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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Literature,
#3201
R. S. Gwynn
#85621
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Robert Samuel "Sam" Gwynn is an American poet and anthologist associated with New Formalism. Life Gwynn is married and lives in Beaumont, Texas. He graduated from Davidson College in 1969, where he won the Vereen Bell Award for creative writing twice, played varsity football, and was a member of the school's championship team on the General Electric College Bowl. He did graduate work at Middlebury College's Bread Loaf School of English and later earned an M.A. and an M.F.A. from the University of Arkansas.
Go to Profile#3202
Agata Tuszyńska
#60717
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Agata Tuszynska is a Polish writer, poet and journalist. Biography The daughter of Bogdan Tuszyński, sports reporter and historian, and Halina Przedborska journalist, Agata Tuszynska graduated from the prestigious Academy of Drama and Theatrical Art in Warsaw, majoring in History of Drama. She received her PhD in humanities from the Institute of Arts of the Polish Academy of Sciences. In 1987–1992, she worked as a lecturer at the Institute of Literary Research. In 1996–1998, she lectured at the Center for Journalism in Warsaw, and from 2001, taught courses in reportage and literary history at Warsaw University.
Go to Profile#3203
Seth Clabough
#22513
Overall Influence
Seth Clabough is an American fiction writer and author of the novel All Things Await, which was nominated for the 2017 Library of Virginia Literary Award for Fiction. Clabough's work has been published in anthologies, journals, and magazines ranging from Blackbird: an online journal of literature & the arts and Aesthetica magazine to The Chronicle of Higher Education and New Writing: the International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing. He has literary representation through Inkwell Management in New York and currently works at Randolph–Macon College as an English profess...
Go to Profile#3204
Alafair Burke
#49752
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Alafair S. Burke is an American crime novelist, professor of law, and legal commentator. She is a New York Times bestselling author of twenty crime novels, including The Ex, The Wife, and The Better Sister, and two series—one featuring NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher, and the other, Portland, Oregon, prosecutor Samantha Kincaid. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
Go to Profile#3205
Brigit Pegeen Kelly
#76435
Overall Influence
1951 - 2016 (65 years)
Brigit Pegeen Kelly was an American poet and teacher. Born in Palo Alto, California, Kelly grew up in southern Indiana and lived much of her adult life in central Illinois. An intensely private woman, little is known about her life.
Go to Profile#3206
Renée Ashley
#76939
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Renée Ashley is an American poet, novelist, essayist, and educator. Presently on the faculty of Fairleigh Dickinson University and an editor of The Literary Review, Ashley is the author of five collections of poetry, two chapbooks and a novel. Her work has garnered several honours including the Brittingham Prize in Poetry, Pushcart Prize, as well as fellowships granted by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment of the Arts. Several of her poems have been published in noted literary journals and magazines, including Poetry, American Voice, Bellevue Literary Review, ...
Go to Profile#3208
Carlos Moore
#30023
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Carlos Moore is a writer, social researcher, professor and activist, dedicated to the study of African and Afro-American history and culture. Moore holds two doctorates, in Human sciences and in Ethnology from the Paris Diderot University, and speaks five languages. At various periods he lived in France, Africa, the United States of America, Brazil and the Caribbean
Go to Profile#3209
Taylor Marshall
#12302
Overall Influence
Taylor Reed Marshall is an American Catholic YouTube commentator, former Episcopal Church priest, former academic, and advocate of traditionalist Catholicism. He is the author of multiple books, including the 2019 book Infiltration: The Plot to Destroy the Church from Within.
Go to Profile#3210
Jorge Carrión
#63669
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Jorge Carrión is a Spanish writer, cultural critic, and director of the Master in Literary Creation at the Pompeu Fabra University. His published books include the non-fiction works Bookshops and Barcelona: Book of Passageways , and the novels The Dead , The Orphans , and The Tourists . He writes in the Spanish edition of The New York Times, and he's also a collaborator in international media as the National Geographic magazine, El País, and La Vanguardia.
Go to Profile#3211
Elizabeth Webby
#86523
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Elizabeth Anne Webby was an Australian literary critic, editor and scholar of literature. Emeritus Professor Webby retired from the Chair of Australian Literature at the University of Sydney in 2007. She edited The Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature and was editor of Southerly from 1988 to 1999.
