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.

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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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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Literature,

#2901

Tim Heald

#38522

Overall Influence

1944 - 2016 (72 years)

Tim Villiers Heald FRSL was a British author, biographer, journalist and public speaker. Life and writings Heald was born in Dorchester, Dorset, England, and educated at Sherborne School, Dorset, and Balliol College, Oxford, gaining an MA in Modern History in 1965.

#2902

Virginia Spencer Carr

Virginia Spencer Carr

#49616

Overall Influence

1929 - 2012 (83 years)

Virginia Spencer Carr was a biographer of Carson McCullers, John Dos Passos and Paul Bowles. Carr was also a college professor for more than 25 years at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia, and Georgia State University in Atlanta.

#2903

Rodney Jones

#53074

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Rodney Glenn Jones is an American poet and retired professor of English at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. He was born and reared near Falkville, Alabama, gained a B.A. in 1971 at the University of Alabama and an M.F.A. at the University of North Carolina in 1973. He taught poetry at high schools in Tennessee, Alabama and Virginia from 1974 to 1978 and then became a writer in residence at Virginia Intermont College from 1979 to 1984. He was finally appointed Professor of English at the Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. He retired in 2012.

#2904

Warren Tallman

#72990

Overall Influence

1921 - 1994 (73 years)

Warren Tallman was an American-born poetry professor who influenced the Vancouver Tish poets. History Born in Seattle, Tallman was raised in Tumwater, Washington. He attended the University of California, Berkeley on the G.I. Bill, writing dissertations on Henry James and Joseph Conrad. There he met Ellen King; they married in 1951.

#2905

Garrett Hongo

#57086

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Garrett Kaoru Hongo is a Yonsei, fourth-generation Japanese American academic and poet. His work draws on Japanese American history and his own experiences. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The River of Heaven .

#2906

Concha Zardoya

#89767

Overall Influence

1914 - 2004 (90 years)

María Concepción Zardoya González, also known as Concha Zardoya, was a Chilean poet and literary critic. During her career, she published nearly 40 poetry collections and won multiple literary awards.

#2907

An Dohyeon

#86992

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

An Dohyeon is a South Korean poet and university professor. Life An Dohyeon was born in 1961 in Yecheon, North Gyeongsang Province. While in high school, he joined the creative writing club 'Taedonggi Literary Society', coming to know fellow writers such as Hong Seung-woo, Seo Jeong-yoon, Park Deok-gyu, Kwon Tae-hyeon, Ha Eung-baek, and Lee Jeong-ha. He received many awards such as various writing contests and creative writing competitions across the country including the ‘Hakwon Literary Award’. In 1980 he entered Wonkwang University to study Korean literature, and he was also active as a m...

#2908

Adal Soomro

#62893

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Dr. Adal Soomro is a Sindhi language poet and retired academician. He was Director Shaikh Ayaz Chair at Shah Abdul Latif University in Khairpur, Pakistan. He holds a Ph.D. in the history of Sindhi Adabi Sangat, a Pakistani literary organization for which he has also been Secretary.

#2909

Robert Kurz

#13799

Overall Influence

1943 - 2012 (69 years)

Robert Kurz was a German philosopher, social critic, journalist and editor of the journal Exit! He was one of Germany's most prominent theorists of value criticism. Life and work Robert Kurz was born on 24 December 1943 in Nuremberg to a German working-class family. During his military service he was involved in pacifist propaganda and participated in the "Ostermärschen," protest marches against atomic weapons in the 1960s. Kurz studied philosophy, history and paedagogy at the university of Erlangen without taking a degree. He participated in the "student revolt" in 1968 and took part in the intense discussions within the New Left.

#2910

Jean Howard Hagstrum

#79039

Overall Influence

1913 - 1995 (82 years)

Jean H. Hagstrum was John C. Shaffer Professor Emeritus of English at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Career Hagstrum taught at Northwestern from 1941 to 1981, was a distinguished lecturer of 18th century and Romantic literature. During his 40 years at Northwestern, he was a co-founder of the residential college system. He was chair of the English department. He managed the issue of the "Community of Scholars" report and directed one of the first Alumni Colleges on the subject of "Sex and Sensibility." Hagstrum published many works on 18th-century and Romantic literature. He focussed on relations between poetry and painting.

