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,
#2651
Stephen Beachy
#47407
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Stephen Beachy is an American writer. Early life Beachy's parents are Mennonites and his paternal grandparents were Old Order Amish. His brother Tim Beachy is a member of the band Squidboy. Beachy is a second cousin of biologist Philip Beachy and historian Robert M. Beachy and also a relative of biologist Roger N. Beachy. He attended the University of Iowa from 1983 to 1990, both as an undergrad and in the Iowa Writers' Workshop. As a student he traveled extensively in the US and Latin America, sometimes by motorcycle and sometimes hitchhiking, which influenced his first novel.
Go to Profile#2652
LeAnne Howe
#38695
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
LeAnne Howe (born April 29, 1951) is an American author and Eidson Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at the University of Georgia , Athens. She previously taught American Indian Studies and English at the University of Minnesota and at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and is a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. LeAnne Howe attended Oklahoma State University–Tulsa where she majored in English. Afterwards, Howe worked toward pursuing her Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing from Vermont College of Norwich University in 2000. Over the next couple of ...
Go to Profile#2653
Ahmed Mejjati
#88460
Overall Influence
1936 - 1995 (59 years)
Ahmed Mejjati was an influential Moroccan avant-garde poet. Biography Mejjati studied in Damascus and completed his PhD in Arabic literature at the Mohammed V University in Rabat, where he also worked as a professor of Arabic literature.
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Jean Giraud
#22806
Overall Influence
1938 - 2012 (74 years)
Jean Henri Gaston Giraud was a French artist, cartoonist and writer who worked in the Franco-Belgian bandes dessinées tradition. Giraud garnered worldwide acclaim predominantly under the pseudonym Mœbius for his fantasy/science-fiction work, and to a slightly lesser extent as Gir , which he used for the Blueberry series and his other Western themed work. Esteemed by Federico Fellini, Stan Lee, and Hayao Miyazaki, among others, he has been described as the most influential bande dessinée artist after Hergé.
Go to Profile#2655
Brenda Marie Osbey
#43072
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Brenda Marie Osbey is an American poet. She served as the Poet Laureate of Louisiana from 2005 to 2007. Life She graduated from Dillard University, Paul Valéry University, Montpellier III, and from the University of Kentucky, with an M.A. She has taught at the University of California at Los Angeles, Loyola University New Orleans, and at Dillard University. She was Visiting Writer-in-residence at Tulane University and Scholar-in-residence at Southern University. She teaches at Louisiana State University.
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Aado Lintrop
#90086
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Aado Lintrop is an Estonian poet, religious researcher and folklorist. He graduated from the University of Tartu with a degree in Estonian and Finno-Ugric philology in 1995. The same year, he also received a master's degree in Estonian and comparative folklore. He received his doctorate from the University of Tartu in 2000 in Estonian and comparative folklore. From 1979 until 1990, he worked at Estonian National Museum. Since 2000, he has been working at the Estonian Literary Museum.
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Sarah Bond
#55869
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Sarah Emily Bond is a Professor of History at the University of Iowa. Her research focuses on late Roman history, epigraphy, law, topography, GIS, and digital humanities. Education Bond received her PhD in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2011. Her doctoral thesis was entitled Criers, Impresarios, and Sextons: Disreputable Occupations in the Roman World. Her PhD was supervised by Professor Richard Talbert. Bond received a master's degree from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in 2007. She was awarded a BA in Classics and History from the University o...
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Rudolf Kassel
#71390
Overall Influence
1926 - 2020 (94 years)
Rudolf Kassel was a German classical philologist. He was a professor at the Free University of Berlin from 1963 to 1975 and subsequently the University of Cologne from 1975 until his retirement in 1991.
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Aurelio González Ovies
#35566
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Aurelio González Ovies is a Spanish writer and poet from Asturias. He has a Ph.D in Classical Philology and he is a Professor of Latin Philology at the University of Oviedo. In words of the writer Victor Alperi:
Go to Profile#2660
Solomiia Pavlychko
#33115
Overall Influence
1958 - 1999 (41 years)
Solomiia Dmytrivna Pavlychko was a Ukrainian literary critic, philosopher, feminist, and translator. She is considered as one of the pioneering scholars to introduce gender studies and feminist analysis to Ukraine.
