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,

#5501

Louise Ravelli

#119714

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Louise Jane Ravelli is an Australian linguist. She is a professor in the School of the Arts and Media at the University of New South Wales, Australia. Her research expertise includes multimodal communication, museum communication, discourse analysis, and systemic functional grammar, using the frameworks of Systemic Functional Linguistics, Social Semiotics, and Multimodal Discourse Analysis.

#5502

Annette Markham

Annette Markham

#83379

Overall Influence

Annette Markham is an American academic, Chair Professor of Media Literacy and Public Engagement at Utrecht University, Adjunct Professor at RMIT University in Melbourne, and Adjunct Professor of Information Studies at Aarhus University, Denmark. She is Director of RMIT's Digital Ethnography Research Centre. She has served on the executive committee of the Association of Internet Researchers since 2013. She publishes research in the area of Internet studies, digital identity, social interaction, innovative qualitative methods for social research, and Internet research ethics.

#5503

Ray Charles

#112224

Overall Influence

1918 - 2015 (97 years)

Ray Charles was an American musician, singer, songwriter, vocal arranger and conductor who was best known as organizer and leader of the Ray Charles Singers who were featured on Perry Como's records and television shows for 35 years and were also known for a series of 30 choral record albums produced in the 1950s and 1960s for the Essex, MGM, Decca and Command labels.

#5504

Christian Merlin

#104767

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Christian Merlin is a French contemporary music critic and musicologist. Biography Christian Merlin, who holds an agrégation in German and a doctorate in literature, is a musicologist and a lecturer at the Charles de Gaulle University – Lille III. A music critic at Le Figaro and the magazine Diapason, he contributes to programmes on France Musique such as Le Casque et l'enclume and Classic Club. He is also the author or editor of several issues of L'Avant-Scène Opéra, as well as of a book devoted to the symphony orchestra, documented by long years of acquaintance with instrumentalists and con...

#5505

Vladimir Ponkin

#132065

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Vladimir Ponkin is a Russian principal conductor, Professor and a recipient of both the Golden Mask and People's Artist of Russia award from Irkutsk. He is also a 2001 medal recipient For the merits in development of Cuban region and a 2006 cross recipient of The Defender of Russia as well as For the Love and Faith to the Homeland medal both of which were 1st grade.

#5506

James Curran

#120594

Overall Influence

James R. Curran is a computational linguist and senior lecturer at the University of Sydney. He holds a PhD in Informatics from the University of Edinburgh. Research Curran's research focuses on natural language processing, making him one of the few Australian computational linguists. Specifically Curran's research has focused on the area of natural language processing known as combinatory categorial grammar parsing. In addition to his contributions to NLP, Curran has produced a paper on the development of search engines to assist in driving problem based learning.

#5507

Irma Thomas

#69680

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Irma Thomas is an American singer from New Orleans. She is known as the "Soul Queen of New Orleans". Thomas is a contemporary of Aretha Franklin and Etta James, but never experienced their level of commercial success. In 2007, she won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album for After the Rain, her first Grammy in a career spanning over 50 years.

#5508

Barre Phillips

#107994

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Barre Phillips is an American jazz bassist. A professional musician since 1960, he moved to New York City in 1962, then to Europe in 1967. Since 1972, he has been based in southern France where, in 2014, he founded the European Improvisation Center.

#5509

Mitski

#54822

Overall Influence

1990 - Present (36 years)

Mitski Miyawaki is an American singer and songwriter. She self-released her first two albums, Lush , and Retired from Sad, New Career in Business , while studying studio composition at Purchase College's Conservatory of Music. The albums were originally made as her senior project. Her third studio album, Bury Me at Makeout Creek, was released in 2014 on the label Double Double Whammy.

#5510

Larry Bunker

#95735

Overall Influence

1928 - 2005 (77 years)

Lawrence Benjamin Bunker was an American jazz drummer, vibraphonist, and percussionist. A member of the Bill Evans Trio in the mid-1960s, he also played timpani with the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra.

#5511

Andrew Love

#75328

Overall Influence

1941 - 2012 (71 years)

Andrew Love was a saxophone player based in Memphis, Tennessee, best known for being a member of The Memphis Horns. Career Love was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and began his interest in music at the Baptist church where his father was pastor. His music education continued in high school and at Langston University in Oklahoma. He returned to Memphis in 1965 and began session work at Stax Records where he teamed up with trumpet player Wayne Jackson. The two created the signature horn sound at Stax on hit records by Otis Redding, Sam & Dave and others.

