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,

#5601

Paul Bartel

#71881

Overall Influence

1938 - 2000 (62 years)

Paul Bartel was an American actor, writer and director. He was perhaps most known for his 1982 hit black comedy Eating Raoul, which he co-wrote, starred in and directed. Bartel appeared in over 90 movies and TV episodes, including such titles as Eat My Dust , Hollywood Boulevard , Rock 'n' Roll High School , Get Crazy , Chopping Mall , and Amazon Women on the Moon . He frequently co-starred with friend and former Warhol girl Mary Woronov; the pair appeared in 17 films together, often as husband and wife.

#5602

Bounty Killer

#60606

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Rodney Basil Price , known as Bounty Killer, is a Jamaican lyricist, deejay, actor, dancer and choreographer. AllMusic describes him as "one of the most aggressive dancehall stars of the '90s, a street-tough rude boy with an unrepentant flair for gun talk". He is considered one of the best dancehall lyricists of all time.

#5603

Tex Beneke

$Tex Beneke$

#69161

Overall Influence

1914 - 2000 (86 years)

Gordon Lee "Tex" Beneke was an American saxophonist, singer, and bandleader. His career is a history of associations with bandleader Glenn Miller and former musicians and singers who worked with Miller. His band is also associated with the careers of Eydie Gormé, Henry Mancini and Ronnie Deauville. Beneke also solos on the recording the Glenn Miller Orchestra made of their popular song "In The Mood" and sings on another popular Glenn Miller recording, "Chattanooga Choo Choo". Jazz critic Will Friedwald considers Beneke to be one of the major blues singers who sang with the big bands of the ea...

#5604

Phil Trumbo

#98698

Overall Influence

Phil Trumbo is an American art director, graphic designer, and film director. He is Professor and Department Chair of Digital Gaming and Media at the Kirkland Campus of Lake Washington Institute of Technology and is the creator of numerous popular video games.

#5605

David Maslanka

#86893

Overall Influence

1943 - 2017 (74 years)

David Maslanka was an American composer of Polish descent who wrote for a variety of genres, including works for choir, wind ensemble, chamber music, and symphony orchestra. Best known for his wind ensemble compositions, Maslanka published over 150 pieces, including ten symphonies, eight of them for concert band, over 15 concerti, and a full Mass. His compositional style is rhythmically intense and complex, highly tonal and melodically oriented. His compositions have been performed throughout the United States, Europe, Australia, Canada, and Japan. His Tenth Symphony was orchestrated by his s...

#5606

Miranda July

#66919

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Miranda July is an American film director, screenwriter, actress and author. Her body of work includes film, fiction, monologue, digital presentations and live performance art. She wrote, directed and starred in the films Me and You and Everyone We Know and The Future and wrote and directed Kajillionaire . She has authored a book of short stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You ; a collection of nonfiction short stories, It Chooses You ; and the novel The First Bad Man .

#5607

Maël Renouard

#97990

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (47 years)

Maël Renouard is a French writer and translator. Biography A former student at the École Normale Supérieure and agrégé in philosophy, Maël Renouard taught philosophy at the Paris-1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University between 2002 and 2006 and at the École Normale Supérieure between 2006 and 2009, as an attaché temporaire d'enseignement et de recherche.

#5608

Jim Jarmusch

#80419

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

James Robert Jarmusch is an American film director and screenwriter. He has been a major proponent of independent cinema since the 1980s, directing films such as Stranger Than Paradise , Down by Law , Mystery Train , Dead Man , Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai , Coffee and Cigarettes , Broken Flowers , Only Lovers Left Alive , and Paterson . Stranger Than Paradise was added to the National Film Registry in December 2002. As a musician Jarmusch has composed music for his films and released three albums with Jozef van Wissem.

#5609

Helen Aristar-Dry

#89002

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Helen Aristar-Dry is an American linguist who currently serves as the series editor for SpringerBriefs in Linguistics. Most notably, from 1991 to 2013 she co-directed The LINGUIST List with Anthony Aristar. She has served as principal investigator or co-Principal Investigator on over $5,000,000 worth of research grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She retired as Professor of English Language and Literature from Eastern Michigan University in 2013.

#5610

Don Randi

#69716

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Don Randi is an American keyboard player, bandleader, and songwriter who was a member of the Wrecking Crew. Career Don was born February 25, 1937, in New York City. He was raised in the Catskill Mountains and studied classical music. In 1954, he moved to Los Angeles and became a studio musician. During the next year, he began working at record distribution company where he was influenced by jazz musicians, particularly Horace Silver.

