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,
#3901
Mikhail Meltyukhov
#36734
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Mikhail Ivanovich Meltyukhov is a Russian military historian. Works Meltyukhov was born in Moscow. In 1995, he defended the dissertation “Contemporary Historiography on Pre-history of the German-Soviet War” on historiography concerning the beginning of World War II. Since then, he has published several studies, many of which are notable for the critical review of the official Soviet conceptions of World War II. Some important works in this direction are On the Verge of the Great Patriotic War: the Debate Goes on and Stalin's Missed Chance and "Soviet-Polish Wars: Military and Political Stand...
Go to Profile#3902
Lauren Michele Jackson
#73676
Overall Influence
1991 - Present (35 years)
Lauren Michele Jackson is an American culture critic and assistant professor of English and African American studies at Northwestern University. Her first book, White Negroes , is a nonfiction collection of essays that explores cultural appropriation.
Go to Profile#3903
Nuno Júdice
#59387
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Nuno Judice is a Portuguese essayist, poet, writer, novelist and professor. Poet and fiction writer, his literary debut was with the Concept of Poem in 1972. He graduated in Romance Philology from the University of Lisbon and obtained the degree of Doctor from the New University of Lisbon , where he is a full professor, presenting in 1989 a thesis on Medieval Literature. He published anthologies, critical editions of literary studies and maintains as a regular contributor in the press. He received Spain's Queen Sofia Ibero-American Poetry Prize in 2013, awarded by the Spanish National Heritage and the University of Salamanca, in the amount of 42,100 euros.
Go to Profile#3904
Kathleen Coburn
#73338
Overall Influence
1905 - 1991 (86 years)
Kathleen Hazel Coburn was a Canadian academic and a leading authority on the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Born in Stayner, Ontario, a fourth generation Canadian of Scottish–Irish descent, Coburn was one of six children born to John Coburn, a Methodist minister, and Susannah Wesley Emerson, Coburn was educated at Harbord Collegiate Institute in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and later studied at the University of Toronto, taking a BA in 1928 and an MA in 1930. Having been awarded an Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire War Memorial Scholarship to Oxford in 1930, she obtained a BLitt fro...
Go to Profile#3905
Anthony Robinson
#71003
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Anthony Robinson is an American novelist and short story writer. He is professor emeritus of English and the former director of the creative writing program at the State University of New York at New Paltz.
Go to Profile#3906
Fawziyya Abu Khalid
#41603
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Fawziyya Abu Khalid is a Saudi Arabian poet, essayist, sociologist, and professor. Her poetry is noted for its prominent political motifs and focus on women's ability to attain education and freedom. Her literary reputation was established by the publication of her first poetry collection, Until When Will They Abduct You on Your Wedding Night? . She went on to publish two other poetry collections, entitled the Secret Readings in the History of Arab Silence and Mirage Water .
Go to Profile#3907
John Logan
#58972
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
John David Logan is an American playwright and filmmaker. He is known for his work as a screenwriter for such films as Ridley Scott's Gladiator , Martin Scorsese's The Aviator and Hugo , Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and Sam Mendes's James Bond films Skyfall , and Spectre . He has been nominated three times for Academy Awards, and has won a Tony Award and a Golden Globe Award.
Go to Profile#3908
Ethan Paquin
#27132
Overall Influence
Ethan Paquin is an American poet and a native of New Hampshire. Biography Ethan Paquin grew up in Londonderry, New Hampshire. He earned a BA in English/writing from Plymouth State University in Plymouth, New Hampshire, and his MFA in creative writing from the MFA Program for Poets & Writers, University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is founding editor of the online literary journal Slope, which he launched in 1999, and co-founded with Christopher Janke the nonprofit poetry press Slope Editions in 2001. He previously taught at Plymouth State University, the University of Massachusetts Lowell, Med...
Go to Profile#3909
Whitney "Strix" Beltrán
#59721
Overall Influence
Whitney "Strix" Beltrán is a narrative designer and Project Narrative Director at Hidden Path Entertainment. Her writing and design career includes the indie game Bluebeard's Bride. She also founded the advocacy initiative Gaming as Other to promote inclusivity in the gaming community.
