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.

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).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Communications,

#5051

Arthur Paul Brief

#124311

Overall Influence

#5052

Cris Morena

#79977

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

María Cristina De Giacomi , professionally known as Cris Morena, is an Argentine Award-winning television producer, actress, television presenter, composer, musician, songwriter, writer, former fashion model and CEO of Cris Morena Group. She is one of the most successful producers in the country and is the creator of Argentina's most successful youth-oriented shows such as Jugate Conmigo, Chiquititas, Rebelde Way, Floricienta, Alma Pirata, and Casi Ángeles. She was a producer at Telefe from 1991 to 2001, then created the Cris Morena Group as an independent production company, with Rebelde Way as its first production.

#5053

Finn Thiesen

#95077

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Finn Vilhelm Thiesen is a Danish–Norwegian linguist, iranist and translator. He was an associate professor of Persian at the University of Oslo until 2008. Thiesen was residing in Tehran, Iran, in the years 1977 to 1979 when he studied Persian literature at the University of Tehran. Thiesen speaks a dozen foreign languages fluently, including Persian, Hindi, Urdu, Turkish, English, German, and French, and is also a specialist in Ancient Greek, Middle Persian and Sanskrit. He is one of today's foremost experts in the Persian and poet Hafiz, and can recite the whole of his Diwan by heart. Thi...

#5054

Claude Kelly

#50027

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Claude Kelly is an American singer, songwriter and music producer. He is a four-time Grammy Award nominee, and has written or co-written songs for Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Kelly Clarkson, Britney Spears, Ariana Grande, Bruno Mars, Christina Aguilera, Adam Lambert, Jennifer Lopez, Kesha, Brandy, Keke Wyatt, and One Direction. He and Chuck Harmony make up the R&B duo Louis York, and founded the music collective Weirdo Workshop.

#5055

Slide Hampton

#68795

Overall Influence

1932 - 2021 (89 years)

Locksley Wellington Hampton was an American jazz trombonist, composer and arranger. As his nickname implies, Hampton's main instrument was slide trombone, but he also occasionally played tuba and flugelhorn.

#5056

Ignacio Bosque

#94856

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

José Ignacio Bosque Muñoz is a Spanish linguist. He is a professor of Spanish Philology at the Complutense University of Madrid; a position he has held since 1982. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Utrecht, Ohio State University, the University of Leuven, Sophia University and the University of Minnesota.

#5057

Isaac Julien

#71012

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Sir Isaac Julien is a British installation artist, filmmaker, and Distinguished Professor of the Arts at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Early life Julien was born in the East End of London, one of the five children of his parents, who had migrated to Britain from St Lucia. He graduated in 1985 from Saint Martin's School of Art, where he studied painting and fine art film. He co-founded Sankofa Film and Video Collective in 1983, and was a founding member of Normal Films in 1991.

#5058

Gillian Welch

#60747

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Gillian Howard Welch is an American singer-songwriter. She performs with her musical partner, guitarist David Rawlings. Their sparse and dark musical style, which combines elements of Appalachian music, bluegrass, country and Americana, is described by The New Yorker as "at once innovative and obliquely reminiscent of past rural forms."

#5059

Henrik Birnbaum

#71092

Overall Influence

1925 - 2002 (77 years)

Henrik Birnbaum was an American linguist, Slavist and historian. Education and work Birnbaum was born in Breslau, today's Wrocław, Poland. He received his PhD in Slavic Philology in 1954. He worked as a docent at the University of Stockholm in 1958-1961, as an Associate Professor of Slavic languages and literature at the University of California at Los Angeles , and as a tenured professor at the same university in 1964-1994. He was a guest professor at many American and European universities. From 1992 he led the Department of Medieval Studies at Central European University in Budapest.

#5060

Samuel Krachmalnick

#87881

Overall Influence

1926 - 2005 (79 years)

Samuel Krachmalnick was an American conductor and music educator. He first came to prominence as a conductor on Broadway during the 1950s, notably earning a Tony Award nomination for his work as the music director of the original production of Leonard Bernstein's Candide. He went on to work as a busy conductor of operas and symphony orchestras internationally during the 1960s and 1970s. He was particularly active in New York City, where he held conducting posts with the American Ballet Theatre, the Harkness Ballet, the Metropolitan Opera, and the New York City Opera. His later career was prim...

