Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Literature,

#1851

Gary Giddins

#21105

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Gary Giddins is an American jazz critic and author. He wrote for The Village Voice from 1973; his "Weather Bird" column ended in 2003. In 1986 Gary Giddins and John Lewis created the American Jazz Orchestra which presented concerts using a jazz repertory with musicians such as Tony Bennett.

#1852

Aritha Van Herk

Aritha Van Herk

#39825

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Aritha van Herk, , is a Canadian writer, critic, editor, public intellectual, and university professor. Her work often includes feminist themes, and depicts and analyzes the culture of western Canada.

#1853

Laura Kasischke

Laura Kasischke

#42972

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Laura Kasischke is an American fiction writer and poet. She is best known for writing the novels Suspicious River, The Life Before Her Eyes and White Bird in a Blizzard, all of which have been adapted to film.

#1854

Alexander Chee

#43022

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Alexander Chee is an American fiction writer, poet, journalist and reviewer. Born in Rhode Island, he spent his childhood in South Korea, Kauai, Truk, Guam and Maine. He attended Wesleyan University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

#1855

Bill Manhire

#33826

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

William Manhire is a New Zealand poet, short story writer, emeritus professor, and New Zealand's inaugural Poet Laureate . He founded New Zealand's first creative writing course at Victoria University of Wellington in 1975, founded the International Institute of Modern Letters in 2001, and has been a strong promoter of New Zealand literature and poetry throughout his career. Many of New Zealand's leading writers graduated from his courses at Victoria. He has received many notable awards including a Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in 2007 and an Arts Foundation Icon Award in 2...

#1856

Rebecca Sugar

#44367

Overall Influence

1987 - Present (37 years)

Rebecca Rea Sugar is an American animator, screenwriter and musician. She is best known for being the creator of the Cartoon Network series Steven Universe, making her the first non-binary person to independently create a series for the network; prior to coming out as non-binary, Sugar was described as the first woman to do so. Until 2013, Sugar was a writer and storyboard artist on the animated television series Adventure Time. Her work on the two series has earned her seven Primetime Emmy Award nominations. Sugar is bisexual, non-binary, and genderqueer, using both she/her and they/them pronouns.

#1857

Jörg Rüpke

#21300

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Jörg Rüpke is a German scholar of comparative religion and classical philology, recipient of the Gay-Lussac Humboldt Prize in 2008, and of the Advanced Grant of the European Research Council in 2011. In January 2012, Rüpke was appointed by German Federal President Christian Wulff to the German Council of Science and Humanities.

#1858

Tim Whitmarsh

#18239

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Timothy John Guy Whitmarsh, is a British classicist and Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge. He is best known for his work on the Greek literary culture of the Roman Empire, especially the Second Sophistic and the ancient Greek novel.

#1859

Wayne Koestenbaum

Wayne Koestenbaum

#35341

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Wayne Koestenbaum is an American artist, poet, and cultural critic. He received a B.A. from Harvard University, an M.A. from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, and a Ph.D. from Princeton University and is a 1994 Whiting Award recipient. He received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature in 2020. He has published over 20 books to date.

#1860

Allen Varney

#10451

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Allen Varney is an American writer and game designer. Varney has produced numerous books, role-playing game supplements, technical manuals, articles, reviews, columns, and stories, as well as the fantasy novel Cast of Fate . Since the 1990s, he has worked primarily in computer games.

#1861

Joan Rivers

#11819

Overall Influence

1933 - 2014 (81 years)

Joan Alexandra Molinsky , known professionally as Joan Rivers, was an American comedian, actress, producer, writer, and television host. She was noted for her blunt, often controversial comedic persona that was heavily self-deprecating and acerbic, especially towards celebrities and politicians, delivered in her signature New York accent. She is considered a pioneer of women in comedy. She received an Emmy Award and a Grammy Award, as well as nomination for a Tony Award.

#1862

Andy Samberg

#25739

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (46 years)

Andy Samberg is an American actor, comedian, writer, producer, and musician. He is a member of the comedy music group The Lonely Island alongside childhood friends Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone. Samberg was also a cast member and writer for the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 2005 to 2012, where he and his fellow group members are credited with popularizing the SNL Digital Shortss.

