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,
#1601
Midori
#110461
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Midori Goto, who performs under the mononym Midori, is a Japanese-born American violinist. She made her debut with the New York Philharmonic at age 11 as a surprise guest soloist at the New Year's Eve Gala in 1982. In 1986 her performance at the Tanglewood Music Festival with Leonard Bernstein conducting his own composition made the front-page headlines in The New York Times. Midori became a celebrated child prodigy, and one of the world's preeminent violinists as an adult.
Go to Profile#1602
Lesli Linka Glatter
#68706
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Lesli Linka Glatter is an American film and television director. She is best known for her work on the AMC drama series Mad Men and the Showtime series Homeland. For her work in these two shows, she has received eight Primetime Emmy Award nominations and 7 Directors Guild of America Awards nominations, winning the latter 3 times. She has also received a nomination for Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film for Tales of Meeting and Parting .
Go to Profile#1603
Aleksandra Przegalińska
#56316
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Aleksandra Katarzyna Przegalińska-Skierkowska is a Polish futurist. She is an associate professor of management and artificial intelligence as well as a vice-rector at Kozminski University. Life Przegalińska is a research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research and the Center for Collective Intelligence at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is also a visiting scholar at the Labor & Worklife Center at Harvard University.
Go to Profile#1604
Niloofar Haeri
#124613
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Niloofar Haeri is an Iranian-American Islamic scholar, anthropologist and linguist. She is a professor in the Department of Anthropology, and the Program Chair in Islamic Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
Go to Profile#1605
Shannon Jackson
#120717
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Shannon Jackson is the Cyrus and Michelle Hadidi Professor of Rhetoric and of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, Department Chair of History of Art, and former Associate Vice Chancellor of the Arts and Design. She also serves as Program Director of the Kramlich Collection and Kramlich Art Foundation.
Go to Profile#1606
Maria Kliegel
#127625
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Maria Kliegel is a German cellist. Professional career Kliegel was born in Dillenburg, Hesse. She studied under Janos Starker starting at the age of 19. She won first prize at the American College Competition, First German Music Competition and Concours Aldo Parisot, and was also the Grand Prize winner at the second Mstislav Rostropovich International Cello Competition in 1981.
Go to Profile#1607
Rajna Dragićević
#99892
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Rajna Dragićević, PhD, is a Serbian linguist, lexicologist and lexicographer. She is a full professor at the Faculty of Philology, the University of Belgrade, Serbia. Dragićević is the author of over 250 articles published in Serbian and international linguistic journals. She has published five books, Pridevi sa značenjem ljudskih osobina u savremenom srpskom jeziku , Leksikologija srpskog jezika , Verbalne asocijacije kroz srpski jezik i kulturu , Leksikologija i gramatika u skoli and Srpska leksika u prošlosti i danas. She collaborated in making of four dictionaries, Asocijativni rečnik sr...
Go to Profile#1608
Sheila Browne
#169448
Overall Influence
Sheila Browne is an American-Irish concert violist from Gladwyne, Pennsylvania with dual citizenship. She is a concert and recording artist and Associate Professor at the University of Delaware. For ten years she was on faculty and Associate Professor of Viola at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Named the William Primrose Recitalist of 2016 in conjunction with the Primrose International Viola Archive , Ms. Browne has played solo, concerto and chamber music concerts and has played principal of orchestras on six continents, performing in major venues in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, Australia, and the Middle East.
Go to Profile#1609
Amaryllis Fleming
#118938
Overall Influence
1925 - 1999 (74 years)
Amaryllis Marie-Louise Fleming was a British cello performer and teacher. Early life and education Fleming was born in 1925, reportedly in Switzerland. She was born out of wedlock to the painter Augustus John and his mistress Eve Fleming, who was the mother of the writers Peter Fleming and Ian Fleming by her late husband. Most of her life she was raised as the adopted daughter of Eve Fleming as a pretence to hide the circumstances of her birth. The discovery of her true parentage only in 1949 when she was in her twenties "had a traumatic effect". Fleming was thus a niece to John's sister Gwen and aunt to actress Lucy Fleming.
Go to Profile#1610
Carita Paradis
#169201
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Carita Paradis is a Swedish linguist, and Professor of English Language and Linguistics at Lund University. Her research is focused on the dynamics of meaning-making in human communication. Within the framework of Cognitive Semantics, her works highlight the meaningful functioning of language in all its guises and all its uses when people communicate with one another. She is best known for her work on meanings related to degree, opposition and stance-taking in human communication. She has authored/co-authored and edited several books, including Degree Modifiers of Adjectives in Spoken British...
