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,

#4201

Joanne Leedom-Ackerman

Joanne Leedom-Ackerman
#68506
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Joanne Leedom-Ackerman is an American novelist, short story writer and journalist whose fiction and literary non-fiction includes the recent novel Burning Distance, upcoming novel The Far Side of the Desert, regional bestseller The Dark Path to the River, the short story collection No Marble Angels, and PEN Journeys: Memoir of Literature on the Line. She’s also the senior editor of The Journey of Liu Xiaobo: From Dark Horse to Nobel Laureate. She is a Vice President of PEN International and has served as the International Secretary of PEN International and Chair of PEN International's Writer...
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#4202

Saveria Chemotti

#101438
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Saveria Chemotti is an Italian writer of non-fiction and prose. She is an essayist, novelist, and literary critic, as well as a researcher with a focus area of culture and gender studies. Biography Saveria Chemotti was born Madruzzo, Trentino, April 5, 1947. She earned a degree in literary subjects in 1972 .
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#4203

Bill Pearson

#97344
Overall Influence
1922 - 2002 (80 years)
William Harrison Pearson was a New Zealand fiction writer, essayist and critic. Early life Born in Greymouth Pearson began writing at an early age, writing for the children's page of the Christchurch Star-Sun. He completed a B.A. in English at the Canterbury University College in 1939 and trained as a teacher at Dunedin Training College. He taught briefly at Blackball Primary School in 1942. He served in World War II between 1942 and 1946 firstly in the dental corps in Fiji, then in the infantry in Egypt, Italy and Japan.
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#4204

Song Giwon

#101192
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Song Giwon Life Song Giwon was born on July 1, 1947, in the Choseong Township of Boseong County, Jeollanam-do, in South Korea. In 1966, while a student at Joseon High School, his poem “Field of Flowers” was chosen for a prize in a nationwide writing contest for high school students sponsored by Korea University. Later his poem “Song of the Wind” was chosen in a similar contest put on by the Sorabol College of Arts, and in 1967 his poem “On a Sleepless Night” won a prize in the spring literary contest held by the Chonnam Daily newspaper. In 1968, due to the outcome of the contest, he entere...
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#4205

Vu Tran

Vu Tran
#75966
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Vu Hoang Tran is a Vietnamese American writer. His debut novel, Dragonfish, was released in 2015. Life Vu Tran was born in Saigon in 1975, and grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He graduated from the University of Tulsa with an MA, from the Iowa Writers' Workshop with an MFA, and from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas as a Glenn Schaeffer Fellow in Fiction with a PhD.
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#4206

Andrzej Drawicz

Andrzej Drawicz
#83941
Overall Influence
1932 - 1997 (65 years)
Andrzej Józef Drawicz was a Polish essayist, literary critic and translator of Russian literature. Career In recognition of his outstanding services in public activity and for achievements in literary and journalistic work, he was posthumously honoured with the Commander's Cross with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta by Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski on 16 May 1997.
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#4207

Miriam T. Griffin

Miriam T. Griffin
#72213
Overall Influence
1935 - 2018 (83 years)
Miriam Tamara Griffin was an American classical scholar and tutor of ancient history at Somerville College at the University of Oxford from 1967 to 2002. She was a scholar of Roman history and ancient thought, and wrote books on the Emperor Nero and his tutor, Seneca, encouraging an appreciation of the philosophical writings of the ancient Romans within their historical context.
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#4208

Christine Craig

#86191
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Christine Craig is a Jamaican writer living in Florida, United States. She has published collections of poetry and short stories, as well as children's fiction and several non-fiction works. Biography Christine Craig was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and grew up in rural Saint Elizabeth. She received a BA from the University of the West Indies. In 1970, she published her first work, Emanuel and His Parrot, a children's book. She began publishing poetry in the late 1970s and published her first poetry collection, Quadrille for Tigers, in 1984. In 1993, Craig published a collection of short stories entitled Mint Tea.
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#4209

Andy Rooney

Andy Rooney
#54465
Overall Influence
1919 - 2011 (92 years)
Andrew Aitken Rooney was an American radio and television writer who was best known for his weekly broadcast "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney", a part of the CBS News program 60 Minutes from 1978 to 2011. His final regular appearance on 60 Minutes aired on October 2, 2011; he died a month later at the age of 92.
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#4210

