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).

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Person Name

School

Gender

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Communications,

#5101

Michał Łabenda

#65604

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Michał Rafał Łabenda is a Polish diplomat, serving as Polish ambassador to Egypt , Mongolia , Azerbaijan . Life He holds an M.A. in Arab studies . In 2006, Łabenda defended at the University of Warsaw, Institute of Oriental Studies his Ph.D. thesis on Muslim movements in the Fergana Valley. His doctoral supervisor was Anna Parzymies.

#5102

Tete Montoliu

#104036

Overall Influence

1933 - 1997 (64 years)

Vicenç Montoliu i Massana, better known as Tete Montoliu was a Spanish jazz pianist from Catalonia, Spain. Born blind, he learnt braille music at age seven. His styles varied from hard bop, through afro-Cuban, world fusion, to post bop. He recorded with Lionel Hampton in 1956 and played with saxophonist Roland Kirk in 1963. He also worked with leading American jazz musicians who toured in, or relocated to Europe including Kenny Dorham, Dexter Gordon, Ben Webster, Lucky Thompson, and Anthony Braxton. Tete Montoliu recorded two albums in the US, and recorded for Enja, SteepleChase Records, and ...

#5103

Linda Stern Zisquit

#83037

Overall Influence

Linda Stern Zisquit is an American-born Israeli poet and translator. She teaches poetry, Hebrew literature and poetry translation at Bar-Ilan University. Biography Linda Stern was born in Buffalo, NY. She studied at Tufts University and, later, at Harvard University and SUNY Buffalo. In 1978, she moved to Israel and settled in Jerusalem. She is married to the lawyer Donald Zisquit, and is the mother of five children. She also runs the ArtSpace Gallery at her home in Jerusalem's German Colony.

#5104

Herb Ellis

#68336

Overall Influence

1921 - 2010 (89 years)

Mitchell Herbert Ellis was an American jazz guitarist. During the 1950s, he was in a trio with pianist Oscar Peterson. Biography Born in Farmersville, Texas, Ellis grew up on a farm. His first exposure to guitar came through the radio, while hearing the Light Crust Doughboys. At the age of three, Ellis was playing harmonica, and banjo by six. Although his brother owned a guitar, he tuned it wrong, and Ellis wanted to play better than his brother, so he bought a book to learn how to tune guitar. His interest in guitar grew from there. He also heard George Barnes on a radio program. This expe...

#5105

Phyllis Curtin

#81514

Overall Influence

1921 - 2016 (95 years)

Phyllis Curtin was an American soprano and academic teacher who had an active career in operas and concerts from the early 1950s through the 1980s. She is known for her creation of roles in operas by Carlisle Floyd, such as the title role in Susannah and Catherine Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights. She was a dedicated song recitalist, who retired from singing in 1984. She was named Boston University's Dean Emerita, College of Fine Arts in 1991.

#5106

Dick Heckstall-Smith

Dick Heckstall-Smith

#86049

Overall Influence

1934 - 2004 (70 years)

Richard Malden "Dick" Heckstall-Smith was an English jazz and blues saxophonist. He played with some of the most influential English blues rock and jazz fusion bands of the 1960s and 1970s. He is known for primarily playing tenor, soprano, and baritone saxophones, as well as piano, clarinet and alto saxophone.

#5107

Robert Mann

#97900

Overall Influence

1920 - 2018 (98 years)

Robert Nathaniel Mann was a violinist, composer, conductor, and founding member of the Juilliard String Quartet, as well as a faculty member at the Manhattan School of Music. Mann, the first violinist at Juilliard, served on the school's string quartet for over fifty years until his retirement in 1997.

#5108

Robert Craig Liden

#125411

Overall Influence

#5109

Eric W. T. Ngai

#125415

Overall Influence

#5110

Tainy

#62156

Overall Influence

1989 - Present (37 years)

Marcos Efraín Masís Fernández , known professionally as Tainy, is a Puerto Rican record producer and songwriter. Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, he entered the world of reggaeton with his work on Mas Flow 2.