#2911

Duncan Wu

#72771

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Duncan Wu is a British academic and biographer. Biography Wu received his D.Phil from Oxford University. From 2000-2008, he was Professor of English Language and Literature at St Catherine's College, Oxford. He is now the Raymond Wagner Professor of Literary Studies in the English Department at Georgetown University in Washington DC. Wu joined St Catherine's in 2000 as University Lecturer, and in 2003 became Professor of English Language and Literature. Before that, he was Reader and then Professor of English Literature at the University of Glasgow, 1995–2000, and before that he was a Researc...

#2912

Homeira Qaderi

#51857

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (47 years)

Homeira Qaderi born in 1980 is an Afghan writer, advocate for women's rights, and professor of Persian literature, currently serving as a Robert G. James Scholar Fellow at Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Research, Harvard University.

#2913

James J. O'Donnell

James J. O'Donnell

#20401

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

James Joseph O'Donnell is a classical scholar and University Librarian at Arizona State University. He formerly served as University Professor at Georgetown University and as Provost of Georgetown University . O'Donnell was previously Vice Provost for Information Systems and Computing at the University of Pennsylvania . He is a former President of the American Philological Association and a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America. From 2012 to 2018, he chaired the Board of the American Council of Learned Societies.

#2914

Julia Kasdorf

#62499

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Julia Mae Spicher Kasdorf is an American poet. Early years and education Born in Lewistown, Pennsylvania, Julia Spicher grew up in the suburbs of Pittsburgh near Irwin, Westmoreland County. Her parents were Mennonites born in Big Valley, Pennsylvania, who chose to leave their rural community in central Pennsylvania to work in an urban setting. Spicher attended Goshen College, in Goshen, Indiana, but completed her B.A. and Ph.D. at New York University. As a student at Goshen College, Spicher visited China in the autumn of 1982 for the Study-Service Trimester at Sichuan Teachers College. She pu...

#2915

William Bronk

#27348

Overall Influence

1918 - 1999 (81 years)

William Bronk was an American poet. For his book, Life Supports , he won the National Book Award for Poetry. He was also a veteran of World War II and a businessman. After teaching at Union College for a brief period, he took over the family business of Bronk Coal and Lumber after his father's early death. He ran it for 30 years in Hudson Falls, New York.

#2916

Daniel R. Schwarz

#60596

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Daniel R. Schwarz is Frederick J. Whiton Professor of English Literature and Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow at Cornell University, where he has taught since 1968. He is the author of eighteen significant books and numerous articles, many of which have appeared in prestigious journals and collections of essays. His recent book is Endtimes? Crises and Turmoil at the New York Times: 1999-2009 speaks to both scholarly and general audiences. He has directed nine NEH seminars and has lectured widely in the United States and abroad, including a number of lecture tours under the auspices of the academic programs of the USIS and the State Department.

#2917

Rita Williams-Garcia

Rita Williams-Garcia

#79376

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Rita Williams-Garcia is an American writer of novels for children and young adultss . In 2010, her young adult novel Jumped was a National Book Award finalist for Young People's Literature. She won the 2011 Newbery Honor Award, Coretta Scott King Award, and Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction for her book One Crazy Summer. She won the PEN/Norma Klein Award. Her 2013 book, P.S. Be Eleven, was a Junior Literary Guild selection, a New York Times Editors Choice Book, and won the Coretta Scott King Award in 2014. In 2016 her book Gone Crazy in Alabama won the Coretta Scott King Award. In 201...

#2918

D. A. Powell

#73998

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Douglas A. Powell is an American poet. Life and career Powell lived in various places growing up, then graduated high school from Lindhurst High School in Olivehurst, California. He then worked in a number of jobs before eventually settling in Santa Rosa, California, where he attended Sonoma State University. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1991 and a master's in 1993. Not long after completing his graduate work at Sonoma State, he entered the Iowa Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa.

#2919

Carolyn Ferrell

#50282

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Carolyn Ferrell is an American short story writer and novelist. Life Ferrell graduated from Sarah Lawrence College, and City College of New York with an MA. She has lived, worked, and studied in West Berlin, Manhattan, and the South Bronx. She is married to and has children with psychology professor Linwood Lewis.

