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,
#701
Liliane Haegeman
#98314
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Liliane Madeleine Victor Haegeman ARB is a Belgian professor of linguistics at Ghent University. She received her PhD in English linguistics in 1981 from Ghent University, and has written numerous books and journal articles thereafter. Haegeman is best known for her contributions to the English generative grammar, with her book Introduction to Government and Binding Theory well established as the most authoritative introduction on the Principles and Parameters approach of generative linguistics. She is also acknowledged for her contributions to syntactic cartography, including works on the left periphery of Germanic languages, negation and discourse particles, and adverbial clauses.
Go to Profile#702
Vivien Law
#62463
Overall Influence
1954 - 2002 (48 years)
Vivien Anne Law, Lady Shackleton, was a British linguist and academic, who specialised in grammar. Over her lifetime, she "acquired a grammatical knowledge of over a hundred languages". She spent all her academic career at the University of Cambridge.
Go to Profile#703
Martha Cheung
#61345
Overall Influence
1953 - 2013 (60 years)
Martha Pui Yiu Cheung was a researcher and scholar in Translation Studies, Chair Professor in Translation and Director of the Centre for Translation at Hong Kong Baptist University. She is best known for the first volume of her Anthology on Chinese Discourse on Translation, published in 2006. She was working on the second volume of the anthology at the time of her death. Cheung was also noted for her works in translation theory, literary translation, and translation history.
Go to Profile#704
Lisa Gerrard
#60908
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Lisa Germaine Gerrard is an Australian musician, singer and composer who rose to prominence as part of the music group Dead Can Dance with music partner Brendan Perry. She is known for her unique singing style technique , influenced by her childhood spent in multicultural areas of Melbourne. She has a dramatic contralto voice and has a vocal range of three octaves.
Go to Profile#705
Maria Schneider
#77646
Overall Influence
1952 - 2011 (59 years)
Maria-Hélène Schneider , known professionally as Maria Schneider, was a French actress. In 1972, at the age of 19, she starred opposite Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris, but being traumatised by a rape scene and hounded by unsavoury publicity negatively affected her subsequent career. Although Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger showcased her abilities, a reputation for walking out of films mid-production resulted in her becoming unwelcome in the industry. However, she re-established stability in her personal and professional life in the early 1980s, and became an advocate for equality and improving the conditions actresses worked under.
Go to Profile#706
Anita O'Day
#58824
Overall Influence
1919 - 2006 (87 years)
Anita Belle Colton , known professionally as Anita O'Day, was an American jazz singer and self proclaimed “song stylist” widely admired for her sense of rhythm and dynamics, and her early big band appearances that shattered the traditional image of the "girl singer". Refusing to pander to any female stereotype, O'Day presented herself as a "hip" jazz musician, wearing a band jacket and skirt as opposed to an evening gown. She changed her surname from Colton to O'Day, pig Latin for "dough", slang for money.
Go to Profile#707
Jennifer Jenkins
#88457
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
#708
Ann Reinking
#54429
Overall Influence
1949 - 2020 (71 years)
Ann Reinking was an American dancer, actress, choreographer, and singer. She worked predominantly in musical theater, starring in Broadway productions such as Coco , Over Here! , Goodtime Charley , Chicago , Dancin' , and Sweet Charity .
Go to Profile#709
Safiya Noble
#17247
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Safiya Umoja Noble is a professor at UCLA, and is the co-founder and co-director of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry. She is the author of Algorithms of Oppression, and co-editor of two edited volumes: The Intersectional Internet: Race, Sex, Class and Culture and Emotions, Technology & Design. She is a research associate at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford. She was appointed a Commissioner to the University of Oxford Commission on AI and Good Governance in 2020. In 2020 she was nominated to the Global Future Council on Artificial Intelligence for Humanity ...
Go to Profile#710
Renata Scotto
#66605
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Renata Scotto was an Italian soprano, opera director, and voice teacher. Recognised for her sense of style, her musicality, and as a remarkable singer-actress, Scotto is considered to have been one of the preeminent opera singers of her generation.
Go to Profile#711
Jane McGonigal
#18884
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
Jane McGonigal is an American author, game designer, and researcher. McGonigal is known for her game Jane the Concussion Slayer and her role as Director of Game Research and Development at Institute for the Future.
Go to Profile#712
Mira Ariel
#82715
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Mira Ariel is a professor of linguistics at Tel Aviv University, specializing in pragmatics. A pioneer of the study of information structure, she is best known for creating and developing Accessibility Theory.
Go to Profile#713
Margaret O'Brien
#60987
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Angela Maxine O'Brien is an American film, radio, television, and stage actress, and is one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema. Beginning a prolific career as a child actress in feature films for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer at age four, O'Brien became one of the most popular child stars in cinema history and was honored with a Juvenile Academy Award as the outstanding child actress of 1944. In her later career, she appeared on television, on stage, and in supporting film roles.
Go to Profile#714
Sarafina Nance
#38749
Overall Influence
Sarafina El-Badry Nance is an Egyptian-American science communicator, astrophysicist and Ph.D. student in the Department of Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on supernovae and their applications to cosmology. Nance is known for her use of social media, in particular Twitter, where she discusses astrophysics and activism. She is also an advocate for women's health and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
Go to Profile#715
Sam Brown
#60002
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Samantha Brown is an English singer, songwriter and musician. Brown is a blue-eyed soul and jazz singer, and ukulele and piano player. She came to prominence in the late 1980s as a solo artist and released six singles that entered the UK Singles Chart during the 1980s and 1990s. Her solo singles, sometimes dealing with lost love, include "Stop!", "This Feeling", "Can I Get a Witness", "Kissing Gate", "With a Little Love" and "Just Good Friends". She worked as a session backing vocalist, working with artists such as Gary Moore, George Harrison, Small Faces, Spandau Ballet, Adam Ant, Jon Lord ,...
Go to Profile#716
Christa Dürscheid
#86795
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Christa Dürscheid , is a German linguist and professor at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Her main research interests include grammar, variational linguistics, didactics of language, writing systems, and media linguistics. In the English-speaking research community, she is best known for her publications about language use in the New Media.
Go to Profile#717
Lindsay Cooper
#75591
Overall Influence
1951 - 2013 (62 years)
Lindsay Cooper was an English bassoon and oboe player and composer. Best known for her work with the band Henry Cow, she was also a member of Comus, National Health, News from Babel and David Thomas and the Pedestrians. She collaborated with a number of musicians, including Chris Cutler and Sally Potter, and co-founded the Feminist Improvising Group. She wrote scores for film and TV and a song cycle Oh Moscow which was performed live around the world in 1987. She also recorded a number of solo albums, including Rags , The Gold Diggers , and Music For Other Occasions .
Go to Profile#718
Kitty Wells
#45008
Overall Influence
1919 - 2012 (93 years)
Ellen Muriel Deason , known professionally as Kitty Wells, was an American pioneering female country music singer. She broke down a barrier for women in country music with her 1952 hit recording "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels", which also made her the first female country singer to top the U.S. country charts and turned her into the first female country superstar. “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” would also be her first of several pop crossover hits. Wells is the only artist to be awarded top female vocalist awards for 14 consecutive years. Her chart-topping hits continued...
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Heike Hennig
#42116
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Heike Hennig is a German dancer, choreographer and director of the opera and dance ensemble "Heike Hennig & Co". Life Heike Hennig had her first dance lessons at the age of 5 years in Leipzig of East Germany, studied modern dance, choreography and Body-Mind Centering in Cologne and at Moving on Center – School for Participatory Arts and Research in Oakland in US with teachers such as Steve Paxton, worked in Brazil and Portugal.
Go to Profile#720
Barbara Romaine
#71802
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Barbara Romaine is an academic and translator of Arabic literature. From 2008 to 2021 she taught in the Department of Global Interdisciplinary Studies at Villanova University, where she also edited a periodical, Writing in Tongues: A Global Interdisciplinary Journal. Romaine has translated a number of literary works from Arabic to English. These include:Aunt Safiyya and the Monastery by Bahaa Taher Siraaj by Radwa Ashour Spectres by Radwa Ashour Blue Lorries by Radwa Ashour A Cloudy Day on the Western Shore by Mohamed Mansi Qandil Waiting for the Past by Hadiya Hussein
Go to Profile#721
Judith Curry
#19797
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Judith A. Curry is an American climatologist and former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research interests include hurricanes, remote sensing, atmospheric modeling, polar climates, air-sea interactions, climate models, and the use of unmanned aerial vehicles for atmospheric research. She was a member of the National Research Council's Climate Research Committee, published over a hundred scientific papers, and co-edited several major works. Curry retired from academia in 2017 at age 63, coinciding with her public climate change ...
Go to Profile#722
Sally Caves
#64160
Overall Influence
Sally Caves is the pen name of Sarah Higley, a science fiction writer and professor of English at the University of Rochester. She is best known for creating the Star Trek character Reginald Barclay.
Go to Profile#723
Annemarie von Gabain
#25233
Overall Influence
1901 - 1993 (92 years)
Annemarie von Gabain was a German scholar who dealt with Turkic studies, both as a linguist and as an art historian. Early life and education Gabain was born in Morhange on 7 April 1901. Her father, Arthur von Gabain, was a general and from Protestant family, Hugenotte. However, her mother raised her as a Catholic. Gabain received primary and secondary education in Mainz and Brandenburg. She went to Berlin for university education. She took courses on mathematics, sciences, Sinology and Turcology. She completed a dissertation in Sinology. Von Gabain then studied Turcology with Johann Wilhelm Bang Kaup who was the founder of the Berlin school of Turkic studies.
Go to Profile#724
Laurel J. Brinton
#78511
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Laurel J. Brinton is an American-born Canadian linguist. Her research explores areas of Modern English grammar, historical change in English discourse markers, grammaticalization and lexification in English, corpus linguistics, and the pragmatics of English.
Go to Profile#725
Charlotte Smith
#71499
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Charlotte Victoria Smith is one of two main presenters of BBC Radio 4's Farming Today. Early life Smith grew up in Quorn, Leicestershire, the ancestral home of British fox hunting. She attended Loughborough High School]], where she was head girl. She studied English and Drama at the University of Kent from 1983–86.
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Judy Rebick
#18407
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Judy Rebick is a Canadian writer, journalist, political activist, and feminist. Early life Born in Reno, Nevada, Rebick and her family moved to Toronto when she was 9. She became a socialist activist in the 1970s, joining the Revolutionary Marxist Group. She was a member of its successor, the Revolutionary Workers League, and wrote articles for the RWL's newspaper, Socialist Voice, until she left the organization in the early 1980s.
Go to Profile#727
Deniece Williams
#37102
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
June Deniece Williams is an American singer. She has been described as "one of the great soul voices" by the BBC. She is best known for the songs "Free", "Silly", "It's Gonna Take a Miracle" and two Billboard Hot 100 No.1 singles "Let's Hear It for the Boy" and "Too Much, Too Little, Too Late" . Williams has won four Grammys with twelve nominations altogether. She is also known for recording “Without Us”, the theme song of Family Ties.
Go to Profile#728
Erika Timm
#74384
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Erika Timm is a German linguist, the author of works that have made fundamental contributions to Yiddish historical linguistics and philology. Biography In 1985 she wrote her habilitation work in Trier University . Currently she is a Professor Emeritus of Trier University. She was the first German scholar to be appointed to a chair of Yiddish studies. Her husband, Gustav Adolf Beckmann, a German philologist who specialized in Romance languages, was her collaborator on a number of books.
Go to Profile#729
Alice Coltrane
#56428
Overall Influence
1937 - 2007 (70 years)
Alice Lucille Coltrane , also known as Swamini Turiyasangitananda or simply Turiya, was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader and Hindu spiritual leader. An accomplished pianist and one of the few harpists in the history of jazz, Coltrane recorded many albums as a bandleader, beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s for Impulse! and other record labels. She was married to the jazz saxophonist and composer John Coltrane, with whom she performed in 1966–1967. One of the foremost proponents of spiritual jazz, her eclectic music proved influential both within and outside the world of...
Go to Profile#730
Inez Fung
#30317
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Inez Fung is a professor of atmospheric science at the University of California, Berkeley, jointly appointed in the department of earth and planetary science and the department of environmental science, policy and management. She is also the co-director of the Berkeley Institute of the Environment.
Go to Profile#731
Lisa Strausfeld
#44915
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Lisa Strausfeld is an American design professional and information architect. Education Strausfeld studied art history and computer science and earned a Bachelor of Arts at Brown University. She went on to study at Harvard University, where she earned a Master of Architecture. She later studied media arts and sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology , earning a Master of Science degree.
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Moya Brennan
#62740
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Moya Brennan , also known as Máire Brennan, is an Irish folk singer, songwriter, harpist, and philanthropist. She is the sister of the musical artist known as Enya. She began performing professionally in 1970 when her family formed the band Clannad. Brennan released her first solo album in 1992 called Máire, a successful venture. She has received a Grammy Award from five nominations and has won an Emmy Award. She has recorded music for several soundtracks, including Titanic, To End All Wars and King Arthur.
Go to Profile#733
Celeste Condit
#59509
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Celeste Michelle Condit is an American professor and scholar of rhetorical criticism. Her work focuses on the rhetoric of racism, biology, the human genome, and feminism. In 2018, the Public Address Conference described Condit as "a pioneer in understanding and improving public communication about genetics." She currently holds the role of Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Georgia.
Go to Profile#734
Jeanne Moreau
#80586
Overall Influence
1928 - 2017 (89 years)
Jeanne Moreau was a French actress, singer, screenwriter, director, and socialite. She made her theatrical debut in 1947, and established herself as one of the leading actresses of the Comédie-Française. Moreau began playing small roles in films in 1949, later achieving prominence with starring roles in Louis Malle's Elevator to the Gallows , Michelangelo Antonioni's La Notte , and François Truffaut's Jules et Jim . Most prolific during the 1960s, Moreau continued to appear in films into her 80s. Orson Welles called her "the greatest actress in the world".
Go to Profile#735
Yoko Shimomura
#47829
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Yoko Shimomura is a Japanese composer and pianist primarily known for her work in video games such as the Kingdom Hearts series. She graduated from the Osaka College of Music in 1988 and began working in the video game industry by joining Capcom the same year. She wrote music for several games there, including Final Fight, Street Fighter II, and The King of Dragons.
Go to Profile#736
Shreya Ghoshal
#51393
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (40 years)
Shreya Ghoshal is an Indian singer. Noted for her wide vocal range and versatility, she is one of the most prolific and popular singers of India. She has recorded songs for films and albums in various Indian and foreign languages and received numerous accolades, including five National Film Awards, four Kerala State Film Awards, two Tamil Nadu State Film Awards, two BFJA Awards, seven Filmfare Awards and ten Filmfare Awards South.
Go to Profile#737
Anna Szabolcsi
#82208
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Anna Szabolcsi is a linguist whose research has focused on semantics, syntax, and the syntax–semantics interface. She was born and educated in Hungary, and received her Ph.D. from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest.
Go to Profile#738
Eliane Elias
#78062
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Eliane Elias is a Brazilian jazz pianist, singer, composer and arranger. Biography Elias was born in São Paulo, Brazil on 19 March 1960. She started studying piano when she was seven, and at age twelve she was transcribing solos from jazz musicians. She began teaching piano when she was fifteen, and began performing at seventeen with Brazilian singer-songwriter Toquinho and touring with the poet Vinicius de Moraes.
Go to Profile#739
Amanda Eubanks Winkler
#89605
Overall Influence
Amanda Eubanks Winkler is a British-American scholar of English music and theater. She is Director of the Department of Music at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. Formerly she was Chair and Professor of Music History and Cultures in the Department of Art and Music Histories at Syracuse University College of Arts and Sciences. Between 2017–2020, she collaborated with the theater historian Richard Schoch on the AHRC Research Project Performing Restoration Shakespeare.
Go to Profile#740
Julianne Malveaux
#8526
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Julianne Marie Malveaux is an American economist, author, social and political commentator, and businesswoman. After five years as the 15th president of Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina, she resigned on May 6, 2012.
Go to Profile#741
Maria Polinsky
#83567
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Maria “Masha” Polinsky is an American linguist specializing in theoretical syntax and study of heritage languages. Career Polinsky was born in Moscow, Russia. She received a B.A. in philology from Moscow University in 1979, and an M.A. in 1983 and a Ph.D. in 1986 in linguistics from the Institute for Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Her dissertation examined the structure of antipassives in several ergative languages.
Go to Profile#742
Whitney Houston
#35082
Overall Influence
1963 - 2012 (49 years)
Whitney Elizabeth Houston was an American singer and actress. Nicknamed "the Voice", she is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with over 220 million records sold worldwide. In 2023, Rolling Stone named her the second-greatest singer of all time. Houston influenced many singers in popular music, and was known for her powerful, soulful vocals, vocal improvisation skills, and use of gospel singing techniques in pop music. She had 11 number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100 and is the only artist to have seven consecutive number-one singles on the chart. Her accolades include eight Grammy Awards, 16 Billboard Music Awards, two Emmy Awards, and 30 Guinness World Records.
Go to Profile#743
Teresa Berganza
#70505
Overall Influence
1933 - 2022 (89 years)
Teresa Berganza Vargas OAXS was a Spanish mezzo-soprano. She is most closely associated with roles such as Rossini's Rosina and La Cenerentola, and later Bizet's Carmen, admired for her technical virtuosity, musical intelligence, and beguiling stage presence. Berganza was a key singer in a Rossini renaissance which explored less performed operas and restored the leading roles to mezzo register. She appeared as Zerlina in Joseph Losey's Don Giovanni film in 1979. She participated in the opening ceremonies of the Expo '92 in Seville and of the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.
Go to Profile#744
Sylvia Harris
#84605
Overall Influence
1953 - 2011 (58 years)
Sylvia Harris was an African-American graphic designer and design strategist. She has been considered a pioneer in the field of social impact design. In honor of her memory the American Institute of Graphic Arts created the Sylvia Harris Citizen Design Award, which honors a professional designer who has created a project that enhances public life.
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Anna-Brita Stenström
#102430
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (92 years)
Anna-Brita Stenström is a linguist whose areas of research include corpus linguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, and discourse analysis. She has initiated and co-directed three online corpora of adolescent language: The Bergen Corpus of London Teenage Language , Ungdomsspråk och språkkontakt i Norden , and Corpus Oral de Lenguaje Adolescente . She is Professor Emerita of English Linguistics at the University of Bergen, Norway.
Go to Profile#746
Barbara Hendricks
#57357
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Barbara Hendricks is an American operatic soprano and concert singer. Hendricks has lived in Europe since 1977, and in Switzerland in Basel since 1985. She is a citizen of Sweden following her marriage to a Swedish citizen.
Go to Profile#747
Nina Grønnum
#78865
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Nina Grønnum is a Danish retired phonetician and associate professor emeritus from the University of Copenhagen. She is best known for her work on the pronunciation of Danish and especially her many studies on Danish intonation and prosody. She went by her married name Nina Thorsen or Nina Grønnum Thorsen until the 1980s.
Go to Profile#748
Susan Rogers
#7140
Overall Influence
Susan Rogers is an American professor, sound engineer, and record producer best known for being Prince's staff engineer during his commercial peak , including on albums like Purple Rain, Around the World in a Day, Parade, Sign o' the Times, and The Black Album." During this time, Rogers laid the foundations for Prince's now-famous vault by beginning the process of collecting and cataloguing all his studio and live recordings. She has also worked as a sound engineer and record producer for other musical artists such as Barenaked Ladies , David Byrne, Robben Ford, Jeff Black, Rusted Root, Tricky, Michael Penn, Toad the Wet Sprocket, and Tevin Campbell.
Go to Profile#749
Dora Bryan
#69241
Overall Influence
1923 - 2014 (91 years)
Dora May Broadbent, , known as Dora Bryan, was a British actress of stage, film and television. Early life Bryan was born in Southport, Lancashire. Her father was a salesman and she attended Hathershaw County Primary School in Oldham, Lancashire. Her career began in pantomime before the Second World War, during which she joined ENSA in Italy to entertain British troops.
Go to Profile#750
Kirsti Koch Christensen
#56802
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Kirsti Koch Christensen is a Norwegian linguist that served as chancellor of the University of Bergen from 1999 to 2005. Kirsti Koch Christensen was born in Oslo. She received a master's degree in general linguistics from the University of Oslo in 1978. She has also studied at the University of Hawaii, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Stanford University, and in Kobe, Japan. In 1991 Koch Christensen became a linguistics professor at the University of Bergen with special responsibility for Japanese. She had previously been an associate professor of linguistics at the University of Be...
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