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.
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List of the most influential female people in Communications,
#3251
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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Elena Beckman-Shcherbina
1881 - 1951 (70 years)
Elena Aleksandrovna Bekman-Shcherbina was a Soviet and Russian pianist, composer and teacher. Origins Born Elena Aleksandrovna Kamentseva, she was adopted by her mother's sister after the death of her mother. In gratitude, she took her adoptive mother's surname, Shcherbina.
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Clytie Hine
1887 - 1983 (96 years)
Clytie May Hine, was an Australian-born operatic soprano who became a renowned voice teacher in New York. Biography Clytie Hine was an only child, born in Adelaide, South Australia in 1887 to William Henry Hine, a jeweller and Mary McDonald. At age 16, having studied piano privately since age 7, she commenced studies with Bryceson Treharne at the Elder Conservatorium, University of Adelaide. Her voice studies were under Frederick Bevan. She graduated AMUA in 1908 and the following year travelled to London to study under Medora Henson at the Royal College of Music. On the strength of her pe...
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Joy Boughton
1913 - 1963 (50 years)
Christina Joyance Boughton was an English oboist and the daughter of composer Rutland Boughton and artist Christina Walshe. She died in 1963 in tragic circumstances.. She was taught oboe by Léon Goossens and attended the Royal College of Music from 1929 to 1937 at which, for a short while before her death, she was a professor of Oboe. She helped establish Benjamin Britten's English Opera Group, being a member of its orchestra in the late 1940s and 1950s. In 1951 Britten dedicated his Six Metamorphoses after Ovid to Joy, which she premiered at the Aldeburgh Festival on 14 June that year. Toge...
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Ilona Kabos
1893 - 1973 (80 years)
Ilona Kabos was a Hungarian-British pianist and teacher. Biography Kabos was born in Budapest in 1893 . She studied at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music under Árpád Szendy , Leo Weiner and Zoltán Kodály
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Kathleen Parlow
1890 - 1963 (73 years)
Kathleen Parlow was a violinist known for her outstanding technique, which earned her the nickname "The lady of the golden bow". Although she left Canada at the age of four and did not permanently return until 1940, Parlow was sometimes billed as "The Canadian Violinist".
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Helen Lemmens-Sherrington
1834 - 1906 (72 years)
Helen Lemmens-Sherrington was an English concert and operatic soprano prominent from the 1850s to the 1880s. Born in northern England, she spent much of her childhood and later life in Belgium, where she studied at the Brussels Conservatory. After engagements in mainland Europe she made her London debut in 1856. Her singing career was mostly in concert, but in the first half of the 1860s she appeared in opera at Covent Garden and other leading London theatres.
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Edith Weiss-Mann
1885 - 1951 (66 years)
German harpsichordist, musicologist, and teacher Edith Weiss-Mann was born in Hamburg to businessman Emil Weiss and his wife Hermine Rosenfeld Weiss. She studied at Hamburg's Hochschule für Musik from 1900 to 1904. In 1905, she continued her studies privately with James Kwast, Carl Friedberg, Jose Vianna da Motta, and Bruno Eisner. After meeting harpsichordist Wanda Landowska, Weiss-Mann began to concentrate on the harpsichord and early music.
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Marie Sundelius
1884 - 1958 (74 years)
Marie Sundelius was a Swedish-American classical soprano. She sang for many years with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City and later embarked on a second career as a celebrated voice teacher in Boston.
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Carroll Glenn
1918 - 1983 (65 years)
Elizabeth Carroll Glenn was an American violinist and music educator. Early years Glenn was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1918. She began studying violin under her mother’s guidance when she was four and continued her studies in Columbia, South Carolina, with Felice de Horvath, who, at the time was teaching at the University of South Carolina. At age 11, Glenn moved to New York to study with Edouard Déthier at the Juilliard School through a cooperative program with the New Lincoln School, an experimental K-12 program operated by Teachers College, Columbia University. She graduated from Jui...
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Jane Froman
1907 - 1980 (73 years)
Ellen Jane Froman was an American actress and singer. During her thirty-year career, she performed on stage, radio, and television despite chronic health problems due to injuries sustained in a 1943 plane crash.
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Aglaja Orgeni
1841 - 1926 (85 years)
Aglaja Orgeni , was a Hungarian coloratura soprano. Biography Orgeni was born in Rimászombat, Galicia . She studied with Pauline Viardot in Baden-Baden and Mathilde Marchesi. She became a member of the Hofoper Berlin , making her debut as Amina in Bellini's La sonnambula. In 1866, she performed at Covent Garden singing Violetta in Verdi's La traviata and the title roles in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor and Friedrich von Flotow's Martha.
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Liane Haid
1895 - 2000 (105 years)
Juliane "Liane" Haid was an Austrian actress and singer. She has often been referred to as Austria's first movie star. Biography Juliane Haid was born in Vienna on 16 August 1895, the first child to Georg Haid and Juliane Haid . She had two younger sisters, Grit, who also became an actress, and Johanna .
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Winifred Copperwheat
1905 - 1976 (71 years)
Winifred May Copperwheat was an English classical viola player and teacher. She studied under English violist Lionel Tertis at the Royal Academy of Music. Tertis later said after one of her recitals, that she had "played like an angel".
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Tosca Kramer
1903 - 1976 (73 years)
Tosca Berger Kramer was a New Zealand-born American violinist and violist. Kramer, along with her parents, was instrumental in bringing classical music performance and instruction to the state of Oklahoma.
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Annelies Kupper
1906 - 1987 (81 years)
Annelies Kupper , was a German operatic soprano, particularly associated with Mozart and the German repertory. Kupper was born at Glatz in Lower Silesia. She studied in Breslau and was a music teacher there before making her operatic debut in 1935. She then appeared in Schwerin , Weimar , Hamburg , Munich . She sang Eva in Die Meistersinger at the Bayreuth festival, in 1944, and returned as Elsa in Lohengrin in 1960. She created Danae in Richard Strauss's Die Liebe der Danae at the Salzburg festival, in 1952.
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Myrna Sharlow
1893 - 1952 (59 years)
Myrna Docia Sharlow was an American soprano who had an active performance career in operas and concerts during the 1910s through the 1930s. She began her career in 1912 with the Boston Opera Company and became one of Chicago's more active sopranos from 1915–1920, and again in 1923–1924 and 1926–1927. She sang with several other important American opera companies during her career, including one season at the Metropolitan Opera. She made only a handful of opera appearances in Europe during her career, most notably singing in the English premiere of Riccardo Zandonai's Francesca da Rimini at Covent Garden in 1914.
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Ania Dorfmann
1899 - 1984 (85 years)
Ania Dorfmann was a Russian-American pianist and teacher, who taught at the Juilliard School in New York for many years and was the first of only a very few women pianists to play or record under Arturo Toscanini.
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Rosina Buckman
1881 - 1948 (67 years)
Rosina Buckman was a New Zealand soprano who became a prima donna during World War I and later a professor of singing at the Royal Academy of Music. She was born in Blenheim, grew up mostly in the North Island and went to England when still a teenager to get a formal singing education from Charles Swinnerton Heap. After Heap's death, she moved to the Birmingham School of Music. Graduating in 1903, she could immediately sustain herself from singing engagements but fell ill and returned to New Zealand the following year. She advanced her career in the country of her birth and had her operatic debut in 1905.
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Miriam Bernstein-Cohen
1895 - 1991 (96 years)
Miriam Bernstein-Cohen , 1895–1991, was an Israeli actress, director, poet and translator. Miriam Bernstein-Cohen was born in Kishinev, Russian Empire. Her father was the doctor and community activist Jacob Bernstein-Kogan. She grew up in Kharkov. After training as a medical doctor she enrolled in drama school. She studied with Konstantin Stanislavski in Moscow in 1918 before returning to Moldova as an actress, where she worked under the name Maria Alexandrova.
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Judy Canova
1913 - 1983 (70 years)
Judy Canova , born Juliette Canova , was an American comedienne, actress, singer, and radio personality. She appeared on Broadway and in films. She hosted her own self-titled network radio program, a popular series broadcast from 1943 to 1955.
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