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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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Communications,

#2201

Elaine Bonazzi

#171034

Overall Influence

1929 - 2019 (90 years)

Elaine Bonazzi was an American operatic mezzo-soprano who had an active international career from the 1950s through the 1990s. A singer with an unusually broad repertoire that encompassed both classical and contemporary works, she notably created roles in the world premieres of operas by composers Dominick Argento, David Carlson, Carlisle Floyd, Gian Carlo Menotti, Thomas Pasatieri, and Ned Rorem. In the United States she was particularly active with the New York City Opera, the Santa Fe Opera, and the Washington National Opera.

#2202

Marjorie Merryman

#180712

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Marjorie Merryman is an American composer, author, and music educator. She is a member of the composition faculty at the Manhattan School of Music since 2007, where she also served as Interim President, Provost and Senior Vice President at Manhattan School of Music. She previously taught at Boston University and Macalester College.

#2203

Dorothy Rudd Moore

#175953

Overall Influence

1940 - 2022 (82 years)

Dorothy Rudd Moore was an American composer and music educator. She was one of the co-founders of the Society of Black Composers. She is considered one of the leading women composers of color for her generation and did commissions for the National Symphony, Opera Ebony, the Buffalo Philharmonic, and solo artists. She was a member of the American Composers Alliance, BMI, New York Singing Teachers Association, and New York Women Composers. Her works were unpublished, but are available through the American Composers Alliance.

#2204

Hilary Tann

#182458

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Hilary Tann was a Welsh composer based in the United States. Career Born in Llwynypia, Glamorgan , Tann held degrees in music composition from the University of Wales, Cardiff, and Princeton University. Her compositions are published by Oxford University Press. Tann's orchestral works have been released on the North/South Recordings CD Here, the Cliffs, – "music of great integrity, impeccable craft, and genuine expressive ambition" Robert Carl, Fanfare 36:I. Her overture, "With the Heather and Small Birds," commissioned by the 1994 Cardiff Festival, is her tribute to the land of her birth.

#2205

Dorothee Oberlinger

#111753

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Dorothee Oberlinger is a German recorder player and professor. Biography Dorothee Oberlinger was born in Aachen and raised in Simmern. At the University of Cologne, she studied music education and German studies. After university, she studied recorder in Cologne, Amsterdam and Milan. Her teachers include Günther Höller , Walter van Hauwe and Pedro Memelsdorff . In 1997 she won the first prize at the international "Moeck" UK / SRP competition. In 1998, she made her solo debut at London's Wigmore Hall.

#2206

Susan Stocklmayer

#163171

Overall Influence

Emeritus Professor Susan Mary Stocklmayer, , is a science communicator who served as Director of the Centre for the Public Awareness of Science at the Australian National University from 1998 to 2015.

#2207

Simone Zgraggen

#180087

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Simone Zgraggen is a Swiss violinist and professor at Freiburg University of Music. Career Simone Zgraggen began playing the violin at the age of five. She studied from 1991 to 1994 at Lucerne University of Music under Alexander van Wijnkoop, from 1994 to 1995 at Basel Conservatory also under van Wijnkoop and from 1996 to 2002 at Karlsruhe University of Music under Ulf Hoelscher. She received all degrees with highest honors.

#2208

Lisa Brescia

#135599

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Lisa Brescia is an American musical theatre actress who has performed as lead and understudy in several Broadway shows. Raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, she went on to pursue acting and graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She taught Acting I and IV at Missouri State University and is now set to be the head of the Musical Theatre department at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri.

#2209

Maggi Payne

#163142

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Maggi Payne is an American composer, flutist, video artist, recording engineer/editor, and historical remastering engineer who creates electroacoustic, instrumental, vocal works, and works involving visuals .

#2210

Pamela Frank

#179251

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Pamela Frank is an American violinist, with an active international career across a varied range of performing activity. Her musicianship was recognized in 1999 with the Avery Fisher Prize, one of the highest honors given to American instrumentalists. In addition to her career as a performer, Frank holds the Herbert R. and Evelyn Axelrod Chair in Violin Studies at the Curtis Institute of Music, where she has taught since 1996, and is also an Adjunct Professor of Violin at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music since 2018.

#2211

Mina

#177992

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Mina Anna Maria Mazzini or Mina Anna Quaini , known mononymously as Mina, is an Italian singer and actress. She was a staple of television variety shows and a dominant figure in Italian pop music from the 1960s to the mid-1970s, known for her three-octave vocal range, the agility of her soprano voice, and her image as an emancipated woman.

#2212

Yōko Oginome

#175251

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Yōko Oginome, married name Yōko Tsujino, is a former pop idol, actress and voice actress, who gained popularity in the mid-1980s. Her fans often call her Oginome-chan. Her husband is Ryuso Tsujino.

#2213

Deborah Holland

#90139

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Deborah Holland is an American-Canadian singer-songwriter. She rose to national prominence in 1987 as the lead singer and songwriter of Animal Logic featuring Stanley Clarke and Stewart Copeland. As of March 2020, Deborah Holland has released six solo albums: Freudian Slip , The Panic Is On , The Book of Survival , Bad Girl Once... , Vancouver , and Fine, Thank You! .

#2214

Tomeka Reid

#153497

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Tomeka Reid is an American composer, improviser, cellist, curator, and teacher. Reid has performed and recorded with the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Nicole Mitchell, Anthony Braxton, the AACM Great Black Music Ensemble, Mike Reed's Loose Assembly, and Roscoe Mitchell. She leads the Tomeka Reid Quartet, with , , and Mary Halvorson, and is co-leader of Hear In Now, a trio with and .

#2215

Ellen Alaküla

#178033

Overall Influence

1927 - 2011 (84 years)

Ellen Alaküla was an Estonian stage, radio, television, and film actress and theatre teacher whose career spanned over forty years. Early life and education Ellen Alaküla was born in Kohtla-Järve in Ida-Viru County to parents Rudolf Alaküla and Johanna Alaküla . She was one of three siblings; having a brother and a sister. The family moved to Tallinn when she was young. Her father was a stage actor and sang in the church choir and her mother was a homemaker. Her father was later deported to Siberia by Soviet authorities, but was eventually allowed to return to Estonia.

#2216

Susan Allen

#179756

Overall Influence

1951 - 2015 (64 years)

Susan Allen was an American harpist and music educator. She was particularly known for her world premieres of music for both the classical and electric harp by contemporary composers. She performed in a variety genres—classical, experimental music, jazz, and world music. For many years Allen was also Associate Dean of the Herb Alpert School of Music at California Institute of the Arts.

#2217

Betzy Bromberg

#185047

Overall Influence

Betzy Bromberg is an American director, editor, and experimental filmmaker. She is the Director of the Program in Film and Video at California Institute of the Arts. Her work has been shown at the Rotterdam, London, Edinburgh, Sundance and Vancouver Film Festivals as well as the Museum of Modern Art , Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the San Francisco Cinematheque, the Harvard Film Archive , Anthology Film Archives , the National Film Theater , The Vootrum Centrum and the Centre Georges Pompidou .

#2218

Kyung Wha Chung

Kyung Wha Chung

#143826

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Kyung Wha Chung is a South Korean violinist. Early years and education Kyung Wha Chung was born in Seoul as the middle of the seven children in her family. Her father was an exporter, and her mother ran a restaurant. She began piano studies at age 4, and violin studies at age 7, where she proved more sympathetic to the violin. She became recognized as a child prodigy, and by the age of 9 she was already playing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra. As time progressed she steadily won most of the famous music competitions in Korea. With her siblings, Chung toured around the country, performing music both as soloist and as a part of an ensemble.

#2219

Patricia Smith

#150713

Overall Influence

1930 - 2011 (81 years)

Patricia Smith was an American actress who performed on stage, in films, and on television from the early 1950s to the late 1990s. Early life and education Born in Connecticut in 1930, Patricia was the younger of two children of Virginia and E. Allen Smith Jr., who worked in New Haven as a salesman of plate glass. She began her primary education in New Haven public schools and completed her secondary education in her father's native state of New Jersey, where by 1940 the Smith family had moved to the city of Summit and where Allen was employed as a representative for a paint manufacturer. The...

#2220

Dana Claxton

#131795

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Dana Claxton is a Hunkpapa Lakota filmmaker, photographer, and performance artist. Her work looks at stereotypes, historical context, and gender studies of Indigenous peoples of the Americas, specifically those of the First Nations. In 2007, she was awarded an Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Art.

#2221

Irina Nikolaeva

#184181

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Irina Alekseevna Nikolaeva is a linguist and Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at the SOAS University of London. Biography Nikolaeva gained her PhD from the University of Leiden in 1999. She worked at the University of Konstanz and the University of Oxford before joining SOAS in 2007 as a Lecturer. She was appointed Professor of Linguistics in 2012 and Emeritus Professor in 2020. She was awarded the Humanity Award at the 2008 Women of Discovery Awards. She was elected as a fellow of the British Academy in 2019.

#2222

Ester Mägi

#178380

Overall Influence

1922 - 2021 (99 years)

Ester Mägi was an Estonian composer, widely regarded as the First Lady of Estonian Music. Biography Her compositional output is substantial and represents all genres, from chamber and vocal music to choral and highly regarded symphonic works. She trained initially under Mart Saar at the Tallinn Conservatory, then from 1951 to 1954 at the Moscow Conservatory under Vissarion Shebalin. Amongst her best-known works are her Piano Sonata , Piano Trio in F minor , Piano Concerto , Violin Concerto , Symphony , Variations for Piano, Clarinet and Chamber Orchestra , Bukoolika for orchestra and Vesper for violin and piano/organ .

#2223

Edith Wiens

#128786

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Edith Wiens OC is a Canadian opera, recital and concert singer with a soprano voice. Early life and education Wiens, daughter of a Mennonite pastor, grew up in Vancouver where she finished high school at the age of 16. She studied theology and church music at Columbia Bible College in Clearbrook. At age 20 she received a bursary to study singing in Hannover, Germany. She went on to Oberlin Conservatory of Music to study with Richard Miller. She received her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees here.

#2224

Noël Valis

#139456

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Noël Ritter Valis is a writer, scholar and translator. She is a Professor of Spanish at Yale University. Biography She was raised in Toms River, New Jersey and graduated from Toms River High School in 1964; she was inducted into the Toms River Regional Schools' Hall of Fame in 1995.

#2225

Emily Vey Duke

#166666

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Emily Vey Duke is a Canadian-born visual artist who has worked collaboratively with Cooper Battersby since 1994. She is an associate professor in the Department of Transmedia at the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University.

#2226

Alexandra Kertz-Welzel

#123879

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Alexandra Kertz-Welzel is Professor and Chair of Music Education at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, Germany. She studied at the Hochschule für Musik Saar and Saarland University in Saarbrücken, where she obtained Master's Degrees in music education, German studies, Philosophy, piano performance , and harpsichord performance , and was a scholarship holder from Cusanuswerk between 1992 and 2000. In 2000, she received a PhD degree in Musicology from Saarland University, with a dissertation on aesthetics in literature and music during the early romanticism in the Nineteenth century. Pri...

#2227

Gabriela Ortiz

#177379

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Gabriela Ortiz is a Mexican music educator and composer. Biography Gabriela Ortiz Torres was born in Mexico City of parents who were folk musicians. She learned folk music at home, and then studied in Paris at the Ecole Normale de Musique. She returned to Mexico City due to the illness of her mother, and studied composition there with Mario Lavista at the National Conservatory of Music. She continued her studies at the Guildhall School with Robert Saxton, and with Simon Emmerson at the University of London where she received a PhD in 1996. After completing her studies, she took a position at the National School of Music at the National Autonomous University in Mexico City.

#2228

Patricia Brooks

#178660

Overall Influence

1937 - 1993 (56 years)

Patricia Brooks was a lyric soprano, actress, and opera singer, who performed primarily with the New York City Opera. She was known for her acting ability as much as for her voice. Biography Brooks was born in Manhattan and attended the High School of Music and Art, studying dance with Martha Graham. Following a knee injury, she turned to theatrical performance, studied singing with Margaret Harshaw and Daniel Ferro, and studied acting with Uta Hagen.

#2229

Marion Lerner-Levine

#170733

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (95 years)

Marion Lerner-Levine is British-born American a painter, printmaker, and teacher who creates "emotionally expressive" still life paintings in oil and watercolor, which "transform the traditional form of the still life into whimsical portraits of everyday life."

#2230

Yael Sharvit

#184818

Overall Influence

Yael Sharvit is an American linguist who is Professor of Linguistics at UCLA. She specializes in semantics and the syntax-semantics interface. Education Sharvit received her PhD in linguistics from Rutgers University in 1997; she was the third person to graduate from the program. Her dissertation title was "The Syntax and Semantics of Functional Relative Clauses."

#2231

Lynne Arriale

#133771

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Lynne Arriale is an American jazz pianist, composer, bandleader and educator. She is Professor of Jazz Studies and Director of Small Ensembles at the University of North Florida. Awards and honors "The Lights Are Always On" #3 on JazzWeek Radio charts"The Lights Are Always On" #19 on JazzWeek Radio charts, CDs receiving the most airplay in 2020"Chimes of Freedom" #8 on JazzWeek Radio charts"Chimes of Freedom" #34 on JazzWeek Radio charts,CDs receiving the most airplay in 2020"Give Us These Days" #15 on JazzWeek Radio charts"Solo" #28 JazzWeek Radio charts"Convergence" #4 on JazzWeek Rad...

#2232

Jaye P. Morgan

#173516

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (95 years)

Jaye P. Morgan is a retired American popular music singer, actress, and game show panelist. Early life Morgan was born in Mancos in Montezuma County in far southwestern Colorado. Her family moved to California by the time she was in high school. Morgan had six siblings; five brothers and one sister. In the late 1940s, at Verdugo Hills High School in the Tujunga neighborhood of Los Angeles, she served as class treasurer and sang at school assemblies, accompanied by her brother on guitar. She was married briefly to Michael Baiano from 1954-1955.

#2233

Judith LeClair

#170550

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Judith LeClair , from Newark, Delaware, is an American bassoonist. She has been the principal bassoon in the New York Philharmonic since 1981 and on the faculty at the Juilliard School since 1985. LeClair began studying the instrument at age 11 and began her professional career at the age of 15 in a performance with the Philadelphia Orchestra playing the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante with colleagues from the Settlement Music School in Philadelphia, where she studied with Shirley Curtiss. She studied bassoon with K. David van Hoesen at the Eastman School of Music and held the principal chair in t...

#2234

Mari Kimura

#180660

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

is a Japanese violinist and composer best known for her use of subharmonics, which, achieved through special bowing techniques, allow pitches below the instrument's normal range. She is credited with "introducing" the use of violin subharmonics, which allow a violinist to play a full octave below the low G on the violin without adjusting the tuning of the instrument.

#2235

Jodi Levitz

#177890

Overall Influence

Jodi Levitz is an American viola player and academic. She has performed throughout Europe, South America, the US, and the Far East as a solo violist and has recorded works for the viola on several record labels including Erato Records. She is the violist of the Ives Quartet.

#2236

Lauren Kalman

#177541

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Lauren Kalman is a contemporary American visual artist who uses photography, sculpture, jewelry, craft objects, performance, and installation. Kalman's works investigate ideas of beauty, body image, and consumer culture. Kalman has taught at institutions including Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Currently she is an associate professor at Wayne State University.

#2237

Emily Floyd

#174557

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Emily Floyd is an Australian artist working in public art, sculpture and print making. Her family were toy makers in traditional European styles — carefully crafted of wood. She learned the skills and use of machinery, which are reflected and used in many of her sculptural works. She has been commissioned to produce multiple public art sculptures in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia.

#2238

Zora Dirnbach

#119768

Overall Influence

1929 - 2019 (90 years)

Zora Dirnbach was a Croatian-Jewish journalist and writer, born in Osijek on 22 August 1929 to a Jewish father and Austrian-born Catholic mother who converted to Judaism in 1922. She was raised with her sister Gertruda.

#2239

Ana María Fernández Planas

#186198

Overall Influence

1968 - 2021 (53 years)

Ana María Fernández Planas was a Spanish philologist and phonetician from Catalonia. Biography Ana Maria Fernández Planas was born in Blanes on 16 October 1968. After earning a doctorate in linguistics from the University of Barcelona , she began her research in the field of articulatory phonetics in Spanish and Catalan. In 1984, she became coordinator of the journal . She was a professor of linguistics at UB, and in 1998 she became the technical manager of its Phonetics Laboratory. In 2018, she received the Antoni Caparrós Award from the Bosch i Gimpera Foundation and UB for best knowledge t...

#2240

Kristin Merscher

#136247

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Kristin Merscher is a German classical pianist and professor at the Hochschule für Musik Saar in Saarbrücken, Germany. Life Born in Frankfurt, Merscher began her studies at age eight with Karl-Heinz Kämmerling at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hannover. From 1977, she continued her studies at the Conservatoire de Paris with Pierre Sancan and with György Sebők at the Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington, Indiana. She has performed with the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the Munich Philharmonic, and gave solo performances throughout Europe, North America, and in the Far East.