Go to Profile#3212
William A. Gleason
#71137
Overall Influence
William A. Gleason is an American academic. He is the Hughes-Rogers Professor of English and chair of the English department at Princeton University. He is the author of two books.
Go to Profile#3213
John Frederick Nims
#57699
Overall Influence
1913 - 1999 (86 years)
John Frederick Nims was an American poet and academic. Life He graduated from DePaul University, University of Notre Dame with an M.A., and from the University of Chicago with a Ph.D. in 1945. He published reviews of the works by Robert Lowell and W. S. Merwin. He taught English at Harvard University, the University of Florence, the University of Toronto, Williams College, University of Missouri, and the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Go to Profile#3214
Ramón Saldívar
#53880
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Ramón Saldívar is an American author, teacher and researcher of cultural studies and Chicano literature. He is currently a professor at Stanford University, and received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama in 2012.
Go to Profile#3215
Chad Simpson
#41482
Overall Influence
Chad Simpson is a short and flash fiction author from Monmouth, Illinois. He is the winner of the 2012 John Simmons Short Fiction Award, juried by Jim Shepard. His short story collection, "Tell Everyone I Said Hi," was published by the University of Iowa Press in fall 2012.
Go to Profile#3216
Eduardo Chirinos
#67406
Overall Influence
1960 - 2016 (56 years)
Eduardo Alejandro Chirinos Arrieta was a Peruvian professor of literature at the University of Montana, and a poet. He received the Premio Casa de América de Poesía Americana in 2001. Career Eduardo Chirinos was born in Lima, in 1960. He studied Hispanic linguistics, acquiring a bachelor's degree from Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, and a PhD in literature at Rutgers University.
Go to Profile#3217
Akiko Itoyama
#83267
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
is a Japanese novelist. She has won the Akutagawa Prize, the Kawabata Yasunari Prize, and the Tanizaki Prize, and her work has been adapted for film. Biography After graduation from Shinjuku High School and Waseda University, she worked as a saleswoman for a major household equipment company and, as is common in Japanese corporate life, was transferred several times to various localities. Treatment for cyclic psychosis led to her writing.
Go to Profile#3218
Shumona Sinha
#55450
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Shumona Sinha, also spelled Sumana Sinha; , is a naturalised French writer born in Calcutta, West Bengal, India, who lives in France. In her interviews for the French media, Shumona Sinha claims that her homeland is no longer India, nor even France, but the French language.
Go to Profile#3219
David Shaw
#45466
Overall Influence
1943 - 2005 (62 years)
David Shaw was an American journalist. He was best known for his reporting for the Los Angeles Times, where he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1991. He wrote criticism of food, wine, and film, but is perhaps best known for taking a critical eye on the media itself.
Go to Profile#3220
Itamar Moses
#66065
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Itamar Moses is an American playwright, author, and television writer. Biography Moses grew up in a Jewish family in Berkeley, California, earned his bachelor's degree at Yale University, and his Master of Fine Arts degree in dramatic writing from New York University. He has taught playwriting at both Yale and New York University, and he has written for Men of a Certain Age and Boardwalk Empire.
Go to Profile#3221
Cyrus Hoy
#58958
Overall Influence
1926 - 2010 (84 years)
Cyrus Henry Hoy was an American literary scholar of the English Renaissance stage who taught at the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University, and was the John B. Trevor Professor of English at the University of Rochester. He wrote and published on a wide range of topics in English literature, though he is best known for his works on William Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, and other figures in English Renaissance theatre.
Go to Profile#3222
Alan Steinberg
#78369
Overall Influence
Dr. Alan L. Steinberg was an American author. He wrote the libretto for the opera The Falcon and the Sailor Boy, which was composed by Paul Siskind. The opera was performed at SUNY Potsdam in 2006 and starred Steinberg's former rhetoric student Stephanie Blythe.
Go to Profile#3223
Chris Elliott
#50944
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Christopher Nash Elliott is an American actor, comedian, writer, director, and author. He appeared in comedic sketches on Late Night with David Letterman , created and starred in the comedy series Get a Life on Fox, and wrote and starred in the film Cabin Boy . His writing has won four consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards. His other television appearances include recurring roles on Everybody Loves Raymond and How I Met Your Mother , starring as Chris Monsanto in Adult Swim's Eagleheart and starring as Roland Schitt in Schitt's Creek . He also appeared in the film Groundhog Day , There's Somet...
