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).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people in Literature,
#1651
Derek Attridge
#33894
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Derek Attridge FBA is a South African-born British academic in the field of English literature. He is Emeritus Professor of English and Related Literature at the University of York, having retired from the university in 2016, and is a Fellow of the British Academy. Attridge undertakes research in South African literature, James Joyce, modern fiction, deconstruction and literary theory and the history and performance of poetry. He is the author or editor of thirty books, and has published eighty articles in essay collections and a similar number in journals. He has held a Guggenheim Fellowship...
Go to Profile#1652
David St. John
#42832
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
David St. John is an American poet. Biography Born in Fresno, California, he was educated at California State University, Fresno, where he studied with poet Philip Levine, and at the University of Iowa, receiving an M.F.A. in 1974. He is the author of nine books of poetry, including Study for the World's Body: New and Selected Poems , No Heaven , and Hush , as well as a volume of essays, interviews and reviews entitled Where the Angels Come Toward Us. His most recent work is The Last Troubadour .
Go to Profile#1654
Safa Khulusi
#27276
Overall Influence
1917 - 1995 (78 years)
Safa Abdul-Aziz Khulusi was an Iraqi historian, novelist, poet, journalist and broadcaster. He is known for mediating between Arabic- and English-language cultures, and for his scholarship of modern Iraqi literature.
Go to Profile#1655
Robert Reid-Pharr
#34989
Overall Influence
Robert Reid-Pharr is an American literary and cultural critic and professor. Early life and education A native North Carolinian, Reid-Pharr holds a B.A. in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and both an M.A. in African American studies and a Ph.D. in American studies from Yale University.
Go to Profile#1656
Scott Rettberg
#50644
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Scott Rettberg is an American digital artist and scholar of electronic literature based in Bergen, Norway. He is the co-founder and served as the first executive director of the Electronic Literature Organization. He leads the Center for Digital Narrative, a Norwegian Centre of Research Excellence from 2023 to 2033.
Go to Profile#1657
René Derolez
#52500
Overall Influence
1921 - 2005 (84 years)
René Lodewijk Maurits Derolez was a Belgian philologist who was Professor of English and Germanic Philology at Ghent University. He specialized in runology and the study of Old English literature and Germanic religion.
Go to Profile#1658
James Lees-Milne
#14161
Overall Influence
1908 - 1997 (89 years)
James Henry Lees-Milne was an English writer and expert on country houses, who worked for the National Trust from 1936 to 1973. He was an architectural historian, novelist and biographer. His extensive diaries remain in print.
Go to Profile#1659
Steve McCaffery
#29881
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Steven McCaffery is a Canadian poet and scholar who was a professor at York University. He currently holds the David Gray Chair at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. McCaffery was born in Sheffield, England and lived in the UK for most of his youth attending University of Hull.
Go to Profile#1660
Roland Petit
#4033
Overall Influence
1924 - 2011 (87 years)
Roland Petit was a French ballet company director, choreographer and dancer. He trained at the Paris Opera Ballet school, and became well known for his creative ballets. Life and work The son of shoe designer Rose Repetto, Petit was born in Villemomble, near Paris. He trained at the Paris Opéra Ballet school under Gustave Ricaux and Serge Lifar and began to dance with the corps de ballet in 1940. He founded the Ballets des Champs-Élysées in 1945 and the Ballets de Paris in 1948, at Théâtre Marigny, with Zizi Jeanmaire as star dancer.
Go to Profile#1661
Robert Kelly
#26728
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Robert Kelly is an American poet associated with the deep image group. He was named the first Dutchess County poet laureate 2016-2017. Early life and education Kelly was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Samuel Jason and Margaret Rose Kelly née Kane. In 1935, he studied at the City College of the City University of New York, graduating with a degree in 1955. He then spent three years at Columbia University.
Go to Profile#1662
Barbara Newman
#12701
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Barbara Jane Newman is an American medievalist, literary critic, religious historian, and author. She is Professor of English and Religion, and John Evans Professor of Latin, at Northwestern University. Newman was elected in 2017 to the American Philosophical Society.