#2241

Leslie Grace

#177160

Overall Influence

1995 - Present (31 years)

Leslie Grace Martínez is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. For her work as a singer, she has received three Latin Grammy Award nominations. She starred as Nina Rosario in Jon M. Chu's film adaptation In the Heights .

#2242

Joyce Castle

#175718

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Joyce Castle is an American mezzo-soprano who has had an active opera career for the last four decades. She earned degrees in music from The University of Kansas and the Eastman School of Music. She made her professional opera debut in 1970 at the San Francisco Opera as Siebel in Charles Gounod's Faust. In 1984 she became the first woman to portray Mrs. Lovett in an operatic staged production of Sweeney Todd at the Houston Grand Opera. She spent seven years performing with opera companies in France during the 1970s, after which her career has mainly been spent performing with opera companies throughout the United States.

#2243

Heidi Thomson

#180305

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Heidi Thomson is a New Zealand academic, a full professor of English at the Victoria University of Wellington. Academic career After an undergraduate at the University of Ghent and a 1990 PhD titled 'The poetic self in the English ode, 1740–1820' at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Thomson moved to Victoria University of Wellington, rising to full professor.

#2244

Olga Scheps

#169217

Overall Influence

1986 - Present (40 years)

Olga Scheps is a German pianist, who currently resides in Cologne, Germany. Biography 1986–2001: Early life and career beginnings Scheps was born on 4 January 1986, in Moscow and came to Germany at the age of six. Influenced by the musical surroundings of her family, especially of her father Ilja Scheps she began piano lessons at the age of four.

#2245

Jay Clayton

#178050

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Judith Colantone, known as Jay Clayton, is an American avant-garde jazz vocalist and educator. Early life and education Clayton, was born in Youngstown, Ohio, in 1941. From a young age, Clayton would pick up different jazz standards, and eventually learned to play the accordion. As she grew, she picked up piano and received lessons for a number of years. After graduating high school, Clayton spent the following summer at the St. Louis Institute of Music, a formerly accredited music college in Missouri. First in her family to enroll in college, Clayton attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

#2246

Beena Sarwar

#172754

Overall Influence

Beena Sarwar is a Pakistani journalist, artist and filmmaker focusing on human rights, gender, media and peace. She resides in Boston and is currently Editor of the Aman ki Asha initiative, that aims to develop peace between the countries of India and Pakistan. The initiative is jointly sponsored by the Jang group in Pakistan and the Times of India across the border. In March 2021, she founded the Southasia Peace Action Network or Sapan along with other peace activists from across South Asia. In August 2022, Sapan informally launched Sapan News Network, a news and features syndicated service in the making.

#2247

Kirsten Zickfeld

#164672

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Kirsten Zickfeld is a German climate physicist who is now based in Canada. She is a member of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and was one of the authors on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C .Zickfeld completed a Master of Science degree in physics at the Free University of Berlin in 1998, followed by a doctorate in physics at the University of Potsdam in 2004.[7]

#2248

Françoise Barrière

#185735

Overall Influence

1944 - 2019 (75 years)

Françoise Barrière was a French editor, writer and composer. Life Françoise Barrière was born in Paris and studied at the Conservatoire de Versailles and the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris. She continued her studies in ethnomusicology at the Ecole Pratique de Hautes Etudes. Barrière worked at the Service de la Recherche, ORTF, and in 1970 became co-founder and director of the International Institute of Electroacoustic Music of Bourges with Christian Clozier.

#2249

Mariapaola D'Imperio

#177656

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Mariapaola D’Imperio is an Italian linguist and Distinguished Professor at the Department of Linguistics at Rutgers University. She is president of the Association for Laboratory Phonology and is known for her works on phonology. Previously D'Imperio was a professor at Aix-Marseille University and head of the Prosody Group at the Laboratoire Parole et Langage . She is an associate editor of the Journal of Phonetics since 2016.

#2250

Doina Rotaru

#142501

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Doina Rotaru is a Romanian composer best known for orchestral and chamber works. Biography Marilena Doinița Rotaru was born in Bucharest and studied with Tiberiu Olah at the Bucharest Conservatory in Bucharest from 1970-1975. In 1991, she continued her studies with Theo Loevendie in Amsterdam. In 1991 she also took a position as a professor at the National University of Music, and has served several times as a guest lecturer in Darmstadt, Germany and the Gaudeamus Composers Workshop in Amsterdam. Her music has been commissioned and performed internationally in Europe, Asia and the Americas. S...

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