The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people in Literature,
#3851
Ron Smith
#62636
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Ron Smith is an American poet and the first writer-in-residence at St. Christopher's School in Richmond, Virginia. He is the author of Running Again in Hollywood Cemetery, Moon Road, Its Ghostly Workshop, and The Humility of the Brutes. In 2005, he was selected, along with Elizabeth Seydel Morgan, as an inaugural winner of the Carole Weinstein Poetry Prize, "which is awarded each year to a poet with strong connections to the Commonwealth of Virginia." He serves as a curator for the prize along with Morgan, David Wojahn, and Don Selby.
Go to Profile#3852
Laurie Ann Guerrero
#33405
Overall Influence
Laurie Ann Guerrero is a Chicana poet from San Antonio, Texas. She was the poet laureate of San Antonio from 2014 to 2016 and the Poet Laureate of Texas from 2016 to 2017. In the fall semester of 2017, she became the first writer-in-residence at Texas A&M University San Antonio and a "fully immersed faculty member. She will teach a contemporary American woman poets course, host numerous University writing workshops and mentor students while working on her next writing project."
Go to Profile#3853
Walter Harding
#64635
Overall Influence
1917 - 1996 (79 years)
Walter Harding was a distinguished professor of English at the State University of New York at Geneseo and internationally recognized scholar of the life and work of Henry David Thoreau. Harding was born in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, and received his B.S. from Bridgewater State College in 1939, M.A. from the University of North Carolina in 1947 and a Ph. D. from Rutgers University in 1950.
Go to Profile#3854
Leslie Pietrzyk
#36040
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Leslie Pietrzyk is an American author who has published three novels, Pears on a Willow Tree, A Year and a Day, and Silver Girl, as well as two books of short stories, This Angel on My Chest and Admit This To No One. An additional historical novel, Reversing the River, set in Chicago on the first day of 1900, was serialized on the literary app, Great Jones Street.
Go to Profile#3855
Ali El-Makk
#97015
Overall Influence
1937 - 1992 (55 years)
Ali El-Makk , full name Ali Muhammad Ali El-Mak, also spelled Ali El-Maak or Ali Makk, was a Sudanese writer, translator and literary scholar, known for his short stories, translations from English into Arabic and literary studies.
Go to Profile#3856
Israel Eliraz
#89464
Overall Influence
1936 - 2016 (80 years)
Israel Eliraz was an Israeli poet who won the Bialik Prize , the Brenner Prize , the ACUM lifetime achievement award , the Nathan Alterman Award , the Jerusalem Foundation-Jerusalem Municipality’s Belles-Lettres Award , the Award , the , and the .
Go to Profile#3857
Anthony Giardina
#99050
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Anthony Giardina is an American novelist, short story writer, essayist and playwright. Giardina started his professional career as an actor. He switched to play writing, and eventually began writing novels.
Go to Profile#3858
Robley Wilson
#50384
Overall Influence
1930 - 2018 (88 years)
Robley Wilson was an American poet, writer, and editor. Educated at Bowdoin College, B.A., 1957; Indiana University, graduate study, 1960; University of Iowa, M.F.A., 1968. Married Charlotte Lehon, August 20, 1955 ; married fiction writer Susan Hubbard in 1995; two sons: Stephen, Philip, two stepdaughters: Kate and Clare, and two grandchildren, Sam and Kate.
Go to Profile#3859
Cynthia Cruz
#100356
Overall Influence
Cynthia Cruz is a contemporary American poet. She is the author of seven published poetry collections, and two works of cultural criticism. She currently teaches classes in the Graduate Writing Program at Columbia University.
Go to Profile#3860
Justin Hill
#22466
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Justin Hill is an English novelist. Biography Justin Hill was born in Freeport, Grand Bahama Island in 1971, and he grew up in Yorkshire, England. He was educated at St Peter's School, an independent school in York.
Go to Profile#3861
Oscar Dathorne
#35106
Overall Influence
1934 - 2007 (73 years)
Oscar Ronald Dathorne was a Guyanese educator, novelist, poet and critic. He was the founder of the Association of Caribbean Studies and the Journal of Caribbean Studies. Biography Born in Georgetown, Guyana, Dathorne attended Queen's College, prior to his parents moving the family to England in 1953. He attended the University of Sheffield in 1955, obtaining his BA English degree in 1958 and subsequently completing his MA in 1960 and his PhD, English, in 1966.