Go to Profile#2661
Amy Boesky
#75684
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Amy Boesky is an American author and a professor of English at Boston College. Life Born in Detroit, Boesky studied her undergraduate degree at Harvard College before completing a M.Phil in Renaissance English at the University of Oxford. After completing her master's degree and returning to the United States, Boesky worked as an editorial assistant and also began work as one of the principal ghostwriters for the Sweet Valley High series originated by Francine Pascal. Boesky's first contribution to the series was the sixteenth novel, Rags to Riches; she would go on to write fifty books for the Sweet Valley franchise while completing a PhD at Harvard University.
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James Radcliffe Squires
#70843
Overall Influence
1917 - 1993 (76 years)
Radcliffe Squires was an American poet, writer, critic, and academic. He published several well-regarded books of poetry, as well as biographical and critical works which focused on highly acclaimed 20th-century writers.
Go to Profile#2663
Ellah Wakatama Allfrey
#53999
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Ellah Wakatama, OBE, Hon. FRSL , is the Editor-at-Large at Canongate Books, a senior Research Fellow at Manchester University, and Chair of the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing. She was the founding Publishing Director of the Indigo Press. A London-based editor and critic, she was on the judging panel of the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award and the 2015 Man Booker Prize. In 2016, she was a Visiting Professor & Global Intercultural Scholar at Goshen College, Indiana, and was the Guest Master for the 2016 Gabriel Garcia Marquez Foundation international journalism fellowship in Cartagena, Colombia.
Go to Profile#2664
Kim Won-il
#80217
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Kim Won-il is a South Korean writer. Life Kim Won-il was born on March 15, 1942, in Gimhae, Gyeongsangnam-do. Kim was only a child when his father, a communist activist, defected to the North during the Korean War. The father left his wife and four children behind, to a legacy of great poverty and a cloud of ideological suspicion. Kim attended Daegu Agriculture High School, and holds bachelor's degrees from Sorabol College of Arts and Yeungnam University and a master's degree in Korean Literature from Dankook University.
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Maria Galina
#52068
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Maria Galina is a Russian writer. She was born in Kalinin and studied marine biology in Odessa. She lived in Bergen for a while, studying salmon. She started publishing fiction in the 1990s under the pseudonym Maxim Golitsyn. She has since published novels under her own name as well. Two of her novels, Little Boondock and Mole-Crickets, were nominated for the Big Book Award in 2009 and 2012. She is also a prize-winning poet and literary critic, writing regular columns for the literary journal Novy Mir.
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Peter V. Zima
#50650
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Peter Václav Zima is a literary critic and a social scientist born in Prague 1946. He is of Czech-German origin and has dual nationality such as Austrian and Dutch. He is emeritus professor of the Alpen-Adria-Universität in Klagenfurt where he held the chair of General and Comparative Literature from 1983 to 2012.
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Joanna Brooks
#31829
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Joanna Brooks is an American author and professor of English and comparative literature at San Diego State University. Brooks is currently the associate vice president of faculty advancement and professor of English and comparative literature. She is a frequent media commentator on faith in American life, particularly in relation to her own Mormonism. Politico named her one of 2011's "50 politicos to watch" for her Twitter feed, @askmormongirl.
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Evelyn McDonnell
#62640
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Evelyn McDonnell is an American writer and academic. Writing primarily about popular culture, music, and society, she "helped to forge a new kind of feminism for her generation." She is associate professor of journalism and new media at Loyola Marymount University.
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Stanley Insler
#29106
Overall Influence
1937 - 2019 (82 years)
Stanley Insler was an American philologist. Early life He was born in New York City on June 23, 1937, to parents Clara and Frank, and attended the Bronx High School of Science until the age of sixteen, when he enrolled at Columbia University. Insler graduated from Columbia College in 1957. He studied at the University of Tübingen from 1960 to 1962, and completed a doctorate at Yale University in 1963. Upon earning his Ph.D Insler joined Yale's faculty, where he was later named the Edward E. Salisbury Professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology. Among his many publications are The Gāthās o...
