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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List of the most influential people in Literature,

#4001

Derek Pearsall

#46905

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (95 years)

Derek Albert Pearsall was a prominent medievalist and Chaucerian who wrote and published widely on Chaucer, Langland, Gower, manuscript studies, and medieval history and culture. He was the co-director, Emeritus, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York; Gurney Professor of English Literature, Emeritus, Harvard University. He earned a B.A. in 1951 and an M.A. in 1952 from the University of Birmingham . In 1998 he delivered the British Academy's Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture.

#4002

David Gilbert

#61669

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

David Gilbert is an American author known for the novels & Sons, The Normals, and for Remote Feed, a collection of short stories. Early life and education Gilbert's father was S. Parker Gilbert, the Chairman of Morgan Stanley during the 1980s and his grandfather was Seymour Parker Gilbert, the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and the Agent General for Reparations to Germany, from October 1924 to May 1930. He grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, graduated from Middlebury College, and earned an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Montana.

#4003

Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin

#122625

Overall Influence

#4004

Matthew Spangler

#72720

Overall Influence

Matthew Spangler is an American playwright, director, and professor of performance studies. Body of work Matthew Spangler's plays have been produced on Broadway, in London's West End at Wyndham's Theatre and the Playhouse Theatre, off Broadway at 59E59 Theatres, and at theatres throughout the world. He has written fifteen plays, but is best known for his adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner. His most recent play, an adaptation of Christy Lefteri’s novel The Beekeeper of Aleppo, co- written with Nesrin Alrefaai and directed by Miranda Cromwell, opened at the Nottingham Playhouse in February 2023 followed by a five month tour of the UK and Ireland.

#4005

Ann Bannon

#81639

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

Ann Weldy , better known by her pen name Ann Bannon, is an American author who, from 1957 to 1962, wrote six lesbian pulp fiction novels known as The Beebo Brinker Chronicles. The books' enduring popularity and impact on lesbian identity has earned her the title "Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction". Bannon was a young housewife trying to address her own issues of sexuality when she was inspired to write her first novel. Her subsequent books featured four characters who reappeared throughout the series, including her eponymous heroine, Beebo Brinker, who came to embody the archetype of a butch lesbian.

#4006

William Howarth

#50378

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

William Howarth was an American writer and professor emeritus at Princeton University. He published fourteen books and also wrote for such national periodicals as National Geographic, Smithsonian, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The American Scholar.

#4007

Alan Jackson

#84104

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Alan Jackson is a Scottish poet. Early life and education He was born in Liverpool in 1938, to Scottish parents who returned to Edinburgh in 1940. He attended the Royal High School in Edinburgh and Edinburgh University .

#4008

Bob Brissenden

#96009

Overall Influence

1928 - 1991 (63 years)

Robert Francis Brissenden was an Australian poet, novelist, critic, and academic. Life Brissenden was born on 13 March 1928 at Wentworthville, Sydney to schoolteacher Arthur Piercy Brissenden, and Nellie Annie . After studying at Bowral and Cowra high schools, Brissenden earned a scholarship to St Andrew’s College, University of Sydney, where he achieved a Bachelor of Arts with honours and a Master of Arts.

#4009

Washington Delgado

Washington Delgado

#75145

Overall Influence

1927 - 2003 (76 years)

José Washington Delgado Tresierra was a Peruvian poet. He studied at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú in Lima, later pursuing his studies in literature in Madrid between 1955 and 1958.

#4010

Paul Holdengräber

#24946

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Paul Bernard Holdengräber is an American interviewer, curator, and writer. He was director of the New York Public Library's public programming and organized literary conversations for the NYPL's public program series, LIVE from the NYPL, which he founded.

#4011

Gerard Wegemer

#70782

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Gerard B. Wegemer is a professor at the University of Dallas and the founding Director for . He has published many articles and books on Thomas More and is a member of the Board of Editors for Moreana, the international journal on Thomas More and Renaissance studies. He has graduate degrees in political philosophy and literature from the University of Notre Dame, Georgetown University, and Boston College. He is co-editor of The Essential Works of Thomas More, which assembles all of More's major English and Latin works for the first time in a single volume. He is also co-editor of essentialmore.org and thomasmorestudies.org.

