a Norwegian-American author and college professor. He is best remembered for his novel Gunnar: A Tale of Norse Life, which is generally considered to have been the first novel by a Norwegian immigrant in America.
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Walther Kranz
1884 - 1960 (76 years)
Walther Kranz was a German classical philologist and historian of philosophy. Biography Kranz studied classical philology at the University of Berlin from 1903 to 1907 with Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, Hermann Diels and Eduard Norden. He received his doctorate in 1910 with Wilamowitz-Moellendorf. For several years he was a teacher at the Berlin-Grunewald experimental school. In 1932, he joined the University of Halle as an honorary professor of classical languages . He took over the publication of Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker from the 5th edition onwards. After the takeover by the Nazis, he experienced political difficulties because his wife was Jewish.
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Tsubouchi Shōyō
1859 - 1935 (76 years)
Tsubouchi Shōyō was a Japanese author, critic, playwright, translator, editor, educator, and professor at Waseda University. He has been referred to as a seminal figure in Japanese drama. Biography He was born Tsubouchi Yūzō , in Gifu prefecture. He also used the pen name Harunoya Oboro .
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Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
1836 - 1895 (59 years)
Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch was an Austrian nobleman, writer and journalist, who gained renown for his romantic stories of Galician life. The term masochism is derived from his name, invented by his contemporary, the Austrian psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing. Masoch did not approve of this use of his name.
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Francis Buchanan-Hamilton
1762 - 1829 (67 years)
Francis Buchanan , later known as Francis Hamilton but often referred to as Francis Buchanan-Hamilton, was a Scottish surgeon, surveyor and botanist who made significant contributions as a geographer and zoologist while living in India. He did not assume the name of Hamilton until three years after his retirement from India.
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Radclyffe Hall
1880 - 1943 (63 years)
Marguerite Antonia Radclyffe Hall was an English poet and author, best known for the novel The Well of Loneliness, a groundbreaking work in lesbian literature. In adulthood, Hall often went by the name John, rather than Marguerite.
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Charlotte Mary Yonge
1823 - 1901 (78 years)
Charlotte Mary Yonge was an English novelist, who wrote in the service of the church. Her abundant books helped to spread the influence of the Oxford Movement and show her keen interest in matters of public health and sanitation.
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Robert Fitzgerald
1910 - 1985 (75 years)
Robert Stuart Fitzgerald was an American poet, literary critic and translator whose renderings of the Greek classics "became standard works for a generation of scholars and students". He was best known as a translator of ancient Greek and Latin. He also composed several books of his own poetry.
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Cao Xueqin
1724 - 1763 (39 years)
Cáo Xuěqín ; was a Chinese novelist and poet during the Qing dynasty. He is best known as the author of Dream of the Red Chamber, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. His given name was Cáo Zhān and his courtesy name was Mèngruǎn .
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Leonardo Sciascia
1921 - 1989 (68 years)
Leonardo Sciascia was an Italian writer, novelist, essayist, playwright, and politician. Some of his works have been made into films, including Porte Aperte , Cadaveri Eccellenti , Todo Modo and Il giorno della civetta .
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Alain-René Lesage
1668 - 1747 (79 years)
Alain-René Lesage was a French novelist and playwright. Lesage is best known for his comic novel The Devil upon Two Sticks , his comedy Turcaret , and his picaresque novel Gil Blas . Life Youth and education Claude Lesage, the father of the novelist, held the united positions of advocate, notary and registrar of the royal court in Rhuys. His mother's name was Jeanne Brenugat. Both Lesage's father and mother died when Lesage was very young, and he was left in the care of his uncle who wasted his education and fortune. Père Bochard, of the Order of the Jesuits, Principal of the College in Vannes, became interested in the boy on account of his natural talents.
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Angelo Maria Ripellino
1923 - 1978 (55 years)
Angelo Maria Ripellino was an Italian translator, poet, linguist and academic. Life and career Born in Palermo, the son of a high school professor, in 1945 Ripellino graduated in Slavistics at the University of Palermo. In 1947 he enrolled the filmmaking courses at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia; the same year he married Ela Hlochova, a Czech student of Italian literature he had known during a 1946 study travel in Prague, who would who would become his closer collaborator.
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Robert Dodsley
1704 - 1764 (60 years)
Robert Dodsley was an English bookseller, publisher, poet, playwright, and miscellaneous writer. Life Dodsley was born near Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, where his father was master of the free school. He is said to have been apprenticed to a stocking-weaver in Mansfield, from whom he ran away, going into service as a footman. Profits and fame from his early literary works enabled Dodsley to establish himself with the help of his friends as a bookseller at the sign of Tully's Head in Pall Mall, London, in 1735.