Go to Profile#2670
George Rousseau
#23111
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
George Sebastian Rousseau is an American cultural historian resident in the United Kingdom. Early life and education George Rousseau was educated at Amherst College and Princeton University, where he obtained his doctorate.
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Dean Hughes
#53483
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Dean Hughes is an American author of historical novels and children's books. He has written 105 books as well as various poems and short stories. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Hughes is a prominent author of LDS fiction for children and juveniles. Many of Hughes's books are sports or war themed. Hughes is most well known for his historical World War II era Children of the Promise series for adults. His novel Midway to Heaven was adapted into a feature-length film in 2011. Before he became a full-time author, Hughes taught English at Central Missouri State University.
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Cate Kennedy
#73331
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Cate Kennedy is an Australian author based in Victoria. Life and career Kennedy graduated from the University of Canberra and has also taught at several colleges, including The University of Melbourne. She is the author of the highly acclaimed novel The World Beneath, which won the People's Choice Award in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards in 2010. It was also shortlisted for The Age fiction prize 2010 and the ASA Barbara Jefferis Award 2010, among others. She is a short-story writer whose work has twice won The Age Short Story Competition and has appeared in a range of publications, including The New Yorker.
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David Wright
#47339
Overall Influence
1920 - 1994 (74 years)
David John Murray Wright was an author and "an acclaimed South African-born poet". Biography Wright was born in Johannesburg, South Africa 23 February 1920 of normal hearing. When he was 7 years old he contracted scarlet fever and was deafened as a result of the disease. He immigrated to England at the age of 14, where he was enrolled in the Northampton School for the Deaf. He studied at Oriel College, Oxford, and graduated in 1942.
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Samah Selim
#37476
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Samah Selim is an Egyptian scholar and translator of Arabic literature. She studied English literature at Barnard College, and obtained her PhD from Columbia University in 1997. At present she is an associate professor at the Department of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. She has also taught at Columbia, Princeton and Aix-en-Provence universities.
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Vahé Oshagan
#46452
Overall Influence
1922 - 2000 (78 years)
Vahé Oshagan was an Armenian poet, writer, and literary critic. Life Vahé Oshagan was born in 1922. His father, Hagop Oshagan, was a prominent writer and critic. Raised in Cairo, Jerusalem, and Cyprus, he studied in France and received a doctorate in comparative literature from the University of Sorbonne, in Paris.
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G. Blakemore Evans
#61172
Overall Influence
1912 - 2005 (93 years)
Gwynne Blakemore Evans was an American scholar of Elizabethan literature best known for editing the Riverside Shakespeare edition in 1974. Biography Evans was born on 31 March 1912 in Columbus, Ohio to Marshall B. Evans, a scholar of the German language at Ohio State University. Gwynne graduated from that university in 1934. He then earned a master's degree from the University of Cincinnati in 1936. He received his doctorate from Harvard University in 1940. In 2000 Albright College awarded him an LL. D., honoris causa.
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Eddie Campbell
#51053
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Eddie Campbell is a British comics artist and cartoonist. He was the illustrator and publisher of From Hell , and the creator of the semi-autobiographical Alec stories collected in Alec: The Years Have Pants, and Bacchus , a wry adventure series about the few Greek gods who have survived to the present day.
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Debra Adelaide
#74827
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Debra Adelaide is an Australian novelist, writer and academic. She teaches creative writing at the University of Technology Sydney. Biography Adelaide was born in Sydney and grew up in the Sutherland Shire. A contemporary of writers Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey, she attended Gymea High School and then via a teacher's scholarship, she completed a BA and MA in English literature at the University of Sydney. She then completed a PhD in Australian women’s literature in 1991, and in the process completed her first book, a bibliography of Australian women's literature. While studying, Debra Ad...
