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.
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List of the most influential female people in Communications,
#3051
Anna Neagle
1904 - 1986 (82 years)
Dame Florence Marjorie Wilcox , known professionally as Anna Neagle, was an English stage and film actress, singer, and dancer. She was a successful box-office draw in British cinema for 20 years and was voted the most popular star in Britain in 1949. She was known for providing glamour and sophistication to war-torn London audiences with her lightweight musicals, comedies, and historical dramas. Almost all of her films were produced and directed by Herbert Wilcox, whom she married in 1943.
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Dorothy Howell
1898 - 1982 (84 years)
Dorothy Gertrude Howell was an English composer and pianist. Biography Howell was born in Birmingham, grew up in Handsworth, and received a convent education. She received private composition lessons from Granville Bantock before beginning her studies at the Royal Academy of Music, aged 15. Her teachers there included John Blackwood McEwen and Tobias Matthay.
Go to Profile#3053
Fannie Charles Dillon
1881 - 1947 (66 years)
Fannie Charles Dillon was an American pianist, music educator and composer. Life Fannie Charles Dillon was born in Denver, Colorado in 1881. She moved with her family to Long Beach, California in 1890. She graduated from Pomona College and studied composition with Heinrich Urban, Hugo Kaun and Rubin Goldmark, and piano with Leopold Godowsky in Berlin.
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Helen Twelvetrees
1908 - 1958 (50 years)
Helen Marie Twelvetrees was an American actress. She starred in Hollywood films in the sound film era from 1929 to 1939. Many of her roles were of "suffering women". She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
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Eva Fiesel
1891 - 1937 (46 years)
Eva Fiesel, née Lehmann , was a German linguist and scholar of Etruscan. Life Her father Karl Lehmann was Professor of Law and Rector of the University of Rostock from 1904 to 1905, and from 1911 in Göttingen. Her mother was the painter Henni Lehmann, and her brother Karl Leo Heinrich Lehmann became a well-known archaeologist. In 1915 she married Ludolf Fiesel, a lecturer at Rostock, in Göttingen. In the winter semester of 1916–17 she enrolled at the University of Rostock.
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Helen Humes
1913 - 1981 (68 years)
Helen Humes was an American singer. Humes was a teenage blues singer, a vocalist with Count Basie's band, a saucy R&B diva, and a mature interpreter of the classic popular song. Early life She was born on June 23, 1913, in Louisville, Kentucky, to Emma Johnson and John Henry Humes. She grew up as an only child. Her mother was a schoolteacher, and her father was the first black attorney in her home town. In an interview, Humes recalled her parents singing to each other around the house and in a church choir.
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Rosina Lhévinne
1880 - 1976 (96 years)
Rosina Lhévinne was a Russian and American pianist and famed pedagogue. Early life, education and family Rosina Bessie was the younger of two daughters of Maria and Jacques Bessie, a prosperous jeweller from a Dutch Jewish family who emigrated to the Russian Empire to ply his trade as a diamond merchant. There were violent anti-Semitic riots in Kiev during her first year, and the Bessies moved to Moscow in 1881 or 1882. The young Rosina began studying piano at the age of six with a teacher in Moscow, where the family had moved shortly after her birth. When her teacher became ill, a family fr...
Go to Profile#3058
Joanna Baker
1862 - 1935 (73 years)
Joanna Baker was an American linguist and child prodigy, holding her first college teaching job at the age of 16 and publishing her first book of translations from the Greek at the age of 18. For more than a quarter of a century, she was professor of ancient languages at Simpson College in Iowa, and she also taught at Lake Erie College in Ohio.
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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...
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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.
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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 ...
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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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Izumo no Okuni
1572 - Present (454 years)
Izumo no Okuni was a Japanese entertainer and shrine maiden who is believed to have invented the theatrical art form of kabuki. She is thought to have begun performing her new art style of theatre in the dry riverbed of the Kamo River in Kyoto. Okuni's troupe quickly gained immense popularity, and were known for their performers, who were often lower-class women Okuni had recruited to act in her all-female theatre group.
Go to Profile#3064
Charlotte Greenwood
1890 - 1977 (87 years)
Frances Charlotte Greenwood was an American actress and dancer. Born in Philadelphia, Greenwood started in vaudeville, and starred on Broadway, movies and radio. Standing almost six feet tall , she was best known for her long legs and high kicks. She earned the unique praise of being, in her words, the "only woman in the world who could kick a giraffe in the eye."