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Michel Carré
1821 - 1872 (51 years)
Michel Carré was a prolific French librettist. He went to Paris in 1840 intending to become a painter but took up writing instead. He wrote verse and plays before turning to writing libretti. He wrote the text for Charles Gounod's Mireille on his own, and collaborated with Eugène Cormon on Bizet's Les pêcheurs de perles. However, the majority of his libretti were completed in tandem with Jules Barbier, with whom he wrote the libretti for numerous operas, including Camille Saint-Saëns's Le timbre d'argent , Gounod's Faust , Roméo et Juliette , and Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann . As with t...
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Anna Pavlova
1881 - 1931 (50 years)
Anna Pavlovna Pavlova was a Russian prima ballerina of the late 19th and the early 20th centuries. She was a principal artist of the Imperial Russian Ballet and the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev. Pavlova is most recognized for her creation of the role of The Dying Swan and, with her own company, became the first ballerina to tour around the world, including performances in South America, India, Mexico and Australia.
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Devaneya Pavanar
1902 - 1981 (79 years)
Devaneya Pavanar was an Indian scholar who wrote over 35 research volumes on Tamil language and literature. Additionally, he was a staunch proponent of the "Pure Tamil movement" and initiated the Etymological Dictionary Project primarily to bring out the roots of Tamil words and their connections and ramifications with Nostratic studies.
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Viktor Petrov
1894 - 1969 (75 years)
Viktor Platonovych Petrov was a prominent Ukrainian existentialist writer. Together with Valerian Pidmohylny, Petrov is considered to be the founder of the Ukrainian intellectual novel. Although Petrov is remembered as a writer today, during his life he was a scientist in the first place. He wrote papers on archaeology, anthropology, history, philosophy and literature.
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Christopher Okigbo
1930 - 1967 (37 years)
Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo was a Nigerian poet, teacher, and librarian, who died fighting for the independence of Biafra. He is today widely acknowledged as an outstanding postcolonial English-language African poet and one of the major modernist writers of the 20th century.
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Endre Ady
1877 - 1919 (42 years)
Endre Ady was a turn-of-the-century Hungarian poet and journalist. Regarded by many as the greatest Hungarian poet of the 20th century, he was noted for his steadfast belief in social progress and development and for his poetry's exploration of fundamental questions of the modern European experience: love, temporality, faith, individuality, and patriotism.
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William Barnes
1801 - 1886 (85 years)
William Barnes was an English polymath, writer, poet, philologist, priest, mathematician, engraving artist and inventor. He wrote over 800 poems, some in Dorset dialect, and much other work, including a comprehensive English grammar quoting from more than 70 different languages. A linguistic purist, Barnes strongly advocated against borrowing foreign words into English, and instead supported the use and proliferation of "strong old Anglo-Saxon speech".
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Maik Yohansen
1895 - 1937 (42 years)
Maik Hervasiiovych Yohansen or Mike Johansen – was a Ukrainian poet, prose writer, dramatist, translator, critic and linguist. He was one of the founders of VAPLITE. Biography Maik Yohansen was born on 16 October 1895 in Kharkiv. His father, a Latvian emigrant was a teacher of German, and made sure his son had a proper education. Maik Yohansen received his secondary education at the Kharkiv Third Gymnasium. There he studied along with Hryhoriy Petnikov and Bohdan Hordeev , who later became well-known poet-futurists, as well as with Yuriy Platonov – a geographer and prose writer. Afterwards, ...
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William Beebe
1877 - 1962 (85 years)
Charles William Beebe was an American naturalist, ornithologist, marine biologist, entomologist, explorer, and author. He is remembered for the numerous expeditions he conducted for the New York Zoological Society, his deep dives in the Bathysphere, and his prolific scientific writing for academic and popular audiences.
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Georg Friedrich Benecke
1762 - 1844 (82 years)
Georg Friedrich Benecke was a German philologist. Beginning in 1780, he was a student at the University of Göttingen, where he was a pupil of Christian Gottlob Heyne. In 1814 he became a full professor at Göttingen, and later on, acquired duties as a head librarian.
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Allan Ramsay
1684 - 1758 (74 years)
Allan Ramsay was a Scottish poet , playwright, publisher, librarian and impresario of early Enlightenment Edinburgh. Ramsay's influence extended to England, foreshadowing the reaction that followed the publication of Percy's Reliques. He was on close terms with the leading men of letters in Scotland and England. He corresponded with William Hamilton of Bangour, William Somervile, John Gay and Alexander Pope.
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Ignacy Krasicki
1735 - 1801 (66 years)
Ignacy Błażej Franciszek Krasicki , from 1766 Prince-Bishop of Warmia and from 1795 Archbishop of Gniezno , was Poland's leading Enlightenment poet , a critic of the clergy, Poland's La Fontaine, author of the first Polish novel, playwright, journalist, encyclopedist, and translator from French and Greek.
