Search People Result | Academic Influence

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).

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School

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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Communications,

#1001

Christa Agnes Tuczay

#74115

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (73 years)

Christa Agnes Tuczay is an Austrian University professor in Medieval German Language and Literature at the Institute of German Studies at the University of Vienna. Tuczay is well known for her research on narratives and fairytales in the Middle Ages.

#1002

Genevieve Oswald

#65918

Overall Influence

1921 - 2019 (98 years)

Genevieve Mary Oswald was an American dance scholar and archivist, founder and curator of the New York Public Library's dance archive. Early life Oswald was born in Buffalo, New York, the daughter of Charles Oswald and Jeannette Glenn Oswald. Her father worked at a shipping company. She earned a bachelor's degree in music at the North Carolina College for Women in 1943.

#1003

Annie-B Parson

#50012

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (25 years)

Annie-B Parson is an American choreographer, dancer, and director based in Brooklyn, New York. Parson is notable for her work in dance/theater, post-modern dance, and art pop music. Parson is the Artistic Director of Brooklyn's Big Dance Theater, which she founded with Molly Hickok and her husband, Paul Lazar. She is also well known for her collaborations with Mikhail Baryshnikov, David Byrne, David Bowie, St. Vincent, Laurie Anderson, Jonathan Demme, Ivo van Hove, Sarah Ruhl, Lucas Hnath, Wendy Whelan, David Lang, Esperanza Spalding, Mark Dion, Salt ‘n Pepa, Nico Muhly, and the Martha Graham ...

#1004

Lucy Jones

#92326

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (70 years)

Lucy Jones is a British painter and printmaker. She was born with cerebral palsy. Jones is from London and lives in Ludlow, Shropshire. Career Jones was educated at the King Alfred School, London and studied at the Byam Shaw School of Art between 1975 and 1977. From 1976 to 1979 Jones studied at the Camberwell School of Art and then at the Royal College of Arts from 1979 until 1982. In 1982 she won the Prix de Rome prize which allowed her to study at the British School in Rome for two years. Jones had her first solo exhibition, at the Flowers Gallery, in 1987. She has exhibited her work extensively in the UK and abroad.

#1005

Brenda Laurel

#21680

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Brenda Laurel is an American interaction designer, video game designer, and researcher. She is an advocate for diversity and inclusiveness in video games, a "pioneer in developing virtual reality", a public speaker, and an academic.

#1006

Diane Lillo-Martin

#96487

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (66 years)

Diane Lillo-Martin is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at the University of Connecticut. She is currently the Director of the university's Cognitive Sciences Program as well as its Coordinator of American Sign Language Studies. She spent 12 years as Head of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Connecticut.

#1007

Michele Weldon

#75880

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (67 years)

Michele Weldon is an author, journalist, keynote speaker, and assistant professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. Education Michele Weldon received both her BSJ and MSJ at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

#1008

Veneeta Dayal

#98444

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (69 years)

Veneeta Dayal is an American linguist. She is currently the Dorothy R. Diebold Professor of Linguistics at Yale University. Education and research Dayal was born in India. She received a BA, MA, and M. Phil in English Literature from Delhi University. She earned a PhD in Linguistics from Cornell University in 1991, under the supervision of Gennaro Chierchia. Before taking up a position at Yale, she was on the faculty of Rutgers University, where she served as Department chair from 2005-2008 and Acting Dean of Humanities in the School of Arts and Sciences from 2008-2009.

#1009

Julia Preston

#69824

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (74 years)

Julia Preston is an American journalist and contributing writer for The Marshall Project, focusing on immigration. Preston was a foreign and national correspondent and an editor for The New York Times for 21 years, from 1995 through 2016. She was a member of the New York Times team, of four reporters and an editor, that won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1998, "for its revealing series that profiled the corrosive effects of drug corruption in Mexico." She is the co-author, with Samuel Dillon, of Opening Mexico: The Making of a Democracy, "a sweeping account of a nation's st...

#1010

Astrid Varnay

#88655

Overall Influence

1918 - 2006 (88 years)

Ibolyka Astrid Maria Varnay was a Swedish-born American dramatic soprano of Hungarian descent. She spent most of her career in the United States and Germany. She was one of the leading Wagnerian heroic sopranos of her generation.

