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.

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List of the most influential people in Literature,

#4601

John Cameron Bryce

#91441

Overall Influence

1909 - 2001 (92 years)

John Cameron Bryce was a Scottish academic, first Bradley Professor of English Literature in the University of Glasgow and editor of The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith.

#4602

Agop Melkonyan

#73590

Overall Influence

1949 - 2006 (57 years)

Agop Melkonyan was a Bulgarian writer of Armenian descent. He is best known as an author of science fiction short stories and novels. He was also a translator, journalist, editor and scholar. Melkonyan popularized in Bulgaria recent discoveries in physics, astronomy and mechanics. His literary influence spread mainly through such Bulgarian periodical editions as Orbita, Omega and Varkolak.

#4603

Jill Jones

#98914

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Jill Jones is a poet and writer from Sydney, Australia. She is a senior lecturer at the University of Adelaide. Career In 1993 Jones won the Mary Gilmore Prize for her first book of poetry, The Mask and the Jagged Star . Her third book, The Book of Possibilities , was published in 1997. It was shortlisted for the National Book Council 'Banjo' Awards and the Adelaide Festival Awards.

#4604

Phil Jimenez

#92026

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Phil Jimenez is an American comics artist and writer known for his work as writer/artist on Wonder Woman from 2000 to 2003, as one of the five pencilers of the 2005–2006 miniseries Infinite Crisis, his collaborations with writer Grant Morrison on New X-Men and The Invisibles, and his artistry for his 2021 critically acclaimed partnership with writer Kelly Sue DeConnick on Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons.

#4605

Dez Skinn

#74385

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Derek "Dez" Skinn is a British comic and magazine editor, and author of a number of books on comics. As head of Marvel Comics' operations in England in the late 1970s, Skinn reformatted existing titles, launched new ones, and acquired the BBC license for Doctor Who Weekly. After leaving Marvel UK, Skinn founded and edited Warrior, which featured key works by Alan Moore.

#4606

Ben Miller

#47935

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Bennet Evan Miller is an English actor, comedian, and author. He rose to fame as one half of the comedy duo Armstrong and Miller. Miller is also known for playing the lead role of DI Richard Poole in the first two series of the BBC crime drama Death in Paradise, and for portraying James Lester in the ITV science-fiction series Primeval.

#4607

Jaime Martínez Tolentino

#108029

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Jaime Martínez Tolentino is a Puerto Rican writer. Early life and education At the age of four, Martinez Tolentino contracted polio, which has left him crippled. In 1951, he and his family emigrated to New York City where he lived until 1966. He attended New York University where he majored in French and French literature, while also studying Spanish literature and German. As an undergraduate he participated actively in the theater.

#4608

Bruce Hainley

#81621

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Bruce Hainley is an American critic, writer and poet. He is the professor of Criticism and Theory at the MFA program at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, and the Roski School of Fine Arts, University of Southern California. In 2021, he was made Chair of the Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts at Rice University. He is a contributing editor at Artforum and Frieze.

#4609

Emma Smith

#81748

Overall Influence

1923 - 2018 (95 years)

Emma Smith was an English novelist, who also wrote for children and published two volumes of autobiography. She gave encouragement to Laurie Lee while he was writing his bestselling memoir of his childhood, Cider with Rosie.

#4610

R. P. Winnington-Ingram

#101943

Overall Influence

1904 - 1993 (89 years)

Reginald Pepys Winnington-Ingram, was a British classicist, an authority on Greek tragedy and ancient Greek music. Life Reginald Pepys Winnington-Ingram was born in Sherborne, Dorset on 22 January 1904, the son of Rear admiral Charles William Winnington-Ingram and his wife Ida Vera Maude . His uncle was Arthur Winnington-Ingram, the Bishop of London from 1901 to 1939.

#4611

Sarah Holland-Batt

#80672

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (44 years)

Sarah Holland-Batt is a contemporary Australian poet, critic, and academic. Early life and education Born in Southport, Queensland, Sarah Holland-Batt grew up in Australia and Denver, Colorado. She was educated at the University of Queensland, where she received First Class Honours in Literary Studies, an MPhil and PhD, and at New York University, where she was a Fulbright Scholar and attained an M.F.A.