#1863

Alfred Kolleritsch

Alfred Kolleritsch

#57727

Overall Influence

1931 - 2020 (89 years)

Alfred Kolleritsch was an Austrian journalist, poet and philosopher. He was born in Eichfeld, Austria. He was the founder of the literary magazine . He was the President of the , a cultural center in Graz. He contributes to the Grazer Autorenversammlung. He won the Petrarca-Preis in 1978, and was since 2010 part of the jury.

#1864

Michael S. Harper

#33795

Overall Influence

1938 - 2016 (78 years)

Michael Steven Harper was an American poet and English professor at Brown University, who was the Poet Laureate of Rhode Island from 1988 to 1993. His poetry was influenced by jazz and history. Among the influences which shaped his writing, he said that the most important lesson he learned from musicians was phrasing, the authenticity of phrasing, and the transcendence and spiritual mastery. He published ten books of poetry, two of which—Dear John, Dear Coltrane and Images of Kin —were nominated for the National Book Award. Many of his poems have been included as examples of African-America...

#1865

Jackie Collins

#12875

Overall Influence

1937 - 2015 (78 years)

Jacqueline Jill Collins was an English romance novelist and actress. She moved to Los Angeles in 1985 and spent most of her career there. She wrote 32 novels, all of which appeared on The New York Times bestsellers list. Her books have sold more than 500 million copies and have been translated into 40 languages. Eight of her novels have been adapted for the screen, either as films or television miniseries. She was the younger sister of Dame Joan Collins.

#1866

Carol Rumens

#45733

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Carol Rumens FRSL is a British poet. Life Carol Rumens was born in Forest Hill, South London. She won a scholarship to grammar school and later studied Philosophy at London University, but left before completing her degree. She gained a Postgraduate Diploma in Writing for the Stage from City College Manchester in 2002.

#1867

Dwight V. Swain

Dwight V. Swain

#52280

Overall Influence

1915 - 1992 (77 years)

Dwight Vreeland Swain , born in Rochester, Michigan, was an American author, screenwriter and teacher. Swain was a member of the Oklahoma Professional Writers Hall of Fame. Early life and career Born in Rochester, Michigan, Swain was the son of John Edgar Swain, a railroad telegrapher, and Florence Marietta Vreeland. In 1937, he graduated from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Arts in journalism.

#1868

Merle Collins

#25039

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Merle Collins is a distinguished Grenadian poet and short story writer. Life Collins' parents are from Grenada, where they returned from Aruba shortly after her birth. Her primary education was in St George's, Grenada. She later studied at the University of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica, earning degrees in English and Spanish in 1972. She then taught history and Spanish in Grenada for two years and subsequently in St Lucia. In 1980, she graduated from Georgetown University, Washington, DC, with a master's degree in Latin American Studies. She graduated from the London School of Economics with a Ph.D.

#1869

Mark McWatt

#47519

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Mark McWatt is a Guyanese writer and former professor of English at University of the West Indies. Biography McWatt was born in Guyana, attending many schools throughout the country due to his father's position as a district officer. McWatt attended the University of Toronto and Leeds University, where he studied the works of Wilson Harris and completed a Ph.D. in 1975. He took a position at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill campus, Barbados, as an assistant lecturer, then moved up to Professor of West Indian Literature in 1999, until retiring in 2007 as Professor Emeritus.

#1870

Larry Townsend

#13679

Overall Influence

1930 - 2008 (78 years)

Larry Townsend was the American author of dozens of books including Run, Little Leather Boy and The Leatherman's Handbook , published by pioneer erotic presses such as Greenleaf Classics and the Other Traveler imprint of Olympia Press. Leatherman's Handbook, with illustrations by Sean, was among the first books to popularize BDSM among the general public.

#1871

Dževad Karahasan

Dževad Karahasan

#44146

Overall Influence

1953 - 2023 (70 years)

Dževad Karahasan was a Bosnian writer, essayist and philosopher. Karahasan was awarded the Herder Prize and Goethe Medal for his writings. In 2020, the city of Frankfurt awarded him the Goethe Prize.