#1011

Margaret Pardee

#75281

Overall Influence

1920 - 2016 (96 years)

Margaret Pardee Butterly was an American violinist and violin teacher. Life and career Pardee was born in 1920 and grew up in Valdosta, Georgia. She graduated from the Juilliard School where she studied with Ivan Galamian, Sascha Jacobsen, Albert Spalding and Louis Persinger.

#1012

Julia Duin

#67670

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (72 years)

Julia Duin is an American journalist and author who is Newsweek's religion correspondent. She has written seven books and was the religion editor for The Washington Times for 14 years. She has received three Wilbur Awards, most recently for a 2017 article in the Washington Post Magazine about Paula White, spiritual adviser to then-president Donald Trump.

#1013

Elvia Ardalani

#66557

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (62 years)

Elvia Ardalani or Elvia García Ardalani , is a Mexican writer, poet, and storyteller. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Modern languages and Literatures at the University of Texas–Pan American, where she teaches creative writing and Spanish literature.

#1014

Mandy Moore

#61815

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (49 years)

Samantha Jo "Mandy" Moore is an American choreographer, dancer, producer, and dance instructor. She is known for her work on the United States reality television series So You Think You Can Dance, having appeared on the show every year since the third season, and Dancing with the Stars. She choreographed the 2016 film La La Land and has also worked on stage musicals and commercials. She has created dance numbers for the Academy Awards, Golden Globe Awards, Emmy Awards, and Grammy Awards ceremonies. She has been nominated seven times for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Choreography, win...

#1015

Rosalyn Tureck

#93082

Overall Influence

1914 - 2003 (89 years)

Rosalyn Tureck was an American pianist and harpsichordist who was particularly associated with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. However, she had a wide-ranging repertoire that included works by composers Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms and Frédéric Chopin, as well as more modern composers such as David Diamond, Luigi Dallapiccola and William Schuman. Diamond's Piano Sonata No. 1 was inspired by Tureck's playing.

#1016

Alexandra Berzon

#56273

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (45 years)

Alexandra Berzon is an American investigative reporter for The New York Times. She previously wrote for ProPublica and The Wall Street Journal. Her 2008 series of investigative stories about the deaths of construction workers on the Las Vegas Strip for the Las Vegas Sun won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service and The Hillman Prize.

#1017

Emma Kirkby

#98126

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (76 years)

Dame Carolyn Emma Kirkby, is an English soprano and early music specialist. She has sung on over 100 recordings. Education and early career Kirkby was educated at Hanford School, Sherborne School for Girls in Dorset, and Somerville College, Oxford University. Her father was Geoffrey John Kirkby, a Royal Navy Officer.

#1018

Fatma Ceren Necipoğlu

#44978

Overall Influence

1972 - 2009 (37 years)

Fatma Ceren Necipoğlu was a Turkish harpist and university lecturer for piano and harp. She was aboard Air France Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to Paris, France, which crashed in the Atlantic Ocean on 1 June 2009.

#1019

Maureen Forrester

#92345

Overall Influence

1930 - 2010 (80 years)

Maureen Kathleen Stewart Forrester, was a Canadian operatic contralto. Life and career Maureen Forrester was born and grew up in Montreal, Quebec, one of four children of Thomas Forrester, a Scottish cabinetmaker, and his Irish-born wife, the former May Arnold. She sang in church and radio choirs. At age 13, she dropped out of school to help support the family, working as a secretary at Bell Telephone.

#1020

Alice Harris

#106788

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (78 years)

Alice Carmichael Harris is an American linguist. She is Professor emerita of Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Research Citing an early interest in the “systematic, almost mathematical aspects of languages," Harris began investigating ergativity in graduate school, and in doing so began to study the Georgian language. She was one of the first Americans allowed to do research in the Republic of Georgia when it was still part of the Soviet Union. She has continued to work in this region, looking at different characteristics of Georgian, Laz, Svan, Mingrelian, Udi, and Bats...

#1021

Ann Copestake

#49843

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (66 years)

Ann Alicia Copestake is professor of computational linguistics and head of the Department of Computer Science and Technology at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge.