#2920

Himayat Ali Shair

#60385

Overall Influence

1926 - 2019 (93 years)

Himayat Ali Shair was an Urdu poet, writer, film songwriter, actor and radio drama artist from Pakistan. He received the 2002 Pride of Performance Award for his literary services in Urdu literature from the president of Pakistan. He also received two Nigar Awards in 1962 and 1963 for 'Best Song Lyricist' for the Pakistani films "Aanchal" and "Daman" .

#2921

Suzanne Gardinier

#51381

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Suzanne Gardinier is an American poet. She is a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry. Life Gardinier grew up in Scituate, Massachusetts. She completed her B.A. at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1981, and her MFA at Columbia University, in 1986. She is the author of a long poem called The New World. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College, is a member of PEN, and lives in Manhattan.

#2922

Frank X. Gaspar

#66038

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Frank Xavier Gaspar is an American poet, novelist and professor of Portuguese descent. A number of his books treat Portuguese-American themes or settings, particularly the Portuguese community in Provincetown, Massachusetts. His most recent novel is The Poems of Renata Ferreira . His most recent collection of poems is Late Rapturous . His fourth collection of poetry, Night of a Thousand Blossoms was one of 12 books honored as the "Best Poetry of 2004" by Library Journal. Gaspar's books have won many awards. His first collection of poetry, The Holyoke, won the 1988 Morse Poetry Prize ; Mass ...

#2923

Tiphanie Yanique

Tiphanie Yanique

#80703

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Tiphanie Yanique from Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, is a Caribbean American fiction writer, poet and essayist who lives in New York. In 2010 the National Book Foundation named her a "5 Under 35" honoree. She also teaches creative writing, currently based at Emory University.

#2924

Stephen Watson

#68465

Overall Influence

1954 - 2011 (57 years)

Stephen Watson was a South African poet. Most of his poetry is about the city of Cape Town, where he lived most of his life. His schooling was at Bishops in Rondebosch. He was a professor in English at the University of Cape Town. He was also the Director of the Writing Centre there, and one of the founders of the Creative Writing Program.

#2925

Michael Smith

#55359

Overall Influence

1942 - 2014 (72 years)

Michael Smith was an Irish poet, author and translator. A member of Aosdána, the Irish National Academy of Artists, Michael Smith was the first Writer in-Residence to be appointed by University College, Dublin and was an Honorary Fellow of UCD. He was a poet who gave a lifetime of service to the art of poetry both in English and Spanish. He has been described as a classical modernist, a poet of modern life.

#2926

Leslie Kurke

#49789

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Leslie V. Kurke is a Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor, Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at University of California, Berkeley. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College with a B.A. in 1981, and from Princeton University with a Ph.D. in 1988.

#2927

Marti Noxon

#62419

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Martha Mills Noxon is an American television and film writer, director, and producer. She is best known for her work as a screenwriter and executive producer on the supernatural drama series Buffy the Vampire Slayer . She was also executive producer, writer, and creator of the Bravo comedy-drama series Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce and the Lifetime drama series UnREAL , and an executive producer of the CBS medical drama series Code Black .

#2928

Gina Barreca

#44563

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Regina Barreca is an American academic and humorist. She is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of English literature and feminist theory at the University of Connecticut and winner of UConn's highest award for excellence in teaching. She is the author of ten books, including the best selling They Used to Call Me Snow White But I Drifted: Women's Strategic Use of Humor and editor of 13 others. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Independent of London, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Cosmopolitan, and The Harvard Business Review; for 20 years she wrote columns for various Tribune newspapers as well as a series of cover stories for the Chicago Tribune.

#2929

Barry Baldwin

#87485

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Barry Baldwin is a classicist, journalist and author of mystery fiction. He gained a doctorate at the University of Nottingham and worked in Australia and Canada. For two years he contributed a regular column to the British Communist newspaper The Morning Star. He is now a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and Emeritus Professor of Classics at the University of Calgary. Barry Baldwin is best known in his academic field for his work on early Greek humorists and satirists, notably on the Philogelos, on Lucian, and on the Byzantine satire Timarion. He is a regular columnist for Fortean Times...

