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,
#951
Denise Gonzales Crisp
#112644
Overall Influence
Denise Gonzales Crisp is a graphic designer, writer, and professor of graphic design at North Carolina State University College of Design , where she currently directs the graduate program. She holds a M.F.A. in graphic design from the California Institute of the Arts and a B.F.A. from Art Center College of Design.
Go to Profile#952
Janet E. Steele
#88256
Overall Influence
Janet E. Steele is a professor of journalism at George Washington University's school of journalism and an author. She published a book with a collection of newspaper articles from Indonesia. She also published a book about Tempo, an Indonesian magazine, during the Soeharto era in Indonesia and wrote a biography of Charles Anderson Dana. It has been described as covering "the complete history of the Sun. Steele found that experts appearing on television news programs are typically from a cadre of former political and military elites.
Go to Profile#953
Marin Alsop
#52437
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Marin Alsop is an American conductor, the first woman to win the Koussevitzky Prize for conducting and the first conductor to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. She is music director laureate of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and chief conductor of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Ravinia Festival. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008 and to the American Philosophical Society in 2020. On June 5, 2023, she was named as the artistic director and conductor of the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Go to Profile#954
Silvina Montrul
#116513
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
Silvina Montrul is a linguist specializing in generative approaches to second language acquisition. She is currently Professor of Linguistics and Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, as well as Second Language Acquisition, at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.
Go to Profile#955
Elisabeth Selkirk
#112784
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (80 years)
Elisabeth O. Selkirk is a theoretical linguist specializing in phonological theory and the syntax-phonology interface. She is currently a professor emerita in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Go to Profile#956
Giuliana Bruno
#78774
Overall Influence
Giuliana Bruno is a scholar of visual art and media. She is currently the Emmet Blakeney Gleason Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University. She is internationally known as the author of numerous influential books and articles on art, architecture, film, and visual culture.
Go to Profile#957
Maureen Warner-Lewis
#35998
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (82 years)
Maureen Warner-Lewis is a Trinidadian and Tobagonian academic whose career focused on the linguistic heritage and unique cultural traditions of the African diaspora of the Caribbean. Her area of focus has been to recover the links between African cultures and Caribbean cultures. She has been awarded multiple prizes for her works, including two Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Awards, the Gold Musgrave Medal of the Institute of Jamaica, and was inducted into the Literary Hall of Fame of Tobago.
Go to Profile#958
Elisabeth Leinfellner
#67797
Overall Influence
1938 - 2010 (72 years)
Elisebeth Leinfellner was professor in linguistics at the University of Vienna, Department of Linguistics. She moved to the United States in 1967, and taught at Doane College in Crete, Nebraska, and at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She is notable for her contributions to linguistics and philosophy. She received the Austrian Grand Decoration of Honour for services to the province of Lower Austria for Science and Art. She co-founded the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society and International Wittgenstein Symposium.
Go to Profile#959
Joyce DiDonato
#83541
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (56 years)
Joyce DiDonato is an American lyric-coloratura mezzo-soprano. She is notable for her interpretations of operas and concert works in the 19th-century romantic era in addition to works by Handel and Mozart.
Go to Profile#960
Lucía Lijtmaer
#98975
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (48 years)
Lucía Lijtmaer Paskvan is a journalist and writer born in Argentina and raised in Barcelona, where her parents went into exile. She is a specialist in pop culture from a gender perspective. She is also cultural curator, literary translator, and university professor. She currently writes for various media, including El País, El Diario, and .
Go to Profile#961
Susan Gal
#42317
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (76 years)
Susan Gal is the Mae & Sidney G. Metzl Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology, of Linguistics, and of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago She is the author or co-author of several books and numerous articles on linguistic anthropology, gender and politics, and the social history of Eastern Europe.
Go to Profile#962
Wanda Sykes
#45468
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (61 years)
Wanda Yvette Sykes is an American stand-up comedian, actress, and writer. She was first recognized for her work as a writer on The Chris Rock Show, for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award in 1999. In 2004, Entertainment Weekly named Sykes as one of the 25 funniest people in America. She is also known for her recurring roles on CBS' The New Adventures of Old Christine , and HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm . She received Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series nominations for her roles in ABC's Black-ish , and Amazon's The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel . She currently stars in...