#1022

Mary Wells

#65712

Overall Influence

1943 - 1992 (49 years)

Mary Esther Wells was an American singer, who helped to define the emerging sound of Motown in the early 1960s. Along with the Supremes, the Miracles, the Temptations, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, and the Four Tops, Wells was said to have been part of the charge in black music onto radio stations and record shelves of mainstream America, "bridging the color lines in music at the time."

#1023

Sylvia Li-chun Lin

#77855

Overall Influence

Sylvia Li-chun Lin is a Taiwanese-born Chinese–English translator and a former associate professor of Chinese Literature at the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Notre Dame. She has translated over a dozen novels with her husband Howard Goldblatt.

#1024

Melinda O'Neal

#69123

Overall Influence

Melinda O'Neal is a conductor of choral and choral-orchestral music, professor emerita of music, and author. O'Neal was music director and conductor of the Handel Society of Dartmouth College 1979–2004, and founder and conductor of Dartmouth College Chamber Singers 1979-1996. She was professor of music at Dartmouth College 1979–2018, leading ensembles and teaching courses in conducting, vocal literature, Berlioz and Brahms, and music theory.

#1025

Laura Marling

#65597

Overall Influence

1990 - Present (35 years)

Laura Beatrice Marling is a British folk singer-songwriter. She won the Brit Award for Best British Female Solo Artist at the 2011 Brit Awards and was nominated for the same award at the 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2018 Brit Awards.

#1026

Jackie Spinner

#72963

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (55 years)

Jackie Spinner is an American journalist who worked for The Washington Post from 1995 to 2009. Biography Spinner grew up in Decatur, Illinois, the daughter of a pipe fitter and a schoolteacher. She has a bachelor of science degree in journalism from Southern Illinois University Carbondale and a master's degree at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley.

#1027

Laurel Touby

#62333

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Laurel Touby is an American journalist and investor. She is currently the Managing Director of Supernode Ventures, a venture capital firm in New York City. Touby is best known as the founder of Mediabistro, the journalism and publishing resource site that she sold to Jupitermedia in 2007 for $23 million. Following the sale of Mediabistro, Laurel began a second career as a New York City based start-up advisor and tech investor. She has also been a mentor for the tech incubator Techstars. In January 2015, she set up her own investor syndicate, Flatiron Investors, representing New York based pri...

#1028

Julia Bishop

#120760

Overall Influence

Julia Bishop is an English Baroque violin specialist. She was a member of The English Concert for six years, and has toured the world with most of the UK's leading period instrument orchestras. She has appeared as an orchestral leader and concerto soloist with the Gabrieli Consort, Brandenburg Consort, Florilegium early music ensemble and the Hanover Band. Bishop has taught baroque violin techniques at the Royal Academy of Music, London.

#1029

Lisa Travis

#112850

Overall Influence

Lisa deMena Travis is a researcher and educator in the field of linguistics, specializing in syntax and in the study of Austronesian languages such as Malagasy and Tagalog. She is currently a professor of linguistics at McGill University. Her 1984 proposal of the Head Movement Constraint, which seeks to account for limitations on the movement of syntactic heads in question formation, has become a cornerstone of generative linguistics.

#1030

Clara Deser

#71208

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (64 years)

Clara Deser is an American climate scientist. She is a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research where she leads the Climate Analysis Section. Deser was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 2021.

#1031

Minnie Pearl

#59068

Overall Influence

1912 - 1996 (84 years)

Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon , known professionally as her stage character Minnie Pearl, was an American comedian who appeared at the Grand Ole Opry for more than 50 years and on the television show Hee Haw from 1969 to 1991.

#1032

Nancy Wilson

#46498

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (71 years)

Nancy Lamoureux Wilson is an American musician. She rose to fame alongside her older sister Ann as a guitarist and backing and occasional lead vocalist in the rock band Heart. Raised in Bellevue, Washington, Wilson began playing music as a teenager. During college, she joined her sister who had recently become the singer of Heart. The first hard rock band fronted by women, Heart released numerous albums throughout the late 1970s and 1980s; the albums Dreamboat Annie , and Little Queen generated chart singles such as "Magic Man", "Crazy on You", and "Barracuda". The band also had commercial s...

