The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
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List of the most influential people in Literature,
#10701
Eugène Vinaver
1899 - 1979 (80 years)
Eugène Vinaver was a Russian-born British literary scholar who is best known today for his edition of the works of Sir Thomas Malory. Early life Vinaver was born in Saint Petersburg, the son of Jewish-Russian lawyer, national politician, and Jewish community leader Maxim Vinaver, who emigrated to France in 1919.
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Jan Sztaudynger
1904 - 1970 (66 years)
Jan Izydor Sztaudynger was a Polish poet and satirist who enjoyed enormous popularity after World War II. Life Jan Sztaudynger studied Polish and German philology at Kraków's Jagiellonian University.
Go to Profile#10703
Nathaniel Lee
1653 - 1692 (39 years)
Nathaniel Lee was an English dramatist. He was the son of Dr Richard Lee, a Presbyterian clergyman who was rector of Hatfield and held many preferments under the Commonwealth; Dr Lee was chaplain to George Monck, afterwards Duke of Albemarle, but after the Restoration he conformed to the Church of England, and withdrew his approval for Charles I's execution.
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William Shenstone
1714 - 1763 (49 years)
William Shenstone was an English poet and one of the earliest practitioners of landscape gardening through the development of his estate, The Leasowes. Biography Son of Thomas Shenstone and Anne Penn, daughter of William Penn of Harborough Hall, then in Hagley , Shenstone was born at the Leasowes, Halesowen on 18 November 1714. At that time this was an exclave of Shropshire within the county of Worcestershire and now in the West Midlands. Shenstone received part of his formal education at Halesowen Grammar School . In 1741, Shenstone became bailiff to the feoffees of Halesowen Grammar Schoo...
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René Lesson
1794 - 1849 (55 years)
René-Primevère Lesson was a French surgeon, naturalist, ornithologist, and herpetologist. Biography Lesson was born at Rochefort, and entered the Naval Medical School in Rochefort at the age of sixteen. He served in the French Navy during the Napoleonic Wars; in 1811 he was third surgeon on the frigate Saale, and in 1813 was second surgeon on the Regulus.
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Gregor Wilhelm Nitzsch
1790 - 1861 (71 years)
Gregor Wilhelm Nitzsch was a German classical scholar known chiefly for his writings on Homeric epic. Brother of Karl Immanuel Nitzsch, he was born at Wittenberg. In 1827 he was appointed professor of ancient literature at the University of Kiel, but in 1852 was dismissed by the Danish government for his German sympathies. In the same year, he accepted a similar post at Leipzig, which he held until his death.
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Haruo Satō
1892 - 1964 (72 years)
Haruo Sato was a Japanese novelist and poet active during the Taishō and Shōwa periods of Japan. His works are known for their explorations of melancholy. He won the 4th Yomiuri Prize. Selected works The House of a Spanish Dog, 西班牙犬の家, 1914.Melancholy in the Country, 田園の憂鬱, 1919.
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Picander
1700 - 1764 (64 years)
Christian Friedrich Henrici , writing under the pen name Picander, was a German poet and librettist for many of the cantatas which Johann Sebastian Bach composed in Leipzig. Henrici was born in Stolpen. He studied law at Wittenberg and Leipzig. He wrote to supplement his income from tutoring and continued even after obtaining regular employment as a civil servant.
Go to Profile#10709
Ford Sterling
1883 - 1939 (56 years)
Ford Sterling was an American comedian and actor best known for his work with Keystone Studios. One of the 'Big 4', he was the original chief of the Keystone Cops. Early years Sterling was born George Stitch in La Crosse, Wisconsin, on November 3, 1883, He left home at age 12 to join a repertory company.
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Alfred Gudeman
1862 - 1942 (80 years)
Alfred Gudeman was an American-German classical scholar. Biography He was born in Atlanta, Georgia and graduated from Columbia University in 1883 and studied under Johannes Vahlen and Hermann Diels at the University of Berlin. From 1890 to 1893 he was reader in classical philology at Johns Hopkins University, from 1893 to 1902 professor in the University of Pennsylvania, and from 1902 to 1904 professor in Cornell University.
