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).
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List of the most influential female people in Communications,
#2901
Kirsten Flagstad
1895 - 1962 (67 years)
Kirsten Malfrid Flagstad was a Norwegian opera singer, who was the outstanding Wagnerian soprano of her era. Her triumphant debut in New York on 2 February 1935 is one of the legends of opera. Giulio Gatti-Casazza, the longstanding General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera said, “I have given America two great gifts — Caruso and Flagstad.”
Go to Profile#2902
Jill Ireland
1936 - 1990 (54 years)
Jill Dorothy Ireland was an English actress and singer. She appeared in 16 films with husband Charles Bronson, and was involved in two of Bronson’s other films as a producer. Early life Born in Hounslow, Ireland was the daughter of a wine importer.
Go to Profile#2903
Wakamatsu Shizuko
1864 - 1896 (32 years)
Wakamatsu Shizuko was a Japanese educator, translator, and novelist best known for translating Little Lord Fauntleroy written by Frances Hodgson Burnett. She is also known for introducing literature with Christianity for children's novels.
Go to Profile#2904
P. L. Travers
1899 - 1996 (97 years)
Pamela Lyndon Travers was an Australian-British writer who spent most of her career in England. She is best known for the Mary Poppins series of books, which feature the eponymous magical nanny. Goff was born in Maryborough, Queensland, and grew up in the Australian bush before being sent to boarding school in Sydney. Her writing was first published when she was a teenager, and she also worked briefly as a professional Shakespearean actress. Upon emigrating to England at the age of 24, she took the name "Pamela Lyndon Travers" and adopted the pen name P. L. Travers in 1933 while writing the ...
Go to Profile#2905
Lili Boulanger
1893 - 1918 (25 years)
Marie-Juliette Olga "Lili" Boulanger was a French composer and the first female winner of the Prix de Rome composition prize. Her older sister was the noted composer and composition teacher Nadia Boulanger.
Go to Profile#2906
Betty Compson
1897 - 1974 (77 years)
Betty Compson was an American actress and film producer who got her start during Hollywood's silent era. She is best known for her performances in The Docks of New York and The Barker, the latter of which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.
Go to Profile#2907
Silvana Mangano
1930 - 1989 (59 years)
Silvana Mangano was an Italian film actress. She was one of a generation of thespians who arose from the neorealist movement, and went on to become a major female star, regarded as a sex symbol for the 1950s and '60s. She won the David di Donatello for Best Actress three times - for The Verona Trial , The Witches , and The Scientific Cardplayer – and the Nastro d'Argento for Best Actress twice.
Go to Profile#2908
Helena Modjeska
1840 - 1909 (69 years)
Helena Modrzejewska , known professionally as Helena Modjeska, was a Polish actress who specialized in Shakespearean and tragic roles. She was successful first on the Polish stage. After emigrating to the United States , she also succeeded on stage in America and London. She is regarded as the greatest actress in the history of theatre in Poland.
Go to Profile#2909
Josephine Baker
1906 - 1975 (69 years)
Freda Josephine Baker , naturalised as Joséphine Baker, was an American-born French dancer, singer and actress. Her career was centered primarily in Europe, mostly in France. She was the first black woman to star in a major motion picture, the 1927 silent film Siren of the Tropics, directed by and .
Go to Profile#2910
Magdalena Avietėnaitė
1892 - 1984 (92 years)
Magdalena Avietėnaitė was a Lithuanian journalist, diplomat and a public figure. Biography In 1899, Avietėnaitė and her family emigrated to Worcester, Massachusetts. In 1914 she graduated from the University of Geneva in the field of literature and philosophy. From 1914 to 1920, she edited the weekly newspaper Amerikos lietuvis .