Go to Profile#1611
Márta Kurtág
#137223
Overall Influence
1927 - 2019 (92 years)
Márta Kurtág was a Hungarian classical pianist and academic piano teacher. She was the wife of György Kurtág, with whom she performed for 60 years, including at international festivals. They often played from his collection Játékok, which they also recorded together.
Go to Profile#1612
Gunilla Florby
#114787
Overall Influence
1943 - 2011 (68 years)
Eva Gunilla Yvonne Florby , was a Swedish academic. She grew up in Malmö and received her Ph.D. at Lund University in 1982. She was an English literature professor, first in Lund and from 2002 until her retirement in 2010 at Gothenburg University. She is noted for her studies of the works of the Jacobean poet and playwright George Chapman.
Go to Profile#1613
Tista Bagchi
#139712
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Tista Bagchi , Professor of Linguistics in the University of Delhi, is a distinguished Indian linguist and ethicist. Bagchi trained in Sanskrit College, Kolkata, the University of Delhi, and the University of Chicago, from where she obtained her PhD in Linguistics, her work spans issues of semantics and syntax in languages in general and South Asian languages in particular, questions of ethics in the application of medical technology and social interaction, and translations of iconic texts in Bangla literature and comparative philology. Bagchi has also been active in the area of cognitive scie...
Go to Profile#1614
Louise Talma
#121522
Overall Influence
1906 - 1996 (90 years)
Louise Juliette Talma was an American composer, academic, and pianist. After studies in New York and in France, piano with Isidor Philipp and composition with Nadia Boulanger, she focused on composition from 1935. She taught at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, and at Hunter College. Her opera The Alcestiad was the first full-scale opera by an American woman staged in Europe. She was the first woman in the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the first woman awarded the Sibelius Medal for Composition.
Go to Profile#1615
Annette Badland
#98227
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Annette Badland is an English actress known for a wide range of roles on television, radio, stage, and film. She is best known for her roles as Charlotte in the BBC crime drama series Bergerac, Margaret Blaine in the BBC science fiction series Doctor Who, Mrs. Glenna Fitzgibbons in the first season of Outlander, Babe Smith in the BBC soap opera EastEnders, and as Dr. Fleur Perkins on the ITV mystery series Midsomer Murders. She was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role in 1993 for her performance as Sadie in Jim Cartwright's play The Rise and Fall of L...
Go to Profile#1616
Lyudmila Kasatkina
#120219
Overall Influence
1925 - 2012 (87 years)
Lyudmila Ivanovna Kasatkina was a Soviet and Russian actress who starred in a string of war-related films directed by her husband Sergey Kolosov. Biography Kasatkina was born in a village near Vyazemsky Uyezd, Smolensk Oblast, and attended a ballet school. After breaking her leg at age 14, she gave up her dream of dancing and joined the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts. Kasatkina joined the troupe of the Red Army Theatre in 1947 and worked there for the rest of her life. Her breakthrough film role was a tiger tamer in Tamer of Tigers where she was body/stunt doubled by Margarita Nazarova, a professionally trained tiger handler.
Go to Profile#1617
Raya Garbousova
#155496
Overall Influence
1909 - 1997 (88 years)
Raya Garbousova was a Russian Empire-born American cellist and teacher. Early life and career According to the biography contained in the program booklet for the 1997 memorial concert in her honor in DeKalb, Illinois, she made her formal debut in Moscow in 1923 and left the Soviet Union in 1925. She lived and performed in Europe, and gave her first performance in New York City in 1935. In December 1938, she toured the UK as supporting artist to Richard Tauber. She emigrated to the United States in 1939.
Go to Profile#1618
Karen McGrane
#120404
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Karen McGrane is a content strategist and website accessibility advocate, who wrote a book called Content Strategy for Mobile. McGrane teaches Design Management at School of Visual Arts in New York. Her design philosophy is "every company is a technology company" and "every business is in the user experience business." McGrane was an early proponent of designing web content for mobile devices and is a frequent speaker at technology conferences. She was also the co-executive producer, with Jared Spool, of the UX Advantage Conference and cohost of the UX Advantage podcast. She co-hosted the Resp...