#4012

Lorna Reynolds

#96047

Overall Influence

1911 - 2003 (92 years)

Lorna Reynolds was an Irish writer, editor, and professor. Early life and education Reynolds was born in Jamaica in 1911 to staff sergeant Michael Reynolds in the Royal Engineers and his wife Teresa Hickey. She was one of five children. Her father died when she was ten.

#4013

Fernando Arrabal

Fernando Arrabal

#70383

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

Fernando Arrabal Terán is a Spanish playwright, screenwriter, film director, novelist, and poet. He was born in Melilla and settled in France in 1955. Regarding his nationality, Arrabal describes himself as "desterrado", or "half-expatriate, half-exiled".

#4014

Craig Strete

#100105

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Craig Kee Strete is an American science fiction writer of Cherokee descent. He is noted for his use of American Indian themes and has had multiple Nebula Award nominations. Career Craig K. Strete earned his B.A. in 1975 at Wayne State University and his M.F.A. in 1978 at University of California at Irvine.

#4015

Quentin Anderson

#64952

Overall Influence

1912 - 2003 (91 years)

Quentin Anderson was an American literary critic and cultural historian at Columbia University. His research focused on 19th-century American authors, especially Henry James, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walt Whitman, and their attempts to define American identity as both connected to and differentiated from European precedents.

#4016

Rebecca Miller

#65185

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Rebecca Augusta Miller, Lady Day-Lewis is an American filmmaker and novelist. She is known for her films Angela , Personal Velocity: Three Portraits , The Ballad of Jack and Rose , The Private Lives of Pippa Lee , and Maggie's Plan , all of which she wrote and directed, as well as her novels The Private Lives of Pippa Lee and Jacob's Folly. Miller received the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize for Personal Velocity and the Gotham Independent Film Award for Breakthrough Director for Angela.

#4017

Dainius Razauskas

Dainius Razauskas

#101124

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Dainius Razauskas is a Lithuanian mythologist, historian of religions, writer, and translator. He is one of the leading experts of Lithuanian mythology. His mother was Birutė Razauskienė-Daukintaitė, musician and choir leader from Samogitia . Dainius Razauskas graduated from the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics of Vilnius University. Later he studied at the Russian Academy of Sciences, where his teacher was Vladimir Toporov, a famous linguist and mythologist. In 2005 Razauskas finished his habilitation presenting his work "lexical-semantic analysis of mythological concepts of fish symbo...

#4018

Robert D. Lamberton

#119065

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Robert Drummond Lamberton is a classics scholar, poet, and translator of ancient and contemporary literature, most notably Maurice Blanchot's Thomas the Obscure. He is currently professor emeritus in the Classics Department at Washington University in St. Louis. Lamberton was born in Providence, Rhode Island and graduated in 1964 from Harvard College magna cum laude with a degree in Romance languages and literature. He has a master's and a doctoral degree in comparative literature from Yale University , and has taught at Columbia, Princeton, and Cornell universities. He has written eight book...

#4019

Terence Young

#48491

Overall Influence

1915 - 1994 (79 years)

Stewart Terence Herbert Young was a British film director and screenwriter who worked in the United Kingdom, Europe and Hollywood. He is best known for directing three James Bond films: the first two films in the series, Dr. No and From Russia with Love , and Thunderball . His other films include the Audrey Hepburn thrillers Wait Until Dark and Bloodline , the historical drama Mayerling , the infamous Korean War epic Inchon , and the Charles Bronson films Cold Sweat , Red Sun , and The Valachi Papers .

#4020

Kelly Le Fave

#95706

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Kelly Le Fave is an American poet. Childhood and personal life Le Fave was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Virginia and Maryland. She has also spent time living in Western Massachusetts. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and two children.

#4021

Ethan Stiefel

#38633

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Ethan Stiefel is an American dancer, choreographer, and director. He was a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre from 1997 until July 2012. He was the artistic director of the Royal New Zealand Ballet from 2011 to 2014. His wife is Gillian Murphy, also a principal dancer with ABT.

#4022

Alma Luz Villanueva

#99651

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Alma Luz Villanueva is an American poet, short story writer, and novelist. Life Her Mexican grandfather edited a newspaper in Hermosillo, Mexico, and was a published poet. Her maternal grandmother, a Yaqui Indian curandera/healer from Sonora, raised her in the Mission District of San Francisco.

