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,
#2551
Věnceslava Hrubá-Freiberger
#185722
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Věnceslava Hrubá-Freiberger is a Czech-German soprano. Life Born in Dublovice, Freiberger studied at the Prague Conservatory with the singing teachers V. Passerová and L. Michelová. From 1968 to 1970, she was a member of the opera choir at the National Theatre in Prague. Her solo career began in 1970 at the Plzeň Opera. From 1972 to 1988 she was an ensemble member at the Leipzig Opera. After her marriage to the solo violist of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Eberhard Freiberger, she emerged primarily as an interpreter of oratorios and orchestral works by Johann Sebastian Bach and George Fri...
Go to Profile#2552
Kristin Korb
#181122
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Kristin Korb is an American jazz double bassist and vocalist. Biography Korb studied at Eastern Montana College and the University of California, San Diego. She also studied with Ray Brown, with whom she made her recording debut, released in 1996.
Go to Profile#2553
Valerie Frissen
#133125
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Valerie Frissen holds the extraordinary professorship in ‘ICT and Social Change’ at the Faculty of Philosophy at the Erasmus University Rotterdam where she belongs to the group of Professor Dr. Jos de Mul. The chair is sponsored by the Dutch governmental research organization TNO, where Valerie Frissen is also head of the ICT & Policy department of TNO Information and Communication Technology. She is also a member of the board of Het Expertise Centrum in The Hague.
Go to Profile#2554
Melia Watras
#175257
Overall Influence
Melia Watras is an American violist, composer and professor of viola. She is a soloist, chamber musician and recording artist, who has commissioned, premiered and recorded numerous new compositions, and appeared at venues such as Carnegie Hall, Weill Recital Hall and Alice Tully Hall. Her compositions have been performed in the United States and Europe. Educated at Indiana University and the Juilliard School, Watras has been on the faculty of the University of Washington in Seattle since the fall of 2004, where she is Chair of Strings.
Go to Profile#2555
Helen Roberts
#188230
Overall Influence
1912 - 2010 (98 years)
Helen Florence Roberts , later known as Betty Roberts and by her married name, Betty Walker, was an English singer and actress, best known for her performances in soprano roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.
Go to Profile#2556
Zhao Jin
#187464
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Zhao Jin is a Chinese professor of German linguistics and a scholar in cultural-analytical linguistics. Education and career Zhao Jin completed her undergraduate study in 1991 and her master's study in 1997 at the Tongji University. She subsequently received a DAAD-scholarship and was awarded a doctorate at the Philipps University of Marburg.
Go to Profile#2557
Kay Griffel
#184359
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Kay Griffel is an American operatic spinto soprano. Early life and education After earning a Bachelor of Music from Northwestern University, she pursued further studies with Lotte Lehmann at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara. She received a Fulbright Scholarship and a Rockefeller Foundation Grant. In 1962 she won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. She also won a competition sponsored by the National Association of Teachers of Singing. In the mid 1960s she pursued graduate studies at the Musikhochschule Berlin. She also received further instruction from Nadia Boula...
Go to Profile#2558
Eleanor Sanger
#188937
Overall Influence
1929 - 1993 (64 years)
Eleanor Sanger was a 7-time Emmy-award-winning television writer and producer, who was the first woman Network Sports Producer. "Women television producers are still as rare as Howard Cosell's silences, but at least one has begun to break through the double barriers of televised sports. That rarity is Eleanor Riger, the lone distaff on any network sports team." The New York Times, January 8, 1974.
Go to Profile#2559
Phia Berghout
#185032
Overall Influence
1909 - 1993 (84 years)
Sophia Rosa Berghout was a Dutch harpist. Her obituary in The Independent called her "arguably the most influential harpist this century". Career She was born in Rotterdam on 14 December 1909 and started playing the harp when she was 15 years old. She studied the harp at the Amsterdam Conservatoire with . She played in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, as second harp 1933-1945 and principal harp 1945–1960, as well as having a successful solo career. She taught at the Amsterdam Conservatoire and then, from 1974, at the Maastricht Conservatoire.
Go to Profile#2560
Natalya Boyarskaya
#180809
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Natalya Konstantinovna Boyarskaya is a Russian violinist and music teacher. She is the wife of the cellist Alexander Boyarsky and mother of the violist Konstantin Boyarsky. Biography She studied violin at Moscow Conservatory Music College under Maya Glezarova and Yuri Yankelevich, and later graduated from Felix Andrievsky's class at Gnessin State Musical College. From 1971 to 1990 she taught at the junior department of Moscow Conservatory Music College, heading the Strings Department there. In 1991, at the invitation of Yehudi Menuhin, she moved to London and began teaching at Yehudi Menuhin ...