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Louis Kronenberger
1904 - 1980 (76 years)
Louis Kronenberger was an American literary critic , novelist, and biographer who wrote extensively on drama and the 18th century. Background Kronenberger was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Louis Kronenberger Sr., a merchant, and Mabel Newwitter. Kronenberger attended, but did not graduate from, the University of Cincinnati from 1921 to 1924.
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Adolf Holtzmann
1810 - 1870 (60 years)
Adolf Holtzmann was a German professor and philologist. His name is associated with a Proto-Germanic sound law known as Holtzmann's Law. He studied theology at the universities of Halle and Berlin, where he was a student of Friedrich Schleiermacher. He later studied philology at the University of Munich, where his influences included Johann Andreas Schmeller. Holtzmann also attended classes in Paris given by Eugène Burnouf, and beginning in 1837, spent a number of years working as a tutor to members of Baden royalty. From 1852 he was a professor of German literature and Sanskrit at the Univer...
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James McAuley
1917 - 1976 (59 years)
James Phillip McAuley was an Australian academic, poet, journalist, literary critic and a prominent convert to Roman Catholicism. He was involved in the Ern Malley poetry hoax. Life and career McAuley was born in Lakemba, a suburb of Sydney. He was educated at Fort Street High School and then attended Sydney University, where he majored in English, Latin and philosophy
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May Swenson
1913 - 1989 (76 years)
Anna Thilda May "May" Swenson was an American poet and playwright. Harold Bloom considered her one of the most important and original poets of the 20th century. The first child of Margaret and Dan Arthur Swenson, she grew up as the eldest of 10 children in a Mormon household where Swedish was spoken regularly and English was a second language. Although her conservative family struggled to accept the fact that she was a lesbian, they remained close throughout her life. Much of her later poetry works were devoted to children . She also translated the work of contemporary Swedish poets, includi...
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Eduard Fraenkel
1888 - 1970 (82 years)
Eduard David Mortier Fraenkel FBA was a German classical scholar who served as the Corpus Christi Professor of Latin at the University of Oxford from 1935 until 1953. Born to a family of assimilated Jews in the German Empire, he studied Classics at the universities of Berlin and Göttingen. In 1934, antisemitic legislation introduced by the Nazi Party forced him to seek refuge in the United Kingdom where he eventually settled at Corpus Christi College.
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Toyohachi Fujita
1869 - 1929 (60 years)
Toyohachi Fujita was a Japanese writer and professor in East Asian History. He was from Tokushima Prefecture. His pen name was Jianfeng / Kenfou . He founded a school in Jiangsu, China. He was a teacher at Beijing University , author of Secondary Education East Asian history《中等教育東洋史》and Research on the History of East-West Interactions《東西交涉史之研究（東西交渉史の研究）》. He collected over 1700 Chinese books. After he died, those were sent to the Toyo Bunko and put into a section called Fujita's library .
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Adolf Frey
1855 - 1920 (65 years)
Adolf Frey was a Swiss writer and literary historian. The son of popular writer Jakob Frey , he studied at various universities, including from 1879 to 1881 literature and history at the University of Leipzig.
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Léonie Adams
1899 - 1988 (89 years)
Léonie Fuller Adams was an American poet. She was appointed the seventh Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1948. Biography Adams was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in an unusually strict environment. She was not allowed on the subway until she was eighteen, and even then, her father accompanied her. Her sister was the teacher and archaeologist Louise Holland and her brother-in-law the archaeologist Leicester Bodine Holland. She studied at Barnard College, where she was a contemporary and friend of roommate Margaret Mead. While still an undergraduate, she showed remarkable skill as a poet, and at this time her poems began to be published.
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Renato Poggioli
1907 - 1963 (56 years)
Renato Poggioli , was an Italian academic specializing in comparative literature. After 1938, he lived in the United States. At the time of his death, he was the Curt Hugo Reisinger Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature at Harvard University. A prolific writer and translator, who was fluent in five languages, he is considered one of the founders of the academic discipline of comparative literature in the United States.
