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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List of the most influential female people in Communications,

#2001

Wendy Williams

#156537

Overall Influence

1934 - 2019 (85 years)

Wendy Williams was a British actress. She is best known for her work on television, with credits including: Danger Man, Z-Cars, The Regiment, The Pallisers, Thriller, Doctor Who , Survivors, Poldark, Beau Geste, Tenko and The Darling Buds of May. She had a long running role in Crossroads as Sally Banks, stepping in to the role at very short notice when the original actress Patricia Mort quit the series without notice.

#2002

Lori Kido Lopez

#167941

Overall Influence

Lori Kido Lopez is an American media activist and an associate professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, whose research centers on depictions of Asian Americans in modern media. Additionally, she is affiliate faculty in the Department of Women's Studies and the Asian American Studies Program. She most notably wrote Asian American Media Activism: Fighting for Cultural Citizenship, which was published in 2016 by New York University Press. She is also a Co-Editor of the Routledge Companion to Asian American Media. Lopez's work explores minorities’ use of medi...

#2003

Ariel Bybee

#176378

Overall Influence

1943 - 2018 (75 years)

Ariel Bybee was a mezzo-soprano who has had a distinguished career as a soloist, voice teacher and university opera director. According to Opera News , she was "a prominent mezzo at the Metropolitan Opera for eighteen seasons." She sang over 460 performances at the Metropolitan Opera.

#2004

Naoko Tosa

#161071

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Naoko Tosa is a Japanese media artist based in Fukuoka, Japan. In recent years Tosa has been creating artwork expressing Japanese tradition and culture without utilizing digital technology but rather by taking photographic captures of water and flowers in motion at 2000 frames per second. Much of her focus is based on Japanese Zen, Shinto and Rinpa traditions. Rinpa, a school of painting which traces its origins to 17th century Kyoto emphasizes natural subjects, refinement and the use of gold leaf, and is a key influence in Tosa's most recent works.

#2005

Elizabeth Kemp

#110674

Overall Influence

1951 - 2017 (66 years)

Elizabeth Kemp was an American actress and acting coach. She began her career on the television series Love of Life in 1973, after studying at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and the Actors Studio under Lee Strasberg. She went on to become an acting coach and faculty member of the Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University.

#2006

Doris Duke

#168474

Overall Influence

1945 - 2019 (74 years)

Doris Willingham , known for much of her singing career as Doris Duke, was an American gospel and soul singer, best known for her 1969 album I'm a Loser. Biography Duke was born in Sandersville, Georgia, and reportedly started singing with gospel groups including the Queen of Gospel Albertina Walker and The Caravans, though this has been questioned. By 1963 she was working in New York City on sessions and as a backing singer at the Apollo Theatre. She also recorded some demos for Motown Records, but none were ever released.

#2007

Anastasia Chebotareva

#181117

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Anastasia Chebotareva is a Ukrainian violinist. She started the violin at the age of five. Three years later, her exceptional talent was discovered by the famous professor Irina Bochkova, who was a student and follower of the legendary Yuri Yankelevich.

#2008

Helen Ward

#168401

Overall Influence

1913 - 1998 (85 years)

Helen Ward was an American jazz singer. She appeared on radio broadcasts with WOR and WNYC and worked as a staff musician at WNYC. Early years Ward came from a musical family and was a native of New York City. As a high school student, she sang with bands, including the one led by Eddy Duchin.

#2009

Mercedes Teixido

#181360

Overall Influence

Mercedes M. Teixido is an American visual artist. She is the Loren Barton Babcock Miller Fine Arts Professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California. External links Personal websiteFaculty page at Pomona College

#2010

Alessandra Celletti

Alessandra Celletti

#131410

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Alessandra Celletti is an Italian pianist, vocalist, songwriter and composer, best known as an interpreter of Erik Satie. Biography Alessandra Celletti comes from a purely classical background, graduating at the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia in Rome and perfecting herself with Vera Gobbi Belcredi. She has played in Italy, France, England, Germany, Portugal, Denmark, Czech Republic, Austria, Spain, United States, Mozambique, Tunisia, India.

#2011

Susan McCullough

#181469

Overall Influence

Susan McCullough is a professor at the Lamont School of Music, University of Denver, in the United States of America, and a respected and experienced French horn recitalist. She performs regularly at horn society conferences around the world, and as a soloist in America. She often performs in tandem with her son, Jesse McCormick the second horn in the Cleveland Orchestra. In 2008, Susan Hosted the 40th International Horn Symposium at the Lamont School of Music, University of Denver. This Symposium set record attendance of over 800 participants.

#2012

Carla Henius

#142529

Overall Influence

1919 - 2002 (83 years)

Carla Henius was a German operatic soprano and mezzo-soprano, voice teacher and librettist. She played a decisive role in promoting recent works by composers such as Arnold Schönberg, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luigi Nono for the stage. She wrote the libretto for an opera by Aribert Reimann.

#2013

Sujatha Mohan

#96087

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Sujatha Mohan is an Indian playback singer who is popular for singing in Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu movies. She has also sung for Kannada, Badaga, Hindi and Marathi and more languages movies. , she had recorded more than 10,000 songs.

#2014

Pozzi Escot

#159293

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

Olga Pozzi-Escot Zapata is a Peruvian-born American composer, music theorist, and faculty member at the New England Conservatory in Boston, Massachusetts. Life Pozzi Escot was born in Lima, Peru, her father was a French professor at the University of San Marcos in Lima, Peru, Marius Emmanuel Pozzi Escot, and her mother was Lucía María Zapata Hurtado. After living in Peru, she went to France.

#2015

Julia Thornton

#156552

Overall Influence

Julia Thornton is a professional harpist, who to date has released two albums: Harpistry and Eye of the Storm . Musical life and career Julia Thornton began to play the harp aged 11. Having wanted to do so since the age of three, her parents initially managed to stave off her persistence, allowing her piano lessons at the age of 9. Eighteen months later, having taken well to the piano, she was allowed to have her first harp lesson.

#2016

Liz Collins

#121749

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Liz Collins is an American contemporary artist and designer. Collins is recognized for her artwork involving fabric, knitwear, and textiles as well as the fashion label she developed. She has expertise in textile media including the transition of fabric into multi-dimensional forms as a method to vary the scale of her pieces to make them architectural and inviting rather than object-based. Collins is based in Brooklyn, New York.

#2017

Steffani Jemison

Steffani Jemison

#123086

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

Steffani Jemison is an American artist, writer, and educator. Her videos and multimedia projects explore the relationship between Black embodiment, sound cultures, and vernacular practices to modernism and conceptual art. Her work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum, Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and other U.S. and international venues. She is based in Brooklyn, New York and is represented by Greene Naftali, New York and Annet Gelink, Amsterdam.

#2018

Ingrid Haebler

#173950

Overall Influence

1929 - 2023 (94 years)

Ingrid Haebler was an Austrian classical pianist. Early life Haebler was born in Vienna. Her birth year has been variously given as 1926 or 1929; The New York Times has suggested the former date was "probably" the accurate one. Her parents moved to Poland shortly after her birth, where she remained for her early childhood. Many celebrated musicians were regular visitors to the Haebler home, including Claudio Arrau, Robert Casadesus and Bronislaw Huberman. It was Casadesus who recognised the child's talent as a pianist and predicted a great future for her.

#2019

Judy Ledgerwood

#116023

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Judy Ledgerwood is an American abstract painter and educator, who has been based in Chicago. Her work confronts fundamental, historical and contemporary issues in abstract painting within a largely high-modernist vocabulary that she often complicates and subverts. Ledgerwood stages traditionally feminine-coded elements—cosmetic and décor-related colors, references to ornamental and craft traditions—on a scale associated with so-called "heroic" abstraction; critics suggest her work enacts an upending or "domestication" of modernist male authority that opens the tradition to allusions to female sexuality, design, glamour and pop culture.

#2020

Yang Jing

#76979

Overall Influence

1983 - Present (43 years)

Yang Jing is a Chinese violist, violinist, and five-string violinist. Along with the pianists Yin Chengzong and Xu Feiping, Yang is considered one of the three most famous classical musicians from Kulangsu, China’s "Music Island". She played at the 41st Session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee to celebrate the inscription of Kulangsu as World Cultural Heritage site.

#2021

Yip Wing-sie

#108640

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Yip Wing-sie is a Hong Kong musician. A highly respected and influential figure in Asia's orchestral music scene, Yip Wing-sie has been the Music Director of Hong Kong Sinfonietta since 2002. Positions she has previously held Principal Conductor and later Music Director of Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra and Resident Conductor of Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.

#2022

Valerie Tryon

#178972

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Valerie Tryon, is an English classical pianist. Since 1971 she has resided in Canada, but continues to pursue an international performing and recording career, and spends a part of each year in her native Britain. Among her specialisms is the music of Franz Liszt, of which she has made a number of celebrated recordings. Currently 'Artist-in-Residence' at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Tryon is active as a concerto soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, accompanist and adjudicator.

#2023

Elżbieta Magdalena Wąsik

Elżbieta Magdalena Wąsik

#176310

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Elżbieta Magdalena Wąsik is a Polish linguist specializing in general linguistics and semiotics of communication, employed as professor extraordinarius at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland.

#2024

Gwen Pearson

#85227

Overall Influence

Gwen Pearson is a science writer and education coordinator in the Department of Entomology at Purdue University. Education Pearson completed a Bachelors in Zoology at Ohio State University in 1984. In 1991, Pearson testified before a Congressional Hearing to request that the tax-exempt status of graduate student stipends should be maintained. She completed her graduate studies at North Carolina State University in 1992, where she worked on sesiid pheromone biology.

#2025

Jenny McLeod

#161614

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Jennifer Helen McLeod was a New Zealand composer and professor of music at Victoria University of Wellington. She composed several major works for big groups including Under the Sun for four orchestras and 450 children, and the opera Hōhepa.

#2026

Barbara Walsh

#145274

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Barbara Ann Walsh is an American journalist and writer of children's books. She has worked for The Eagle-Tribune , Portland Press Herald, and South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and has taught journalism at Florida International University, University of Southern Maine, and University of Maine at Augusta. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for a series she wrote for the Eagle-Tribune about the Massachusetts prison system. Barbara has also worked as an international speaker for the U.S. Department of State.

#2027

Scherezade García

Scherezade García

#175934

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Scherezade García is a Dominican-born, American painter, printmaker, and installation artist. She is a co-founder of the Dominican York Proyecto GRÁFICA Collective. García is an Advisor to the Board of Directors of No Longer Empty and sits on the board of directors of the College Art Association for the period of 2020–2024. She is assistant professor of Art at the University of Texas at Austin. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York and Austin, Texas.

#2028

Elsa Cavelti

#169511

Overall Influence

1907 - 2001 (94 years)

Elsa Cavelti was a Swiss operatic contralto and mezzo-soprano, temporarily also a dramatic soprano, who worked at German and Swiss opera houses and as an international guest. She was an academic voice teacher in Frankfurt.

#2029

Kristin Linklater

#134467

Overall Influence

1936 - 2020 (84 years)

Kristin Linklater was a Scottish vocal coach, acting teacher, actor, theatre director, and author. She retired from the Theatre Arts Division of Columbia University where she was professor emerita. She taught residential courses in Orkney.

#2030

Mara Mattuschka

Mara Mattuschka

#175876

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Mara Mattuschka is an Austrian avant-garde filmmaker. Life Mattuschka was born in Sofia in Bulgaria in 1959. At the age of 17, in 1976, she moved to Vienna to study Ethnology and Linguistics. In 1983, she entered Maria Lassnig's masterclass in animation and painting at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and started making her first short films. Her graduation film Der Einzug des Rokoko ins Inselreich der Huzis caused a small scandal at the university in 1989, because it mixed animation, theatre, performance, music and fine arts. She graduated in 1990. From 1997 until 2001 she taught arts at Braunschweig University of Art in Germany.

#2031

Sherry Farrell Racette

#131211

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Sherry Farrell Racette is a Métis-Canadian feminist scholar, author, curator, and artist. She is best known for her contributions to Indigenous and Canadian art histories. She is currently an associate professor of Visual Arts at the University of Regina.

