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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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Communications,

#5301

Mitsuko Uchida

#90000

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Dame Mitsuko Uchida, DBE is a Japanese-British classical pianist and conductor. Born in Japan and naturalised in Britain, she is particularly notable for her interpretations of Mozart and Schubert. She has appeared with many notable orchestras, recorded a wide repertory with several labels, won numerous awards and honours and is the Co-Artistic Director, with Jonathan Biss, of the Marlboro Music School and Festival. She has also conducted several major orchestras.

#5302

Ikue Mori

#85080

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Ikue Mori , also known as Ikue Ile, is a drummer, electronic musician, composer, and graphic designer. Mori was awarded a "Genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation in 2022. Biography Ikue Mori was born and raised in Japan. She says she had little interest in music before hearing punk rock. In 1977, she went to New York City, initially for a visit, but she became involved in the music scene, and has remained in New York since.

#5303

Pete Candoli

#86791

Overall Influence

1923 - 2008 (85 years)

Pete Candoli was an American jazz trumpeter. He played with the big bands of Woody Herman and Stan Kenton and worked in the studios of the recording and television industries. Career A native of Mishawaka, Indiana, Pete Candoli was the older brother of Conte Candoli.

#5304

John Tchicai

#89148

Overall Influence

1936 - 2012 (76 years)

John Martin Tchicai was a Danish free jazz saxophonist and composer. Biography Tchicai was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, to a Danish mother and a Congolese father. The family moved to Aarhus, where he studied violin when young, and in his mid-teens began playing clarinet and alto saxophone, focusing on the latter. By the late 1950s, he was travelling around northern Europe, playing with many musicians.

#5305

David Cope

#59929

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

David Cope is an American author, composer, scientist, and Dickerson Emeriti Professor of Music at UC Santa Cruz. His primary area of research involves artificial intelligence and music; he writes programs and algorithms that can analyze existing music and create new compositions in the style of the original input music. He taught the groundbreaking summer workshop in Workshop in Algorithmic Computer Music that was open to the public as well as a general education course entitled Artificial Intelligence and Music for enrolled UCSC students. Cope is also co-founder and CTO Emeritus of Recombi...

#5306

Bruce E. Johansen

#52488

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Bruce Elliott Johansen is an American academic and author. He is the Frederick W. Kayser Professor of Communication at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and is the author or editor of many books and articles, notably on environmentalal and Native American issues.

#5307

Eileen Farrell

#85105

Overall Influence

1920 - 2002 (82 years)

Eileen Farrell was an American soprano who had a nearly 60-year-long career performing both classical and popular music in concerts, theatres, on radio and television, and on disc. NPR noted, "She possessed one of the largest and most radiant operatic voices of the 20th century." While she was active as an opera singer, her concert engagements far outnumbered her theatrical appearances. Her career was mainly based in the United States, although she did perform internationally. The Daily Telegraph stated that she "was one of the finest American sopranos of the 20th century; she had a voice of ...

#5308

Shigeru Ida

#128554

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

#5309

Sheila McNamee

#24532

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Sheila McNamee is an American academic known for her work in human communication and social constructionism theory and practice. She is a Professor of Communication at the University of New Hampshire and founding member, Vice President and board member of the Taos Institute. She has authored numerous, books, chapters, and journal articles. Her work focuses on appreciative dialogic transformation within a variety of social and institutional contexts including psychotherapy, organizations, education, healthcare, and local communities. She engages constructionist practices in a variety of conte...

#5310

Diethard Hellmann

Diethard Hellmann

#92451

Overall Influence

1928 - 1999 (71 years)

Diethard Hellmann was a German Kantor and an academic in Leipzig, Mainz and Munich. Professional career Born in Grimma, Dietmann Hellmann was a member of the Thomanerchor. He studied church music in Leipzig with Günther Ramin. Hellmann was the organist for early recordings of Bach cantatas by Ramin. He was Kantor at the Friedenskirche in Leipzig from 1948 to 1955. At the same time, he was a teacher for organ at the Musikhochschule Leipzig, conducting the choir of the Hochschule, and until 1951, a teacher at the Fürstenschule in Grimma. In 1950, he won a prize for organ at the first International Bach Competition.