Go to Profile#3224
Colette Inez
#35938
Overall Influence
1931 - 2018 (87 years)
Colette Inez was an American poet and a faculty member at Columbia University’s Undergraduate Writing Program. She published ten poetry collections and won the Guggenheim Fellowship, Rockefeller Fellowship, and two National Endowment for the Arts and two Prizes and many other awards. Her memoir, The Secret of M. Dulong, was released in 2008 by The University of Wisconsin Press.
Go to Profile#3225
Susan Somers-Willett
#69732
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Susan Somers-Willett is an American author and academic working as a professor of literature and creative writing at the University of Texas at Austin. Education Somers-Willett earned an A.B. from Duke University, followed by a Master of Arts in creative writing and PhD in American literature from the University of Texas at Austin.
Go to Profile#3226
Serena Vitale
#99704
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Serena Vitale is an Italian academic, scholar, writer, and translator. She won the 2001 Bagutta Prize. Life In 1958, she moved to Rome with her family. She was married to the poet Giovanni Raboni. In 2003 she married Vladimír Novák. She is a Professor of Russian language and literature; she taught at the Università degli Studi di Napoli "L'Orientale", and the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore from 1971 to 2015.
Go to Profile#3227
Zhang Yueran
#91582
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Zhang Yueran is a Chinese writer. Biography Zhang was born in 1982 in Jinan, Shandong. She is an only child. Her father was a professor of Shandong University, and he was very keen on literature. Zhang is an alumnus of Shandong Experimental High School, Shandong University and National University of Singapore.
Go to Profile#3228
Sara Nović
#90438
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (39 years)
Sara Nović is an American writer, translator, and creative writing professor. Nović is also a deaf rights' activist who has written about the challenges she has faced as a deaf novelist. Nović is most notable for her debut novel, Girl at War, which tells the story of Ana Jurić, a ten-year-old girl whose life is upended by the civil war that resulted in the dissolution of Yugoslavia. The novel was an Alex Awards recipient in 2016. In 2014, Nović was awarded an ALTA Travel Fellowship by the American Literary Translators Association. In addition to publishing her own literary works, Nović has translated poems written by Izet Sarajlić, a renowned Bosnian writer.
Go to Profile#3229
Torsten Pettersson
#70123
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Torsten Pettersson is a Finnish-Swedish author, poet and professor. Born in Turku, Finland, Pettersson lives in Uppsala, Sweden where he works as a professor of literature at Uppsala University. In 1982 he graduated from Åbo Academy with a work about Joseph Conrad. He has also been professor in literature and aesthetics at Helsingfors University and in 1994 he started working as professor in Uppsala full time.
Go to Profile#3230
Aza Takho-Godi
#104806
Overall Influence
1922 - Present (104 years)
Aza Alibekovna Takho-Godi is a Soviet and Russian philologist. Since 1954 she was officially married to philosopher and philologist Aleksei Losev, whom she met in 1944. Takho-Godi graduated from the Philological Faculty of Moscow State Pedagogical University in 1944. She defended her dissertation, titled «Поэтические тропы Гомера и их социальный смысл», at Lomonosov Moscow State University. She lectured at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv from 1948 to 1949, then worked as an associate professor at Moscow Regional Pedagogical Institute from 1949 to 1957. Since 1958 till now she works at Lomonosov Moscow State University.
Go to Profile#3231
Matthea Harvey
#60911
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Matthea Harvey is a contemporary American poet, writer and professor. She has published four collections of poetry. The most recent of these, If the Tabloids Are True What Are You?, a collection of poetry and images, was published in 2014. Prior to this, the collection Modern Life earned her the 2009 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and was a finalist for the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award, and a New York Times Notable Book.
Go to Profile#3232
Marcel Bénabou
#79628
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Marcel Bénabou is a French writer and historian. Biography Emeritus professor of Roman history at the Paris Diderot University, Marcel Bénabou's work focuses on ancient Rome, in particular North Africa during Antiquity and acculturation and romanisation processes at work in these provinces.