#2930

Garrett Stewart

#84289

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Garrett Stewart is an American literary and film theorist. He has served as the James O. Freedman Professor of Letters in the English Department at the University of Iowa since 1993. Career Stewart graduated with a B.A. from the University of Southern California in 1967 and then earned a Ph.D. in English from Yale University in 1971. He taught at Boston University and the University of California, Santa Barbara before joining the University of Iowa faculty.

#2931

Elvia Ardalani

#66557

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Elvia Ardalani or Elvia García Ardalani , is a Mexican writer, poet, and storyteller. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Modern languages and Literatures at the University of Texas–Pan American, where she teaches creative writing and Spanish literature.

#2932

Carolyn D. Wright

Carolyn D. Wright

#28275

Overall Influence

1949 - 2016 (67 years)

Carolyn D. Wright was an American poet. She was a MacArthur Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and the Poet Laureate of Rhode Island. Background C. D. Wright was born in Mountain Home, Arkansas, to a chancery judge and a court reporter. She earned a BA in French from Memphis State University in 1971 and briefly attended law school before leaving to pursue an MFA from the University of Arkansas, which she received in 1976. Her poetry thesis was titled Alla Breve Loving.

#2933

Brad Wright

#78791

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Brad Wright is a Canadian television producer and screenwriter. He is best known as the co-creator of the television series Stargate SG-1 , Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe and as the creator of Travelers.

#2934

Colin Harrison

#51178

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Colin Harrison is an American novelist and editor. Harrison is the author of eight novels: Break and Enter , Bodies Electric , Manhattan Nocturne , Afterburn , The Havana Room , The Finder , Risk , which was first published as a fifteen-part serial in The New York Times magazine in 2008, and You Belong to Me, published in June 2017. His books have been published in a dozen countries and four have been selected as Notable Books by The New York Times Book Review. The Finder was a finalist for the 2009 Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the 2009 Dashiell Hammett Award. All are atmospheric novels o...

#2935

Gauri Viswanathan

#53641

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Gauri Viswanathan is an Indian American academic. She is the Class of 1933 Professor in the Humanities and Director of the South Asia Institute at Columbia University. Biography Viswanathan was born on November 5, 1950, in Kolkata, the daughter of UN officials. She earned her bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Delhi and her doctorate from Columbia University. Her research has focused on nineteenth-century British and colonial cultural studies.

#2936

Harold Cruse

#26707

Overall Influence

1916 - 2005 (89 years)

Harold Wright Cruse was an American academic who was a social critic and teacher of African American studies at the University of Michigan until the mid-1980s. The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual is his best-known book.

#2937

Deena Metzger

#50360

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Deena Metzger is an American writer, healer, and teacher whose work spans multiple genres including the novel, poetry, non-fiction, and plays. Metzger is a creative writing teacher and feminist scholar. In the 1960s and 1970s Metzger was a member of the Critical Studies faculty at the California Institute of the Arts, taught English at Los Angeles Valley College, and was on the faculty of the Feminist Studio Worship. Metzger also founded the writing program at Woman's Building in Los Angeles. Metzger was a contributing editor to Chrysalis: A Magazine of Women's Culture that ran from 1977 to 1...

#2938

Ali Cobby Eckermann

#82063

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Ali Cobby Eckermann is an Australian poet of Aboriginal Australian ancestry. She is a Yankunytjatjara woman born on Kaurna land in South Australia. Eckermann has written poetry collections, verse novels and a memoir, and has been shortlisted for or won several literary awards. In 2017, she won the international Windham-Campbell Literature Prize for Poetry. She has travelled extensively, performing her poetry.

#2939

Julie Shigekuni

#36457

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Julie Shigekuni is an American writer and professor. Her novels include A Bridge Between Us, Invisible Gardens, Unending Nora, and In Plain View, and she has won a PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award. She is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of New Mexico.

#2940

David Nokes

#70545

Overall Influence

1948 - 2009 (61 years)

David Nokes FRSL was a scholar of 18th-century English literature known for his biographies of Jonathan Swift, John Gay, Jane Austen, and Samuel Johnson. He also penned screenplays, including a BBC adaptation of Samuel Richardson's novel Clarissa and an adaptation of Anne Brontë's novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall . He was also a leading reviewer for The Times Literary Supplement and the London Review of Books.