#4023

Eric Handley

#105627

Overall Influence

1926 - 2013 (87 years)

Eric Walter Handley, was a British classical scholar, noted for his work on the Greek new comic poet Menander. He was Director of the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London from 1967 to 1984, Professor of Greek at University College London from 1968 to 1984, and Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge from 1984 to 1994. Handley supported the JACT Greek summer school at Bryanston in Dorset, acting as a tutor on a number of occasions, and lecturing on Menander.

#4024

Geri Doran

#96843

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Geri Doran was born in Kalispell, Montana in 1966. Doran has attended Vassar College, the University of Cambridge, the University of Florida , and Stanford University, where she held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Poetry. She lives in Eugene, Oregon where she is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Oregon.

#4025

Jessica Helfand

#21499

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Jessica Helfand is a designer, author, and educator. She is a former contributing editor and columnist for Print, Eye and Communications Arts magazine, and founding editor of the website Design Observer. She is Senior Critic at Yale School of Art since 1994, a lecturer in Yale College, and Artist-in-Residence at Yale’s Institute for Network Science. Named the first Henry Wolf Resident in design at the American Academy in Rome in 2010, she is a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale and the Art Director’s Hall of Fame. In 2013, she won the AIGA medal.

#4026

Joel Porte

#86933

Overall Influence

1933 - 2006 (73 years)

Joel Miles Porte was an American literary scholar, who was an internationally renowned authority on the life and work of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Biography Porte was born in Brooklyn, New York, to "impecunious and unpedigreed" second-generation Russian Jewish immigrants and was raised there with his two brothers. Intellectually curious from an early age, he mastered Morse code and obtained, at the age of fourteen, a licence to operate the radio station W2YIR. Attending the selective public Brooklyn Technical High School, Porte excelled not only in English but also in the science of industrial processes, mechanical drawing, and printing technology.

#4027

Adam Braver

#59362

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Adam Braver is an American author of historical fiction. His first book was Mr. Lincoln's Wars , a novel told from thirteen different perspectives in order to illuminate Abraham Lincoln's inner life. Second was Divine Sarah , which fictionalizes actress Sarah Bernhardt's Farewell Tour of America. Crows Over the Wheatfield told the story of a renowned Van Gogh scholar struggling to deal with her guilt after she accidentally kills a young boy in a car accident. November 22, 1963 is a fictionalization of the day of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, "Misfit" , focuses on the last weekend in the life of Marilyn Monroe.

#4028

Barbara Santucci

#75325

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Barbara Jean Santucci is an American artist, poet and author of several children's books. Santucci is best known as a children's book author and traveling lecturer. Her stories and lectures deal with the struggle of children to adapt to an adult world.

#4029

Robert Pring-Mill

#70612

Overall Influence

1924 - 2005 (81 years)

Robert Duguid Forrest Pring-Mill, FBA was a British Hispanist. He was University Lecturer in Spanish at the University of Oxford and fellow of St Catherine's College, Oxford from 1965 to 1988. After serving in the Black Watch in India and Burma during the Second World War, rising to the rank of captain, Pring-Mill read Modern Languages at New College, Oxford. He was appointed University Lecturer in Spanish at the University of Oxford in 1952, was elected fellow of St Catherine's College, Oxford in 1965, and held college lectureships at New College, Oxford and Exeter College, Oxford.

#4030

Sharon M. Draper

Sharon M. Draper

#65652

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Sharon Mills Draper is an American children's writer, professional educator, and the 1997 National Teacher of the Year. She is a five-time winner of the Coretta Scott King Award for books about the young and adolescent African-American experience. She is known for her Hazelwood and Jericho series, Copper Sun, Double Dutch, Out of My Mind and Romiette and Julio.

#4031

Christopher Howell

#113395

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Christopher Howell is an American poet, editor, and educator. He has published nine books of poetry. Born in Portland, Oregon, Howell served as a journalist for the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War. He earned a B.S. from Oregon State University in 1968, an M.A. from Portland State University in 1971, and an MFA from the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1973. He also attended Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington.

#4032

Sam Michel

#105411

Overall Influence

Sam Michel is an American author. He is married to the writer Noy Holland. They live in western Massachusetts with their two children. Publications He wrote Under the Light, a collection of stories, "Strange Cowboy, Lincoln Dahl Turns Five"' and Big Dogs and Flyboys, published by Southern Methodist University Press in 2007.