#5512

Terttu Nevalainen

#113175

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Terttu Nevalainen is a Finnish linguist and the current Chair of English Philology at the University of Helsinki. She has been a member of the Finnish Academy of Sciences since 2001 and was inducted as a First Class Knight of the Order of the White Rose of Finland in 2015. Nevalainen works on corpus linguistics, the history of English and historical sociolinguistics.

#5513

Leif Ove Andsnes

Leif Ove Andsnes

#71688

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Leif Ove Andsnes is a Norwegian pianist and chamber musician. Andsnes has made several recordings for Virgin and EMI. In 2012, Leif Ove Andsnes has signed to Sony Classical, and recorded for the label the "Beethoven Journey" project, which included the composer's five piano concertos with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. The works were recorded over three years, beginning with Piano Concertos Nos 1 and 3 in 2012, followed by Concertos Nos 2 and 4 in 2013 and the Fifth Piano Concerto and Choral Fantasy in 2014. He is represented by IMG.

#5514

Jonathan Bailey

Jonathan Bailey

#88143

Overall Influence

1988 - Present (38 years)

Jonathan Stuart Bailey is an English actor. Known for his comedic, dramatic, and musical roles on stage and screen, he is the recipient of a Laurence Olivier Award and a nomination for an Evening Standard Theatre Award.

#5515

George Veras

#80468

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

George James Veras was the producer of NFL Today on CBS from 1981-1993, and vice-president of production and broadcasting for the Cleveland Browns from 2004-2007. His productions have won 10 Emmy Awards. He is the former president and CEO of Pro Football Hall of Fame Enterprises, president of Veras Communications, Inc. , and adjunct professor at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University.

#5516

Chou Wen-chung

#82753

Overall Influence

1923 - 2019 (96 years)

Chou Wen-chung was a Chinese American composer of contemporary classical music. He emigrated in 1946 to the United States and received his music training at the New England Conservatory and Columbia University. Chou is credited by Nicolas Slonimsky as one of the first Chinese composers who attempted to translate authentic East Asian melo-rhythms into the terms of modern Western music.

#5517

DJ Muggs

#48095

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Lawrence Muggerud professionally known by his stage name DJ Muggs, is an American DJ, audio engineer and record producer. He has been a member of Cypress Hill, a member of the trip hop band Cross My Heart Hope To Die and the leader of hip hop and art collective Soul Assassins.

#5518

William Radice

#70044

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

William Radice is a poet, writer and translator. He is the senior lecturer in Bengali in the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. His research area is in Bengali language and literature. He has translated several Bengali works, and works by Rabindranath Tagore and Michael Madhusudan Dutt.

#5519

Paul Hunter

#63735

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Paul Hunter is an American film director, screenwriter, and music video director. He has directed over 100 music videos, television advertisements and was nominated for an Emmy for Nike's Freestyle commercial. In 2004, the Washington Post called Hunter one of "most seminal names among black hip-hop directors."

#5520

Mischa Maisky

#90266

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Mischa Maisky is a Soviet-born Israeli cellist. Biography Mischa Maisky was born in 1948 in Riga and is the younger brother of organist, harpsichordist and musicologist Valery Maisky . He was taught by Mstislav Rostropovich at the Moscow Conservatory from 1966 to 1970. In 1966, he won sixth prize at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. In 1970, he was arrested and spent 18 months in jail and a work camp and later 2 months in mental hospital. He emigrated to Israel in 1972, where he holds citizenship. In 1974 he studied with Gregor Piatigorsky in Los Angeles. Maisky currently l...

#5521

Emanuel Vardi

#108229

Overall Influence

1915 - 2011 (96 years)

Emanuel Vardi , an American violist, was considered to have been one of the great viola players of the 20th century. Early life Emanuel Vardi was born April 21, 1915, in Jerusalem. His mother, Anna Joffa Vardi, had a piano studio with many students and started Emanuel on piano at about age 3. His father, Joseph Vardi had a violin studio and also started his son out on his instrument at about the age of 3. The family came to the United States in 1920 via Paris, France, aboard a ship called "the Asia" to escape the pogroms in the Middle East.

