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,

#4951

Lamar Giles

#109694

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (47 years)

Lamar Giles is an American author of young adult novels and short stories. He best known for his award-winning novels with his most popular being Fake ID, SPIN, Not So Pure and Simple, and The Legendary Alston Boys middle grade fantasy series. He is also one of the founding members of the American non-profit We Need Diverse Books.

#4952

Joan Silber

#81911

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Joan Silber is an American novelist and short story writer. She won the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction and the 2018 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for her novel Improvement. Biography Joan Silber was born in 1945. She grew up in Millburn, New Jersey. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College and obtained an M.A. from New York University. She taught at NYU and now teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in New York City.

#4953

Imraan Coovadia

#106543

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Imraan Coovadia is a South African novelist, essayist, and academic. He is the director of the creative writing program at the University of Cape Town. He has taught 19th-Century Studies and Creative Writing at a number of US universities. His debut novel, The Wedding, published simultaneously in the US and SA in 2001, has been translated into Hebrew and Italian.

#4954

Josh Emmons

#66179

Overall Influence

Josh Emmons is an American novelist who was raised in Northern California. He studied at UC Santa Cruz, Oberlin College and the Iowa Writers' Workshop . Emmons has an MFA from University of Iowa, from which he also received a teaching fellowship. Emmons published his first book, The Loss of Leon Meed, in 2005. Set in his native northern California, about the varied responses of ten small-town residents to a stranger's mysterious appearances and disappearances, it was a Book Sense pick and winner of a James Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award, and has been translated into several languages.

#4955

Clifford Chase

#125255

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Clifford Chase is an American author who has written the memoir The Tooth Fairy and Winkie, a novel about a sentient teddy bear accused of terrorism. He has also written additional memoirs and edited Queer 13: Lesbian and Gay Writers Recall Seventh Grade, a shortlisted nominee in the Children's/Young Adult and Nonfiction Anthologies categories at the 1999 Lambda Literary Awards.

#4956

Judy Juanita

#37979

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Judy Juanita is an American poet, novelist and playwright. She is a Lecturer in the College Writing Programs at the University of California, Berkeley. She was formerly a writing teacher at Laney College. In 1968, while attending San Francisco State, Juanita served as editor-in-chief of The Black Panther, the newspaper of the Black Panther Party. In her semi-autobiographical novel, Virgin Soul, , a black teen starts community college in Oakland, struggles to matriculate and then joins the Black Panther Party . The story of the female foot soldier in the black power movement, Virgin Soul expose...

#4957

Kathryn Gutzwiller

#131923

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Kathryn J. Gutzwiller is a professor of classics at the University of Cincinnati. She specialises in Hellenistic poetry, and her interests include Greek and Latin poetry, ancient gender studies, literary theory, and the interaction between text and image. Her contribution to Hellenistic epigram and pastoral poetry has been considered particularly influential.

#4958

Sion Sono

#83719

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

is a Japanese filmmaker, author, and poet. Best known on the festival circuit for the film Love Exposure , he has been called "the most subversive filmmaker working in Japanese cinema today", a "stakhanovist filmmaker" with an "idiosyncratic" career.

#4959

Brooke Stevens

#93877

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Brooke Stevens is an American novelist. His first novel, The Circus of the Earth and the Air, was a nominee for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award in 1994 and a finalist for the World Fantasy Award in 1995. He has published two subsequent novels, not works of fantasy, and has taught creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College. His work has been translated into French, German and Japanese and it has also been published in the UK. He lives in Kent, Connecticut.

#4960

Kim Namjo

#103569

Overall Influence

1927 - Present (99 years)

Kim Namjo was a South Korean poet. Biography Kim Namjo was born on 25 September 1927, in Daegu, Japanese-occupied Korea. She attended a girls' school in Kyushu, Japan, and graduated from Seoul National University's College of Education in 1951 with a degree in Korean Language Education. Kim made her official literary debut in 1950 while still in college, publishing the poetry collection Constellations. Kim taught at Masan High School and Ewha Girls' High School. She became a professor at Sookmyung Women's University in 1954 and was a professor emerita there. Kim served as chairperson of Socie...

