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 female people in Communications,
#501
Colette Grinevald
#59739
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Colette Grinevald is a French linguist. She earned her PhD from Harvard University in 1975 and joined the newly created Linguistics department at the University of Oregon in 1977. Grinevald has written grammars of Jakaltek Popti' and Rama and advocates for endangered languages. She contributed to UNESCO's language vitality criteria developed in 2003. Grinevald serves on Sorosoro's scientific board.
Go to Profile#502
Norma Mendoza-Denton
#39411
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Norma Catalina Mendoza-Denton is a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She specializes in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, including work in sociophonetics, language and identity, ethnography and visual anthropology.
Go to Profile#503
Laura J. Downing
#75934
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Laura J. Downing is an American linguist, specializing in the phonology of African languages. Education and career Downing earned her B.S. in linguistics from Georgetown University in 1977, and her PhD in linguistics from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign in 1990. Her dissertation, The tonal phonology of Jita, was published by Lincom Europa in 1996. After receiving her PhD, she held several positions in North America before moving to Europe in 2001. She was a senior researcher at the ZAS in Berlin from 2001 to 2012, and was professor of African Languages at the University of Got...
Go to Profile#504
Judee K. Burgoon
#36730
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Judee K. Burgoon is a professor of communication, family studies and human development at the University of Arizona, where she serves as director of research for the Center for the Management of Information and site director for the NSF-sponsored Center for Identification Technology Research. She is also involved with different aspects of interpersonal and nonverbal communication, deception, and new communication technologies. She is also director of human communication research for the Center for the Management of Information and site director for Center for Identification Technology Research...
Go to Profile#505
Cini Boeri
#9775
Overall Influence
1924 - 2020 (96 years)
Maria Cristina Mariani Dameno, known as "Cini Boeri" was an Italian architect and designer. She was considered "one of the great pioneering women in Italian design and architecture", who was described as a "formidable architect and designer, paragon of Milanese elegance and verve."
Go to Profile#506
Jacqueline Casey
#47315
Overall Influence
1927 - 1992 (65 years)
Jacqueline S. Casey was a graphic designer best known for the posters and other graphic art she created for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . While practicing a functional Modernism, Jacqueline S. Casey was a graphic designer in the Office of Publications from 1955 to 1989, and was appointed director in 1972. In discussing her design, Casey stated, "My work combines two cultures: The American interest in visual metaphor on the one hand, and the Swiss fascination with planning, fastidiousness, and control over technical execution on the other."
Go to Profile#507
Jaklin Kornfilt
#63826
Overall Influence
Jaklin Kornfilt is a theoretical linguist and professor at Syracuse University who is well known for her contributions to the fields of syntax, morphology, Turkish language and grammar, and Turkic language typology.
Go to Profile#508
A. Sumru Özsoy
#64140
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
A. Sumru Özsoy is a leading linguist and Turkish academic working at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. Education Özsoy received a bachelor's degree in comparative literature from Robert College in 1971. She obtained a master's degree in linguistics from Boğaziçi University in 1975 and a PhD in linguistics from the University of Michigan in 1983. Title of her PhD thesis is "Kendi-reflexivization in Turkish: A syntactic, semantic and discourse analysis".
Go to Profile#509
Sherry Simon
#52993
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Sherry Simon is Canadian translation scholar, who is best known for her work in translation and gender. Biography Simon is a Professor in the Department of French Studies at Concordia University. She has also held the position of Canada Research Chair in Translation and Cultural History and served as Director of Concordia’s interdisciplinary PhD in Humanities Program.
Go to Profile#510
Rachel Nordlinger
#70828
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Rachel Nordlinger is an Australian linguist and a professor at The University of Melbourne. Education After completing a master's degree at The University of Melbourne, she received her PhD in linguistics in 1997 from Stanford University.
Go to Profile#511
Natalie Dessay
#63910
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Natalie Dessay is a French soprano, best known as an opera singer before her retirement from opera stage in 2013. She gained wide recognition after her portrayal of Olympia in The Tales of Hoffmann in 1992, and then performing at leading stages, such as the Paris Opera, Vienna State Opera, and the Metropolitan Opera.
Go to Profile#512
Jillian York
#31857
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (42 years)
Jillian C. York is an American free-expression activist and author. She serves as Director of International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation , and a founding member of Deep Lab. She is the author of Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism and Morocco - Culture Smart!: the essential guide to customs & culture.
Go to Profile#513
Catrin Finch
#34794
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (44 years)
Catrin Ana Finch is a Welsh harpist, arranger and composer. She was the Official Harpist to the Prince of Wales from 2000 to 2004 and is visiting professor at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama and the Royal Academy of Music in London. Finch has given recitals at venues throughout the world.
Go to Profile#514
Renata Tebaldi
#53290
Overall Influence
1922 - 2004 (82 years)
Renata Tebaldi was an Italian lirico-spinto soprano popular in the post-war period, and especially prominent as one of the stars of La Scala, San Carlo and, especially, the Metropolitan Opera. Often considered among the great opera singers of the 20th century, she focused primarily on the verismo roles of the lyric and dramatic repertoires. Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini called her voice "" , and La Scala music director Riccardo Muti called her "one of the greatest performers with one of the most extraordinary voices in the field of opera."
Go to Profile#515
Felicitas Goodman
#30348
Overall Influence
1914 - 2005 (91 years)
Felicitas D. Goodman was an American linguist and anthropologist. She was a highly regarded expert in linguistics and anthropology and researched and explored Ecstatic Trance Postures for many years. She studied the phenomenon of "speaking in tongues" in Pentecostal congregations in Mexico. She is the author of such well-received books as Speaking in Tongues and Where the Spirits Ride the Wind: Trance Journeys and Other Ecstatic Experiences. Her work has been published mostly in the United States and Germany.
Go to Profile#516
Ivonne Bordelois
#55283
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Ivonne Aline Bordelois , is an Argentine poet, essayist, and linguist. Career Ivonne Bordelois graduated from the at the University of Buenos Aires, later studying literature and linguistics at the Sorbonne. She worked at the magazine Sur and conducted interviews and publications with Alejandra Pizarnik for various national and international publications.
Go to Profile#517
Katie Salen
#22950
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Katie Salen Tekinbas is an American game designer, animator, and educator. She is a professor at the University of California, Irvine. Previously, she taught at DePaul University College of Computing and Digital Media, Parsons The New School for Design the University of Texas at Austin, New York University, and the Rhode Island School of Design. She has an MFA in graphic design from the Rhode Island School of Design.
Go to Profile#518
Sally Miller Gearhart
#22473
Overall Influence
1931 - 2021 (90 years)
Sally Miller Gearhart was an American teacher, feminist, science-fiction writer, and political activist. In 1973, she became the first open lesbian to obtain a tenure-track faculty position when she was hired by San Francisco State University, where she helped establish one of the first women and gender study programs in the country. She later became a nationally known gay rights activist.
Go to Profile#519
Vanessa Leggett
#43459
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Vanessa Leggett is an American freelance journalist and lecturer who was jailed by the U.S. Justice Department for 168 days for protecting sources and research notes for an independent book about a federal murder-for-hire case. At the time, it was the longest contempt-of-court imprisonment of a journalist in United States history for protecting sources. Leggett holds the record for serving the most time for protecting source material and without providing that material to negotiate a release from prison.
Go to Profile#520
Anne Abeillé
#78607
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Anne Abeillé is a French linguist specialising in French grammar and syntactic theory, in particular constraint-based grammar, as well as natural language processing. She led the creation of the French Treebank, the first syntactically-annotated corpus of French.
Go to Profile#521
Isolde Ahlgrimm
#71101
Overall Influence
1914 - 1995 (81 years)
Isolde Ahlgrimm was an Austrian harpsichordist and fortepianist. In 1975 she was awarded the Austrian Gold Medal. Musical education Ahlgrimm pursued her early piano studies from 1922 at the Musikakademie, Vienna , under the instruction of such notable teachers as Viktor Ebenstein , Emil von Sauer and Franz Schmidt.
Go to Profile#522
Wilga Rivers
#61537
Overall Influence
1919 - 2007 (88 years)
Wilga Marie Rivers was an Australian linguist and Professor of Romance Languages. While she taught at both the secondary-education and college level throughout her life, she spent the majority of her career on the faculty of Harvard University. There, she served as a Professor of Romance Languages and Coordinator of Language Instruction in Romance Languages, fulfilling these roles until her eventual retirement in 1989.
Go to Profile#523
Sarah Moore
#80789
Overall Influence
Sarah Jones is a British television reporter and presenter. Moore grew up in Redditch, Worcestershire, England and studied Philosophy at the University of Warwick. Whilst at University she competed nationally in Latin and Ballroom dancing. She then studied at Cardiff Journalism School, whilst at the same time gaining work experience as a weekend news editor for a radio station in Wolverhampton, where she produced and presented news bulletins. She undertook her course work placement at ITV Central.
Go to Profile#524
Giulietta Masina
#52072
Overall Influence
1921 - 1994 (73 years)
Giulia Anna "Giulietta" Masina was an Italian film actress best known for her performances as Gelsomina in La Strada and Cabiria in Nights of Cabiria , for which she won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival.
Go to Profile#525
Valeria Bruni Tedeschi
#77059
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, also written Bruni-Tedeschi , is an Italian-French actress, screenwriter and film director. Her 2013 film, A Castle in Italy, was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.
Go to Profile#526
Blossom Dearie
#55971
Overall Influence
1924 - 2009 (85 years)
Margrethe Blossom Dearie was an American jazz singer and pianist. She had a recognizably light and girlish voice. Dearie performed regular engagements in London and New York City over many years and collaborated with many musicians, including Johnny Mercer, Miles Davis, Jack Segal, Johnny Mandel, Duncan Lamont, Bob Dorough, Dave Frishberg, and Jay Berliner.
Go to Profile#527
Pam Peters
#81572
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Pamela Hardy Peters is an Australian linguist. She is an Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at Macquarie University, Sydney. She is a member of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Standing Committee on Spoken English. She has published several books on Australian and international English usage, including The Cambridge Guide to English Usage and The Cambridge Guide to Australian English Usage . She was a member of the editorial committee of the Macquarie Dictionary.
Go to Profile#528
Dodie Bellamy
#49738
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Dodie Bellamy is an American novelist, nonfiction author, journalist, educator and editor. Her book, Cunt-Ups won the 2002 Firecracker Alternative Book Award. Her work is frequently associated with that of the New Narrative movement in San Francisco and fellow writers Robert Glück, Dennis Cooper, Kathy Acker, Kevin Killian, and Eileen Myles.
Go to Profile#529
Ulrike Zeshan
#63555
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Ulrike Zeshan is a German-born linguist and academic specializing in the linguistics of signed languages. She is Professor of Sign Language Linguistics at the University of Central Lancashire, UK. Biography Zeshan obtained an MA at the University of Cologne in 1996 and her PhD in linguistics from the same institution in 2000. Between 1999 and 2006 she held two postdoctoral positions: first at the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology in Canberra, Australia, and then at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen in the Netherlands. In 2006 she took up her current position as...
Go to Profile#530
Diana Krall
#32048
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Diana Jean Krall is a Canadian jazz pianist and singer known for her contralto vocals. She has sold more than 15 million albums worldwide, including over six million in the US. On December 11, 2009, Billboard magazine named her the second greatest jazz artist of the decade , establishing her as one of the best-selling artists of her time.
Go to Profile#531
T. L. Taylor
#32617
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
T. L. Taylor is an American sociologist and professor. Taylor specialises in researching the culture of gaming and online communities, in particular, esports, live-streaming, and MMOGs such as EverQuest and World of Warcraft.
Go to Profile#532
Martha Argerich
#42989
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Martha Argerich is an Argentine classical concert pianist. She is widely considered to be one of the greatest pianists of all time. Born and raised in Buenos Aires to Jewish-Spanish parents, Argerich gave her debut concert at eight before receiving further piano training in Europe. At an early age, she won several competitions, including the VII International Chopin Piano Competition, and has since recorded numerous albums and performed with leading orchestras worldwide.
Go to Profile#533
Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen
#87328
Overall Influence
Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen is a linguist and Professor of French Language and Linguistics at the University of Manchester, UK. Biography Hansen studied at the University of Copenhagen, where she received an MA in 1992, a PhD in 1996 , and a higher doctorate in 2008 . On completion of her PhD she took up an assistant professorship at the same university, and was promoted to associate professor in 2000.
Go to Profile#534
Sofia Gubaidulina
#39906
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (93 years)
Sofia Asgatovna Gubaidulina is a Soviet-Russian composer and an established international figure. Major orchestras around the world have commissioned and performed her works. She is considered one of the foremost Russian composers of the second half of the 20th century.
Go to Profile#535
Laura Diaz
#53879
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Laura Diaz is an American newscaster on KTTV Fox 11 in Los Angeles. She began working for the Fox station in May 2012. She had served as solo anchor of the weekday editions of CBS2 News at 6 pm from April 2010 until she left the station. She produced and hosted some "Eye on Our Community" specials for CBS2. She was previously Diaz the lead anchor at CBS2 and ABC7 in Los Angeles. She was the first Mexican-American to hold a lead anchor position at a Southern California English-language television station.
Go to Profile#536
Margo Chase
#41121
Overall Influence
1958 - 2017 (59 years)
Margo Chase was an American graphic designer known for her eclectic and experimental design style. Chase was prolific – with a career bridging the graphic design field's transition from the analog to the digital era, working with clients ranging from Selena and Prince to Mattel and Procter & Gamble.
Go to Profile#537
Marlene Dietrich
#49624
Overall Influence
1901 - 1992 (91 years)
Marie Magdalene "Marlene" Dietrich was a German and American actress and singer whose career spanned from the 1910s to the 1980s. In 1920s Berlin, Dietrich performed on the stage and in silent films. Her performance as Lola-Lola in Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel brought her international acclaim and a contract with Paramount Pictures. She starred in many Hollywood films, including six iconic roles directed by Sternberg: Morocco , Dishonored , Shanghai Express and Blonde Venus , The Scarlet Empress , The Devil Is a Woman , Desire , and Destry Rides Again . She successfully traded on her glamorous persona and exotic looks, and became one of the era's highest-paid actresses.
Go to Profile#538
Margot Mifflin
#41951
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Margot Mifflin is an author who has written for The New York Times, ARTnews, The New Yorker, Entertainment Weekly, Elle Magazine,The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and other publications.
Go to Profile#539
Shirley Collins
#61139
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Shirley Elizabeth Collins MBE is an English folk singer who was a significant contributor to the English Folk Revival of the 1960s and 1970s. She often performed and recorded with her sister Dolly, whose accompaniment on piano and portative organ created unique settings for Shirley's plain, austere singing style.
Go to Profile#540
Cheris Kramarae
#20993
Overall Influence
Cheris Kramarae is a scholar in the area of women's studies and communication, with her research primarily focusing on gender, language and communication, technology, and education. She is mostly known for her contributions to muted group theory, as well as A Feminist Dictionary, in which she was a co-author.
Go to Profile#541
Pamela Faber
#73245
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Pamela Faber Benítez is an American/Spanish linguist. She has held the Chair of Translation and Interpreting at the Department of Translation and Interpreting of the University of Granada since 2001.