Go to Profile#1663
Michele Mari
#46658
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Michele Mari is an Italian novelist, short story writer, academic critic and poet. The son of a Milanese industrial designer and artist, Enzo Mari, Mari teaches Italian literature at the Università Statale di Milano; he is considered one of the leading experts of 18th century Italian literature.
Go to Profile#1664
Larry Woiwode
#23000
Overall Influence
1941 - 2022 (81 years)
Larry Alfred Woiwode was an American writer from North Dakota, where he was the state's Poet Laureate from 1995 until his death. His work appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, Harpers, Gentleman's Quarterly, The Partisan Review and The Paris Review. He was the author of five novels; two collections of short stories; a commentary titled "Acts"; a biography of the Gold Seal founder and entrepreneur, Harold Schafer, Aristocrat of the West; a book of poetry, Even Tide; and reviews and essays and essay-reviews that appeared in dozens of publications, including The New York Times and The Washington Post Book World.
Go to Profile#1665
Bob Shacochis
#42213
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Bob Shacochis is an American novelist, short story writer, and literary journalist. He teaches creative writing at Florida State University. Writing career Shacochis was born in Pennsylvania, but grew up in the Washington, D.C. suburb of McLean, Virginia. He was educated at the University of Missouri and the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, and currently teaches creative writing at Florida State University. His first short-story collection, Easy in the Islands, was published in 1985 and received the National Book Award in category First Work of Fiction. The stories are set i...
Go to Profile#1666
Daryl Hine
#25236
Overall Influence
1936 - 2012 (76 years)
William Daryl Hine was a Canadian poet and translator. A MacArthur Fellow for the class of 1986, Hine was the editor of Poetry from 1968 to 1978. He graduated from McGill University in 1958 and then studied in Europe, as a Canada Council scholar. He earned a PhD. in comparative literature at the University of Chicago in 1967. During his career, Hine taught at UChicago, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Northwestern University.
Go to Profile#1667
Noé Jitrik
#27562
Overall Influence
1928 - 2022 (94 years)
Noé Jitrik was an Argentine literary critic. Jitrik was born in Argentina on 23 January 1928. He was director of the Instituto de literatura hispanoamericana at the University of Buenos Aires, and was a notable participant in the cultural journal Contorno in the 1950s in Argentina.
Go to Profile#1668
Anacristina Rossi
#37858
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Anacristina Rossi is a Costa Rican writer. Biography After studying theatre and dance in her home country, she travelled to Europe and studied in England, France and the Netherlands. She has a diploma in translation from the University of Paris and a master's degree in women studies and development from the International Institute of Social Studies.
Go to Profile#1669
A. C. Spearing
#19694
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Anthony Colin Spearing is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of English at the University of Virginia, specialising in medieval literature. He translated The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Works for Penguin Classics.
Go to Profile#1670
David Mura
#46392
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
David Mura is an American author, poet, novelist, playwright, critic and performance artist whose writings explore the themes of race, identity and history. In 2018, Mura has published a book on creative writing, A Stranger’s Journey: Race, Identity & Narrative Craft in Writing, in which he argues for a more inclusive and expansive definition of craft.
Go to Profile#1671
Pai Hsien-yung
#18862
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Kenneth Hsien-yung Pai is a Chinese writer from Taiwan who has been described as a "melancholy pioneer". He was born in Guilin, Guangxi at the cusp of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Pai's father was the Kuomintang general Bai Chongxi , whom he later described as a "stern, Confucian father" with "some soft spots in his heart." Pai was diagnosed with tuberculosis at the age of seven, during which time he would have to live in a separate house from his siblings . He lived with his family in Chongqing, Shanghai, and Nanjing before moving to the British-controlled Hong Kong in 1948 as CPC forces turned the tide of the Chinese Civil War.