#1033

Wendy Ayres-Bennett

#96754

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (67 years)

Wendy Ayres-Bennett is a British linguist, Professor of French Philology and Linguistics at the University of Cambridge, England, and Professorial Fellow in Linguistics at Murray Edwards College. She has a BA and MA in Modern Languages from Girton College and a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford. Her doctoral thesis was "Vaugelas and the development of the French language: theory and practice". After her doctorate she spent a year as a Junior Research Fellow at St Hilda's College, Oxford and was appointed as an Assistant Lecturer , then Lecturer and Reader , in the French Department at Cambridge.

#1034

Lucille Watahomigie

#108575

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (80 years)

Lucille Watahomigie is a Hualapai educator and linguist and native speaker of the Hualapai language. Biography After receiving her bachelor's degree in elementary education from Northern Arizona University, she returned to the Hualapai community of Peach Springs and became a teacher at the Peach Springs School. She went on to receive her master's degree at the University of Arizona, where she then worked as a professor for three years before returning to the Hualapai Nation in 1975 to found the Hualapai bilingual and bicultural education program in response to community demand. In 1982, she c...

#1035

Chris Connor

#80008

Overall Influence

1927 - 2009 (82 years)

Mary Jean Loutsenhizer, known professionally as Chris Connor was an American jazz singer. Biography Chris Connor was born Mary Loutsenhizer in Kansas City, Missouri, to Clyde Loutsenhizer and Mabel Shirley. She became proficient on the clarinet, having studied for eight years during middle school and high school. She sang with the college band at the University of Missouri, playing at functions in Columbia, Missouri.

#1036

Darlene Love

#38261

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (84 years)

Darlene Wright , known professionally as Darlene Love, is an American singer and actress. She was the lead singer of the girl group the Blossoms and she also recorded as a solo artist. She began singing as a child with her local church choir. In 1962, she began recording with producer Phil Spector who renamed her Darlene Love. She sang lead on "He's a Rebel" and "He's Sure the Boy I Love," which were credited to the Crystals. She was soon a highly sought-after vocalist and worked with many rock and soul legends of 1960s, including Sam Cooke, Dionne Warwick, Bill Medley, the Beach Boys, Elvis Presley, Tom Jones and Sonny and Cher.

#1037

Bettelou Los

#111279

Overall Influence

Bettelou Los is a linguist and philologist specializing in the history of the English language. Since 2013 she has held the Forbes Chair of English Language at the University of Edinburgh. Academic career Los received her MA from the University of Amsterdam in 1986. After spending some time working as a translator, she obtained her PhD in 2000 from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; her dissertation focused on infinitives in Old and Middle English. From 2004 she held positions as lecturer first at the Vrije Universiteit and then at Radboud University Nijmegen, where she was promoted to senior l...

#1038

Stephanie W. Jamison

#58591

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (77 years)

Stephanie Wroth Jamison is an American linguist, currently at University of California, Los Angeles and an Elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She did her doctoral work at Yale University as a student of Stanley Insler, and is trained as a historical linguist and Indo-Europeanist. Much of her work focusses on Sanskrit and other Indo-Iranian languages.

#1039

Élise Paré-Tousignant

#116185

Overall Influence

1937 - 2018 (81 years)

Élise Paré-Tousignant was a Canadian music administrator and music pedagogue. She was employed as a music theory teacher and auditory trainor at Université Laval and then was appointed the Faculty of Arts at Université Laval's first dean in 1985. Paré-Tousignant was the university's vice-rector of human resources and held the role of artistic director of the Domaine Forget that he held from 1993 to 2001. She oversaw the construction of the Domaine's Françoys-Bernier Hall and was the supervisor of the renovation of the . Paré-Tousignant served on the board of directors of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and was president of the between 2001 and 2005.

#1040

Delia Derbyshire

#64588

Overall Influence

1937 - 2001 (64 years)

Delia Ann Derbyshire was an English musician and composer of electronic music. She carried out notable work with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop during the 1960s, including her electronic arrangement of the theme music to the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who. She has been referred to as "the unsung heroine of British electronic music", having influenced musicians including Aphex Twin, the Chemical Brothers and Paul Hartnoll of Orbital.