Susan Shreve

Susan Shreve
#59248
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Susan Shreve is an American novelist, memoirist, and children's book author. She has published fifteen novels, most recently More News Tomorrow , and a memoir Warm Springs: Traces of a Childhood . She has also published thirty books for children, most recently The Lovely Shoes , and edited or co-edited five anthologies. Shreve co-founded the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at George Mason University in 1980, where she teaches fiction writing. She is the co-founder and the former chairman of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. She lives in Washington, D.C.
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#4211

Bruce Smith

Bruce Smith
#74015
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Bruce Smith is an American poet. Life Smith was born and raised in Philadelphia. He taught at the University of Alabama, Phillips Academy, Andover and now teaches at Syracuse University. He has been a co-editor of the Graham House Review and a contributing editor of Born Magazine.
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#4212

Hanne Marie Svendsen

#100774
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Hanne Marie Svendsen is a Danish writer and former broadcasting executive. She has written works on Danish literature, plays and novels, including the award-winning Guldkuglen , published in English as The Gold Ball in 1989.
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#4213

Bimal Guha

Bimal Guha
#80297
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Bimal Guha is a Bangladeshi poet. He appeared on the Bangladesh literary scene in the 1970s. His themes revolve around the war of liberation and the eternal subjects of love, nature, motherland, mother-tongue, tradition, and modernity.
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#4214

Andrew Taylor

#89716
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Andrew McDonald Taylor is an Australian poet and academic, and a co-founder of Friendly Street Poets in Adelaide, South Australia. Early life and career Andrew Taylor was born in Warrnambool, Victoria on 19 March 1940. Educated at the University of Melbourne, Taylor moved to Adelaide in 1970, where he taught at the English Department at the University of Adelaide, mainly in American Literature.
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#4215

Jane Bernstein

#93342
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Jane Bernstein is an American writer and novelist. Biography Born in Brooklyn, Bernstein received her Bachelor of Arts at New York University and her Master of Fine Arts at Columbia University. She is a professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University, where she has taught since 1991.
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#4216

Michael Sprinker

#39408
Overall Influence
1950 - 1999 (49 years)
Michael Sprinker was a literary critic known for his writings on Louis Althusser, Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht, among others, as well as for his editorial work at Verso, Cambridge University Press, the New Left Review and The Minnesota Review. With Mike Davis, Sprinker co-founded Verso's Haymarket series and was said to have guided it until his death. He also taught at Oregon State University and the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
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#4217

Francisco García Tortosa

Francisco García Tortosa
#100898
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Francisco García Tortosa is a Spanish University Professor, literary critic, and translator into Spanish. In Spain García Tortosa is considered one of the chief experts on the figure and work of the Irish writer, James Joyce, whose creations he has translated and about which he has published a wide range of studies. The Irish hispanist, Ian Gibson, has called García Tortosa «Spain's leading expert on Joyce», while considering his translation of Ulysses, in collaboration with María Luisa Venegas, as «prodigious».
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#4218

Norman Fruchter

#84491
Overall Influence
1937 - 2023 (86 years)
Norman Fruchter was an American writer, filmmaker, and academic. Life and career Fruchter was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on August 11, 1937. He graduated from Rutgers University, in 1959, where he edited the literary magazine, Anthologist.
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#4219

Nadia Chafik

Nadia Chafik
#81051
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Nadia Chafik is a Moroccan novelist. Biography Nadia Chafik was born in Casablanca in 1962, and grew up in Rabat. She is from the Ait Sadden tribe, a Middle Atlas Berber tribe. Chafik studied at Montreal University and she taught in the same university during two years. Her principal academic works are: "Être romancière au Maghreb" and Une autre lecture du Maghreb à travers l'art scriptural et pictural français du 19e siècle .
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#4220

Michael Gilkes

#38584
Overall Influence
1933 - 2020 (87 years)
Michael Arthur Gilkes was a Caribbean literary critic, dramatist, poet, filmmaker and university lecturer. He was involved in theatre for more than 40 years, as a director, actor and playwright, winning the Guyana Prize for Drama in 1992 and 2006, as well as the Guyana Prize for Best Book of Poetry in 2002. He was also respected for his insight into and writings on the work of Wilson Harris.
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#4221