#4033

Robert Hammond

#99065

Overall Influence

1920 - 2009 (89 years)

Robert Hammond earned a BA from the University of Rochester , and both an MA and PhD from Yale University. He was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to France along with numerous other honors, fellowships and grants. Hammond was an instructor, and then professor of French at the University of Arizona . He later was professor of French at Harvard University , and a visiting professor of French Literature and Cinema at Wells College in Aurora, NY . From 1968, Hammond taught at SUNY-Cortland, where he also served as chair of the International Communications and Culture Department. Upon his retire...

#4034

John Dickson

#36621

Overall Influence

John Dickson is an Australian author, clergyman and historian of the ancient world, largely focusing on early Christianity and Judaism. He currently teaches at the graduate school of Wheaton College .

#4035

C. J. Stevens

#65062

Overall Influence

1927 - Present (99 years)

Clysle Julius Stevens was a writer. He published over 30 books , and was published in hundreds of magazines. The United States Library of Congress contains a special collection of his works. In 1998, the Portland Press Herald described him as "versatile and charismatic". Stevens also translated others' works into English from other languages, including Dutch and Flemish.

#4036

Lee Maracle

#77959

Overall Influence

1950 - 2021 (71 years)

Bobbi Lee Maracle was an Indigenous Canadian writer and academic of the Stó꞉lō nation. Born in North Vancouver, British Columbia, she left formal education after grade 8 to travel across North America, attending Simon Fraser University on her return to Canada. Her first book, an autobiography called Bobbi Lee: Indian Rebel, was published in 1975. She wrote fiction, non-fiction, and criticism and held various academic positions. Maracle's work focused on the lives of Indigenous people, particularly women, in contemporary North America. As an influential writer and speaker, Maracle fought for ...

#4037

Avidov Lipsker

#92579

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Avidov Lipsker is an Israeli professor of Hebrew Literature at Bar Ilan University in Israel. Biography Avidov Lipsker was born in Haifa in 1949. His fields of study are the Hebrew Literature of the Third and Fourth Immigration , as well as ancient and modern Hebrew prose. From 1998–2002, Lipsker was the chair of the Department of Literature of the Jewish People and as the chair of the Kurzweil Institute. Since 2007 he was the chair of the Inter-Disciplinary Academic Programs in Bar-Ilan University . Since 2007 Lipsker is a senior researcher in Shalom Hartman Institute – Jerusalem.

#4038

Park Chan-wook

#41077

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Park Chan-wook is a South Korean film director, screenwriter, producer, and former film critic. He is considered one of the most prominent filmmakers of South Korean cinema as well as 21st-century world cinema. His films have gained notoriety for their cinematography and framing, black humor and often brutal subject matter.

#4039

Evangelina Vigil-Piñón

#75651

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Evangelina Vigil-Piñón is a Chicana poet, children's book author, director, translator, and television personality. Life Her mother's family emigrated to Texas in the early 1900s from Parras, Mexico. As a child, Vigil-Piñón lived with her maternal grandmother. Her interest in literature started since she was a little girl. As a sixth grader, her principal sent her to the Inman Christian Center, a private art school in San Antonio, where she was in attendance with people in their twenties. Vigil-Piñón earned a scholarship for business administration and started school at Prairie View A&M University.

#4040

Nicholas Evans

#43924

Overall Influence

1950 - 2022 (72 years)

Nicholas Benbow Evans was a British journalist, screenwriter, television and film producer and novelist. Biography Nicholas Benbow Evans was born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, son of Anthony Evans, director of a motor engineering company, and Eileen, née Whitehouse. He was educated at Bromsgrove School, where he was head boy. He served as a teacher in Senegal with the charity Voluntary Service Overseas for a year, after which he earned a first in law at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford. Following graduation he worked as a reporter for the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Evening Chronicle before moving to London ...

#4041

Jung Hansuk

#106052

Overall Influence

1922 - 1997 (75 years)

Jung Hansuk was a South Korean writer and critic. Life Jung Hansuk was born on November 3, 1922 in Yongbyon, Pyonganbuk-do, Korea and died in 1977. Jung graduated from Korea University in 1950. Jung Hansuk also served in executive capacity for a number of literary organizations: he was at various times the vice president of Korean Fiction Writers’ Association, director of Korean Culture and Arts Foundation, and president of The Korean Academy of the Arts.

