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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School

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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Literature,

#3301

Atukwei Okai

#48450

Overall Influence

1941 - 2018 (77 years)

Atukwei John Okai was a Ghanaian poet, cultural activist and academic. He was Secretary-General of the Pan African Writers' Association, and a president of the Ghana Association of Writers. His early work was published under the name John Okai. With his poems rooted in the oral tradition, he is generally acknowledged to have been the first real performance poet to emerge from Africa, and his work has been called "also politically radical and socially conscious, one of his great concerns being Pan-Africanism". His performances on radio and television worldwide include an acclaimed 1975 appeara...

#3302

Chris Morris

#47038

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Christopher J. Morris is an English comedian, radio presenter, actor, and filmmaker. Known for his deadpan, dark humour, surrealism, and controversial subject matter, he has been praised by the British Film Institute for his "uncompromising, moralistic drive".

#3303

Richard Murphy

#51830

Overall Influence

1927 - 2018 (91 years)

Richard Kerr Murphy was an Anglo-Irish poet. Biography Early years Murphy was born to an Anglo-Irish family at Milford House, near the County Mayo–Galway border, in 1927. He spent much of his early childhood in Ceylon where his father William Lindsay Murphy served in the Colonial Service and was active as mayor of Colombo, later becoming Governor General of the Bahamas . Murphy received his education at the King's School, Canterbury and Wellington College. He won a scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford at the age of 17, where he studied English under C.S. Lewis. He was later educated at the Sorbonne, and ran a school in Crete between 1953 and 1954.

#3304

Lise Gauvin

#55025

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Lise Gauvin is a Canadian writer and literary critic from Quebec. Biography She was born in Quebec City and pursued literary studies at Université Laval and the University of Vienna. She went on to earn a doctorate from the Paris-Sorbonne University in 1967. In 1969, she began teaching in the French studies department at the Université de Montréal; in 1998, she became department director. She was director for the review from 1994 to 2000. She also contributed to various publications including Le Devoir.

#3305

Annamarie Jagose

Annamarie Jagose

#53378

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Annamarie Jagose is an LGBT academic and writer of fictional works. Life and career Jagose was born in Ashburton, New Zealand in 1965. She gained her PhD in 1992, and worked in the Department of English with Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne before returning to New Zealand in 2003, where she was a Professor in the Department of Film, Television and Media Studies at the University of Auckland and Head of the Department from 2008 to 2010.

#3306

Richard Tillinghast

#81421

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Richard Tillinghast is a poet and author. Life Richard Tillinghast is a native of Memphis, Tennessee, a graduate of Sewanee and Harvard . He has taught at Harvard as a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer, at the University of California at Berkeley, in the college program at San Quentin Prison, at Sewanee, The Poets' House in Ireland, The University of Michigan, and the low-residency MFA program at Converse College.

#3307

Kim Echlin

#74701

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Kim Echlin is a Canadian novelist, translator, editor and teacher. She has a PhD in English literature for a thesis about the translation of the Ojibway Nanabush myths. Echlin has worked for CBC Television and several universities. She currently works as a creative writing instructor at the University of Toronto School for Continuing Studies. Her 2009 novel, The Disappeared, featured on the shortlist for the 2009 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

#3308

Sarah Polley

#51809

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (47 years)

Sarah Ellen Polley is a Canadian filmmaker, writer, political activist and retired actress. She first garnered attention as a child actress for her role as Ramona Quimby in the television series Ramona, based on Beverly Cleary's books. This subsequently led to her role as Sara Stanley in the Canadian television series Road to Avonlea . She has starred in many feature films, including The Adventures of Baron Munchausen , Exotica , The Sweet Hereafter , Guinevere , Go , The Weight of Water , No Such Thing , My Life Without Me , Dawn of the Dead , Splice , and Mr. Nobody .

#3309

Andrew Ervin

#87535

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Andrew Ervin is an American writer whose debut 2010 novella collection Extraordinary Renditions was selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the Best Books of 2010. His 2015 debut novel Burning Down George Orwell’s House was listed as an Editor's Choice in the New York Times Book Review. He currently lives in Philadelphia.

