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).

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Ranking

List of the most influential people in Literature,

#2251

F. W. Walbank

#18820

Overall Influence

1909 - 2008 (99 years)

Frank William Walbank, was a scholar of ancient history, particularly the history of Polybius. He was born in Bingley, Yorkshire, and died in Cambridge. Early life and education Born at Bingley, Yorkshire, son of schoolmaster Albert Joseph David Walbank and Clarice , née Fletcher, Walbank attended Bradford Grammar School and went on to study Classics at Peterhouse, Cambridge. His father was the son of a cobbler, but had left the family business on winning a scholarship and became a teacher.

#2252

Margot Singer

#36391

Overall Influence

Margot Singer is an American short story writer and novelist. Her book The Pale of Settlement won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction in 2006 and her novel Underground Fugue was listed as "one of the most anticipated books by women in 2017" by Elle Magazine.

#2253

Rumiko Takahashi

#29577

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

is a Japanese manga artist. With a career of several commercially successful works, beginning with Urusei Yatsura in 1978, Takahashi is one of Japan's best-known and wealthiest manga artists. Her works are popular worldwide, where they have been translated into a variety of languages, with over 200 million copies in circulation. She has won the Shogakukan Manga Award twice, once in 1980 for Urusei Yatsura and again in 2001 for Inuyasha, and the Seiun Award twice, once in 1987 for Urusei Yatsura and again in 1989 for Mermaid Saga. She also received the Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême in 2019, becoming the second woman and second Japanese to win the prize.

#2254

M. T. Anderson

#55947

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Matthew Tobin Anderson , is an American writer of children's books that range from picture books to young adult novels. He won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 2006 for The Pox Party, the first of two "Octavian Nothing" books, which are historical novels set in Revolution-era Boston. Anderson is known for using wit and sarcasm in his stories, as well as advocating that young adults are capable of mature comprehension.

#2255

S. E. Gontarski

#33613

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Stanley E. Gontarski specializes in twentieth-century Irish Studies, in British, U.S., and European modernism, and in performance theory. He is a leading scholar of the work of Samuel Beckett, and is the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University.

#2256

Sheenagh Pugh

#49533

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Sheenagh Pugh is a British poet, novelist and translator who writes in English. Her book, Stonelight won the Wales Book of the Year award. Pugh was born in Birmingham. She was a creative writer educator at the University of Glamorgan until her retirement. She has written several poetry collections, and two novels. She has also written The Democratic Genre: fan fiction in a literary context , a literary study of fan fiction.

#2257

Vira Ageyeva

#45193

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Vira Ageyeva is a Ukrainian literary critic and philologist. In 1990, she and other scholars established the first feminist seminars in the country as an initiative of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and she was a co-founder of the Kyiv Institute for Gender Studies in 1998. She was honored as a joint winner of the Shevchenko National Prize in 1996 and the Petro Mohyla Prize, an award given by Academic Council of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, in 2008.

#2258

Paul Zindel

#36644

Overall Influence

1936 - 2003 (67 years)

Paul Zindel Jr. was an American playwright, young adult novelist, and educator. Early life Zindel was born in Tottenville, Staten Island, New York, to Paul Zindel Sr., a policeman, and Betty Zindel, a nurse; his sister, Betty Hagen, was a year and a half older than him. Paul Zindel Sr. ran away with his mistress when Zindel was two, leaving the trio to move around Staten Island, living in various houses and apartments.

#2259

Marie Redonnet

#69742

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Marie Redonnet is the nom de plume of Martine L'hospitalier who is a French writer of poems, novels, essays, short stories, and plays. Her works have been translated into eleven languages. Biography Martine L'hospitalier was born in 1948, her mother's birth name was Redonnet. She studied literature, particularly Jean Genet, and she became a teacher and began writing in the late 1970s. Her first published work was Le Mort & Cie, a collection of poems released in 1985. The following year, she published a collection of short stories entitled Doublures. She followed that with a trilogy of novels...