Gilbert Hernandez

Gilbert Hernandez
#77956
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Gilberto Hernández , usually credited as Gilbert Hernandez and also by the nickname Beto , is an American cartoonist. He is best known for his Palomar/Heartbreak Soup stories in Love and Rockets, an alternative comic book he shared with his brothers Jaime and Mario.
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#4222

Vicente Cabrera Funes

#56407
Overall Influence
1944 - 2014 (70 years)
Vicente Cabrera Funes was a Professor of Spanish at the University of Minnesota Morris and Ecuadorian writer in Morris, Minnesota. Prof. Cabrera received his B.A. from Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador - Quito, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts.
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#4223

Gilbert Lascault

#55555
Overall Influence
1934 - 2022 (88 years)
Gilbert Lascault was a French novelist, essayist, and art critic. Biography Lascault was born in Strasbourg on 25 October 1934. Agrégé of philosophy in 1960, Gilbert Lascault began writing his thesis, « Le monstre dans l’art occidental » , an essay of aesthetics inaugurating his writings to come. He discovered contemporary art by meeting Henri Michaux and Jean Dubuffet.
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#4224

Taylor Stoehr

#90185
Overall Influence
1931 - 2013 (82 years)
Taylor Stoehr was an American professor and author. He edited several volumes of Paul Goodman's work as his literary executor. Works Dickens: The Dreamer's Stance Hawthorne's Mad Scientists: Pseudoscience and Social Science Nay-Saying in Concord: Emerson, Alcott, and Thoreau Here Now Next: Paul Goodman and the Origins of Gestalt Therapy Edited
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#4225

Suzanne Chazin

#92405
Overall Influence
Suzanne Chazin is an American author best known for the Georgia Skeehan mystery series, published by Putnam, about a New York City female firefighter-turned-fire marshal and for the Jimmy Vega mystery fiction series about a homicide detective navigating the world of the undocumented, published by Kensington Books.
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#4226

Rakhshanda Jalil

Rakhshanda Jalil
#125124
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Rakhshanda Jalil is an Indian writer, critic and literary historian. She is known for her book on Delhi's lesser-known monuments called Invisible City: The hidden Monuments of India and a well-received collection of short stories, called Release & Other Stories . Her PhD on the Progressive Writers' Movement as Reflected in Urdu Literature has been published by Oxford University Press as Liking Progress, Loving Change . Jalil runs an organization called Hindustani Awaaz, devoted to the popularization of Hindi-Urdu literature and culture.
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#4227

Gillian Conoley

#71667
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Gillian Conoley is an American poet. Conoley serves as a professor and poet-in-residence at Sonoma State University. Conoley is author of seven collections of poetry. Her work has been anthologized in Norton’s American Hybrid, Counterpath’s Postmodern Lyricisms, Mondadori’s Nuova Poesia Americana , and Best American Poetry. Conoley's poetry has appeared in Conjunctions, New American Writing, American Poetry Review, The Canary, A Public Space, Carnet de Rouge, Jacket, Or, Fence, Verse, Ironwood, jubilat, Zyzzyva, Ploughshares, the Denver Quarterly, the Missouri Review and other publications. She is the recipient of the Jerome J.
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#4228

Eckart Schütrumpf

#72724
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Eckart Schütrumpf is a professor of classics at the University of Colorado at Boulder and former professor of Classics at the University of Cape Town. He is known for his work on political, ethical, rhetorical and poetic issues in Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, and other ancient writers. In 2005 he won a prestigious research prize from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for foreign scholars in the humanities. He is currently working on an edition of Aristotle's fragments .
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#4229

Erin Elizabeth Smith

#119023
Overall Influence
Erin Elizabeth Smith is an American poet, editor, publisher, and educator. Biography Smith, originally from Lexington, South Carolina, holds a B.A. in English from Binghamton University, an M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of Illinois, and a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern Mississippi. She currently teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Tennessee. She is the author of three full-length poetry collections as well as a chapbook. Smith lives in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where she serves as the Executive Director of the Sundress Acade...
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#4230