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Elbert Hubbard
1856 - 1915 (59 years)
Elbert Green Hubbard was an American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher. Raised in Hudson, Illinois, he had early success as a traveling salesman for the Larkin Soap Company. Hubbard is known best as the founder of the Roycroft artisan community in East Aurora, New York, an influential exponent of the Arts and Crafts movement.
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Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay
1876 - 1938 (62 years)
Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay , was a Bengali novelist and short story writer of the early 20th century. He generally wrote about the lives of Bengali family and socity in cities and villages. However, his keen powers of observation, great sympathy for fellow human beings, a deep understanding of human psychology , an easy and natural writing style, and freedom from political biases and social prejudices enable his writing to transcend barriers and appeal to all Indians. He remains the most popular, translated, and adapted Indian author of all time.
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C. P. Snow
1905 - 1980 (75 years)
Charles Percy Snow, Baron Snow, was an English novelist and physical chemist who also served in several important positions in the British Civil Service and briefly in the UK government. He is best known for his series of novels known collectively as Strangers and Brothers, and for The Two Cultures, a 1959 lecture in which he laments the gulf between scientists and "literary intellectuals".
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Murray Leinster
1896 - 1975 (79 years)
Murray Leinster was a pen name of William Fitzgerald Jenkins, an American writer of genre fiction, particularly of science fiction. He wrote and published more than 1,500 short stories and articles, 14 movie scripts, and hundreds of radio scripts and television plays.
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Per Daniel Amadeus Atterbom
1790 - 1855 (65 years)
Per Daniel Amadeus Atterbom was a Swedish romantic poet, and a member of the Swedish Academy. Life He was son of a country parson, was born in the province of Ostergotland on 19 January 1790. He studied in the university of Uppsala from 1805 to 1815, and became professor of philosophy there in 1828.
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Hans Sachs
1494 - 1576 (82 years)
Hans Sachs was a German Meistersinger , poet, playwright, and shoemaker. Biography Hans Sachs was born in Nuremberg . As a child he attended a singing school that was held in the church of Nuremberg. This helped to awaken in him a taste for poetry and music. His father was a tailor. He attended Latin school in Nuremberg . When he was 14 he took up an apprenticeship as a shoemaker.
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Wilhelm Raabe
1831 - 1910 (79 years)
Wilhelm Raabe was a German novelist. His early works were published under the pseudonym of Jakob Corvinus. Biography He was born in Eschershausen . After attending gymnasia in Holzminden and Wolfenbüttel, he entered a bookstore in Magdeburg as apprentice in 1849. He used this opportunity for wide reading and enriched himself with the tales and folklore of his own and other countries. He remained an apprentice until 1854.
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Robert Williams Buchanan
1841 - 1901 (60 years)
Robert Williams Buchanan was a Scottish poet, novelist and dramatist. Early life and education He was the son of Robert Buchanan , Owenite lecturer and journalist, and was born at Caverswall, Staffordshire, England. Buchanan senior, a native of Ayr, Scotland, lived for some years in Manchester, then moved to Glasgow, where Buchanan junior was educated, at the high school and the university, one of his fellow-students being the poet David Gray. His essay on Gray, originally published in the Cornhill Magazine, tells the story of their close friendship, and of their journey to London in 1860 in...
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Richard Crashaw
1612 - 1649 (37 years)
Richard Crashaw was an English poet, teacher, High Church Anglican cleric and Roman Catholic convert, who was one of the major metaphysical poets in 17th-century English literature. Crashaw was the son of a famous Anglican divine with Puritan beliefs who earned a reputation as a hard-hitting pamphleteer and polemicist against Catholicism. After his father's death, Crashaw was educated at Charterhouse School and Pembroke College, Cambridge. After taking a degree, Crashaw taught as a fellow at Peterhouse, Cambridge and began to publish religious poetry that expressed a distinct mystical natur...
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Friedrich von Bodenstedt
1819 - 1892 (73 years)
Friedrich Martin von Bodenstedt was a German author. Biography Bodenstedt was born at Peine, in the Kingdom of Hanover. He was trained as a merchant in Braunschweig and studied in Göttingen, Munich and Berlin.
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Józef Ignacy Kraszewski
1812 - 1887 (75 years)
Józef Ignacy Kraszewski was a Polish writer, publisher, historian, journalist, scholar, painter, and author who produced more than 200 novels and 150 novellas, short stories, and art reviews, which makes him the most prolific writer in the history of Polish literature. He is best known for his epic series on the history of Poland, comprising twenty-nine novels in seventy-nine parts.
