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

Gender

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Communications,

#1851

Rae Woodland

#168079

Overall Influence

1922 - 2013 (91 years)

Rae Woodland was a British soprano who studied with Roy Henderson. Her debut was as Queen of the Night at Sadlers Wells. She sang in many European festivals, and debuted at Covent Garden in La sonnambula with Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti. She was first asked to sing for Benjamin Britten on the English Opera Group's tour of Russia, and played many roles for him subsequently. She also created roles for Gottfried von Einem, Nicholas Maw and Sir Arthur Bliss, and made many live broadcasts for the BBC, from the RAH Proms to Friday Night is Music Night. She retired from the opera stage in 1984.

#1852

Diane-Monique Daviau

#130987

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Diane-Monique Daviau is a Quebec educator, writer, translator and journalist. Biography She was born in Montreal. Daviau wrote literary columns for Le Devoir, Lettres québécoises and Liberté, also contributing to the radio programs En toutes lettres, Littératures actuelles and Paysages littéraires on Radio Canada FM. She has taught literature, German and translation at McGill University, at the Université de Montréal and at the Goethe-Institut. Daviau was an editor for several publishing houses and also worked as a translator from German to French and from French to German. She served on the editorial committees for Lettres québécoises and for XYZ, la revue de la nouvelle.

#1853

Ida Bieler

#73709

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Ida Bieler is an American violinist and professor of Violin. Biography Bieler studied under Ruggiero Ricci at the North Carolina School of the Arts, Oscar Shumsky at the Juilliard School of Music in New York, Max Rostal in Cologne and Nathan Milstein in London. From 1982 to 1988 she was concertmaster of the Gürzenich Orchestra of Cologne.

#1854

Rusty Morrison

#128075

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Rusty Morrison is an American poet and publisher. She received a BA in English from Mills College in Oakland, California, an MFA in Creative Writing from Saint Mary's College of California in Moraga, California, and an MA in Education from California State University, San Francisco. She has taught in the MFA program at the University of San Francisco and was Poet in Residence at Saint Mary’s College in 2009. She has also served as a visiting poet at a number of colleges and universities, including the University of Redlands, the University of Arizona, Boise State University, Marylhurst University, and Millikin University.

#1855

Silvia Malagrino

#130968

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Silvia A. Malagrino is an American multimedia artist, independent filmmaker and educator based in Chicago, Illinois. She is known for interdisciplinary work that explores historical and cultural representation, and the intersections of fact, fiction, memory and subjectivity. Her experimental documentary, Burnt Oranges , interwove personal narrative, witness testimony, interviews, and both documentary and re-created footage to examine the long-term effects of Argentina's Dirty War. Malagrino's art has been featured at The Art Institute of Chicago, Palais de Glace and Centro Cultural Recoleta ,...

#1856

Andrea Martin

#101810

Overall Influence

1972 - 2021 (49 years)

Andrea Monica Martin was an American R&B singer-songwriter and record producer. Career She was primarily known for writing hit songs for artists like Toni Braxton , Monica , Angie Stone , En Vogue , SWV , and British singer Leona Lewis . She has written a number of hits in both the UK and the US, as well as non-charting singles for the likes of Paloma Faith , Nelly , RBD and Jennifer Hudson .

#1857

Noriko Ogawa

#156289

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Noriko Ogawa is a Japanese classical pianist, based in London. Biography Born in Kawasaki, Ogawa studied at the Tokyo College of Music and the Juilliard School in New York , and later with Benjamin Kaplan.

#1858

Abbey Lincoln

#136264

Overall Influence

1930 - 2010 (80 years)

Anna Marie Wooldridge , known professionally as Abbey Lincoln, was an American jazz vocalist and songwriter. She was a civil rights activist beginning in the 1960s. Lincoln made a career out of delivering deeply felt presentations of standards as well as writing and singing her own material.

#1859

Gioconda de Vito

#159082

Overall Influence

1907 - 1994 (87 years)

Gioconda de Vito was an Italian-British classical violinist. Life De Vito was born, one of five children, in the town of Martina Franca in southern Italy, to a wine-making family. Initially she played the violin untaught, having received only music theory lessons from the local bandmaster. Her uncle, a professional violinist based in Germany, heard her attempting a concerto by Charles Auguste de Bériot when she was aged only eight, and decided to teach her himself. At age 11, she entered the Rossini Conservatory in Pesaro to study with Remy Principe. She graduated at age 13, commenced a career as a soloist, and at age 17 became Professor of Violin at the newly founded conservatory in Bari.