Go to Profile#3910
Tetiana Yakovenko
#51915
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Tetiana Vasylivna Yakovenko is a Ukrainian poet, literary critic, and teacher. Since 1988, she has been a member of the National Writers' Union of Ukraine. Her awards include Honored Worker of Ukraine Culture , and Excellent Education of Ukraine .
Go to Profile#3911
Michèle Perret
#26468
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Michèle Perret is a French linguist and novelist who was born in 1937 in Oran in Algeria. Background and education She lived in Algeria until 1955, first on a farm near to Sfissef , and then in Oran. Towards the end of her secondary education she settled in Paris. After qualifying as an agrégée in modern literature, she went on to a doctorate in literature and humanities.
Go to Profile#3912
Anne Oterholm
#104560
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Anne Oterholm is an American-born Norwegian novelist and literary critic. Among her novels are Ikke noe annet enn det du vil from 1995 and Avbrutt selskap from 1996. From 2005 to 2012 she was the leader of the Norwegian Authors' Union. She was awarded the Aschehoug Prize in 2010.
Go to Profile#3913
Francesca Orsini
#90615
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Francesca Orsini, FBA is an Italian scholar of South Asian literature. She is currently Professor of Hindi and South Asian Literature at the School of Oriental and African Studies , University of London. She previously lectured at the University of Cambridge, before joining SOAS in 2006. For the 2013/2014 academic year, she was Mary I. Bunting Institute Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.
Go to Profile#3914
Maggie Anderson
#67407
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Maggie Anderson is an American poet and editor with roots in Appalachia. Education and beginning of career Anderson attended West Virginia Wesleyan College from 1966–68 and earned a bachelor's degree in English, with high honors, from West Virginia University in 1970. Her M.A. in English in 1973 and an M.S.W. in 1977 were also from WVU. She worked as a rehabilitation counselor for blind and visually impaired clients at the West Virginia Rehabilitation Center from 1973-77. Beginning in 1979, she worked as poet-in-residence for ten years, in schools, senior centers, correctional facilities and libraries in West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#3915
Sheba Karim
#83103
Overall Influence
Sheba Karim is an American author who writes literature and young adult fiction. Early life Sheba Karim was born and raised in Catskill, New York. She graduated from the New York University School of Law and received a M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Go to Profile#3916
Alexander Dubyanskiy
#100387
Overall Influence
1941 - 2020 (79 years)
Alexander Mikhailovitch Dubiansky, also spelt Alexander Dubianskiy, Alexander Dubyanskiy, or Aleksandr Dubiansky , was a Russian Tamil scholar, university professor, linguist, and writer. During his lifetime, he was accredited and acknowledged for his valuable contributions towards the revival of Tamil language scholarship in Russia, especially after the downfall of Soviet Union.
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Alejandro Murguía
#72621
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Alejandro Murguía is an American poet, short story writer, and editor. He is known for his writings about the San Francisco's Mission District. He lives in San Francisco, where he teaches at San Francisco State University. In 2012, he was named San Francisco Poet Laureate.
Go to Profile#3918
Douglas Whynott
#77840
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Douglas Whynott is an American writer who has written five critically acclaimed books of narrative nonfiction. The subjects of his books range from migratory commercial beekeepers and the beekeeping industry, to the bluefin tuna fishery in New England, a boatyard in Maine, a veterinary clinic in New Hampshire, and the maple syrup industry. In his early years Whynott worked as a dolphin trainer, fish curator, piano tuner, apiary inspector, track coach, and blues piano player.
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Andrew Wallace-Hadrill
#31520
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Andrew Frederic Wallace-Hadrill, is a British ancient historian, classical archaeologist, and academic. He is Professor of Roman Studies and Director of Research in the Faculty of Classics at the University of Cambridge. He was Director of the British School at Rome between 1995 and 2009, and Master of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge from August 2009 to July 2013.
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Constance Reid
#10503
Overall Influence
1918 - 2010 (92 years)
Constance Bowman Reid was the author of several biographies of mathematicians and popular books about mathematics. She received several awards for mathematical exposition. She was not a mathematician but came from a mathematical family—one of her sisters was Julia Robinson, and her brother-in-law was Raphael M. Robinson.