#5061

Dimebag Darrell

Dimebag Darrell

#43527

Overall Influence

1966 - 2004 (38 years)

Darrell Lance Abbott , best known by his stage name Dimebag Darrell, was an American musician. He was the guitarist of the heavy metal bands Pantera and Damageplan, both of which he co-founded alongside his brother Vinnie Paul. He is considered by many to be one of the greatest metal guitarists of all time.

#5062

Joel Sherzer

#85273

Overall Influence

1942 - 2022 (80 years)

Joel Fred Sherzer was an American anthropological linguist known for his research with the Guna people of Panama and his focus on verbal art and discourse-centered approaches to linguistic research. He co-founded the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America. Sherzer completed his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania in 1968 and thereafter taught at the University of Texas at Austin for his entire career.

#5063

Timothy White

#35563

Overall Influence

1952 - 2002 (50 years)

Timothy White was an American rock music journalist and editor. White began his journalism career as a writer for the Associated Press, but soon gravitated towards music writing. He was an editor for the rock magazine Crawdaddy in the late 1970s and a senior editor for Rolling Stone magazine in the early 1980s, where he wrote an article detailing the destruction of Bob Hope's face in a logging accident when Hope was in his teens, accounting for Hope's unusual nose and jaw.

#5064

R. Stevie Moore

#56856

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Robert Steven Moore is an American multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter who pioneered lo-fi music. Often called the "godfather of home recording", he is one of the most recognized artists of the cassette underground, and his influence is particularly felt in the bedroom and hypnagogic pop artists of the post-millennium. Since 1968, he has self-released approximately 400 albums, while about three dozen "official" albums have been issued on various labels.

#5065

GZA

#29668

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Gary Grice , better known by his stage names GZA and The Genius, is an American rapper. A founding member of the hip hop group Wu-Tang Clan, GZA is the group's "spiritual head", being both the first member in the group to receive a record deal and being the oldest member. He has appeared on his fellow Wu-Tang members' solo projects, and has maintained a successful solo career starting with Liquid Swords .

#5066

Phoebe Snow

#60656

Overall Influence

1950 - 2011 (61 years)

Phoebe Snow was an American roots music singer-songwriter and guitarist, known for her hit 1974 and 1975 songs "Poetry Man" and "Harpo's Blues", and her credited guest vocals backing Paul Simon on "Gone at Last". She was described by The New York Times as a "contralto grounded in a bluesy growl and capable of sweeping over four octaves." Snow also sang numerous commercial jingles for many U.S. products during the 1980s and 1990s, including General Foods International Coffees, Salon Selectives, and Stouffer's. Snow experienced success in Australia in the late 1970s and early 1980s with five top 100 albums in that territory.

#5067

Prokopis Doukas

#105365

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Prokopis Doukas is a Greek journalist and newscaster. Born in Athens, Greece in 1963, he studied electrical engineering at the University of Patras, Greece and music technology at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics , Stanford University, Ca. as a visiting scholar. His career as a DJ and journalist started with the "burst" of independent radio in Greece, in 1988. He has collaborated with major music and news stations in Athens, such as Sky 100.4, Antenna 97.1, Jazz Fm, Athina 9.84, Net 105.8, and Kosmos 93.6.

#5068

June Havoc

#64089

Overall Influence

1912 - 2010 (98 years)

June Havoc was an American actress, dancer, stage director and memoirist. Havoc was a child vaudeville performer under the tutelage of her mother Rose Thompson Hovick, born Rose Evangeline Thompson. She later acted on Broadway and in Hollywood, and stage-directed, both on and off-Broadway. She last acted on television in 1990 in a story arc on the soap opera General Hospital, and she last appeared on television as herself in interviews in the "Vaudeville" episode of American Masters in 1997 and in "The Rodgers & Hart: Thou Swell, Thou Witty" episode of Great Performances in 1999. Her elder s...

#5069

Frank Wess

#91895

Overall Influence

1922 - 2013 (91 years)

Frank Wellington Wess was an American jazz saxophonist and flutist. In addition to his extensive solo work, Wess is remembered for his time in Count Basie's band from the early 1950s into the 1960s. Critic Scott Yanow described him as one of the premier proteges of Lester Young, and a leading jazz flutist of his era—using the latter instrument to bring new colors to Basie's music.

#5070

Stuart White

#37645

Overall Influence

Stuart White is a recording and mix engineer. He is best known for his work with Beyoncé, namely on studio albums Beyoncé, Lemonade, and Renaissance. White has three Grammy awards and has been nominated ten times.