#1860

Marisa Robles

#170124

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Marisa Robles is a Spanish harpist and composer. She was born in Spain, where she studied the harp with Luisa Menarguez, and studied music at the Madrid Conservatory, graduating at the age of sixteen in 1953. She made her concert debut at seventeen, performing with flautist Jean-Pierre Rampal.

#1861

Katherine Dunham

Katherine Dunham

#114138

Overall Influence

1909 - 2006 (97 years)

Katherine Mary Dunham was an American dancer, choreographer, anthropologist, and social activist. Dunham had one of the most successful dance careers of the 20th century, and directed her own dance company for many years. She has been called the "matriarch and queen mother of black dance."

#1862

Saori Hayami

#159514

Overall Influence

1991 - Present (35 years)

is a Japanese voice actress and singer affiliated with I'm Enterprise. As a singer, she is signed to Warner Bros. Home Entertainment. Hayami won the 10th Seiyu Awards for Best Supporting Actress. Her most notable roles include Miyuki Shiba in The Irregular at Magic High School, Yukino Yukinoshita in My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, As I Expected, Leona in Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai, Himawari Uzumaki in Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, Shinobu Kochō in Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Ryuu Lion in Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, Yor Forger in Spy × Family, Yamato in ...

#1863

Monica Huggett

#169894

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Monica Huggett is a British conductor and leading baroque violinist. Biography At the age of 16, Huggett started studying at the Royal Academy of Music, London, with Manoug Parikian and Kato Havas, baroque violin with Sigiswald Kuijken.

#1864

Faith Esham

#142485

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Faith Esham is an American soprano and college professor of voice. Life and career Faith Lou Esham was born in Portsmouth, Ohio, and grew up in Vanceburg, Kentucky, the daughter of Dr. Elwood Esham and Ruth Louise Opfer Esham , a nurse. She graduated in psychology from Columbia Union College in Maryland. She completed study for a master's degree in clinical psychology at Eastern Kentucky University before transferring to the Juilliard School where she received her master's degree in music in 1978. Her voice teacher at Juilliard was Beverley Peck Johnson.

#1865

Kaye Ballard

#141529

Overall Influence

1925 - 2019 (94 years)

Kaye Ballard was an American actress, comedian, and singer. Early life Ballard was born Catherine Gloria Balotta in Cleveland, Ohio, one of four children born to Italian immigrant parents, Lena and Vincenzo Balotta. Her parents immigrated to the United States from Calabria, a region of southern Italy.

#1866

Adele Stolte

#168953

Overall Influence

1932 - 2020 (88 years)

Adele Stolte was a German soprano singer in concert and Lieder, and an academic voice teacher. Biography Born in Sperenberg, Stolte attended schools in Lübeck and Potsdam. She studied voice with Anneliese Buschmann in Rostock. With the Thomanerchor she started broadcasting in 1958 and recording of Bach cantatas in 1960. In 1958 she sang in the premiere of Te Deum by Ernst Pepping in Dresden. She recorded the oratorio Das Gesicht Jesajas op. 41 of Willy Burkhard, with Kurt Huber, Jakob Stämpfli and the Bern Symphony Orchestra conducted by Martin Flämig. In the recording of Bach's St Matthew P...

#1867

Yukari Tamura

#147039

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

is a Japanese voice actress and singer affiliated with Amuleto . She debuted as a voice actress in 1997, releasing her debut single "Yūki o Kudasai" on March 26, 1997. Her role as Nanoha Takamachi in the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha series contributed to a rise in her popularity, as several of her singles were used as the ending themes for the franchise's anime adaptations. Besides Nanoha, she voices the title characters Haruka Minazuki / Red Angel in Kaitō Tenshi Twin Angel, Ringo Kinoshita in No-Rin, Yamada in B Gata H Kei and Kaoru Tsunashi in I Can't Understand What My Husband Is Saying. O...