#5311

Klaus Thunemann

#64164

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Klaus Thunemann is a German bassoonist, considered "one of the finest bassoonists of his generation". Biography Klaus Thunemann was born in Magdeburg on 19 April 1937. He originally studied piano but from the age of 18 focused on the bassoon. He was a student at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, where he studied under Willy Fugmann. Upon graduation Thunemann was engaged by the North German Radio Symphony Orchestra of Hamburg where he served as principal bassoonist from 1962 to 1978. During this time he also appeared frequently in chamber music and as a soloist. In the 1970s he also collabor...

#5312

Peter Filkins

#49075

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Peter Filkins is an American poet and literary translator. Filkins graduated from Williams College with a Bachelor of Arts and from Columbia University with a Master of Fine Arts degree. His poetry collections include the forthcoming Water / Music, as well as The View We’re Granted, co-winner of the 2013 Sheila Motton Best Book Award from the New England Poetry Club, and Augustine’s Vision, winner of the 2009 New American Press Chapbook Award. His poems, essays, reviews, and translations have appeared in numerous journals, including The New Republic, Partisan Review, The New Criterion, Poetry, The Yale Review, the New York Times Book Review, and the Los Angeles Times.

#5313

Lukas David

#116819

Overall Influence

1934 - 2021 (87 years)

Lukas Florian David was an Austrian classical violinist. Life David was born in Wels upper Austria in 1934 as the younger son of the composer and conductor Johann Nepomuk David and his wife Berta Eybl. His older brother was the composer and conductor Thomas Christian David . He received his first violin lessons at the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig. Later he was a student of Max Strub at the Mozarteum University Salzburg and of Max Kergl at the State University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart. He had his first public performance at the age of 14. From 1949 to 1957, he studied...

#5314

Matt Dennis

#91168

Overall Influence

1914 - 2002 (88 years)

Matthew Loveland Dennis was an American singer, pianist, band leader, arranger, and writer of music for popular songs. Biography Dennis was born in Seattle, Washington, United States. His mother was a violinist and his father a singer, and the family was in vaudeville, so he was exposed to music early. In 1933 he joined Horace Heidt's orchestra as a vocalist and pianist. Later on, he formed his own band, with Dick Haymes as vocalist. He became vocal coach, arranger, and accompanist for Martha Tilton, and worked with a new vocal group, The Stafford Sisters. Jo Stafford, one of the sisters, joined the Tommy Dorsey band in 1940 and persuaded Dorsey to hire Dennis as arranger and composer.

#5315

Steve Walsh

#65784

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Steve Walsh is an American singer, musician and songwriter, best known for his work as a longtime member of the progressive rock band Kansas. He retired from the band in 2014. He sings lead on four of Kansas' best-known hits: "Carry On Wayward Son", "Dust in the Wind", "Point of Know Return", and "All I Wanted", the last two of which he co-wrote.

#5316

Ethel Winter

#83133

Overall Influence

1924 - 2012 (88 years)

Ethel Winter was an American dancer and dance instructor. Winter was specifically a modern dancer - a member of the Martha Graham Dance Company from the 1940s through the 1960s, working with other notable members of the company, including Martha Graham, Bertram Ross, Yuriko, Pearl Lang, Ethel Butler, Jean Erdman, and Patricia Birch. She taught modern dance at the Juilliard School Dance Division for fifty years, retiring in 2003.

#5317

Daniel Harding

#94491

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Daniel John Harding is a British conductor. Biography Harding was born in Oxford. He studied trumpet at Chetham's School of Music and was a member of the National Youth Orchestra at age 13. At age 17, Harding assembled a group of musicians to perform Pierrot Lunaire of Arnold Schoenberg, and sent a tape of the performance to Simon Rattle in Birmingham. After listening to this tape, Rattle hired Harding as his assistant at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra for a year, from 1993 to 1994. Harding then attended the University of Cambridge, but after his first year at university, Claudio Abbado named him his assistant with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

#5318

No I.D.

#39496

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Ernest Dion Wilson , professionally known as No I.D. , is an American hip hop and R&B producer from Chicago, Illinois. Wilson is also a disc jockey , music arranger and former rapper, having released an album Accept Your Own and Be Yourself , in 1997 under Relativity Records. He is perhaps best known for his early work with Chicago-based rapper Common. He has since become a heavily sought-out and high-profile producer, producing hit singles such as "Smile" by G-Unit, "Outta My System" and "Let Me Hold You" by Bow Wow, "Heartless" by Kanye West, "D.O.A." by Jay-Z, "My Last" by Big Sean, and "Ne...

