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).
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List of the most influential people in Literature,
#4501
Michael McFee
#94078
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Michael McFee is a poet and essayist from Asheville, North Carolina. Career McFee earned his B.A. and M.A. from UNC-Chapel Hill. He left graduate school to work a variety of jobs—editorial assistant, librarian, and freelance journalist among them—while he completed his first book. After it was published, he taught part-time at N.C. State University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. In the late 1980s, McFee was poet-in-residence at Cornell University and also at Lawrence University. He began teaching at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1990, where he is now Professor of English in the Creative Writing Program.
Go to Profile#4502
Moses I. Finley
#136584
Overall Influence
#4503
Moon Deoksu
#104962
Overall Influence
1928 - 2020 (92 years)
Moon Deoksu was a South Korean poet. Life Moon Deoksu was born December 8, 1928 in Haman South Gyeongsang Province, Korea. Moon graduated from Hongik University, attended Tsukuba University, and graduate school at Korea University, resulting in a Ph.D. in Literature. He worked for the Magazine, Shidan and served in many organizations including as President of the Poetry Second of the Korean Literature Association; President of the Modern Poet's Association; Vice Director of the Korean Literature Association; Director, Vice President, and President of the Korean branch of P.E.N.; Representativ...
Go to Profile#4504
Michael Sheringham
#87681
Overall Influence
1948 - 2016 (68 years)
Michael Hugh Tempest Sheringham FBA was Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature at the University of Oxford from 2004 until his retirement in 2015. He had previously acted a lecturer at University of Kent and University of Ulster
Go to Profile#4505
Mercedes Arriaga Flórez
#111837
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Mercedes Arriaga Flórez is a Spanish philologist. Full professor in Italian philology at the University of Seville , with a degree on Italian philology from the University of Salamanca and modern and contemporary Italian Writings by the University of Bari . She achieved her first PhD at the University of Seville in 1993 and the second in language sciences and theory of signs from the University of Bari in 1995. Nowadays, she holds a chair at the Asociación Universitaria de Estudios de las Mujeres . From 2012, she is also a member of the board of the Sociedad Española de Italianistas .
Go to Profile#4506
Kenichi Yamakawa
#103465
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Kenichi Yamakawa is a Japanese author and rock musician. Books Kagami no Naka no Glass no Fune Suishoh no Yoru Rolling KidsRockn'roll GamesMacintosh High Albums Backstreet
Go to Profile#4507
Theodore Weiss
#86685
Overall Influence
1916 - 2003 (87 years)
Theodore Russell Weiss was an American poet, and literary magazine editor. Life He graduated from Muhlenberg College in 1938 and Columbia University in 1940. He was an instructor at the University of Maryland, College Park, the University of North Carolina, Yale University, and Bard College. He taught at Princeton University, until retirement in 1987.
Go to Profile#4508
Maureen Seaton
#81712
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Maureen Seaton is an American LGBTQ poet, activist, and professor emeritus of English/Creative Writing at the University of Miami. She is the author of fourteen solo books of poetry, thirteen co-authored books of poetry, and her memoir, Sex Talks to Girls. Throughout her writing career, Seaton has often collaborated with fellow poets Denise Duhamel, Neil de la Flor, Kristine Snodgrass, Samuel Ace, Aaron Smith, Nicole Tallman, Carolina Hospital, Nicole Hospital-Medina, and Holly Iglesias.
Go to Profile#4509
Yi In-hwa
#99144
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Yi In-hwa is a South Korean writer, literary critic and professor. Life Yi was born Lyou Chul-gyun in Daegu in 1966. When young, he was inspired by his father, a professor of Korean Language and Literature at Kyungpook National University, to become a novelist one day. During his high school years, Yi won awards for various national creative writing competitions. However, after entering college, he changed his career path to become a literary critic. There, he made his debut in 1988 with a critical essay called “Study of Yang Guija” which was published in Literature and Society, a Korean quarterly literary magazine.
Go to Profile#4510
Nenad Veličković
#61915
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Nenad Veličković is a Bosnian writer and playwright. He lives in Sarajevo. Recent activity In 2017, Nenad Veličković has signed the Declaration on the Common Language of the Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks and Montenegrins.