#4961

Christopher Frayling

Christopher Frayling

#85686

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Sir Christopher John Frayling is a British educationalist and writer, known for his study of popular culture. Early life and education Christopher Frayling was born in Hampton, a suburb of London, in affluent circumstances. His father, Major Arthur Frederick Frayling, OBE , late of the Royal Army Service Corps, was chairman of the Hudson's Bay fur auction house in London and of the International Fur Trade Federation; his mother, Barbara Kathleen Imhof, the daughter of record and audio equipment store owner Alfred Imhof, was a driver in international car rallies, and won the RAC Rally with her brother, Godfrey Imhof, in 1952.

#4962

Ruth B. Bottigheimer

#114185

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Ruth B. Bottigheimer is a literary scholar, folklorist, and author. She is currently Research Professor in the department of English at Stony Brook University, State University of New York where she specializes in European fairy tales and British children’s literature. She is also interested in the history of illustration and the religious socialization of children through edited Bible narratives. She “has been hailed as one of America’s foremost Grimm scholars”.

#4963

Kim Kyung-uk

#134680

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Kim Kyung-uk , is a Korean author. Life Kim Kyung-uk was born in Gwangju, South Jeolla Province, South Korea in 1971. He completed his undergraduate degree in English Language and Literature and a master's degree in Korean Language and Literature from Seoul National University. His career as a novelist began when he won the 1993 Best New Writer Award from the quarterly Writer's World for his novella Outsider. In 2013, he participated in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Kim teaches creative writing at the Korean National University of Arts in the School of Drama.

#4964

Jason Brown

#113270

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Jason Brown is an American writer who writes primarily about Maine and New England. He has published two collections of short stories and has a third forthcoming in October 2019. His fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies including The New Yorker , Harper's , The Atlantic and The Best American Short Stories.

#4965

James Kimbrell

#111092

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

James Kimbrell is an American poet. Life As an undergraduate he majored in philosophy at Millsaps College, where his poetry was first published in the literary magazine Stylus. He graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi with an M.A., from University of Virginia with an MFA, and from University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri with a Ph.D. He teaches at Florida State University.

#4966

Edie Meidav

#107408

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Edie Meidav is an American novelist. Life She graduated with a B.A., Yale University, and M.F.A., Mills College. Her works include Kingdom of the Young, a collection of fiction with a nonfiction coda; Lola, California, a novel concerning death penalty, motherhood, female friendship, and the cultural aftermath of 1960s idealism; Crawl Space, a novel written in the voice of a Vichy criminal reckoning with the commodification of wartime memory; The Far Field: A Novel of Ceylon, set in Sri Lanka and concerning the effects of the Western gaze on the East.

#4967

Joanne Dobson

#105373

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Joanne Dobson is a writer of mystery novels and features in Great Women Mystery Writers . Biography Dobson graduated in 1963 from The King's College, New York gaining a degree in English. She later earned a master's from the University of New York at Albany in 1977 and a PhD from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1985. She taught at Amherst College and Tufts University before becoming a tenure-track professor at Fordham University. She founded a scholarly society devoted to Emily Dickinson and was a founding editor of Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers. She has taught Fulbri...

#4968

Killarney Clary

#139489

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Killarney Clary is an American poet who was recently awarded a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry. Her first book, Who Whispered Near Me, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Clary received the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry in 1992.

#4969

Tomo Virk

#125299

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Tomo Virk is a Slovene literary historian and essayist. Virk was born in Ljubljana in 1960. He studied Comparative literature and German language at the University of Ljubljana and works as a lecturer at the University. He was head of the Jury for the Kresnik Award between 2004 and 2007. In 1996 he received the Rožanc Award for his book of literary essays Ujetniki bolečine .

#4970

Michael Olmert

#100965

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Michael Olmert, is a professor of English at the University of Maryland, College Park and a writer. He was born and raised in Washington D.C. His specialty is British Literature. He has a Ph.D. from Maryland in medieval English literature. He has written many shows and television movies for National Geographic, and many articles for the Colonial Williamsburg Magazine.