#5319

Trifonia Melibea Obono

Trifonia Melibea Obono

#83927

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (44 years)

Trifonia Melibea Obono Ntutumu Obono is an Equatorial Guinean novelist, political scientist, academic and LGBT activist. Her novel La Bastarda is the first novel by a female Equatorial Guinean writer to be translated into English.

#5320

Franz Welser-Möst

#91587

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Franz Leopold Maria Möst , known professionally as Franz Welser-Möst, is an Austrian conductor. He is currently music director of the Cleveland Orchestra. Biography Franz Leopold Maria Möst was born in Linz, Austria, and later studied under the composer Balduin Sulzer. As a youth in Linz, he studied the violin and had developed an interest in conducting. After suffering injuries in a car crash that led to nerve damage, he stopped his violin studies and shifted full-time to conducting studies.

#5321

Vicente Alejandro Guillamón

Vicente Alejandro Guillamón

#102744

Overall Influence

1930 - 2021 (91 years)

Vicente Alejandro Guillamón was a Spanish journalist and writer. Biography Vicente Alejandro Guillamón was born in Onda, Castellon, Spain in 1930, and he was the youngest child of a humble farming and ranching family.

#5322

Arild Andersen

#85276

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Arild Andersen is a Norwegian jazz musician bassist, known as the most famous Norwegian bass player in the international jazz scene. Career Andersen was born at Strømmen, Norway. He started his musical career as jazz guitarist in the Riverside Swing Group in Lillestrøm , started playing double bass in 1964, and soon became part of the core jazz bands in Oslo. He was a member of Roy Hellvin Trio, was in the backing band at Kongsberg Jazz Festival in 1967 and 1968, was elected Best Bassist by Jazznytt in 1967, and started as bass player in the Jan Garbarek Quartet , including Terje Rypdal and Jon Christensen.

#5323

Helge Nordahl

#81063

Overall Influence

1927 - 2018 (91 years)

Helge Nordahl was a Norwegian philologist. Nordahl graduated from the University of Oslo in 1953 with the cand.philol. degree in French. He was a part-time teacher at Oslo Cathedral School from 1954 to 1956, teacher at Trondheim Cathedral School from 1956 to 1963, lecturer at the University of Bergen from 1963 to 1970, docent at the University of Oslo from 1970 to 1972 and professor of Romance languages at the University of Oslo from 1972 to 1996.

#5324

Whitelaw Reid

#64177

Overall Influence

1913 - 2009 (96 years)

Whitelaw Reid was an American journalist who later served as editor, president and chairman of the family-owned New York Herald Tribune. An avid sportsman throughout his life, he won a national singles title in his age group at age 85 and a national doubles title at age 90, both in tennis.

#5325

Bernd Nothofer

#104660

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Bernd Nothofer is a German linguist. His primary research interests include Austronesian historical linguistics, Malayic dialectology, and the languages of Indonesia. Education After graduating from high school, Nothofer studied in Bonn starting from 1962. In 1966, he obtained a License de Lettre libre at the Université de Franche-Comté in Besançon, France and taught German and French philology at Millersville State College in Pennsylvania, United States.

#5326

Paavo Järvi

#86491

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Paavo Järvi is an Estonian-American conductor. He has been chief conductor of Zurich's Tonhalle since 2020. Early life Järvi was born in Tallinn, Estonia, to Liilia Järvi and the Estonian conductor Neeme Järvi. His siblings, Kristjan Järvi and Maarika Järvi, are also musicians. After leaving Estonia, the family settled in the US. Järvi studied privately with Leonid Grin in Philadelphia, at the Curtis Institute of Music with Max Rudolf and Otto-Werner Mueller, and at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute with Leonard Bernstein.

#5327

Pedro Costa

#77208

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Pedro Costa is a Portuguese film director. He is best known for his sequence of films set in Lisbon, which focuses on the lives of the impoverished residents of a slum in the Fontainhas neighbourhood.