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Radu Gyr
1905 - 1975 (70 years)
Radu Gyr was a Romanian poet, essayist, playwright and journalist. Biography Early life Born in Câmpulung-Muscel, Gyr was the son of actor Ștefan "Coco" Dumitrescu. When he was 3, his family moved to Craiova, where he did his secondary studies at the Carol I High School. Starting in 1924, he studied at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the University of Bucharest, where he received his Ph.D. in Literature and became a Senior Lecturer. He made his literary debut in 1924 with the well-received volume Liniști de schituri . In 1927 he married Flora, with whom he had a daughter, Simona Lum...
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Adolphe d'Ennery
1811 - 1899 (88 years)
Adolphe Philippe d'Ennery or Dennery was a French playwright and novelist. Life Born in Paris, his real surname was Philippe. He obtained his first success in collaboration with Charles Desnoyer in Émile, ou le fils d'un pair de France , a drama which was the first of a series of some two hundred pieces written alone or in collaboration with other dramatists. He died in Paris in 1899.
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Paul Laurence Dunbar
1872 - 1906 (34 years)
Paul Laurence Dunbar was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in Dayton, Ohio, to parents who had been enslaved in Kentucky before the American Civil War, Dunbar began writing stories and verse when he was a child. He published his first poems at the age of 16 in a Dayton newspaper, and served as president of his high school's literary society.
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Samuel Foote
1720 - 1777 (57 years)
Samuel Foote was a British dramatist, actor and theatre manager. He was known for his comedic acting and writing, and for turning the loss of a leg in a riding accident in 1766 to comedic opportunity.
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F. M. Cornford
1874 - 1943 (69 years)
Francis Macdonald Cornford was an English classical scholar and translator known for work on ancient philosophy, notably Plato, Parmenides, Thucydides, and ancient Greek religion. Frances Cornford, his wife, was a noted poet. Due to the similarity in their names, he was known in the family as "FMC" and his wife as "FCC".
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August Bournonville
1805 - 1879 (74 years)
August Bournonville was a Danish ballet master and choreographer. He was the son of Antoine Bournonville, a dancer and choreographer trained under the French choreographer, Jean Georges Noverre, and the nephew of Julie Alix de la Fay, née Bournonville, of the Royal Swedish Ballet.
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Georg Goetz
1849 - 1932 (83 years)
Georg Goetz was a German classical philologist, known for his scholarly treatment of Plautus and Varro. From 1870 to 1873 he studied at the University of Leipzig, where his influences included Friedrich Ritschl. In 1873 he received his doctorate with the dissertation De temporibus Ecclesiazuson Aristophanis, and following graduation, worked as a tutor in St. Petersburg. In 1877 he obtained his habilitation for classical philology at Leipzig, and two years later, became an associate professor at the University of Jena. From 1880 to 1924 he was a full professor of classical philology at Jena, s...
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Jens Baggesen
1764 - 1826 (62 years)
Jens Immanuel Baggesen was a major Danish poet, librettist, critic, and comic writer. Life Baggesen was born at Korsør on the Danish island of Zealand on February 15, 1764. His parents were very poor, and he was sent to copy documents at the office of the clerk of Hornsherred District before he was twelve. He was a melancholy, feeble child, and he attempted suicide more than once. By dint of indomitable perseverance, he managed to gain an education; in 1782, he entered the University of Copenhagen.
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Ludwig Traube
1861 - 1907 (46 years)
Ludwig Traube was a German paleographer and held the first chair of Medieval Latin in Germany while at the University of Munich. He was a son of the physician Ludwig Traube , and the brother of the chemist Margarete Traube .
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Robert Holmes
1926 - 1986 (60 years)
Robert Colin Holmes was a British television scriptwriter. For over 25 years he contributed to some of the most popular programmes screened in the UK. He is particularly remembered for his work on science fiction programmes, most notably his extensive contributions to Doctor Who, which included working as its script editor from 1974 to 1977.