#4612

Iryna Yevsa

#139756

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Iryna Oleksandrivna Yevsa is a Russian-language Ukrainian poet and translator. She lives in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Biography Yevsa was born into a military family in Kharkiv, Ukraine SSR. She studied in the philological faculty at the National University of Kharkiv and graduated from Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow in 1981. Following her graduation, she worked at the Book Chamber of Ukraine from 1981-1986 and began working for the company Apis in 1988. She has recently worked for the National University of Kharkiv.

#4613

David Gewanter

#83566

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

David Gewanter is an American poet. Life He teaches at Georgetown University, and lives in Washington, D. C., with his wife, writer Joy Young, and son James. His work has appeared in Ploughshares. Awards 1980: Hopwood Award, University of Michigan1989: Eisner Prize, University of California, Berkeley1990: Academy of American Poets Prize, University of California, Berkeley1994: Levinson Award, Harvard University1998: John C. Zacharis First Book Award for In the Belly1999: Witter Bynner Fellowship, Library of Congress 2002: Whiting Award2003: James Laughlin Award - finalist for The Sleep of Reas...

#4614

Amryl Johnson

#125578

Overall Influence

1944 - 2001 (57 years)

Amryl Johnson was a writer born in Trinidad who lived most of her life in Britain. Life Johnson was born in Tunapuna, Trinidad, and was brought up by her grandparents until the age of 11, when she moved to Britain to join her parents. She attended secondary school in London and went on to study British, African and Caribbean literature at the University of Kent. Much of her work concerned the diasporic nature of her life and the hostility she faced in Britain. For a time, she taught at the University of Warwick but generally supported herself by writing and performing. During the late 1980s, ...

#4615

Che Husna Azhari

#81537

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

The surname is Ches Husna; the given name is Azhari.Che Husna Azhari in Kota Bharu, Melor, Kelantan, is a Malaysian writer of literature. Biography Che Husna received a degree from Tunku Kurshiah College, Seremban in 1973, and her A Levels from Oxford College of Further Education in 1975.

#4616

Kailash Vajpeyi

Kailash Vajpeyi

#100797

Overall Influence

1936 - 2015 (79 years)

Kailash Vajpeyi was an Indian poet, writer, and lyricist who chiefly wrote Hindi language poems throughout his literary career. He wrote more than 28 books, including one of his publications Hawa Mein Hastakshar which translates to "signature in the air" for which he was awarded a literary honour Sahitya Akademi Award in 2009. The University of Lucknow awarded him Vachaspati title in recognition of his contribution to Hindi literature.

#4617

Masri Feki

#52748

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Masri Feki is a French writer, researcher in the Paris 8 University, and a specialist of the geopolitics and the Middle East who lives in Paris. He is Middle East Pact's founding president and author of numerous articles published in newspapers of the Middle East and North Africa, including Al-Seyassah , Hürriyet , Turkish Daily News , The Jerusalem Post , Al-Ahram and El Watan .

#4618

William Froug

#111515

Overall Influence

1922 - 2013 (91 years)

William Froug was an American television writer and producer. His producing credits included the series The Twilight Zone, Gilligan's Island, and Bewitched. He was a writer for, among other shows, The Dick Powell Show, Charlie's Angels, and Adventures in Paradise. He authored numerous books on screenwriting, including Screenwriting Tricks of the Trade, Zen and the Art of Screenwriting I and II, The Screenwriter Looks at The Screenwriter, and How I Escaped from Gilligan's Island: Adventures of a Hollywood Writer-Producer, published in 2005 by the University of Wisconsin Press.

#4619

Serge Gavronsky

#71016

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

Serge Gavronsky is an American poet and translator. Life Gavronsky was born in Paris. He fled Nazi-occupied France in 1940. Gavronsky received his A.B. in European History and French in 1954 from Columbia College and an M.A. in European History in 1955 and a Ph.D in European Intellectual History in 1965 from Columbia University, and is now professor emeritus in the French department at Barnard College. He lives in New York City.