#2260

Brennan Manning

#17858

Overall Influence

1934 - 2013 (79 years)

Richard Francis Xavier Manning, known as Brennan Manning was an American author, laicized priest, and public speaker. He is best known for his bestselling book The Ragamuffin Gospel. Early life Manning was born in Depression-era Brooklyn, New York City, and was one of three children. After studying at St. John's University in Queens for two years, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and fought in the Korean War. After returning to the U.S., he studied journalism.

#2261

Chris Morris

#48804

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Christopher Crosby Morris is an American author of fiction and non-fiction, as well as a lyricist, musical composer, and singer-songwriter. He is married to author Janet Morris. He is a defense policy and strategy analyst and a principal in M2 Technologies, Inc. He writes primarily as Chris Morris, a shortened form of his name, but occasionally uses pseudonyms.

#2262

Gevorg Jahukyan

#30419

Overall Influence

1920 - 2005 (85 years)

Gevorg Jahukyan was an Armenian linguist and philologist, Doctor of Philological Sciences, Professor, Academician of the Academy of Sciences of Armenia, Honored Scientist of the Armenian SSR. Biography He was born on April 1, 1920, in the village of Shahnazar in the present-day Lori Province of Armenia. In 1941 he graduated from Yerevan State University Faculty of Philology. From 1941 to 1943 he participated in the WWII.

#2263

Susanna Jones

#73188

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Susanna Jones is a British writer. Her debut novel, The Earthquake Bird won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize a Betty Trask Award and the Crime Writers' Association John Creasy Dagger. Biography Born in Hull, Jones spent her childhood in Hornsea in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Her father was a University Professor and her mother a teacher then School Inspector. She studied drama at Royal Holloway University in London where she became interested in Japanese culture through her study of Noh theatre. After graduating in 1988 she then travelled to Japan where she taught English in Nagoya on the JET...

#2264

Roman Shmarakov

#72706

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Roman Lvovich Shmarakov is a modern Russian writer, poet, translator, Doctor of Philology, lecturer, and blogger. Biography In 1994 Roman Shmarakov graduated from Tula State Pedagogical University and worked as a teacher at its Department of Literature from 1994 till 2005. He took postgraduate courses at the Moscow State Pedagogical University Department of Russian Literature. In 1999 he defended his thesis, "Symbolic subtext of Demons, the novel by Dostoyevsky".

#2265

María Dueñas

#65144

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

María Dueñas Vinuesa is a Spanish writer and professor. She rose to fame in 2009 with El tiempo entre costuras, her first novel, which became one of the best-selling works of Spanish literature in recent years and has been translated into more than twenty-five languages.

#2266

Page Stegner

#58138

Overall Influence

1937 - 2017 (80 years)

Stuart Page Stegner was a novelist, essayist, and historian who wrote extensively about the American West. He was the son of novelist and historian Wallace Stegner. Career Stegner received his B.A. in history from Stanford University in 1959, followed by a Ph.D in American literature in 1964. He served as a Professor of American Literature and Director of the creative writing program at the University of California, Santa Cruz from 1965 to 1995 at which time he focused his efforts on writing. He received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship , a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship .

#2267

Alan Kaufman

#63224

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Alan Kaufman is an American writer, memoirist and poet. He is the author of the memoirs Jew Boy and Drunken Angel, the novel [Matches], and is listed as editor of The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. He is also listed as co-editor of The Outlaw Bible of American Literature, alongside Barney Rosset and Neil Ortenberg.

#2268

Cathy Park Hong

Cathy Park Hong

#38606

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Cathy Park Hong is an American poet, writer, and professor who has published three volumes of poetry. Much of her work includes mixed language and serialized narrative. She was named on the 2021 Time 100 list for her writings and advocacy for Asian American women.

#2269

Arthur Smith

#15695

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Brian Arthur John Smith is an English alternative comedian, presenter and writer. Early life Smith was born on 27 November 1954 in Bermondsey, south London. His eldest brother is Richard Smith, a medical doctor, editor and businessman. His younger brother is Nick Smith, a civil servant who was also a stand-up comic but in recent years has turned to amateur dramatics. Arthur was a student and school captain at The Roan School for Boys, a grammar school, now The John Roan School in Blackheath, London. He then studied at the University of East Anglia, where he was chairman of the poetry society, wrote for the student newspaper and contributed sketches for a student revue.

