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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List of the most influential people in Literature,

#3601

David Roderick

#65170

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

David Roderick is an American poet from Plymouth, Massachusetts, who taught for nine years at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Previously, he had lectured at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, as the Kenan Visiting Writer at the University of San Francisco, and at Stanford University, where he also conducted classes for its Education Program for Gifted Youth summer program.

#3602

Barbara Kiefer Lewalski

#86910

Overall Influence

1931 - 2018 (87 years)

Barbara Josephine Lewalski was an American academic, an authority on Renaissance literature particularly known for her work on John Milton. Early life Born in Topeka, Kansas, to John Kiefer, a farmer, and Vivo , an elementary schoolteacher and speech therapist, she received her BSE at Emporia State University in 1950 and her AM in 1951. She went on to earn a PhD at the University of Chicago in 1956.

#3603

Karyna McGlynn

#90809

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Karyna McGlynn is an American poet and editor associated with spoken-word, New Sincerity, and Gurlesque. Biography McGlynn earned a BA from Seattle University, a MFA from the University of Michigan, and a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from University of Houston with a certificate in literary translation.

#3604

Robert E. Hegel

#78184

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Robert E. Hegel is an American sinologist specializing in the fiction of late imperial China. He taught at Washington University in St. Louis, from 1975 until his retirement in the spring of 2018 and was made Liselotte Dieckman Professor of Comparative Literature and Professor of Chinese in 2006.

#3605

Catherine Mavrikakis

Catherine Mavrikakis

#74152

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Catherine Mavrikakis is a Canadian academic and writer living in Quebec. The daughter of a Greek father who grew up in Algeria and a French mother, she was born in Chicago and grew up in Anjou, Montréal-Nord, St. Leonard, in France and in the United States. She settled in Montreal in 1979. From 1993 to 2003, she taught at Concordia University. In 2003, she joined the department of French language literature at the Université de Montréal.

#3606

Lia Purpura

#86753

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Lia Purpura is an American poet, writer and educator. She is the author of four collections of poems , four collections of essays and one collection of translations . Her poems and essays appear in AGNI, The Antioch Review, DoubleTake, FIELD, The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, Orion Magazine, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Parnassus: Poetry in Review, Ploughshares. Southern Review, and many other magazines.

#3607

April Ossmann

#80774

Overall Influence

April Ossmann is an American poet, teacher, and editor. She is author of Event Boundaries and Anxious Music , and has had her poems published in many literary journals including Harvard Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Puerto del Sol, Seneca Review, Passages North, Mid-American Review, and Colorado Review, and in anthologies including From the Fishouse , and Contemporary Poetry of New England . Her awards include a 2000 Prairie Schooner Reader's Choice Award. Her essays have been published in Poets & Writers, and by the Poetry Foundation.

#3608

Aleksandr Garkavets

#87394

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Aleksandr Nikolaevich Garkavets is a Soviet, Ukrainian, and Kazakhstani linguist, philologist, and Turkologist. He is best known for his work on the Kipchak languages, both modern and historical. Much of the focus of his work has been on the Armeno-Kipchak language, Cuman language, Crimean Tatar language, and Urum language.

#3609

Mark Hudson

#42761

Overall Influence

Mark Hudson is a British writer, journalist and art critic. Since 2021 he has been chief art critic of The Independent. He has won multiple awards. Biography Hudson was born on 29 March 1957 in Harrogate, England. He completed his B.A. with honors from Winchester School of Art.

#3610

Arturo Islas

#70397

Overall Influence

1938 - 1991 (53 years)

Arturo Islas, Jr. was an English professor and novelist from El Paso, Texas, whose writing focused on the experience of Chicano cultural duality. He received three degrees from Stanford: a B.A. in 1960, a Masters in 1963 and a Ph.D. in 1971, when he joined the Stanford faculty. Islas was one of the first Chicanos in the United States to earn a Ph.D. in English. In 1976, he became the first Chicano faculty member to receive tenure at Stanford.

