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,

#4351

Marion Cohen

#70517

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Marion Cohen is an American poet whose pen name is Marion Deutsche Cohen. She is also a mathematician with a Ph.D. in distribution theory from Wesleyan University. Cohen has published 32 books of poetry and prose. She writes poetry and creative non-fiction, in particular memoir and has written about pregnancy loss, spousal illness/caregiving, and her passion for mathematics. She has studied the relationship between art and mathematics, and has taught math and writing at Arcadia University in Glenside, PA. Cohen has studied the relationship between art and mathematics and has developed a cour...

#4352

Mart Kangur

#115281

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Mart Kangur is an Estonian poet, translator and philosopher. From 1991 to 2005, he attended at Estonian Institute of Humanities, studying languages, literary theory, philosophy and Oriental studies.

#4353

Cathy Smith Bowers

Cathy Smith Bowers

#64000

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Cathy Smith Bowers is an American poet and professor. She teaches poetry in an M.F.A. program at Queens University of Charlotte. Bowers was named by Governor Bev Perdue as the sixth North Carolina Poet Laureate, 2010–2012. She has published five collections of poetry.

#4354

Benoît Conort

#106829

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Benoît Conort is a French poet and literary critic. He also teaches at the University of Paris X - Nanterre, under the department of modern literature. He serves on the editorial board of the journal New Series where he published numerous poems and reviews.

#4355

Philip Heldrich

#128635

Overall Influence

Philip Heldrich was an American author of poetry, essays, short stories, and literary criticism, including Good Friday, winner of the Poetry Prize, X.J. Kennedy and Out Here in the Out There: Essays in a Region of Superlatives, winner of the Mid-List Press First Series Award for Creative Nonfiction.

#4356

Robin Becker

#93228

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Robin Becker is an American poet, critic, feminist, and professor. She was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and is the author of seven collections of poetry, most recently, Tiger Heron and Domain of Perfect Affection . Her All-American Girl , won the 1996 Lambda Literary Award in Poetry. Becker earned a B.A. in 1973 and an M.A. from Boston University in 1976. She lives in Boalsburg, Pennsylvania and spends her summers in southern New Hampshire.

#4357

Jan Schreiber

#57884

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Jan Schreiber is an American poet, translator, and literary critic who has been part of the renascence of formal poetry that began in the late twentieth century. He is the author of five books of verse, two books of verse translation and one book of literary criticism. He was a co-founder of the literary magazine, Canto: Review of the Arts, which flourished in the 1970s, and as a literary editor he launched the poetry chapbook series at the Godine Press. He is a recipient of the Carey Thomas Award for creative publishing.

#4358

Phillip Barron

#27365

Overall Influence

Phillip Barron is an American poet and philosopher who teaches at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. His poetry has won the Nicolás Guillén Outstanding Book Award for philosophical literature and has been featured in many national journals including The Brooklyn Rail, New American Writing, and Janus Head: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenological Psychology, and the Arts. Barron also has a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Connecticut.

#4359

Peter Rose

#95930

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Peter John Rose is an Australian poet, memoirist, critic, novelist and editor. For many years he was an academic publisher. Since 2001 he has been editor of Australian Book Review. Career Peter Rose was born in Wangaratta on 8 June 1955, and grew up there. Rose belongs to a famous Collingwood Football Club family. His father, Bob, was a celebrated Collingwood player and coach. His brother, Robert , also played for Collingwood and, as a cricketer, opened the batting for Victoria. Rose was educated at Haileybury, Melbourne and Monash University.

#4360

Catherine Lacey

Catherine Lacey

#82669

Overall Influence

1985 - Present (41 years)

Catherine Lacey is an American writer. Career Lacey's first novel, Nobody Is Ever Missing, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Dwight Garner, in The New York Times, called her prose "dreamy and fierce at the same time." Time Out New York named it "the best book of the year." It also made The New Yorkers list for the best books of 2014. It has been translated into Dutch, Spanish, Italian, French, and German. The novel was a finalist for the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award. In 2016, Lacey won a Whiting Award for her fiction.

#4361

Robert Frakes

#125839

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Robert Martin Frakes is an American classics scholar. He is the dean of the School of Arts & Humanities at California State University, Bakersfield, where he is also a professor of history. His research concerns "political, legal, and religious history in the later Roman Empire".