#2270

Heinz Schlaffer

#69926

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Heinz Schlaffer was a German Germanist and Professor of Literary Science of the University of Stuttgart. He was best known for essays like "Die kurze Geschichte der deutschen Literatur" . Biography Heinz Schlaffer was born in Černošín on 21 June 1939. He received his first Literary Science Professorship at the Philipp's University – Marburg and changed to Stuttgart in 1975. He held a teaching position in that town from 1975 until his emeritus in 2004.

#2271

Rebecca Wells

#49255

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Rebecca Wells is an American author, actor, and playwright known for the Ya-Ya Sisterhood series, which includes the books Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Little Altars Everywhere, Ya-Yas in Bloom, and The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder.

#2272

Helen Damico

#51647

Overall Influence

1931 - 2020 (89 years)

Helen Damico was a Greek-born American scholar of Old English and Old English literature. Life and career Born in Chios, Greece, Damico emigrated to the United States in 1937. She earned her B.A. from the University of Iowa in 1952, and was on the faculty of Brooklyn College, followed by the University of Minnesota. She received her Ph.D. from New York University in 1980.

#2273

Cordelia Candelaria

#64388

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Cordelia Chávez Candelaria is an American educator and writer of Hispanic descent. Early life and education Candelaria was born in Deming, New Mexico, to Ray J. Chávez and Eloida Trujillo. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Fort Lewis College, where she studied English and French. She then earned a Master of Arts in English and a PhD in American literature and structural linguistics from the University of Notre Dame.

#2274

Catherine Fisher

#46287

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Catherine Fisher is a Welsh poet and children's novelist. She has also worked as a school and university teacher. Work experience Catherine Fisher has worked as a primary-school teacher and as an archaeologist. She also taught writing for children at the University of Glamorgan.She has been a full-time writer of fiction and poetry since 2002.

#2275

Myung Mi Kim

#50096

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Myung Mi Kim is a Korean American poet noted for her postmodern writings. Kim and her family immigrated to the United States when she was nine years old. She holds a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa and lectured for some years on creative writing at the San Francisco State University. She is currently Professor of English at the University at Buffalo.

#2276

David Jhave Johnston

#29186

Overall Influence

David Jhave Johnston is a Canadian poet, videographer, and motion graphics artist working chiefly in digital and computational media,. and a researcher at the Center for Digital Narrative at the University of Bergen. This artist's work is often attributed, simply, to the name Jhave.

#2277

Joan Hinde Stewart

#45195

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Joan Hinde Stewart is an American academic administrator who served as the 19th president of Hamilton College in Clinton, New York from 2003 to 2016. Early life and education Stewart was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. After earning a Bachelor of Arts degree, summa cum laude, from St. Joseph's College in 1965, Stewart earned a Ph.D. in French from Yale University in 1970.

#2278

George Chigas

#47706

Overall Influence

George Chigas is an American writer, scholar and expert on Cambodian culture and the crimes of the Khmer Rouge. He is currently an associate teaching professor in the World Languages and Cultures department at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

#2279

Geir Kjetsaa

#75093

Overall Influence

1937 - 2008 (71 years)

Geir Kjetsaa was a Norwegian professor in Russian literary history at the University of Oslo, translator of Russian literature, and author of several biographies of classical Russian writers. Biography He was born in Oslo, Norway. He was the son of Thorleif Kjetsaa and Marit Elen Hansen . He grew up and died in Hornnes. He graduated as cand.philol. in 1963, took the dr.philos. degree in 1969, and was appointed professor in 1971. Kjetsaa was member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and of the Norwegian Academy for Language and Literature.

#2280

Maurice Limat

#55279

Overall Influence

1914 - 2002 (88 years)

Maurice Limat was a French author of science fiction. His œuvre, particularly abundant, was published primarily by publisher Fleuve Noir. He used a variety of pseudonyms, notably Maurice Lionel, Maurice d'Escrignelles, and Lionel Rex.