Go to Profile#1619
Lynn Davis
#77105
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Lynn Davis is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer. She rose to prominence after joining The George Duke Band in 1977. During her time with the band, she sang lead vocals on some of their biggest hits: "I Want You for Myself", "Party Down", and "Thief in the Night". Under the guidance of Epic Records musician and mentor George Duke, Davis continued booking success by contributing background vocals and writing songs for many singers including Tracie Spencer, La Toya Jackson, Patrice Rushen, Anita Baker, and many other singers.
Go to Profile#1620
Katherine Westphal
#121074
Overall Influence
1919 - 2018 (99 years)
Katherine Westphal was an American textile designer and fiber artist who helped to establish quilting as a fine art form. Early life and education Westphal was born January 2, 1919, in Los Angeles, California to Emma and Leo Westphal, who managed grocery stores. At age two, she began cutting, pasting and coloring and decided that she liked to do that more than anything. She attended Los Angeles public, elementary, junior and senior high schools. In 1941 she earned an Associate of Arts degree from Los Angeles City College. She then transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied painting and art history and received BA and MFA degrees in painting.
Go to Profile#1621
Toyah Willcox
#120356
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Toyah Ann Willcox is an English singer, actress, and TV presenter. In a career spanning more than 40 years, she has had eight top 40 singles, released over 20 albums, written two books, appeared in over 40 stage plays and 10 feature films, and voiced and presented numerous television shows.
Go to Profile#1622
Amália Rodrigues
#134634
Overall Influence
1920 - 1999 (79 years)
Amália da Piedade Rebordão Rodrigues GCSE, GCIH , better known as Amália Rodrigues or popularly as Amália, was a Portuguese fadista . She was known as the 'Rainha do Fado' and was instrumental in popularising fado worldwide and travelled internationally throughout her career. Amália remains the best-selling Portuguese artist in history. She advocated the restoration of the monarchy in Portugal. She was a devout Catholic, which was reflected in her music.
Go to Profile#1623
V. V. Ganeshananthan
#102588
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
V. V. "Sugi" Ganeshananthan is an American fiction writer, essayist, and journalist of Ilankai Tamil descent. Her work has appeared in many leading newspapers and journals, including Granta, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Washington Post.
Go to Profile#1624
Miriam Hadar Weingarten
#15800
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Miriam Hadar Weingarten is an American-Israeli lawyer, model and beauty pageant titleholder who was crowned Miss Israel 1958 and represented Israel at Miss Universe 1958. Life Hadar-Weingarten was born in Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine . She did her military service in the Israeli Air Force while studying law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1958, she won the title of Beauty Queen of Jerusalem and Beauty Queen of Israel.
Go to Profile#1625
Jan Howard
#95415
Overall Influence
1929 - 2020 (91 years)
Jan Howard was an American author, as well as a country music singer and songwriter. As a singer, she placed 30 singles on the Billboard country songs chart, was a Grand Ole Opry member and was nominated for several major awards. As a writer, she wrote poems and published an autobiography. She was married to country songwriter Harlan Howard.
Go to Profile#1626
Chrisanthi Avgerou
#53861
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Chrisanthi Avgerou FBCS FAIS is a Greek-born British scholar in the field of the Social Study of Information Systems, focusing on Information Technology in developing countries. She is currently Professor of Information Systems at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Go to Profile#1627
Tatiana Samoilova
#114596
Overall Influence
1934 - 2014 (80 years)
Tatiana Yevgenyevna Samoilova was a Soviet and Russian film actress best known for her lead role in The Cranes Are Flying . She received a number of awards for the film, including a special mention at the Cannes Film Festival. Samoilova had several major roles in the 1960s before largely disappearing from public life. In 1993, she was named a People's Artist of Russia. She made a comeback in the 2000s and received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2007 Moscow Film Festival.
Go to Profile#1628
Amanda Lenhart
#123004
Overall Influence
Amanda Lenhart is a senior research specialist at the Pew Internet & American Life Project who resides in Washington, D.C. She has published numerous articles and research reports, many of which focus on teenagers and their interactions with the internet and other new media technologies.
Go to Profile#1629
Hiromi Uehara
#115907
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
, known professionally as Hiromi, is a Japanese jazz composer and pianist. She is known for her virtuosic technique, energetic live performances and blending of musical genres such as stride, post-bop, progressive rock, classical and fusion in her compositions.