Go to Profile#3065
Claire Du Brey
1892 - 1993 (101 years)
Claire Du Brey was an American actress. She appeared in more than 200 films from 1916 to 1959. Her name is sometimes rendered as Claire Du Bray or as Claire Dubrey. Early years Du Brey was born in Bonner's Ferry, Idaho, to an Irish-American mother, Lilly , later Mrs. Richard Fugitt. Her parents married on November 9, 1891 in Pocatello, Bannock County, Idaho. She was raised Catholic and attended a convent school.
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Elizabeth Cotten
1893 - 1987 (94 years)
Elizabeth "Libba" Cotten was an American folk and blues musician. She was a self-taught left-handed guitarist who played a guitar strung for a right-handed player, but played it upside down. This position meant that she would play the bass lines with her fingers and the melody with her thumb. Her signature alternating bass style has become known as "Cotten picking". NPR stated "her influence has reverberated through the generations, permeating every genre of music."
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Bess Flowers
1898 - 1984 (86 years)
Bess Flowers was an American actress best known for her work as an extra in hundreds of films. She was known as "The Queen of the Hollywood Extras," appearing in more than 350 feature films and numerous comedy shorts in her 41-year career.
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Isa Miranda
1909 - 1982 (73 years)
Isa Miranda was an Italian actress with an international film career. Biography Miranda was born Ines Isabella Sampietro in Milan, the daughter of a street car conductor. When she was 10 years old, she began working as an errand girl for a dressmaker. She later had jobs in a box factory and a handbag factory. When she was 15, she became a model, a job that provided enough income for her to learn bookkeeping and typing in night school. She worked as a typist while attending the Accademia dei Filodrammatici in Milan and trained as a stage actress. She went on to play bit parts in Italian films in Rome.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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Margaret Farrand Thorp
1891 - 1970 (79 years)
Margaret Farrand Thorp was a writer, English professor, and journalist. Thorp published six books, including five biographies. She is most noted for her 1939 work America at the Movies and her 1949 work Female Persuasion: Six Strong-Minded Women.
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Florence Price
1887 - 1953 (66 years)
Florence Beatrice Price was an American classical composer, pianist, organist and music teacher. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, Price was educated at the New England Conservatory of Music, and was active in Chicago from 1927 until her death in 1953. Price is noted as the first African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer, and the first to have a composition played by a major orchestra. Price composed over 300 works: four symphonies, four concertos, as well as choral works, art songs, chamber music and music for solo instruments. In 2009, a substantial collection of her work...
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Toni Stolper
1890 - 1988 (98 years)
Antonie "Toni" Stolper was an Austrian-German economist and journalist. She fled Europe and immigrated to the United States in 1933 and moved to Canada in 1977. Biography Stolper was born Antonie Kassowitz, daughter of and , in Vienna, Austria in 1890. She studied law in Vienna and economics in Berlin, Germany, earning her doctorate under Heinrich Herkner in 1917. In 1921, she married Gustav Stolper, the editor of a journal called Der Österreichische Volkswirt . In 1925, the couple moved to Berlin, where Gustav Stolper established a new paper, Der Deutsche Volkswirt . Toni Stolper wrote regu...
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Elisabeth Schumann
1888 - 1952 (64 years)
Elisabeth Schumann was a German lyric soprano who sang in opera, operetta, oratorio, and lieder. She left a substantial legacy of recordings. Career Born in Merseburg, Schumann trained for a singing career in Berlin and Dresden. She made her stage debut in Hamburg in 1909. Her initial career started in the lighter soubrette roles that expanded into mostly lyrical roles, some coloratura roles, and even a few dramatic roles. She remained at the Hamburg State Opera until 1919, also singing during the 1914/1915 season at the Metropolitan Opera, New York.
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Mary Kornman
1915 - 1973 (58 years)
Mary Kornman was an American child actress who was the leading female star of the Our Gang series during the Pathé silent era. Our Gang She was born as Mary Agnes Evans, the daughter of Verna Comer, who appeared in several films, and David Lionel Evans. Her stepfather, Hal Roach′s still-photo cameraman Eugene Kornman, adopted Mary after he and Mary's mother were married in 1921. After Peggy Cartwright, who appeared in only four or five Our Gang episodes, Mary became the leading lady of the series, appearing in more than 40 episodes. Kornman was one of the series′ biggest stars during its early years between 1922 and 1926.
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Elisabeth Risdon
1887 - 1958 (71 years)
Elisabeth Risdon was an English film actress. She appeared in more than 140 films from 1913 to 1952. A beauty in her youth, she usually played in society parts. In later years in films she switched to playing character parts.
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Ethel Waters
1896 - 1977 (81 years)
Ethel Waters was an American singer and actress. Waters frequently performed jazz, swing, and pop music on the Broadway stage and in concerts. She began her career in the 1920s singing blues. Her notable recordings include "Dinah", "Stormy Weather", "Taking a Chance on Love", "Heat Wave", "Supper Time", "Am I Blue?", "Cabin in the Sky", "I'm Coming Virginia", and her version of "His Eye Is on the Sparrow". Waters was the second African American to be nominated for an Academy Award, the first African American to star on her own television show, and the first African-American woman to be nomina...
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Geraldine Farrar
1882 - 1967 (85 years)
Alice Geraldine Farrar was an American lyric soprano who could also sing dramatic roles. She was noted for her beauty, acting ability, and "the intimate timbre of her voice." She had a large following among young women, who were nicknamed "Gerry-flappers".
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Fanny Brice
1891 - 1951 (60 years)
Fania Borach , known professionally as Fanny Brice or Fannie Brice, was an American comedian, illustrated song model, singer, and actress who made many stage, radio, and film appearances. She is known as the creator and star of the top-rated radio comedy series The Baby Snooks Show.
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Jeannette Mirsky
1903 - 1987 (84 years)
Jeannette Mirsky Ginsburg was an American writer who was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1947 for her biographical writings on the history of exploration. Early life and education Jeannette R. Mirsky was born in Bradley Beach, New Jersey and raised in New York City, the daughter of Michael David Mirsky and Frieda Ettleson Mirsky. Her father was in the garment business. Her brother was Alfred Mirsky , a cell biologist involved in the discovery of DNA. She was a student at the Ethical Culture School, class of 1921. She attended Barnard College, graduating in 1924. She did graduate work in anthropology at Columbia University with Franz Boas and Margaret Mead.
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Arabella Goddard
1836 - 1922 (86 years)
Arabella Goddard was an English pianist. She was born and died in France. Her parents, Thomas Goddard, an heir to a Salisbury cutlery firm, and Arabella née Ingles, were part of an English community of expatriates living in Saint-Servan near Saint-Malo, Brittany. She remained very proud of her French background all her life, and spiced her conversation with French phrases .
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Sophie Tucker
1886 - 1966 (80 years)
Sophie Tucker was an American singer, comedian, actress, and radio personality. Known for her powerful delivery of comical and risqué songs, she was one of the most popular entertainers in the U.S. during the first half of the 20th century. She was known by the nickname "the Last of the Red-Hot Mamas".
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Dorothy Dandridge
1922 - 1965 (43 years)
Dorothy Jean Dandridge was an American actress and singer. She was the first African-American film star to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, which was for her performance in Carmen Jones . Dandridge also performed as a vocalist in venues such as the Cotton Club and the Apollo Theater. During her early career, she performed as a part of The Wonder Children, later The Dandridge Sisters, and appeared in a succession of films, usually in uncredited roles.
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Jessie Matthews
1907 - 1981 (74 years)
Jessie Margaret Matthews was an English actress, dancer and singer of the 1920s and 1930s, whose career continued into the post-war period. After a string of hit stage musicals and films in the mid-1930s, Matthews developed a following in the USA, where she was dubbed "The Dancing Divinity". Her British studio was reluctant to let go of its biggest name, however, which resulted in offers for her to work in Hollywood being repeatedly rejected.
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Vera Griner
1890 - 1992 (102 years)
Vera Griner , was a Russian Empire-born Soviet rhythmitician, born 5 April 1890 in Saint Petersburg, died 24 June 1992 in Moscow. Her father, Alexander Alvang, was a well-known barrister. Since 1908 the Alvang family had been living in Munich. It was here that Alvang became acquainted with Rhythmics. In 1911 she came to Dresden, where she took lessons from Dalcroze, and attended the newly founded Hellerau Institute. In 1912 Alvang, together with several pupils of Dalcroze came to St. Petersburg to train to be a teacher with courses set by Prince Serge Wolkonsky. After a year she was a teacher and a student of Hellerau, and in May 1913 she graduated from the Institute and returned to St.
