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,
#851
Gillian Armstrong
#54974
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Gillian May Armstrong is an Australian feature film and documentary director, best known for My Brilliant Career, Little Women, The Last Days of Chez Nous, and Mrs. Soffel. She is a Member of the Order of Australia.
Go to Profile#852
Jacqui Banaszynski
#74202
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Jacqui Banaszynski is an American journalist. She was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 1988. Banaszynski went on to become a professor and a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Chair at the school of journalism at University of Missouri.
Go to Profile#853
Wendy James
#95823
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
Wendy Patricia James is an English singer-songwriter most notable for her work with the pop band Transvision Vamp. Transvision Vamp Born in London to Norwegian parents, James was adopted soon after birth. She left home at the age of sixteen, moving to the East Sussex seaside resort town of Brighton. There she met Nick Christian Sayer, who became her boyfriend and musical collaborator. Sayer and James moved to London, where they teamed up with friends Dave Parsons, Tex Axile and Pol Burton, with whom they formed the pop-punk band Transvision Vamp. James was the lead singer and focal point of ...
Go to Profile#854
Zhengdao Ye
#91581
Overall Influence
Zhengdao Ye is an Australia-based Chinese linguist who specializes in semantics, pragmatics, translation studies and intercultural communication. She is a lecturer at the Australian National University. She has contributed to the development of NSM semantics in Mandarin and Shanghainese, to the study of the semantics of nouns, and the semantics of emotion.
Go to Profile#855
Donna Polseno
#94157
Overall Influence
Donna Polseno is a contemporary American visual artist known for pottery, ceramics, and sculpture. Background Donna Polseno earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Kansas City Art Institute and her Master of Arts in Teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design. She lives and works in Floyd, Virginia and teaches ceramics at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. Polseno is a founding member of the 16 Hands Studio Tour and director of the Women Working with Clay Symposium.
Go to Profile#856
Siobhán McHugh
#102695
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (68 years)
Siobhán McHugh is an Irish-Australian author, podcast producer and critic, oral historian, audio documentary-maker and journalism academic. In 2013 she founded RadioDoc Review, the first journal of critical analysis of crafted audio storytelling podcasts and features, for which she received an academic research award. She is Associate Professor of Journalism at the University of Wollongong . and Associate Professor of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney. Her latest book, The Power of Podcasting: telling stories through sound, was published by NewSouth Books in February 2022.
Go to Profile#857
Mercedes Bengoechea
#71167
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Mercedes Bengoechea Bartolomé is a Spanish feminist sociolinguist, professor of English philology and a proponent for the defense of the use of gender-neutral language from an academic foundation. She has had a long career as an advisor to various entities, including the Institute of Women and the Instituto RTVE . Since 1994, Bengoechea has been a member of the Comisión Asesora sobre Lenguaje del Instituto de la Mujer . She has been vocal at the Commission for the Modernization of Legal Language of the Ministry of Justice, as well as coordinator of the first Annual Report of the National Observatory on Gender Violence.
Go to Profile#858
Donka Farkas
#96072
Overall Influence
Donka Farkas is a Rumanian-American linguist, Professor Emerita of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Academic career Donka Farkas received her PhD in Linguistics from the University of Chicago in 1981. Her dissertation, titled Intensional Descriptions and the Romance Subjunctive Mood, was supervised by James D. McCawley.
Go to Profile#859
Philomen Probert
#75446
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Philomen Probert is a British classicist and academic, specialising in linguistics. She is Professor of Classical Philology and Linguistics at the University of Oxford. Early life and education From 1991 to 1995, Probert studied classics at Exeter College, Oxford, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree. Remaining at Exeter College, she undertook postgraduate studies in general linguistics and comparative philology, completing her Master of Philosophy degree in 1997. She then moved to St John's College, Oxford, where she undertook research towards her Doctor of Philosophy degree under the supervision of Anna Morpurgo Davies.
Go to Profile#860
Liz Fraser
#81678
Overall Influence
1930 - 2018 (88 years)
Elizabeth Joan Winch , known professionally as Liz Fraser, was a British film actress, best known for being cast in provocative comedy roles. Early life Fraser was born in Southwark, London. Her year of birth was usually cited as 1933, which she gave when auditioning for her role in I'm All Right Jack, because the Boulting Brothers wanted someone younger for the part. In fact she was three years older, as she confirmed in her 2012 autobiography Liz Fraser ... and Other Characters,. Her father was a travelling salesman for a brewery and her mother owned a corner shop just off the New Kent Road....