#5328

William Adam

#122523

Overall Influence

1917 - 2013 (96 years)

William Alexander Adam was an American trumpeter, respected pedagogue, and Professor Emeritus at Indiana University. He was highly analytical as a teacher, but always avoided discussing the mechanical aspects of trumpet playing with a student. Instead he "taught" by demonstration and by explanation in terms of sound. In his own words, "If your mind leaves the sound of the horn, obstacles will appear."

#5329

Alfred Drake

#81930

Overall Influence

1914 - 1992 (78 years)

Alfred Drake was an American actor and singer. Biography Born as Alfred Capurro in New York City, the son of parents emigrated from Recco, Genoa, Drake began his Broadway career while still a student at Brooklyn College. He is best known for his leading roles in the original Broadway productions of Oklahoma! and Kiss Me, Kate and for playing Marshall Blackstone in the original production of Babes in Arms, and Hajj in Kismet, for which he received the Tony Award. He was also a prolific Shakespearean, notably starring as Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing opposite Katharine Hepburn.

#5330

Tatul Hakobyan

#80857

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Tatul Ashiki Hakobyan is an Armenian reporter and an independent political analyst. Early life and education Hakobyan was born in the village of Dovegh in northeastern Armenia, near the border with Azerbaijan. He attended the Yerevan State University and graduated from the Journalism Department in 1995. He is also a graduate of the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs in Tbilisi.

#5331

Lou Scheimer

#61264

Overall Influence

1928 - 2013 (85 years)

Louis Scheimer was an American producer and voice actor who was one of the original founders of Filmation. He was also credited as an executive producer of many of its cartoons. Early life and education Scheimer was the son of a German Jew who, according to family legend, had to leave Germany in the early 1920s after punching a young Adolf Hitler in 1921 or 1922, "well before" the Beer Hall Putsch.

#5332

Michelle Hartman

#90593

Overall Influence

Michelle Hartman is an academic and translator. She obtained a BA from Columbia College in 1993 and a DPhil from Oxford University in 1998. She is currently a professor of Arabic and francophone literature at the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University. She is the author of a number of academic papers and several monographs including "Breaking Broken English: Black Arab Literary Solidarities and the Politics of Language", which won the College Language Association award for creative scholarship in 2020. She is also a translator of contemporary Arabic literature, and has translated twel...

#5333

Jerry Donahue

#95331

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Jerry Donahue is an American guitarist and producer primarily known for his work in the British folk rock scene as a member of Fotheringay and Fairport Convention as well as being a member of the rock guitar trio The Hellecasters.

#5334

Gerald Robert Salancik

#128962

Overall Influence

#5335

Valerie Henitiuk

#91262

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Valerie Henitiuk is a scholar researching aspects of the intersection of translation studies, world literature, Inuit literature, Japanese literature, and women's writing. She is a Canadian citizen, recently retired as Vice-president Academic & Provost at Concordia University of Edmonton. Henitiuk has been a visiting scholar at both Harvard and Columbia Universities in the US and at Kokugakuin University in Japan. She was previously executive director of the Centre for the Advancement of Faculty Excellence and Professor of English at Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta, on the facul...

#5336

Stephen Rosenbaum

#46273

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Stephen Rosenbaum is an American visual effects artist and supervisor, and has worked on numerous movie, tv and music productions, including six that have won Academy Awards. He has been nominated three times for an Academy Award and two times for a BAFTA Award. He has won both awards twice for his contributions on Forrest Gump and Avatar, and has played artist and supervisor roles on such pioneering films as Jurassic Park, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, The Abyss, X2: X-Men United, Death Becomes Her, Contact and The Perfect Storm.

#5337

Harry Lloyd

#88405

Overall Influence

1983 - Present (43 years)

Harry Charles Salusbury Lloyd is an English actor. His performance in the Channel 4 miniseries The Fear earned him a British Academy Television Award nomination. He gained prominence through his roles as Will Scarlet in the BBC drama Robin Hood , Jeremy Baines in the Doctor Who episodes "Human Nature" and "The Family of Blood" , and Viserys Targaryen in the first season of the HBO series Game of Thrones .

#5338

Jan-Olof Svantesson

#118258

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Jan-Olof Svantesson, born 1944, is a professor of Linguistics at Lund University, Sweden. Svantesson wrote his doctoral dissertation in 1983 on the phonology and morphology of the Kammu language, and has written a book about modern Mongolian phonology and the historical development of Mongolian.