#1872

Arturo Pérez-Reverte

Arturo Pérez-Reverte

#21442

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Arturo Pérez-Reverte Gutiérrez is a Spanish novelist and journalist. He worked as a war correspondent for RTVE for 21 years . His first novel, El húsar, set in the Napoleonic Wars, was released in 1986.

#1873

Margarita Carrera

Margarita Carrera

#50335

Overall Influence

1929 - 2018 (89 years)

Margarita Carrera Molina was a Guatemalan philosopher, professor and writer. She was a member of the Academia Guatemalteca de la Lengua and the 1996 laureate of the Miguel Ángel Asturias National Prize in Literature.

#1874

Jacques Heurgon

#41184

Overall Influence

1903 - 1995 (92 years)

Jacques Heurgon was a French university, normalian, Etruscan scholar and Latinist, professor of Latin language and literature at the Sorbonne. Married to Anne Heurgon-Desjardins, founder in 1952, of the Centre culturel international de Cerisy-la-Salle, he was the father of , politician and historian, Catherine Peyrou and Edith Heurgon who continued the "Colloques of Cerisy".

#1875

William Everson

#27479

Overall Influence

1912 - 1994 (82 years)

William "Bill" Everson, also known as Brother Antoninus , was an American poet, literary critic, teacher and small press printer. He was a member of the San Francisco Renaissance. Beginnings Everson was born on September 10, 1912, in Sacramento, California. His parents, both of whom were printers, raised him on a farm outside the small fruit-growing town of Selma, California. He played football at Selma High School and attended Fresno State College .

#1876

Germaine Brée

#32260

Overall Influence

1907 - 2001 (94 years)

Germaine Brée was a French-American literary scholar, who wrote extensively on Marcel Proust, Andre Gide, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Life Born in Paris, Germaine Brée grew up in the English-speaking Channel Islands. After graduating from the University of Paris, she taught in Algeria from 1932 to 1936. Appointed to teach at Bryn Mawr in 1936, she returned to France to fight for the Free French when World War II broke out. She joined a volunteer ambulance unit, rising to the rank of lieutenant, and was assigned to the intelligence section of the Free French in Algiers. She received a Bronze Star and was named to the Legion of Honor.

#1877

'Abd al-'Azim 'Anis

#59924

Overall Influence

1923 - 2009 (86 years)

'Abd al-'Azim 'Anis was a leading Egyptian cultural critic and Marxist involved with the Communist Party of Egypt. He was detained in Egyptian prisons from the early 1960s due to his political activities. 'Anis called for "unity of all the nationalist and progressive forces including, naturally, the Arab communists."

#1878

Ruth Behar

#15030

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Ruth Behar is a Cuban-American anthropologist and writer. Her work includes academic studies, as well as poetry, memoir, and literary fiction. As an anthropologist, she has argued for the open adoption and acknowledgement of the subjective nature of research and participant-observers. She is a recipient of the Belpré Medal.

#1879

Bryan Fuller

#41208

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Bryan Fuller is an American television writer and producer who has created a number of television series, including Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies, Hannibal, American Gods, and Crystal Lake. Fuller worked as writer and executive producer on the Star Trek television series Voyager and Deep Space Nine; he is also the co-creator of Star Trek: Discovery.

#1880

Michael Maar

#40990

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Michael Maar is a German literary scholar, germanist and author. For his 1995 doctoral dissertation on Thomas Mann, titled Geister und Kunst, he was awarded the Johann Heinrich Merck Prize by the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung. He was himself elected a member of the academy in 2002. He was a Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin from 1997 to 1998, and Visiting Professor at Stanford University in 2002. From 2005 to 2006 he was a Fellow of the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung. In 2008, he became a member of the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste.

#1881

Mac Wellman

#33438

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Mac Wellman, born John McDowell Wellman on March 7, 1945, in Cleveland, Ohio, is an American playwright, author, and poet. He is best known for his experimental work in the theater which rebels against theatrical conventions, often abandoning such traditional elements as plot and character altogether. In 1990, he received an Obie Award for Best New American Play . In 1991, he received another Obie Award for Sincerity Forever. He has received a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers Award, and the 2003 Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement, as well as the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to ...