Go to Profile#963
Yolanda Adams
#46075
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (64 years)
Yolanda Yvette Adams is an American gospel singer, actress, and host of her own nationally syndicated morning gospel show. She is one of the best-selling gospel artists of all time, having sold over 10 million albums worldwide. In addition to achieving multi-platinum status, she has won four Grammy Awards, four Dove Awards, five BET Awards, six NAACP Image Awards, six Soul Train Music Awards, two BMI Awards and sixteen Stellar Awards. She was the first Gospel artist to be awarded an American Music Award.
Go to Profile#964
Bonnie Bramlett
#53272
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (81 years)
Bonnie Bramlett is an American singer and occasional actress known for performing with her husband, Delaney Bramlett, as Delaney & Bonnie. She continues to sing as a solo artist. Life and career Early life Bonnie O'Farrell was born in Granite City, Illinois, the daughter of a steelworker. When she was young her parents divorced and remarried other spouses. She was raised with an extended family that included four half-and step-siblings. She began singing as a child. When she was five years old, she sang "Beautiful Golden Harbor" at the family church in Granite City. Bonnie started her musical career at the age of fifteen singing around St.
Go to Profile#965
Thea Musgrave
#81713
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (97 years)
Thea Musgrave CBE is a Scottish composer of opera and classical music. She has lived in the United States since 1972. Biography Born in Barnton, Edinburgh, Musgrave was educated at Moreton Hall School, a boarding independent school for girls near the market town of Oswestry in Shropshire, followed by the University of Edinburgh, and in Paris as a pupil of Nadia Boulanger from 1950 to 1954. In 1958 she attended the Tanglewood Festival and studied with Aaron Copland. In 1970 she became guest professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, a position which confirmed her increasing involvement with the musical life of the United States.
Go to Profile#966
Halyna Hnatyuk
#116975
Overall Influence
1927 - 2016 (89 years)
Halyna Makarivna Hnatyuk was a Ukrainian linguist, lexicographer, historian of Ukrainian language, doctor of philological sciences. She was a research fellow of the Potebnia Institute of Linguistics in 1956-1992.
Go to Profile#967
Maila Nurmi
#58536
Overall Influence
1922 - 2008 (86 years)
Maila Elizabeth Syrjäniemi , known professionally as Maila Nurmi, was an American actress who created the campy 1950s character Vampira. She was raised in Astoria, Oregon, where she worked in tuna and salmon canneries. She relocated to Los Angeles in 1940, with hopes of becoming an actress. After several minor film roles, she found success with her Vampira character, television's first horror host. Nurmi hosted her own series, The Vampira Show, from 1954 to 1955, on KABC-TV.
Go to Profile#968
Birdy
#87880
Overall Influence
1996 - Present (29 years)
Jasmine Lucilla Elizabeth Jennifer van den Bogaerde , better known by her stage name Birdy , is an English singer and songwriter. She won the music competition Open Mic UK in 2008, at the age of 12. Her debut single, a cover version of Bon Iver's "Skinny Love", was her breakthrough, charting all across Europe and earning platinum certification six times in Australia. Her self-titled debut album, Birdy, was released on 7 November 2011 to similar success, peaking at number one in Australia, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Her second studio album, Fire Within, was released on 23 September 2013 in the UK.
Go to Profile#969
Ann Hui
#55313
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
Ann Hui On-wah, is a film director, producer, screenwriter and actress from Hong Kong who is one of the most critically acclaimed filmmakers of the Hong Kong New Wave. She is known for her films about social issues in Hong Kong which include: literary adaptations, martial arts, semi-autobiographical works, women's issues, social phenomena, political changes, and thrillers. She served as the president of the Hong Kong Film Directors' Guild from 2004 to 2006.