#5522

Lloyd Richards

#69451

Overall Influence

1919 - 2006 (87 years)

Lloyd George Richards was a Canadian-American theatre director, actor, and dean of the Yale School of Drama from 1979 to 1991, and Yale University professor emeritus. Biography Richards was born in Toronto, Ontario, but was raised in Detroit, Michigan. His father, a Jamaican carpenter turned auto-industry worker, died when Richards was nine years old. Soon after, his mother lost her eyesight, he and his brother Allan kept the family together. He later went on to study law at Wayne State University where instead he found his way in theatrical arts after a brief break during World War II while serving in the U.S.

#5523

Edgar Meyer

#65087

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Edgar Meyer is an American bassist and composer. His styles include classical, bluegrass, newgrass, and jazz. He has won five Grammy Awards and been nominated seven times. Meyer is a member of the Telluride Bluegrass Festival's "house band" super group, along with Sam Bush, Béla Fleck, Jerry Douglas, Stuart Duncan, and Bryan Sutton. His collaborators have spanned a wide range of musical styles and talents; among them are Joshua Bell, Hilary Hahn, Yo-Yo Ma, Jerry Douglas, Béla Fleck, Zakir Hussain, Sam Bush, Stuart Duncan, Chris Thile, Mike Marshall, Mark O'Connor, Christian McBride, and Emanu...

#5524

Hermann Bausinger

#80688

Overall Influence

1926 - 2021 (95 years)

Hermann Bausinger was a German cultural scientist. He was professor and head of the Ludwig Uhland Institute for empirical cultural science at the University of Tübingen from 1960 to 1992. The institute has focused on the culture of everyday life, the history of traditions, and the research of narration patterns and dialects. His history of literature from Swabia from the 18th century to the present was published for his 90th birthday.

#5525

David Frankel

#74508

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

David Frankel is an American filmmaker. He directed the 2006 film The Devil Wears Prada, as well as Marley & Me , Hope Springs , Jerry & Marge Go Large , and the first and fourth episodes of the Netflix miniseries Inventing Anna .

#5526

Julie Anne Legate

#119984

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Julie Anne Legate is a professor in the department of linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. Education and research Legate earned her B.A. from York University in 1995 and her M.A. from the University of Toronto in 1997. She received her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2002, writing a dissertation on the Warlpiri language, under the supervision of Noam Chomsky and Sabine Iatridou.

#5527

Frank Galati

#79983

Overall Influence

1943 - 2023 (80 years)

Frank Joseph Galati was an American director, writer, and actor. He was a member of Steppenwolf Theatre Company and an associate director at Goodman Theatre. He taught at Northwestern University for many years.

#5528

John Randolph

#72915

Overall Influence

1915 - 2004 (89 years)

Emanuel Hirsch Cohen , better known by the stage name John Randolph, was an American film, television and stage actor. Early life Randolph was born Emanuel Hirsch Cohen in New York City on June 1, 1915, the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia and Romania. His mother, Dorothy , was an insurance agent, and his father, Louis Cohen, was a hat manufacturer. In the 1930s, he spent his summers at the Pine Brook Country Club in Nichols, Connecticut which was the summer home of the Group Theatre. He made his Broadway debut in 1938 in Coriolanus. Randolph joined the United States Army Air Forces in World War II.

#5529

Jack Halpern

#62258

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Jack Halpern is a Japan-based lexicographer specializing in Chinese characters, namely kanji. He is best known as editor-in-chief of the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary and as the inventor of the SKIP system for kanji lookup. Halpern is also an active unicyclist, having served as founder and president of the International Unicycling Federation. He currently resides in Saitama, Japan.

#5530

Anders Lyngfelt

#132436

Overall Influence

#5531

Mabel

#101767

Overall Influence

1996 - Present (30 years)

Mabel Alabama-Pearl McVey is an English and Swedish singer and songwriter. She had her breakthrough in 2017 with her single "Finders Keepers" which peaked at number eight on the UK Singles Chart. Her debut studio album High Expectations released in 2019 entered the UK Albums Chart at number three and was certified platinum. It included the UK top 10 singles: "Don't Call Me Up", "Mad Love" and "Boyfriend". She won the Brit Award for British Female Solo Artist in 2020. Her second studio album About Last Night... was released in 2022. It was supported by the release of its lead single "Let Them Know".