Go to Profile#3921
Edward Alexander
#94018
Overall Influence
1936 - 2020 (84 years)
Edward Alexander was an American essayist and professor emeritus of English at the University of Washington. He focused his research on literary figures such as John Stuart Mill, Matthew Arnold, John Morley, John Ruskin, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Lionel Trilling, Irving Howe, and Robert B. Heilman; and authored books about Jewish history, Zionism, and antisemitism.
Go to Profile#3922
Selena Millares
#118181
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Selena Millares is a Spanish writer and professor. She was born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and got her Ph.D. in Literature at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She has lived in Minneapolis, Paris, Berlin, Santiago de Chile and Alghero. Since 1996, she is a professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. She is the author of numerous essays as well as creative works , which suggest an interdisciplinary dialogue and the return to the original humanism, based on the integral conception of art and thought.
Go to Profile#3923
Lucy Treloar
#88335
Overall Influence
Lucy Treloar is an Australian novelist. Her first novel, Salt Creek, won the 2016 Dobbie Literary Award and was shortlisted for the 2016 Miles Franklin Award and the 2016 Walter Scott Prize. Her second novel, Wolfe Island, won the 2020 Barbara Jefferis Award and was shortlisted for both the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction and the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction in 2020.
Go to Profile#3924
Christopher Coake
#104104
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Christopher Coake is an American fiction writer. Background Coake is the author of two collections of short stories,You Would Have Told Me Not To , and We're in Trouble , for which he was awarded the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize in 2006, and of the novel You Came Back . He was named by the 2007 issue of the British fiction journal Granta as one of the twenty "Best Young American Novelists."
Go to Profile#3925
Brian Bouldrey
#87994
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Brian Bouldrey is a United States writer and actor. Life He is a Senior Lecturer in Northwestern University's English Department. At Northwestern, he founded the Creative Non-Fiction writing sequence, which he currently teaches. He is also a Visiting Writer at Lesley University.
Go to Profile#3926
Richard Goodman
#61039
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Richard Goodman is an American writer of nonfiction. He lives in Lafayette, Louisiana. He is the author of four books of nonfiction. His articles and essays have appeared in the Harvard Review, Ascent, Vanity Fair, The New York Times, Creative Nonfiction, French Review, and The Michigan Quarterly Review, among others. He was educated at the University of Michigan, where he won a Hopwood Award and received a B.A.; at Wayne State University, where he received his M.A.; and at Spalding University, where he received his M.F.A.
Go to Profile#3927
Russell Scott Valentino
#78331
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Russell Scott Valentino is an American author, literary scholar, translator, and editor. Currently, he is a professor of Slavic and comparative literature, and serves as chair of the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures at Indiana University, Bloomington.
Go to Profile#3928
Roland Greene
#98214
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Roland Greene is a scholar of the early modern literature and culture of England, Latin Europe, and the colonial Americas; and of poetry and poetics from the sixteenth century to the present. He is the Mark Pigott KBE Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University. He serves as Director of the Stanford Humanities Center.
Go to Profile#3929
Molly Antopol
#53905
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Molly Antopol is an American fiction and nonfiction writer. As of 2016, she is the Jones Lecturer at Stanford University. Her primary research interests include the Cold War and the Middle East. She is married to author Chanan Tigay and lives in San Francisco.
Go to Profile#3930
Linda McCarriston
#55964
Overall Influence
Linda McCarriston and holding dual citizenship of Ireland and the United States, is a poet and Professor in the Department of Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Alaska Anchorage, teaching creative writing and literary arts since 1994.
Go to Profile#3931
Sissel Lie
#66168
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Sissel Lie is a Norwegian novelist, translator, playwright and professor in Romance languages and literature at the University of Trondheim since 1992. Biography Sissel Lie was born in Kristiansand, in Vest-Agder county, Norway. Her literary début, the short story collection Tigersmil, won Tarjei Vesaas' debutantpris for 1986. Her works have been translated into eight languages as of 2004. She has edited anthologies of French poets and translated poetry, short stories and novels from the French language. She has also been co-editor of Kvinnenes kulturhistorie .