Go to Profile#1672
Soledad Reyes
#49206
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Soledad Sarmiento Reyes is a Philippine literature scholar, literary and art critic, author, anthologist, consultant, professor, instructor, editor, annotator, researcher, and essayist in the Philippines. Specializing in the field of popular culture and the arts in the Philippines, Reyes is a professor teaching interdisciplinary studies at the University of the Philippines and the Ateneo de Manila University. She is an accomplished author of books and anthologies. "sa nobela mababalatuba ang mga pangyayati sa buhay ng isang kagawad sa union
Go to Profile#1673
Susheila Nasta
#50502
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Susheila Nasta, MBE, Hon. FRSL , is a British critic, editor, academic and literary activist. She is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literatures at Queen Mary University of London, and founding editor of Wasafiri, the UK's leading magazine for international contemporary writing. She is a recipient of the Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature.
Go to Profile#1674
William Goldman
#33165
Overall Influence
1931 - 2018 (87 years)
William Goldman was an American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. He first came to prominence in the 1950s as a novelist before turning to screenwriting. Among other accolades, Goldman won two Academy Awards in both writing categories—once for Best Original Screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and once for Best Adapted Screenplay for All the President's Men .
Go to Profile#1675
Barbara Probst Solomon
#42233
Overall Influence
1928 - 2019 (91 years)
Barbara Probst Solomon was an American author, essayist and journalist. Her published works include two novels, two volumes of memoirs, and a book of collected essays. Solomon was the United States cultural correspondent for Spain's "newspaper-of-record", El País of Madrid. Solomon was awarded the 25th Francisco Cerecedo Prize by the Association of European Journalists in Spain. The prize, which comes with an award of $36,000, is the most prestigious journalism prize in that country, and Solomon was the first North American to receive it. She accepted the award from the future King of Spain ...
Go to Profile#1676
Lucila Nogueira
#58279
Overall Influence
1950 - 2016 (66 years)
Lucila Nogueira Rodrigues was a Brazilian poet, essayist, short story writer, educator, and federal prosecutor. Published in 1978, Almenara won the Manuel Bandeira Poetry Prize in Pernambuco. It was the first of the 25 poetry books she was to publish, many of which were translated. Nogueira also published many books of literary criticism and short stories. In 2006, Nogueira was the first woman to represent Brazil at the International Poetry Festival of Medellín. In addition to being a celebrated author, Nogueira was a federal prosecutor, a professor of literature at the Federal University of ...
Go to Profile#1677
Andrew Dalby
#15565
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Andrew Dalby, is an English linguist, translator and historian who has written articles and several books on a wide range of topics including food history, language, and Classical texts. Education and early career Dalby studied Latin, French and Greek at the Bristol Grammar School and University of Cambridge. Here he also studied Romance languages and linguistics, earning a bachelor's degree in 1970.
Go to Profile#1678
Nicholas Christopher
#35806
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Nicholas Christopher is an American novelist and poet. He is the author of seven novels, eight volumes of poetry, and a critical study of film noir. Background Christopher graduated from Harvard College with an A.B. in English Literature. After traveling extensively abroad, he returned to New York. He began publishing his poetry in The New Yorker while still in his twenties.
Go to Profile#1679
Vladislav Krapivin
#10790
Overall Influence
1938 - 2020 (82 years)
Vladislav Petrovich Krapivin was a Soviet and Russian children's books writer. Biography Vladislav Petrovich Krapivin was born in the city of Tyumen on 14 October 1938. He received a degree in journalism from the Ural State University. In the course of his studies, he started working at the newspaper "Evening Sverdlovsk", followed by several years in the periodical "Ural Pathfinder". Krapivin has been a full-time writer since 1965. His first book, The Voyage of Orion , was printed by the Sverdlovsk Publishing House in 1962. Over the course of his literary career, Krapivin became the author of...
Go to Profile#1680
Jean-Claude van Itallie
#22414
Overall Influence
1936 - 2021 (85 years)
Jean-Claude van Itallie was a Belgian-born American playwright, performer, and theatre workshop teacher. He is best known for his 1966 anti-Vietnam War play America Hurrah; The Serpent, an ensemble play he wrote with Joseph Chaikin's Open Theatre; his theatrical adaptation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead; and his translations of Anton Chekhov's plays.
