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,
#3051
Maude Adams
1872 - 1953 (81 years)
Maude Ewing Adams Kiskadden , known professionally as Maude Adams, was an American actress and stage designer who achieved her greatest success as the character Peter Pan, first playing the role in the 1905 Broadway production of Peter Pan; or, The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up. Adams' personality appealed to a large audience and helped her become the most successful and highest-paid performer of her day, with a yearly income of more than $1 million during her peak.
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Clara Butt
1872 - 1936 (64 years)
Dame Clara Ellen Butt was an English dramatic contralto and one of the most popular singers from the 1890s through to the 1920s. She had an exceptionally fine contralto voice and an agile singing technique, and impressed contemporary composers such as Saint-Saëns and Elgar; the latter composed his Sea Pictures, Op. 37 with her voice in mind.
Go to Profile#3053
Dinah Washington
1924 - 1963 (39 years)
Dinah Washington was an American singer and pianist, one of the most popular black female recording artists of the 1950s. Primarily a jazz vocalist, she performed and recorded in a wide variety of styles including blues, R&B, and traditional pop music, and gave herself the title of "Queen of the Blues". She was a 1986 inductee of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.
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Norma Talmadge
1894 - 1957 (63 years)
Norma Marie Talmadge was an American actress and film producer of the silent era. A major box-office draw for more than a decade, her career reached a peak in the early 1920s, when she ranked among the most popular idols of the American screen.
Go to Profile#3055
Lotte Lehmann
1888 - 1976 (88 years)
Charlotte "Lotte" Pauline Sophie Lehmann was a German-American lyric soprano noted for her successful performances with international opera houses, on the recital stage and in teaching.She gave memorable appearances in the operas of Richard Strauss, Richard Wagner, Ludwig van Beethoven, Puccini, Mozart, and Massenet. The Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, Sieglinde in Die Walküre and the title-role in Fidelio are considered her greatest roles. During her long career, Lehmann also made almost five hundred recordings in both opera and art song.
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Asta Nielsen
1881 - 1972 (91 years)
Asta Sofie Amalie Nielsen was a Danish silent film actress who was one of the most popular leading ladies of the 1910s and one of the first international movie stars. Seventy of Nielsen's 74 films were made in Germany where she was known simply as Die Asta .
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Augusta Webster
1837 - 1894 (57 years)
Augusta Webster born in Poole, Dorset as Julia Augusta Davies, was an English poet, dramatist, essayist, and translator. Biography Augusta was the daughter of Vice-admiral George Davies and Julia Hume, she spent her younger years on board the ship he was stationed, the Griper.
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Edith Head
1897 - 1981 (84 years)
Edith Head was an American costume designer who won a record eight Academy Awards for Best Costume Design between 1949 and 1973, making her the most awarded woman in the Academy's history. Head is considered to be one of the greatest and most influential costume designers in film history.
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Pearl Bailey
1918 - 1990 (72 years)
Pearl Mae Bailey was an American actress, singer and author. After appearing in vaudeville, she made her Broadway debut in St. Louis Woman in 1946. She received a Special Tony Award for the title role in the all-black production of Hello, Dolly! in 1968. In 1986, she won a Daytime Emmy award for her performance as a fairy godmother in the ABC Afterschool Special Cindy Eller: A Modern Fairy Tale. Her rendition of "Takes Two to Tango" hit the top ten in 1952.
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Vivian Vance
1909 - 1979 (70 years)
Vivian Vance was an American actress best known for playing Ethel Mertz on the sitcom I Love Lucy , for which she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress, among other accolades. She also starred alongside Lucille Ball in The Lucy Show from 1962 until she left the series at the end of its third season in 1965. In 1991, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She is most commonly identified as Lucille Ball’s longtime comedic foil from 1951 until her death in 1979.
Go to Profile#3061
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#3062
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.
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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#3064
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 ...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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#3069
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.
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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."
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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.
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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.
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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 .
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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 .
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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.
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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 .
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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...
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Dolores Costello
1903 - 1979 (76 years)
Dolores Costello was an American film actress who achieved her greatest success during the era of silent movies. She was nicknamed "The Goddess of the Silent Screen" by her first husband, the actor John Barrymore. She was the mother of John Drew Barrymore and grandmother of actress and talk show host Drew Barrymore.
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Blanche Sweet
1896 - 1986 (90 years)
Sarah Blanche Sweet was an American silent film actress who began her career in the early days of the motion picture film industry. Early life Born Sarah Blanche Sweet in Chicago, Illinois in 1896, she was the daughter of Pearl Alexander, a dancer, and Gilbert Joel Sweet, a wine merchant. The actors Antrim and Gertrude Short were cousins of Blanche. Her mother died when Blanche was an infant, and she was raised by her maternal grandmother, Cora Blanche Alexander. Cora Alexander found her many parts as a young child. At age 4, she toured in the play The Battle of the Strong with Marie Burroug...
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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.
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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.
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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 ...
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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.
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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.
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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#3099
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.
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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.
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