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.

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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,

#2951

Zhang Ruoming

1902 - 1958 (56 years)

Zhang Ruoming was a Chinese scholar of French literature, translator and journalist. She was a professor at Yunnan University and considered an authority on the French author André Gide. She was one of the first Chinese women to earn a doctorate in France, graduating from the University of Lyon. In her youth, she was a leader in the May Fourth Movement in Tianjin and was known for her political association with Zhou Enlai and the Chinese Communist Party in France in the early 1920s.

#2952

Aira Kaal

1911 - 1988 (77 years)

Aira Kaal was an Estonian writer. From 1931 to 1940, she studied in Tartu University, focusing on philosophy, but also learning Estonian literature, world literature and English. From 1938 to 1939, she worked in Great Britain, where she met her husband Arthur Robert Hone, with whom she returned to Estonia. From 1945 to 1950, she was a lecturer in the Tartu State University, teaching the foundations of Marxism-Leninism.

#2953

Dorothy Swaine Thomas

1899 - 1977 (78 years)

Dorothy Swaine Thomas was an American sociologist and economist. She was the 42nd President of the American Sociological Association, the first woman in that role. Life and career Thomas was born on October 24, 1899, in Baltimore, Maryland to John Knight and Sarah Swaine Thomas.

#2954

Patsy Cline

1932 - 1963 (31 years)

Patsy Cline was an American singer. She is considered one of the most influential vocalists of the 20th century and was one of the first country music artists to cross over into pop music. Cline had several major hits during her eight-year recording career, including two number-one hits on the Billboard Hot Country and Western Sides chart.

#2955

Myra Hess

1890 - 1965 (75 years)

Dame Julia Myra Hess, was an English pianist best known for her performances of the works of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, and Brahms. Career Early life Julia Myra Hess was born on 25 February 1890 to a Jewish family in South Hampstead, London. She was the youngest of four children and began piano lessons at the age of five. She studied at the Guildhall School of Music and at the Royal Academy of Music under Tobias Matthay, after winning a scholarship to the latter in 1903 at age 12.

#2956

Florence Lawrence

Florence Lawrence

1886 - 1938 (52 years)

Florence Lawrence was a Canadian-American stage performer and film actress. She is often referred to as the "first movie star", and was long thought to be the first film actor to be named publicly until evidence published in 2019 indicated that the first named film star was French actor Max Linder. At the height of her fame in the 1910s, she was known as the "Biograph Girl" for work as one of the leading ladies in silent films from the Biograph Company. She appeared in almost 300 films for various motion picture companies throughout her career.

#2957

Maria Yudina

1899 - 1970 (71 years)

Maria Veniaminovna Yudina was a Soviet pianist. Early life and education Maria Yudina was born to a Jewish family in Nevel, Vitebsk Governorate, Russian Empire. She was the fourth child of Veniamin Yudin, a renowned physiologist and forensic expert, and his first wife, Raisa Yakovlevna Yudina . Yudina studied at the Petrograd Conservatory under Anna Yesipova and Leonid Nikolayev. She also briefly studied privately with Felix Blumenfeld. Her classmates included Dmitri Shostakovich and Vladimir Sofronitsky. In 1921–22 Yudina attended lectures at the historical-philological department of Petrogr...

#2958

Imogen Holst

1907 - 1984 (77 years)

Imogen Clare Holst was a British composer, arranger, conductor, teacher, musicologist, and festival administrator. The only child of the composer Gustav Holst, she is particularly known for her educational work at Dartington Hall in the 1940s, and for her 20 years as joint artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival. In addition to composing music, she wrote composer biographies, much educational material, and several books on the life and works of her father.

#2959

Martita Hunt

1900 - 1969 (69 years)

Martita Edith Hunt was an Argentine-born British theatre and film actress. She had a dominant stage presence and played a wide range of powerful characters. She is best remembered for her performance as Miss Havisham in David Lean's Great Expectations.

#2960

Athene Seyler

1889 - 1990 (101 years)

Athene Seyler, CBE was an English actress. Early life She was born in Hackney, London; her German-born grandparents moved to the United Kingdom, where her grandfather Philip Seyler was a merchant in London. Athene Seyler was educated at Coombe Hill School in Surrey, a progressive co-educational school which disliked petitionary prayer and whose advanced biology classes studied Darwin's On the Origin of Species. Seyler took part in an anti-blood sports demonstration, during which pupils captured the fox from the local hunt.