Go to Profile#3932
John Louis DiGaetani
#75508
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
John Louis DiGaetani is a Professor of English at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. He received his BA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, his MA from Northern Illinois University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. DiGaetani's published works include studies on modern British literature, modern American literature, opera, and the connections between literature and music. He is also director of Hofstra's London Program.
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Ettore Scola
#47466
Overall Influence
1931 - 2016 (85 years)
Ettore Scola was an Italian screenwriter and film director. He received a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film in 1978 for his film A Special Day and over the course of his film career was nominated for five Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film.
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John Burke
#77562
Overall Influence
1922 - 2011 (89 years)
John Frederick Burke was an English writer of novels and short stories. He also wrote under the pen names J. F. Burke, Jonathan Burke, Jonathan George, Robert Miall, Martin Sands, Owen Burke, Sara Morris, Russ Ames, Roger Rougiere, and Joanna Jones; and co-wrote with his wife Jean Burke under the pen name Harriet Esmond.
Go to Profile#3935
Frances Leviston
#98745
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Frances Leviston is a British poet. Biography Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Frances Leviston later moved to Sheffield. She studied at St Hilda's College in Oxford University, where she read English. Leviston then began an MA in creative writing at Sheffield Hallam University, winning their Ictus Prize in 2004, which led to the publication of her first pamphlet, Lighter. She won an Eric Gregory Award, for poets under 30 years of age, in 2006. Her first collection, Public Dream, was published by Picador in 2007 and shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. Her second collection, Disinformation, also from Picador, was published in February 2015.
Go to Profile#3936
Sandra Bermann
#71149
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Sandra Bermann is an American literary scholar. She is the Cotsen Professor of the Humanities and Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University. Her research and writing focuses on poetry, translation, and literary theory. She served as president of the American Comparative Literature Association from 2007 to 2009, and chaired Princeton's Comparative Literature department from 1998 to 2010. In 2011, she succeeded Harvey S. Rosen as the Head of Whitman College. Bermann was succeeded by Claire F. Gmachl on July 1, 2019.
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Erik Larsen
#55290
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Erik J. Larsen is an American comic book artist, writer, and publisher. He currently acts as the chief financial officer of Image Comics. He gained attention in the early 1990s with his art on Spider-Man series for Marvel Comics. In 1992 he was one of several artists who stopped working for Marvel to found Image Comics, where he launched his superhero series Savage Dragon – one of the longest running creator-owned superhero comics series – and served for several years as the company's publisher.
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Bill Holm
#76737
Overall Influence
1943 - 2009 (66 years)
Bill Holm was an American poet, essayist, memoirist, and musician. He was a frequent guest on A Prairie Home Companion. Biography Holm was born on a farm north of Minneota, Minnesota in 1943 and attended Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota where he graduated in 1965. Later, he attended the University of Kansas. He was Professor of English at Southwest Minnesota State University, where he taught classes on poetry and literature until his retirement in 2007.
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Akiva Schaffer
#80350
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Akiva Daniel Shebar Schaffer is an American actor, filmmaker, comedian, and musician. He is a member of the comedy group The Lonely Island along with childhood friends Andy Samberg and Jorma Taccone. Schaffer began his career with The Lonely Island making videos for Channel 101. In 2005, Saturday Night Live hired the trio, with Schaffer joining as a writer. In their time at SNL, The Lonely Island pioneered the digital short format, creating some of the most popular sketches of all time, including "Lazy Sunday", "I Just Had Sex", "I'm on a Boat", and "Dick in a Box". After SNL, Schaffer went o...
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Alan Cameron
#99480
Overall Influence
1938 - 2017 (79 years)
Alan Douglas Edward Cameron, was a British classicist and academic. He was Charles Anthon Professor Emeritus of the Latin Language and Literature at Columbia University, New York. He was one of the leading scholars of the literature and history of the later Roman world and at the same time a wide-ranging classical philologist whose work encompassed above all the Greek and Latin poetic tradition from Hellenistic to Byzantine times but also aspects of late antique art.
Go to Profile#3941
Jim Cash
#87384
Overall Influence
1941 - 2000 (59 years)
James Willis Cash was an American film writer, noted for writing such 1980s films as Top Gun and The Secret of My Success. Early life and education Cash was born on January 17, 1941, in Boyne City, Michigan.