#5111

Mattiwilda Dobbs

Mattiwilda Dobbs

#91554

Overall Influence

1925 - 2015 (90 years)

Mattiwilda Dobbs was an American coloratura soprano and was one of the first black singers to enjoy a major international career in opera. She was the first black singer to perform at La Scala in Italy, the first black woman to receive a long-term performance contract and to sing a lead role at the Metropolitan Opera, New York and the first black singer to play a lead role at the San Francisco Opera.

#5112

David Raksin

#80103

Overall Influence

1912 - 2004 (92 years)

David Raksin was an American composer who was noted for his work in film and television. With more than 100 film scores and 300 television scores to his credit, he became known as the "Grandfather of Film Music."

#5113

Tommy Ramone

#51100

Overall Influence

1949 - 2014 (65 years)

Thomas Erdelyi , known professionally as Tommy Ramone, was a Hungarian-American musician. He was the drummer for the influential punk rock band the Ramones from its debut in 1974 to 1978, later serving as its producer, and was the longest-surviving original member of the Ramones.

#5114

Chris W. Allen

#73734

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Chris Allen is a professor in the College of Communication, Fine Arts and Media at the University of Nebraska at Omaha . A Fulbright scholar, he has lectured on investigative journalism and freedom of the press in Afghanistan and Oman.

#5115

Richard Jordan

#98789

Overall Influence

1937 - 1993 (56 years)

Robert Anson Jordan Jr. was an American actor. A long-time member of the New York Shakespeare Festival, he performed in many Off Broadway and Broadway plays. His films include Logan's Run, Les Misérables, Old Boyfriends, Raise the Titanic, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, The Yakuza, Interiors, The Bunker, Dune, The Secret of My Success, Timebomb, The Hunt for Red October, Posse and Gettysburg.

#5116

Ezri Tarazi

#90044

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Prof. Ezri Tarazi Israeli industrial designer and educator . Tarazi studied industrial design at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem. Subsequently, he was a coordinator of instructors' education for leadership in the Maritime Academy of the Israeli Navy. Early employment included serving as the project manager of industrial-design projects at Bezalel R&D in Jerusalem in 1990–96, and was active as a freelance designer in 1993–96. 1996–2004, he was the head of the Department of Industrial Design at the Bezalel Academy and, 2004–12, founded and chaired the Bezalel master's-degree ...

#5117

Blanca María Prósper

#45953

Overall Influence

Blanca María Prósper Pérez is a Spanish linguist and scholar of Celtic studies. Since 2019, she has been Professor in Indo-European linguistics at the University of Salamanca. Biography Blanca María Prósper earned a PhD in Indo-European linguistics from the Complutense University of Madrid in 1992.

#5118

Reet Kasik

#100319

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Reet Kasik is an Estonian linguist. She was born in Tallinn. In 1969, she graduated from Tartu State University with a degree in Estonian philology. Since 1969, she has taught at the University of Tartu. She has also taught Estonian language in several universities in Finland.

#5119

Christopher Burke

#77154

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Christopher Burke is a British writer on typography and a typeface designer. Burke worked at Monotype before earning a PhD in Typography & Graphic Communication at the University of Reading in 1995.

#5120

Alex Chilton

#45879

Overall Influence

1950 - 2010 (60 years)

Alex Chilton was an American musician, singer-songwriter and record producer, best known as the lead singer of the Box Tops and Big Star. Chilton's early commercial success in the 1960s as a teen vocalist for the Box Tops was never repeated in later years with Big Star and in his subsequent indie music solo career on small labels, but he drew an intense following among indie and alternative rock musicians. He is frequently cited as a seminal influence by influential rock artists and bands, some of whose testimonials appeared in the 2012 documentary Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me.

#5121

Bud Freeman

#80944

Overall Influence

1906 - 1991 (85 years)

Lawrence "Bud" Freeman was an American jazz musician, bandleader, and composer, known mainly for playing tenor saxophone, but also the clarinet. Biography In 1922, Freeman and some friends from high school formed the Austin High School Gang. Freeman played the C melody saxophone with band members such as Jimmy McPartland and Frank Teschemacher. before switching to tenor saxophone two years later. The band was influenced by the New Orleans Rhythm Kings and Louis Armstrong. While Armstrong was in King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, Freeman attended performances at Lincoln Gardens with McPartland. T...