#4971

Dario Fo

#84791

Overall Influence

1926 - 2016 (90 years)

Dario Luigi Angelo Fo was an Italian playwright, actor, theatre director, stage designer, songwriter, political campaigner for the Italian left wing and the recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature. In his time he was "arguably the most widely performed contemporary playwright in world theatre". Much of his dramatic work depends on improvisation and comprises the recovery of "illegitimate" forms of theatre, such as those performed by giullari and, more famously, the ancient Italian style of commedia dell'arte.

#4972

Quraysh Ali Lansana

#100950

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Quraysh Ali Lansana is an American poet, book editor, civil rights historian, and professor. He has authored 20 books in poetry, nonfiction and children’s literature. In 2022, he was a Tulsa Artist Fellow and Director of the Center for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation at Oklahoma State University-Tulsa, where he was also Lecturer in Africana Studies and English. Lansana is also credited as creator and executive producer of "Focus: Black Oklahoma," a monthly radio program on the public radio station KOSU.

#4973

Scott Campbell

#112337

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Scott Campbell is an American writer. He lives in Boston and works as Director of Communications in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning. Campbell holds a master's in creative writing from Vermont College.

#4974

Park Taesun

#117260

Overall Influence

1942 - 2019 (77 years)

Park Taesun was a South Korean writer. Life Park Taesun was born May 8, 1942, in Sinchon, Hwanghae-do, Korea. Park attended Seoul National University, where he studied English Literature. Park served as the Director of the National Writers' Conference.

#4975

Mariya Litovskaya

Mariya Litovskaya

#102421

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Mariya Arkadevna Litovskaya, née Yeremeyeva is a Soviet and Russian philologist, literary critic, Professor of the Ural Federal University, one of the leading scholars at the Institute of History and Archaeology under the Russian Academy of Sciences . She is a specialist in the fields of the 20th century Russian literature, sociology of literature and education, Ural literature.

#4976

John B. McDiarmid

#107587

Overall Influence

1913 - 2002 (89 years)

John Brodie McDiarmid was a Canadian-born academic who played an important role in Canadian Naval Intelligence during World War II. He was chairman of the Classics Department at the University of Washington, was the university's first Professor of Humanities, and was co-founder of the Seattle Chapter of the Archaeological Institute of America.

#4977

Gene Frumkin

#89244

Overall Influence

1928 - 2007 (79 years)

Gene Frumkin was an American poet and teacher. Personal life Frumkin was born in Harlem, New York and spent his first ten years in The Bronx. His parents moved to Los Angeles, California, in the late 1930s because of Eugene's asthma.

#4978

Jonathan Strong

#90958

Overall Influence

Jonathan Strong is an American author of novels and short stories. Personal life Jonathan Strong was born in 1944. He was raised in Winnetka, Illinois, where he attended North Shore Country Day School. He enrolled at Harvard University in 1962, but dropped out in the middle of his senior year as his writing career advanced. He returned to Harvard and earned his bachelor's degree in 1969. That year, he began his long career teaching fiction-writing at Tufts University. Strong lives in Rockport, Massachusetts, and West Corinth, Vermont.

#4979

Fawzia Assaad

#99794

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (97 years)

Fawzia Assaad is an Egyptian novelist writing in French. Life Fawzia Assaad was born in Cairo. Educated at French schools, she gained a doctorate in philosophy in Paris. Her autombiographical novel L'Égyptienne portrays the effects of the 1952 Egyptian revolution and the Arab–Israeli conflict on an Egyptian Coptic woman.

#4980

D. Watkins

#47721

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Dwight "D." or "Doc" Watkins is an author, HBO writer, and lecturer at The University of Baltimore. Watkins is a lecturer at the University of Baltimore and New York Times bestselling author from East Baltimore.

#4981

Stella Pope Duarte

#80106

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Stella Pope Duarte is a Latina American novelist. Life She graduated from Arizona State University with a B.A. and MA in Educational Counseling. She taught at Arizona State University from 1999–2008, and South Mountain Community College. She was a member of the Arizona Commission on the Arts from 2006 to 2010.