#5071

Randy Kerber

#53306

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Randy Kerber is an American composer, orchestrator and keyboard player, who has had a prolific career in the world of cinema. Kerber was born in Encino, California. He began his first national tour with Bette Midler in 1977 at the age of 19. He was nominated for an Oscar in 1986, along with Quincy Jones and others, for Best Original Score for the motion picture The Color Purple. He was also nominated for a Grammy for his arrangement of "Over the Rainbow" for Barbra Streisand.

#5072

John Jorgenson

#81619

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

John Richard Jorgenson is an American musician. Although best known for his guitar work with bands such as the Desert Rose Band and The Hellecasters, he is also proficient on the mandolin, mandocello, Dobro, pedal steel guitar, piano, upright bass, clarinet, bassoon, and saxophone. While a member of the Desert Rose Band, he won the Academy of Country Music's "Guitarist of the Year" award three consecutive years.

#5073

Paul Horn

#77724

Overall Influence

1930 - 2014 (84 years)

Paul Horn was an American flautist, saxophonist, composer and producer. He became a pioneer of world and new age music with his 1969 album Inside. He received five Grammy nominations between 1965 and 1999, including three nominations in 1965.

#5074

Marius de Vries

#59800

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Marius de Vries is an English music producer and composer. He has won a Grammy Award from four nominations, two BAFTA Awards, and an Ivor Novello Award. Education Marius de Vries was educated at St Paul's Cathedral School, Bedford School and then at Peterhouse, Cambridge.

#5075

Lawrence Foster

#89826

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Lawrence Foster is an American conductor of Romanian ancestry. He is currently the artistic director and chief conductor of the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra and the music director of the Marseille Opera and the .

#5076

David Owen

#49644

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

David Owen is an American journalist and author. Education David Owen grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, and graduated from The Pembroke-Country Day School in 1973. He attended Colorado College before transferring to Harvard University, where he was an editor of The Harvard Lampoon, as was his future wife, Ann Hodgman. He graduated from Harvard in 1978 with a degree in English.

#5077

Peter Brötzmann

#80988

Overall Influence

1941 - 2023 (82 years)

Peter Brötzmann was a German jazz saxophonist and clarinetist regarded as a central and pioneering figure in European free jazz. Throughout his career, he released over fifty albums as a bandleader. Amongst his many collaborators were key figures in free jazz, including Derek Bailey, Anthony Braxton and Cecil Taylor, as well as experimental musicians such as Keiji Haino and Charles Hayward. His 1968 Machine Gun became "one of the landmark albums of 20th-century free jazz".

#5078

John Balance

#86571

Overall Influence

1962 - 2004 (42 years)

Geoffrey Nigel Laurence Rushton , better known under the pseudonyms John Balance or the later variation Jhonn Balance, was an English musician, occultist, artist and poet. He was best known as a co-founder of the experimental music group Coil, in collaboration with his partner Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson. Coil was active from 1982 to Balance's death in 2004. He was responsible for the majority of Coil's vocals, lyrics and chants, along with synthesizers and various other instruments both commonplace and esoteric.

#5079

Tony Coe

#105818

Overall Influence

1934 - 2023 (89 years)

Anthony George Coe was an English jazz musician who played clarinet, bass clarinet, and flute as well as soprano, alto, and tenor saxophones. Career Born in Canterbury, Kent, England, Coe started out on clarinet and was self-taught on tenor saxophone. At just 15 years of age in 1949 he played in his school's trad band and two years later, aged 17, became a full professional with Joe Daniels. In 1953, aged 18, he joined the army where he played clarinet in the Military band and saxophone with the unit Dance Band. After demob in 1955 he spent some time in France with the Micky Bryan Band , before rejoining Joe Daniels.

#5080

John 5

#48293

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

John William Lowery , best known by the stage name John 5, is an American guitarist. His stage name was bestowed on him in 1998 when he left David Lee Roth's solo band and joined the rock band Marilyn Manson as their guitarist, taking over for Zim Zum. Still going by the name John 5, Lowery became the guitarist for Rob Zombie in addition to his continued collaborations with musical artists across many genres. In 2022, John 5 left Rob Zombie and became the touring lead guitarist for Mötley Crüe, being promoted to a full member the following year.