George McWhirter

George McWhirter
#77564
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
George McWhirter is an Irish-Canadian writer, translator, editor, teacher and Vancouver's first Poet Laureate. The son of a shipyard worker, George McWhirter was raised in a large extended family on the Shankill Road in Belfast. He and his extended family spent the war years and then weekends and the summers at their seaside bungalow in Carnalea, now a suburb of Bangor, County Down. In 1957 he began a "combined scholarship" studying English and Spanish at Queen's University, Belfast, and education at Stranmillis College, Belfast. His tutor at Queen's was the poet Laurence Lerner, and he was ...
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#4231

Johanna Hanink

#85295
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Johanna Hanink is Associate Professor of Classics at Brown University. She specialises in ancient Greek theater and performance and the cultural life and afterlife of ancient Athens. Hanink also serves as a contributor to Aeon Magazine, the Chronicle for Higher Education, and Eidolon.
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#4232

George Stambolian

George Stambolian
#85583
Overall Influence
1938 - 1991 (53 years)
George Stambolian was an American educator, writer, and editor of Armenian descent. Stambolian was a key figure in the early gay literary movement that came out of New York during the 1960s and 1970s. He was best known as the editor of the Men on Men anthologies of gay fiction.
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#4233

Francisco Amighetti

#65938
Overall Influence
1907 - 1998 (91 years)
Francisco Amighetti was a Costa Rican painter. In addition to his paintings, Amighetti also produced wood engravings, poetry and works of art criticism. He based his artwork on basic lifestyle in Costa Rica.
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#4234

John C. Pope

#82730
Overall Influence
1904 - 1997 (93 years)
John Collins Pope was an American scholar of Old English. He taught at Yale University English Department from 1928 to 1971, where he was William Lampson Professor Emeritus of English at the time of his death. He was described by fellow Old English specialist Fred C. Robinson as "the leading Old English scholar of his generation".
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#4235

Leon Katz

#47045
Overall Influence
1919 - 2017 (98 years)
Leon Katz was professor emeritus of drama at Yale University. He was a playwright, dramaturg, and scholar. Interviews with Alice B. Toklas Katz was best known for his interviews with Alice B. Toklas, the companion of Gertrude Stein, which he conducted over the period from November 1952-February 1953. These interviews have served as the basis for much of the Stein scholarship over the years. In October 2007, Katz gave a public lecture and performance at Carnegie Mellon University based on his time spent with Toklas in her Paris apartment. Titled "An Evening With Leon Katz," the performance was...
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#4236

Anthony Walton

#59718
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Anthony Walton is an American poet and writer. He is perhaps best known as the author of a chapbook of poems, Cricket Weather and for his non-fiction work Mississippi: An American Journey. His work has appeared widely in magazines, journals, and anthologies, including The New Yorker, Kenyon Review, Oxford American, and Rainbow Darkness. He is currently a professor and the writer-in-residence at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine.
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#4237

Robert Étienne

Robert Étienne
#56217
Overall Influence
1921 - 2009 (88 years)
Robert Étienne was a 20th-century French historian of ancient Rome. Career A student of the École Normale Supérieure and agrégé of history, Robert Étienne was member of the École française de Rome from 1947 to 1949. In 1958, he defended a doctoral thesis on the imperial cult in the Iberian Peninsula from Augustus to Diocletian.
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#4238

Seo Yeong-eun

Seo Yeong-eun
#112694
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Seo Yeong-eun is a South Korean writer. Life Born in Gangneung, Gangwon-do, Seo graduated from Gangneung Teacher Training School in 1961 and entered Konkuk University in 1963 to study English Language and Literature. However she left the university in 1965. In 1968, her short story, "Bridge" was accepted for publication by World of Thoughts and the following year, "I and 'I'" was published in Monthly Literature . She also worked as an editor for Literature and Thought and reported for Korean Literature , under the editorship of Lee Mungu. In 1983, she published a novella, The Distant Othe...
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#4239

Shariann Lewitt

Shariann Lewitt
#105474
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Shariann Lewitt is an American author, specializing in science fiction. She is currently a lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Publications First and Final Rites White Wing with Susan Shwartz Angel at Apogee Blind Justice Cybernetic Jungle Songs of Chaos Memento Mori Interface Masque Rebel Sutra
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#4240