Go to Profile#3233
Melissa Pritchard
#67630
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Melissa Pritchard is an American short story writer, novelist, essayist, and journalist. Life Melissa Brown was born on December 12, 1948 in San Mateo, California. She grew up in San Mateo, Burlingame and Menlo Park and attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart High School in Atherton, California. Her parents are Clarence John Brown, Jr., and Helen Lorraine Reilly Brown; she has one sibling, Penny Lee Byrd. She graduated in 1970 from the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a B.A. in Comparative Religions and in 1995, received an M.F.A. from Vermont College. Her first marriage of five...
Go to Profile#3234
Lynn Crosbie
#48471
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Lynn Crosbie is a Canadian poet and novelist. She teaches at the University of Toronto. Life and career Crosbie was born in Montreal, Quebec, and now lives in Toronto, Ontario. She received her PhD in English from the University of Toronto, writing her PhD thesis on the work of the American poet Anne Sexton.
Go to Profile#3235
Ana Luísa Amaral
#93925
Overall Influence
1956 - 2022 (66 years)
Ana Luísa Amaral was a Portuguese poet. Professor at the University of Porto, she held a Ph.D. on the poetry of Emily Dickinson and had academic publications in the areas of English and American poetry, comparative poetics, and feminist studies. She was a senior researcher and co-director of the Institute for Comparative Literature Margarida Losa. Co-author of the Dictionary of Feminist Criticism and responsible for the annotated edition of New Portuguese Letters and the coordinator of the international project New Portuguese Letters 40 Years Later, financed by FCT, that involves 10 countries and over 60 researchers.
Go to Profile#3236
Kazutami Watanabe
#70057
Overall Influence
1932 - 2013 (81 years)
Kazutami Watanabe was a Japanese scholar and translator of French literature. Watanabe, who was born in Tokyo, graduated from the Literature Department, School of French Studies of the University of Tokyo in 1955. After getting his Ph.D at the same university, he became a lecturer at Rikkyo University's General Education Department in 1960, and an assistant professor in 1963. In 1965, he became an assistant professor at the School of French Literature of the same university and in 1970 a full professor. From 1981 to 1983, he was the dean of the Literature Department. After his retirement in 19...
Go to Profile#3237
Brian D'Amato
#42976
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Brian D'Amato is an American author and sculptor. Biography When he was young, his father taught at Wellesley College. During this time, Hillary Clinton , a student at the college, babysat him. D'Amato went to high school at New Trier High School in the suburbs of Chicago.
Go to Profile#3238
Gabrielle Gourdeau
#82470
Overall Influence
1952 - 2006 (54 years)
Gabrielle Gourdeau was a writer in Quebec, Canada. Biography Born in the Limoilou neighbourhood of Quebec City, Gourdeau received a PhD in French literature from the University of Toronto. She lectured in the Department of Literature at Laval University for a number of years.
Go to Profile#3239
Charles Martin
#82550
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Charles Martin is a poet, critic and translator. He grew up in the Bronx. He graduated from Fordham University and received his Ph.D. from the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. He now teaches at Queensborough Community College of the City University of New York, Syracuse University, and the Stonecoast MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine. Martin's specialty is Latin poetry. Martin is also a New Formalist, and was an original faculty member of the West Chester University Poetry Conference.
Go to Profile#3240
Howard Norman
#55345
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Howard A. Norman , is an American writer and educator. Most of his short stories and novels are set in Canada's Maritime Provinces. He has written several translations of Algonquin, Cree, and Inuit folklore. His books have been translated into 12 languages.
Go to Profile#3241
Jeton Kelmendi
#63816
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Jeton Kelmendi is an academic, Albanian journalist, poet, translator, university professor and political analyst. Early career Jeton Kelmendi completed elementary school in his birthplace. Later he continued his studies at the University of Pristina and received the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Mass communication. He completed his graduate studies at the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, specializing in International and Security Studies. He finished his second master's degree in diplomacy. Kelmendi did a PhD in the "Influence of media in EU Political Security Issues". He is professor at AAB University College.
Go to Profile#3242
Assia Djebar
#60878
Overall Influence
1936 - 2015 (79 years)
Fatima-Zohra Imalayen , known by her pen name Assia Djebar , was an Algerian novelist, translator and filmmaker. Most of her works deal with obstacles faced by women, and she is noted for her feminist stance. She is "frequently associated with women's writing movements, her novels are clearly focused on the creation of a genealogy of Algerian women, and her political stance is virulently anti-patriarchal as much as it is anti-colonial." Djebar is considered to be one of North Africa's pre-eminent and most influential writers. She was elected to the Académie française on 16 June 2005, the first writer from the Maghreb to achieve such recognition.