#2281

Afrânio Coutinho

Afrânio Coutinho

#72806

Overall Influence

1911 - 2000 (89 years)

Afrânio Coutinho was a Brazilian literary critic and essayist. He encouraged the rise of the "New Criticism" in Brazil of the 1950s. Coutinho edited the Portuguese version of Reader's Digest as well as several reference works on Brazilian literature. He also taught literature at several universities.

#2282

Lawrence Joseph

#34607

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Lawrence Joseph is an American poet, writer, essayist, critic, lawyer, and professor of law. Early life and education Lawrence Joseph was born in 1948 in Detroit, Michigan. Joseph's grandparents, Lebanese Maronite and Syrian Melkite Eastern Catholics, were among the first Arab Americans to emigrate to Detroit around 1910, where both Joseph's parents were born.

#2283

Dan Gordon

#35960

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Dan Gordon is an Israeli-American screenwriter, television writer, television producer, television director, film producer, novelist, playwright, film director, and reserve duty captain in the Israel Defense Forces.

#2284

Carl Barks

#20254

Overall Influence

1901 - 2000 (99 years)

Carl Barks was an American cartoonist, author, and painter. He is best known for his work in Disney comic books, as the writer and artist of the first Donald Duck stories and as the creator of Scrooge McDuck. He worked anonymously until late in his career; fans dubbed him The Duck Man and The Good Duck Artist. In 1987, Barks was one of the three inaugural inductees of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.

#2285

Martín Espada

#36459

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Martín Espada is a Puerto Rican-American poet, and a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he teaches poetry. Puerto Rico has frequently been featured as a theme in his poems.

#2286

Hanif Kureishi

#42728

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Hanif Kureishi is a British playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker and novelist of South Asian and English descent. In 2008, The Times included Kureishi in its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.

#2287

Genevieve L. Asenjo

#44038

Overall Influence

Genevieve L. Asenjo is a Filipino poet, novelist, translator and literary scholar in Kinaray-a, Hiligaynon and Filipino. Her first novel, Lumbay ng Dila, received a citation for the Juan C. Laya Prize for Excellence in Fiction in a Philippine Language in the National Book Award.

#2288

Betty Louise Bell

#53635

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Betty Louise Bell is an American author and educator. Biography Bell was born on November 23, 1949, in Davis, Oklahoma. She is a scholar and fiction writer of Cherokee ancestry. She earned her PhD in 1985 from Ohio State University.

#2289

Sardar Anjum

#43098

Overall Influence

1941 - 2015 (74 years)

Sardar Anjum was an Indian poet Awards and recognition Padma Bhushan Award — Anjum was honoured with the Padma Bhushan Award in 2005 Citation Literature and Education. This is India's third largest civilian honourPadma Shri Award , India's fourth highest civilian honour.The Millennium Peace Award - Anjum has been honored by many literary societies, cultural forums and creative foundations both in India and Abroad. In 2000, former first lady Hillary Clinton presented "The Millennium Peace Award" to Anjum on behalf of "International Peace Foundation of New York". The citation of this award reads - The Millennium Peace Award to Padmashri Dr.

#2290

Winfried Fluck

#71576

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Winfried Fluck studied German, English and American literature at Freie Universität Berlin, Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley. In 1972, he got his doctoral degree from Freie Universität Berlin with a dissertation on aesthetic premises in the literary criticism of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. For his Habilitation, the European qualification for a professorship, he wrote a study on American realism as a form of “staged reality” . After visiting scholarships at Harvard and Yale University, he got his first appointment as a professor at the University of Constance in Germany before he became Professor and Chair of North American Culture at the John F.

#2291

Don Lee

#59234

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Don Lee is an American novelist, fiction writer, literary journal editor, and creative writing professor. Background The son of a State Department officer, Lee—a third-generation Korean American—spent his childhood in Tokyo and Seoul. He received his B.A. in English Literature from University of California, Los Angeles and his M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Literature from Emerson College.