#3310

Brooks Haxton

#81596

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Brooks Haxton is an American poet and translator. His publications include nine books of original poems and four books of translations from the German, the French, and ancient Greek. In 2014 he published Fading Hearts on the River, a book of nonfiction about his son's professional poker career.

#3311

Liang Xiaosheng

#64430

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Liang Xiaosheng is a Chinese novelist and screenwriter. Liang is a member of China Writers Association. He is also a professor at Beijing Language and Culture University. His novels have been translated into English, French, Japanese, Russian, and Italian.

#3312

Tom Wayman

#81393

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Thomas Ethan Wayman is a Canadian author. Born in Hawkesbury, Ontario, Wayman has lived most of his life in British Columbia. He studied at the University of British Columbia , and the University of California, Irvine , and has been employed at a number of blue-collar and white-collar jobs in Canada and the U.S., although mainly he taught at the postsecondary level. Much of his academic career was spent in the B.C. community college system. As well, he is a co-founder of two alternative B.C. post-secondary creative writing schools: the Vancouver centre of the Kootenay School of Writing and the writing department of Nelson, B.C.'s Kootenay School of the Arts .

#3313

Rick DeMarinis

#68241

Overall Influence

1934 - 2019 (85 years)

Rick DeMarinis was an American novelist and short story writer. Life DeMarinis was born in New York City to "Big Al" DeMarinis, an Italian gangster, and Ruth Siik, a Finnish dancer. After their divorce, he was sent briefly to a Catholic boarding school before his mother took him to live with her relatives in Michigan. He led an itinerant childhood with his mother, living in Michigan, Texas, New York, and California twice while his mother pursued work opportunities. After high school he joined the Air Force in hopes of seeing the world, but was instead stationed in Havre, Montana.

#3314

Jozef IJsewijn

#33304

Overall Influence

1932 - 1998 (66 years)

Jozef A. M. K. IJsewijn was a Belgian Latinist. He studied classical philology at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, where he became a professor in 1967. An authority on Neo-Latin literature , IJsewijn has been called "the founding father of modern neo-Latin studies". In 1980, he was awarded the Francqui Prize on Human Sciences. A collection of essays in his memory was published in 2000.

#3315

Allan Havis

#66051

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Allan Havis is an American playwright whose dramas have pronounced political themes and probe colliding cultures. His works range from minimal-language texts to ambiguous, ironic narratives that delineate the genesis, paradoxes, and seduction of evil. Several of his stories involve Jewish identity, cultural alienation, and universal problems of racism. He has been influenced by August Strindberg and Harold Pinter.

#3316

Tamás Aczél

#28354

Overall Influence

1921 - 1994 (73 years)

Tamás Aczél was a Kossuth Prize-winning Hungarian poet, writer, journalist and university professor. Career Aczél was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1921. He graduated in his hometown in 1939, subsequently he went to Italy to study commerce and catering . After returned to Hungary, Aczél enrolled at the Pázmány Péter Catholic University and earned academic degree from Hungarian and English.

#3317

S. Georgia Nugent

#72051

Overall Influence

Susan Georgia Nugent is the president of Illinois Wesleyan University. She was president of Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio from 2003 to 2013, and interim president of the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio for the 2015-16 academic year. She was succeeded at Kenyon by Sean M. Decatur, former dean of Arts and Sciences at Oberlin College, and at Wooster by Sarah Bolton, former dean of Williams College. In November of 2019, Nugent became the first woman to serve as President of Illinois Wesleyan University.

#3318

Janisse Ray

#43349

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Janisse Ray is an American writer, naturalist, and environmental activist. Early life and education Ray was born in a small town, Baxley, Georgia, the county seat of Appling County, in the southeast region of the state. She is the daughter of loving parents, Franklin D. and Lee Ada Branch Ray. She grew up with one sister, Kay, and two brothers, Steve and Dell. Ray’s family was deeply rooted in the area where she grew up, going back at least six generations. Ray’s ancestors were listed in the first census in Appling county in 1820 and the town of Baxley was named for an ancestor as well. From ...

#3319

David Karp

#68390

Overall Influence

1922 - 1999 (77 years)

David Karp was an American novelist and television writer. He also used the pseudonyms Wallace Ware and Adam Singer. Life and career Born in Manhattan, Karp worked for his living from an early age. His employment included selling shirts from an outdoor stand, theatre-ushering, leading a recreation group, and dish-washing. In 1942, he enlisted in the United States Army and served in the Signal Corps in the Philippines and in Japan.