Go to Profile#970
Grace Bumbry
#80663
Overall Influence
1937 - 2023 (86 years)
Grace Melzia Bumbry was an American opera singer, considered one of the leading mezzo-sopranos of her generation, who also ventured to soprano roles. She belonged to a pioneering generation of African-American classical singers, led by Marian Anderson. She was recognized internationally when Wieland Wagner cast her for the 1961 Bayreuth Festival as Venus in Tannhäuser, the first black singer to appear at the festival.
Go to Profile#971
Janet Fletcher
#86891
Overall Influence
Janet Fletcher is an Australian linguist. She completed her BA at the University of Queensland in 1981 and then moved to the United Kingdom and received her PhD from the University of Reading in 1989.
Go to Profile#972
Binnie Barnes
#91267
Overall Influence
1903 - 1998 (95 years)
Gertrude Maud Barnes , known professionally as Binnie Barnes, was an English actress whose career in films spanned from 1923 to 1973. Early life Barnes was born in Islington, London, the daughter of Rosa Enoyce and George Barnes, a policeman; 16 children were in her family. Before moving to Hollywood to become an actress, Barnes worked a series of jobs, such as chorus girl, nurse, and dance hostess.
Go to Profile#973
Paula Escobar
#50494
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (57 years)
Paula Escobar Chavarría is a Chilean editor, columnist, journalist, professor and writer. She is a recipient of the Lenka Franulic Award. She is an opinion columnist at La Tercera, host and panelist on CNN Chile, Founder and executive director of The Women and Media Chair at Universidad Diego Portales, and tenured professor at The Faculty of Communications of UDP.
Go to Profile#974
Susan Ehrlich
#69640
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Susan Lynn Ehrlich is a Canadian linguist known for her work in both language and gender, language and the law, and the intersections between them. She studies language, gender and the law, with a focus on consent and coercion in rape trials.
Go to Profile#975
Tracy Fullerton
#37032
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (60 years)
Tracy Fullerton is an American game designer, educator and writer, best known for Walden, a game . She is a Professor in the USC Interactive Media & Games Division of the USC School of Cinematic Arts and Director of the Game Innovation Lab at USC.
Go to Profile#976
Foxes
#77682
Overall Influence
1989 - Present (36 years)
Louisa Rose Allen , known professionally as Foxes, is an English singer, songwriter, and model. Foxes' debut album, Glorious, was released in 2014, and features the UK top 20 singles "Youth", "Let Go for Tonight" and "Holding onto Heaven". Her vocals were featured on Zedd's 2012 single "Clarity", which peaked at number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 and won a Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording.
Go to Profile#977
Jill Green
#40098
Overall Influence
Jill Green is an American dance educator and scholar who originated the Social Somatic Theory. Green served on the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and was co-editor of Dance Research.
Go to Profile#978
Alka Yagnik
#63102
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
Alka Yagnik is an Indian playback singer who works predominantly in Hindi cinema. One of the most prominent singers of 90s era of Bollywood, she has received several accolades including two National Film Awards, two Bengal Film Journalists' Association Awards and a record seven Filmfare Awards for Best Female Playback Singer from a record of thirty-six nominations.
Go to Profile#979
Louise Jameson
#74741
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Louise Marion Jameson is an English actress with a variety of television and theatre credits. Her roles on television have included playing Leela in Doctor Who , Anne Reynolds in The Omega Factor , Blanche Simmons in Tenko , Susan Young in Bergerac , Rosa di Marco in EastEnders and Mary Goskirk in Emmerdale .
Go to Profile#980
Jean Mulder
#110316
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Jean Mulder is a linguist. Mulder's research interests include Australian English and Tsimshian, a North American Indian language. Mulder is currently an Honorary Senior Fellow in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Melbourne, having been a Professor there until 2017. She is currently the editor of the Australian Journal of Linguistics.
Go to Profile#981
Barbara Bonney
#97341
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Barbara Bonney is an American soprano. She is associated with lyric soprano roles in operas by Mozart and Richard Strauss as well as lieder performances. Early life Bonney was born in Montclair, New Jersey. As a child she practised piano and cello. When Bonney was 13 her family moved to Maine, where she became part of the Portland Symphony Youth Orchestra as a cellist. She spent two years at the University of New Hampshire studying German and music including voice with Patricia Stedry, and spent her junior year at the University of Salzburg, where she switched from cello to voice. While there, she studied at Mozarteum University Salzburg.