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Yakov Grot
1812 - 1893 (81 years)
Yakov Karlovich Grot was a nineteenth-century Russian philologist of German extraction who worked at the University of Helsinki. Grot was a graduate of the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. In his lifetime, he gained fame for his translations of German and Scandinavian poetry, his work on the theory of Russian orthography, lexicography, and grammar, and his approach to literary editing and criticism, exemplified in a full edition of the works of Derzhavin . His Russkoye Pravopisaniye became the standard textbook of Russian spelling and punctuation until superseded by the decrees of 1917–1918, although his definition of the theoretical foundations remains little changed to this day.
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J. Slauerhoff
1898 - 1936 (38 years)
Jan Jacob Slauerhoff , who published as J. Slauerhoff, was a Dutch poet and novelist. He is considered one of the most important Dutch language writers. Youth Slauerhoff attended HBS in Leeuwarden, where he first met fellow future writer Simon Vestdijk, who was from Harlingen. In 1916, Slauerhoff and Vestdijk both moved to Amsterdam to read medicine. While at the university, Slauerhoff wrote his first poems; his debut as a poet was in the Communist magazine De Nieuwe Tijd. He edited the Amsterdam student magazine Propria Cures from 1919 to 1920. In 1919, Slauerhoff became engaged to a Dutch language student, Truus de Ruyter.
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Uladzimir Dubouka
1901 - 1976 (75 years)
Uladzimir Mikalahevič Dubouka was a Belarusian poet, prose writer, linguist, and a literary critic. Early life Dubouka was born on 15 July 1900 into a working family in a Vilna Governorate, his grandfather was a farmer and his father was a fabric worker. He went to school in 1905-1912, in 1912 he entered the specialized school, in 1914 he enrolled to New Vilejka Teachers' Seminary, that was later moved to Nevel. In 1918 he graduated and joined his family in Moscow, where they had moved in 1915. he tried to receive higher education and enrolled to the MSU History and Philology Faculty, but aft...
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Mariano Picón Salas
1901 - 1965 (64 years)
Mariano Federico Picón Salas was a Venezuelan diplomatic, cultural critic and writer of the 20th century, born in Mérida on January 26, 1901, and died in Caracas on January 1, 1965. Career Among his books, his collection of essays on history, literary criticism and cultural history are remarkable. He travelled a lot through the Americas. His work is also important because of his wide perspective, studying the culture of the entire continent. He left Venezuela, under the political persecution of dictator Juan Vicente Gómez. Living for a large period in Chile, he studied history, gaining the d...
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Simon Dach
1605 - 1659 (54 years)
Simon Dach was a German lyrical poet and hymnwriter, born in Memel, Duchy of Prussia . Early life Although brought up in humble circumstances , he received a classical education in the Domschule of Königsberg and in the Latin schools of Wittenberg and Magdeburg, and entered the University of Königsberg in 1626 where he was a student of theology and philosophy. In 1626, he left Magdeburg to escape both the plague and the Thirty Years' War, and returned to his Prussian homeland, settling in Königsberg, where he remained for the rest of his life.
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Fernando Ortiz Fernández
1881 - 1969 (88 years)
Fernando Ortiz Fernández was a Cuban essayist, anthropologist, ethnomusicologist and scholar of Afro-Cuban culture. Ortiz was a prolific polymath dedicated to exploring, recording, and understanding all aspects of indigenous Cuban culture. Ortiz coined the term "transculturation," the notion of converging cultures.
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Dumitru Caracostea
1879 - 1964 (85 years)
Dumitru Caracostea was a Romanian folklorist, literary historian and critic. Biography Origins and early career He was born in Slatina, Olt County to Nicolae Caracostea, a magistrate of Aromanian descent, and his wife Eufrosina , a French teacher. His father's family had become wealthy through engaging in commerce, which opened the possibility of higher education for its members. He attended primary school and one year of high school in his native town, completing his secondary education at Saint Sava High School in Bucharest in 1900. That year, he enrolled in the literature and philosophy f...
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Anatole Le Braz
1859 - 1926 (67 years)
Anatole le Braz, the "Bard of Brittany" , was a Breton poet, folklore collector, and translator. He was highly regarded amongst both European and American scholars, and was known for his warmth and charm.