Go to Profile#3862
Delia Jarrett-Macauley
#33691
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Delia Jarrett-Macauley , also known as Dee Jarrett-Macauley, is a London-based British writer, academic and broadcaster of Sierra Leonean heritage. Her debut novel, Moses, Citizen & Me, won the 2006 Orwell Prize for political writing, the first novel to have been awarded the prize. She has devised and presented features on BBC Radio, as well as being a participant in a range of programmes. As a multi-disciplinary scholar in history, literature and cultural politics, she has taught at Leeds University, Birkbeck, University of London, and other educational establishments, most recently as a fellow in English at the University of Warwick.
Go to Profile#3863
Emily Grosholz
#39615
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Emily Rolfe Grosholz is an American poet and philosopher. She is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy, African American Studies and English, and a member of the Center for Fundamental Theory / Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos, at the Pennsylvania State University.
Go to Profile#3864
Stephen Poliakoff
#37944
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Stephen Poliakoff is a British playwright, director and screenwriter. In 2006 Gerard Gilbert of The Independent described him as the UK's "pre-eminent TV dramatist" who had "inherited Dennis Potter's crown".
Go to Profile#3865
Laurie Hergenhan
#109197
Overall Influence
1931 - 2019 (88 years)
Laurence Thomas Hergenhan was an Australian literary scholar. After completing his schooling at St Bernard's College, Katoomba, Hergenhan attended the University of Sydney, where he received his MA in 1953 and Diploma of Education in 1957. He completed his PhD at Birkbeck College in London before returning to Australia in 1960 to take up a lectureship at the University of Tasmania.
Go to Profile#3866
Vladimir Uspensky
#42893
Overall Influence
1930 - 2018 (88 years)
Vladimir Andreyevich Uspensky was a Russian mathematician, linguist, writer, doctor of physics and mathematics . He was the author of numerous papers on mathematical logic and linguistics. In addition, he also penned a number of memoir essays. Uspensky initiated a reform of linguistic education in Russia.
Go to Profile#3867
Kim Addonizio
#56561
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Kim Addonizio is an American poet and novelist. Life Addonizio was born in Washington, D.C., United States. She is the daughter of tennis champion Pauline Betz and sports writer Bob Addie . She briefly attended Georgetown University and American University before dropping out of both. She later moved to San Francisco and received a B.A. and M.A. from San Francisco State University. She has taught at San Francisco State University and Goddard College.
Go to Profile#3868
Johnny Payne
#69907
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
#3869
Elena Passarello
#99778
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Elena Passarello is an American writer, actor, and professor. In 2018, she became the announcer for the PRI variety show and podcast Live Wire with Luke Burbank. Career Originally from Charleston, South Carolina, Passarello studied nonfiction at the University of Pittsburgh and The Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Her essays have been published in The New York Times, Virginia Quarterly Review, Audubon and Oxford American. She is the recipient of a 2015 Whiting Award in nonfiction.
Go to Profile#3870
Tom Scott
#81738
Overall Influence
1918 - 1995 (77 years)
Tom Scott was a Scottish poet, editor, and prose writer. His writing is closely tied to the New Apocalypse, the New Romantics, and the Scottish Renaissance. Scott was born in Glasgow, Scotland, the son of a Clydeside boilermaker. With the onset of the Depression, the family moved to St. Andrews in Fife, where Tom worked briefly as a butcher's assistant before becoming an apprentice stonemason in his uncle's business.
Go to Profile#3871
R. T. Smith
#85427
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Rodney T. Smith is an American poet, fiction writer, and editor. The author of twelve poetry collections and a collection of short fiction, Smith is the editor of Shenandoah, a prestigious literary journal published by Washington and Lee University. His poetry and stories are identified with Southern literature and have been published in magazines and literary journals such as The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, Southern Humanities Review, and The Kenyon Review.
Go to Profile#3872
Deirdre Osborne
#87508
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Deirdre Osborne Hon. FRSL is an Australian-born academic who is Reader in English Literature and Drama in the Theatre and Performance Department at Goldsmiths, University of London, and also co-convenes the MA degree in Black British Writing.