Go to Profile#2911
Maria Anna Mozart
1751 - 1829 (78 years)
Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia Mozart , called "Marianne" and nicknamed Nannerl, was a musician, the older sister of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and daughter of Leopold and Anna Maria Mozart . Childhood Maria Anna Mozart was born in Salzburg. When she was seven years old, her father Leopold Mozart started teaching her to play the harpsichord. Leopold took her and Wolfgang on tours of many cities, such as Vienna and Paris, to showcase their talents. In the early days, she sometimes received top billing, and she was noted as an excellent harpsichord player and fortepianist.
Go to Profile#2912
Kay Kendall
1927 - 1959 (32 years)
Justine Kay Kendall McCarthy was an English actress and comedienne. She began her film career in the musical film London Town , a financial failure. Kendall worked regularly until her appearance in the comedy film Genevieve brought her widespread recognition. Prolific in British films, Kendall also achieved some popularity with American audiences, and won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for her role in the musical-comedy film Les Girls .
Go to Profile#2913
Clara Kimball Young
1890 - 1960 (70 years)
Clara Kimball Young was an American film actress who was popular in the early silent film era. Early life Edith Matilda Clara Kimball was born in Chicago on September 6, 1890, the only child to Edward Kimball and Pauline Madeline Kimball , both of whom were traveling stock actors. She made her stage debut at the age of three, and throughout her early childhood traveled with her parents and acted with their theater company. She attended St. Francis Xavier Academy in Chicago. Afterward, she was hired into a stock company and resumed her stage career, traveling extensively through the United St...
Go to Profile#2914
Marie-Louise Puech-Milhau
1876 - 1966 (90 years)
Marie-Louise Puech-Milhau was a French pacifist, feminist and journal editor. In 1900, she went to Canada where she became a lecturer at McGill University until 1908 when she returned to France. In 1911, she subscribed to the newspaper La Française, the source of her appetite for feminism. After the end of the First World War, she became Secretary of the Union pour le Suffrage des Femmes and President of the Union Féminine pour la Société des Nations. She is also remembered for the extensive correspondence she maintained with family members, former students and war veterans.
Go to Profile#2915
Teresa Carreño
1853 - 1917 (64 years)
María Teresa Gertrudis de Jesús Carreño García was a Venezuelan pianist, soprano, composer, and conductor. Over the course of her 54-year concert career, she became an internationally renowned virtuoso pianist and was often referred to as the "Valkyrie of the Piano". Carreño was an early adopter of the works of one of her students, American composer and pianist Edward MacDowell and premiered several of his compositions across the globe. She also frequently performed the works of Norwegian composer and pianist Edvard Grieg . Carreño composed approximately 75 works for solo piano, voice and piano, choir and orchestra, and instrumental ensemble.
Go to Profile#2916
Sister Rosetta Tharpe
1915 - 1973 (58 years)
Sister Rosetta Tharpe was an American singer, songwriter and guitarist. She gained popularity in the 1930s and 1940s with her gospel recordings, characterized by a unique mixture of spiritual lyrics and electric guitar. She was the first great recording star of gospel music, and was among the first gospel musicians to appeal to rhythm and blues and rock and roll audiences, later being referred to as "the original soul sister" and "the Godmother of rock and roll". She influenced early rock-and-roll musicians including Little Richard, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Jerry...
Go to Profile#2917
Lois Wilson
1894 - 1988 (94 years)
Lois Wilson was an American actress who worked during the silent film era. She also directed two short films and was a scenario writer. Early life Born to Andrew Kenley Wilson and Constance in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Wilson's family moved to Alabama when she was still very young. She earned a degree from Alabama Normal College , and became a school teacher for young children, soon leaving to pursue a film career.
Go to Profile#2918
Elisabeth Grümmer
1911 - 1986 (75 years)
Elisabeth Grümmer was a German soprano. She has been described as "a singer blessed with elegant musicality, warm-hearted sincerity, and a voice of exceptional beauty". Life Elisabeth Schilz was born in Niederjeutz [now Yutz, near Diedenhofen , Alsace-Lorraine] to German parents. In 1918, her family was expelled from Lorraine, and they settled in Meiningen, where she studied theater and made her stage debut as Klärchen in Goethe's Egmont.