Go to Profile#1681
Amin Zaoui
#40833
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Amin Zaoui is an Algerian novelist. He was born in Bab el Assa in Tlemcen province and studied at the University of Oran, obtaining a PhD in comparative literature. He moved to France during the Algerian civil war, but returned home in 1999. He has served as the Director General of the National Library of Algeria, and currently teaches comparative literature at the Central Algerian University.
Go to Profile#1682
Paul Durcan
#25350
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Paul Durcan is a contemporary Irish poet. Early life Durcan was born and grew up in Dublin and in Turlough, County Mayo. His father, John, was a barrister and circuit court judge; father and son had a difficult and formal relationship. Durcan enjoyed a warmer and more natural relationship with his mother, Sheila MacBride Durcan, through whom he is a great-nephew of both Maud Gonne, the Irish social and political activist , and John MacBride, one of the leaders of the Easter Rising, which began the Irish War of Independence leading to the foundation of the Irish state.
Go to Profile#1683
Suzanne Keen
#42713
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Suzanne Keen is a literary scholar, feminist critic, a poet, author and academic administrator. She was W. M. Keck Foundation Presidential Chair and Professor of English at Scripps College, the women's college of the Claremont Colleges. Previously she served as Dean of the College at Washington and Lee University and Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dean of Faculty, and Professor of Literature at Hamilton College. She became president of Scripps College on July 1, 2022. Dr. Keen announced her resignation from Scripps College effective March 20, 2023. Her resignation letter states she inten...
Go to Profile#1684
Peter Demetz
#44007
Overall Influence
1922 - Present (102 years)
Peter Demetz is an American literature scholar of Germany and a Sterling Professor emeritus at Yale University, and also a published author. He was formerly the Craig Distinguished Visiting Professor at Rutgers University.
Go to Profile#1685
Lore Segal
#40549
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (96 years)
Lore Segal , née Lore Groszmann, is an American novelist, translator, teacher, short story writer, and author of children's books. Her novel Shakespeare's Kitchen was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2008.
Go to Profile#1686
Elizabeth Spencer
#19939
Overall Influence
1921 - 2019 (98 years)
Elizabeth Spencer was an American writer. Spencer's first novel, Fire in the Morning, was published in 1948. She wrote a total of nine novels, seven collections of short stories, a memoir , and a play . Her novella The Light in the Piazza was adapted for the screen in 1962 and transformed into a Broadway musical of the same name in 2005. She was a five-time recipient of the O. Henry Award for short fiction.
Go to Profile#1687
Stanley Elkin
#19382
Overall Influence
1930 - 1995 (65 years)
Stanley Lawrence Elkin was an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist. His extravagant, satirical fiction revolves around American consumerism, popular culture, and male-female relationships.
Go to Profile#1688
Paul Zumthor
#33488
Overall Influence
1915 - 1995 (80 years)
Paul Zumthor, was a medievalist, literary historian, and linguist. He was a Swiss from Geneva. Biography He studied in Paris with Gustave Cohen and worked on French etymology with Walther von Wartburg. In studying medieval French poetry, he formulated the concept of mouvance . He also emphasised "vocality" in medieval poetry, the place of the human voice.
Go to Profile#1689
Peter May
#21576
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Peter May is a Scottish television screenwriter, novelist, and crime writer. He is the recipient of writing awards in Europe and America. The Blackhouse won the U.S. Barry Award for Crime Novel of the Year and the national literature award in France, the CEZAM Prix Litteraire. The Lewis Man won the French daily newspaper Le Télégrammes 10,000-euro Grand Prix des Lecteurs. In 2014, Entry Island won both the Deanston's Scottish Crime Novel of the Year and the UK's ITV Crime Thriller Book Club Best Read of the Year Award. May's books have sold more than two million copies in the UK and several m...
Go to Profile#1690
Hugh Fox
#47827
Overall Influence
1932 - 2011 (79 years)
Hugh Bernard Fox Jr. was a writer, novelist, poet and anthropologist and one of the founders of the Pushcart Prize for literature. He has been published in numerous literary magazines and was the first writer to publish a critical study of Charles Bukowski.
