Humanist · 1466 – 1536
Erasmus
If you're interested in Erasmus, these historical figures share a similar impact, discipline, philosophy, or era. Each recommendation explains why the connection exists.
Similar Impact & Significance
Thomas More
79Thomas More was an English statesman, lawyer and Renaissance humanist who served as Lord Chancellor and coined the word "utopia" in his book of that name — and who was executed for refusing to accept King Henry VIII's break with Rome.
Why A close friend to whom Erasmus dedicated In Praise of Folly.
Martin Luther
91Martin Luther was a German theologian and reformer whose challenge to the Catholic Church sparked the Protestant Reformation and reshaped the religious, political and cultural landscape of Europe.
Why The reformer with whom Erasmus famously debated free will, while declining to leave the Church.
Michel de Montaigne
80Michel de Montaigne was a French Renaissance thinker and nobleman who invented the essay as a literary form, using candid self-examination to explore the human condition with unmatched honesty and wit.
Why A later humanist writer who shared Erasmus's sceptical, tolerant spirit.
Hildegard of Bingen
84Hildegard of Bingen was a German Benedictine abbess and one of the most remarkable polymaths of the Middle Ages — a visionary, composer, writer, healer and natural philosopher.
Why Also a theologian & writer · Comparable historical impact
Agatha Christie
81Agatha Christie was an English writer, the best-selling novelist of all time, whose ingenious detective stories featuring Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple made her the undisputed "Queen of Crime".
Why Also a writer · Comparable historical impact
Aldous Huxley
80Aldous Huxley was an English writer and philosopher whose dystopian novel Brave New World became one of the most influential warnings of the 20th century, imagining a future enslaved not by terror but by pleasure and conditioning.
Why Also a writer · Comparable historical impact
Alexander von Humboldt
81Alexander von Humboldt was a Prussian naturalist and explorer whose pioneering expeditions and best-selling books — including the vast Cosmos — founded modern geography and ecology and made him one of the most famous scientists and authors of his age.
Why Also a writer · Comparable historical impact
Alexandre Dumas
81Alexandre Dumas was a French writer whose swashbuckling historical novels — The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo — became some of the most popular and widely adapted stories in the world.
Why Also a writer · Comparable historical impact
Anne Frank
81Anne Frank was a German-Dutch Jewish girl whose diary, written while hiding from the Nazis in occupied Amsterdam, became one of the most widely read accounts of the Holocaust and a lasting testament to humanity amid persecution.
Why Also a writer · Comparable historical impact
Anton Chekhov
81Anton Chekhov was a Russian playwright and short-story writer — and a practising physician — widely regarded as among the greatest masters of both the short story and modern drama, whose plays like The Cherry Orchard transformed the theatre.
Why Also a writer · Comparable historical impact
Arthur Conan Doyle
81Arthur Conan Doyle was a British writer and physician who created Sherlock Holmes, the most famous detective in fiction, whose stories of brilliant deduction defined the detective genre and remain among the best-loved in the world.
Why Also a writer · Comparable historical impact
Benjamin Franklin
90Benjamin Franklin was an American polymath — a founding father, scientist, inventor, writer and diplomat — whose work on electricity and statesmanship made him one of the most admired figures of the 18th century.
Why Also a writer · Comparable historical impact
Bram Stoker
78Bram Stoker was an Irish writer and theatre manager whose 1897 Gothic novel Dracula created the modern vampire and became one of the most influential works of horror fiction ever written.
Why Also a writer · Comparable historical impact
Carl Linnaeus
81Carl Linnaeus was a Swedish naturalist whose book Systema Naturae established the modern system for naming and classifying living things, earning him the title "father of taxonomy" and making him one of the most influential scientific authors in history.
Why Also a writer · Comparable historical impact
Carl Sagan
82Carl Sagan was an American astronomer and planetary scientist who became the world's most famous communicator of science, reaching millions through the television series Cosmos and best-selling books that made him a celebrated author as well as a researcher.
Why Also a writer · Comparable historical impact
Charles Dickens
86Charles Dickens was an English novelist of the Victorian age, the most popular writer of his time and one of the greatest in the English language, whose vivid characters and social conscience defined the 19th-century novel.
Why Also a writer · Comparable historical impact
Cicero
88Cicero was a Roman statesman, orator and philosopher whose speeches and writings defined Latin prose, transmitted Greek philosophy to Rome, and championed the values of the Roman Republic.
Why Also a writer · Comparable historical impact
Edgar Allan Poe
81Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer and poet, a master of the macabre, who invented the detective story, helped shape the modern short story and science fiction, and gave the world haunting tales and poems such as "The Raven".
Why Also a writer · Comparable historical impact
Emily Dickinson
80Emily Dickinson was an American poet who lived in near-seclusion and published almost nothing in her lifetime, yet whose nearly 1,800 original, compressed poems made her, after her death, one of the most important poets in the English language.
Why Also a writer · Comparable historical impact
Ernest Hemingway
82Ernest Hemingway was an American novelist and short-story writer whose spare, understated prose style revolutionized 20th-century fiction, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature for works such as The Old Man and the Sea.
Why Also a writer · Comparable historical impact
Same Field or Discipline
Niccolò Machiavelli
88Niccolò Machiavelli was a Renaissance Italian diplomat, political philosopher and writer whose treatise The Prince founded modern political science and gave his name to ruthless statecraft.
Why Also a writer · Active in the same era
Augustine of Hippo
92Augustine of Hippo was a Roman North African theologian and philosopher whose works, including Confessions and City of God, shaped Western Christianity and laid intellectual foundations for medieval and modern thought.
Why Also a theologian & writer
Miguel de Cervantes
91Miguel de Cervantes was a Spanish writer whose novel Don Quixote is widely regarded as the first modern novel and one of the greatest works in world literature.
Why Also a writer · Active in the same era
William Shakespeare
96William Shakespeare was an English playwright and poet widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's preeminent dramatist.
Why Also a writer · Active in the same era