#3611

Poopak NikTalab

#24320

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Poopak Niktalab is an Iranian education theorist, author, and literary researcher, especially of children's literature. Life She was born in 1970 in Tehran in a cultural and literary family. She is a member of Niktalab family and one of the daughters of Ahmad Niktalab. After receiving a diploma in mathematics and physics, she was immediately accepted to Al-Zahra University in the field of mathematics. She married Ali Latifiyan in 1999. The result of this marriage is two children named Parniya and Pouya.

#3612

DeWitt Henry

#69706

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

DeWitt Henry is an American author and editor. Born in 1941 in Wayne, Pennsylvania, Henry earned his A.B. from Amherst College in 1963 and his MA and PhD from Harvard University. He is a founding editor of Ploughshares, a literary journal, and served as its editor and director from its inception in 1971 to 1995. Henry taught at Emerson College from 1983 until his retirement in 2014.

#3613

Dan Lungu

#85374

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Dan Lungu is a Romanian novelist, short story writer, poet and dramatist, also known as a literary theorist and sociologist. The recipient of critical acclaim for his short story volume Cheta la flegmă and his novels Raiul găinilor and Sînt o babă comunistă! , he is also one of the most successful authors to have emerged in post-1990 Romanian literature. Lungu's literary universe, which mainly comprises "microsocial" images of life under the communist regime and during the subsequent transitional period, bridges a form of Neorealism with Postmodernism. Often included among a group of autho...

#3614

Hwang Ji-u

#54398

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Hwang Ji-u is a Korean poet and art critic. Life Hwang Ji-u was born in Jeollanam-do in 1952. He studied Aesthetics at Seoul National University and Philosophy at Sogang University. Hwang Ji-u is a native of Haenam at the southernmost tip of the Korean Peninsula. He developed a deep interest in poetry while majoring in aesthetics and philosophy at college and graduate school. While active in literary circles in college, he participated in several anti-government protests and was forcefully drafted into military service. After being discharged from the army, he was expelled from university for his involvement in anti- government activities and was subjected to imprisonment and torture.

#3615

Joan Margarit

#65352

Overall Influence

1938 - 2021 (83 years)

Joan Margarit i Consarnau was a Catalan poet, architect and professor. Most of his work is written in the Catalan language. He won the 2019 Miguel de Cervantes Prize. Life and career Born in Sanaüja to Joan Margarit i Serradell, an architect from Barcelona, and Trinitat Consarnau i Sabaté, a teacher at l'Ametlla de Mar , he grew up at the time of the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War. His family moved to various locations in Catalonia. In 1954, they settled in the Canary Islands, but in 1956 Margarit returned to Barcelona to complete his architecture studies, lodging at the University hall of residence the Col·legi Major Sant Jordi.

#3616

John Wood

#62887

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

John Wood was an American poet, historian of photography, scholar and critic. Wood is Professor Emeritus of English literature and photographic history at McNeese State University, where he founded and directed its MFA in creative writing for more than twenty-five years.

#3617

Santanu Das

#75671

Overall Influence

Santanu Das is an Indian born academic and author, best known for his work on the literature of the First World War. Since 2019, he has been Professor of Modern Literature and Culture at Oxford University and a Senior Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.

#3618

Peter McDonald

#85236

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Peter McDonald is a poet, university lecturer, and writer of literary criticism. He holds the post of Christopher Tower Student and Tutor in Poetry in the English Language at Christ Church, a college of the University of Oxford .

#3619

Norberto James Rawlings

Norberto James Rawlings

#76580

Overall Influence

1945 - 2021 (76 years)

Norberto James Rawlings was a poet of Afro-Caribbean descent from the Dominican Republic’s 60s Generation. In his early days, his poetry dealt with intimacy of everyday life in his country’s multicultural society.

#3620

Michael Simms

#33972

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Michael Simms is an American poet, novelist and literary publisher. His satiric novel Bicycles of the Gods: A Divine Comedy and his YA fantasy novel The Green Mage were published by Madville Publishing, and his most recent poetry collections are American Ash , Nightjar and Strange Meadowlark published by Ragged Sky Press. His poems and essays have been published in journals and magazines including Scientific American, Poetry Magazine, Black Warrior Review, Mid-American Review, Pittsburgh Quarterly, Southwest Review, Plume and West Branch. His poems have also appeared in Poem-a-Day publishe...