#4362

Abdul Haleem Chishti

#53393

Overall Influence

1929 - 2020 (91 years)

Abdul Halim Chishti Nomani was a Pakistani Islamic scholar, librarian, writer and the first PhD in library sciences in Pakistan. He was a disciple of Hussain Ahmad Madani. He was head of the Department of Hadith Studies at Jamia Uloom Islamia and the younger brother of Abdul Rasheed Naumani.

#4363

Clem Seecharan

#24446

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Clem Seecharan is a Guyanese writer and historian of the Indo-Caribbean experience, and of West Indies cricket. He was born in Guyana and has been based in England since 1986. Life and career Seecharan grew up in East Berbice-Corentyne, and attended the Sheet Anchor Anglican School, the Berbice Educational Institute, and Queen's College in Guyana. He studied at McMaster University in Canada, and taught Caribbean Studies at the University of Guyana for some years, before completing his doctorate in history at the University of Warwick in 1990. He joined the staff of the University of North Lon...

#4364

Cornelius Schnauber

#68990

Overall Influence

1939 - 2014 (75 years)

Professor Cornelius Schnauber was a German-born scholar, historian, playwright, biographer, and educator. At the time of his death, he was Emeritus Associate Professor of German at the University of Southern California .

#4365

Karen Alkalay-Gut

Karen Alkalay-Gut

#91438

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Karen Alkalay-Gut is a poet, professor, and editor who lives in Israel and writes in English. Personal life Born in London on the last night of the Blitz buzz bombs, Alkalay-Gut moved with her parents and brother Joseph Rosenstein to Rochester, New York in 1948. She graduated from the University of Rochester, with a BA with honors, and an MA in English literature in 1967. From 1967 to 1970 she taught at the State University of New York at Geneseo before returning to complete her doctorate. In 1972 she moved to Israel and began teaching at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev . In 1977 she moved to Tel Aviv University, where she continued to teach.

#4366

Bryan Reynolds

#72634

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Bryan Reynolds , Claire Trevor Professor, Distinguished Professor, and Chancellor's Professor at the University of California-Irvine, is an American critical theorist, performance theorist, and Shakespeare scholar who developed the combined sociopolitical theory, performance aesthetics, and research methodology known as transversal poetics. He is also a playwright, director, performer, and cofounder of the Transversal Theater Company, an Amsterdam-based collective of American and European artists, which has produced a number of his works. Reynolds received his bachelor's degree in English Lite...

#4367

Sarah Micklem

#124488

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Sarah Micklem is the author of the best-selling fantasy novel, Firethorn. She began writing after many years as a graphic designer and spent fourteen years working for Time Warner, designing for a children's magazine in New York City. She wrote Firethorn while working as the art director for the magazine. The second part of the trilogy is titled Wildfire. She is the second daughter of three children, of a schoolteacher father and an activist mother. She received her high school G.E.D and graduated from Princeton University. She lives with her husband, poet and playwright Cornelius Eady, in New...

#4368

Khady Sylla

#44809

Overall Influence

1963 - 2013 (50 years)

Khady Sylla was a Senegalese writer of two novels, short work, and filmmaker. Life Born in Dakar, she studied at the École Normale Supérieure where she became interested in a literary career. She later became one of a small number of African women film makers. Her An Open Window won a first film prize at the Marseille Festival of Documentary Film . She was one of several Senegalese filmmakers mentored by French ethnologist Jean Rouch. She was the older sister of the filmmaker Mariama Sylla, with whom she co-directed the film Une simple parole.

#4369

Hans Georg Beck

#89006

Overall Influence

1910 - 1999 (89 years)

Hans-Georg Beck FBA was a German scholar, specializing in Byzantine studies. Biography He was born in Schneizlreuth, Bavaria in 1910. In 1929 he graduated from high school in Ettal. In 1930 he entered the Ludwig-Maximilian University, where in 1936 he defended his doctoral thesis in theology, "Vorhersehung und Vorherbestimmung in der theologischen Literatur der Byzantiner" , which was published in Rome the following year as volume 114 of the Orientalia Christiana Analecta series. In 1949 he defended his habilitated work "Theodoros Metochites. Die Krise des byzantinischen Weltbildes im 14. Jahrhundert" .