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Joel Elias Spingarn
1875 - 1939 (64 years)
Joel Elias Spingarn was an American educator, literary critic, civil rights activist, military intelligence officer, and horticulturalist. Biography Spingarn was born in New York City to an upper middle-class Jewish family. His younger brother was Arthur B. Spingarn. He graduated from Columbia College in 1895. He grew committed to the importance of the study of comparative literature as a discipline distinct from the study of English or any other language-based literary studies.
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Kalki Krishnamurthy
1899 - 1954 (55 years)
Ramaswamy Krishnamurthy , better known by his pen name Kalki, was an Indian writer, journalist, poet, critic and Indian independence activist who wrote in Tamil. He chose the pen-name "Kalki", the future incarnation of the Hindu God Vishnu. He founded a magazine, which was also named Kalki, with T Sadasivam being the co-founder, in 1941. Krishnamurthy‘s writings include over 120 short stories, 10 novellas, 5 novels, 3 historical romances, editorial and political writings and hundreds of film and music reviews.
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Ouyang Xiu
1007 - 1072 (65 years)
Ouyang Xiu , courtesy name Yongshu, also known by his art names Zuiweng and Liu Yi Jushi , was a Chinese historian, calligrapher, epigrapher, essayist, poet, and politician of the Song dynasty. He was a renowned writer among his contemporaries and is considered the central figure of the Eight Masters of the Tang and Song. He revived the Classical Prose Movement and promoted it in imperial examinations, paving the way for future masters like Su Shi and Su Zhe.
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Denis Johnston
1901 - 1984 (83 years)
Denis Johnston was an Irish writer. Born in Dublin, he wrote mostly plays, but also works of literary criticism, a book-length biographical essay of Jonathan Swift, a memoir and an eccentric work on cosmology and philosophy. He also worked as a war correspondent, and as both a radio and television producer for the BBC. His first play, The Old Lady Says "No!", helped establish the worldwide reputation of the Dublin Gate Theatre; his second, The Moon in the Yellow River, has been performed around the globe in numerous productions featuring such storied names as James Mason, Jack Hawkins, Claude Rains, Barry Fitzgerald, James Coco and Errol Flynn.
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Terence
185 BC - 159 BC (26 years)
Publius Terentius Afer , better known in English as Terence , was an African Roman playwright during the Roman Republic. His comedies were performed for the first time around 166–160 BC. Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator, brought Terence to Rome as a slave, educated him and later on, impressed by his abilities, freed him. It is thought that Terence abruptly died, around the age of 25, likely in Greece or on his way back to Rome, due to shipwreck or disease. He was supposedly on his way to explore and find inspiration for his comedies. His plays were heavily used to learn to speak and write in...
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Shrimad Rajchandra
1867 - 1901 (34 years)
Shrimad Rajchandra was a Jain poet, mystic, philosopher, scholar, and reformer. Born in Vavaniya, a village near Morbi, he claimed to have recollection of his past lives at the age of seven. He performed Avadhāna, a memory retention and recollection test that gained him popularity, but he later discouraged it in favour of his spiritual pursuits. He wrote much philosophical poetry including Atma Siddhi. He also wrote many letters and commentaries and translated some religious texts. He is best known for his teachings on Jainism and his spiritual guidance to Mahatma Gandhi.
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Saunders Lewis
1893 - 1985 (92 years)
Saunders Lewis was a Welsh politician, poet, dramatist, Medievalist, and literary critic. He was a prominent Welsh nationalist, supporter of Welsh independence and was a co-founder of Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru , later known as Plaid Cymru. Lewis is usually acknowledged as one of the most prominent figures of 20th century Welsh literature. In 1970, Lewis was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature. Lewis was voted the tenth greatest Welsh hero in the '100 Welsh Heroes' poll, released on St. David's Day 2004.
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Gabrielle Roy
1909 - 1983 (74 years)
Gabrielle Roy was a Canadian author from St. Boniface, Manitoba and one of the major figures in French Canadian literature. Early life Roy was born in 1909 in Saint-Boniface , Manitoba, and was educated at the Académie Saint-Joseph. She was born into a family of eleven children and reportedly began to write at an early age. She lived on rue Deschambault, a house and neighbourhood in Saint-Boniface that would later inspire one of her most famous works. The house is now a National Historic Site and museum in Winnipeg.
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Ion Barbu
1895 - 1961 (66 years)
Ion Barbu was a Romanian mathematician and poet. His name is associated with the Mathematics Subject Classification number 51C05, which is a major posthumous recognition reserved only to pioneers of investigations in an area of mathematical inquiry.
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Terry Carr
1937 - 1987 (50 years)
Terry Gene Carr was an American science fiction fan, author, editor, and writing instructor. Background and discovery of fandom Carr was born in Grants Pass, Oregon. He attended the City College of San Francisco and the University of California, Berkeley from 1954 to 1959.
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