#1868

Kolleen Park

#140576

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Kolleen Park is an American-born South Korean-Lithuanian musical director, conductor, and actress, and is also a judge on the Korean talent show Korea's Got Talent. Background Kolleen was born in the United States to a Korean father and an American mother of Lithuanian descent. Kolleen has two sisters named Kim and Kelly. She is bilingual, being fluent in both English and Korean.

#1869

Rebecca Saunders

#142583

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Rebecca Saunders is a London-born composer who lives and works freelance in Berlin. In a 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000, Saunders' compositions received the third highest total number of votes , surpassed only by the works of Georg Friedrich Haas and Simon Steen-Andersen . In 2019, writers of The Guardian ranked Skin the 16th greatest work of art music since 2000, with Tom Service writing that "Saunders burrows into the interior world of the instruments, and inside the grain of Fraser's voice [...] and finds a revelatory world of heightened feeling."

#1870

Elaine Ryan Hedges

Elaine Ryan Hedges

#92073

Overall Influence

1927 - 1997 (70 years)

Elaine Ryan Hedges was an American feminist who pioneered Women's Studies in the 1970s and advocated for curricula encompassing a more inclusive body of American literature which brought together works by ethnic and gendered minorities. A recognized expert in feminist literary criticism, she was awarded The Feminist Press Award for Contributions to Women's Culture in 1988 and inducted into the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame in 1998.

#1871

Holly Peterson

#59198

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Holly Peterson is an American producer, journalist, and novelist. The daughter of Peter George Peterson, she was a contributing editor for Newsweek magazine, an editor-at-large for Talk magazine, and a producer for ABC News, where she covered global politics.

#1872

Claire Wilcox

#146147

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Claire Wilcox is senior curator of fashion at the Victoria and Albert Museum. She received an honorary doctorate in art and design from Middlesex University in July 2017. She sits on the editorial board of the journal Fashion Theory. She is professor of fashion curation at the London College of Fashion. She won the 2021 PEN/Ackerley Prize for Patch Work.

#1873

Donna Campbell

#105250

Overall Influence

Donna Campbell is a New Zealand Māori university teacher, curator, weaver and textile artist. She affiliates with Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Ruanui iwi. Her works are held in the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and in the British Museum. In 2019 Campbell completed a PhD at the University of Waikato with a thesis titled Ngā kura a Hineteiwaiwa: The embodiment of Mana Wahine in Māori fibre Arts.

#1874

Nietzchka Keene

Nietzchka Keene

#170101

Overall Influence

1952 - 2004 (52 years)

Nietzchka Keene was an American film director and writer best known for The Juniper Tree, a feature film shot in Iceland starring the Icelandic singer Björk in her first film role. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in the spring of 2004 and died, aged 52, on October 20, 2004. She taught film making and editing at the University of Wisconsin–Madison until her death.

#1875

Rhian Samuel

#171025

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Rhian Samuel is a Welsh composer who resided in the USA for many years. She has composed over 140 published works, including orchestral, chamber, vocal, and choral music. She now divides her time between mid-Wales and London. She currently resides in the coastal town of Aberdyfi.

#1876

Maria Tipo

#159215

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (95 years)

Maria Tipo is an Italian pianist. Biography Tipo was born in Naples. She was taught originally by her mother, Ersilia Cavallo, who was a pupil of Ferruccio Busoni. She went on to study under Alfredo Casella and Guido Agosti.

#1877

Florence Piron

#177187

Overall Influence

1966 - 2021 (55 years)

Florence Piron was a French-born Canadian anthropologist and ethicist. She was full professor in the Department of Communication and Information at Laval University. She also acted as a Knight of the International Order of Academic Palms of CAMES . Her focus was on open access to knowledge and to enhance the scientific "heritage" of places like Africa and Haiti.

#1878

Mary Miller

#152570

Overall Influence

1929 - 2020 (91 years)

Mary Elizabeth Miller was an English television and stage actress, who was a founding member of the National Theatre Company in 1963. Career Early years Mary Miller first appeared on television in 1959 as Alice Chandler in episode one of the 6-part series The Golden Spur, with Ronald Fraser and Oliver Reed. In the same year, she took the role of Ann Elsden in "The Talking Doll", the first instalment of the UK TV police drama, No Hiding Place.