Go to Profile#3873
Diane Francis
#23999
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Diane Marie Francis is a Canadian journalist, author and editor-at-large for the National Post newspaper since 1998. Background Francis was born in Chicago, Illinois, on 14 November 1946. She immigrated to Canada in 1966 and became a naturalized Canadian citizen. She is married and has two adult children.
Go to Profile#3874
Joshua Weiner
#81474
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Joshua Weiner is an American poet. Life He graduated from Northwestern University, and earned his PhD in English and American Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He served as the writing coordinator at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and as a visiting assistant professor at Northwestern University.
Go to Profile#3875
Lee Mun-ku
#100839
Overall Influence
1941 - 2003 (62 years)
Lee Mun Ku was a South Korean novelist. Life Lee Mun Ku was born in Boryeong, South Chungcheong Province, South Korea. Lee graduated from Sorabol Arts College with a degree in creative writing. Lee edited various magazines and publishing companies, including Shilchon Munhak-sa and was a founding member and officer of the Freedom Activist Writers' Association as well as being an officer of the League of Korean Writers and serving as the chairman of the Liaison Committee of the Korean Writer's Association and director of the Korean International PEN Club.
Go to Profile#3876
Barbara Graziosi
#83776
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Barbara Graziosi is an Italian classicist and academic. She is Professor of Classics at Princeton University. Her interests lie in ancient Greek literature, and the way in which readers make it their own. She has written extensively on the subject of Homeric literature, in particular the Iliad, and more generally on the transition of the Twelve Olympians from antiquity to the Renaissance. Her most recent research was a project entitled 'Living Poets: A New Approach to Ancient Poetry, which was funded by the European Research Council.
Go to Profile#3877
Jan Heller Levi
#58134
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Jan Heller Levi is a poet who teaches at CUNY Hunter College’s MFA Program in Creative Writing. Life She grew up in Baltimore, Maryland. Levi is the recipient of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets for her first book, Once I Gazed at You in Wonder. She has also received two awards form the Poetry Society of America, the George Bogin Memorial Award, and the Writer Magazine/Emily Dickinson Award.
Go to Profile#3878
Juan Manuel Rodriguez
#59411
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Juan Manuel Rodríguez López is a Spanish-born, naturalized Ecuadorian author and professor. He holds a licenciate/BA degree in philosophy and a doctorate in literature from Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador . He was a professor at Universidad Central del Ecuador and Universidad Católica, as well as a founding professor of Universidad San Francisco de Quito, where he was Dean of the College of Communication and Contemporary Arts.
Go to Profile#3879
Scott Frost
#74921
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Scott Frost is an American screenwriter and novelist. He is the son of actor Warren Frost and the brother of Mark Frost and actress Lindsay Frost. He worked with his brother and David Lynch on the Twin Peaks television series, writing two episodes. He wrote episode 1.4 of the little-seen On the Air television series for Lynch and his brother, although the episode was never aired in the United States. Among others, he has also written an episode of Babylon 5 entitled "The Long Dark", and two episodes of Andromeda. In the early 1990s, he wrote the script for the mystery/thriller TV movie Past Tense with Miguel Tejada-Flores.
Go to Profile#3880
David Wain
#66355
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
David Benjamin Wain is an American comedian, writer, actor, and director. He has co-written and directed six feature films, including Wet Hot American Summer , Role Models , Wanderlust and They Came Together . He has also served as a creator, producer, writer and director on a number of television series, including Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later, Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp, Childrens Hospital and Medical Police. He has had small roles in most of the films and TV series he has produced or directed. Wain had a starring voice role as The Warden on the 2008–2014 Adult S...
Go to Profile#3881
David Mouradian
#88858
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
David Mouradian is an Armenian philologist, writer, film critic and publicist. He is a lecturer at the Yerevan State University and the Institute of film and theater since 1986. Biography David Mouradian is a graduate of the Yerevan State University, the Faculty of Philology. His work as a novelist began to be published in 1969 in the magazine for children pioneer. His first published book, I want to tell you was in 1976. From 1977 to 1999, he worked in film studio Armenfilm as a writer. He has covered television programs on cinema and arthouse which he was secretary between 1994-1996, and w...