#1882

Jeffrey Ford

#33049

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Jeffrey Ford is an American writer in the fantastic genre tradition, although his works have spanned genres including fantasy, science fiction and mystery. His work is characterized by a sweeping imaginative power, humor, literary allusion, and a fascination with tales told within tales. He is a graduate of Binghamton University, where he studied with the novelist John Gardner.

#1883

John Haffenden

#41886

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

John Haffenden is emeritus professor of English literature at the University of Sheffield. Education and positions held A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin , where he edited Icarus, he was supervised for his doctorate at St Peter's College, Oxford by Richard Ellmann. He was for two years a lecturer in English and Liberal Studies, Oxford College of Further Education, before teaching at the University of Exeter, 1973–74.

#1884

Lewis Turco

#45659

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Lewis Putnam Turco is an American poet, teacher, and writer of fiction and non-fiction. Turco is an advocate for Formalist poetry in the United States. Life and work Turco took a keen interest in poetry as a teenager and after high school, while serving in the U.S. Navy aboard , he had work published in various little magazines and quarterlies. He graduated from the University of Connecticut in 1959, published his First Poems in 1960, and completed an MA at the University of Iowa in 1962 . It was there that he cultivated an interest in formal verse and began, to use his words, "collecting fo...

#1885

Eric Mottram

#32486

Overall Influence

1924 - 1995 (71 years)

Eric Mottram was a British teacher, critic, editor and poet who was one of the central figures in the British Poetry Revival. Early life and education Mottram was born in London and educated at Purley Grammar School, Croydon, and Blackpool Grammar School, Lancashire. In 1943, he was awarded a scholarship to Pembroke College, Cambridge, but opted to serve in the Royal Navy instead, only taking up the scholarship in 1947. He graduated with honours in 1950, obtaining a first in both parts of the English Literature, Life and Thought tripos . M.A. in 1951. Over the following decade, Mottram travel...

#1886

Leslie Fiedler

#44847

Overall Influence

1917 - 2003 (86 years)

Leslie Aaron Fiedler was an American literary critic, known for his interest in mythography and his championing of genre fiction. His work incorporates the application of psychological theories to American literature. Fiedler's best known work is the book Love and Death in the American Novel . A retrospective article on Leslie Fiedler in the New York Times Book Review in 1965 referred to Love and Death in the American Novel as "one of the great, essential books on the American imagination... an accepted major work." This work views in depth both American literature and character from the time of the American Revolution to the present.

#1887

Megan Marshall

#48562

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Megan Marshall is an American scholar, writer, and biographer. Her first biography The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism earned her a place as a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.

#1888

Kim Hoon

#41189

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Kim Hoon is a South Korean novelist, journalist and critic. Life Kim was born on May 5, 1948, in Seoul, Korea. After graduating from Whimoon High School, Kim Hoon entered Korea University in 1966. He joined Hankook Ilbo as a journalist in 1973. He made his debut as a novelist at the age of forty-seven with the publication of Memories of Earthenware with Comb Teeth Pattern. His second novel. Song of the Sword , which was awarded the prestigious Dong-in Literature Prize, was a literary sensation and elevated him into one of the most recognized names in Korean literature. Two years later in 2003,...

#1889

Sylvie Richterová

Sylvie Richterová

#62179

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Sylvie Richterová is a Czech educator and writer living in Italy. She was born in Brno and was educated as an interpreter at Charles University in Prague. In 1971, she moved to Italy, where she lectured in Czech and was a researcher at the Institute of Slavonic Philology. She went on to lecture on Czech language and literature in Padua and Viterbo.

#1890

Franklin Sirmans

#23845

Overall Influence

Franklin Sirmans is an American art critic, editor, writer, curator and has been the director of the Pérez Art Museum Miami since October 2015. His initiatives there include ensuring that PAMM's art program reflects the community in Miami and securing donations. In his first six months at PAMM, he managed to secure the largest donation of works in the museum's short history, over a hundred pieces of art were donated by Design District developer Craig Robins.