#1879

Micaela Comberti

#177318

Overall Influence

1952 - 2003 (51 years)

Micaela "Mica" Comberti was an English violinist. Her concert career lasted from 1977 until her death. Born to a German mother and an Italian father, she was taught at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, the Royal Academy of Music and the Mozarteum University Salzburg. Comberti was involved in early music and played for The English Concert, St. James' Baroque, Ex Cathedra and the Collegium Musicum 90. She also taught at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the Royal College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music. An award and position at the Royal Academy of Music are nam...

#1880

Dorothy Taubman

#49578

Overall Influence

1917 - 2013 (96 years)

Dorothy Taubman was an American music teacher, lecturer, and founder of the Taubman Institute of Piano. She developed the "Taubman Approach" to piano playing, though her approach provoked controversy.

#1881

Dorothy A. Leonard

#133585

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Dorothy A. Leonard is an American professor of business administration specialized in knowledge management. She is the William J. Abernathy professor of business administration emerita at the Harvard Business School.

#1882

Marina Rosenfeld

#135288

Overall Influence

Marina Rosenfeld is an American composer, sound artist and visual artist based in New York City. Her work has been produced and presented by the Park Avenue Armory, Museum of Modern Art, Portikus , Donaueschinger Musiktage, and such international surveys as documenta 14 and the Montreal, Liverpool, PERFORMA, and Whitney biennials, among many others. She has performed widely as an improvising turntablist, and served as co-chair of Music/Sound in the MFA program at the Milton Avery School of the Arts, Bard College, from 2007 to 2020. She has also taught at Harvard, Yale, Brooklyn College, and Da...

#1883

Wilma Lipp

#151002

Overall Influence

1925 - 2019 (94 years)

Wilma Lipp was an Austrian operatic soprano and academic voice teacher. A long-time member of the Vienna State Opera, she was particularly associated with the role of the Queen of the Night in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, a role she performed internationally more than 400 times. She was awarded the title Kammersängerin at age 28, and was an honorary member of the Vienna State Opera, among other honours.

#1884

Wendy Sadler

#120249

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Wendy Sadler FInstP FHEA FLSW is a British science communicator and lecturer at Cardiff University. She is the founding director of Science Made Simple, which focuses on engaging audiences with the physical sciences. Her areas of interest include inspiring the next generation of scientists, engineers and communicators; women in STEM; and making STEM subjects accessible to diverse audiences.

#1885

Ellen Faull

#139401

Overall Influence

1918 - 2008 (90 years)

Ellen Hartla Faull was an American operatic soprano and voice teacher. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she was primarily associated with New York City Opera, where she sang from 1947 until 1978 and created the role of Abigail Borden in Jack Beeson's opera Lizzie Borden in its 1965 world premiere. After her retirement from the opera stage, she taught singing at Sarah Lawrence College, the Manhattan School of Music and the Juilliard School and later privately at her home in Camas, Washington.

#1886

Maria de Medeiros

Maria de Medeiros

#164871

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Maria Esteves de Medeiros Victorino de Almeida, DamSE , known professionally as Maria de Medeiros , is a Portuguese actress, director, and singer who has been involved in both European and American film-productions.

#1887

Elisabeth Scholl

#125095

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Elisabeth Scholl is a German soprano and academic teacher. Career Elisabeth Scholl was the first girl to sing with the boys choir Kiedricher Chorbuben. From 1982 to 1987 she sang the role of the First Boy in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte at the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden. After her Abitur she studied musicology, English studies and history of art at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz and took private singing lessons with Eduard Wollitz. She continued her studies at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis with René Jacobs and Richard Levitt and attended master classes with Ingrid Bjoner, Helmut Deutsch, Luisa Bosabalian, Ileana Cotrubas and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

#1888

Carmen McRae

#138790

Overall Influence

1920 - 1994 (74 years)

Carmen Mercedes McRae was an American jazz singer. She is considered one of the most influential jazz vocalists of the 20th century and is remembered for her behind-the-beat phrasing and ironic interpretation of lyrics.

#1889

Dori Tunstall

#118994

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Elizabeth "Dori" Tunstall is a design anthropologist, researcher, academic leader, writer, and educator. She is dean of the faculty of design at OCAD University in Toronto, Canada, and the first black dean of a faculty of design anywhere. Tunstall holds a PhD and an MA in anthropology from Stanford University [1994–1999] and a BA in anthropology from Bryn Mawr College [1990–1994].