Go to Profile#4511
Catherine Cusset
#75533
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Catherine Cusset is a best-selling French novelist and the author of Life of David Hockney: A Novel , The Story of Jane , and 12 other novels published by Éditions Gallimard between 1990 and 2018. Some of her novels are described as autofiction, a French literary movement that is a hybrid of fiction and autobiography. Others are more romantic, but all share some recurring themes: the family, desire, and cultural conflicts between France and America. She stands out from her contemporaries with a direct, incisive, visual form of writing, marked by the influence of Anglo-Saxon novelists. ...
Go to Profile#4512
Adib Khan
#84674
Overall Influence
Adib Khan is an Australian novelist of Bangladeshi origin. He moved to Australia in 1973 and obtained an MA from Monash University in 1976. He taught creative writing at Ballarat University, and in 2007 returned to Monash to pursue a PhD.
Go to Profile#4513
Nasrin Rahimieh
#61558
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Nasrin Rahimieh is an Iranian-born American literary critic, editor, and educator. Rahimieh is the Howard Baskerville Professor of Humanities in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Director of the Humanities Core program at the University of California, Irvine .
Go to Profile#4514
Peter Everwine
#105323
Overall Influence
1930 - 2018 (88 years)
Peter Paul Everwine was an American poet. Life Born on February 14, 1930, in Detroit, Michigan, Everwine grew up in western Pennsylvania, and was educated in the Midwest. In 1962, he joined Philip Levine, on the faculty of Fresno State University. He retired from there in 1992.
Go to Profile#4515
Simona Škrabec
#61873
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Simona Škrabec is a Slovene literary critic, essayist and translator who lives and works in Barcelona. She spent her childhood in the small town of Ribnica in the region of Lower Carniola. She has lived in Barcelona since 1992. Skrabec has translated several books from Slovenian to Catalan and from Catalan to Slovenian. In addition to these two languages, she is fluent in Spanish, Serbo-Croatian, German, English and French.
Go to Profile#4516
David Bromige
#96767
Overall Influence
1933 - 2009 (76 years)
David Mansfield Bromige was a Canadian-American poet who resided in northern California from 1962 onward. Bromige published thirty books, many so different from one another as to appear to be the work of a different author. Associated in his youth with the New American Poetry and especially with Robert Duncan and Robert Creeley, Bromige is sometimes associated with the language poets, but this connection is based more on his close friendships with some of those poets, and their admiration for his work. It is difficult to fit Bromige into a slot. He departs from language poetry in the themati...
Go to Profile#4517
Robert W. Corrigan
#70323
Overall Influence
1927 - 1993 (66 years)
Robert Willoughby Corrigan was an American academic and the founding editor of the Carleton Drama Review, which later became TDR: The Drama Review. Robert Willoughby Corrigan was born in Portage, Wisconsin, on 23 September 1927. His father was an Episcopal bishop. The younger Corrigan earned a bachelor's degree at Cornell University in 1950, followed by a master's degree from Johns Hopkins University two years later. In 1955, Corrigan completed a doctorate in comparative literature from the University of Minnesota. He founded the Carleton Drama Review later that year shortly after joining the faculty of Carleton College.
Go to Profile#4518
Greg Williamson
#111451
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Greg Williamson is an American poet. He is most known for the invention of the "Double Exposure" form in which one poem can be read three different ways: solely the standard type, solely the bold type in alternating lines, or the combination of the two.
Go to Profile#4519
Nicola Monaghan
#96607
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Nicola Monaghan is an English novelist and author of The Killing Jar, Starfishing and The Okinawa Dragon. She grew up in Nottingham, England, and gave up a career in finance to pursue an MA in creative writing at Nottingham Trent University.
Go to Profile#4520
Angela Hur
#111256
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Angela Mi Young Hur is a Korean American writer based in Sweden. Her debut novel, The Queens of K-Town, was published in 2007 by MacAdam/Cage. Her second novel, Folklorn, is forthcoming from Erewhon in 2021.
Go to Profile#4521
Barnita Bagchi
#69128
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Barnita Bagchi is a Bengali-speaking Indian feminist advocate, historian, and literary scholar. She is a faculty member in literary studies at Utrecht University, and was previously at the Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata at the University of Calcutta. She was educated at Jadavpur University, in Kolkata, St Hilda's College, Oxford, and at the Trinity College, Cambridge.