#4370

Bill Burgwinkle

#95538

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

William E. Burgwinkle is a UK-based American medievalist and French scholar. He is an emeritus professor in medieval French and Occitan literature at King's College, Cambridge, an emeritus fellow at King's College, and a former president of the Society for French Studies.

#4371

Tauno Frans Mustanoja

#105575

Overall Influence

1912 - 1996 (84 years)

Tauno Frans Mustanoja was a professor of English Philology and Literature at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He was a philologist and scholar of Medieval and Middle English. He was also a major influence in initiating what became the widespread study and use of the English language in Finland.

#4372

Robin Truth Goodman

#94372

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Robin Truth Goodman is a professor of Literature at Florida State University. Trained as a comparatist and as a scholar in postcolonial studies, Goodman specializes in the issues of critical pedagogy, feminism, and postcolonial theory. A cult following has been developing around her second book, Strange Love: Or How We Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Market, which was one of the earliest titles on the cultures of neoliberalism. One of her books, World, Class, Women was considered a "pathbreaking book" that "examines how theory and literature can be used to reclaim feminism, schooling, an...

#4373

Barry Beckham

#52960

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Barry Earl Beckham is an American playwright and novelist. Biography Beckham was born in 1944 in Philadelphia to Clarence and Mildred Beckham. At the age of nine, he moved with his mother to a Black neighborhood in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He graduated from Atlantic City High School and in 1962 he entered Brown University as one of only eight Black students in the freshman year and one of three black graduates in 1966.

#4374

Tara Ison

#104677

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Tara Ison is an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist. She is the author of three novels: Rockaway , The List , and A Child out of Alcatraz , which was a Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A collection of essays, Reeling Through Life: How I Learned To Live, Love & Die at the Movies, was published by Soft Skull Press in January 2015, and was the winner of the 2015 PEN Southwest Award for Creative Nonfiction. Her short story collection, Ball, was published by Soft Skull Press in Fall 2015. She received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 2020 in support of ...

#4375

Mel Smith

#41259

Overall Influence

1952 - 2013 (61 years)

Melvyn Kenneth Smith was an English comedian, actor and filmmaker. He worked on the sketch comedy shows Not the Nine O'Clock News and Alas Smith and Jones with his comedy partner, Griff Rhys Jones. Smith and Jones founded Talkback, which grew to be one of the United Kingdom's largest producers of television comedy and light entertainment programming.

#4376

Steve Niles

#81971

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Steve Niles is an American comic book author and novelist, known for works such as 30 Days of Night, Criminal Macabre: A Cal McDonald Mystery, Simon Dark, Mystery Society, and Batman: Gotham County Line.

#4377

John Matthias

#95806

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

John E. Matthias is an American poet living in South Bend, Indiana and an emeritus faculty member at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of more than fourteen books of poetry and is the subject of two scholarly books. John Matthias served as the co-editor of an international literary journal, Notre Dame Review, for twenty years.

#4378

Kinky Friedman

#51997

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Richard Samet "Kinky" Friedman is an American singer, songwriter, novelist, humorist, politician, and former columnist for Texas Monthly who styles himself in the mold of popular American satirists Will Rogers and Mark Twain.

#4379

Kim Paffenroth

#69945

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Kim Paffenroth is an American religious scholar, professor, and contemporary American horror author, best known for his Bram Stoker Award-winning book Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero’s Visions of Hell on Earth.

#4380

Domenicangela Lina Unali

Domenicangela Lina Unali

#45023

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Domenicangela Lina Unali has been professor of English literature at the Faculty of Letters, University of Rome Tor Vergata since 1983. Previously, from 1969 to 1982, she taught at the University of Cagliari. She was Secretary and Treasurer of AISNA in the years 1971-1973.

#4381

Shotaro Ishinomori

Shotaro Ishinomori

#56457

Overall Influence

1938 - 1998 (60 years)

Shotaro Ishinomori was a Japanese manga artist who became an influential figure in manga, anime, and , creating several immensely popular long-running series such as Cyborg 009, the Super Sentai series , and the Kamen Rider series. He was twice awarded by the Shogakukan Manga Awards, in 1968 for Sabu to Ichi Torimono Hikae and in 1988 for Hotel and Manga Nihon Keizai Nyumon. He was born as Shotaro Onodera in Tome, Miyagi, and was also known as Shotaro Ishimori prior to 1986, when he changed his family name to Ishinomori by adding the character in katakana.