Go to Profile#2919
Maybelle Carter
1909 - 1978 (69 years)
"Mother" Maybelle Carter was an American country musician and "among the first" to use the Carter scratch, with which she "helped to turn the guitar into a lead instrument." It was named after her. She was a member of the original Carter Family act from the late 1920s until the early 1940s and a member of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle group.
Go to Profile#2920
Mary Lou Williams
1910 - 1981 (71 years)
Mary Lou Williams was an American jazz pianist, arranger, and composer. She wrote hundreds of compositions and arrangements and recorded more than one hundred records . Williams wrote and arranged for Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, and she was friend, mentor, and teacher to Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Tadd Dameron, Bud Powell, and Dizzy Gillespie.
Go to Profile#2921
Erna Berger
1900 - 1990 (90 years)
Erna Berger was a German lyric coloratura soprano. She was best known for roles such as Queen of the Night and Konstanze. Career Born in Dresden, Germany, Berger spent some years as a child in India and South America. She lived there later on as well, working as a clerk and a piano teacher, before borrowing enough money for the trip back to Germany. At age 26, she secured a position as a soubrette soprano at the Semperoper in Dresden and had her first success as Hannele in Paul Graener's opera Hanneles Himmelfahrt, based on Gerhart Hauptmann's play The Assumption of Hannele. She later held leading positions at the Vienna State Opera, the Berlin State Opera, and the Deutsche Oper Berlin.
Go to Profile#2922
Sarah Robertson
1891 - 1948 (57 years)
Sarah Margaret Armour Robertson was a Canadian painter of landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and murals for private homes. Early life Robertson was born in Montreal on June 16, 1891, the daughter of John Armour Robertson and Jessie Anne Christie, and the oldest of four siblings. Her parents were originally from Scotland. She was educated in Montreal. During her childhood, the family lived comfortably, but later faced financial struggles. She began art studies at the age of nineteen with a Wood Scholarship to the Art Association of Montreal under William Brymner and Maurice Cullen. World War ...
Go to Profile#2923
Marjorie Lawrence
1907 - 1979 (72 years)
Marjorie Florence Lawrence CBE was an Australian dramatic soprano, particularly noted as an interpreter of Richard Wagner's operas. She was the first Metropolitan Opera soprano to perform the immolation scene in Götterdämmerung by riding her horse into the flames as Wagner had intended. She was afflicted by polio from 1941. Lawrence later served on the faculty of the School of Music at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
Go to Profile#2924
Juliette Alvin
1897 - 1982 (85 years)
Juliette Louise Alvin was a French-British cellist, viola da gamba player, and pioneering music therapist. Biograph She was born in Limoges, France, and studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, where she was awarded the Premier Prix d'Excellence and the Mèdaille d'Or. She studied under a master class arrangement with Pablo Casals. Her debut recital took place in 1927 at London's Wigmore Hall.
Go to Profile#2925
Mildred Bailey
1907 - 1951 (44 years)
Mildred Bailey was a Native American jazz singer during the 1930s, known as "The Queen of Swing", "The Rockin' Chair Lady" and "Mrs. Swing". She recorded the songs "For Sentimental Reasons", "It's So Peaceful in the Country", "Doin' The Uptown Lowdown", "Trust in Me", "Where Are You?", "I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart", "Small Fry", "Please Be Kind", "Darn That Dream", "Rockin' Chair", "Blame It on My Last Affair", and "Says My Heart". She had three records that reached number one on the popular charts.
Go to Profile#2926
Alice Joyce
1890 - 1955 (65 years)
Alice Joyce Brown was an American actress who appeared in more than 200 films during the 1910s and 1920s. She is known for her roles in the 1923 film The Green Goddess and its 1930 remake of the same name.