#5339

Jim Brown

#93954

Overall Influence

Jim Brown is a Canadian radio personality, best known as a host of programming on CBC Radio One. He was the host of the Calgary Eyeopener on CBR in Calgary from 2003 until 2011, and the national public affairs program The 180 on CBC Radio One from 2013 to 2017.

#5340

Christopher M. Anderson

#94500

Overall Influence

Christopher Anderson was the Director of Bands, Director of Instrumental Music Education, and an Associate Professor of Music at Arkansas Tech University. Prior to his appointment at Arkansas Tech, he was the Associate Director of Bands, Director of Athletic Bands, and an Associate Professor of Music at Texas Tech University. He holds a Bachelor of Music Education from Abilene Christian University under Fred J. Allen, a Master of Music in Conducting from Northwestern University under John P. Paynter, and a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Conducting from University of Texas under Professor Jerry Junkin.

#5341

Janice N. Harrington

#98241

Overall Influence

Janice N. Harrington is an American storyteller, poet, and children's writer. Life She grew up in Vernon, Alabama. Her family moved to Lincoln, Nebraska to escape racial segregation when she was eight. She now lives in Illinois.

#5342

Charlton McIlwain

#59928

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Charlton Deron McIlwain is an American academic and author whose expertise includes the role of race and media in politics and social life. McIlwain is Professor of media, culture, and communication and is the Vice Provost for Faculty Engagement and Development at New York University.

#5343

Ruggiero Ricci

#89645

Overall Influence

1918 - 2012 (94 years)

Ruggiero Ricci was an American violinist known for performances and recordings of the works of Paganini. Biography He was born in San Bruno, California, the son of Italian immigrants who first named him Woodrow Wilson Rich. His brother was cellist George Ricci , originally named George Washington Rich. His sister Emma played violin with the New York Metropolitan Opera. His father first taught him to play the violin. At age seven, Ricci studied with Louis Persinger and Elizabeth Lackey. Persinger would become his piano accompanist for many recitals and recordings.

#5344

Otis Blackwell

#64763

Overall Influence

1931 - 2002 (71 years)

Otis Blackwell was an American songwriter whose work influenced rock and roll. His compositions include "Fever" , "Great Balls of Fire" and "Breathless" , "Don't Be Cruel", "All Shook Up" and "Return to Sender" , and "Handy Man" .

#5345

Anol Bhattacherjee

#129172

Overall Influence

#5346

Donca Steriade

#107391

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Donca Steriade is a professor of Linguistics at MIT, specializing in phonological theory. Education She began her academic career studying classics in Bucharest, after earning her B.A. in Philology from the University of Bucharest in 1974. She left Romania after her father emigrated to Canada. She earned her M.A. from Université Laval in 1976, She studied for her PhD at the MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy under Morris Halle. Her 1982 dissertation is titled, "Greek prosodies and the nature of syllabification".

#5347

Robin Reisig

#93968

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (125 years)

Robin Reisig is an American journalist and journalism professor. A graduate of Wellesley College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she is a lecturer at the Columbia School of Journalism and a visiting faculty at the Asian College of Journalism.

#5348

Otto-Werner Mueller

#71724

Overall Influence

1926 - 2016 (90 years)

Otto-Werner Mueller was a German-born conductor. He was a professor of conducting at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, as well as at the Juilliard School in New York City. Mueller was born in Bensheim, Germany. At the age of 13, he was selected to attend the Musisches Gymnasium Frankfurt, where he was a student throughout the war. Following the war, he became director of the chamber music department at Radio Stuttgart at age 19, and was on the staff of the Heidelberg Theatre.

#5349

Kid Harpoon

#68814

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (44 years)

Thomas Edward Percy Hull , known professionally as Kid Harpoon, is an English singer, songwriter, musician and record producer. In 2023, he won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year and the Brit Award for Songwriter of the Year for his work on Harry's House by Harry Styles.

#5350

Jerzy Stuhr

#84456

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Jerzy Oskar Stuhr is a Polish film and theatre actor. He is one of the most popular, influential and versatile Polish actors. He also works as a screenwriter, film director and drama professor. He served as the Rector of the Ludwik Solski Academy for the Dramatic Arts in Kraków for two terms: from 1990 to 1996 and again from 2002 to 2008.

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