#1891

Heinz-Günther Nesselrath

#60873

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Heinz-Günther Nesselrath is a German philologist. Career Born in Rödingen, Heinz Günther Nesselrath studied classical philology in the University of Cologne from 1976 to 1981. Between 1981 and 1989 he held an assistant professorship at the Cologne Classics Institute, between 1989 and 1992 a Heisenberg Scholarship granted by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft . He reached Habilitation in 1987.

#1892

Gregory Pardlo

#26960

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Gregory Pardlo is an American poet, writer, and professor. His book Digest won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. His poems, reviews, and translations have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Poet Lore, Harvard Review, Ploughshares, and on National Public Radio. His work has been praised for its “language simultaneously urban and highbrow… snapshots of a life that is so specific it becomes universal.”

#1893

John Irving

#36655

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

John Winslow Irving is an American-Canadian novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. Irving achieved critical and popular acclaim after the international success of The World According to Garp in 1978. Many of Irving's novels, including The Hotel New Hampshire , The Cider House Rules , A Prayer for Owen Meany , and A Widow for One Year , have been bestsellers. He won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in the 72nd Academy Awards for his script of The Cider House Rules.

#1894

Frédéric-Yves Jeannet

#36817

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Frédéric-Yves Jeannet is a writer and professor of French origin who emigrated to Mexico in his youth. He was born in Grenoble, France, in 1959 and left it in 1975. Jeannet earned B.A. and M.A. degrees in comparative literature at the University of Grenoble. He then lived in London until 1977 before moving to Mexico. He currently lives in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

#1895

Mary Robison

#35101

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Mary Cennamo Robison is an American short story writer and novelist. She has published four collections of stories, and four novels, including her 2001 novel Why Did I Ever, winner of the 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction. Her most recent novel, released in 2009, is One D.O.A., One on the Way. She has been categorized as a founding "minimalist" writer along with authors such as Amy Hempel, Frederick Barthelme, and Raymond Carver. In 2009, she won the Rea Award for the Short Story.

#1896

Leonard Fein

#22335

Overall Influence

1934 - 2014 (80 years)

Leonard J. Fein , also known as Leibel Fein, was an American activist, writer, and teacher specializing in Jewish social themes. Academic career After studying at the University of Chicago, Fein later received his PhD from Michigan State University.

#1897

Shumon Miura

#33789

Overall Influence

1926 - 2017 (91 years)

was a Japanese novelist. He attended the University of Tokyo, and upon graduation joined the staff of the literary magazine Shin-Shicho in 1950. The next year, Miura published his first book. He then married fellow Third Generation writer Ayako Sono in 1953, with whom he wrote many books about Catholicism and religion. Miura began teaching at Nihon University in 1967, the same year he was awarded the Shinchosha Prize. From 1985 to 1986, he was commissioner of the Cultural Affairs Agency. In 1999, the Japanese government designated Miura a Person of Cultural Merit. In 2004, Miura was appointed to lead the Japan Art Academy.

#1898

Camilo José Cela Conde

#15635

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Camilo José Arcadio Cela Conde, 2nd Marquess of Iria Flavia , is a Spanish writer. He is the son of Nobel Prize winning writer Camilo José Cela and is currently a Professor of Philosophy of law, Morality and Politics at the University of the Balearic Islands.

#1899

Sarah Silverman

Sarah Silverman

#21426

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Sarah Kate Silverman is an American stand-up comedian, actress, and writer. Silverman first rose to prominence for her brief stint as a writer and cast member on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live during its 19th season between 1993 and 1994. She then starred in and produced The Sarah Silverman Program, which ran from 2007 to 2010 on Comedy Central. For her work on the program, Silverman was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series.

#1900

H. S. Shivaprakash

H. S. Shivaprakash

#36297

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Hulkuntemath Shivamurthy Sastri Shivaprakash is a leading poet and playwright writing in Kannada. He is professor at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He heads the Cultural Centre at Berlin, known as the Tagore Centre, as Director run by Indian Council for Cultural Relations . He has seven anthologies of poems, twelve plays, and several other books to his credit. His works have been widely translated into English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Polish, Hindi, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu. His plays have been performed in Kannada, Hindi, Meitei, Rabha, Assamese, Bodo, Tamil and Malayalam.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions