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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School

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Communications,

#5151

Judith Becker

#42827

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

Judith O. Becker is an American academic and educator. She is a scholar of the musical and religious cultures of South and Southeast Asia, the Islamic world and the Americas. Her work combines linguistic, musical, anthropological, and empirical perspectives. As an ethnomusicologist and Southeast Asianist, she is noted for her study of musics in South and Southeast Asia, including Javanese gamelan, Burmese harp, music and trance, music and emotion, neuroscience, and a theoretical rapprochement of empirical and qualitative methods. Becker teaches at the University of Michigan. In 2000, Becker w...

#5152

William Finn

#57010

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

William Alan Finn is an American composer and lyricist. He is best known for his musicals, which include Falsettos, for which he won the 1992 Tony Awards for Best Original Score and Best Book of a Musical, A New Brain , and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee .

#5153

Kalev Leetaru

#52410

Overall Influence

Kalev Hannes Leetaru is an American internet entrepreneur, academic, and senior fellow at the George Washington University School of Engineering and Applied Science Center for Cyber & Homeland Security in Washington, D.C. He was a former Yahoo! Fellow in Residence of International Values, Communications Technology & the Global Internet at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, before moving to George Washington University.

#5154

Vishal Dadlani

#65735

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Vishal Dadlani is an Indian singer, songwriter, actor and music composer. He is one half of the duo Vishal–Shekhar, Front Man and vocalist of one of India's leading rock bands Pentagram. As a singer he has sung various hit songs for various genre's notably Dhoom Again, Kurban Hua, Jee le Zara, Marjaiyann, I feel Good, Jab Mila Tu, Tu Meri, Swag Se Swagat, Bala, Har funn Maula, Khuda Hafiz. In an interview he has claimed to be able to "sing any genre from Rock to Romantic, as he has particular voice texture for kind of genre". As a vocalist of band Pentagram, notable works are Voice, Tomorrow's Decided, Must I, Love Drug Climbdown and more to go.

#5155

Mike Mills

#73562

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Michael Chadbourne Mills is an American film and music video director, writer and graphic designer. He made his directorial debut with the independent film Thumbsucker . His followup films include Beginners , 20th Century Women , and C'mon, C'mon . Mills received an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay nomination for 20th Century Women.

#5156

Erich Bergel

#84655

Overall Influence

1930 - 1998 (68 years)

Erich Bergel was a German trumpet player and conductor. Career Born in Râşnov, Bergel was a flutist of the Hermannstädter Philharmoniker age 18. From 1950 to 1955 he studied conducting, organ and composition at the Gheorghe Dima Music Academy of Cluj-Napoca . He was appointed principal conductor of the Cluj Philharmonic Orchestra and guest conductor of the Bucharest Philharmonic Orchestra.

#5157

Earl Klugh

#75873

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Earl Klugh is an American acoustic guitarist and composer. He has won one Grammy Award and received 13 nominations. Biography At the age of six, Klugh commenced training on the piano until he switched to the guitar at the age of ten. At the age of 13, Klugh was captivated by the guitar playing of Chet Atkins when Atkins made an appearance on the Perry Como Show. Klugh was a performing guest on several of Atkins' albums. Atkins, reciprocating as well, later joined Klugh on his Magic In Your Eyes album. Klugh also appeared with Atkins on several television programs, including Hee Haw and a 1994 TV special titled "Read my Licks".

#5158

Kyle Gann

#73436

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Kyle Eugene Gann is an American composer, professor of music, critic, analyst, and musicologist who has worked primarily in the New York City area. As a music critic for The Village Voice and other publications, he has supported progressive music, including such "downtown" movements as postminimalism and totalism.

#5159

Garson Yu

#118110

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Garson Yu is a Hong Kong-born American designer. He is the founder and creative director of yU+co in Hollywood, California. Biography Garson Yu was born in Hong Kong in 1961. Garson attended the Yale School of Art, on the Norman Ives Scholarship in 1985. Upon graduating with the Alexei Brodovitch Prize in 1987, Garson started his career in New York as a freelance designer at R/Greenberg Associates.