Go to Profile#3243
Elizabeth Farrelly
#27275
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Elizabeth Margaret Farrelly , is a Sydney-based author, architecture critic, essayist, columnist and speaker who was born in New Zealand but later became an Australian citizen. She has contributed to current debates about aesthetics and ethics; design, public art and architecture; urban and natural environments; society and politics, including criticism of the treatment of Julian Assange. Profiles of her have appeared in the New Zealand Architect, Urbis, The Australian Financial Review, the Australian Architectural Review, and Australian Geographic.
Go to Profile#3244
Henk Bodewitz
#74239
Overall Influence
1939 - 2022 (83 years)
Hendrik Wilhelm "Henk" Bodewitz was a Dutch Sanskrit scholar. He was a professor at the Universities of Utrecht and later Leiden between 1976 and 2002. Career Between 1952 and 1958 he attended the gymnasium in Coevorden. He obtained a degree in classical languages at Utrecht University in 1963 and subsequently a further degree in Indo-Iranian studies in 1966.
Go to Profile#3245
Paul Farley
#69846
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Paul Farley, FRSL is a British poet, writer and broadcaster. Life and work Farley was born in Liverpool. He studied painting at the Chelsea School of Art, and has lived in London, Brighton and Cumbria. His first collection of poetry, The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See You won a Forward Poetry Prize in 1998, and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize. The book also gained him the Somerset Maugham Award, and in 1999 he won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. From 2000 to 2002, he was the poet-in-residence at the Wordsworth Trust in Grasmere. His second collection, The Ice A...
Go to Profile#3246
Pi Chun-deuk
#30125
Overall Influence
1910 - 2007 (97 years)
Pi Cheon-deuk was a Korean poet and an English literature scholar, but primarily an essayist. Life Born in Seoul on April 21, 1910, his pen name was Geum-a. He majored in English literature at Hujiang University in Shanghai. He was a professor at Seoul National University from 1946 - 1974 and taught many students. Before liberation he concentrated on poetic composition and English poetry as an instructor at Gyeongseong Central Business Institute, and after liberation he taught the arts at Gyeongseong University and later taught at Seoul National University.
Go to Profile#3247
Chigozie Obioma
#65381
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Chigozie Obioma is a Nigerian writer. He is best known for writing the novels The Fishermen and An Orchestra of Minorities , both of which were shortlisted for the Booker Prize in their respective years of publication. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages.
Go to Profile#3248
Molly Peacock
#73439
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Molly Peacock is an American-Canadian poet, essayist, biographer and speaker, whose multi-genre literary life also includes memoir, short fiction, and a one-woman show. Career Peacock's latest book is Flower Diary: Mary Hiester Reid Paints, Travels, Marries & Opens a Door , a layered memoir and biography that examines the balancing act of female creativity and domesticity in the life of Mary Hiester Reid, a painter who produced over three hundred stunning, emotive floral still lifes and landscapes. Critics noted that the biography is written with the "lingering observations and lyrical touch ...
Go to Profile#3249
Alfred Appel Jr.
#75260
Overall Influence
1934 - 2009 (75 years)
Alfred Appel Jr. was an American professor, author and journal editor noted for his investigations into the works of Vladimir Nabokov, modern art, and jazz modernism. He edited The Annotated Lolita, an edition of Nabokov's Lolita. He also authored four other books about Nabokov, literature and music.
Go to Profile#3250
Karen Lynn Williams
#96842
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Karen Lynn Williams is an American writer of children's literature. She is best known for her books about the difficulties of children in developing countries. Background Williams was born in 1952 in New Haven, Connecticut. She was graduated from the University of Connecticut and Southern Connecticut State University . She was a teacher of the deaf in Connecticut from 1977 to 1980 and a Peace Corps teacher of English in Malawi from 1980 to 1983. From 1990 to 1993 she lived and worked in Deschapelles, Haiti, where her husband, Steven Williams, was a doctor at the Hôpital Albert Schweitzer.
Go to Profile