Go to Profile#1691
Sacvan Bercovitch
#27846
Overall Influence
1933 - 2014 (81 years)
Sacvan Bercovitch was a Canadian literary and cultural critic who spent most of his life teaching and writing in the United States. During an academic career spanning five decades, he was considered to be one of the most influential and controversial figures of his generation in the emerging field of American studies.
Go to Profile#1692
May Ayim
#22739
Overall Influence
1960 - 1996 (36 years)
May Ayim is the pen name of May Opitz ; she was an Afro-German poet, educator, and activist. The child of a German dancer and Ghanaian medical student, she lived with a white German foster family when young. After reconnecting with her father and his family in Ghana, in 1992 she took his surname for a pen name.
Go to Profile#1693
Giorgio Melchiori
#32077
Overall Influence
1920 - 2009 (89 years)
Giorgio Melchiori CBE FBA was an Italian literary critic and translator. His scholarly work was focused on the Early Modern English literature of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras. Early life Melchiori was born on 19 August 1920 in Rome, Italy.
Go to Profile#1694
Neil Innes
#26951
Overall Influence
1944 - 2019 (75 years)
Neil James Innes was an English writer, comedian and musician. He first came to prominence in the pioneering comedy rock group Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and later became a frequent collaborator with the Monty Python troupe on their BBC television series and films, and is often called the "seventh Python" along with performer Carol Cleveland. He co-created the Rutles, a Beatles parody/pastiche project, with Python Eric Idle, and wrote the band's songs. He also wrote and voiced the 1980s ITV children's cartoon adventures of The Raggy Dolls.
Go to Profile#1695
Ihor Ševčenko
#35593
Overall Influence
1922 - 2009 (87 years)
Ihor Ševčenko was a Polish-born philologist and historian of Ukrainian origin. Byzantinist and paleo-Slavic professor of classical philology at Harvard University. He died 26 December 2009 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Go to Profile#1696
Gary Russell
#17547
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Gary Russell is a British freelance writer, producer and former child actor. As a writer, he is best known for his work in connection with the television series Doctor Who and its spin-offs in other media. As an actor, he is best known for playing Dick Kirrin in the British 1978 television series The Famous Five.
Go to Profile#1697
Einar Már Guðmundsson
#43825
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Einar Már Guðmundsson is an Icelandic author of novels, short stories, and poetry. His books have been translated into several languages. Background Guðmundsson grew up in Reykjavík. In 1979 he received his Bachelor of Arts at the University of Iceland in comparative literature and history. He subsequently worked in the comparative literature department of the University of Copenhagen. Today, the author lives in Reykjavík, is married, and has five children.
Go to Profile#1698
Bhob Stewart
#19761
Overall Influence
1937 - 2014 (77 years)
Robert Marion Stewart, known as Bhob Stewart was an American writer, editor, cartoonist, filmmaker, and active fan who contributed to a variety of publications over a span of five decades. His articles and reviews appeared in TV Guide, Publishers Weekly, and other publications, along with online contributions to Allmovie, the Collecting Channel, and other sites. In 1980, he became the regular film columnist for Heavy Metal.
Go to Profile#1699
Michael Wolfe
#27726
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Michael B. Wolfe is an American poet, author, and the President and Co-Executive Producer of Unity Productions Foundation. A secular American born in Cincinnati, Ohio to a Christian mother and a Jewish father, Wolfe converted to Islam at 40 and has been a frequent lecturer on Islamic issues at universities across the United States including Harvard, Georgetown, Stanford, SUNY Buffalo, and Princeton. He holds a degree in Classics from Wesleyan University.
Go to Profile#1700
Lionel Abel
#40316
Overall Influence
1910 - 2001 (91 years)
Lionel Abel was an eminent Jewish American playwright, essayist and theater critic. He was also a translator, and was an authorized translator of Jean-Paul Sartre, who called Abel the most intelligent man in New York City.
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