William E. Berrett

#74355
Overall Influence
1902 - 1993 (91 years)
William Edwin "Ed" Berrett was a Vice President of Brigham Young University and a Latter-day Saint author. Biography Berrett was raised in southern Salt Lake County in what is today Cottonwood Heights, Utah. He attended Jordan High School. He received his undergraduate education from the University of Utah. Berrett graduated from there in 1924 and then worked for a time as the principal of the LDS seminary in Roosevelt, Utah. He received a law degree from the University of Utah in 1933. He also did graduate studies at BYU from 1927 to 1933. In 1926, Berrett married Eleanore Louise Calliste...
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#4241

William Veeder

#86279
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
William Veeder is a scholar of 19th-century American and British literature and a Professor Emeritus in the Department of English at the University of Chicago. Early life William Veeder was born on September 14, 1940, in Denver, Colorado to Virginia Holderness and author William H. Veeder. He grew up in Arlington, Virginia.
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#4242

Henry Beissel

#93162
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
Henry Eric Beissel is a writer and editor who has published 24 volumes of poetry, six books of plays, a non-fiction book on Canada, two anthologies of plays intended for use in high schools, and numerous essays and pieces of short fiction.
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#4243

Finn-Erik Vinje

#66201
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Finn-Erik Vinje is a Norwegian philologist. He was a professor at the University of Trondheim from 1971 to 1975, and at the University of Oslo from 1975 to 2006. He was a language consultant for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation from 1971 to 1992. He has written several books on language-related questions.
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#4244

Michael Norman

#54816
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Michael Norman was an American author known for his supernatural book series Haunted which he has written alongside fellow author Beth Scott. Norman, who hailed from Illinois, graduated with a master's degree from Northern Illinois University in 1969. He worked at the University of Wisconsin–River Falls journalism department from 1973 until his retirement in May 2003. In 1996, Norman made a guest appearance in the Annie Award-nominated talk show Space Ghost Coast to Coast. He later spoke about Haunted Hollywood on the Travel Channel, which was Number 9 on the countdown of World's Creepiest Destinations.
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#4245

Nadezhda Pavlova

#109732
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Nadezhda Vasilyevna Pavlova is a Soviet and Russian ballet dancer. People's Artist of the USSR . Life and artistic output Nadia Pavlova liked to dance from an early age. At 7 she began to dance with a group at the House of Pioneers.
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#4246

Rebecca Futo Kennedy

Rebecca Futo Kennedy
#77249
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Rebecca Futo Kennedy is Associate Professor of Classics, Women's and Gender Studies, and Environmental Studies at Denison University, and the Director of the Denison Museum. Her research focuses on the political, social, and cultural history of Classical Athens, Athenian tragedy, ancient immigration, ancient theories of race and ethnicity, and the reception of those theories in modern race science.
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#4247

Mihhail Lotman

#87649
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Mihhail Lotman is an Estonian literature researcher and politician, son of Juri Lotman and Zara Mints. Mihhail Lotman's research fields include general semiotics and semiotics of culture as well as text theory and history of Russian literature. Lotman was a member of the board of Russian Cultural Society in Estonia from 1988 to 1994. Lotman is a professor of semiotics and literary theory at the Tallinn University and also a member of a research group on semiotics at the University of Tartu.
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#4248

Bernard Miles

#71395
Overall Influence
1907 - 1991 (84 years)
Bernard James Miles, Baron Miles, CBE was an English character actor, writer and director. He opened the Mermaid Theatre in London in 1959, the first new theatre that opened in the City of London since the 17th century.
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#4249

Álfrún Gunnlaugsdóttir

#122184
Overall Influence
1938 - 2021 (83 years)
Álfrún Gunnlaugsdóttir was an Icelandic writer who was born in Reykjavík on 18 March 1938. After high school, she went to Spain and later worked on her doctoral thesis at Lausanne, Switzerland. She has written seven acclaimed novels in Iceland.
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#4250

C. Dale Young

#69545
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
C. Dale Young is an American poet and writer, physician, editor and educator of Asian and Latino descent. Life Young writes and publishes poetry and short stories, practices medicine full-time, and teaches in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. For 19 years, he edited poetry for New England Review, stepping down from the post of poetry editor there in August 2014. His poems have appeared in many magazines and journals, including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, The Paris Review, POETRY, Yale Review, and elsewhere. His work has also been included in anthologies, including...
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