Go to Profile#3882
Dan Taulapapa McMullin
#46554
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Dan Taulapapa McMullin is an American Samoan artist, known for their poetry, visual art and film. Their major themes are their indigenous Samoan heritage and their fa'afafine gender identity. McMullin has been creating literary and artistic works for over 35 years, and has received numerous awards, fellowships, and grants. They work in a variety of literary styles and visual art modes. In their adult life, they have spent time in Los Angeles , and now live with their partner in Laguna, California, and Hudson, New York.
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Kim Seong-kon
#95943
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Kim Seong-Kon , also known as Seong-Kon Kim, is a South Korean academic, literary critic, film critic, columnist, editor and writer. Kim was the president of the LTI Korea in the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism of South Korea, which was an undersecretary-level post. On May 19, 2017, Kim received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the State University of New York "in recognition of the profound impact Professor Kim has had as a cultural and literary bridge between Korea and the United States." In 2018, Kim taught at George Washington University as Dean's Distinguished Visiting professor in the Humanities and also at the University of Málaga in Spain as a visiting professor.
Go to Profile#3884
Eric Gamalinda
#81281
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Mario Eric Gamalinda is a poet, fiction writer, playwright, and experimental filmmaker. Recognition for his work includes a New York State Council of the Arts grant for film and media [2014], the Cultural Center of the Philippines Independent Film and Video Awards [2004], the Asian American Literary Award and the Alice James Books New York/New England Selection for Zero Gravity [poems, 2000], the New York Foundation for the Arts [fiction, 1998], the Philippine Centennial Literary Prize for My Sad Republic [novel, 1998], the Philippine National Book Award twice for Planet Waves [novel, 1990] and My Sad Republic [2000], and the Asiaweek Short Story Competition [1985].
Go to Profile#3885
Mario Andrea Rigoni
#118500
Overall Influence
1948 - 2021 (73 years)
Mario Andrea Rigoni was an Italian writer. He worked as a professor of Italian literature at the University of Padua and was an editor of the works of Giacomo Leopardi and translated works by Emil Cioran.
Go to Profile#3886
Cynthia Huntington
#83953
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Cynthia Huntington is an American poet, memoirist and a professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. In 2004 she was named Poet Laureate of New Hampshire. Life and career Huntington has published numerous books of poetry, including Heavenly Bodies , a finalist for the National Book Award. She has published poems in numerous literary journals and magazines including TriQuarterly, The Michigan Quarterly Review, Harvard Review, Cimarron Review, AGNI, Ploughshares, and Massachusetts Review, and in anthologies including The Best American Erotic Poems: From 1800 to the Present an...
Go to Profile#3887
Philip Horne
#93981
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Philip Horne is a teacher and literary critic specializing in 19th century literature, particularly Henry James and Charles Dickens. Educated at King's College School and Cambridge University, he is currently Professor of English at University College London.
Go to Profile#3888
Janice Gould
#74051
Overall Influence
1949 - 2019 (70 years)
Janice Gould was a Koyangk'auwi Maidu writer and scholar. She was the author of Beneath My Heart, Earthquake Weather and co-editor with Dean Rader of Speak to Me Words: Essays on Contemporary American Indian Poetry. Her book Doubters and Dreamers was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award and the Binghamton University Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award.
Go to Profile#3889
Russel B. Nye
#55008
Overall Influence
1913 - 1993 (80 years)
Russel Blaine Nye was an American professor of English who in the 1960s pioneered popular culture studies. He was the author of a dozen books, including George Bancroft: Brahmin Rebel which won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.
Go to Profile#3890
Irene McKinney
#71616
Overall Influence
1939 - 2012 (73 years)
Irene McKinney was an American poet and editor, and served as the Poet Laureate of the state of West Virginia from her appointment by Governor Gaston Caperton in January 1994 until her death. Biography Third oldest of her parents' six children, Irene McKinney was born and grew up in Belington, Barbour County, WV on a 300-acre farm that had been in her family for generations. She had 5 siblings . Her family grew most of their food on their farm due to the struggle of living on one income and having to feed 8 mouths in the house.