#2961

Martha Hill

1900 - 1995 (95 years)

Martha Hill was one of the most influential American dance instructors in history. She was the first Director of Dance at the Juilliard School, and held that position for almost 35 years. Early life Hill was born in East Palestine, Ohio. She attended the Battle Creek Normal School of Physical Education in Battle Creek, Michigan, graduating in 1920. She took over the position of dance instructor, teaching ballet and Swedish gymnastics for the next three years. In 1923, she was hired as dance instructor at Kansas State Teachers College. Hill taught there for three years, moving to New York City...

#2962

Frances Marion

1888 - 1973 (85 years)

Frances Marion was an American screenwriter, director, journalist and author often cited as one of the most renowned female screenwriters of the 20th century alongside June Mathis and Anita Loos. During the course of her career, she wrote over 325 scripts. She was the first writer to win two Academy Awards. Marion began her film career working for filmmaker Lois Weber. She wrote numerous silent film scenarios for actress Mary Pickford, before transitioning to writing sound films.

#2963

Alma Cogan

1932 - 1966 (34 years)

Alma Angela Cohen Cogan was an English singer of traditional pop in the 1950s and early 1960s. Dubbed the "Girl with the Giggle in Her Voice", she was the highest paid British female entertainer of her era.

#2964

Katharine Lee Bates

Katharine Lee Bates

1863 - 1929 (66 years)

Katharine Lee Bates was an American author and poet, chiefly remembered for her anthem "America the Beautiful", but also for her many books and articles on social reform, on which she was a noted speaker.

#2965

Maria Torrence Wishart

1893 - 1982 (89 years)

Maria Torrence Wishart was a Canadian medical illustrator and the founder of the University of Toronto's Art as Applied to Medicine program. She was educated at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine under Max Brödel, and in 1925 returned to Canada to found the Department of Medical Art Service in the Faculty of Medicine.

#2966

June Christy

1925 - 1990 (65 years)

June Christy was an American singer, known for her work in the cool jazz genre and for her silky smooth vocals. Her success as a singer began with The Stan Kenton Orchestra. She pursued a solo career from 1954 and is best known for her debut album Something Cool. After her death, she was hailed as "one of the finest and most neglected singers of her time."

#2967

Dorothy Kilgallen

Dorothy Kilgallen

1913 - 1965 (52 years)

Dorothy Mae Kilgallen was an American columnist, journalist, and television game show panelist. After spending two semesters at the College of New Rochelle, she started her career shortly before her 18th birthday as a reporter for the Hearst Corporation's New York Evening Journal. In 1938, she began her newspaper column "The Voice of Broadway", which was eventually syndicated to more than 140 papers. In 1950, she became a regular panelist on the television game show What's My Line?, continuing in the role until her death.

#2968

Anita Loos

1889 - 1981 (92 years)

Corinne Anita Loos was an American actress, novelist, playwright and screenwriter. In 1912, she became the first female staff screenwriter in Hollywood, when D. W. Griffith put her on the payroll at Triangle Film Corporation. She is best known for her 1925 comic novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and her 1951 Broadway adaptation of Colette's novella Gigi.

#2969

Josephine Baker

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 .

#2970

Magdalena Avietėnaitė

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 .

#2971

Maria Anna Mozart

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.

#2972

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 .

#2973

Clara Kimball Young

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...

#2974

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.

#2975

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.

#2976

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...

#2977

Polly Moran

1883 - 1952 (69 years)

Pauline Theresa Moran billed as Polly Moran, was an American actress of vaudeville, stage and screen and a comedian. Career Born in Chicago, Illinois, Moran started in vaudeville, and widely toured North America, as well as various other locations that included Europe and South Africa. An attractive beauty of Irish descent, she left vaudeville in 1914 after signing for Mack Sennett at Keystone Studios as one of his Sennett Bathing Beauties. There she honed the style of the brash, loud-mouthed, knock-about comedian by which she later became known. She proved effective at slapstick and remained...