#1890

Maria Bittner

#160770

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Maria Bittner is Professor Emerita in Linguistics at Rutgers University. She is a fieldworker, semanticist, and logician whose work has focused on tense and cross-linguistic typology. She is best known for her descriptive and theoretical work on the Greenlandic language Kalaallisut, for which she has done some text documentation. She has long combined linguistic fieldwork, and to analyze her data she has developed a compositional dynamic update logic, building on DRT and Centering Theory, but with a novel architecture. She has also worked on the phenomena of case, questions, and causatives.

#1891

Doriot Anthony Dwyer

#148454

Overall Influence

1922 - 2020 (98 years)

Doriot Anthony Dwyer was an American flutist. She was one of the first women to be awarded principal chair for a major U.S. orchestra . She was the principal flute for the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1952 until 1990. She was second flute for the National Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. She was an Adjunct Professor of Music at Boston University.

#1892

Jennifer Aylmer

#172987

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Jennifer Aylmer is an American operatic soprano noted for significant performances with the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, and as an oratorio soloist with major ensembles such as the National Symphony, and the Oratorio Society of New York.

#1893

Rebecca Fortnum

#158800

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Rebecca Fortnum is a British artist, writer, and academic. Education and biography Fortnum studied English at Corpus Christi College in Oxford before gaining an MFA at Newcastle University. In 2009, she became reader and pathway leader of fine art at Camberwell College of Arts, one of London's leading art-education institutions. She was professor of fine art at Middlesex University, London. until 2016 and was professor of fine art at the Royal College of Art in London and founding editor of the of Contemporary Painting published by Intellect. She is currently professor of fine art and head o...

#1894

Heather Goad

#176712

Overall Influence

Heather Goad is a Canadian linguist. Her research explores areas of phonology and language acquisition, especially investigating the shapes of phonological systems, including contrasts in English, French, Korean, Portuguese, Italian and Nepali, as well as the developmental paths of acquiring speech sounds by first and second language learners.

#1895

Liza Lim

#122832

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Liza Lim is an Australian composer. Lim writes concert music as well as music theatre and has collaborated with artists on a number of installation and video projects. Her work reflects her interests in Asian ritual culture, the aesthetics of Aboriginal art and shows the influence of non-Western music performance practice.

#1896

Stephanie Chase

#155102

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Stephanie Ann Chase is an American classical violinist. Life and career Chase was born in Evanston, Illinois. She is the daughter of two musicians, the noted arranger and composer Bruce Chase and violinist Fannie Chase. She gave her first public performance when only two years old and was recognized as a child prodigy. She studied first with her mother and then embarked on studies with Sally Thomas, then an assistant to Ivan Galamian at The Juilliard School. While still in her teens she moved to Belgium to study privately with Arthur Grumiaux, who is noted as "holding her in regard for her energy and the way in which she put into practice what he taught...

#1897

Marilu Madrunio

Marilu Madrunio

#112786

Overall Influence

Marilu Rañosa Madrunio is an applied linguist. Her works have been published in various international publications on World Englishes, Philippine English, English sociolinguistics, English language education and Forensic Linguistics.

#1898

Alice Caffarel

#176058

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Alice Marie-Claude Caffarel-Cayron is a French-Australian linguist. She is an Honorary Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Sydney. Caffarel is recognized for the development of a Systemic Functional Grammar of French which has been applied in the teaching of the French language, Discourse analysis and Stylistics at the University of Sydney. Caffarel is recognised as an expert in the field of French Systemic Functional Linguistics .

#1899

Rivka Golani

#149210

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Biography Golani was born in Tel Aviv. Her father Yakov Gulnik was from Warsaw, and had lost his family in the Holocaust. Her mother Liza Goldstein was from Polish Galicia. Golani took up the violin at age 7, while her sister Bela learned the cello. Golani was a mathematics prodigy.

#1900

Amanda Roocroft

#170536

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Amanda Jane Roocroft is an English operatic soprano, who in the course of her career has sung leading roles in the opera houses of Europe and North America. She is also a voice professor at London's Royal College of Music and a Fellow of the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester where she herself had trained as a singer. She also became a visiting tutor at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire in 2018. Roocroft was the winner of the 2007 Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera for her performance in the title role of Jenůfa at the English National Opera.

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