Go to Profile#982
Erica Klarreich
#58462
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (53 years)
Erica Gail Klarreich is an American mathematician, journalist and science popularizer. Early life and education Klarreich's father was a professor of mathematics, and her mother was a mathematics teacher.
Go to Profile#983
Sharon Inkelas
#101054
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Sharon Inkelas is a Professor and former Chair of the Linguistics Department at the University of California, Berkeley. Education and career Inkelas completed her Bachelor of Arts in mathematics at Pomona College in 1984 and received her PhD in linguistics at Stanford University in 1989 with a dissertation, "Prosodic Constituency in the Lexicon," supervised by Paul Kiparsky. In 1990, she arrived at UC Berkeley as a Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science research fellow and became a faculty member at Berkeley in 1992. She was a Hellman Fellow in 1995. She was named the special faculty a...
Go to Profile#984
Camille A. Brown
#73239
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (46 years)
Camille A. Brown is a dancer, choreographer, director and dance educator. She is the Founder & Artistic Director of Camille A. Brown & Dancers, and has congruently choreographed commissioned pieces for dance companies, Broadway shows, and universities. Brown started her career as a dancer in Ronald K. Brown’s Evidence, A Dance Company, and was a guest artist with Rennie Harris Puremovement, and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater . Brown has choreographed major Broadway shows such as Choir Boy, Once on This Island and Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert! that aired on NBC. Brown also teaches...
Go to Profile#985
Rebecca Warren
#59713
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (60 years)
Rebecca Jane Warren is a British visual artist and sculptor, born in Pinhoe, Exeter. She is particularly well known for her works in clay and bronze and for her arranged vitrines. The artist currently lives and works in London.
Go to Profile#986
Linda Gary
#90999
Overall Influence
1944 - 1995 (51 years)
Linda Gary was an American actress. Career Live-action appearances Gary worked as a voice-over artist in animation and also appeared in two live-action films, 1977's Joyride To Nowhere with husband Charles Howerton and 1980's Cruising with Al Pacino. She lent her voice in such movies as Wolfen and Switch.
Go to Profile#987
Irit Meir
#60423
Overall Influence
1957 - 2018 (61 years)
Irit Meir was an Israeli linguist, who specialized in the linguistics of sign languages. She was an associate professor in the Department of Hebrew Language and the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Haifa, and the associate director of the Sign Language Research Lab.
Go to Profile#988
Roberta Peters
#86018
Overall Influence
1930 - 2017 (87 years)
Roberta Peters was an American coloratura soprano. One of the most prominent American singers to achieve lasting fame and success in opera, Peters is noted for her 35-year association with the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York, among the longest such associations between a singer and a company in opera. She was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1998.
Go to Profile#989
Bobby Hillson
#76797
Overall Influence
Bobby Hillson is a London-based fashion illustrator, former designer of children's clothing, and founder of the Saint Martin's School of Art MA Fashion course. Early life Hillson, who had studied at Saint Martin's School of Art, started out as an illustrator for publications such as Vogue UK, The Sunday Times, and The Observer in the early 1950s. In 1954 she attended Coco Chanel's relaunch show. She is particularly renowned for her 1960s illustration work. In 1969, she launched her childrenswear brand, and in 1972, a little girl's dress and pinafore was chosen as the Dress of the Year by Moira Keenan alongside a Biba outfit and a young boy's outfit by Burton.
Go to Profile#990
Omara Portuondo
#68971
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (95 years)
Omara Portuondo Peláez is a Cuban singer and dancer. A founding member of the popular vocal group Cuarteto d'Aida, Portuondo has collaborated with many important Cuban musicians during her long career, including Julio Gutiérrez, Juanito Márquez and Chucho Valdés. Although primarily known for her rendition of boleros, she has recorded in a wide range of styles from jazz to son cubano. Since 1996, she has been part of the Buena Vista Social Club project, touring extensively and recording several albums with the ensemble. She won a Latin Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Tropical Album in 2009,...