#3621

Jeon Sungtae

#106850

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Jeon Sungtae is a South Korean writer. South Korea’s 1980s was a time when university students were on the frontlines of political activism, which later contributed to the growth of various civil movements. To categorize the political lines of liberal university students of the 1980s, There was the PD , which focused on labor movements based on Marxist ideologies, and the NL , which thought the most important thing was reunification based on their studies of North Korea’s Juche ideology. Jeon Sungtae is a writer who thinks that the contradiction of South Korean society arises from the special nature of being a divided nation.

#3622

Pip Adam

#82008

Overall Influence

Pip Adam is a novelist, short story writer, and reviewer from New Zealand. Background Adam was born in Christchurch, New Zealand. She attended the New Zealand Film and Television School in Christchurch before moving to Dunedin. Adam has an MA in Library and Information Studies and an MA in creative writing from Victoria University of Wellington. In 2012 she completed her PhD, also from Victoria University, supervised by Damien Wilkins.

#3623

Henri Verneuil

#33559

Overall Influence

1920 - 2002 (82 years)

Henri Verneuil was a French-Armenian playwright and filmmaker, who made a successful career in France. He was nominated for Oscar and Palme d'Or awards, and won Locarno International Film Festival, Edgar Allan Poe Awards, French Legion of Honor, Golden Globe Award, French National Academy of Cinema and Honorary Cesar awards.

#3624

Andrea Hairston

#82165

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Andrea Hairston is an African-American science fiction and fantasy playwright and novelist. Her novel Redwood and Wildfire won the James Tiptree, Jr. Award for 2011. Mindscape, Hairston's first novel, won the Carl Brandon Parallax Award and was short-listed for the Philip K. Dick Award and the James Tiptree, Jr. Award. Hairston was one of the Guests of Honor at the science fiction convention Wiscon in May 2012.

#3625

William Whitehead

#61051

Overall Influence

1931 - 2018 (87 years)

William Frederick Whitehead was a Canadian writer, actor and filmmaker. Whitehead is best known as a writer of radio and television documentaries and as the former partner of the late Canadian writer Timothy Findley.

#3626

Bill Russell

#55402

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Bill Russell is an American librettist and lyricist. Among his stage musicals are Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens and Side Show, which was nominated for the Tony Award as Best Musical. Career Russell's first musical to be produced is Fortune, which ran Off-Broadway at the Actors' Plahouse from April 27, 1980 to November 23, 1980. Ronald Melrose wrote the music, with Russell writing the book and lyrics. The musical director and arranger was Janet Hood; they have gone on to write several musicals together. The musical concerned four performers who were headed to be stars. According ...

#3627

Gesine Manuwald

#90772

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Gesine Manuwald is currently a Professor of Latin and Head of the Department of Greek and Latin at University College London. She focuses on Roman drama, epic and oratory and the reception of Roman literature, especially Neo-Latin poetry.

#3628

Heinz Klingenberg

#103083

Overall Influence

1934 - 2018 (84 years)

Heinz Klingenberg is a German philologist who specializes in Old Norse studies. Biography Heinz Klingenberg was born in Nauen, Germany on 9 October 1934. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Freiburg in 1959, where he completed his habilitation in 1970. He was appointed an associate professor there in 1973. From 1979 until his retirement in 2000, Klingenberg was Professor of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Freiburg.

#3629

Ovidiu Papadima

Ovidiu Papadima

#70451

Overall Influence

1909 - 1996 (87 years)

Ovidiu Papadima was a Romanian literary critic, folklorist, and essayist. He studied at the Alexandru Papiu Ilarian High School in Târgu Mureș, graduating at the top of his class in 1928. He then enrolled in the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy at the University of Bucharest, graduating in 1931.