Go to Profile#3942
Michael Groden
#103574
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Michael Groden was a distinguished professor of English at the University of Western Ontario. Life and career Born in Buffalo, New York on 30 May 1947, Groden received a B.A. from Dartmouth College in 1969 and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1975, where he studied James Joyce's writing methods through close textual analyses of his manuscripts under the supervision of A. Walton Litz. He is known for his involvement in the envisioning and development of James Joyce's Ulysses as hypertext and hypermedia with William H. Quillian and other scholars from around the world. Groden wa...
Go to Profile#3943
Jack Epps Jr.
#86376
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Jack Epps Jr. is an American screenwriter, author, and educator, known chiefly for such popular 1980s films as Top Gun, Legal Eagles, and The Secret of My Success, which he wrote with longtime partner Jim Cash. Epps Jr. graduated from the College of Arts and Letters at Michigan State University, and he has since gone on to teach at the University of Southern California.
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J. Robert Lennon
#62690
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
John Robert Lennon is an American novelist, short story writer, musician and composer. Early life Lennon was raised in Phillipsburg, New Jersey. He earned a B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.F.A. from the University of Montana. He is, as of 2011, an associate professor, and director of the Creative Writing Program, at Cornell University and resides in upstate New York.
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Eric Kimmel
#73198
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Eric A. Kimmel is an American author of more than 50 children's books. His works include Caldecott Honor Book Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins , Sydney Taylor Book Award winners The Chanukkah Guest and Gershon's Monster, and Simon and the Bear: A Hanukkah Tale.
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Kendrick Smithyman
#90863
Overall Influence
1922 - 1995 (73 years)
William Kendrick Smithyman was a New Zealand poet and one of the most prolific of that nation's poets in the 20th century. Family and early life Smithyman was born in Te Kōpuru, a milling and logging town on the Wairoa River near Dargaville, in the Northland Region in the far north of New Zealand. He was the only child of William "Bill" Kendrick Smithyman, an immigrant from England and a former soldier who had fought both in the Boer War and World War I and who had radical political sympathies. Before World War I, he had worked in sugar plantations in Fiji. The poet's father had also been a ...
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James Marshall
#76930
Overall Influence
1942 - 1992 (50 years)
James Edward Marshall was an American illustrator and writer of children's books, probably best known for the George and Martha series of picture books . He illustrated books exclusively as James Marshall; when he created both text and illustrations he sometimes wrote as Edward Marshall. In 2007, the U.S. professional librarians posthumously awarded him the bi-ennial Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal for "substantial and lasting contribution" to American children's literature.
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David Gordon
#66007
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
David Gordon is an American novelist. Biography Gordon initially worked as a writer and editor for adult magazines Hustler, Chic and Barely Legal in the 1990s before moving on to write novels. His debut novel, The Serialist, won the 2011 First Novelist Award and was a finalist for the Mystery Writers of America's 2011 Edgar Award for Best First Novel. Its translation into Japanese by Aoki Chizuru as Niryū Shōsetsuka, lit. "Second-Rate Novelist" became a major hit, winning three literary contests and being turned into a full-length motion film by Toei, directed by Izaki Nobuaki and starring Ka...
Go to Profile#3949
Pinckney Benedict
#95857
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Pinckney Benedict is an American short-story writer and novelist whose work often reflects his Appalachian background. Biography Benedict was raised in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, where his family had a dairy farm. He attended The Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Princeton University, where he studied primarily with Joyce Carol Oates, in 1986, and from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1988.
Go to Profile#3950
Leo Buscaglia
#11352
Overall Influence
1924 - 1998 (74 years)
Felice Leonardo Buscaglia , also known as "Dr. Love", was an American author, motivational speaker, and a professor in the Department of Special Education at the University of Southern California. Life and career Felice Leonardo Buscaglia was born in Los Angeles, California, on March 31, 1924, into a family of Italian immigrants. He spent his early childhood in Aosta, Italy, before going back to the United States for education. He was a graduate of Theodore Roosevelt High School. Buscaglia served in the U.S. Navy during World War II; he did not see combat, but he saw its aftermath in his duties in the dental section of the military hospital, helping to reconstruct shattered faces.
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