Go to Profile#991
Evelyn Glennie
#67712
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (61 years)
Dame Evelyn Elizabeth Annie Glennie, is a Scottish percussionist. She was selected as one of the two laureates for the Polar Music Prize of 2015. Early life Glennie was born in Methlick, Aberdeenshire in Scotland. The indigenous musical traditions of north-east Scotland were important in her development as a musician. Her first instruments were the piano and the clarinet. Other influences were Glenn Gould, Jacqueline du Pré and Trilok Gurtu. She studied at Ellon Academy, Aberdeenshire and the Royal Academy of Music, London. She was a member of the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland and th...
Go to Profile#992
Marion Zimmer Bradley
#60670
Overall Influence
1930 - 1999 (69 years)
Marion Eleanor Zimmer Bradley was an American author of fantasy, historical fantasy, science fiction, and science fantasy novels, and is best known for the Arthurian fiction novel The Mists of Avalon and the Darkover series. Noted for the feminist perspective in her writing, her reputation has been posthumously marred by her daughter Moira Greyland's accusations of child sexual abuse, and for allegedly assisting her second husband, convicted child abuser Walter Breen, in sexually abusing multiple unrelated children.
Go to Profile#993
Catherine Hardwicke
#43967
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Helen Catherine Hardwicke is an American film director, production designer, and screenwriter. Her directorial work includes Thirteen , which she co-wrote with Nikki Reed, the film's co-star, Lords of Dogtown , The Nativity Story , Twilight , Red Riding Hood , Plush , Miss You Already , Miss Bala , and Prisoner's Daughter .
Go to Profile#994
Betty Carter
#68378
Overall Influence
1929 - 1998 (69 years)
Betty Carter was an American jazz singer known for her improvisational technique, scatting and other complex musical abilities that demonstrated her vocal talent and imaginative interpretation of lyrics and melodies. Vocalist Carmen McRae once remarked: "There's really only one jazz singer—only one: Betty Carter."
Go to Profile#995
Sonia Seymour Mikich
#61365
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Sonia Seymour Mikich is a German TV journalist. Education After studying political sciences, sociology, and philosophy from 1972–1979 at the RWTH Aachen University. She worked as research associate with the institute's Arnold-Gehlen Research Group. In 1985 she received a scholarship from the German Marshall Fund.
Go to Profile#996
Susan Strasberg
#65534
Overall Influence
1938 - 1999 (61 years)
Susan Elizabeth Strasberg was an American stage, film, and television actress. Thought to be the next Hepburn-type ingenue, she was nominated for a Tony Award at age 18, playing the title role in The Diary of Anne Frank. She appeared on the covers of LIFE and Newsweek in 1955. A close friend of Marilyn Monroe and Richard Burton, she wrote two best-selling tell-all books. Her later career primarily consisted of slasher and horror films, followed by TV roles, by the 1980s.
Go to Profile#997
Cathrine Fabricius Hansen
#88620
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
Cathrine Fabricius-Hansen is a Danish-born Norwegian Germanist. She is a professor of German studies at the University of Oslo; she originally taught in the Department of Germanic Studies, which is now part of the merged Department of Literature, Area Studies, and European Languages.
Go to Profile#998
Aisin-Gioro Ulhicun
#71546
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (67 years)
Aisin-Gioro Ulhicun is a Chinese linguist of Manchu ethnicity who is known for her studies of the Manchu, Jurchen and Khitan languages and scripts. She is also known as a historian of the Liao and Jin dynasties. Her works include a grammar of Manchu , a dictionary of Jurchen , and a study of Khitan memorial inscriptions , as well as various studies on the phonology and grammar of the Khitan language.
Go to Profile#999
Bette Midler
#55113
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (80 years)
Bette Midler is an American singer, actress, comedian and author. Throughout her career, which spans over five decades, Midler has received numerous accolades, including four Golden Globe Awards, three Grammy Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards and a Kennedy Center Honor, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards and a British Academy Film Award.
Go to Profile#1000
Emily Falk
#50697
Overall Influence
Emily B. Falk is an American psychologist, neuroscientist, and professor of communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, holding secondary appointments in psychology and marketing.
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