#4042

Kevin Hart

#44740

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Kevin John Hart is an Anglo-Australian theologian, philosopher and poet. He is currently Edwin B. Kyle Professor of Christian Studies and Chair of the Religious Studies Department at the University of Virginia. As a theologian and philosopher, Hart's work epitomizes the "theological turn" in phenomenology, with a focus on figures like Maurice Blanchot, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Marion and Jacques Derrida. He has received multiple awards for his poetry, including the Christopher Brennan Award and the Grace Leven Prize for Poetry twice.

#4043

Richard Shelton

#61352

Overall Influence

1933 - 2022 (89 years)

Richard Shelton was an American writer, poet and emeritus Regents Professor of English at the University of Arizona. Shelton was born in Boise, Idaho on June 24, 1933. He wrote nine books of poetry; his first collection of poems, The Tattooed Desert, won the International Poetry Forum's U.S. Award. His 1992 memoir Going Back to Bisbee, a New York Times Notable Book was selected for the One Book Arizona program in 2007. Shelton also won the Western States Book Award for Creative Nonfiction in 1992 for Going Back to Bisbee. In 2000, Shelton received a $100,000 grant from the Lannan Foundati...

#4044

Ellen Akins

#88149

Overall Influence

Ellen Akins is an American novelist from South Bend, Indiana. Early life and education After graduating from LaSalle Intermediate Academy in 1977, Akins earned a Bachelor of Arts in film production at the University of Southern California. As a young adult, Akins participated in Beyond Our Control, a youth-produced community television program.

#4045

Robyn R. Warhol

#103813

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Robyn R. Warhol is an American literary scholar, associated in particular with feminist narrative theory, of which she is considered one of the originators. She is currently an Arts and Humanities Distinguished Professor of English at the Ohio State University and a core faculty member of Project Narrative. Warhol received her BA in English from Pomona College in 1977 and her PhD in English and American Literature from Stanford University in 1982, where she studied with Thomas Moser, George Dekker, and Ian Watt.

#4046

Arthur Motyer

#46471

Overall Influence

1925 - 2011 (86 years)

Arthur Motyer was a Canadian educator, playwright and novelist. Life and career Born in Hamilton, Bermuda, the son of building contractor and land developer Ernest Motyer and Edith Brunning, he was educated at Saltus Grammar School and later studied English literature at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick. In 1945, after graduation and short periods in the Canadian Army and the University of Toronto, he travelled to England on a Rhodes Scholarship where he read English at Exeter College, studying under Nevill Coghill. His namesake uncle, Arthur John Motyer, had also been a Rhodes scholar from Bermuda .

#4047

Leonard Cohen

#66862

Overall Influence

1934 - 2016 (82 years)

Leonard Norman Cohen was a Canadian singer-songwriter, poet, and novelist. Themes commonly explored throughout his work include faith and mortality, isolation and depression, betrayal and redemption, social and political conflict, and sexual and romantic love, desire, regret, and loss. He was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was invested as a Companion of the Order of Canada, the nation's highest civilian honour. In 2011 he received one of the Prince of Asturias Awards for literature and the ninth Gle...

#4048

Lorna Hardwick

#103168

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Lorna Hardwick is professor emerita of classical studies at the Open University. She is a leading authority on classical reception studies and has published several books and articles on the subject, as well being the first editor of the Classical Receptions Journal.

#4049

Elguja Khintibidze

#97306

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Elguja Khintibidze is a Georgian philologist, Doctor of Philological Sciences; professor at Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University; academician of The Georgian National Academy of Sciences; Member of Société Internationale pour l’Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale – S.I.E.P.M.

#4050

Jo-Ann Mapson

#76513

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Jo-Ann Mapson is an American author. She is the author of twelve works of fiction, set mainly in the American Southwest. Biography She was born on March 29, 1952, in Pasadena, California, and now lives in Anchorage, Alaska. She attended Johnston College at the University of Redlands, graduated with a B.A. in English/Creative Writing from California State University Long Beach, and received her M.F.A. in both Poetry and Prose from Vermont College in 1992.

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