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Marjorie Hayward
1885 - 1953 (68 years)
Marjorie Olive Hayward was an English violinist and violin teacher, prominent during the first few decades of the 20th century. Biography Marjorie Hayward was born in Greenwich in 1885. An "infant prodigy", her violin studies were with Émile Sauret at the Royal Academy of Music in London , and Otakar Ševčík in Prague .
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Natalie Hinderas
1927 - 1987 (60 years)
Natalie Leota Henderson Hinderas was an American pianist, composer and professor at Pennsylvania's Temple University. Hinderas was born in Oberlin, Ohio to a musical family. Her father was a jazz pianist and her mother, Leota Palmer, was a classical pianist who taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music. She began playing at the age of three, with formal lessons beginning at six years of age. A child prodigy, she gave her first full-length recital at eight years old.
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Julia Smith
1905 - 1989 (84 years)
Julia Frances Smith was an American composer, pianist, and author on musicology. Life and career She was born in Denton, Texas. She graduated from University of North Texas College of Music and then continued with graduate studies in piano and composition at the Juilliard School with Reuben Goldmark and Frederick Jacobi from 1932 to 1939, earning a diploma. She simultaneously studied at New York University earning a master's degree in 1933 and a PhD in 1952. From 1932 to 1939, she served as pianist for the Orchestrette Classique of New York, a women's orchestra. During this time, she also gave concerts of mostly American music in Latin America, Europe, and throughout the United States.
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Stefi Geyer
1888 - 1956 (68 years)
Stefi Geyer was a Hungarian violinist who was considered one of the leading violinists of her generation. Biography Born in 1888 in Budapest, she was the daughter of Josef Geyer, a police doctor who played the violin himself. When she was 5 years old she started playing the violin, with remarkable results for someone who had not practiced at all. She subsequently studied under Jenő Hubay.
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Etta Lemon
1860 - 1953 (93 years)
Margaretta "Etta" Louisa Lemon was an English bird conservationist and a founding member of what is now the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds . She was born into an evangelical Christian family in Kent, and after her father's death she increasingly campaigned against the use of plumage in hatmaking which had led to billions of birds being killed for their feathers. She founded the Fur, Fin and Feather Folk with Eliza Phillips in Croydon in 1889, which two years later merged with Emily Williamson's Manchester-based Society for the Protection of Birds , also founded in 1889. The new or...
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Cass Elliot
1941 - 1974 (33 years)
Ellen Naomi Cohen , known professionally as Cass Elliot, was an American singer and voice actress. She was also known as "Mama Cass", but she reportedly hated the name. She was a member of the singing group the Mamas & the Papas. After the group broke up, Elliot released five solo albums. She received the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Performance for "Monday, Monday" . In 1998, she was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for her work with the Mamas & the Papas.
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Helene Chadwick
1897 - 1940 (43 years)
Helene Chadwick was an American actress in silent and in early sound films. Early life and career Chadwick was born in the small town of Chadwicks, New York, which was named for her great-grandfather. Her parents were George W. Chadwick Jr. and Marie Louise Norton Chadwick. Her mother was a singer who performed on the stage and her father was a business man.
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Marilyn Monroe
1926 - 1962 (36 years)
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress and model. Known for playing comic "blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s, as well as an emblem of the era's sexual revolution. She was a top-billed actress for a decade, and her films grossed $200 million by the time of her death in 1962. Long after her death, Monroe remains a pop culture icon. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked her as the sixth-greatest female screen legend from the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Go to Profile#3099
Ethel Clayton
1882 - 1966 (84 years)
Ethel Clayton was an American actress of the silent film era. Early years Born in Champaign, Illinois, Clayton attended St. Elizabeth's school in Chicago. Career Clayton debuted on stage as a professional as a member of the chorus in a production at the Chicago Opera House. After that, she worked with stock theater companies in Milwaukee and Minneapolis.
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Nadia Reisenberg
1904 - 1983 (79 years)
Nadia Reisenberg Sherman was an American pianist of Lithuanian birth. Biography Nadia Reisenberg was born in Vilnius to a Jewish family. Her parents were Aaron and Rachel Reisenberg. Her sister Anna was born two years later, and Clara in 1911 who later took the married name of Clara Rockmore and became renowned for her virtuosity on the theremin. The three sisters remained extremely close. When Nadia was six, her uncle Paul sent the family a piano, and Nadia immediately knew she would be at the keyboard for the rest of her life. Her talent demanded that the family move to St. Petersburg for ...
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