Go to Profile#4522
Laynie Browne
#104449
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Laynie Browne is an American poet. Her work explores notions of silence and the invisible, through the re-contextualization of poetic forms, such as sonnets , tales , letters , psalms and others. Life Laynie Browne received her M.F.A. from Brown University in 1990. She was a member of the Subtext collective, Seattle, and The Ear Inn in New York City.
Go to Profile#4523
Sudhir Chakraborty
#58244
Overall Influence
1934 - 2020 (86 years)
Sudhir Chakravarti was a Bengali educationist and essayist. He made a vast contribution in Bengal's folk culture development and research. Chakravarti had completely changed the style of colonial prose with his new narrative style. He successfully had replaced the prevailing idea of essay-based writing being something of heavy scholarly matter with his graceful and humorous prose language.
Go to Profile#4524
Geoffrey Douglas
#117436
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Geoffrey Douglas is an American author and journalist and former adjunct professor of writing at the University of Massachusetts/Lowell. His most recent nonfiction book is "The Grifter, The Poet, and The Runaway Train," a collection of his stories in Yankee Magazine. Other books include The Game of Their Lives , about the 1950 FIFA World Cup soccer match between the United States and England2005200819941992
Go to Profile#4525
John Morrison
#99777
Overall Influence
1904 - 1998 (94 years)
John Gordon Morrison was a British-born Australian novelist and short story writer. Life John Morrison was born in Sunderland, England on 29 January 1904. His interest in flora and the natural world saw him begin work at the Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens at the age of 14. After two and a half years there he went to work as a learner-gardener for a wealthy shipowner at East Boldon
Go to Profile#4526
Damien Wilkins
#91914
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Damien Wilkins is a New Zealand novelist, short story writer, and poet. He is the director of the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington. Life He was graduated from Victoria University of Wellington in 1984. He was assistant editor at Victoria University Press in 1988. He graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with an MFA. Since 1992 he has been a writing tutor in Wellington, New Zealand. His notable doctoral students have included Pip Adam, Michalia Arathimos, and Gigi Fenster.
Go to Profile#4527
Fusanosuke Natsume
#88179
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
is a Japanese columnist and cartoonist. Born in Tokyo to Jun'ichi Natsume, eldest son of novelist Natsume Sōseki, he attended Aoyama Gakuin University, where he graduated in 1973. He was awarded the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize in 1999 for excellence in criticism of manga.
Go to Profile#4528
Im Cheolu
#116116
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Lim Chul-Woo is a South Korean writer born in 1954, known for his subversive works. Life Im Chul-woo was born October 15, 1954, on Wando Island in Jeollanam-do. He moved to Gwangju at age 10 and attended Sung-il High School there. He graduated from Jeonnam University with a degree in English Literature and completed graduate programs in English Literature at both Sogang University and Jeonnam University. Presently, he teaches Creative Writing at Hanshin University. Im was in Gwangju during the Gwangju Uprising and this critically influenced his outlook. His work has centered around dramatiz...
Go to Profile#4529
Rolando Hinojosa-Smith
#96513
Overall Influence
1929 - 2022 (93 years)
Romeo Rolando Hinojosa-Smith was an American novelist, essayist, poet and the Ellen Clayton Garwood professor in the English Department at the University of Texas at Austin. He was noted for authoring the Klail City Death Trip series of 15 novels written over several decades.
Go to Profile#4530
Elizabeth Arnold
#93479
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Elizabeth Arnold is an American poet. She graduated from University of Chicago, with a PhD. She teaches at the University of Maryland. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Slate, TriQuarterly, Conjunctions, Antioch Review, Chicago Review, Sagetrieb, Literary Imagination, Gulf Coast, The Carolina Review, Tikkun, Pequod, Smartish Pace, Poetry Daily, Kalliope, and Shankpain.
Go to Profile#4531
L. Luis Lopez
#91331
Overall Influence
L. Luis Lopez is an American poet. Life Lopez graduated from Spring Hill College, from St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico with an MA, and from the University of New Mexico with a PhD. He taught high school in Tampa, Florida, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and in Grand Junction, Colorado. At the university level, he taught in the Academic Honors Program at the University of New Mexico and at Mesa State College.