#5160

Mark Addy

#80191

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Mark Ian Addy is an English actor. His roles in British television include Detective Constable Gary Boyle in the sitcom The Thin Blue Line , Andy Richmond in Trollied , and Hercules in the fantasy drama series Atlantis .

#5161

Gary Green

#65705

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Gary Green is an American conductor, specializing in the wind band. Green is a champion of new music for the wind band, and has commissioned works by such composers as Eric Whitacre, Michael Colgrass, Kenneth Fuchs, David Maslanka, Mark Camphouse, and Christopher Rouse. On 29 March 2007, he premiered Rouse's Wolf Rounds at Carnegie Hall in New York with the University of Miami-Frost Wind Ensemble. In February 2006, he conducted the East Coast Premiere of David Maslanka's Mass after the composer's 2005 revision, which was performed by the University of Miami School of Music's Frost Wind Ensembl...

#5162

Anastasia Giannakidou

#119644

Overall Influence

Anastasia Giannakidou is a professor of linguistics at the University of Chicago. She is co-director of Center for Gesture, Sign and Language at the University of Chicago, along with Diane Brentari and Susan Goldin-Meadow. She is best known for her work on nonveridicality, a theory of the licensing of polarity items.

#5163

Tim Blake Nelson

Tim Blake Nelson

#44942

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Timothy Blake Nelson is an American actor and playwright. Described as a "modern character actor", his roles include Delmar O'Donnell in O Brother, Where Art Thou? , Gideon in Minority Report , Dr. Pendanski in Holes , Danny Dalton Jr. in Syriana , Samuel Sterns in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Richard Schell in Lincoln , the title character in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs , and Henry McCarty in Old Henry . He portrayed Wade Tillman / Looking Glass in the HBO limited series Watchmen , for which he received a Critics' Choice Television Awards nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Se...

#5164

Neil Marshall

#64668

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Neil Marshall is an English film and television director, editor, producer, and screenwriter. He directed the horror films Dog Soldiers and The Descent , the science fiction action film Doomsday , the historical war film Centurion , the superhero action film Hellboy , and the adventure horror film The Reckoning .

#5165

Steve McFadden

#59826

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Steve Robert McFadden is an English actor. He is best known for his role as Phil Mitchell in the BBC One soap opera EastEnders, which he has played since 1990. He was also the presenter of the game show Britain's Hardest .

#5166

Anthony Tommasini

#74894

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Anthony Carl Tommasini is an American music critic and author who specializes in classical music. Described as "a discerning critic, whose taste, knowledge and judgment have made him a must-read", Tommasini was the chief classical music critic for The New York Times from 2000 to 2021. Also a pianist, he has released two CDS and two books on the music of his colleague and mentor, the composer and critic Virgil Thomson.

#5167

David Zinman

#68059

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

David Zinman is an American conductor and violinist. Education After violin studies at Oberlin Conservatory, Zinman studied theory and composition at the University of Minnesota, earning his M.A. in 1963. He took up conducting at Tanglewood and from 1958 to 1962 worked in Maine with Pierre Monteux; he served as Monteux's assistant from 1961 to 1964.

#5168

Charles Gray

#86347

Overall Influence

1928 - 2000 (72 years)

Charles Gray was an English actor and voice artist who was well known for roles including the arch-villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever; Dikko Henderson in a previous Bond film, You Only Live Twice; Sherlock Holmes's brother Mycroft Holmes in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes; and The Criminologist in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

#5169

Graeme Hirst

#126382

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

#5170

Hide

#73383

Overall Influence

1964 - 1998 (34 years)

Hideto Matsumoto, known professionally as Hide, was a Japanese musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the rock band X Japan from 1987 to 1997 and a solo artist from 1993 onward. He also formed the United States-based rock supergroup Zilch in 1996.

#5171

Muhal Richard Abrams

#79566

Overall Influence

1930 - 2017 (87 years)

Muhal Richard Abrams was an American educator, administrator, composer, arranger, clarinetist, cellist, and jazz pianist in the free jazz medium. He recorded and toured the United States, Canada and Europe with his orchestra, sextet, quartet, duo and as a solo pianist.