Go to Profile#861
Paola Antonelli
#16123
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (62 years)
Paola Antonelli is an Italian architect, curator, author, editor, and educator. Antonelli is the Senior Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art , New York, where she also serves as the founding Director of Research and Development. She has been described as "one of the 25 most incisive design visionaries in the world" by TIME magazine.
Go to Profile#862
Sophia Ananiadou
#67724
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (67 years)
Sophia Ananiadou is a Greek-British computer scientist and computational linguist. She led the development of and directs the National Centre for Text Mining in the United Kingdom. She is also Professor in Computer Science in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Manchester.
Go to Profile#863
Wendy Sandler
#78976
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (76 years)
Wendy Sandler is an American-Israeli linguist who is known for her research on the phonology of Sign Languages. Career and research Sandler earned her PhD in linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1987, with a dissertation entitled "Sequentiality and simultaneity in American Sign Language." A revised version of her dissertation was published in 1989 under the title, "Phonological Representation of the Sign: Linearity and Nonlinearity in Sign Language Phonology."
Go to Profile#864
Marilyn Bergman
#73132
Overall Influence
1929 - 2022 (93 years)
#865
Hannah Storm
#59300
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
Hannah Lynn Storen Hicks , known professionally as Hannah Storm, is an American television sports journalist, serving as the anchor of ESPN's SportsCenter. She was also host of the NBA Countdown pregame show on ABC as part of the network's National Basketball Association Sunday game coverage.
Go to Profile#866
Astrid Klein
#59730
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Astrid Klein is a German contemporary artist. Klein works in a variety of mediums including drawing, painting, text, photography and installation and sculpture. Biography Astrid Klein studied at the Academy of Art and Design in Cologne Köln International School of Design from 1973 to 1977. In 1986 she was visiting professor at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg, and from 1993 to 2017 she was professor of fine arts at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig. The artist has received a variety of awards including the Käthe Kollwitz Prize in 1997 and the Cologne Fine Art Award in 2001. Astrid Klein is married to Don Nikos Marquis Araldi of Piadena.
Go to Profile#867
Marian McPartland
#56641
Overall Influence
1918 - 2013 (95 years)
Margaret Marian McPartland OBE , was an English–American jazz pianist, composer, and writer. She was the host of Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz on National Public Radio from 1978 to 2011. After her marriage to trumpeter Jimmy McPartland in February 1945, she resided in the United States when not travelling throughout the world to perform. In 1969, she founded Halcyon Records, a recording company that issued albums for 10 years. In 2000, she was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master. In 2004, she was given a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement. In 2007, she was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame.
Go to Profile#868
Sissel Tolaas
#24259
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
Sissel Tolaas is a Norwegian artist and researcher known for her work with smell. Sissel Tolaas was born in 1961 in Stavanger, Norway and is now based in Berlin. Tolaas has a background in chemistry, mathematics, linguistics, languages and art; she studied at the universities of Oslo, Warsaw, Moscow, St. Petersburg and Oxford.
Go to Profile#869
Judith Baxter
#45060
Overall Influence
1955 - 2018 (63 years)
Judith Baxter was a British sociolinguist and Professor of Applied linguistics at Aston University where she specialised in Gender and Language, and Leadership Language. She served in editorial positions with several academic journals.
Go to Profile#870
Danielle Wood
#45229
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (53 years)
Danielle Wood is a Tasmanian journalist, writer and academic. Her first book, The Alphabet of Light and Dark, won The Australian/Vogel Literary Award in 2002. Biography Wood was born in Hobart, Tasmania. She was educated at The Friends' School in Hobart and went on to complete a Bachelor of Arts with honours from the University of Tasmania, before working as a cadet journalist. At age 26, Wood moved to Western Australia and enrolled in a PhD through Edith Cowan University, starting work on her book at the same time. She has since returned to Tasmania where she is a lecturer at University of T...
Go to Profile#871
Francesca Gino
#28213
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Francesca Gino is an Italian-American behavioral scientist. In June 2023, after an investigation concluded that she had falsified data in her research, she was placed on unpaid administrative leave from her position as Tandon Family Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and as head of HBS's Negotiation, Organizations and Markets unit.
Go to Profile#872
Jocelyn Brown
#60559
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Jocelyn Lorette Brown , sometimes credited as Jocelyn Shaw, is an American R&B and dance singer. Although she has only one Billboard Hot 100 chart entry solely in her name, she has an extensive background in the music industry and is well known in the world of dance music. Brown sang on 23 hit singles from the Official UK Singles Chart, 8 of which have reached the top 20.
Go to Profile#873
Marie-Luise Neunecker
#90331
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Marie Luise Neunecker is a German horn player and professor at the Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler". Professional career Neunecker was born in Erbes-Büdesheim. She studied musicology and German studies. She completed her horn studies with at the Hochschule für Musik Köln. In 1978 she started her career at the Opern- und Schauspielhaus Frankfurt as second horn. In 1979 she was appointed principal horn with the Bamberg Symphony, and from 1981 to 1989 she held the same position with the hr-Sinfonieorchester. She has appeared as a soloist with various orchestras worldwide, and is also active ...
Go to Profile#874
Anne-Sophie Mutter
#73171
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (62 years)
Anne-Sophie Mutter is a German violinist. Born and raised in Rheinfelden, Baden-Württemberg, Mutter started playing the violin at age five and continued studies in Germany and Switzerland. She was supported early in her career by Herbert von Karajan and made her orchestral debut with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1977. Since Mutter gained prominence in the 1970s and 1980s, she has recorded over 50 albums and performed as a soloist with leading orchestras worldwide and as a recitalist. Her primary instrument is the Lord Dunn–Raven Stradivarius violin.
Go to Profile#875
Marilyn Walker
#106569
Overall Influence
Marilyn A. Walker is an American computer scientist. She is professor of computer science and head of the Natural Language and Dialogue Systems Lab at the University of California, Santa Cruz . Her research includes work on computational models of dialogue interaction and conversational agents, analysis of affect, sarcasm and other social phenomena in social media dialogue, acquiring causal knowledge from text, conversational summarization, interactive story and narrative generation, and statistical methods for training the dialogue manager and the language generation engine for dialogue syst...
Go to Profile#876
Gret Palucca
#21348
Overall Influence
1902 - 1993 (91 years)
Gret Palucca was a German dancer and dance teacher, notable for her dance school, the Palucca School of Dance, founded in Dresden in 1925. Life and work Margarethe Paluka was born in Munich. Shortly after birth, her family moved to San Francisco, returning with her mother to Dresden in 1909. She had ballet lessons with Heinrich Kröller from 1914 to 1916 and from 1917 to 1918, she attended Margarete Balsat's school for upper-class girls in Dresden.
Go to Profile#877
Shirley Horn
#81011
Overall Influence
1934 - 2005 (71 years)
Shirley Valerie Horn was an American jazz singer and pianist. She collaborated with many jazz musicians including Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Toots Thielemans, Ron Carter, Carmen McRae, Wynton Marsalis and others. She was most noted for her ability to accompany herself with nearly incomparable independence and ability on the piano while singing, something described by arranger Johnny Mandel as "like having two heads", and for her rich, lush voice, a smoky contralto, which was described by noted producer and arranger Quincy Jones as "like clothing, as she seduces you with her voice".
Go to Profile#878
Juliet Prowse
#74211
Overall Influence
1936 - 1996 (60 years)
Juliet Anne Prowse was a British-American dancer and actress whose four-decade career included stage, television and film. She was raised in South Africa, where her family emigrated after World War II. Known for her attractive legs, she was described after her death as having "arguably the best legs since Betty Grable."
Go to Profile#879
Suzanne Flynn
#99033
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Suzanne Flynn is an American linguist and Professor of Linguistics at MIT who has contributed to the fields of second and third language acquisition. She has also investigated language disorders. Research Suzanne Flynn received her PhD from Cornell University in 1983. Her work has spanned from syntax and second-language acquisition of syntax to language processing in people with neurocognitive disorders, such as changes in language during the prodromal course in the development of Alzheimer’s disease.
Go to Profile#880
Lisa Gotto
#107233
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (49 years)
Lisa Gotto is a professor of film theory at the University of Vienna. She was previously a professor of film studies at the Internationale Filmschule Köln and a professor of media and game studies at the Cologne Game Lab at the Technical University of Cologne. Gotto specializes in film studies, game studies and media studies.
Go to Profile#881
Golnaz Modarresi Ghavami
#112296
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
Golnaz Modarresi Ghavami is an Iranian linguist and associate professor of linguistics at Allameh Tabataba'i University. She is known for her research on Persian phonology and phonetics. Her textbook on phonetics is widely taught in Iranian universities. Modarresi Ghavami received a BA in English translation from Allameh Tabataba'i University in 1989, an MA in linguistics from Ferdowsi University in 1992 and a PhD in linguistics from University of Texas at Austin in 2002.
Go to Profile#882
Carolee Schneemann
#40540
Overall Influence
1939 - 2019 (80 years)
Carolee Schneemann was an American visual experimental artist, known for her multi-media works on the body, narrative, sexuality and gender. She received a B.A. in poetry and philosophy from Bard College and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Illinois. Originally a painter in the Abstract Expressionist tradition, Schneeman was uninterested in the masculine heroism of New York painters of the time and turned to performance-based work, primarily characterized by research into visual traditions, taboos, and the body of the individual in relation to social bodies. Although renowned for ...
Go to Profile#883
Patricia Aufderheide
#68255
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
Patricia Ann Aufderheide is a scholar and public intellectual on media and social change, and an expert on fair use in media creation and scholarship. She is a University Professor at American University in Washington, D.C., where she has worked since 1989 and directed the Center for Social Media, later the Center for Media & Social Impact, beginning in 2000. She has received multiple awards and honors for her journalism and scholarship, including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 1994, and a Fulbright Research Fellowship in 1995, and a Distinguished Career Award in 2008 from th...
Go to Profile#884
Judith Weir
#68554
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Judith Weir is a British composer serving as Master of the King's Music. Appointed in 2014 by Queen Elizabeth II, Weir is the first woman to hold this office. Life and career Weir was born in Cambridge, England, to Scottish parents. She studied with John Tavener while at the North London Collegiate School and subsequently with Robin Holloway at King's College, Cambridge, graduating in 1976. Her music often draws on sources from medieval history, as well as the traditional stories and music of her parents' homeland, Scotland. Although she has achieved international recognition for her orchestral and chamber works, Weir is best known for her operas and theatrical works.
Go to Profile#885
Luz Mely Reyes
#92855
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (60 years)
Luz Mely Reyes is a Venezuelan journalist, writer, and analyst. She is known as the director and co-founder of the digital media franchise Efecto Cocuyo. She has received multiple honors for her work.
Go to Profile#886
Velta Ruke-Dravina
#27826
Overall Influence
1917 - 2003 (86 years)
Velta Ruke-Dravina was a Latvian-born Swedish linguist and folklorist, as well as a professor in Baltic languages at Stockholm University. Ruke-Dravina's research interests included children's language, language contact, and dialectology. Her doctoral thesis was about diminutives in Latvian. She held the only professorship in Baltic languages outside the Baltics and had a leading role in developing the teaching program on the subject at Stockholm University. In 1980, she was elected as a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities.
Go to Profile#887
Dianne Reeves
#62547
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Dianne Elizabeth Reeves is an American jazz singer. Biography Dianne Reeves was born in Detroit, Michigan, into a musical family. Her father sang, her mother played trumpet, her uncle is bassist Charles Burrell, and her cousin is George Duke. Her father died when she was two years old, and she was raised in Denver, Colorado, by her mother, Vada Swanson, and maternal family. Reeves was raised Catholic and attended Cure D'Ars Catholic School in Denver for much of her early schooling.
Go to Profile#888
Anna Deavere Smith
#42911
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Anna Deavere Smith is an African-American actress, playwright, and professor. She is known for her roles as National Security Advisor Dr. Nancy McNally in The West Wing , hospital administrator Gloria Akalitus in the Showtime series Nurse Jackie , and as U.S. District Court Clerk Tina Krissman on the ABC show For the People .
Go to Profile#889
Patsy Swayze
#57769
Overall Influence
1927 - 2013 (86 years)
Yvonne Helen "Patsy" Swayze was an American film choreographer, dancer, and dance instructor, and the mother of actors Patrick Swayze and Don Swayze. Her credits include choreography for Urban Cowboy, Liar's Moon and Hope Floats.
Go to Profile#890
Carla Bazzanella
#72424
Overall Influence
1947 - 2022 (75 years)
Carla Bazzanella was an Italian linguist. Bazzanella was born in Turin. After graduating in classics from the University of Turin in 1971, Carla Bazzanella became a lecturer and researcher at the University of Pavia. She held this post from 1976 to 1983. After that she moved back to Turin, and taught glottology and philosophy of language until 1998. Since 2001 she had been an associate professor of linguistics at the University of Turin, where she taught both general linguistics and cognitive linguistics. She retired in 2012, but was active in the academic debate.
Go to Profile#891
Gina McKee
#81468
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (61 years)
Georgina McKee is an English actress. She won the 1997 BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for Our Friends in the North , and earned subsequent nominations for The Lost Prince and The Street . She also starred on television in The Forsyte Saga and as Caterina Sforza in The Borgias . Her film appearances include Notting Hill , Phantom Thread , and My Policeman .
Go to Profile#892
LaVerne Jeanne
#99357
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
LaVerne Masayesva Jeanne is an anthropologist and linguist at the University of Nevada at Reno, where she is an emerita associate professor. She received her PhD at MIT in 1978, where she studied with linguist Ken Hale. Together with MIT her classmate Navajo Paul R. Platero, Jeanne is one of the first two Native Americanss to have received a PhD degree in linguistics.
Go to Profile#893
Teresa Stratas
#77551
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (87 years)
Teresa Stratas is an operatic soprano and actress from Canada of Greek descent. She is especially well known for her award-winning recording of Alban Berg's Lulu. She has now formally retired. Early life and career Stratas was born Anastasia Stratakis to a struggling immigrant Cretan family in Oshawa, near Toronto, Ontario. At age 13, she performed Greek pop songs on the radio. She graduated from The Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. At age 20, Stratas made her professional opera debut as Mimì in La bohème at the Toronto Opera Festival. One year later in 1959, she co-won the Metropolit...
Go to Profile#894
Marina Joubert
#38481
Overall Influence
Marina Joubert is a senior science communication researcher at The Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology at Stellenbosch University. Previously, she was the communication manager for the National Research Foundation and managed her own independent science communication consultancy for a decade. Her consultancy presented the first online course in science communication in Africa.
Go to Profile#895
Valentina Cortese
#94216
Overall Influence
1923 - 2019 (96 years)
Valentina Cortese , sometimes credited as Valentina Cortesa, was an Italian film and theatre actress. In her 50 years spanning career, she appeared in films of Italian and international directors like Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, Franco Zeffirelli, François Truffaut, Joseph L. Mankiewicz and others.
Go to Profile#896
Gillian Murphy
#39936
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (46 years)
Gillian Murphy is an American ballet dancer who is a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre. Early life and education Raised in Florence, South Carolina, Murphy was a member of Columbia City Ballet before attending high school at University of North Carolina School of the Arts. There, under the tutelage of Melissa Hayden, she danced principal roles in several of the school's productions, including The Nutcracker and George Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco, Western Symphony, Tarantella and Theme and Variations.
Go to Profile#897
Ellie Greenwich
#47760
Overall Influence
1940 - 2009 (69 years)
Eleanor Louise Greenwich was an American pop music singer, songwriter, and record producer. She wrote or co-wrote "Da Doo Ron Ron", "Be My Baby", "Maybe I Know", "Then He Kissed Me", "Do Wah Diddy Diddy", "Christmas ", "Hanky Panky", "Chapel of Love", "Leader of the Pack", and "River Deep – Mountain High", among others.
Go to Profile#898
Julia Davis
#72797
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
Julia Charlotte L. Davis is an English actress, comedian, director and writer. She is known for writing and starring in the BBC Three comedy Nighty Night and the comedies Hunderby and Camping , which she also directed. Davis has been noted by critics for creating boundary-pushing black comedy that centres female anti-hero characters.
Go to Profile#899
Marian Seldes
#73044
Overall Influence
1928 - 2014 (86 years)
Marian Hall Seldes was an American actress. A five-time Tony Award nominee, she won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for A Delicate Balance in 1967, and received subsequent nominations for Father's Day , Deathtrap , Ring Round the Moon , and Dinner at Eight . She also won a Drama Desk Award for Father's Day.
Go to Profile#900
Susan George
#76520
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Susan Melody George is an English film and television actress. She is best known for appearing in films such as Straw Dogs with Dustin Hoffman, Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry with Peter Fonda, and Mandingo with Ken Norton.
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