#3630

Celîlê Celîl

#79378

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Celîlê Celîl is a Kurdish historian, writer and Kurdologist. He was born in Yerevan to a Yazidi Kurdish family and studied history at the university of Yerevan and Oriental Academy of Leningrad. He wrote his thesis regarding the Kurdish rebellions in the 19th century. He received his PhD in 1963, and worked in the Academy of Sciences from 1963 to 1993. He along with his brother Ordîxanê Celîl, collected Yazidi religious poetry and Kurdish legends and tales. After the collapse of Soviet Union, he moved to Austria, and taught at the University of Vienna, where he taught Kurdish. He is now worki...

#3631

Dustin Lance Black

Dustin Lance Black

#38734

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Dustin Lance Black is an American screenwriter, director, producer, and LGBT rights activist. He is known for writing the film Milk, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2009. He has also subsequently written the screenplays for the film J. Edgar and the 2022 crime miniseries Under the Banner of Heaven.

#3632

Oliver Lyne

#84920

Overall Influence

1944 - 2005 (61 years)

Richard Oliver Allen Marcus Lyne , also known as R.O.A.M. Lyne, was a British academic and classicist specialising in Latin poetry. He was a tutor in classics at Balliol College and Professor of Classical Languages and Literature at the University of Oxford.

#3633

Seo-Young Chu

#98674

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Seo-Young Chu is a queer Korean American scholar, feminist, poet, #MeToo activist, and associate professor of English at Queens College, CUNY. She is the author of A Refuge for Jae-in Doe and Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sleep? A Science-Fictional Theory of Representation.

#3634

Donald Antrim

#56134

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Donald Antrim is an American novelist. His first novel, Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World, was published in 1993. In 1999, The New Yorker named him as among the 20 best writers under the age of 40. In 2013, he was named a MacArthur Fellow.

#3635

Merrill Joan Gerber

#90574

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Merrill Joan Gerber is an American writer. She is an O. Henry Award winner. Biography Gerber was born in Brooklyn, New York, March 15, 1938. She received a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Florida in 1959, and a Masters in English from Brandeis University.

#3636

Donald Revell

#36917

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Donald Revell is an American poet, essayist, translator and professor. Revell has won numerous honors and awards for his work, beginning with his first book, From the Abandoned Cities, which was a National Poetry Series winner. More recently, he won the 2004 Lenore Marshall Award and is a two-time winner of the PEN Center USA Award in poetry. He has also received the Gertrude Stein Award, two Shestack Prizes, two Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as from the Ingram Merrill and Guggenheim Foundations. His most recent book is Drought-Adapted Vine .

#3637

Jena Osman

#37206

Overall Influence

Jena Osman is an American poet and editor, who graduated from Brown University, and the State University of New York at Buffalo, with a Ph.D. She teaches at Temple University. Biography Osman's work has appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Conjunctions, Hambone, Verse, and XCP: Cross-Cultural Poetics.

#3638

Matthew Shenoda

#31967

Overall Influence

Matthew Shenoda is an Egyptian-American poet, writer, and professor based in the United States. Born July 14, 1977 in California to Coptic parents who immigrated from Egypt, Matthew Shenoda is a writer and educator whose poems and writings have appeared in a variety of newspapers, journals, radio programs and anthologies. His work has been supported by the California Arts Council and the Lannan Foundation among others.

#3639

Robert O'Connor

#60367

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Robert O'Connor is an American novelist and professor. His satiric novel Buffalo Soldiers was adapted into the 2001 movie of the same name. Personal life O'Connor received a B.A. in English/Writing Arts from the State University of New York at Oswego, and an M.A. in English from Syracuse University. As of 2005, he teaches Intermediate Fiction, Advanced Fiction and Intermediate Screenwriting at SUNY Oswego.

#3640

Nnedi Okorafor

#77938

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Nnedimma Nkemdili "Nnedi" Okorafor is a Nigerian American writer of science fiction and fantasy for both children and adults. She is best known for her Binti Series and her novels Who Fears Death, Zahrah the Windseeker, Akata Witch, Akata Warrior, Lagoon and Remote Control. She has also written for comics and film.