Go to Profile#2679
Aurel Plasari
#53993
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Aurel Plasari is an Albanian lecturer, scholar, writer, translator and professor. Early life and education Plasari was born in Tirana, where he completed all levels of his education. At the age of seventeen, while still in high school, Plasari began to publish translations from world literature. He is an Aromanian.
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Donald Greene
#61489
Overall Influence
1914 - 1997 (83 years)
Donald Johnson Greene was a literary critic, English professor, and scholar of British literature, particularly the eighteenth-century period. Known especially for his work on Samuel Johnson, he also wrote on later authors such as Jane Austen, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and Donald Davie.
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Peter Wild
#48018
Overall Influence
1940 - 2009 (69 years)
Peter T. Wild was a poet, historian, and professor of English at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. Born in Northampton, Massachusetts, he grew up in and graduated from high school in Easthampton, Massachusetts. Wild worked as a rancher and firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service, and served as a lieutenant with the U.S. Army in Germany. Wild earned his M.F.A. in 1969 from the University of California, Irvine. He then began teaching for nearly 40 years and wrote over 2,000 poems; also, he edited or wrote some 80 fiction and non-fiction books, largely dealing with the American West....
Go to Profile#2682
Valerie Martin
#42563
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Valerie Martin is an American novelist and short story writer. Her novel Property won the Orange Prize for Fiction. In 2012, The Observer named Property as one of "The 10 best historical novels". Early life Martin was born in Sedalia, Missouri, to John Roger Metcalf and Valerie Fleischer Metcalf. Her father was a sea captain and her mother was a housewife whose family goes back several generations in New Orleans, Louisiana. She was raised in New Orleans from the age of three, attending public elementary school and a Catholic high school . She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Univers...
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William J. Dominik
#45048
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
William J. Dominik is an American-Australian scholar of Classical Studies. He is presently Visiting Professor and Integrated Researcher of Classical Studies at the University of Lisbon and Professor Emeritus of Classics at the University of Otago.
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Rebecca Curtis
#69573
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Rebecca Curtis is an American writer. She is the author of Twenty Grand and Other Tales of Love & Money and has been published in The New Yorker, Harper's, McSweeney's, NOON, N+1, and other magazines.
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Reed Whittemore
#39040
Overall Influence
1919 - 2012 (93 years)
Edward Reed Whittemore, Jr. was an American poet, biographer, critic, literary journalist and college professor. He was appointed the sixteenth and later the twenty-eighth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1964, and in 1984.
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Alicia Borinsky
#54237
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Alicia Borinsky , is a US-based Argentine novelist, poet and literary critic. Alicia Borinsky is professor of Latin American and Comparative Literature and Director of the Writing in the Americas Program at Boston University. Her critical work has helped frame the discussion about the writers of the Latin American Boom or Boom latinoamericano, an important movement in Latin American literature. Among her other scholarly achievements is the introduction of the figure of Macedonio Fernández—Borges’s master—to a wider reading public, the exploration of the intersection between literary theory, cultural and gender studies and numerous works about poetry, Latino writers and World literature.
Go to Profile#2688
Martha Grimes
#26252
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Martha Grimes is an American writer of detective fiction. She is best known for a series featuring Richard Jury, a Scotland Yard inspector, and Melrose Plant, an aristocrat turned amateur sleuth. Biography Grimes was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to William Dermit Grimes, Pittsburgh's city solicitor, and June Dunnington, who owned the Mountain Lake Hotel in Western Maryland, where Martha and her brother spent much of their childhood. Grimes earned her B.A. and M.A. at the University of Maryland and did postgraduate work at the University of Iowa. She has taught at the University of Iowa, ...
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Dennis Schmitz
#50100
Overall Influence
1937 - 2019 (82 years)
Dennis Schmitz was an American poet. Life Dennis Schmitz grew up in Dubuque, Iowa. He graduated from Loras College and the University of Chicago, where he met and married Loretta D'Agostino in 1960; they have five children together. He has taught at Illinois Institute of Technology, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and California State University, Sacramento. His former students include Raymond Carver, Charlene Ungstad, Gary Short, and Gary Thompson.