Go to Profile#1630
Jane Scarpantoni
#81388
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Jane Scarpantoni is an American classically trained cello player, who has played on a number of alternative rock albums. She was a member of Hoboken, New Jersey's Tiny Lights in the mid-1980s, then went on to play with other musicians especially those associated with the Hoboken underground rock scene of the 1980s and early 1990s, including Silverchair, Bruce Springsteen, Sheryl Crow, Patti Smith, Richard Barone, R.E.M., Indigo Girls, 10,000 Maniacs, Throwing Muses, Kristin Hersh, Lou Reed, Chris Cacavas, Bob Mould, John Lurie's Lounge Lizards, Boo Trundle, Train and many others.
Go to Profile#1631
Xian Zhang
#59125
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Xian Zhang is a Chinese-American conductor. Born in Dandong, Liaoning, China, to musician parents, Zhang began to learn music as a child with her mother on a piano built by her father. She continued her music studies at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. She began conducting studies at age 16, and received her bachelor's and master's degrees from the conservatory in Beijing. Her first conducting appearance was at age 19 with the China National Opera Orchestra in a production of The Marriage of Figaro. She served as conductor-in-residence of the China Opera House in Beijing, and c...
Go to Profile#1632
Colette Whiten
#94197
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Colette Whiten is a sculptor, and installation and performance artist who lives and works in Toronto, Canada. Whiten is a recipient of the Governor General's Medal. Early life and education Colette Whiten was born in Birmingham, England. and graduated from the Ontario College of Art in 1972, and was a recipient of the Governor General's Medal.
Go to Profile#1633
Adísia Sá
#171232
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
Maria Adísia Barros de Sá is a Brazilian radio host, television presenter, writer, and journalist. In 2009, the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo established the Adísia Sá Journalism Cultural Contest in her honour. In 2013, she was awarded the Medal of Abolition by the state of Ceará.
Go to Profile#1634
Jordan Casteel
#73229
Overall Influence
1989 - Present (37 years)
Jordan Casteel is an American figurative painter. Casteel typically paints intimate portraits of friends and family members as well as neighbors and strangers in Harlem and New York. Casteel lives and works in New York City.
Go to Profile#1635
Chen Yi
#126415
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Chen Yi is a Chinese-American composer of contemporary classical music and violinist. She was the first Chinese woman to receive a Master of Arts in music composition from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Chen was a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her composition Si Ji , and has received awards from the Koussevistky Music Foundation and American Academy of Arts and Letters , as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2010, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from The New School and in 2012, she was awarded the Brock Commission from the American Choral Directors Association.
Go to Profile#1636
Diane Schuur
#88090
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Diane Joan Schuur , nicknamed "Deedles", is an American jazz singer and pianist. As of 2015, Schuur had released 23 albums, and had extended her jazz repertoire to include essences of Latin, gospel, pop and country music. Her most successful album is Diane Schuur & the Count Basie Orchestra, which remained number one on the Billboard Jazz Charts for 33 weeks. She won Grammy Awards for best female jazz vocal performance in both 1986 and 1987 and has had three other Grammy nominations.
Go to Profile#1637
Yvonne Latty
#161622
Overall Influence
Yvonne Latty is an American journalist, author, filmmaker and professor at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. She has traveled the country to speak on subjects including race to writing, and is also a Leeway Foundation Fellow.
Go to Profile#1638
Kotono Mitsuishi
#139154
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
is a Japanese actress and narrator. She was affiliated with Arts Vision and Lasley Arrow, but is now freelance. Mitsuishi lived in Nagareyama, Chiba. She graduated from high school and entered the Katsuta Voice Actor's Academy in 1986. She is well known for her roles as Usagi Tsukino in Sailor Moon series, Misato Katsuragi in Neon Genesis Evangelion, Sayaka Mine in Yaiba, Boa Hancock in One Piece, Murrue Ramius, Haro and Narrator in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and Mobile Suit Gundam SEED DESTINY, and Rena Mizunashi in Detective Conan.
Go to Profile#1639
Kirsten Johnson
#97932
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Kirsten Johnson is an American documentary filmmaker and cinematographer. She is mostly known for her camera work on several well-known feature-length documentaries such as Citizenfour and The Oath. In 2016, she released Cameraperson, a film which consists of various pieces of footage from her decades of work all over the world as a documentary cinematographer. Directed by Johnson herself, Cameraperson went on to be praised for its handling of themes about documentary ethics interwoven with Johnson's personal reflection on her experiences.