Go to Profile#2561
Marcela Del Río Reyes
#172255
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Marcela Yolanda Del Río y Reyes is an intellectual, professor, journalist, diplomat and writer. Her works cover national and global issues. Early life Del Río Reyes was born in Coyoacán, Mexico City and grew up in a family of writers. Her mother, María Aurelia Reyes de del Río, was a writer, journalist and painter. Her father, Manuel del Río Govea, was a lawyer, historian and was a former child actor. Her brother, Carlos Pacheco Reyes, was a philosopher, journalist and psychiatrist. She learned to paint and inherited her liking for literature and classical music from her mother. Her interest ...
Go to Profile#2562
Joy Nwosu Lo-Bamijoko
#172001
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Joy Ifeoma Nroli Nwosu Lo-Bamijoko is a Nigerian ethnomusicologist, choral conductor, music critic and soprano. A music teacher at the University of Lagos, she promoted Bel canto performances in Nigeria to develop interest in the opera and Italian style of singing. She has performed over 50 solo or group concerts in Nigeria and a few other countries.
Go to Profile#2563
Ellen Frank
#189681
Overall Influence
1904 - 1999 (95 years)
Ellen Frank was a German film and television actress. Selected filmography The Racokzi March Such a Rascal Peer Gynt A Night of Change The Girl from the Marsh Croft The Blonde Carmen The Old and the Young King Family Parade Under Blazing Heavens Gold in New Frisco Little Red Riding Hood Hansel and Gretel The Angel with the Flaming Sword The Royal Waltz Lina Braake
Go to Profile#2564
Alberte Brun
#190114
Overall Influence
2000 - 2000 (0 years)
Alberte Brun, also Alberte Brun-Michelis, was a French classical pianist. Life Born in Paris, Brun studied at the Conservatoire de Paris with Marguerite Long. She received further instruction from Maurice Ravel, with whom she studied his Piano Concerto for the Left Hand. Commissioned by the Ministère des Beaux-Arts, she performed the complete piano works of Albert Roussel. She later lived in Germany, where she taught at the Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf in Düsseldorf. Her interpretations were documented by radio recordings. She was a member, from 1980 to 1986 chairperson of the Deutsch...
Go to Profile#2565
Maria Carbone
#182193
Overall Influence
1908 - 2002 (94 years)
Maria Carbone was an Italian operatic soprano. She created the lead female roles in two of Gian Francesco Malipiero's operas: the title role in Ecuba and Cleopatra in Antonio e Cleopatra . Life and career Born in Castellammare di Stabia, Carbone studied medicine for four years. She then studied music at the Conservatorio di San Pietro a Majella in Naples, receiving a diploma in piano and studying voice with Agostino Roche. She made her debut on the opera stage in 1930 at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples as Margherita in Boito's Mefistofele. She also performed there as Micaëla in Bizet's Carmen...
Go to Profile#2566
Mary Ruth Ray
#178772
Overall Influence
1956 - 2013 (57 years)
Mary Ruth Ray was an internationally known classical musician who received critical acclaim throughout the United States, Europe and Russia. Career Ray was a faculty member at Brandeis University where she taught viola and chamber music from 1980 to 2013. She was appointed Chair of the Music Department at Brandeis in 2005 and held that position for eight years.
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Alicia Henry
#183735
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Alicia Henry is a contemporary artist living, working and teaching in Nashville. Henry is an associate professor in the Language and Arts Department at Fisk University. Henry creates multi-media artwork that focuses on themes of the body and identity. She uses materials such as wood, fabric, paper and pigment for her creations. Henry has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Master of Fine Arts from the School of Art at Yale University.
Go to Profile#2568
Susan Fernandez
#178817
Overall Influence
1956 - 2009 (53 years)
Susan Fernandez Magno was a Filipina singer, activist and academic. She was known for her protest music, especially at the height of the authoritarian regime of Ferdinand Marcos. Biography An alumna of the University of the Philippines, where she earned a degree in A.B. Sociology and Master of Arts in Philippine Studies, Susan Fernandez first gained prominence as a performer during anti-Marcos rallies in the first half of the 1980s. She would come to be hailed as "the voice of a protest generation". She also became known for her rendition of the feminist anthem Babae Ka, which was released a...
Go to Profile#2569
Grace Kelly
#173296
Overall Influence
1992 - Present (34 years)
Grace Kelly is an American jazz musician, composer, and arranger. Kelly has produced and released recordings of her own, scored soundtracks, and tours with her band. She was named one of Glamour magazine's Top 10 College Women in 2011; and she has been featured on CNN.com and on the NPR radio shows Piano Jazz with both Marian McPartland and Jon Weber, as well as on WBGO's JazzSet with Dee Dee Bridgewater. Working professionally since she was a preteen, Kelly was dubbed a prodigy in the jazz world. In 2014, Kelly worked with the producer Stewart Levine on her EP, Working for the Dreamers, whi...
Go to Profile#2570
Kaveri Kaul
#188205
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Kavery Kaul, formerly known as Kavery Dutta, is an American filmmaker, born in India. Her directing and producing credits include Back Walking Forward, Long Way from Home, Cuban Canvas, One Hand Don’t Clap, and First Look.
Go to Profile#2571
Elizabeth Willis
#187966
Overall Influence
Elizabeth Willis was a British stage actress. She originally began appearing at Drury Lane in 1696, before joining Thomas Betterton's company at Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre the following year. For the remainder of her career she switched between the two patent theatres and the new Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket. She also appeared at the summer fairs in London. Her daughter Mary Willis also became an actress, and the two appeared together, being billed as Mrs Willis and Miss Willis respectively.
Go to Profile#2572
Natalie Draper
#188739
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Natalie Draper is an American composer who teaches composition at Syracuse University's Setnor School of Music. Biography Draper completed her Doctor of Musical Arts at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University in 2017. Her teachers include Oscar Bettison and Joel Hoffman. In 2015, Draper was a Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center.
Go to Profile#2573
Margaret Lazarus
#128111
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Margaret Lazarus is an American film producer and director known for her work in documentary film. She and her partner, Renner Wunderlich, received an Oscar in 1993 for their documentary Defending Our Lives, about battered women who were in prison for killing their abusers.
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Ursula Holden-Gill
#185577
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Ursula Holden-Gill is an English actress and dramatherapist, best known for her roles as school secretary Carol on Channel 4's comedy drama Teachers , Alice Dingle on ITV's soap opera Emmerdale and Miss Fitzgerald on CBBC's Wolfblood .
Go to Profile#2575
Judith Malafronte
#173345
Overall Influence
Judith Malafronte is an American mezzo-soprano currently on the faculty at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. For 15 years she taught courses at Yale University in literature and opera. She is the winner of several top awards in Italy, Spain, Belgium and the US, including the Grand Prize at the International Vocal Competition 's-Hertogenbosch, Holland in 1983.
Go to Profile#2576
Benita Raphan
#189951
Overall Influence
1962 - 2021 (59 years)
Benita Raphan was an American filmmaker and designer. She was known for directing short documentary films about "eccentric and unusual minds", including John Nash, Buckminster Fuller, Edwin Land and Emily Dickinson.
Go to Profile#2577
Annette Schlünz
#185078
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Annette Schlünz is a German musician and composer. Biography Schlünz was born in Dessau, East Germany. She studied music at the Dresden Music School from 1983 to 1987 with Udo Zimmermann and at the Academy of Arts in Berlin from 1988 to 1991 with Paul-Heinz Dittrich. She also studied with Iannis Xenakis at Darmstadt and Helmut Lachenmann in Stuttgart.
Go to Profile#2578
Dagne Groven Myhren
#106993
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Dagne Groven Myhren is a Norwegian literature researcher, folk musician and educator. Her literary studies have included significant works on Henrik Wergeland and on Norwegian folk poetry. As a singer, she has focused on the traditional songs of Telemark, frequently contributing to radio programmes. Until her retirement in 2003, she was professor of Nordic Studies at the University of Oslo.
Go to Profile#2579
Tami Gold
#169102
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Tami Kashia Gold is a documentary filmmaker, visual artist and educator. She is also a professor at Hunter College of the City University of New York in the Department of Film and Media Studies. Biography As a teenager, Gold studied in Mexico and Cuba where she was first introduced to the documentary filmmaking of Santiago Álvarez who had a major influence on her work.
Go to Profile#2580
Maria Friesenhausen
#188226
Overall Influence
1922 - 2020 (98 years)
Maria Friesenhausen was a German classical soprano who appeared in Europe. She is known for recordings of Baroque music on record and with broadcasters. She was also a professor of voice at the University of Dortmund.