#5081

Richard Jenkins

Richard Jenkins

#56359

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Richard Dale Jenkins is an American actor. He is well known for his portrayal of deceased patriarch Nathaniel Fisher on the HBO funeral drama series Six Feet Under . He began his career in theater at the Trinity Repertory Company and made his film debut in 1974. He has worked steadily in film and television since the 1980s, mostly in supporting roles. His eclectic body of work includes such films as The Witches of Eastwick , Little Nikita , Flirting with Disaster , Snow Falling on Cedars , The Mudge Boy , Burn After Reading , Step Brothers , Let Me In , Jack Reacher , The Cabin in the Woods ,...

#5082

Janet Staiger

#33957

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Janet Staiger is the William P. Hobby Centennial Professor Emeritus of Communication in the Department of Radio-Television-Film and Professor Emeritus of Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

#5083

Gene Kelly

#74187

Overall Influence

1912 - 1996 (84 years)

Eugene Curran Kelly was an American dancer, actor, singer, director and choreographer. He was known for his energetic and athletic dancing style and sought to create a new form of American dance accessible to the general public, which he called "dance for the common man". He starred in, choreographed, and co-directed with Stanley Donen some of the most well-regarded musical films of the 1940s and 1950s.

#5084

Magnus Lindberg

#73860

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Magnus Gustaf Adolf Lindberg is a Finnish composer and pianist. He was the New York Philharmonic's composer-in-residence from 2009 to 2012 and has been the London Philharmonic Orchestra's composer-in-residence since the beginning of the 2014–15 season.

#5085

David Friedman

#38673

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

David Friedman is an American jazz percussionist. His primary instruments are vibraphone and marimba. Friedman studied drums in the 1950s, then marimba and xylophone in the 1960s at Juilliard. In the 1960s he was a member of the New York Philharmonic and the pit orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera, and worked as a jazz musician with Wayne Shorter, Joe Chambers, Hubert Laws, Horace Silver, and Horacee Arnold in the 1970s. He and Dave Samuels played together in drum workshops before starting a project in 1975, called The Mallet Duo. They also assembled a quartet called Double Image during the years 1977–1980.

#5086

A. Clyde Roller

#97272

Overall Influence

1914 - 2005 (91 years)

Archibald Clyde Roller was an American music professor, conductor, and oboist. Roller, a native of Rogersville, Missouri, received his musical education at the Eastman School of Music, graduating in 1941.

#5087

Luis Conte

#52086

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Luis Conte is a Cuban percussionist best-known for his performances in the bands of artists including James Taylor, Madonna, Pat Metheny Group, Eric Clapton, Carlos Santana, Phil Collins, Rod Stewart and Shakira. He began his music career as a studio musician for Latin Jazz acts like Caldera. Conte's live performance and touring career took off when he joined Madonna's touring band in the 1980s. Neil Strauss of The New York Times describes Conte's playing as "grazing Latin-style percussion".

#5088

Butch Trucks

#46904

Overall Influence

1947 - 2017 (70 years)

Claude Hudson "Butch" Trucks was an American drummer. He was best known as a founding member of The Allman Brothers Band, for which he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. Trucks was born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida. He played in various groups before forming the 31st of February while at Florida State University in the mid-1960s. He joined the Allman Brothers Band in 1969. Their 1971 live release, At Fillmore East, represented an artistic and commercial breakthrough. The group became one of the most popular bands of the era on the strength of their live performances and several successful albums.

#5089

Donald "Duck" Dunn

Donald "Duck" Dunn

#62455

Overall Influence

1941 - 2012 (71 years)

Donald "Duck" Dunn was an American bass guitarist, session musician, record producer, and songwriter. Dunn was notable for his 1960s recordings with Booker T. & the M.G.'s and as a session bassist for Stax Records. At Stax, Dunn played on thousands of records, including hits by Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas, William Bell, Eddie Floyd, Johnnie Taylor, Albert King, Bill Withers, Elvis Presley, and many others. In 1992, he was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Booker T. & the M.G.'s. He is ranked 40th on Bass Player magazine's list of "The 100 Great...

#5090

Dewey Redman

#83118

Overall Influence

1931 - 2006 (75 years)

Walter Dewey Redman was an American saxophonist who performed free jazz as a bandleader and with Ornette Coleman and Keith Jarrett. Redman mainly played tenor saxophone, though he occasionally also played alto, the Chinese suona , and clarinet. His son is saxophonist Joshua Redman.