#4982

Nancy Huddleston Packer

#81314

Overall Influence

1925 - Present (101 years)

Nancy Huddleston Packer is an American writer of short fiction and memoir, who is the Melvin and Bill Lane Professor in the Humanities, Emerita, at Stanford University. Early life and education Packer was born in 1925 in Washington, D.C., where her father, George Huddleston, was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Alabama’s 9th congressional district. She was one of five children, and as a child lived in both Washington and Birmingham, Alabama. She graduated from Birmingham–Southern College in 1945, and gained a master's degree in theology from the University of Chicago in 1947.

#4983

Jon Day

#100567

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (42 years)

Jon Day is a British writer, critic and academic. He teaches English at King's College London. His essays and reviews have appeared in the London Review of Books, n+1, the New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, and The Guardian. He is also a regular fiction critic for The Daily Telegraph and the Financial Times, and writes about art for Apollo magazine.

#4984

Paul Neary

#79089

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Paul Neary is a British comic book artist, writer and editor. His first work was for Warren Publishing in the 1970s before working with Dez Skinn at Marvel UK as well as work for 2000 AD. He later became editor-in-chief of Marvel UK in the 1990s but is now best known for inking Bryan Hitch's work on The Ultimates for Marvel Comics.

#4985

Abdourahman Waberi

Abdourahman Waberi

#105215

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Abdourahman A. Waberi is a novelist, essayist, poet, academic and short-story writer from Djibouti. Early life Abdourahman Waberi was born in Djibouti City in the French Somali Coast, the current Republic of Djibouti. He went to France in 1985 to study English literature. Waberi worked as a literary consultant for Editions Le Serpent à plumes, Paris, and as a literary critic for Le Monde Diplomatique. He has been a member of the International Jury for the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage , 2003 & 2004.

#4986

Jean McGarry

#126804

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Jean McGarry is an author of fiction and a professor at the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. Early life and education Jean McGarry was born in Providence, Rhode Island, was educated at Regis and Radcliffe Colleges, the University of California-Irvine and Johns Hopkins University, where she received an M.A. in The Writing Seminars in 1983.

#4987

Anne Landsman

#145360

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Anne Landsman is a novelist. She was born in Worcester, South Africa, the daughter of a country doctor, and is a graduate of the University of Cape Town and Columbia University. Until 2001, she lectured at The New School university in New York, where she still lives with her husband, architect James Wagman, and children.

#4988

Barbara Goldberg

#111711

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Barbara Goldberg is an American poet, author, translator, and editor from Maryland. Early life and education Goldberg grew up in Forest Hills, Queens> New York. She is a first generation American. Her parents were immigrants from Europe after fleeing from the Holocaust. The language her family spoke in their home was German. She attended Russell Sage Junior High.

#4989

Robin Russin

#121257

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Robin Russin is an American screenwriter, director, playwright, author and educator. Education Robin Uriel Russin was educated at Harvard, Oxford , the Rhode Island School of Design, and UCLA, where he received his MFA in screenwriting. Russin taught screenwriting at UCLA in their undergraduate and graduate film departments as well as their Professional Program from 1994 to 2002. He is currently Professor of Screenwriting and has served as Director of the MFA for Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts at UC Riverside.

#4990

Charles Edward Eaton

#141271

Overall Influence

1916 - 2006 (90 years)

Charles Edward Eaton was an American poet and professor. Life He was born in Winston-Salem, N.C. Eaton received his B.A. degree from the University of North Carolina in 1936, studied at Princeton, and received his M.A. degree from Harvard, where he worked with Robert Frost, who later recommended him to the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.

#4991

Ethan Nadelmann

Ethan Nadelmann

#17429

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Ethan A. Nadelmann is the founder of the Drug Policy Alliance, a New York City-based non-profit organization working to end the War on Drugs. He is a supporter of the legalization of marijuana in America.

#4992

David Ninov

#95891

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

David is an Eastern Orthodox titular Bishop of Dremvit and Auxiliary Bishop of the Eparchy of Skopje of the Macedonian Orthodox Church. Formerly, he was titular Bishop of Stobi of the Orthodox Ohrid Archbishopric, an autonomous church under the supreme jurisdiction of Serbian Orthodox Church. While bishop of Stobi, he was also administrator of the Eparchy of Strumica.