#2978

Helen Adolf

1895 - 1998 (103 years)

Helen Adolf was an Austrian–American linguist and literature scholar. Early life and education Helen Adolf was born in 1895 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. Her family was Jewish. Her mother, Hedwig Adolf, was an artist, while her father, Jakob Adolf, was a lawyer. Adolf had one older sister, Anna Adolf Spiegel. She was a first cousin of writer Leonie Adele Spitzer.

#2979

Henny Porten

1890 - 1960 (70 years)

Frieda Ulricke "Henny" Porten was a German actress and film producer of the silent era, and Germany's first major film star. She appeared in more than 170 films between 1906 and 1955. Biography Frieda Ulricke Porten was born in Magdeburg, in what was then the German Empire. She was one of the few German actresses of the era to enter film without having stage experience. Many of her earlier films were directed by her husband Curt A. Stark, who died during World War I in Transylvania on the Eastern Front in 1916. Her father, Franz Porten, was also an actor and film director, as was her older si...

#2980

Alberta Hunter

1895 - 1984 (89 years)

Alberta Hunter was an American jazz and blues singer and songwriter from the early 1920s to the late 1950s. After twenty years of working as a nurse, Hunter resumed her singing career in 1977. Early life Hunter was born in Memphis, Tennessee, to Laura Peterson, who worked as a maid in a Memphis brothel, and Charles Hunter, a Pullman porter. Hunter said she never knew her father. She attended Grant Elementary School, off Auction Street, which she called Auction School, in Memphis. She attended school until around age 15.

#2981

Dorothy Arzner

1897 - 1979 (82 years)

Dorothy Emma Arzner was an American film director whose career in Hollywood spanned from the silent era of the 1920s into the early 1940s. With the exception of longtime silent film director Lois Weber , from 1927 until her retirement from feature directing in 1943, Arzner was the only female director working in Hollywood. She was one of a very few women able to establish a successful and long career in Hollywood as a film director until the 1970s. Arzner made a total of twenty films between 1927 and 1943 and launched the careers of a number of Hollywood actresses, including Katharine Hepburn, Rosalind Russell, and Lucille Ball.

#2982

Miriam Timothy

1879 - 1950 (71 years)

Miriam Timothy was a British harpist and teacher. She was a soloist, played with many London orchestras and taught harp at the Royal College of Music. Life Miriam Timothy was born in London on 24 February 1879, daughter of Felix Festus Timothy and Jane née Hamblin. From 1890 to 1893 she studied with John Thomas at the Royal Academy of Music, where she gained Bronze and Silver medals. She obtained a scholarship in 1893 to study at the Royal College of Music for three years, and later taught there; her students included the sisters Sidonie and Marie Goossens.

#2983

Linda Creed

1948 - 1986 (38 years)

Linda Diane Creed , also known by her married name Linda Epstein, was an American songwriter and lyricist who teamed up with Thom Bell to produce some of the most successful Philadelphia soul groups of the 1970s.

#2984

Eva Perón

1919 - 1952 (33 years)

María Eva Duarte de Perón , better known as just Eva Perón or by the nickname Evita , was an Argentine politician, activist, actress, and philanthropist who served as First Lady of Argentina from June 1946 until her death in July 1952, as the wife of Argentine President Juan Domingo Perón . She was born in poverty in the rural village of Los Toldos, in the Pampas, as the youngest of five children. In 1934, at the age of 15, she moved to the nation's capital of Buenos Aires to pursue a career as a stage, radio, and film actress.

#2985

Marie Prevost

1898 - 1937 (39 years)

Marie Prevost was a Canadian-born film actress. During her 20-year career, she made 121 silent and sound films. Prevost began her career during the silent film era. She was discovered by Mack Sennett who signed her to contract and made her one of his "Bathing Beauties" in the late 1910s. Prevost appeared in dozens of Sennett's short comedy films before moving on to feature-length films for Universal. In 1922, she signed with Warner Bros. where her career flourished as a leading lady. She was a favorite of director Ernst Lubitsch who cast her in three of his comedy films: The Marriage Circle ,...