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Gwendolyn Leick
#66999
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Gwendolyn Leick was an Austrian-born British historian and Assyriologist who wrote multiple books and encyclopedias in English about ancient Mesopotamia. Early life Gwendolyn Leick was born on 25 February 1951 in Oberaichwald, Austria, to parents Reginald and Herta Leick. Her father was a physician and her mother was a social worker.
Go to Profile#2691
Graham Holderness
#52016
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Graham Holderness is a writer and critic who has published as author or editor 60 books, mostly on Shakespeare, and hundreds of chapters and articles of criticism, theory and theology. He was one of the founders of British Cultural materialism, a pioneer of critical-creative writing, and a significant contributor to interdisciplinary work in Literature and Theology.
Go to Profile#2692
Cate Marvin
#37799
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Cate Marvin is an American poet. Life She graduated from Marlboro College, University of Houston, University of Iowa, and University of Cincinnati with a Ph.D. She has taught at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York and Columbia University. She teaches in the English Department of Colby College.
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Louise Simonson
#49772
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Louise Simonson is an American comic book writer and editor. She is best known for her work on comic book titles such as Conan the Barbarian, Power Pack, X-Factor, New Mutants, Superman: The Man of Steel, and Steel. She is often referred to by the nickname "Weezie". Among the comic characters she co-created are Cable, Steel, Power Pack, Rictor, Doomsday and the X-Men villain Apocalypse.
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Zinovy Zinik
#60633
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Zinovy Zinik is a Russian-born British novelist, short-story writer, and essayist. Life and career A native of Moscow, Zinik studied art at one of the city's art schools and later studied geometrical topology at Moscow State University. He also attended a school of theatre criticism run by Moscow theatre magazine Teatr.
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Robert Eaglestone
#49355
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Robert Eaglestone is a British literary critic and theorist. He is Professor of Contemporary Literature and Thought in the Department of English at Royal Holloway, University of London. He works on contemporary literature, literary theory and contemporary European philosophy, and on Holocaust and genocide studies. He edits the Routledge Critical Thinkers series.
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Uvo Hölscher
#79315
Overall Influence
1914 - 1996 (82 years)
Uvo Hölscher was a German classical philologist. Life Uvo Hölscher was born, the younger of his parents' two recorded sons, in Halle. His father, Gustav Hölscher was a theologian. His mother, born Borghild Gjessing, was the daughter of a school director from Oslo. His grandfather, Wilhelm Hölscher, was also a theologian.
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Christopher Locke
#24405
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Christopher Locke was an American business analyst, consultant, journalist, author and speaker. He is known as a coauthor of The Cluetrain Manifesto, and author of two other books: Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices, and The Bombast Transcripts: Rants and Screeds of RageBoy. In a Financial Times Group survey from 2001, Locke was named as one of the fifty leading business thinkers in the world.
Go to Profile#2698
Robert Benton
#51078
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Robert Douglas Benton is an American screenwriter and film director. He is best known as the writer and director of the film Kramer vs. Kramer, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. He had previously written the screenplay for the film Bonnie and Clyde.
Go to Profile#2699
Valentín García Yebra
#68966
Overall Influence
1917 - 2010 (93 years)
Valentín García Yebra , was a Spanish philologist, translator and translation scholar. Biography He studied Arts at Madrid where he graduated in Classical Philology , then he got his doctoral degree with his thesis Las traducciones latinas de la metafísica de Aristóteles. After a long career as professor and scholar, in 1974 he boosted the creation of a Translation Institute at the Universidad Complutense, where he delivered lectures in Translation Theory.
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Hermann Pálsson
#55946
Overall Influence
1921 - 2002 (81 years)
Hermann Pálsson was an Icelandic language scholar and translator, "one of the most distinguished scholars of Icelandic studies of his generation". Often working in collaboration with others such as Magnus Magnusson or Paul Edwards, he translated around 40 works of medieval Icelandic literature.
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