Go to Profile#2581
Michelle Lopez
#130783
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Michelle Lopez is an American sculptor and installation artist, whose work incorporates divergent industrial materials to critique present day cultural phenomena. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Go to Profile#2582
Regina Werner-Dietrich
#190075
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Regina Werner-Dietrich as Regina Werner Life Born in Zwickau, Werner grew up in a musical family, her father was Kapellmeister. She attended the Thomasschule zu Leipzig from 1964 to 1968 and then studied at the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig with Eva Fleischer until 1973. She won 2nd prize at the International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in 1972. From 1974 to 1987, Werner was a soloist with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, which was conducted by Kurt Masur during this time. She performed regularly at the Gewandhaus, both as part of the Grand Concerts and on . At St. Thomas Chu...
Go to Profile#2583
Irina Odagescu
#190383
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Irina Odăgescu-Țuțuianu is a Romanian music educator and composer. Biography Irina Odăgescu was born on 23 May 1937 in Bucharest, and studied at the Bucharest Music Conservatoire with Tudor Ciortea and . She also took summer courses with Iannis Xenakis, György Ligeti, and Karlheinz Stockhausen. After completing her studies, she became a professor at the Bucharest Conservatoire.
Go to Profile#2584
Michelle Ellsworth
#60086
Overall Influence
Michelle Ellsworth is an American dancer and performance artist, as well as a professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at University of Colorado Boulder. Her "smart, singular" work spans live performance, video, performable websites, and drawing, employing absurdist humor, carpentry, technology, monologue, and dance. Ellsworth has received, among other awards, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Doris Duke Impact Award, a Creative Capital Grant and a United States Artists Knight Fellowship. ArtForum has described her work as "some of the most engrossing explorations of how the body and tech...
Go to Profile#2585
Helen Stadelbauer
#171758
Overall Influence
1910 - 2006 (96 years)
Helen Stadelbauer was a Canadian painter and educator known for her establishment of the Art Department at the University of Calgary. Biography Helen Barbara Stadelbauer was born in Calgary, Alberta, on December 20, 1910. She grew up in Calgary and attended Crescent Heights Collegiate High School, now known as Crescent Heights High School. She later attended Calgary Normal School with her sister Isabel and graduated in 1933. Both sisters later went on to be artists and art educators, and their love of drawing and painting was fostered through early family holidays in the Rockies.
Go to Profile#2586
Elinor Armer
#164326
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Elinor Armer is an American pianist, music educator and composer. Biography Elinor Armer was born in Oakland, California but at the age of 2 months moved to Davis, California with her family where she would spend most of her childhood. Armer’s father worked as an engineer and worked for the Agricultural Engineering Department for the University in Davis, which prompted the family’s move. Her father was an acoustical engineer and used to set up speakers in the family’s living room, exposing Elinor to acoustics at a young age. Elinor first began sight-reading music and enjoying four-part harmo...
Go to Profile#2587
Sofya Gulyak
#170292
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Sofya Gulyak is a Russian classical pianist. She was the first woman to win the Leeds Piano Competition. Gulyak was born in Kazan. She studied at the Kazan State Conservatoire, Piano Academy Incontri col Maestro, and the Royal College of Music. In 2006, she won first prize in the Sigismund Thalberg International Piano Competition. In 2007, she won the William Kapell Competition and shared the Concorso F. Busoni second prize with Dinara Nadzhafova. Gulyak was the winner of the 2008 Washington International Competition of the Friday Morning Music Club, and also won ISANGYUN Competition 2008. In 2009, she won the 1st prize in the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition.
Go to Profile#2588
Barbara Harbach
#139751
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Barbara Harbach is a composer, harpsichordist, organist and teacher. Since 2004, she taught music at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She founded Women in the Arts-St. Louis to highlight women's work and gain more performances for musicians and composers.
Go to Profile#2589
Liu Jiayin
#180983
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Liu Jiayin is a Chinese independent filmmaker and educator, born in Beijing in 1981. She has made two experimental features combining documentary and narrative elements, Oxhide and Oxhide II , both of which received international awards.
Go to Profile#2590
Shannon Barnett
#187773
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Shannon Barnett is an Australian trombonist and composer who was named Young Australian Jazz Artist of the Year at the 2007 Australian Jazz Bell Awards. Background Barnett was born in Traralgon. Since completing studies at the Victorian College of the Arts, she has performed in ensembles including Vada, The Bamboos, The Black Arm Band, The Vampires, the Bennetts Lane Big Band and as a guest with the Andrea Keller Quartet, on the 2004 ABC Jazz release Angels and Rascals.