#5091

Johnny Coles

#104197

Overall Influence

1926 - 1997 (71 years)

John Coles was an American jazz trumpeter. Early life Coles was born in Trenton, New Jersey on July 3, 1926. He grew up in Philadelphia and was self-taught on trumpet. Later life and career Coles spent his early career playing with R&B groups, including those of Eddie Vinson , Bull Moose Jackson , and Earl Bostic . He was with James Moody from 1956 to 1958, and played with Gil Evans's orchestra between 1958 and 1964, including for the album Out of the Cool. After this he spent time with Charles Mingus in his sextet which also included Eric Dolphy, Clifford Jordan, Jaki Byard, and Dannie Richmond.

#5092

Amelia Bence

#105337

Overall Influence

1914 - 2016 (102 years)

Amelia Bence was an Argentine film actress and one of the divas of the Golden Age of Argentine Cinema . Born to Belarusian Jewish immigrants, Bence began her career at a young age, studying with Alfonsina Storni at the Lavardén Children's Theater and with Mecha Quintana at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música y Declamación . She made her film debut in 1933, in only the second sound film of Argentina, Dancing, by Luis Moglia Barth. Bence's acting in La guerra gaucha , one of the most important films in the history of Argentine cinema, gave her recognition and earned her leading role offers. Sh...

#5093

Joey Ramone

#37077

Overall Influence

1951 - 2001 (50 years)

Jeffrey Ross Hyman , known professionally as Joey Ramone, was an American singer, best known as the lead vocalist and a founding member of the punk rock band Ramones. His image, voice, and his tenure with the Ramones made him a countercultural icon. He, along with the guitarist Johnny Ramone, are the only two original members who stayed in the band until the disbandment in 1996.

#5094

Jindřich Pokorný

#123577

Overall Influence

1927 - 2014 (87 years)

Jindřich Pokorný was a Czech translator, editor and writer. He translated in French, German, Italian, Latin and Flemish. In 1950, Pokorný graduated from Charles University in Prague. He did further study under Jan Patočka and later worked for Czech Radio from 1965 to 1970. After his retirement from radio, Pokorný became active in samizdat activities. He sat on the Czech Radio Council from 1992 to 1997 and served the Rainer Maria Rilke Foundation as its president from 1992 to 1998. Pokorný also had two stints as a lecturer at his alma mater.

#5095

Joakim Nivre

#125181

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

#5096

Hiromichi Mori

#80722

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Hiromichi Mori is a Japanese linguist. He makes a study of Chinese phonology and of Old Japanese transcribed into Chinese characters by sound. Work He is renowned for a research on the Nihon Shoki. He divides the history book into two groups and claims that Group α was documented by native speakers of the Northern Chinese dialect during the Tang dynasty while Group β was written by Japanese. He noticed that Group α is standard written Chinese and applies Chinese characters consistently to Japanese words, but Group β is Japanized Chinese and indiscriminates some characters that were distingui...

#5097

Cees Hamelink

#80064

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Cees Jan Hamelink is a Dutch academic known for his work on communication, culture, and technology. He is emeritus professor of international communications and emeritus professor of media at the University of Amsterdam; professor in management information and knowledge at the University of Aruba; and professor of media, religion and culture at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

#5098

Samuel Adler

#82539

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (98 years)

Samuel Hans Adler is an American composer, conductor, author, and professor. During the course of a professional career which ranges over six decades he has served as a faculty member at both the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music and the Juilliard School. In addition, he is credited with founding and conducting the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra which participated in the cultural diplomacy initiatives of the United States in Germany and throughout Europe in the aftermath of World War II. Adler's musical catalogue includes over 400 published compositions. He has been honored w...

#5099

Yael Renan

#75018

Overall Influence

1947 - 2020 (73 years)

Yael Renan was an Israeli writer and translator. Biography Renan was born and grew up in Tel Aviv and attended Tel Aviv University, where she received a bachelor's degree in philosophy and a doctorate in English literature in 1978, for her work on "Figurative Language in the Prose of Modernism". She was a senior lecturer in the Department of English Literature at Tel Aviv University until her retirement in 2007, and also volunteered in the Department of Women's Studies.

#5100

Anthony Milner

#117507

Overall Influence

1925 - 2002 (77 years)

Anthony Francis Dominic Milner was a British composer, teacher and conductor. Milner was born in Bristol, and educated at Douai School, Berkshire. He was awarded a bursary to attend the Royal College of Music, where he studied piano with Herbert Fryer and theory with R. O. Morris. He studied composition privately with Mátyás Seiber. Milner's own teaching career began at Morley College, London, where he taught music theory and history from 1948 to 1964. He was lecturer in music at King's College London, from 1965 to 1971, when he moved to Goldsmiths' College as senior lecturer, becoming principal lecturer in 1974.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions