Which libertarian thinkers influenced Robert Nozick’s change in political views?

Robert Nozick’s transition from an enthusiastic socialist and member of the student New Left to a prominent libertarian thinker was significantly influenced by his reading of works by F.A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises during his graduate studies.1

This intellectual shift culminated in the 1974 publication of his seminal work, Anarchy, State, and Utopia. In this book, Nozick provided a rigorous defense of the libertarian "minimal state" and challenged the social-democratic liberalism championed by his Harvard colleague John Rawls. Through his entitlement theory of justice, Nozick argued that any distribution of holdings is just if it arises from legitimate means, such as voluntary exchange, asserting that attempts to enforce patterned distributions would require unjust intrusions into individual liberty.12