#4993

Claus Killing-Günkel

#96431

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Claus Killing-Günkel , in Esperanto also known as Nikolao Günkel, is a German teacher and interlinguist. Life Claus J. Killing-Günkel was born Claus J. Günkel in Eschweiler, a city in western Rhineland, where he grew up, attended Städtisches Gymnasium Eschweiler and lived from 1963 to 1989 and from 1999 to 2009. From 1982 to 1992, he studied mathematics, computer science and French at the RWTH Aachen University and the University of Paderborn. At the latter, in 1993 and 1994, he was a lecturer in the Department of Education. Since 1997 he works as a berufskolleg teacher.

#4994

Dallas Wiebe

#90550

Overall Influence

1930 - 2008 (78 years)

Dallas Wiebe was an American writer, poet, and a professor of English. He is best known for his 1969 controversial novel, Skyblue the Badass. The Newton, Kansas native was also a founder of the writing program at the University of Cincinnati, where he served as professor emeritus in the Department of English from 1963 until 1995. Some of his other works include "Night Flight to Stockholm," The Transparent Eyeball, Down the River: A Collection of Ohio Valley Fiction and Poetry, "Skyblue on the Dump", "Skyblue's Memoirs," Our Asian Journey, Going to the Mountain, The Kansas Poems and The Vox P...

#4995

John Turner

#33687

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

James John Turner Phillips was an English lyricist who used the pen name John Turner. Biography He ran the Peter Maurice Music Company, whose most important lyricist was Geoffrey Parsons. The company specialized in adapting songs originally in foreign languages into the English language. He would usually assign a song to Parsons and when the latter was finished, suggest some changes. The credits for the English lyrics would then be given as "John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons".

#4996

Judy Blunt

#77607

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Judy Blunt is an American writer from Montana. Her most notable work to date is Breaking Clean, a collection of linked essays exploring her rural upbringing. Biography Blunt was raised on a cattle ranch in a remote area of Phillips County, Montana, near Regina, south of Malta, Montana. In 1986 she moved with her three small children to Missoula to attend the University of Montana.

#4997

Judith Woodsworth

Judith Woodsworth

#57154

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Judith Weisz Woodsworth is a Canadian academic and university administrator, having formerly served as President of Concordia University and Laurentian University. Early life and education Born in Paris, France, in 1948, she grew up in Winnipeg. She received a BA in French and Philosophy from McGill University, a licence ès lettres from the Université de Strasbourg in France, and a Ph.D. in French Literature from McGill.

#4998

Cécile Cloutier

#92719

Overall Influence

1930 - 2017 (87 years)

Cécile Cloutier was a Canadian writer and educator. The daughter of Adrien Cloutier and Maria Lantagne, she was born in Quebec City and studied at the Collège Jésus-Marie de Sillery, at Laval University and at the Université de Paris, going on to earn a doctorate from the Sorbonne and a Master of Philosophy from McMaster University. She studied a variety of languages including Sanskrit and Inuktitut. From 1955 to 1958, she taught French literature, Latin, Greek and Spanish at the Collège des Ursulines and at Marymount College in Quebec City. She was a professor in the French department at the University of Ottawa from 1958 to 1964.

#4999

Philip W. Chung

#71269

Overall Influence

Philip W. Chung is a Korean American writer/producer, co-founder of Los Angeles-based Lodestone Theatre Ensemble and was its co-artistic director. Career Chung has written and produced for theatre, film and television. He was the Co-Founder/Artistic Director of the Asian American theatre company Lodestone Theatre Ensemble and is the current creative director for director Justin Lin's company YOMYOMF. His producing projects include the upcoming LGBTQ-themed horror film Moonshadow, the Stage 13/HBO Max Asian food series Family Style, and Google's first 360 degree live-action film Help directed...

#5000

Scott Hightower

Scott Hightower

#114069

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Scott Hightower is an American poet, teacher, and reviewer. He is the author of five books of poetry. His third, Part of the Bargain, won the 2004 Hayden Carruth Award. He is a recipient of a Willis Barnstone Translation Prize for a translation from Spanish.

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