#1041

Maria Muldaur

#56367

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (82 years)

Maria Muldaur is an American folk and blues singer who was part of the American folk music revival in the early 1960s. She recorded the 1973 hit song "Midnight at the Oasis" and has recorded albums in the folk, blues, early jazz, gospel, country, and R&B traditions.

#1042

Constance Steinkuehler

Constance Steinkuehler

#53584

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (55 years)

Constance Steinkuehler is an American professor of Informatics at the University of California–Irvine. She previously taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before taking public service leave, from 2011-2012, to work as a Senior Policy Analyst in the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House Executive Office, where she advised on policy matters about video games and learning. She currently researches cognitive and social aspects of video games and gaming at the University of California, Irvine. Her current projects include mixed methods research on the North America ...

#1043

Penny Sparke

#47512

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (77 years)

Penelope Anne "Penny" Sparke is a British writer and academic specialising in the history of design. She has been Professor of Design History at Kingston University, London, since 1999, where she is also Director of the Modern Interiors Research Centre.

#1044

Annie Zaleski

#42287

Overall Influence

Annie Zaleski is an American music journalist and writer. Career Zaleski is a regular writer for mainstream media outlets such as The A.V. Club and NPR Music, and a columnist at Salon. She is based in Cleveland, Ohio where she has won first place awards from the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists, including Best Arts Review and Best Feature Writing .

#1045

Lucy Dalglish

#98852

Overall Influence

Lucy Ann Dalglish is an American journalist, attorney, and professor and former dean at the University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism. Early life, education, and early career Dalglish was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota to parents James and Joanne Speikers Dalglish. She graduated from Grand Forks Central High School in 1977 and enrolled at the University of North Dakota for her Bachelor of Arts degree. Upon graduating in 1980, she worked as a reporter and editor at the St. Paul Pioneer Press for 13 years during which she completed her master of studies in law at Yale University.

#1046

Seana Coulson

#86262

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (59 years)

Seana Coulson is a cognitive scientist known for her research on the neurobiology of language and studies of how meaning is constructed in human language, including experimental pragmatics, concepts, semantics, and metaphors. She is a professor in the Cognitive Science department at University of California, San Diego, where her Brain and Cognition Laboratory focuses on the cognitive neuroscience of language and reasoning.

#1047

Esperanza Spalding

Esperanza Spalding

#54847

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (41 years)

Esperanza Emily Spalding is an American bassist, singer, songwriter, and composer. Her accolades include five Grammy Awards, a Boston Music Award, a Soul Train Music Award, and two honorary doctorates: in 2018 from her alma mater Berklee College of Music and in 2022 from CalArts.

#1048

Annie Brisset

#54908

Overall Influence

Annie Brisset, a member of the Royal Society of Canada, is a Professor of Translation Studies and Discourse Theory at the School of Translation and Interpretation of the University of Ottawa, Canada.

#1049

S. Janaki

#49700

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (87 years)

Sistla Janaki is an Indian playback singer and occasional music composer from Andhra Pradesh. She is referred to respectfully as "Janaki Amma" and Nightingale of South India. She is one of the best-known playback singers in India. She is referred to as 'Gaana Kogile' in Karnataka, and 'Gaana Kokila' in Telugu States and 'Isaikkuyil' in Tamil Nadu She has recorded over 48,000 songs in films, albums, TV and Radio which includes solos, duets, chorus and title tracks in 17 languages including Kannada, Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, Sanskrit, Odia, Tulu, Urdu, Punjabi, Badaga, Bengali, Konkani and also in foreign languages such as English, Japanese, German, and Sinhala.

#1050

Jane Simpson

#118394

Overall Influence

Jane Simpson is an Australian linguist and professor emerita at Australian National University. Simpson completed both a B.A. and M.A. at The Australian National University. Her B.A. included majors in Chinese and English literature, with Honours in Middle English. Jane's PhD. was received from MIT in 1983, and her dissertation was a detailed study of Warlpiri in the Lexical-Functional Grammar framework.

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