#5172

Mark Hudson

#70878

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Mark Jeffery Anthony Hudson is an American record producer, musician and songwriter based in both Los Angeles and New York City. After first rising to prominence as a performer, songwriter and TV personality in the 1970s as a member of the Hudson Brothers trio, Hudson achieved independent success as record producer and songwriter, working with a broad variety of artists including Cher, Ringo Starr, Aerosmith, Scorpions, Ozzy Osbourne, Hanson, Harry Nilsson, and the Baha Men.

#5173

Sheila Jordan

#85210

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (98 years)

Sheila Jordan is an American jazz singer and songwriter. She has recorded as a session musician with an array of critically acclaimed artists in addition to recording her own albums. Jordan pioneered a bebop and scat jazz singing style with an upright bass as the only accompaniment. Jordan's music has earned praise from many critics, particularly for her ability to improvise lyrics; Scott Yanow describes her as "one of the most consistently creative of all jazz singers." Charlie Parker often introduced Jordan as "the lady with the million dollar ears."

#5174

Mark Stewart

#90060

Overall Influence

1960 - 2023 (63 years)

Mark Stewart was an English singer and founding member of the Pop Group. A pioneer of post-punk and industrial music, he recorded for On-U Sound Records, Mute Records, eMERGENCY heARTS and UR Suoni.

#5175

Al Foster

#76568

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Aloysius Tyrone Foster is an American jazz drummer. Foster's professional career began in the mid-60s, when he played and recorded with hard bop and swing musicians including Blue Mitchell and Illinois Jacquet. Foster played jazz fusion with Miles Davis during the 70s and was one of the few people to have contact with Davis during his retirement from 1975–1980. During Davis's retirement, Foster continued to play and record acoustic jazz with Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, McCoy Tyner, Horace Silver, and other band leaders. Foster played on Miles Davis's 1981 comeback album The Man with the Horn, and was the only musician to play in Davis's band both before, and after, his retirement.

#5176

Osvaldo Golijov

#63803

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Osvaldo Noé Golijov is an Argentine composer of classical music and music professor, known for his vocal and orchestral work. Biography Osvaldo Golijov was born in and grew up in La Plata, Argentina, in a Jewish family that immigrated to Argentina from Romania. His mother was a piano teacher, and his father was a physician. He studied piano in La Plata and studied composition with Gerardo Gandini.

#5177

Piotr Waglowski

Piotr Waglowski

#56919

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Piotr Waglowski , known online as VaGla, is a Polish lawyer, poet, publicist and webmaster, open government activist, researcher of communication processes in the paradigm of social constructionism. Academic activity and teaching Waglowski specialised in the legal aspects of the information society and the legal analysis of the Internet-based projects. A graduate of the Faculty of Law and Administration, University of Warsaw, he dedicated his Master's thesis to the subject of infringement of personality rights on the Internet and their civil law protection based on the Civil Code. He studied a...

#5178

Clydie King

#68229

Overall Influence

1943 - 2019 (76 years)

Clydie Mae King was an American singer, best known for her session work as a backing vocalist. King also recorded solo under her name. In the 1970s, she recorded as Brown Sugar, and her single "Loneliness " reached No. 44 on the Billboard R&B charts in 1973.

#5179

June Carter Cash

#49621

Overall Influence

1929 - 2003 (74 years)

Valerie June Carter Cash was an American singer, songwriter and dancer. A five-time Grammy award-winner, she was a member of the Carter Family and the second wife of singer Johnny Cash. Prior to her marriage to Cash, she was professionally known as June Carter and continued to be credited as such even after her marriage . She played guitar, banjo, harmonica, and autoharp, and acted in several films and television shows. Carter Cash won five Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Christian Music Hall of Fame in 2009.

#5180

Lauren Gawne

#111309

Overall Influence

Lauren Gawne is a linguistics researcher and academic communicator, most known for her work on gestural languages and in the linguistics of emoji. Early life and education Lauren Gawne was educated at the University of Melbourne, studying a BA in linguistics and art history and subsequently a linguistics PhD under the supervision of Barbara Kelly and Rachel Nordlinger which she received in 2013.

#5181

Lydia Mordkovitch

#100973

Overall Influence

1944 - 2014 (70 years)

Lydia Mordkovitch was a Russian violinist. Lydia was born in Saratov, Russia, on 30 April 1944. She returned with her parents to Kishinev after the war. In 1960, she moved to Odessa, where she studied at the Stolyarsky School of Music until 1962. She then moved to Moscow where she studied at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory under David Oistrakh, later serving as his assistant from 1968 to 1970. During this period, she married and had a daughter, and won the National Young Musicians Competition in Kiev in 1967 and the Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud Competition in Paris in 1969.

#5182

Karol Jakubowicz

#101323

Overall Influence

1941 - 2013 (72 years)

Karol Jakubowicz was a Polish academic who studied journalism and communication science. He was instrumental in guiding the development of media legislation in eastern Europe in the 1990s.

#5183

Dietrich Burger

#122769

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Dietrich Burger is a German painter and graphic artist. Life Born in Bad Frankenhausen, Burger studied at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig under Bernhard Heisig from 1953 to 1958. From 1964, he taught there, from 1984 to 2000 as professor of painting and graphic arts.

#5184

Leonard B. Meyer

#69917

Overall Influence

1918 - 2007 (89 years)

Leonard B. Meyer was a composer, author, and philosopher. He contributed major works in the fields of aesthetic theory in music, and of compositional analysis. Career Meyer studied at Columbia University, where he received a B.A. in Philosophy and an M.A. in Music. He continued at University of Chicago, where he was awarded a Ph.D. in History of Culture in 1954. As a composer, he studied under Stefan Wolpe, Otto Luening, and Aaron Copland. In 1946, he became a member of the music department at the University of Chicago, in 1961 he was appointed professor of music at the University of Chicago and in 1975 professor of music and the humanities at the University of Pennsylvania.

#5185

Lino Brocka

#62682

Overall Influence

1939 - 1991 (52 years)

Catalino Ortiz Brocka was a Filipino film director. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential and significant filmmakers in the history of Philippine cinema. He co-founded the organization Concerned Artists of the Philippines , dedicated to helping artists address issues confronting the country, and the Free the Artist Movement. He was a member of the Coalition for the Restoration of Democracy.

#5186

Gilbert Bécaud

#110527

Overall Influence

1927 - 2001 (74 years)

Gilbert Bécaud was a French singer, composer, pianist and actor, known as "Monsieur 100,000 Volts" for his energetic performances. His best-known hits are "Nathalie" and "Et maintenant", a 1961 release that became an English language hit as "What Now My Love". He remained a popular artist for nearly fifty years, identifiable in his dark blue suits, with a white shirt and "lucky tie"; blue with white polka dots. When asked to explain his gift he said, "A flower doesn't understand botany." His favourite venue was the Paris Olympia under the management of Bruno Coquatrix. He debuted there in 1954 and headlined in 1955, attracting 6,000 on his first night, three times the capacity.

#5187

Todd Phillips

#47490

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Todd Phillips is an American filmmaker and film producer. He began his career in 1993 and directed films in the early-to-mid 2000s such as Road Trip, Old School, Starsky & Hutch, and School for Scoundrels. He came to wider prominence in the late 2000s and early 2010s for directing The Hangover film series. In 2019, he co-wrote and directed the psychological thriller film Joker, based on the DC Comics character of the same name, which premiered at the 76th Venice International Film Festival where it received the top prize, the Golden Lion. Joker went on to earn Phillips three Academy Award nom...