Go to Profile#4532
Anthony Joseph
#125587
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Anthony Joseph FRSL is a British/Trinidadian poet, novelist, musician and academic. In 2023, he was awarded the T. S. Eliot Prize for his book Sonnets for Albert. Biography Joseph was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, where he was raised by his grandparents. He began writing as a young child and cites his main influences as calypso, surrealism, jazz, the spiritual Baptist church that his grandparents attended, and the rhythms of Caribbean speech. Joseph has lived in the United Kingdom since 1989.
Go to Profile#4533
Walter Wangerin Jr.
#78111
Overall Influence
1944 - 2021 (77 years)
Walter Wangerin Jr. was an American author and educator best known for his religious novels and children's books. Biography Wangerin was born in Portland, Oregon, where his father was a Lutheran pastor. He was the oldest of seven children. The family moved often, so Walter grew up in various locations including Shelton, Washington, Chicago, Illinois, Grand Forks, North Dakota, Edmonton, Alberta, Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Fort Wayne, Indiana. In 1968, he attained an M.A. in English literature from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. He went on to study at Concordia Seminary and Christ Seminary-Seminex, both in St.
Go to Profile#4534
Martin Camaj
#46332
Overall Influence
1925 - 1992 (67 years)
Martin Camaj was an Albanian folklorist, linguist, poet, and writer. He is regarded as one of the major authors of modern Albanian prose. His novel Rrathë is considered to be the first psychological novel written in Albanian.
Go to Profile#4535
Takashi Tachibana
#102385
Overall Influence
1940 - 2021 (81 years)
Takashi Tachibana was a Japanese journalist. He was known for his articles on Japanese social problems. History Tachibana graduated from the University of Tokyo, majoring in French literature. At one point he served in the magazine Bungeishunjū, however, he only worked there for two years, quitting after being assigned to write articles about professional baseball. He returned to school at Tokyo University, during which time he wrote numerous nonfiction articles for the magazine Shokun!. Among the articles were ones on topics such as the Scientific Revolution, space travel, and crude oil. Beca...
Go to Profile#4536
Michal Peprník
#119103
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Michal Peprník is a professor at Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic. He is the Head of the Literature Section, and the Secretary of The Czech and Slovak Association for American Studies. He is also the chief coordinator of the international Olomouc Colloquium of American Studies. He taught Czech literature courses at the Department of Slavonic Languages & Literatures at the University of Glasgow in 1992-1993 and habilitated in 2003. His main fields of research include American Romanticism, concepts of space and metamorphosis , the myths of the West, and the literature of the Fantasti...
Go to Profile#4537
Robert Bingham
#81856
Overall Influence
1966 - 1999 (33 years)
Robert Worth Bingham IV was an American writer and a founding editor of the Open City Magazine. Early life A member of a wealthy family from Louisville, Kentucky, his great-grandfather was the politician and newspaper publisher Robert Worth Bingham, and his grandfather, Barry Bingham, Sr., went into the family newspaper businesses as an editor and publisher. Bingham's father, Robert Worth Bingham III , who also worked in the family business and was expected to take over, was killed aged 34 in a car accident while on vacation at Cape Cod in 1966, when his son was only three months old.
Go to Profile#4538
Karen J. Greenberg
#45045
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Karen Joy Greenberg is an American historian, professor, and author. She is Director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University School of Law. Life and career Greenberg earned a B.A. in history from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in history from Yale University.
Go to Profile#4539
Marcus Cafagna
#105862
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Marcus Cafagña is an American poet and professor. He is author of two poetry collections, most recently, Roman Fever , and has published poems published in literary journals and magazines including AGNI, Witness, and Poetry Magazine, and in anthologies.
Go to Profile#4540
James Fenton
#97330
Overall Influence
1931 - 2021 (90 years)
James Fenton was a linguist and poet who wrote in Ulster Scots. Biography He grew up in Drumdarragh and in Ballinaloob, County Antrim. His home language of childhood was Ulster Scots. Educated at Stranmillis College in Belfast, and later Queen's University, he became a teacher at schools in Belfast.
Go to Profile#4541
Aaron Shurin
#106480
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Aaron Shurin is an American poet, essayist, and educator. He is the former director of the Master of Fine Arts in Writing Program at the University of San Francisco, where he is now Professor Emeritus.