#4620

Audrey Bilger

#86027

Overall Influence

Audrey Bilger is the 16th and current president of Reed College. She is former vice president and dean of the college at Pomona College and previously was a professor of literature and faculty director of the Center for Writing and Public Discourse at Claremont McKenna College.

#4621

S. L. Bhyrappa

#73402

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (95 years)

Santeshivara Lingannaiah Bhyrappa is an Indian novelist, philosopher and screenwriter who writes in Kannada. His work is popular in the state of Karnataka and he is widely regarded as one of modern India's popular novelists. His novels are unique in terms of theme, structure, and characterization. He has been among the top-selling authors in the Kannada language and his books have been translated into Hindi and Marathi which have also been sellers.

#4622

Mahmoud Hosseini Zad

Mahmoud Hosseini Zad

#120785

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Mahmoud Hosseini Zad is an Iranian translator of the contemporary German literature. He is also writer, interpreter, literature jury member and docent. In the early 70s, Hosseini Zad graduated from the university of Munich in political science. Then he came back to Iran and began to work as a translator for the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, IRIB, and also began to teach German language in the University of Tehran, Azad University, Tarbiat Modares University and language institutes in Tehran. At the same time he published two collections of short stories.

#4623

K. L. Cook

#100263

Overall Influence

K. L. Cook is an American writer from Texas. He is the author of Last Call , a collection of linked stories spanning thirty-two years in the life of a West Texas family, the novel, The Girl From Charnelle , and the short story collection, Love Songs for the Quarantined . His most recent books are a collection of short stories, Marrying Kind , a collection of poetry, Lost Soliloquies , and The Art of Disobedience: Essays on Form, Fiction, and Influence . He co-directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Environment at Iowa State University and teaches in the low-residency MFA in Writing Progr...

#4624

Danielle Dutton

#102622

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Danielle Dutton is an American writer and publisher. Early life and education Dutton was born in Visalia, California, on October 18, 1975. She received her B.A. in history from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1997, an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a PhD in English and Creative Writing from the University of Denver. During her time at DU, she served as the Associate Editor of the Denver Quarterly, under editor Bin Ramke. For several years she taught courses in the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. In 2011 she joined the MFA program in creative writing at Washington University in St.

#4625

Tom Cheesman

#63073

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Tom Cheesman is a Reader in German at Swansea University, literary critic and literary translator. Tom is Principal Investigator on the collaborative, "Version Variation Visualisation" project. which investigates digital humanities approaches to analysing re-translations. His Case Study on Translations of Shakespeare's Othello investigates by advanced technology, how and why different translations of the same original text often differ significantly from each other. At this, initial stage, the project will concentrate its investigations on works of William Shakespeare.

#4626

Jon Anderson

#99301

Overall Influence

1940 - 2007 (67 years)

Jon Victor Anderson was an American poet and educator. Early life Anderson was born on July 4, 1940, in Somerville, Massachusetts, to Henry Victor and Frances Anderson. Education Anderson earned a BS from Northeastern University and a MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa .

#4627

Mirta Arlt

#115524

Overall Influence

1923 - 2014 (91 years)

Electra Mirta Arlt was an Argentine writer, translator, professor and researcher specializing in theater. She was the daughter of the writer, Roberto Arlt. Early life and education Mirta Arlt was born in Córdoba, the daughter of Roberto Arlt and Carmen Antinucci. She married twice, first at the age of 15, and again at the age of 18. She completed her studies at National University of Córdoba in 1949, becoming a Professor of Language and Literature.

#4628

Patricia Santana

#131757

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Patricia Santana is a Latina American novelist. Life She is the eighth of nine children of Mexican immigrants. Her parents are from El Grullo, Jalisco. She graduated from University of California, San Diego, and from the University of California, Los Angeles with a master's degree in Comparative Literature.