Go to Profile#2591
Renate Behle
#184375
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Renate Behle is an Austrian operatic mezzo-soprano and soprano who made an international career, based in Germany. She was professor of voice at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg from 2000 to 2010.
Go to Profile#2592
Lučka Kajfež Bogataj
#71445
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Lučka Kajfež Bogataj is a Slovenian climatologist, specialist in agricultural meteorology. Early life and education She graduated in 1980 from the Ljubljana Faculty of Natural Sciences and Technology and received her doctorate from the Faculty of Biotechnology. She then pursued post-doctoral training in the U.S. and Sweden.
Go to Profile#2593
Milica Pap
#189334
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Milica Pap is a classical pianist of Bosnian-Herzegovinian, Serbian and Croatian descent. Biography Pap is a Balkan pianist and music teacher. Her father Ljudevit Pap was a violinist and professor of music at the University of Belgrade. He was a founding member of the Association of Serbian Musicians and the first violinist and leader of the Belgrade Symphony Orchestra and the Sarajevo Radio Orchestra. He is also credited with forming the first professional string quartet in Sarajevo. He died when Pap was 14.
Go to Profile#2594
Silvina Milstein
#174645
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Silvina Milstein is an Argentine composer and scholar of twentieth-century music, living in the United Kingdom and teaching at King's College London. Her music has been described as "turbulent and hesitantly ecstatic", as well as "highly poetic", "rich and dense". In 2018 her piece shan shui was nominated for the prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Chamber-Scale Composition.
Go to Profile#2595
Vanessa Tomlinson
#184150
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Vanessa Tomlinson is an Australian percussionist, composer, artistic director and educator. She is Director of Creative Arts Research Institute and Head of Percussion at Griffith University and has produced 150 publications. She is the co-founder and co-artistic director of Clocked Out, along with Erik Griswold.
Go to Profile#2596
Carol Rodland
#184684
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Carol Rodland is an American viola player who studied with Karen Tuttle at the Juilliard School. She was Tuttle's teaching assistant for several years before taking a position as a viola teacher at the New England Conservatory. In February 2008, it was announced that Rodland would join the faculty at the Eastman School of Music for the Fall 2008 semester, replacing the retiring John Graham. She is a recipient of a Fulbright grant.
Go to Profile#2597
Nina Svetlanova
#184969
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Nina Svetlanova is a Russian-American concert pianist and educator. She became a naturalized United States citizen in 1983. She has been a professor of piano at New York's Manhattan School of Music and Mannes College of Music since the late 1970s. Before her teaching career, she was known as a concert pianist and collaborative artist, being the main pianist to work with Armenian mezzo-soprano Zara Dolukhanova.
Go to Profile#2598
Eileen Strempel
#147544
Overall Influence
Eileen Strempel is an operatic soprano, author, higher education policy expert, and academic from Syracuse, New York, who is currently inaugural dean of the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. Strempel’s scholarly work advocates for college transfer students—and both access to and support for higher education—and the works of historically underrepresented composers.
Go to Profile#2599
Joyce Mekeel
#184353
Overall Influence
1931 - 1997 (66 years)
Joyce Haviland Mekeel was a composer, harpsichordist, teacher, anthropologist, and sculptor. Education Joyce Mekeel studied at the Longy School of Music , Paris Conservatory and Yale University . In Paris her teachers included Nadia Boulanger; in the 1960s she studied with Earl Kim. At Yale she studied harpsichord with Gustav Leonhardt and theory with David Kraehenbuehl. Mekeel received a fellowship to MacDowell Colony and grants in composition from Ingram-Merrill in 1964 and Radcliffe Institute from 1969-1970. She was a member of Sigma Alpha Iota. Mekeel took up studying anthropology which brought her to West Africa twice, where she created many sculptures.
Go to Profile#2600
Malvika Iyer
#45548
Overall Influence
1989 - Present (37 years)
Malvika Iyer is an Indian national, a bilateral amputee from an accidental blast while picking up a diffused grenade, a social worker, and a National Awardee. She is an international motivational speaker and a disability rights activist, advocating for building an inclusive society. She is also a model for accessible fashion. Iyer obtained her Doctorate in Social Work from Madras School of Social Work in 2017. Her doctoral thesis is on the stigmatization of people with disabilities.
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