#2986

Florence Turner

Florence Turner

1885 - 1946 (61 years)

Florence Turner was an American actress who became known as the "Vitagraph Girl" in early silent films. Biography Born in New York City, Turner was pushed into appearing on the stage at age three by her ambitious mother. Turner became a regular performer in a variety of productions. In 1906, she joined the fledgling motion picture business, signing with the pioneering Vitagraph Studios and making her film debut in How to Cure a Cold .

#2987

Katherine Kennicott Davis

Katherine Kennicott Davis

1892 - 1980 (88 years)

Katherine Kennicott Davis was an American composer, pianist, arranger, and teacher, whose most well-known composition is the Christmas song "Carol of the Drum," later known as "The Little Drummer Boy".

#2988

Sophie Jewett

1861 - 1909 (48 years)

Sophie Jewett , also known under the pseudonym Ellen Burroughs, was an American lyric poet, translator, and professor at Wellesley College. Much of her poetry contains lesbian themes. Family Jewett was born in Moravia, New York, one of four children of Charles Carroll Jewett, a doctor, and Ellen Ransom Jewett. Her mother died when she was 7 and her father when she was 9, after which she was raised by an uncle, Daniel Burroughs, and her grandmother in Buffalo. Her sister Louise became a noted art historian. In Buffalo, she developed a friendship with Mary Whiton Calkins, the daughter of her mi...

#2989

Elisabeth Treskow

1898 - 1992 (94 years)

Elisabeth Treskow was a German goldsmith and jewellery designer, one of the earliest professional women in the field. After serving an apprenticeship under in Munich, in 1923 she worked with the bookbinder Frida Schoy in the artists' colony in the Margarethenhöhe district of Essen. Around 1930, she rediscovered the Etruscan art of granulation and went on to win several first prizes in Germany as well as a Gold Medal at the 1937 Paris World Fair. Her work is in the collections of museums in Germany and abroad, including London's Victoria & Albert Museum and Cologne's Museum für Angewandte Kun...

#2990

Marjorie Daw

1902 - 1979 (77 years)

Marjorie Daw was an American film actress of the silent film era. She appeared in more than 70 films between 1914 and 1929. Career Born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Daw was the daughter of John H. House. She took her stage name from Marjorie Daw, a short story by Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Daw began acting as a teen to support her younger brother and herself after the death of their parents. She made her film debut in 1914 and worked steadily during the 1920s. She retired from acting after the advent of sound film.

#2991

Pernel Strachey

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.

#2992

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".

#2993

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.

#2994

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.

#2995

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.

#2996

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...

#2997

Mary Robinson

1758 - 1800 (42 years)

Mary Robinson was an English actress, poet, dramatist, novelist, and celebrity figure. She lived in England, in the cities of Bristol and London; she also lived in France and Germany for a time. She enjoyed poetry from the age of seven and started working, first as a teacher and then as actress, from the age of fourteen. She wrote many plays, poems and novels. She was a celebrity, gossiped about in newspapers, famous for her acting and writing. During her lifetime she was known as "the English Sappho". She earned her nickname "Perdita" for her role as Perdita in 1779. She was the first publi...

#2998

Milka Ternina

1863 - 1941 (78 years)

Milka Ternina was a Croatian dramatic soprano who enjoyed a high reputation in major American and European opera houses. Praised by audiences and music critics alike for the electrifying force of her acting and the excellence of her singing in both German and Italian works, her career was curtailed at its peak in 1906 by a medical condition which paralyzed a nerve in her face.

#2999

Maxine Sullivan

1911 - 1987 (76 years)

Maxine Sullivan , born Marietta Williams in Homestead, Pennsylvania, United States, was an American jazz vocalist and performer. As a vocalist, Sullivan was active for half a century, from the mid-1930s to just before her death in 1987. She is best known for her 1937 recording of a swing version of the Scottish folk song "Loch Lomond". Throughout her career, Sullivan also appeared as a performer on film as well as on stage. A precursor to better-known later vocalists such as Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, Sullivan is considered one of the best jazz vocalists of the 1930s. Singer Peggy Lee ...

#3000

Elizabeth Hill

1900 - 1996 (96 years)

Dame Elizabeth Mary Hill DBE was a Russian-born British academic linguist. In addition to a career with the London University School of Slavonic Studies, she was course director of the Joint Services School for Linguists , a UK Government training programme to produce linguists and interpreters of Russian, for military and intelligence purposes.

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