Go to Profile#2927
Wendy Barrie
1912 - 1978 (66 years)
Wendy Barrie was a British-American film and television actress. Early life Barrie was born in London to English parents. Her father, Francis Charles John Graigoe Jenkin KC, was an employee of the Great Western Railway , who then joined the Royal Fusiliers in 1902. Her mother was Ellen McDonagh. Hollywood gave her a more exotic parentage with her father being a King's Counsel. She received her education at a convent school in England and a finishing school in Switzerland.
Go to Profile#2928
Marilyn Miller
1898 - 1936 (38 years)
Marilyn Miller was one of the most popular Broadway musical stars of the 1920s and early 1930s. She was an accomplished tap dancer, singer and actress, and the combination of these talents endeared her to audiences. On stage, she usually played rags-to-riches Cinderella characters who lived happily ever after. Her enormous popularity and famed image were in distinct contrast to her personal life, which was marred by disappointment, tragedy, frequent illness, and ultimately her sudden death due to complications of nasal surgery at age 37.
Go to Profile#2929
Marjorie Rambeau
1889 - 1970 (81 years)
Marjorie Burnet Rambeau was an American film and stage actress. She began her stage career at age 12, and appeared in several silent films before debuting in her first sound film, Her Man . She was twice nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her roles in Primrose Path and Torch Song , and received the 1955 National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress for her roles in A Man Called Peter and The View from Pompey's Head.
Go to Profile#2930
Adele Sandrock
1863 - 1937 (74 years)
Adele Sandrock was a German-Dutch actress. After a successful theatrical career, she became one of the first German movie stars. Early life Sandrock was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands, the daughter of the German merchant Eduard Sandrock and his Dutch wife, Johanna Simonetta ten Hagen . With sister Wilhelmine and brother Christian , she grew up in Rotterdam, and, after her parents' divorce on 15 November 1869, in Berlin.
Go to Profile#2931
Helene Weyl
1893 - 1948 (55 years)
Friederike Bertha Helene Weyl was a German writer and translator. She was married to the mathematician Hermann Weyl. Life Weyl was born on 30 March 1893 in Ribnitz, Germany. She was the daughter of the Jewish country doctor Bruno Joseph and his wife Bertha. Her father was born in Pomerania, and her mother came from a well-established Mecklenburg family. Weyl and her younger sister were raised atheists.
Go to Profile#2932
Liza Lehmann
1862 - 1918 (56 years)
Liza Lehmann was an English soprano and composer, known for her vocal compositions. After vocal studies with Alberto Randegger and Jenny Lind, and composition studies with teachers including Hamish MacCunn, Lehmann made her singing debut in 1885 in London and pursued a concert career for nearly a decade. In 1894, she married and left the stage. She then concentrated on composing music, becoming known for her songs, including many children's songs. She also composed several pieces for the stage and wrote a textbook on singing. In 1910, she toured the United States, where she accompanied her own songs in recitals.
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Felice Rix-Ueno
1893 - 1967 (74 years)
Felice "Lizzie" Rix-Ueno was an Austrian textile, wallpaper, and craft designer. She lived in Japan, and became an influential figure in the Japanese modern art scene. Early life and education Felice Rix was born in Vienna. She studied at University of Applied Arts Vienna and Josef Hoffmann was her teacher.
Go to Profile#2934
Pernel Strachey
1876 - 1951 (75 years)
Pernel Strachey or Joan Pernel Strachey was an English scholar of French and Principal of Newnham College. Life Strachey was born in Clapham Common in London in 1876. She came from a large family led by Lieutenant General Sir Richard Strachey and the suffragist Jane Maria Strachey. Her mother was a friend of Millicent Garrett Fawcett who had co-founded Newnham College in Cambridge. Her brothers included Lytton Strachey and Oliver Strachey, husband of Ray Costelloe.