Go to Profile#3891
Nicholas Rinaldi
#97122
Overall Influence
1934 - 2020 (86 years)
Nicholas M. Rinaldi was an American poet and novelist. Life Rinaldi earned a doctorate from Fordham University. He was the author of four novels and three collections of poetry. His poems and fiction won numerous awards, and he was honored as the 2007 Artist of the Year by the Fairfield Arts Council.
Go to Profile#3892
Martin Paul Eve
#67642
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Martin Paul Eve is a British academic, writer, computer programmer, and disability rights campaigner. He is the Professor of Literature, Technology and Publishing at Birkbeck College, University of London, Principal R&D Developer at Crossref, and was Visiting Professor of Digital Humanities at Sheffield Hallam University until 2022. He is known for his work on contemporary literary metafiction, computational approaches to the study of literature, and open-access policy. Together with Dr Caroline Edwards, he is co-founder of the Open Library of Humanities .
Go to Profile#3893
Rick Hilles
#86710
Overall Influence
Rick Hilles is an American poet. Life Rick Hilles was born in Canton, Ohio and grew up in North Canton , Ohio, where he attended North Canton Montessori before entering the public schools, receiving his diploma from Hoover High School.
Go to Profile#3894
Debra Magpie Earling
#66250
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Debra Cecille Magpie Earling is a Native American novelist, and short story writer. She is a member of the Bitterroot Salish . She is the author of Perma Red and The Lost Journals of Sacajewea, which was on display at the Missoula Museum of Art in late 2011. Her work has also appeared in Ploughshares, the Northeast Indian Quarterly, and many anthologies.
Go to Profile#3895
Richard Grusin
#55423
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Richard Arthur Grusin is an American new media scholar and author. Grusin is a Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and former Director of the Center for 21st Century Studies.
Go to Profile#3896
Liliane Weissberg
#56894
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Liliane Weissberg is an American literary scholar and cultural historian specializing in German-Jewish studies and German and American literature. She is currently the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor in Arts and Sciences and Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. She received, among others, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Humboldt Research Award for her research on German-Jewish literature and culture and the Berlin Prize of the American Academy in Berlin, and holds an honorary degree from the University of Graz.
Go to Profile#3897
Justin Tussing
#98939
Overall Influence
Justin Tussing is an American writer. Tussing was a graduate of the University of Iowa's Writer's Workshop, where he held a Teaching/Writing Fellowship. He later became a Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. His first published stories were "The Artificial Cloud," published in TriQuarterly , and "The Tiny Man," published in Third Coast; both stories appeared in the spring of 2000.
Go to Profile#3898
Giorgio Ficara
#110463
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Giorgio Ficara is an Italian essayist and literary critic. He is Full Professor of Italian Literature at the University of Turin. Biography Born in Turin in 1952, Ficara attended the city’s Jesuit classical high school. A student of Giovanni Getto, he received his baccalaureate from the University of Turin in 1974 with an undergraduate thesis on Gabriele D'Annunzio. From 1975 to 1981 he was Assistant to the Chair of Italian Literature, a post held by Getto. From 1982 to 1999 he was a research fellow and lecturer; from 1999 to the present he has held the position of Full Professor and Chair of...
Go to Profile#3899
J. B. Bullen
#108032
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
J. B. Bullen is an interdisciplinary writer specialising in examining the relationship between literature, mostly English literature, and art in the 19th and 20th centuries. Work Bullen has written on Coleridge, Ruskin, Dickens, George Eliot, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Thomas Hardy. He is the editor of two notable series for the Peter Lang publishing company: Cultural Interactions: Studies in the Relationship between the Arts and Writing and Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century. Bullen took his first degree at the University of Cambridge. This was followed by spells as a researcher at the University of Oxford and at the University of Reading, where he remains an emeritus professor.
Go to Profile#3900
Mazarine Pingeot
#25295
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Mazarine Marie Pingeot who changed her name to Mazarine Marie Mitterrand Pingeot in November 2016, is a French writer, journalist and professor. Biography Pingeot is the daughter of former French president François Mitterrand and his mistress Anne Pingeot. She is said to be named after the Bibliothèque Mazarine, the oldest library in France, because of her parents' love for books. She could also be named after cardinal Mazarin, who was admired by her father. Her existence was long hidden from the press but was once almost revealed by the French writer Jean-Edern Hallier. Keeping Mazarine Ping...
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