#4382

Karl Kesel

#70403

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Karl Kesel is an American comics writer and inker whose works have primarily been under contract for DC Comics. He is a member of Periscope Studio and is best known for his collaborations with fellow artist Tom Grummett on The Adventures of Superman, Superboy, and Section Zero, as well as the first Harley Quinn comic title.

#4383

Marcia Douglas

#110948

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Marcia Douglas is a novelist, poet, and performer. Life and education Douglas was born in the United Kingdom to Jamaican parents. Her family returned to Jamaica when Douglas was six, and she grew up in Kingston.

#4384

William J. Bell

William J. Bell

#68893

Overall Influence

1927 - 2005 (78 years)

William Joseph Bell was an American screenwriter and television producer, best known as the creator of the soap operas Another World, The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful. Early life Bell was born and raised in Chicago as an only child. His father was an accountant for the Link-Belt Company. His mother was primarily a homemaker, with a part-time job with Mrs. Steven's Candies. Bell grew up listening to radio soap operas when he came home from school for lunch and late at night, including Life Can Be Beautiful, The Romance of Helen Trent and Our Gal Sunday. As a depression-era child, he would work at various odd jobs on weekends to help the family.

#4385

Sally Hobart Alexander

#96870

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Sally Hobart Alexander is an American writer of children's literature. She is best known for her books about her experiences as a blind person. Early life and education Sally Hobart was born in Owensboro, Kentucky, the daughter of Robert Hobart and Kate Hobart. She graduated from Hazelton High School, and Bucknell University. She earned a master's degree in social work at the University of Pittsburgh.

#4386

Daniel Chacón

#97955

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (125 years)

Daniel Chacón is a Chicano short story writer, novelist, essayist, editor, professor, and radio host based in El Paso, Texas. He chairs the University of Texas, El Paso's creative writing graduate program, the country's only bilingual MFA program. He founded the Chicano Writers and Artists Association with Fresno State classmate and close friend Andrés Montoya in 1985.

#4387

Yordan Eftimov

#127399

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Yordan Eftimov is a poet, writer and literary critic based in Sofia, Bulgaria. He has six poetry books awarded with national literary prizes. First of them, Metametaphysics , won the National Debut Prize.

#4388

Valentine Vallis

#79882

Overall Influence

1916 - 2009 (93 years)

Valentine Thomas Vallis was a Queensland poet, lecturer and opera critic. Early life Vallis was born in Gladstone, Queensland on 1 August 1916. His father, Michael was a fisherman and wharf worker. Vallis wrote of his father, mother Daisy and siblings in a number of his poems. After attending Gladstone State School and studying secretarial work at Rockhampton High School , Vallis became a clerk in the Gladstone Town Council. Throughout his childhood he had been an avid reader with a love for poetry. His extended family introduced him to opera. He enlisted in the Australian Army in 1940 and wo...

#4389

Choi Suchol

#116122

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Choi Suchol is a Korean author. Life Choi Suchol was born on May 13, 1958, in Chuncheon, Gangwon-do. After attending Chuncheon High School, Choi received undergraduate and graduate degrees in French Literature from Seoul National University. His doctoral dissertation was on the writings of Michel Butor. He debuted in 1981 by winning the New Spring Literary Contest sponsored by the Chosun Ilbo with his story “Blindspot” . He has also taught Creative Writing at Hanshin University.

#4390

Migdalia Cruz

#62486

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Migdalia Cruz is a writer of plays, musical theatre and opera in the U.S. and has been translated into Spanish, French, Arabic, Greek, and Turkish. Her works have been produced in venues as diverse as Playwrights Horizons in New York City, the Old Red Lion Theatre in London, Miracle Theatre in Portland, Oregon, Ateneo Puertorriqueño in San Juan, the National Theatre of Greece in Athens, and Houston Grand Opera. Other venues around the world include: Mabou Mines, Classic Stage Company, INTAR, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Monarch Theater, En-Garde Arts, HOME, Shaliko Company, New York Shakespeare Festival's Festival Latino, Theatre For The New City, and the W.O.W.