Go to Profile#2935
Big Mama Thornton
1926 - 1984 (58 years)
Willie Mae Thornton , better known as Big Mama Thornton because of her height and weight , was an American singer and songwriter of the blues and R&B. She was the first to record Leiber and Stoller's "Hound Dog", in 1952, which was written for her and became her biggest hit, staying seven weeks at number one on the Billboard R&B chart in 1953. According to Maureen Mahon, a music professor at New York University, "the song is seen as an important beginning of rock-and-roll, especially in its use of the guitar as the key instrument".
Go to Profile#2936
Doris Lloyd
1896 - 1968 (72 years)
Hessy Doris Lloyd was an English–American film and stage actress. She is perhaps best known for her roles in The Time Machine and The Sound of Music . Lloyd appeared in two Academy Award winners and four other nominees.
Go to Profile#2937
Nada Klaić
1920 - 1988 (68 years)
Nada Klaić was a Croatian historian. She was a Croatian medievalist of the 20th century. A substantial part of the work was devoted to criticism of medieval sources. Academic career Nada Klaić was born in Zagreb, the granddaughter of the historian Vjekoslav Klaić and sister of landscape architect Smiljan Klaić. She was a university professor and a prominent Croatian medievalist, graduated at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Zagreb, the same faculty where she was involved in teaching for 45 years. She started her teaching and scientific career at the faculty's Department of History in 1943, to become a full professor of the Croatian medieval history in 1969.
Go to Profile#2938
Frida Leider
1888 - 1975 (87 years)
Frida Leider was a German operatic soprano. Leider was a dramatic soprano. Her most famous roles were Wagner's Isolde and Brünnhilde, Beethoven's Fidelio, Mozart's Donna Anna, and Verdi's Aida and Leonora. She made over 80 recordings, mainly for Polydor and HMV.
Go to Profile#2939
Viola Dana
1897 - 1987 (90 years)
Viola Dana was an American film actress who was successful during the era of silent films. She appeared in over 100 films, but was unable to make the transition to sound films. Early life Born Virginia Flugrath on June 26, 1897, in Brooklyn, New York City, where she was raised, she was the middle sister of three siblings who all became actresses. Her sisters were known as Edna Flugrath and Shirley Mason. Dana appeared on the stage at the age of three. She read Shakespeare and particularly identified with the teenage Juliet. She enjoyed a long run at the Hudson Theater in Manhattan. Between 19...
Go to Profile#2940
Jeanette MacDonald
1903 - 1965 (62 years)
Jeanette Anna MacDonald was an American singer and actress best remembered for her musical films of the 1930s with Maurice Chevalier and Nelson Eddy . During the 1930s and 1940s she starred in 29 feature films, four nominated for Best Picture Oscars , and recorded extensively, earning three gold records. She later appeared in opera, concerts, radio, and television. MacDonald was one of the most influential sopranos of the 20th century, introducing opera to film-going audiences and inspiring a generation of singers.
Go to Profile#2941
Kinuyo Tanaka
1909 - 1977 (68 years)
Kinuyo Tanaka was a Japanese actress and film director. She had a career lasting over 50 years with more than 250 acting credits, but was best known for her 15 films with director Kenji Mizoguchi, such as The Life of Oharu and Ugetsu . With her 1953 directorial debut, Love Letter, Tanaka became the second Japanese woman to direct a film, after Tazuko Sakane.
Go to Profile#2942
Mary Martin
1913 - 1990 (77 years)
Mary Virginia Martin was an American actress and singer. A muse of Rodgers and Hammerstein, she originated many leading roles on stage over her career, including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific , the title character in Peter Pan , and Maria von Trapp in The Sound of Music . She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989. She was the mother of actor Larry Hagman.
Go to Profile#2943
Grace Burrows
1893 - 1980 (87 years)
Grace Burrows was an English violinist, violin teacher and orchestra conductor. Life and career Grace Burrows was born in Leicester, the daughter of Dr. Benjamin Harper Burrows who served as organist for a number of churches in the Leicester area. She was also the sister of composer Benjamin Burrows . In the early 1920s she played viola in an ensemble called The Birmingham Quartet. She was appointed as a Lecturer in Music at the University College, Leicester, in 1924. In 1922 she served as the founding leader of the Leicester Symphony Orchestra, and in 1934 she also conducted the British Women's Symphony Orchestra.