Go to Profile#4542
Takayuki Kiyooka
#137771
Overall Influence
1922 - 2006 (84 years)
was a Japanese poet and novelist. He was born in Dalian, China, while it was Japan's leased territory, spent his youth there, and is noted for his stories about the life in Dalian. He received the Akutagawa Prize in 1969, for his story, Dalian of Acasia Flowers.
Go to Profile#4543
Salvador Oliva i Llinàs
#137806
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Salvador Oliva i Llinàs is a translator, poet, and retired university professor. He received a licentiate in romance philology and a doctorate in Catalan philology from the University of Barcelona. He was a professor at the University of Girona for forty years until, in 2013, he retired as the Chair of Catalan Philology.
Go to Profile#4544
Bahira Abdulatif
#102889
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Bahira Abdulatif Yasin is an Iraqi writer, translator and professor living in Madrid. She's an associate professor at Autonomous University of Madrid's Arabic and Islamic Studies department. An expert in Spanish philology, Abdulatif has also served in the Faculty of Languages at the University of Baghdad. She came to Madrid after United Nations imposed Sanctions against Iraq following its invasion of Kuwait in 1990. She has also taught at Complutense University of Madrid, University of Salamanca and written fictional works in Arabic.
Go to Profile#4545
Ruth Vanita
#75393
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Ruth Vanita is an Indian academic, activist and author who specialises in British and Indian literary history with a focus on gender and sexuality studies. She also teaches and writes on Hindu philosophy.
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Johan Snapper
#131571
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Johan Pieter Snapper , is emeritus Queen Beatrix Professor of Dutch Language, Literature and Culture at the University of California, Berkeley He is known as a literary critic and champion of Dutch culture in the United States. His current research is on the role of the Protestant churches in the Netherlands during WW II.
Go to Profile#4547
Eugene Gloria
#103081
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Eugene Gloria is a Filipino-born American poet. Life Eugene Gloria was born in Manila, Philippines in 1957 and raised in San Francisco, California. He attended St. Agnes School in the Haight-Ashbury and St. Ignatius College Preparatory. He earned a B.A. from San Francisco State University, M.A. from Miami University, and MFA from University of Oregon. He is the John Rabb Emison Professor of Creative and Performing Arts and Professor of English at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana where he teaches creative writing and English literature. He served as the Bowling Green State University College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Visiting Writer for the 2013 spring semester.
Go to Profile#4548
Carlos Noguera
#104421
Overall Influence
1943 - 2015 (72 years)
Carlos Noguera was a Venezuelan writer and psychologist. Biography He graduated from the Central University of Venezuela, was the president of Monte Ávila Editores between 2003 until his death. He has written as much poetry as stories, and is the winner of various prizes, such as the National Prize for Literature in 2003, and the National Fiction Award from the National Council of Culture in 1994. His works have been translated into 3 languages, and he has also written essays about psychology. His novels include Historias de la calle Lincoln , Juegos bajo la Luna , which was made into a movie in 2000 by the Mexican film director Mauricio Walerstein, and La flor escrita .
Go to Profile#4549
Virginia Hamilton Adair
#66610
Overall Influence
1913 - 2004 (91 years)
Virginia Hamilton Adair was an American poet who became famous later in life with the 1996 publication of Ants on the Melon. Background Mary Virginia Hamilton was born in the Bronx and raised in Montclair, New Jersey. She attended Montclair Kimberley Academy, graduating in the class of 1929. She disliked the name "Mary" and dropped it as a young adult. Adair composed her first poem at the age of two; after that, she wrote over a thousand poems. Exposed to poetry as a young child through her father, she began writing her own poems regularly at age six. More than seventy were published in journ...
Go to Profile#4550
Marilyn Sides
#96316
Overall Influence
Marilyn Sides is an American writer and a senior lecturer in the English Department of Wellesley College, Massachusetts where she teaches creative writing and literature courses. Her collection of short stories, The Island of the Mapmaker's Wife and Other Tales , was published in 1996. The title story was selected to appear in the 1990 O. Henry Prize Stories collection and inspired the 2001 British-Dutch feature film The Island of the Mapmaker's Wife by Michie Gleason. Her first novel, The Genius of Affection , appeared in 1999.
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