#2032

Lisa Coleman

#129516

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Lisa Jacqueline Coleman is an English actress best known for her television roles as Jude Korcanik in Casualty and Cam Lawson in The Story of Tracy Beaker . Coleman reprised the role in Tracy Beaker Returns , My Mum Tracy Beaker and The Beaker Girls .

#2033

Franka Rasmussen

#154539

Overall Influence

1907 - 1994 (87 years)

Franziska Paula Konstante Rasmussen née Duden was a German-born textile artist and painter who moved to Denmark in 1930. Initially influenced by the minimalist Bauhaus style, she soon developed her own distinctive Structuralist approach to weaving, becoming one of Denmark's most important contributors to tapestry. In 1935, she joined the Danish School of Arts and Crafts where she remained for over 40 years, teaching painting and composition, increasingly with an emphasis on textile art.

#2034

Denise van Outen

Denise van Outen

#168172

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Denise van Outen is an English actress, singer, dancer and presenter. She presented The Big Breakfast, played Roxie Hart in the musical Chicago both in the West End and on Broadway and finished as runner-up in the tenth series of the BBC One dancing show Strictly Come Dancing.

#2035

Janet Lilly

#101029

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Janet Lilly is an American modern dancer and choreographer. She was a principal dancer for Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane's company from 1983 to 1991. She currently serves as the Director of the UNCG College of Visual and Performing Arts, School of Dance at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. From 2012 to 2014 she was the president of the Board of Directors of Iyengar Yoga National United States Association.

#2036

Carol Lawrence

#147599

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

Carol Lawrence is an American actress, appearing in musical theatre and on television. She is known for creating the role of Maria on Broadway in the musical West Side Story , receiving a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. She appeared at The Muny, St. Louis, in several musicals, including Funny Girl. She also appeared in many television dramas, including Rawhide, The Six Million Dollar Man and Murder She Wrote. She was married to fellow performer Robert Goulet.

#2037

Laurie Hays

#137821

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Laurie Hays is an American journalist at Bloomberg News, where she currently serves as senior executive editor for beat reporting. Prior to joining Bloomberg, Hays worked at The Wall Street Journal for 23 years as a reporter, Moscow correspondent, and editor, and she worked on a team that won a 2003 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting on corporate corruption scandals.

#2038

Annie Ross

#165585

Overall Influence

1930 - 2020 (90 years)

Annabelle McCauley Allan Short , known professionally as Annie Ross, was a British-American singer and actress, best known as a member of the jazz vocal trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. Early life Ross was born in Surrey, England, the daughter of Scottish vaudevillians John "Jack" Short and Mary Dalziel Short . Her brother was Scottish entertainer and theatre producer and director Jimmy Logan. She first appeared on stage at age three. At the age of four, she travelled to New York by ship with her family; she later recalled that they "got the cheapest ticket, which was right in the bowels of the...

#2039

Janet Watson

#172059

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Janet Constance Elizabeth Watson is a linguist and phonologist. She is Professor in the School of Languages, Cultures, and Societies at the University of Leeds. Biography Watson studied Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter before undertaking her PhD in Linguistics at the SOAS University of London.

#2040

Crystal Kay

#150400

Overall Influence

1986 - Present (40 years)

is a Japanese-American singer, songwriter, actress and radio host. After releasing her first single, "Eternal Memories" , Crystal Kay gained fame for her third studio album, Almost Seventeen , which debuted at number 2 on the Japanese Oricon charts. Almost Seventeen eventually sold over 400,000 copies and was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of Japan. Crystal Kay, formerly signed to Epic Records, a sub-label of Sony Music Japan for 12 years, suddenly transferred to Delicious Deli Records, a sub-label of Universal Music Japan in 2011.

#2041

Mechthild Georg

#176474

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Mechthild Georg is a German operatic mezzo-soprano, and a professor of voice at the Musikhochschule Köln. Career Georg studied Roman studies and history at the Cologne University, and music pedagogy at the Musikhochschule Köln. She then studied voice at the Robert Schumann Hochschule in Düsseldorf with Ingeborg Reichelt. She graduated in 1982 as a concert singer, and continued studies as an opera singer. She was a member of the Cologne Opera Studio in 1982/83, and took master classes with Giulietta Simionato and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.