#5532

Alejandra Costamagna

Alejandra Costamagna

#90473

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Alejandra Costamagna Crivelli is a Chilean writer and journalist. Biography Costamagna's parents arrived in Chile from Argentina in 1967. Alejandra Costamagna recalls that her first approach to writing was through journal entries that she began to make irregularly from age 10.

#5533

Sampha

#72057

Overall Influence

1988 - Present (38 years)

Sampha Lahai Sisay is an English singer, songwriter, musician and record producer from Morden, South London. Sampha is widely known for his collaborative work with Kendrick Lamar, Drake, Frank Ocean, SBTRKT, Jessie Ware, Travis Scott, Kanye West, Solange and others. Sampha has released two solo EPs: Sundanza and Dual . Sampha's debut album, Process, was released on 3 February 2017 by Young and won the 2017 Mercury Prize. His second album, Lahai, was released on 20 October 2023.

#5534

Mark Benton

#79069

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Mark Benton is an English actor and television presenter known for his roles as Eddie in Early Doors, Howard in Northern Lights and Martin Pond in Barbara. Benton has also starred in the BBC One school-based drama series Waterloo Road as mathematics teacher Daniel "Chalky" Chalk from 2011 to 2014. In 2013, Benton took part in Strictly Come Dancing, and in 2015 he hosted the daytime game show The Edge.

#5535

Tom Stanton

#58515

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Tom Stanton is the author of several nonfiction books, including two memoirs. In 1983, Stanton, a journalist, co-founded The Voice Newspapers in suburban Detroit and served as editor for sixteen years before embarking on a literary career in 1999. A former Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan, Stanton teaches journalism at the University of Detroit Mercy. In 2008, Stanton won the Michigan Author Award.

#5536

Mark Andre

#116252

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Mark Andre is a French composer living in Germany. He was known as "Marc André," his birth name, until 2007, when he formally revised the spelling. He lives in Berlin. Andre's compositions durch , ...auf... III , and Wunderzaichen received multiple votes in a 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000.

#5537

Asim Peco

#84351

Overall Influence

1927 - 2011 (84 years)

Asim Peco was a renowned Bosnian linguist, academician, professor, author and editor. Peco's work is credited for the development of Bosniann and Herzegovinian linguistics. His areas of specialization include the dialectology of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, namely the Shtokavian and Torlakian dialects. He wrote books on the speeches of eastern and central Herzegovina, speeches of western Herzegovina, Ikavian-Štokavian dialects of Bosnia and Turkish loanwords into them.

#5538

Charles L. Dufour

#81869

Overall Influence

1903 - 1996 (93 years)

Charles L. "Pie" Dufour was an American newspaper journalist, historian, humorist, and book author from New Orleans, Louisiana who served as a columnist for the New Orleans States-Item newspaper. He wrote approximately 9700 installments of his column "Pie Dufour's A La Mode" for the States-Item and for the Sunday edition of the New Orleans Times-Picayune during his newspaper tenure, from 1949 until his retirement in 1978. He authored 20 books and approximately 50 articles for scholarly literature. Dufour's column covered diverse topics including Louisiana history, New Orleans Mardi Gras, l...

#5539

Dickey Betts

#27272

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Forrest Richard Betts is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter, and composer best known as a founding member of the Allman Brothers Band. Early in his career, he collaborated with Duane Allman, introducing melodic twin guitar harmony and counterpoint which "rewrote the rules for how two rock guitarists can work together, completely scrapping the traditional rhythm/lead roles to stand toe to toe". Following Allman's death in 1971, Betts assumed sole lead guitar duties during the peak of the group's commercial success in the mid-1970s. Betts was the writer and singer on the Allmans' hit single "Ramblin' Man".

#5540

Kim Jee-woon

#72095

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Kim Jee-woon is a South Korean film director, screenwriter, and producer. He was a theater actor and director before debuting with his self-written and directed film, The Quiet Family in 1998. Kim has worked with increasing levels of success in cinema, showing accomplished acting and a detailed stylization in his films. He is currently one of the most recognized screenwriters/directors in the Korean film industry.

#5541

Hong Sang-soo

#78210

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Hong Sang-soo is a South Korean film director and screenwriter. An acclaimed and prolific filmmaker, Hong is known for his slow-paced films about love affairs and everyday dilemmas in contemporary South Korea.