#5122

Fernande Saint-Martin

#116109

Overall Influence

1927 - 2019 (92 years)

Fernande Saint-Martin was a Canadian art critic, museologist, semiologist, visual arts theorist and writer. A graduate of the Université de Montréal and McGill University, her career began at La Presse in 1954 before being made editor-in-chief of Châtelaine magazine in 1960. Saint-Martin left the magazine in 1972 and was made director of the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. She was a professor and researcher at Université Laval and later Université du Québec à Montréal from 1979 to 1996. Saint-Martin wrote several books and essays, contributed to various art publications and was awarded...

#5123

Yury Yanowsky

#114889

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Yury Yanowsky is a French-born Spanish ballet dancer and choreographer. He was a principal dancer with the Boston Ballet. Early life and training Yury Yanowsky was born in Lyon, France to Russian ballet dancer Anatol Yanowsky and Spanish ballet dancer Carmen Robles, whom were both dancers with the Lyon Opera Ballet. He is the older brother of former Royal Ballet principal dancer Zenaida Yanowsky and Royal New Zealand Ballet dancer Nadia Yanowsky. As a child he lived in Lyon for four years before moving to Rome, then Madrid, and then Las Palmas, Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands.

#5124

Petter Gottschalk

#125567

Overall Influence

#5125

Gary Ross

#57806

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Gary Ross is an American filmmaker. He is best known for writing and directing the fantasy comedy-drama film Pleasantville , the sports drama film Seabiscuit , the sci-fi action film The Hunger Games , and the heist comedy film Ocean's 8 . Ross has been nominated for four Academy Awards.

#5126

Mica Paris

#70140

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Michelle Antoinette Wallen , known professionally as Mica Paris , is an English singer, presenter and actress. Paris was born in Islington in North London, but moved to Brockley, South London, when she was nine. In 1988, she released her debut album, So Good, which spawned singles including "My One Temptation" and "Where Is the Love". She has since gone on to release seven further albums: Contribution , Whisper a Prayer , Black Angel , If You Could Love Me , Soul Classics , Born Again and Gospel . In 2020, Paris was cast in the BBC soap opera EastEnders as Ellie Nixon.

#5127

LaVern Baker

#59429

Overall Influence

1929 - 1997 (68 years)

Delores LaVern Baker was an American R&B singer who had several hit records on the pop chart in the 1950s and early 1960s. Her most successful records were "Tweedle Dee" , "Jim Dandy" , and "I Cried a Tear" .

#5128

Hammadi Sammoud

#80125

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Hammadi Hamida Sammoud is a Tunisian academic, writer, historian, and linguist, who was born on June 25, 1946. He is also a member of the House of Wisdom Foundation. Early life Sammoud was born in Kelibia, Tunisia. He studied the persistence of philosophy and classical literature. In 1972, he obtained a degree in Arabic language and literature from the college of arts and humanities in Tunisia, and in 1980, he received a PhD in the same major, his thesis was titled "Arabs’ Rhetorical Thinking: Its Principles and Development in the 6th Century". After studying at the New Sorbonne University P...

#5129

Gary Grant

#45530

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Gary E. Grant is an American trumpet player, composer and producer, and session musician who has played on hundreds of commercial recordings. Gary has collaborated with a variety of artists such as Barbra Streisand, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, Toni Braxton, Brian McKnight, Frank Sinatra, Natalie Cole, Earth Wind & Fire, Go West, Take Six, Elton John, and Aerosmith. Additionally, Gary has worked with producers such as David Foster, Glenn Ballard, Dave Grusin, and Baby Face. In addition, he was a guest artist with the "Chicago 17" horns.