#3641

Lamberto Pignotti

#81584

Overall Influence

1926 - Present (100 years)

Lamberto Pignotti is an Italian poet, writer and visual artist. Biography In the early 1960s, he was one of the first artists who worked creating intersections between poetry, word and mass media, fixing theoretical basis and assembling traditions of avant-garde and Pop Art. Lamberto Pignotti, together with Eugenio Miccini, are considered to be one of the initiators of Italian visual poetry. He collaborated with national and international journals, with television programs of Rai. He was professor in the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Florence and in DAMS of Bologna, where he hold courses on avant-garde, mass-media, and new media.

#3642

Carter Revard

#55735

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (95 years)

Carter Curtis Revard was an American poet, scholar, and writer. He was of European American and self-identified Osage descent, and grew up on the tribal reservation in Oklahoma. He had his early education in a one-room schoolhouse, before winning a Quiz Bowl scholarship for college, subsequently attending University of Tulsa for his BA.

#3643

Sandra Benitez

#99987

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Sandra Benitez is an American novelist. Life Sandra Benitez was born in Washington, D.C., and spent ten years of her childhood in El Salvador while her father was based there as a diplomat. She attended high school in Missouri from age 14 and subsequently graduated with a B.S. and M.A. from Northeast Missouri State University.

#3644

B. H. Fairchild

#62842

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

B.H. Fairchild is an American poet and former college professor. His most recent book is An Ordinary Life , and his poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Southern Review, Poetry, TriQuarterly, The Hudson Review, Salmagundi, The Sewanee Review. His third poetry collection, The Art of the Lathe, winner of the 1997 Beatrice Hawley Award , brought Fairchild's work to national prominence, garnering him a large number of awards and fellowships including the William Carlos Williams Award, Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, California Book Aw...

#3645

Mohamud Siad Togane

#67080

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Mohamud Siad Togane is a Somali-Canadian poet and peace activist. Biography Born in Somalia, Togane was educated in Mennonite schools in Mahaddei and Jowhar in his home country. He subsequently moved to the United States, where he attended Hartnell Junior College. He graduated from Eastern Mennonite College with a BA in English literature in 1969,He returned to Somalia and taught at the Lafole College of Education from 1970 to 1973. Like many other intellectuals, he left Somalia to escape Mohammed Siad Barre's military regime. He settled in Canada in 1973 and acquired Canadian citizenship in 1978.

#3646

Vitaly Korotich

Vitaly Korotich

#16408

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Vitaly Korotich is a Soviet, Ukrainian and Russian writer and journalist. Born in 1936 in Kyiv, he graduated from the Kyiv Medical University in 1959 and worked as a doctor between 1959 and 1966. Later, he became a full-time writer, and served as an officer of the Union of Soviet Writers.

#3647

Thomas Bradshaw

#62937

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Thomas Bradshaw is an American playwright whose work has been extensively reviewed. He is the recipient of PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award as the Emerging American Playwright and of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award .

#3648

Brian Cathcart

#55263

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Brian Cathcart is an Irish-born journalist, academic and media campaigner based in the United Kingdom. He is professor of journalism at Kingston University London and in 2011 was a founder of Hacked Off, which campaigns for a free and accountable press. His books include Were You Still Up for Portillo? , The Case of Stephen Lawrence , The Fly in the Cathedral and The News From Waterloo .

#3649

Philip F. Gura

#63320

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Philip F. Gura is an intellectual and cultural historian. He currently serves as William S. Newman Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he holds appointments in the Departments of English and Comparative Literature, Religious Studies, and American Studies.

#3650

Peter Makuck

#45164

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Peter Makuck is an American poet, short story writer, and critic. He is distinguished professor emeritus of English at East Carolina University, where he was also the first distinguished professor of arts and sciences; he has also served as visiting writer in residence at Brigham Young University, visiting distinguished professor at North Carolina State University, and visiting distinguished writer-in-residence at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington. In 1993 Makuck received the Charity Randall Citation from the International Poetry Forum. Poems, stories, and reviews by Makuck have be...

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