Go to Profile#542
Liz Byrski
#51084
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Elizabeth Ann Byrski is an Australian writer and journalist. Biography After graduating from Notre Dame Convent in Lingfield, Surrey, in 1960, Byrski furthered her education at the Crawley College of Further Education and the Wall Hall College of Education . Her first job was as a secretary at a pest control firm in Sussex. Her journalism career began when she started as a journalist in 1962 on the Horley Advertiser , in Horley, Surrey. She moved to Australia in 1981.
Go to Profile#543
Ans van Kemenade
#75580
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Ans van Kemenade is a Dutch professor of English linguistics at the Radboud University Nijmegen specializing in the history of the English language. Biography Van Kemenade studied English and linguistics at Utrecht University, and received her doctorate there in 1987 with a thesis titled Syntactic Case and Morphological Case in the History of English. Following positions at Leiden University and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam she was appointed professor and chair of English linguistics at the Radboud University Nijmegen in 1999.
Go to Profile#544
Maria Luisa Altieri Biagi
#79847
Overall Influence
1930 - 2017 (87 years)
Maria Luisa Altieri Biagi was an Italian scholar and writer. Life Altieri Biagi graduated from the University of Florence, where she studied Linguistics, and was a professor of the History of the Italian language at the University of Trieste since 1967, and at the University of Bologna since 1974.
Go to Profile#545
Frances Karttunen
#40119
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Frances Esther Karttunen , also known as Frances Ruley Karttunen, is an American academic linguist, historian and author. Education and career She received her BA in 1964 from Harvard and her PhD in 1970 from Indiana University, with a dissertation entitled Problems in Finnish Phonology. Most of her academic career was spent in association with the University of Texas at Austin, where she held researcher and lecturer positions for over 30 years, until her retirement in 2000, as senior university research scientist at the Linguistics Research Center.
Go to Profile#546
Niina Ning Zhang
#69458
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Niina Ning Zhang is a theoretical linguist specializing in Mandarin Chinese syntax and semantics. Education and career Zhang obtained her M.A. degree in linguistics from Shanghai International Studies University, Ph.D. degrees in linguistics from Shanghai International Studies University and, in 1997, from the University of Toronto, Canada.
Go to Profile#547
June Foray
#36423
Overall Influence
1917 - 2017 (100 years)
June Foray was an American voice actress. She was best known as the voice of such animated characters as Rocky the Flying Squirrel, Natasha Fatale, Nell Fenwick, Lucifer from Disney's Cinderella, Cindy Lou Who, Jokey Smurf, Granny from the Warner Bros. cartoons directed by Friz Freleng, Grammi Gummi from Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears series, and Magica De Spell, among many others.
Go to Profile#548
Ruth Kempson
#53866
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Ruth Margaret Kempson, FBA is a British linguist. She is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at King's College, London. In 1977, Kempson published Semantic Theory, which discusses the concept of entailment in linguistics. A proposition is entailed by another if P is true when Q is true and Q is false when P is false, but Q is not strictly defined if P is true. She was awarded a Fellow of the British Academy in 1989. She has made contributions to the theoretical framework of Dynamic syntax.
Go to Profile#549
Carin Goldberg
#58676
Overall Influence
1953 - 2023 (70 years)
Carin Goldberg was an American graphic designer, publication designer and brand consultant. She was known for her cover designs for record albums and books, with her work appearing in and on the covers of the New York Times Book Review, the New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, and Wired. Her use of visual historical references generated controversy within the graphic design community.
Go to Profile#550
Henriette de Swart
#73393
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Henriëtte Elisabeth de Swart is a Dutch linguist. Education and research She earned her PhD at Groningen University in 1991. She was a research fellow at Groningen University and assistant professor at Stanford University. She is currently a Professor in French linguistics and semantics at Utrecht University.
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