#4629

John Reed

#64449

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

John Reed is an American novelist. He is the author of four novels: A Still Small Voice , Snowball's Chance with a preface by Alexander Cockburn, The Whole , and All the World's a Grave: A New Play by William Shakespeare . His fifth book, Tales of Woe , is a collection of twenty-five stories, chronicling true stories of abject misery.

#4630

Jay Clayton

#82322

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Jay Clayton is an American literary critic who is known for his pioneering work on the relationship between nineteenth-century culture and postmodernism. He has published influential works on Romanticism and the novel, Neo-Victorian literature, steampunk, hypertext fiction, online games, contemporary American fiction, technology in literature, and genetics in literature and film. He is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English and Director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University.

#4631

Ken Smith

#93118

Overall Influence

1938 - 2003 (65 years)

Ken Smith was a British poet. Life The son of a farm labourer, Smith had an itinerant childhood. He attended Leeds University and studied with Geoffrey Hill where fellow students included Tony Harrison and Jon Silkin.

#4632

Barry Spacks

#84771

Overall Influence

1931 - 2014 (83 years)

Barry Bernard Spacks , was a prize-winning poet, novelist and first poet laureate of Santa Barbara, California. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Spacks received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia in 1952. He served in the United States Army Signal Corps in Korea at the end of the Korean War and was honorably discharged in 1954. He later used some of his experiences in Korea for his first novel, Orphans, published in 1972. In 1956 he received his M.A. from Indiana University, Bloomington, then studied at Pembroke College, Cambridge, England, as a Fulbright scholar from 1956 to 1957.

#4633

Ellen Bass

#76349

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Ellen Bass is an American poet and author. She has won three Pushcart Prizes and a Lambda Literary Award for her 2002 book Mules of Love. She co-authored the 1991 child sexual abuse book The Courage to Heal. She received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2014 and was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2017. Bass has taught poetry at Pacific University and founded poetry programs for prison inmates.

#4634

Gabeba Baderoon

Gabeba Baderoon

#67970

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Gabeba Baderoon is a South African poet and academic. She is the 2005 recipient of the Daimler Chrysler Award for South African Poetry. She lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa, and Pennsylvania, US, and serves as an assistant professor of Women's Studies and African and African American Studies at Penn State.

#4635

Martin Walls

#82162

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Martin Walls is a British-American poet and the first British-born winner of the US Library of Congress Witter Bynner Fellowship. Biography Martin Walls was born in Brighton, England in 1970 and now lives in Baldwinsville, New York with his wife, Christine, and their child Alex. A US Library of Congress Witter Bynner Fellow, he is the author of three books of poems: Small Human Detail in Care of National Trust , Commonwealth , and The Solvay Process .

#4636

Audrey Thomas

#93022

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Audrey Grace Thomas, OC is a Canadian novelist and short story writer who lives on Galiano Island, British Columbia. Her stories often have feminist themes and include exotic settings. She is a recipient of the Marian Engel Award.

#4637

Shimon Markish

#91711

Overall Influence

1931 - 2003 (72 years)

Shimon Markish was a classical scholar, literary and cultural historian, translator. Family His father Peretz Markish , the Yiddish poet was executed in the last Stalinist show-trial. He was executed as one of the thirteen Soviet Jews on the Night of the Murdered Poets which marked the end of the "anti-cosmopolitan" campaign aiming to destroy Jewish cultural figures, leading personalities of the Jewish cultural life and former members of the Jewish Antifascist Committee.

#4638

Charles Segal

#117446

Overall Influence

1936 - 2002 (66 years)

Charles Paul Segal was an American classicist renowned for his application of critical theory to ancient texts. Although his work spanned a variety of Latin and Greek genres, he is best known for his work on Greek tragedy. His most influential work is Tragedy and Civilization: an Interpretation of Sophocles , in which he presents a structuralist approach to Greek theatre.