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Gertrude Lawrence
1898 - 1952 (54 years)
Gertrude Lawrence was an English actress, singer, dancer and musical comedy performer known for her stage appearances in the West End of London and on Broadway in New York. Early life Lawrence was born Gertrude Alice Dagmar Klasen, Alexandra Dagmar Lawrence-Klasen, Gertrude Alexandra Dagmar Klasen or some variant , of English and Danish extraction, in Newington, London. Her father was a basso profondo who performed under the name Arthur Lawrence. His heavy drinking led her mother Alice to leave him soon after Gertrude's birth.
Go to Profile#2945
Kate Bruce
1860 - 1946 (86 years)
Kate Bruce was an American actress of the silent era. She appeared in more than 280 films between 1908 and 1931. She was born in Columbus, Indiana, and died in New York, New York. In 1885, Bruce left Boone, Iowa, in a wagon with a group of traveling actors at a time when stages were illuminated by oil lights. On Broadway, Bruce performed in The Starbucks .
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Mathilde Verne
1865 - 1936 (71 years)
Mathilde Verne was an English pianist and teacher, of German descent. Along with most of her other sisters, Mathilde changed her surname to Verne in 1893 after the death of their father, John Wurm. Life and career She was born as Mathilde Würm in Southampton, England, the fourth of ten children. After studying for four years under Clara Schumann in Frankfurt, she became established as a concert pianist in 1887, as well as launching a career as music teacher. She taught briefly at the Royal College of Music, and later made regular appearances under Henry Wood at the Queen's Hall Promenade Conc...
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Eva Novak
1898 - 1988 (90 years)
Eva Barbara Novak was an American film actress, who was quite popular during the silent film era. Biography On February 14, 1898, Eva Barbara Novak was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to Joseph Jerome Novak, an immigrant from Bohemia, and Barbara Medek. Her older sister, Johana, also became an actress. Joseph Novak died when Eva was still a child and Barbara was left to raise five children.
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Gracie Fields
1898 - 1979 (81 years)
Dame Gracie Fields was an English actress, singer, comedian and star of cinema and music hall who was one of the top ten film stars in Britain during the 1930s and was considered the highest paid film star in the world in 1937. She was known affectionately as Our Gracie and the Lancashire Lass and for never losing her strong, native Lancashire accent. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and an Officer of the Venerable Order of St John in 1938, and a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1979.
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Priaulx Rainier
1903 - 1986 (83 years)
Ivy Priaulx Rainier was a South African-British composer. Although she lived most of her life in England and died in France, her compositional style was strongly influenced by the African music remembered from her childhood. She never adopted 12-tone or serial techniques, but her music shows a profound understanding of that musical language. She can be credited with the first truly athematic works composed in England. Her Cello Concerto was premiered by Jacqueline du Pré in 1964, and her Violin Concerto Due Canti e Finale was premiered by Yehudi Menuhin in 1977.
Go to Profile#2950
Jocelyne Binet
1923 - 1968 (45 years)
Jocelyne Binet was a Canadian composer, pianist, and music educator. She studied in Montreal and Paris, France, and returned to compose and teach music in Canada. Biography Binet was born in East Angus, near Sherbrooke, Quebec, and obtained two music degrees in Montreal before traveling to Paris, France, for studies in piano. She studied under Claude Champagne, Jean Dansereau and Jean-Marie Beaudet at the École Supérieure de Musique d'Outremont . She continued her studies at the Paris Conservatory in 1948 and 1949 on a grant from the French government and again in 1949 and 1951 on another grant from the Quebec government, where her teachers were Tony Aubin, Noël Gallon and Olivier Messiaen.
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