#3320

Amina Gautier

#64581

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Amina Gautier is an American writer and academic. She is the author of three short story collections, many individual stories, as well as works of literary criticism. Early life and education Gautier was born and raised in New York. After participating in Prep for Prep, she attended the Nightingale Bamford School before graduating from Northfield Mount Hermon. She then went to Stanford, where she earned bachelor's and master's degrees in English literature. She continued her education at the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned a master's degree and a Ph.D. in English literature.

#3321

Thomas Beller

#70604

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Thomas Beller is an American author and editor. Early life Born and raised in New York City, Beller has remained a resident of his native city, which often features in his stories. He is the son of documentary filmmaker Hava Kohav Beller. After attending Saint Ann's School in Brooklyn, New York, he received his BA from Vassar College, and his MFA from Columbia University Writing Program.

#3322

David Kirby

#44670

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

David Kirby is an American poet and the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University . Biography Early life Kirby was raised in "the rural south" by a polyglot "medievalist college professor" father with an obsessive passion for the works of Chaucer and a "farm-girl" mother turned elementary school teacher who "taught him how to shoot her single-shot .22 and paid him ten cents for every cottonmouth moccasin he knocked off" in aid of protecting the horses and sheep on their family's 10-acre property in Louisiana.

#3323

Grace Schulman

#68131

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Grace Schulman is an American poet. She received the 2016 Frost Medal for Distinguished Lifetime Achievement in American Poetry, awarded by the Poetry Society of America. In 2019, she was inducted as member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

#3324

Stephen Scobie

#93939

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Stephen Scobie is a Canadian poet, critic, and scholar. Born in Carnoustie, Scotland, Scobie relocated to Canada in 1965. He earned a PhD from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver after which he taught at the University of Alberta and at the University of Victoria, from which he recently retired.

#3325

Irène Heidelberger-Leonard

#76213

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Irène Heidelberger-Leonard is an Honorary Professorial Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London. She was Professor of German Literature at the Université Libre de Bruxelles , where she taught for nearly 30 years, before she moved to London in 2009. She was married to Dick Leonard, the British writer and journalist, and is the mother of Mark Leonard, an expert on foreign policy, and Miriam Leonard, a classical scholar.

#3326

Max Wehrli

#57642

Overall Influence

1909 - 1998 (89 years)

Max Wehrli was a Swiss literary scholar and Germanist. Wehrli studied from 1928 till 1935 Germanic and Greek at the Universities of Zurich and Berlin. Among his teachers were Emil Ermatinger, Ernst Howald and Nicolai Hartmann. 1936 he wrote his Ph.D. thesis at the University of Zurich.

#3327

Joan Anim-Addo

#67650

Overall Influence

Joan Anim-Addo is a Grenadian-born academic, poet, playwright and publisher, who is Emeritus Professor of Caribbean Literature and Culture in the English and Creative Writing Department at Goldsmiths, University of London.

#3328

Ed Madden

#64194

Overall Influence

Ed Madden is an American poet, activist, and Director of Women's and Gender Studies at the University of South Carolina in the USA. He grew up in Newport, Arkansas, got his B.A. from nearby Harding University, and received his Ph.D. in literature from the University of Texas, Austin.

#3329

Walter Havighurst

Walter Havighurst

#56848

Overall Influence

1901 - 1994 (93 years)

Walter Edwin Havighurst was a critic, novelist, and literary and social historian of the Midwest. He was a professor of English at Miami University. History The son of Lawrence College professors Freeman Alfred Havighurst and Winifred Weter, Havighurst was born in Appleton, Wisconsin and grew up in the Fox River Valley. Havighurst attended Ohio Wesleyan University, where he earned a bachelor of arts degree, and the University of Denver . He attended King's College London from 1925 to 1926, obtained a bachelor of sacred theology from Boston University in 1928 and a master's degree from Columbia University in 1928.