#2042

Fiora Contino

#146251

Overall Influence

1925 - 2017 (92 years)

Fiora Corradetti Contino was an American opera conductor and teacher. She was particularly known for her interpretations of Italian verismo works of the late 19th century, and was described as one of the most important figures in opera of the 20th century. Anne Midgette of The New York Times once suggested that she "might have had a far bigger career had she been a man".

#2043

Elaine Thornburgh

#179632

Overall Influence

Elaine Thornburgh is an American keyboardist; she teaches harpsichord at Stanford University. As a soloist, she was semi-finalist in the Sixth International Harpsichord Competition in Bruges, Belgium in 1980, and she also received a National Endowment of the Arts Solo Recitalist Grant in 1984.

#2044

Haruka Tomatsu

#169399

Overall Influence

1990 - Present (36 years)

is a Japanese actress and singer, employed by Music Ray'n. She received the Rookie of the Year award at the 3rd Seiyu Awards and the Synergy Award at the 9th Seiyu Awards. Tomatsu voiced Asuna Yuuki in Sword Art Online, Zero Two in Darling in the Franxx, Lala Satalin Deviluke in To LOVE-Ru, Kyoko Hori in Horimiya, Morgiana in Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic and Naruko "Anaru" Anjo in Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day.

#2045

Miriam Gideon

#140470

Overall Influence

1906 - 1996 (90 years)

Miriam Gideon was an American composer. Life Miriam Gideon was born in Greeley, Colorado, on October 23, 1906. She studied organ with her uncle Henry Gideon and piano with Felix Fox. She also studied with Martin Bernstein, Marion Bauer, Charles Haubiel, and Jacques Pillois. She studied harmony, counterpoint, and composition with Lazare Saminsky and at his suggestion also composition with Roger Sessions, after which she abandoned tonality and wrote in a freely atonal or extended post-tonal style. She attended Boston University and graduated with a degree in music in 1926.

#2046

Ruth Ziesak

#172680

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Ruth Ziesak is a German soprano in opera and concert. Career Ruth Ziesak studied voice at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts with Elsa Cavelti and Christoph Prégardien. She has been a member of the Municipal Theatre Heidelberg since 1988 and the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in 1990.

#2047

Kitty Carlisle

#155108

Overall Influence

1910 - 2007 (97 years)

Kitty Carlisle Hart was an American stage and screen actress, opera singer, television personality and spokesperson for the arts. She was the leading lady in the Marx Brothers movie A Night at the Opera and was a regular panelist on the television game show To Tell the Truth . She served 20 years on the New York State Council on the Arts.

#2048

Susan Price

#169977

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Susan Ann Price, is a British academic, previously the Vice-Chancellor of Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, West Yorkshire, a position which she took up on 1 January 2010 following the resignation of Simon Lee in January 2009. Price was Acting Vice-Chancellor of the University of East London, to which office she was appointed in 2008 after having been Deputy Vice-Chancellor from 2007 and previously Pro Vice-Chancellor from 2002.

#2049

Elizabeth Fischer Monastero

#145673

Overall Influence

Elizabeth Fischer Monastero is an American operatic mezzo-soprano and voice teacher. Life and career Born Elizabeth Fischer and raised in Dubuque, Iowa, Fischer Monastero graduated with a bachelor's degree in vocal performance from the University of Michigan in 1956. She also studied with tenor Richard Miller at the Interlochen Center for the Arts and with Clara Bloomfield of Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin.

#2050

Frances Bible

#176695

Overall Influence

1919 - 2001 (82 years)

Frances Lillian Bible was an American operatic mezzo-soprano who had a thirty-year career at the New York City Opera between 1948 and 1978. She also made a number of opera appearances with other companies throughout the United States, but only made a limited number of appearances abroad. Martin Bernheimer wrote in Opera News that, "Frances Bible was cheated by destiny. She never quite achieved the international recognition she deserved. Bible had it all—a mellow, wide-ranging mezzo-soprano, an attractive stage presence, genuine theatrical flair, a probing mind and a technique that allowed her to sing bel-canto filigree one night, Verdian drama the next.

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