#5542

Jacques Hétu

#110781

Overall Influence

1938 - 2010 (72 years)

Jacques Hétu was a Canadian composer and music educator. Biography Jacques Hétu was born in Trois-Rivières, Quebec; he began his professional training at the University of Ottawa where he was a pupil of Jules Martel from 1955 to 1956. In 1956 he entered the Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal and studied there for five years with Melvin Berman , Isabelle Delorme , Jean Papineau-Couture , Clermont Pépin , and Georges Savaria ; he also studied at the Tanglewood Music Center during the summer of 1959 with Lukas Foss. In 1961 he won several important awards, including the first prize a...

#5543

Conte Candoli

#99712

Overall Influence

1927 - 2001 (74 years)

Secondo "Conte" Candoli was an American jazz trumpeter based on the West Coast. He played in the big bands of Woody Herman, Stan Kenton, Benny Goodman, and Dizzy Gillespie, and in Doc Severinsen's NBC Orchestra on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. He played with Gerry Mulligan, and on Frank Sinatra's TV specials. He also recorded with Supersax, a Charlie Parker tribute band that consisted of a saxophone quintet, the rhythm section, and either a trumpet or trombone.

#5544

John Mason

#73324

Overall Influence

1927 - 2019 (92 years)

John Mason was an American artist who did experimental work with ceramics. Mason's work focused on exploring the physical properties of clay and its "extreme plasticity". One of a group of artists who had studied under the pioneering ceramicist Peter Voulkos, he created wall reliefs and expressionistic sculptures, often on a monumental scale.

#5545

G. A. Wells

#65799

Overall Influence

1926 - 2017 (91 years)

George Albert Wells was an English scholar who served as Professor of German at Birkbeck, University of London. After writing books about famous European intellectuals, such as Johann Gottfried Herder and Franz Grillparzer, he turned to the study of the historicity of Jesus, starting with his book The Jesus of the Early Christians in 1971. He is best known as an advocate of the thesis that Jesus is essentially a mythical rather than a historical figure, a theory that was pioneered by German biblical scholars such as Bruno Bauer and Arthur Drews.

#5546

Gail Anderson

#112702

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Gail Anderson is an American graphic designer, writer, and educator- known for her typographic skill, hand-lettering and poster design. Biography Early life and education Gail Anderson's family migrated to the Bronx, New York from Jamaica. She was the first-generation American, and first-generation college-educated in her family. In her youth, Anderson created Jackson 5 and Partridge Family pretend magazines. As she got older, she began to look into what was then called “commercial art” as a possible career field.

#5547

Django Bates

#92565

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Django Bates is an award winning British jazz musician, composer, multi-instrumentalist, band leader and educator. He plays the piano, keyboards and the tenor horn. Bates has been described as "one of the most talented musicians Britain has produced... his work covers the entire spectrum of jazz, from early jazz through to bebop and free jazz to jazz-rock fusion."

#5548

Pinetop Perkins

#73541

Overall Influence

1913 - 2011 (98 years)

Joe Willie "Pinetop" Perkins was an American blues pianist. He played with some of the most influential blues and rock-and-roll performers of his time and received numerous honors, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and induction into the Blues Hall of Fame.

#5549

Ananya Chatterjea

#88807

Overall Influence

Ananya Chatterjea is a contemporary Indian dancer and scholar. She is the founder, artistic director, and choreographer of Ananya Dance Theatre, a professional, contemporary Indian dance company composed of women artists of color. She is also a professor of dance at the University of Minnesota. Originally from Bengal, India, Chatterjea now lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

#5550

John P. Hammond

#64196

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

John Paul Hammond is an American singer and musician. The son of record producer John H. Hammond, he is sometimes referred to as John Hammond Jr. Background Hammond is a son of record producer and talent scout John H. Hammond and his first wife, Jemison McBride, an actress. He is a descendant of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the patriarch of the prominent Vanderbilt family, through his paternal grandmother Emily Vanderbilt Sloane Hammond. He has a brother, Jason, and a stepsister, Rosita Sarnoff, the daughter of his father's second wife, Esme O'Brien Sarnoff. Hammond's middle name, Paul, is in honor of a friend of his father, the actor Paul Robeson.

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