#3330

Timo Maran

#55080

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Timo Maran is an Estonian biosemiotician and poet. He is the head Department of Semiotics, University of Tartu. Membership in organizations:Estonian Naturalists' Society Estonian Semiotics Association Estonian Literary SocietyEstonian Writers' UnionEuropean Association for the Study of Literature, Culture and Environment International Society for Biosemiotic Studies Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies

#3331

Raymond Kennedy

#68344

Overall Influence

1934 - 2008 (74 years)

Raymond Kennedy was an American novelist. Background Raymond Kennedy was born in Wilbraham, Massachusetts to James Patrick Kennedy and Orise Belanger and was the youngest of three brothers. Kennedy spent his formative years in Belchertown and Holyoke. He would later set many of his books in the region.

#3332

Nazik Saba Yared

#77673

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (98 years)

Nazik Saba Yared is a Lebanese novelist and academic, a former professor, and a writer. She is the daughter of Alexander and Hala Saba. She was married to the late Ibrahim Yared and has three children and four grandchildren.

#3333

Resil B. Mojares

#80515

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Resil Buagas Mojares is a Filipino historian and critic of Philippine literature best known as for his books on Philippine history. He is acclaimed by various writers and critics as the Visayan Titan of Letters, due to his immense contribution to Visayan literature. He was recognized in 2018 as a National Artist of the Philippines for Literature - a conferment which represents the Philippine state's highest recognition for artists.

#3334

Peter Grandbois

#64404

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Peter Grandbois is an American writer, editor, academic, and fencing coach. Biography Peter Grandbois received a B.A. from the University of Colorado—Boulder , an MA from the University of Colorado—Boulder , an MFA from Bennington College , and a PhD from the University of Denver . He was an assistant professor at Sacramento State University for four years before taking a position at Denison University in 2010 where he is currently a professor of creative writing and contemporary literature. He is the Poetry Editor for magazine.

#3335

Celil Oker

#69436

Overall Influence

1952 - 2019 (67 years)

Celil Oker was a Turkish crime fiction writer. Biography After studying at Talas Amerikan Junior School, he graduated from Tarsus American High School. Subsequently, he moved to Istanbul and studied at Boğaziçi University. After graduating from the English Language and Literature department in 1971, he worked as a translator, journalist and encyclopedia writer. He transferred to advertising as a copywriter in various prominent agencies. After more than a decade as a partner in an agency he co-founded, he quit the industry in 1999. Subsequently he worked as a full-time lecturer in the Communication Faculty of Istanbul Bilgi University.

#3336

Mark Kamrath

#56353

Overall Influence

Mark L. Kamrath is a professor of early American literature and culture at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida. He specializes in eighteenth-century American literature and culture, especially periodical literature. In particular, he is known for his work on Charles Brockden Brown, America’s first professional author .

#3337

Nuala Archer

#49821

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Nuala Archer is an American poet of Irish descent, author of five books, most recently, Inch Aeons . Her first book, Whale on the Line, won the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award in 1980. She has published poems in literary journals and magazines including The American Poetry Review, Mid-American Review and Seneca Review. Until 2011, she was an associate professor in the English Department at Cleveland State University. During the 1990s, she briefly served as the director of Cleveland State University Poetry Center. She has taught literature and edited the Midland Review at Oklahoma State University.

#3338

Mark Williams

#74330

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Clifton Mark Williams is a New Zealand poet, writer, academic, critic, editor of contemporary New Zealand literature. He holds a MA from the University of Auckland and a Ph.D from the University of British Columbia. He is emeritus Professor of English at Victoria University of Wellington.

#3339

Jaume Cabré

#76846

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Jaume Cabré i Fabré is a Catalan philologist, novelist and screenwriter. He was one of the founders of the Catalan literary collective, Ofèlia Dracs. He was born in Terrassa. He graduated in Catalan Philology from the University of Barcelona, is a high-school teacher on leave of absence, professor at the University of Lleida, and a member of the Philological Section of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans.

#3340

Wolfgang Haubrichs

#75133

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Wolfgang Haubrichs is a German philologist and medievalist who specializes in the study of Old High German literature. Biography Wolfgang Haubrichs was born in Saarbrücken, Germany on 22 December 1942. He is the son of lawyer Willi Haubrichs and Erika Schaap.