#4391

Marilyn Krysl

#98809

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Marilyn Krysl is an American writer of short stories and poetry who is known for her quirky and witty storytelling. She has published four short story collections along with seven collections of poetry. She has won several awards for her work, including the 2008 Richard Sullivan Prize for short fiction for her collection of short stories, Dinner With Osama, which is a sociopolitical satire of post-9/11 America. Krysl also submits work to The Atlantic journal, The Nation journal, and The New Republic journal, as well as being an editor of Many Mountains Moving: A Literary Journal of Diverse, ...

#4392

Martha Bayles

#79846

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Martha Bayles is an American author, critic, and professor. She has written widely on the arts, media, cultural policy, and U.S. public diplomacy. Bayles's essays and reviews have appeared in many national and international publications, including the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, Newsweek, Boston Globe, Atlantic Monthly, and The New Republic. She is a former TV and arts critic for the Wall Street Journal and a regular contributor to the Boston Globe, Weekly Standard, and Claremont Review of Books. She is also an educator, having taught at Harvard University, Claremont McKenna College, and Boston College.

#4393

Leroy Searle

#76542

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Leroy Searle is a distinguished professor of English and comparative literature at University of Washington, author, musician, and poet. His lifelong areas of study are American literature, history and theory of criticism, modernism, European and comparative romanticism, music arrangement and performance, photography, intellectual history and philosophy, and computer science. Specifically, Searle explores, and has published works on, philosophers such as Aristotle, Plato, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kant, and Charles Sanders Peirce. He also specializes in notable American authors such as Henry J...

#4394

Florența Albu

#111172

Overall Influence

1934 - 2000 (66 years)

Florența Albu was a Romanian poet. Biography She was born in Floroaica, Călărași County. She studied at the Gheorghe Șincai High School in Bucharest from 1948 to 1952, and then pursued her studies at the Faculty of Philology of the University of Bucharest, from 1952 to 1957. She worked at the newspaper Scînteia tineretului from 1963 to 1965; and the journal Viața Românească from 1965 to 1995.

#4395

Joyce Ackroyd

#79445

Overall Influence

1918 - 1991 (73 years)

Joyce Irene Ackroyd, was an Australian academic, translator, author and editor. She was a scholar of Japanese language and literature. Early life Ackroyd apparently acquired an interest Japan during her childhood, but she was not permitted to study Japanese at the University of Sydney on a teacher’s scholarship in 1936 because there was insufficient demand for Japanese in secondary schools. She graduated with honours in English and history and a major in mathematics . Ackroyd studied Japanese part-time at the University of Sydney while teaching mathematics at a Sydney boys’ school. In 1944 she began teaching Japanese at the Royal Australian Air Force language school in Sydney.

#4396

Debora Greger

#99355

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Debora Greger is an American poet as well as a visual artist. She was raised in Richland, Washington. She attended the University of Washington and then the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She then went on to hold fellowships at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She was professor of English and creative writing at the University of Florida until retiring.> She now works as Poet in Residence at the Harn Museum of Art.

#4397

Bronwyn Lea

#100706

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Bronwyn Lea is a contemporary Australian poet, academic and editor. Biography Born in Tasmania, Lea grew up in Queensland and Papua New Guinea, moving to San Diego to study at California State University. She completed a PhD titled "The way into stone; To dwell in possibility: Social roles of the poet" at University of Queensland in 2005 and as of 2021 is a full professor and head of the School of Communication and Arts at UQ.

#4398

Jane Shore

#81171

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Jane Shore is an American poet. Life She graduated from Goddard College, and moved from Vermont to the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1972, where she was a student of Elizabeth Bishop.

#4399

José Vicente Anaya

José Vicente Anaya

#94097

Overall Influence

1947 - 2020 (73 years)

José Vicente Anaya was a Mexican writer, poet and cultural journalist. Anaya was born on January 22, 1947, in Villa Coronado, Chihuahua, Mexico. He wrote over thirty books and was part of the Infrarealism poetry movement in Mexico City. He also translated poems of Allen Ginsberg and Carl Sandburg.

#4400

Ethyle R. Wolfe

#65751

Overall Influence

1919 - 2010 (91 years)

Ethyle Renee Wolfe was an American classics professor who taught at Brooklyn College. During her many years at the college, she developed the Humanities Institute and was awarded the Charles Frankel Prize in 1990.

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