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Hovhannes Hovhannisyan
1864 - 1929 (65 years)
Hovhannes Hovhannisyan was an Armenian poet, linguist, translator and educator. He was a key contributor to the Ashkharabar literature movement and a promoter of literacy in Armenia. He has been called the founder of Classic Armenian poetry.
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John Gray
1866 - 1934 (68 years)
Reverend Canon John Gray was an English poet and Catholic priest whose works include Silverpoints, The Long Road and Park: A Fantastic Story. It has often been suggested that he was the inspiration behind Oscar Wilde's fictional Dorian Gray despite evidence to the contrary. His great nephew is the alternative rock musician Crispin Gray.
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Richard Harding Davis
1864 - 1916 (52 years)
Richard Harding Davis was an American journalist and writer of fiction and drama, known foremost as the first American war correspondent to cover the Spanish–American War, the Second Boer War, and World War I. His writing greatly assisted the political career of Theodore Roosevelt. He also played a major role in the evolution of the American magazine. His influence extended to the world of fashion, and he is credited with making the clean-shaven look popular among men at the turn of the 20th century.
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Moriz Haupt
1808 - 1874 (66 years)
Moriz or Moritz Haupt , was a German philologist. Biography He was born at Zittau, Lusatia, Saxony. His early education was mainly conducted by his father, Ernst Friedrich Haupt, burgomaster of Zittau, a man of learning who took pleasure in translating German hymns or Goethe's poems into Latin, and whose memoranda were employed by Gustav Freytag in his Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit. From the Zittau gymnasium, where he spent the five years 1821–1826, Haupt moved to the University of Leipzig intending to study theology; but his own inclinations and the influence of Professor Gottfried ...
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George Colman the Elder
1732 - 1794 (62 years)
George Colman was an English dramatist and essayist, usually called "the Elder", and sometimes "George the First", to distinguish him from his son, George Colman the Younger. He also owned a theatre.
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Georg Ludolf Dissen
1784 - 1837 (53 years)
Georg Ludolf Dissen was a German classical philologist who was a native of Groß Schneen, a village in the District of Göttingen. He studied classical philology at the University of Göttingen, where one of his instructors was Christian Gottlob Heyne . After graduation, he was a lecturer at Göttingen, and in 1812 relocated to the University of Marburg as an associate professor. The following year he returned to Göttingen, where he was a colleague to Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker , Ernst Karl Friedrich Wunderlich and Karl Otfried Müller . In 1817 he was appointed "full professor", and in 1833 bec...
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James Pillans
1778 - 1864 (86 years)
James Pillans FRSE was a Scottish classical scholar and educational reformer. He is credited with inventing the blackboard, but more correctly was the inventor of coloured chalk. Early life The son of James Pillans, he was born at Sheriff Brae in Leith in April 1778. His father was a merchant and then a printer in Edinburgh, creating Pillans & Wilson. He was also an elder in the Anti-Burgher branch of the Scottish Secession Church, of Adam Gib, and a liberal in politics. Pillans was educated at the Royal High School, Edinburgh, under Alexander Adam, of whom he subsequently contributed a biography to the Encyclopædia Britannica.
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Elise Richter
1865 - 1943 (78 years)
Elise Richter was an Austrian philologist, specialising in Romance studies, and university professor. She was the first woman to achieve the habilitation at the University of Vienna, the first female associate professor and the only woman at any Austrian university before World War I to hold an academic appointment. Persecuted by Nazi officials during World War II, she was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in German-occupied Czechoslovakia in October 1942, and died there in June 1943.
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Eugen Mogk
1854 - 1939 (85 years)
Eugen Mogk was a German academic specialising in Old Norse literature and Germanic mythology. He held a professorship at the University of Leipzig. Life and career Mogk was born in Döbeln. He studied Germanic studies and history at the University of Leipzig from 1875 to 1883, earning his doctorate in 1878 with a dissertation on the Gylfaginning section of the Prose Edda. In 1889 he earned his habilitation in Scandinavian philology with an edition and translation of "The So-Called Second Grammatical Tractate of the Snorra Edda". He taught Scandinavian philology at the university from 1888 unt...
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