#3341

Jabbour Douaihy

#70509

Overall Influence

1949 - 2021 (72 years)

Jabbour Douaihy was a critically-acclaimed Lebanese writer, translator, and professor of literature. His novels were nominated four times for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, and he has also published translations, short story collections, and children's books. His work, mostly originally in Arabic, has been translated several languages, including English and French.

#3342

Richard House

#71506

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Richard House is an author, film maker, and artist. He was born in Cyprus. His first novel, Bruiser, was short-listed for the Ferro-Grumley Gay Fiction Award in 1998. His latest novel, The Kills, was longlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize.

#3343

Christopher Cokinos

#59703

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Christopher Cokinos is an American poet and writer of nonfiction on nature and the environment. Born in 1963 in Indianapolis, Indiana, he studied at Indiana University at Bloomington and at Washington University in St. Louis . He taught at Kansas State University from 1991 to 2002. He also served as president of the Kansas Audubon Council from 1996 to 1998. In May 2011 he left Utah State University, where he taught for nine years and founded and edited Isotope: A Journal of Literary Nature and Science Writing. He is now an associate professor in the MFA program at the University of Arizona a...

#3344

Kim Kwang-kyu

#99325

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Kim Kwang-kyu is a South Korean poet and translator. Life Kim was born in Seoul and studied German language and literature at Seoul National University. Early in his university career, he participated in the demonstrations of the April Revolution that was repressed by a massacre on April 19, 1960, leading to the fall of President Syngman Rhee. He later studied for two years in Munich 1972-4. He discovered a talent for writing during his middle and high school years when his works were published in school magazines and even won a national prize. However, he did not begin writing poetry until his return from Germany in his mid-thirties.

#3345

Aka Morchiladze

Aka Morchiladze

#58399

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Aka Morchiladze is the pen name of Giorgi Akhvlediani , a Georgian writer and literary historian who authored some of the best-selling prose of post-Soviet Georgian literary fiction. Morchiladze's work shows reorientation of the early 21st-century Georgian literature towards the Western influences.

#3346

Ania Walwicz

#83382

Overall Influence

1951 - 2020 (69 years)

Ania Walwicz was an Australian poet, playwright, prose writer and visual artist. Early life Walwicz was born in Swidnica, Poland where she spent her childhood, before migrating to Australia in 1963. She attended the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne.

#3347

David Rabe

#46878

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

David William Rabe is an American playwright and screenwriter. He won the Tony Award for Best Play in 1972 and also received Tony Award nominations for Best Play in 1974 , 1977 and 1985 . Early life Rabe was born on March 10, 1940, in Dubuque, Iowa, of German and Irish descent, the son of Ruth , a department store worker, and William Rabe, a teacher and meat packer. He was raised in a devout Catholic family.

#3348

Gary Braver

#56867

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Gary Goshgarian, better known by his pen name Gary Braver, is the author of nine thrillers and mysteries. Goshgarian is an assistant professor of English at Northeastern University in Boston. He has taught fiction-writing workshops throughout the United States and Europe. He is the author of five college writing textbooks with Pearson Education.

#3349

Helen Ivory

#82080

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Helen Ivory is an English poet, artist, tutor, and editor. Career Ivory is a poet and visual artist. Her fifth Bloodaxe Books collection is The Anatomical Venus , which centres on women and otherness. She has co-edited with George Szirtes In Their Own Words: Contemporary Poets on their Poetry Salt 2012. She edits the webzine Ink Sweat and Tears and teaches online for UEA/ National Centre for Writing online creative writing. In 2020 she became a Versopolis poet and has work translated into Ukrainian, Polish, Spanish, Croatian and Greek.

#3350

Alain Borer

#83186

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Alain Borer , is a French poet, art critic, essayist, novelist, playwright, writer-traveler, signatory of the Littérature-monde manifesto, and eminent authority on the works of Arthur Rimbaud. He has been Professor of Art at L'École supérieure des beaux-arts de Tours since 1979 and Visiting Professor of French Literature at the University of Southern California since 2005. He received the Kessel Prize for his novel Koba , as well as the 70th Prix Apollinaire for his play Icare & I don't . In 2010, Borer was awarded the 10th Pierre Mac Orlan Prize for Le Ciel & la carte, carnet de voyage dans ...

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