#2941

Anthony Grooms

#73636

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Anthony Grooms, originally from Louisa, Virginia, has written several pieces of literature and has won many awards for his writings. Grooms is now a professor at Kennesaw State University, near Atlanta, Georgia, and teaches creative writing and other English courses.

#2942

Jennifer Grotz

#47582

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Jennifer Grotz is an American poet and translator who teaches English, creative writing, and literary translation at the University of Rochester, where she is Professor of English. In 2017 she was named the seventh director of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.

#2943

Karen Harper

#60507

Overall Influence

1945 - 2020 (75 years)

Karen Harper was a historical fiction and contemporary fiction author. She was a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. Personal life Harper was born in Toledo, Ohio, and graduated from DeVilbiss High School. She obtained her bachelor's degree from Ohio University in Athens, and her graduate degree from Ohio State University in Columbus. She met her husband Don in Columbus, and lived there for thirty-five years, though they spent some time in Naples, Florida .

#2944

Sharon Lee

#56431

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Sharon Lee is an American science fiction, fantasy and mystery author who lived in Winslow, Maine from 1988-2018 before moving to nearby Waterville. She is the co-author of the Liaden universe novels and stories, as well as other works, and individually the author of several mystery and fantasy novels.

#2945

Chris Wallace-Crabbe

Chris Wallace-Crabbe

#46578

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Christopher Keith Wallace-Crabbe is an Australian poet and emeritus professor in the Australian Centre, University of Melbourne. Life and career Wallace-Crabbe was born in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond. His father was Kenneth Eyre Inverell Wallace-Crabbe, painter, printmaker, journalist and publisher, pilot in the RAF and ending World War II as Group Captain, and his mother Phyllis Vera May Cox Passmore was a pianist, and his brother Robin Wallace-Crabbe became an artist. He was educated at Scotch College, Yale University and the University of Melbourne, where for much of his life he has worked and is now a professor emeritus in the Australian Centre.

#2946

Daniela Gioseffi

Daniela Gioseffi

#30353

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Daniela Gioseffi is a poet, novelist and performer who won the American Book Award in 1990 for Women on War; International Writings from Antiquity to the Present . She has published 16 books of poetry and prose and won a PEN American Center's Short Fiction prize , and The John Ciardi Award for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry .

#2947

Andy Orchard

#81425

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Andrew Philip McDowell Orchard is a scholar and teacher of Old English, Norse and Celtic literature. He is Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. He was previously Provost of Trinity College, Toronto, from 2007 to 2013. In 2021, claims of sexual harassment and assault by Orchard were publicized, which were alleged at universities where he has worked, including the University of Cambridge and the University of Toronto.

#2948

Valzhyna Mort

#63947

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

Valzhyna Mort is a Belarusian poet who now lives in the United States. Life Her first book of poetry, I'm as Thin as Your Eyelashes, came out in Belarus in 2005. In 2004, she received a Crystal Vilencia Award for best poetry performance in Slovenia. In 2005, she was the recipient of a Gaude Polonia scholarship in Poland, and in 2006, the recipient of a writing fellowship from Literarisches Colloquium Berlin, Germany.

#2949

Dana Olmert

#33969

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Dana Olmert , is an Israeli left wing activist, literary theorist and editor. She is a daughter of Israel's former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Olmert graduated with a PhD in literature from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on "The Growth of Hebrew Poetry by Women During the Twenties: Psychoanalytical and Feminist Perspectives." She teaches literature at Tel Aviv University and lately teaches creative writing workshops. She is the editor of a poetry series and was invited to several juries of literary prizes.

#2950

Colin Manlove

#65903

Overall Influence

1942 - 2020 (78 years)

Colin Nicholas Manlove was a literary critic with a particular interest in fantasy. Modern Fantasy: Five Studies , which considers at length works by Charles Kingsley, George MacDonald, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien and Mervyn Peake, was written at a time when "no serious study of the subject [of fantasy literature] has appeared". In it he posits a definition of fantasy as: A fiction evoking wonder and containing a substantial and irreducible element of supernatural or impossible worlds, beings or objects with which the mortal characters in the story or the readers become on at least partly familiar terms.

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