#4639

Lydia Wevers

#97904

Overall Influence

1950 - 2021 (71 years)

Lydia Joyce Wevers was a New Zealand literary historian, literary critic, editor, and book reviewer. She was an academic at Victoria University of Wellington for many years, including acting as director of the Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies from 2001 to 2017. Her academic research focussed on New Zealand literature and print culture, as well as Australian literature. She wrote three books, Country of Writing: Travel Writing About New Zealand 1809–1900 , On Reading and Reading on the Farm: Victorian Fiction and the Colonial World , and edited a number of anthologies.

#4640

Thalia Field

#89120

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Thalia Field is an American author known for innovative fiction and interdisciplinary literature. She teaches experimental fiction and interdisciplinary performance at Brown University, where she also serves as Faculty Director of the Brown Arts Institute.

#4641

David Haynes

#110950

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

David Haynes is an American novelist. He has written over a dozen books for adults and children. He teaches at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. In 1996, he was chosen as one of the best young American novelists by Granta magazine.

#4642

Jeff Kent

#55931

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Jeffrey John William Kent is an English academic, musician, activist, and historian. Early life and education Kent was born on 28 July 1951 in Hartshill, Stoke-on-Trent, England, and was educated at Hanley High School in Stoke-on-Trent. He gained an honours degree in international relations from the University of London in 1973 and a postgraduate certificate of education from Crewe College of Higher Education in 1974.

#4643

Ruben Quesada

#68774

Overall Influence

Ruben Quesada is an American poet and critic. He was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. In 2022, Quesada published an edited an award-winning collection of essays, Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry, published by University of New Mexico Press. It "explores the ways in which a people's history and language are vital to the development of a poet's imagination and insists that the meaning and value of poetry are necessary to understand the history and future of a people."

#4644

Joseph Buttigieg

Joseph Buttigieg

#67948

Overall Influence

1947 - 2019 (72 years)

Joseph Anthony Buttigieg II was a Maltese-American Marxist literary scholar and translator. He served as William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame until his retirement in 2017, when he was named professor emeritus. Buttigieg co-translated and co-edited the three-volume English edition of Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks.

#4645

Kim Jong-gil

#37996

Overall Influence

1926 - 2017 (91 years)

Kim Jong-gil was an early-modern South Korean poet. Life Kim Jong-gil was born on November 5, 1926, in Andong, Gyeongsangbuk-do, Korea. and graduated from Korea University with undergraduate and graduate degrees in English Literature. He also conducted research in English Literature at Sheffield University. Kim has worked as a professor at several universities including Chonggu University, Gyeongbuk University and Korea University. He died on April 1, 2017.

#4646

Matt Cain

#70037

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Matt Cain is a British writer and broadcaster. He is best known for the novels The Madonna of Bolton, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle and Becoming Ted. Career Cain was born in Bury, Greater Manchester, England, and brought up in nearby Bolton. He was educated at state schools and then Queens' College Cambridge University.

#4647

Mary Szybist

#96205

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Mary Szybist is an American poet. She won the National Book Award for Poetry for her collection Incarnadine. Life She grew up in Pennsylvania, earned her B.A. and M.T. from the University of Virginia, and attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was a Teaching-Writing Fellow.

#4648

Richard Greene

#108118

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Richard Greene is a Canadian poet. His book Boxing the Compass won the Governor General's Award for English language poetry at the 2010 Governor General's Awards. A resident of Toronto, Ontario, Greene teaches English literature at the University of Toronto.

#4649

Mark Bomback

#103438

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Mark Bomback is an American screenwriter, originally from New Rochelle, New York. Bomback is a graduate of Wesleyan University, where he studied English Literature and Film Studies. Biography In 1994, Bomback began working as an assistant for Eagles guitarist Glenn Frey, holding the job for a year. His first credited screenplay was The Night Caller . He has since gone on to co-write the scripts to numerous blockbuster films, including Live Free or Die Hard , The Wolverine and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes , and War for the Planet of the Apes , as well as doing uncredited rewrites on severa...

#4650

John Irwin

#112178

Overall Influence

1940 - 2019 (79 years)

John Thomas Irwin was an American poet and literary critic. He was the Decker Professor in the Humanities and Professor in The Writing Seminars and the English Department at Johns Hopkins University.

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