#5130

Rico Rodriguez

#93549

Overall Influence

1934 - 2015 (81 years)

Emmanuel "Rico" Rodriguez , also known as Rico, Reco or El Reco, was a Cuban-born Jamaican ska and reggae trombonist. He recorded with producers such as Karl Pitterson, Prince Buster, and Lloyd Daley. He was known as one of the first ska musicians. Beginning in the 1960s, he worked with The Members, The Specials, Jools Holland, and Paul Young.

#5131

Mark McGowan

#76518

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Mark McGowan is a British street artist, performance artist, film maker and public protester who has gone by the artist name Chunky Mark and more recently The Artist Taxi Driver. By profession, McGowan is a London taxi driver and occasional University speaker and arts tutor. McGowan is known internationally for his performance art including shock art, street art and installation art, and as a stuntman, internet personality, video blogger, social commentator, social critic, satirist, political activist, peace activist, and an anti-establishment, anti-war, anti-capitalist anti-monarchist and anti-power elite protester.

#5132

Gita Venkataramani Johar

#125646

Overall Influence

#5133

Michael Daugherty

#76723

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Michael Kevin Daugherty is an American composer, pianist, and teacher. He is influenced by popular culture, Romanticism, and Postmodernism. Daugherty's notable works include his Superman comic book-inspired Metropolis Symphony for Orchestra , Dead Elvis for Solo Bassoon and Chamber Ensemble , Jackie O , Niagara Falls for Symphonic Band , UFO for Solo Percussion and Orchestra and for Symphonic Band , Bells for Stokowski from Philadelphia Stories for Orchestra and for Symphonic Band , Fire and Blood for Solo Violin and Orchestra inspired by Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, Time Machine for Thre...

#5134

Derrick Adams

#98228

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Derrick Adams is an American visual and performance artist and curator. Much of Adams' work is centered around his Black identity, frequently referencing patterns, images, and themes of Black culture in America. Adams has additionally worked as a fine art professor, serving as a faculty member at Maryland Institute College of Art.

#5135

Harun Farocki

#88161

Overall Influence

1944 - 2014 (70 years)

Harun Farocki was a German filmmaker, author, and lecturer in film. Early life and education Farocki was born as Harun El Usman Faroqhi in Neutitschein, which is now Nový Jičín in the Czech Republic. His father, Abdul Qudus Faroqui, had immigrated to Germany from India in the 1920s. His German mother had been evacuated from Berlin due to the Allied bombing of Germany. He simplified the spelling of his surname as a young man. After World War II Farocki grew up in India and Indonesia before the family resettled in Hamburg in 1958.

#5136

Peaches Golding

Peaches Golding

#54483

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Lois Patricia Golding , commonly known as Peaches Golding , is an American-British business executive, administrator, and former academic who is Lord-Lieutenant of the County and City of Bristol. On her 2010 appointment as High Sheriff of Bristol, she was the second Black person and the first Black woman to hold the position. She was appointed Honorary Captain of the Royal Naval Reserves in June 2020.

#5137

Francisco Villar Liebana

#107985

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Francisco Villar Liébana is a Spanish linguist, full professor of Indoeuropean linguistics at the University of Salamanca, beginning in 1979. Biography He was a disciple of Francisco Rodrigues Adrados, though later in his career he developed independent views and ideas. He was Professor of Indoeuropean linguistics from 1967 till 1979 at the Complutense University of Madrid, when he became a tenured Professor in the same discipline at the University of Salamanca.

#5138

Koji Kondo

#31955

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Koji Kondo is a Japanese music composer, pianist, and sound director for the video game company Nintendo. He is best known for his many contributions to the Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda series of video games, among others produced by the company. Kondo was hired by Nintendo in 1984, becoming the first person hired by them to specialize in video game music. His work in the Mario and Zelda series have been cited as among the most memorable in video games, such as the Super Mario Bros. overworld theme.

#5139

Jeannette Littlemore

#39368

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Jeannette Littlemore is a British scholar of English and applied linguistics whose work focuses on the interpretation of figurative language, including metaphor and metonymy, as it relates to second language learning and teaching. Her research examines the ways that metaphor is misunderstood by learners of English.

#5140

Roberta Kevelson

#47964

Overall Influence

1931 - 1998 (67 years)

Roberta "Bobbie" Kevelson was an American academic and semiotician. She was an acknowledged authority on the pragmatism theories of Charles Sanders Peirce. Personal life Kevelson was born in Fall River, Massachusetts and graduated from B.M.C. Durfee High School in 1948. Although married at 17, she returned to college in the 1960s and received her PhD in semiotics from Brown University in 1978.

#5141

Nripendra Pratap Rana

#125853

Overall Influence

#5142

"Weird Al" Yankovic

"Weird Al" Yankovic

#58648

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Alfred Matthew "Weird Al" Yankovic is an American musician best known for creating comedy songs that make light of pop culture and often parody specific songs by contemporary musicians. He also performs original songs that are style pastiches of the work of other acts, as well as polka medleys of several popular songs, most of which feature his trademark accordion.

#5143

Carol Wincenc

#83778

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Carol Wincenc born June 29, 1949, is an American flutist based in New York City. She is known for her solo and chamber music performances and her support of new music for the flute. She is on the faculty of the Juilliard School and Stony Brook University.

#5144

Mark Arm

#54617

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Mark Arm is an American singer and songwriter, best known as the vocalist for the grunge band Mudhoney. His former group, Green River, was one of the first grunge bands, along with Malfunkshun, Soundgarden, Skin Yard, the U-Men, and others. He is also the manager of the Sub Pop warehouse and previously worked at Fantagraphics Books.

#5145

Fay McAlpine

#124053

Overall Influence

Fay McAlpine is a New Zealand designer, typographer and academic at Massey University. She primarily teaches in the visual communication design programme, particularly in the areas of graphic design, with a strong interest in the typographical aspect of visual communication. Her speciality is teaching typographic fundamentals, type history, publication design, typographic practice in spatial environments and interpretive, navigational or informational typography. McAlpine's "passion for typography has influenced generations of young talent" through her teaching.

#5146

Des McAnuff

#63148

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Desmond Steven McAnuff is the American-Canadian former artistic director of Canada's Stratford Festival and director of such Broadway musical theatre productions as Big River, The Who's Tommy and Jersey Boys.

#5147

William G. Eggington

#121468

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

William Gregory "Bill" Eggington is Ludwig-Weber-Siebach Humanities Professor in the Linguistics and English Language Department, College of Humanities at Brigham Young University. He is a native of Australia. From 2007 to 2013, he was chair of the Linguistics and English Language Department. During the 2013–2014 academic year, he was a visiting scholar at Kyung Hee University, Global Campus, Suweon, South Korea.

#5148

Christian Wolff

#70895

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Christian G. Wolff is an American composer of experimental classical music and classicist. Biography Wolff was born in Nice, France, to the German literary publishers Helen and Kurt Wolff, who had published works by Franz Kafka, Robert Musil, and Walter Benjamin. After relocating to the U.S. in 1941, they helped to found Pantheon Books with other European intellectuals who had fled Europe during the rise of fascism. The Wolffs published a series of notable English translations of European literature, mostly, as well as an edition of the I Ching that came to greatly impress John Cage after Wol...

#5149

Sidney Griller

#113461

Overall Influence

1911 - 1993 (82 years)

Sidney Griller CBE was an English violinist. He was leader of the Griller Quartet from 1928 to 1963, and a teacher of chamber music at the Royal Academy of Music. Life Griller was born in 1911; his parents were Jewish immigrants, with a shop in the East End of London. Aged 13, he won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music.

#5150

Rosental Alves

#113549

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Rosental Calmon Alves is a Brazilian journalist. Alves began his journalism career at the age of sixteen. He studied journalism at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Aged 21, he began lecturing and teaching journalism in Brazil at Fluminense Federal University and at Gama Filho University. Alves wrote for Jornal do Brasil as a foreign correspondent, and managing editor, and helped the publication launch its website in 1994. In 1996, Alves moved to the United States to join the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin as the inaugural Knight Chair in International Journalism. Alves ...

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