#5188

Samuel Fosso Wamba

#126708

Overall Influence

#5189

Alan K. Betts

#126709

Overall Influence

#5190

Eugene Chadbourne

#82133

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Eugene Chadbourne is an American banjoist, guitarist and music critic. Life and career Chadbourne was born in Mount Vernon, New York, but grew up in Boulder, Colorado. He started playing guitar when he was eleven or twelve, inspired by the Beatles and hoping to get the attention of girls. Although he was drawn to Jimi Hendrix and played in a garage band, he found rock and pop music too conventional. He gravitated to the avant-garde jazz of Anthony Braxton and Derek Bailey. Braxton persuaded Chadbourne to abandon his intention to enter journalism and instead pursue music.

#5191

Little Jimmy Dickens

#74291

Overall Influence

1920 - 2015 (95 years)

James Cecil Dickens , better known by his stage name Little Jimmy Dickens, was an American country music singer and songwriter famous for his humorous novelty songs, his small size , and his rhinestone-studded outfits . He started as a member of the Grand Ole Opry in 1948 and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1983. Before his death he was the oldest living member of the Grand Ole Opry.

#5192

Keith Barron

#96715

Overall Influence

1934 - 2017 (83 years)

Keith Barron was an English actor and television presenter who appeared in films and on television from 1961 until 2017. His television roles included the police drama The Odd Man, the sitcom Duty Free, and Gregory Wilmot in Upstairs, Downstairs.

#5193

Thomas Quasthoff

Thomas Quasthoff

#80287

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Thomas Quasthoff is a German bass-baritone. Quasthoff has a range of musical interest from Bach cantatas, to lieder, and solo jazz improvisations. Born with severe birth defects caused by thalidomide, Quasthoff is , and has phocomelia.

#5194

A. N. Narasimhia

#65090

Overall Influence

A. N. Narasimhia is an epigraphist and scholar of the Kannada language, especially its historical aspects. Career Narasimhia received his PhD, under the supervision of Professor R. L. Turner, from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in 1933. Upon his return to India, he became the librarian and part-time professor of philology at the Maharaja College of Mysore. In 1941, the University of Mysore published his PhD thesis, A Grammar of the Oldest Kanarese inscriptions, as the first volume in its series "Studies in Dravidian Philology." The book was reviewed by Thomas Burrow, in the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol.

#5195

John Taylor

#100161

Overall Influence

1942 - 2015 (73 years)

John Taylor was a British jazz pianist, born in Manchester, England, who occasionally performed on the organ and the synthesizer. Early life John Taylor was a self-taught pianist. With his family, he moved from Manchester, first to the Midlands and then to Hastings where he played locally. In 1964, Taylor became a civil servant, moved to London and became involved in the free jazz scene.

#5196

Tom McCarthy

#66359

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Thomas Joseph McCarthy is an American filmmaker and actor who has appeared in several films, including Meet the Parents and Good Night, and Good Luck, and television series such as The Wire, Boston Public and Law & Order.

#5197

Ellen Peters

#82425

Overall Influence

Ellen Peters is an American academic and the Philip H. Knight Chair, Director of the Center for Science Communication Research, and Professor both in the School of Journalism and Communication and in Psychology at the University of Oregon. She is also an associate in the Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact. Prior to moving to the University of Oregon in 2019, she spent nine years in the psychology department at The Ohio State University where she was a Distinguished Professor. She also directed the Decision Sciences Collaborative in the College of Arts and Science ...

#5198

Nazir Jairazbhoy

#29590

Overall Influence

1927 - 2009 (82 years)

Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy was a professor of folk and classical music of South Asia at the University of California at Los Angeles, where he was the founding chair of the Department of Ethnomusicology and Systematic Musicology. He was appointed professor of music at UCLA in 1975, and retired in 1994. He was president of the Society for Ethnomusicology.

#5199

Tore Janson

#33845

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Tore Janson is a Swedish linguist. Janson was professor of Latin at the University of Gothenburg, and later became professor of African languages at the same alma mater. He retired in 2001, but has since been affiliated with the University of Stockholm.

#5200

Anoop Chandola

#91035

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Anoop Chandola, author of 20 books, 4 coauthored is an American linguist-anthropologist, originally from Pauri , where he was raised in a priestly Brahmin family. Though his father and uncles broke their ancestral polygamous tradition he suffered from the after-effects of polygamy.

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