The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people
#35751
Paul Kantner
#35763
Overall Influence
1941 - 2016 (75 years)
Paul Lorin Kantner was an American rock musician. He is best known as the co-founder, rhythm guitarist, and a secondary vocalist of Jefferson Airplane, a leading psychedelic rock band of the counterculture era. He continued these roles as a member of Jefferson Starship, Jefferson Airplane's successor band.
Go to Profile#35752
Gerrit De Geest
#35764
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Gerrit Gaby Aimé De Geest is a Belgian legal scholar and writer specializing in contract law, law and economics, and comparative law. He earned his J.D. in 1983, M.E. in 1986 and Ph.D. in 1993 from Ghent University. With Boudewijn Bouckaert, he was co-editor of Bibliography of law and economics and of the 5-volume Encyclopedia of Law and Economics. He is consultant editor of the European Review of Contract Law and general editor of the book series New Horizons in Law & Economics. He is a member of the European Group on an Integrated Contract Law, the Economic Impact Group of the Common Prin...
Go to Profile#35753
Alan Johnson
#35765
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Alan Arthur Johnson is a British politician who served as Secretary of State for Education and Skills from 2006 to 2007, Secretary of State for Health from 2007 to 2009, Home Secretary from 2009 to 2010, and Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2010 to 2011. A member of the Labour Party, he was the Member of Parliament for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle from 1997 to 2017.
Go to Profile#35754
Derick Thomson
#35766
Overall Influence
1921 - 2012 (91 years)
Derick Smith Thomson was a Scottish poet, publisher, lexicographer, academic and writer. He was originally from Lewis, but spent much of his life in Glasgow, where he was Professor of Celtic at the University of Glasgow from 1963 to 1991. He is best known for setting up the publishing house Gairm, along with its magazine, which was the longest-running periodical ever to be written entirely in Gaelic, running for over fifty years under his editorship. Gairm has since ceased, and was replaced by Gath and then STEALL. He was an Honorary President of the Scottish Poetry Library, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the British Academy.
Go to Profile#35755
William S. McFeely
#35767
Overall Influence
1930 - 2019 (89 years)
William Shield McFeely was an American historian known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1981 biography of Ulysses S. Grant, as well as his contributions to a reevaluation of the Reconstruction era, and for advancing the field of African-American history. He retired as the Abraham Baldwin Professor of the Humanities emeritus at the University of Georgia in 1997, and was affiliated with Harvard University since 2006.
Go to Profile#35756
Elizabeth Hurley
#35768
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Elizabeth Jane Hurley is an English actress and model. As an actress, her best-known film roles have been as Vanessa Kensington in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery and as the Devil in Bedazzled . Hurley's television roles include the E! original series The Royals and portraying Morgan le Fay in Runaways , based on the Marvel Comics series of the same name.
Go to Profile#35757
Pierre Henry
#35769
Overall Influence
1927 - 2017 (90 years)
Pierre Georges Albert François Henry was a French composer and pioneer of musique concrète. Biography Henry was born in Paris, France, and began experimenting at the age of 15 with sounds produced by various objects. He became fascinated with the integration of noise into music, now called noise music. He studied with Nadia Boulanger, Olivier Messiaen, and Félix Passerone at the Conservatoire de Paris from 1938 to 1948.
Go to Profile#35758
Lloyd Austin
#35770
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Lloyd James Austin III is a retired United States Army four-star general who is serving as the 28th United States secretary of defense since January 22, 2021. Before retiring from the military in 2016, Austin served as the 12th commander of United States Central Command , beginning in March 2013. Prior to that he served as the 33rd vice chief of staff of the Army from January 2012 to March 2013, and as commander of United States Forces – Iraq from September 2010 to December 2011. He was the first African American to hold each of these positions. After retiring from the armed services Austin joined the boards of Raytheon Technologies, Nucor, Tenet Healthcare, and Auburn University.
Go to Profile#35759
Frank Hawthorne
#35771
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Frank Christopher Hawthorne is a Canadian mineralogist, crystallographer and spectroscopist. He works at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and is currently Distinguished Professor Emeritus. By combining Graph Theory, Bond-Valence Theory and the moments approach to the electronic energy density of solids he has developed Bond Topology as a rigorous approach to understanding the atomic arrangements, chemical compositions and paragenesis of complex oxide and oxysalt minerals.