Go to Profile#1640
Carol Neblett
#129229
Overall Influence
1946 - 2017 (71 years)
Carol Lee Neblett was an American operatic soprano. Life and career Neblett was born in Modesto, California and raised in Redondo Beach. She studied at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1969 she made her operatic debut with the New York City Opera, playing the part of Musetta in Puccini's La bohème. With that company, she continued to sing many leading roles, in Mefistofele , Prince Igor , Faust, Manon, Louise , La traviata, Le coq d'or, Carmen , The Marriage of Figaro , Don Giovanni , L'incoronazione di Poppea , Ariadne auf Naxos , and Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Die tote Stadt .
Go to Profile#1641
Jody Kreiman
#171334
Overall Influence
Jody Kreiman is an American linguist and professor in residence of head and neck surgery at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is known for her works on phonetics and laboratory phonology. She is an elected fellow of the Acoustical Society of America.
Go to Profile#1642
Linda Putnam
#101623
Overall Influence
Linda Putnam is an American scholar and professor in the department of communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is known for her theories on organizational communication, centered on conflict management and negotiation, solutions within organizations, gender studies in organizations, and organizational space.
Go to Profile#1643
Bari Rolfe
#136825
Overall Influence
1916 - 2002 (86 years)
Bari Rolfe was an American dancer, choreographer, mime artist, and educator. Rolfe studied mime in Paris, and beginning in the 1960s taught it at University of California, Los Angeles, California State University, Northridge, and University of Washington in Seattle. She wrote several books on mime.
Go to Profile#1644
Marjorie Thomas
#155182
Overall Influence
1923 - 2008 (85 years)
Marjorie Gwendolen Thomas was an English opera and oratorio singer for almost three decades. She sang at the Royal Opera House and was a regular performer at the Promenade Concerts and the Three Choirs Festivals and, for many years, a professor of singing at London's Royal Academy of Music. A favourite soloist of Sir Malcolm Sargent's, she also participated in a number of recordings of Gilbert and Sullivan operas.
Go to Profile#1645
Debby Herbenick
#101706
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Debby Herbenick is an American author, research scientist, sex educator, sex advice columnist, children's book author, blogger, television personality, professor, and human sexuality expert in the media. Herbenick is a professor at the Indiana University School of Public Health and lead investigator of the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior , which Time called "the most comprehensive survey of its kind in nearly two decades."
Go to Profile#1646
Helke Sander
#87805
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Helke Sander is a German feminist film director, author, actress, activist, and educator. She is known primarily for her documentary work and contributions to the women's movement in the seventies and eighties.
Go to Profile#1647
Francesca Battistelli
#102603
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Francesca Battistelli is an American Christian singer and songwriter. She was originally an independent artist and had released an independent album, Just a Breath, in 2004. Her first studio album on Fervent Records, My Paper Heart, was released on July 22, 2008. Her first single, "I'm Letting Go", was released to on june bugs radio stations on July 15, 2008, and charted on national Christian CHR charts. The song was the 16th most played song of 2008 on Christian radio stations according to R&R magazine. Battistelli received her first Grammy Award nomination in 2009, for Best Gospel Performance with her single, "Free to Be Me".
Go to Profile#1648
RonNell Andersen Jones
#52190
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (125 years)
RonNell Andersen Jones is the Lee E. Teitelbaum endowed professor of law and Associate Dean of Faculty and Research at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah. She is also an Affiliated Fellow at Yale Law School's Information Society Project. Previously, Jones was a law professor and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Research at the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University, where she was twice named Professor of the Year. Jones has previously been a reporter employed by the Deseret News and she specializes in the study of the integration of the press, the l...
Go to Profile#1649
Gloria Lubkin
#89239
Overall Influence
1933 - 2020 (87 years)
Gloria Lubkin was an American science journalist and editor for the magazine Physics Today, of which she was the editor-in-chief from 1985 to 1994. She also cofounded the Theoretical Physics Institute at the University of Minnesota and was a fellow of both the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Go to Profile#1650
Sue Gardner
#121127
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Sue Gardner is a Canadian journalist, not-for-profit executive and business executive. She was the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation from December 2007 until May 2014, and before that was the director of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's website and online news outlets.
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