#2292

C. George Sandulescu

C. George Sandulescu

#22664

Overall Influence

1933 - 2018 (85 years)

Constantin George Sandulescu was a Joyceanan scholar, but in the first place, he was a linguist with twelve years' experience in the Department of Theoretical Linguistics of the University of Stockholm in the 1970s and 1980s, specializing in Discourse Analysis. In that capacity he read a dozen or so papers at various international congresses .

#2293

Ray B. Browne

#42254

Overall Influence

1922 - 2009 (87 years)

Ray Broadus Browne , was an American educator, author, and founder of the academic study of popular culture in the United States. He was Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. He founded the first academic Department of Popular Culture at BGSU in 1972, and is the founding editor of the Journal of Popular Culture, the Journal of American Culture, and the Popular Press . He also founded the Library for Popular Culture Studies at BGSU , the Popular Culture Association, and the American Culture Association. His particular area of specializatio...

#2294

E. Ethelbert Miller

E. Ethelbert Miller

#44351

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Eugene Ethelbert Miller, best known as E. Ethelbert Miller , is an African-American poet, teacher and literary activist, based in Washington, DC. He is the author of several collections of poetry and two memoirs, the editor of Poet Lore magazine, and the host of the weekly WPFW morning radio show On the Margin.

#2295

Ben Belitt

#53233

Overall Influence

1911 - 2003 (92 years)

Ben Belitt was an American poet and translator. Besides writing poetry, he also translated several books of poetry by Pablo Neruda and Federico García Lorca from Spanish to English. Life Belitt was born in New York City. He was educated at the University of Virginia, receiving a B.A. in 1932 and an M.A. in 1934, and he was a doctoral student at that university from 1934 to 1936. By the early 1940s, he had taken up an appointment at Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont, where he remained, living in a former firehouse in North Bennington, for the rest of his life. A bachelor, he became a g...

#2296

Ai

#39120

Overall Influence

1947 - 2010 (63 years)

Ai Ogawa was an American poet and educator who won the 1999 National Book Award for Poetry for Vice: New and Selected Poems. Ai is known for her mastery of the dramatic monologue as a poetic form, as well as for taking on dark, controversial topics in her work. About writing in the dramatic monologue form, she's said: "I want to take the narrative 'persona' poem as far as I can, and I've never been one to do things in halves. All the way or nothing. I won't abandon that desire."

#2297

Jay Hopler

#60248

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Jay Hopler was an American poet. Early life and education Hopler was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He graduated from Purdue University , the Iowa Writers’ Workshop , the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars and New York University .

#2298

Tilar J. Mazzeo

#38126

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Tilar J. Mazzeo is an American-Canadian cultural historian, wine writer, and author of several bestselling works of narrative nonfiction. She was the Clara C. Piper Associate Professor of English at Colby College in Maine from 2004-2019. she is Professeure Associée in the Département de Littératures et Langues du Monde at the Université de Montréal in Canada.

#2299

Michael Grant

#13965

Overall Influence

1914 - 2004 (90 years)

Michael Grant was an English classicist, numismatist, and author of numerous books on ancient history. His 1956 translation of Tacitus's Annals of Imperial Rome remains a standard of the work. Having studied and held a number of academic posts in the United Kingdom and the Middle East, he retired early to devote himself fully to writing. He once described himself as "one of the very few freelancers in the field of ancient history: a rare phenomenon". As a populariser, his hallmarks were his prolific output and his unwillingness to oversimplify or talk down to his readership. He published ove...

#2300

Astrid Ivask

#55125

Overall Influence

1926 - 2015 (89 years)

Astrid Ivask was a Latvian-American poet. Biography She was born Astrīde Helēna Hartmane in Riga, the daughter of Mārtiņš Hartmanis, a Latvian Army General, and Irma Marija Hartmane. Her brother was computer scientist Juris Hartmanis. Following the 1940 Soviet occupation of Latvia, General Hartmanis was imprisoned by the Soviet Union. He was executed in 1941, but his family would not learn of his fate until after the fall of the USSR in 1991.

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