Go to Profile#35760
Mitch Pileggi
#35772
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Mitch Pileggi is an American actor. He played Horace Pinker in Shocker, Walter Skinner on The X-Files, Colonel Steven Caldwell on Stargate Atlantis, Ernest Darby in Sons of Anarchy, and Harris Ryland in the TNT revival of Dallas .
Go to Profile#35761
Ken Schrader
#35773
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Kenneth William Schrader is an American professional racing driver. He currently races on local dirt and asphalt tracks around the country while also competing part-time in the ARCA Menards Series, driving the No. 11 Ford for Fast Track Racing, and the Superstar Racing Experience, driving the No. 52 car. He previously competed in the NASCAR Cup Series, the NASCAR Xfinity Series, and the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series. He is a first cousin once removed of fellow NASCAR driver Carl Edwards.
Go to Profile#35762
Vince Dooley
#35774
Overall Influence
1932 - 2022 (90 years)
Vincent Joseph Dooley was an American college football coach. He was the head coach of the Georgia Bulldogs from 1964 to 1988, as well as the University of Georgia's athletic director from 1979 to 2004. During his 25-year head coaching career, Dooley compiled a 201–77–10 record. His teams won six Southeastern Conference titles and the 1980 national championship. After the 1980 season, Dooley was recognized as college football's "Coach of the Year" by several organizations.
Go to Profile#35763
Uta Hagen
#35775
Overall Influence
1919 - 2004 (85 years)
Uta Thyra Hagen was a German-American actress and theatre practitioner. She originated the role of Martha in the 1962 Broadway premiere of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee, who called her "a profoundly truthful actress." Because Hagen was on the Hollywood blacklist, in part because of her association with Paul Robeson, her film opportunities dwindled and she focused her career on New York theatre.
Go to Profile#35764
Brendan Hassett
#35776
Overall Influence
Brendan Edward Hassett is an American mathematician who works as a professor of mathematics at Brown University. His research interests include algebraic geometry and number theory. Education and career Hassett graduated from Yale College in 1992, and earned his doctorate in 1996 from Harvard University under the supervision of Joe Harris. After temporary positions at the Mittag-Leffler Institute, University of Chicago, and Chinese University of Hong Kong, he joined the Rice University faculty in 2000. He was promoted to full professor in 2006, chaired the department from 2009 to 2014, and was named as the Milton Brockett Porter Professor of Mathematics in 2013.
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James Luna
#35777
Overall Influence
1950 - 2018 (68 years)
James Luna was a Puyukitchum, Ipai, and Mexican-American performance artist, photographer and multimedia installation artist. His work is best known for challenging the ways in which conventional museum exhibitions depict Native Americans. With recurring themes of multiculturalism, alcoholism, and colonialism, his work was often comedic and theatrical in nature. In 2017 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Go to Profile#35766
Frank L. Graham
#35778
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Frank L. Graham is a Canadian biologist, having been a Distinguished University Professor at McMaster University. Graham is the 1998 recipient of the Robert L. Noble Prize. Graham has performed research on gene therapy.
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Jamileh Alamolhoda
#35779
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Jamileh-Sadat Alamolhoda , commonly known as Jamileh Alamolhoda , is an Iranian writer, scholar and lecturer who is the wife of President of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi. She holds a doctorate in education from Tarbiat Modares University and is an associate professor at the Faculty of Educational Sciences and Psychology of Shahid Beheshti University.
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Giovanni Levi
#35780
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Giovanni Levi is an Italian historian. He is Professor Emeritus of Economic History at the Ca' Foscari University of Venice. He is one of the pioneers in the field of microhistory. Selected works Centro e periferia di uno Stato assoluto. Tre saggi su Piemonte e Liguria in età moderna. Rosenberg e Sellier, Turin 1985, .Das immaterielle Erbe. Eine bäuerliche Welt an der Schwelle zur Moderne. Wagenbach, Berlin 1986, .On Microhistory. In: New Perspectives on Historical Writing. Pennsylvania State University Press, Cambridge 1992, .Geschichte der Jugend. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1996, .The Origins of the Modern State and the Microhistorical Perspective.
Go to Profile#35769
Amir Sufi
#35781
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Amir Sufi is the Bruce Lindsay Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He was awarded the 2017 Fischer Black Prize by the American Finance Association, given biennially to a financial economics scholar under the age of 40 for significant original research that is relevant to finance practice. He was awarded for his work on household debt and the financial crisis.
Go to Profile#35770
Richard D. Freer
#35782
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Richard Freer is a leading American academic in civil procedure and the Robert Howell Hall Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law in Atlanta, Georgia. He has written numerous articles and has published 11 books during his career. Currently, his book on civil procedure is the preferred text on the subject at many law schools throughout the country. Freer is also a member of the Barbri staff and has lectured for Barbri for over thirty years.
Go to Profile#35771
Ami Klin
#35783
Overall Influence
Ami Klin is an American psychologist who studies autism. He is the first chief of autism and related disorders at the Marcus Autism Center, a wholly owned subsidiary of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Klin will also be a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar at Emory University and director of the Division of Autism and Related Developmental Disabilities in the Department of Pediatrics at the Emory University School of Medicine.
Go to Profile#35772
Eugene van Tamelen
#35784
Overall Influence
1925 - 2009 (84 years)
Eugene Earle van Tamelen was an organic chemist who is especially recognized for his contributions to bioorganic chemistry. van Tamelen published five papers while an undergraduate at Hope College. He conducted graduate work at Harvard University, receiving his doctorate in 1950 with Gilbert Stork as his advisor. He began his academic career at the University of Wisconsin, later joining the faculty of Stanford University, where he spent the majority of his career. Among his many students was Nobelist K. Barry Sharpless.
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John Oxford
#35785
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
John Sydney Oxford is an English virologist and a professor at Queen Mary, University of London. He is a leading expert on influenza, including bird flu and the 1918 Spanish Influenza, and HIV/AIDS.
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Matt Cartmill
#35786
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Matthew Cartmill is an American anthropologist and professor of anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences at Boston University, where he formerly served as Chair of Anthropology. Education and career Cartmill was educated at Pomona College and the University of Chicago. He joined the faculty of Duke University in 1970, eventually becoming Professor Emeritus of Evolutionary Anthropology there. He left Duke to join the faculty of Boston University in 2008. He was a founding editor of the International Journal of Primatology from 1978 to 1989, editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Phy...
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Michael Richards
#35787
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Michael Anthony Richards is an American actor, writer, television producer, and comedian. He is best known for playing Cosmo Kramer on the television sitcom Seinfeld from 1989 to 1998. He began his career as a stand-up comedian, first entering the national spotlight when he was featured on Billy Crystal's first cable TV special, and went on to become a series regular on ABC's Fridays.
Go to Profile#35776
Alistair Darling
#35788
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Alistair Maclean Darling, Baron Darling of Roulanish, was a British politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer under Prime Minister Gordon Brown from 2007 to 2010. A member of the Labour Party, he was a member of Parliament from 1987 to 2015, representing Edinburgh Central and Edinburgh South West.
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Ed Decker
#35789
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
John Edward "Ed" Decker is an American counterculture apologist, and evangelist known for his expert studies, books, and public presentations, of the negative aspects of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Freemasonry. He is a former member of the LDS Church, and prominent early member of a Christian group for ex-Mormons called Saints Alive in Jesus. His most well-known book is The God Makers: A Shocking Expose of What the Mormon Church Really Believes, co-authored by Dave Hunt.
Go to Profile#35778
Asrat Woldeyes
#35790
Overall Influence
1928 - 1999 (71 years)
Asrat Woldeyes was an Ethiopian surgeon, a professor of medicine at Addis Ababa University, and the founder and leader of the All-Amhara People's Organization . He was jailed by the Derg and later by the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front . After his death, The Guardian described him as "successively Ethiopia's most distinguished surgeon, physician and university dean, most controversial political party leader and best known political prisoner".
Go to Profile#35779
William G. Wagner
#35791
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
William G. Wagner was an American historian. His research focused on modern Russia. He joined the faculty of Williams College in 1980, after graduating from Haverford College and earning advanced degrees from the University of Oxford. Wagner was raised in Erie, Pennsylvania, and a student of Strong Vincent High School, where he played football. From 2009 to 2010, he was the interim president of Williams. He was also Brown Professor of History Emeritus. He died on September 21, 2021, in Williamstown, Massachusetts, aged 71.
Go to Profile#35780
Ali Said Faqi
#35792
Overall Influence
Ali Said Faqi is a Somali scientist specializing in toxicology and a diplomat. A leading researcher in his field, he has numerous scientific papers and also authored a book entitled A Comprehensive Guide to Toxicology in Preclinical Drug Development. In 2013, he was appointed as the Somali Ambassador to Benelux and European Union.
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John Wood
#35793
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
John Wood is an English sound engineer and producer, best known for his work with Fairport Convention, John Martyn, Cat Stevens, Sandy Denny, Nick Drake, the Incredible String Band, Pink Floyd, Nico and Squeeze.
Go to Profile#35782
Tim Pawlenty
#35794
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Timothy James Pawlenty is an American attorney, businessman, and politician who served as the 39th governor of Minnesota from 2003 to 2011. A member of the Republican Party, Pawlenty served in the Minnesota House of Representatives from 1993 to 2003, and as House Majority Leader from 1999 to 2003. He unsuccessfully ran for the Republican presidential nomination in the 2012 presidential election. Pawlenty's 2006 reelection is the last time a Republican was elected to statewide office in Minnesota.
Go to Profile#35783
Richard A. Devine
#35795
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Richard A. Devine is an American attorney who served as the Cook County State's Attorney from 1996 to 2008. Early life and education The second of five children, he was the son of a Chicago Water Department employee. Devine grew up in Rogers Park, Chicago, and played football and basketball at Loyola Academy in Wilmette, Illinois. He attended John Carroll University for one year on a football scholarship but returned home when his father's health worsened after a stroke. In 1966, Devine graduated from Loyola University Chicago with a Bachelor of Arts degree before earning a Juris Doctor from ...
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Kamal Ranadive
#35796
Overall Influence
1917 - 2001 (84 years)
Kamal Jayasing Ranadive was an Indian biomedical researcher known for her research on the links between cancers and viruses. She was a founding member of the Indian Women Scientists' Association . In the 1960s, she established India's first tissue culture research laboratory at the Indian Cancer Research Centre in Mumbai.
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Gabriella Morreale de Escobar
#35797
Overall Influence
1930 - 2017 (87 years)
Gabriella Morreale de Escobar was an Italian-born Spanish chemist who specialised in the thyroid. She and her husband showed that thyroid hormones cross the placenta during pregnancy and are essential for fetal brain development. She established a national newborn screening program for congenital hypothyroidism in Spain and helped to introduce iodised salt to prevent thyroid problems caused by iodine deficiency.
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Tim McIlrath
#35798
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Timothy James McIlrath is an American rock musician. He is the lead singer, rhythm guitarist, songwriter and co-founder of the punk rock band Rise Against. He is vegan and straight edge. Early and personal life McIlrath was born in 1978 to Jim and Michelle McIlrath. He attended Rolling Meadows High School in Rolling Meadows, Illinois. This was also the set for the music video, "Make It Stop ." In college , McIlrath majored in English and Sociology. In his junior year, he met Joe Principe at a Sick of It All concert. Principe asked McIlrath to sing over a few tracks that he and Dan Wleklinski had recorded.
Go to Profile#35787
Kazuhito Hashimoto
#35799
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
is a Japanese chemist. Between 2004 and 2007 he headed the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Tokyo. In 2016–2022 he served as President of the National Institute for Materials Science and as the editor-in-chief of the journal Science and Technology of Advanced Materials. On April 1, 2022 he assumed the position of President of Japan Science and Technology Agency.
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Türkan Saylan
#35800
Overall Influence
1935 - 2009 (74 years)
Türkan Saylan was a Turkish medical doctor in dermatology, academic, writer, teacher and social activist. She was famous for fighting leprosy, and for founding a charitable foundation called "Association for the Support of Contemporary Living" .
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Garnet Hertz
#35801
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Garnet Hertz is a Canadian artist, designer and academic. Hertz is Canada Research Chair in Design and Media Art and is known for his electronic artworks and for his research in the areas of critical making and DIY culture.
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Jessica Coon
#35802
Overall Influence
Jessica Coon is a professor of linguistics at McGill University and Canada Research Chair in syntax and indigenous languages. She was the linguistics expert consultant for the 2016 film Arrival. Coon works on ergativity, split ergativity, case and agreement, nominalization, field methodology, and collaborative language work in Ch'ol and Chuj and Mi'gmaq .
Go to Profile#35791
Mary Florentine
#35803
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Mary Florentine is a Matthews Distinguished Professor at Northeastern University specialising in psychoacoustics with interests in models of hearing , non-native speech comprehension in background noise, cross-cultural attitudes towards noise, and hearing loss prevention. Her primary collaborator is Søren Buus.
Go to Profile#35792
Danger Mouse
#35804
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Brian Joseph Burton , known professionally as Danger Mouse, is an American musician and record producer. He came to prominence in 2004 when he released The Grey Album, which combined vocal performances from Jay-Z's The Black Album with instrumentals from the Beatles' The Beatles, also known as The White Album. In 2008, Esquire named him one of the "75 most influential people of the 21st century".
Go to Profile#35793
Black Francis
#35805
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He is best known as the frontman of the alternative rock band Pixies, with whom he performs under the stage name Black Francis. Following the band's breakup in 1993, he embarked on a solo career under the name Frank Black. After releasing two albums with record label 4AD and one with American Recordings, he left the label and formed a new band, Frank Black and the Catholics. He re-adopted the name Black Francis in 2007.
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Nicholas Christopher
#35806
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Nicholas Christopher is an American novelist and poet. He is the author of seven novels, eight volumes of poetry, and a critical study of film noir. Background Christopher graduated from Harvard College with an A.B. in English Literature. After traveling extensively abroad, he returned to New York. He began publishing his poetry in The New Yorker while still in his twenties.
Go to Profile#35795
Denis Moloney
#35807
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Denis Moloney, OBE LLD is a solicitor and notary public from Belfast, Northern Ireland. Born in Belfast in 1954, he was a member of the Council of State in the Republic of Ireland from 2004-2011. Moloney is a senior partner in the leading Belfast law firm of Donnelly & Wall specialising in Criminal Law. He was educated at St Malachy's College and Queen's University, Belfast and was conferred with an Honorary Doctorate in Laws from the University of Ulster in 2010.
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MC Solaar
#35808
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Claude Honoré M'Barali , professionally known as MC Solaar , is a French rapper of Senegalese and Chadian origin. He is one of France's most famous and influential hip hop artists. Some consider him the best French rapper of all time.
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Birgit Meyer
#35809
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Birgit Meyer is a German professor of religious studies at Utrecht University. Career Meyer was born on 21 March 1960 in Emden, Germany. She studied comparative religion, pedagogy, and cultural anthropology at the University of Bremen and the University of Amsterdam. She earned her PhD at the latter university in 1995 under doctoral advisors J. Fabian and H.U.E. Thoden van Velzen, with a thesis titled: Translating the Devil. An African Appropriation of Pietist Protestantism. The Case of the Peki Ewe, 1847–1992. She was appointed as professor of religious studies at Utrecht University in 2011....
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Susan Mango
#35810
Overall Influence
Susan E. Mango is an American biologist, the former H.A. and Edna Benning Professor of Oncological Sciences at the University of Utah, and former professor at Harvard University. She is Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology and research group leader at Biozentrum University of Basel
Go to Profile#35799
Kirk Snyder
#35811
Overall Influence
For the basketball player, see Kirk Snyder. Kirk Snyder is an American academic and author. He is a Professor of Business Communication at the USC Marshall School of Business in Los Angeles, California. He has authored three books including Finding Work You Love: 3 Steps to Getting The Perfect Job After College , in addition to two critically acclaimed books on LGBT employees and executives.
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Kurt Busiek
#35812
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Kurt Busiek is an American comic book writer. His work includes the Marvels limited series, his own series titled Astro City, a four-year run on The Avengers, Thunderbolts and Superman. Early life Busiek was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He grew up in various towns in the Boston area, including Lexington, where he befriended future comic book creator Scott McCloud. Busiek did not read comics as a youngster, as his parents disapproved of them. He began to read them regularly around the age of 14, when he picked up a copy of Daredevil #120 . This was the first part of a continuity-heavy four-part story arc; Busiek was drawn to the copious history and cross-connections with other series.
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