#5611

Norman Del Mar

#104334

Overall Influence

1919 - 1994 (75 years)

Norman René Del Mar CBE was a British conductor, horn player, and biographer. As a conductor, he specialised in the music of late romantic composers; including Edward Elgar, Gustav Mahler, and Richard Strauss. He left a great legacy of recordings of British music, in particular Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Frederick Delius, and Benjamin Britten. He notably conducted the premiere recording of Britten's children's opera Noye's Fludde.

#5612

Steve Turre

#101309

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Stephen Johnson Turre is an American jazz trombonist and a pioneer of using seashellss as instruments, a composer, arranger, and educator at the collegiate-conservatory level. For years, Turre has been active in jazz, rock, and Latin jazz – in live venues, recording studios, television, and cinema production.

#5613

Larry Norman

#62921

Overall Influence

1947 - 2008 (61 years)

Larry David Norman was an American musician, singer, songwriter, record label owner, and record producer. He is considered to be one of the pioneers of Christian rock music and released more than 100 albums.

#5614

Gérard Troupeau

#88388

Overall Influence

1927 - 2010 (83 years)

Gérard Troupeau was a French scholar agrégé of Arabic, a professor at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales from 1961 to 1990, and director of studies of Arabic philology at the École pratique des hautes études .

#5615

Ben Gibbard

#40680

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Benjamin Gibbard is an American singer, songwriter and guitarist. He is best known as the lead vocalist and guitarist of the indie rock band Death Cab for Cutie, with whom he has recorded ten studio albums, and as a member of the supergroup The Postal Service. Gibbard released his debut solo album, Former Lives, in 2012, and a collaborative studio album, One Fast Move or I'm Gone with Jay Farrar.

#5616

Jimmy Scott

#88401

Overall Influence

1925 - 2014 (89 years)

James Victor Scott , known professionally as Little Jimmy Scott or Jimmy Scott, was an American jazz vocalist known for his high natural contralto voice and his sensitivity on ballads and love songs.

#5617

Jean Gagnepain

#107805

Overall Influence

1923 - 2006 (83 years)

Jean Gagnepain was a French linguist and anthropologist. Biography Jean Gagnepain was born on November 16, 1923, in Sully-sur-Loire . After obtaining an Agrégation in grammar, he carried on his study of language under the direction of Joseph Vendryes. He went to Dublin for about ten years to study celtic languages and concluded his stay in Ireland by defending a PhD thesis, in 1957, at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Paris, on the syntax of the verbal noun in celtic languages. His complementary thesis was on the Greek nouns in -ΟΣ and -Α. In 1958, he was appointed as a professor at the University of Rennes where he stayed for the rest of his career .

#5618

Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen

#91075

Overall Influence

1946 - 2005 (59 years)

Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen , also known by his abbreviated nickname NHØP, was a Danish jazz double bassist. Biography Pedersen was born in Osted, near Roskilde, on the Danish island of Zealand, the son of a church organist. As a child, Ørsted Pedersen played piano, but from the age of 13, he started learning to play upright bass and at the age of 14, while studying, he began his professional jazz career in Denmark with his first band, Jazzkvintet 60 . By the age of fifteen, he had the ability to accompany leading musicians at nightclubs, working regularly at Copenhagen's Jazzhus Montmartre, after his debut there on New Year's Eve 1961, when he was only 15.

#5619

Ton de Leeuw

#106367

Overall Influence

1926 - 1996 (70 years)

Antonius Wilhelmus Adrianus de Leeuw was a Dutch composer. He occasionally experimented with microtonality. Life and career Taught by Henk Badings, Olivier Messiaen and others, and in his youth influenced by Béla Bartók, De Leeuw was a teacher at the University of Amsterdam and later professor of composition and electronic music at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam from 1959 to 1986, at which institute he served as director from 1971–73. For his notable students,

#5620

Adam Shankman

#62048

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Adam Michael Shankman is an American film director, producer, writer, dancer, author, actor, and choreographer. He was a permanent judge on seasons 6–7 of the television program So You Think You Can Dance. He began his professional career in musical theater, and was a dancer in music videos for Paula Abdul and Janet Jackson. Shankman has choreographed dozens of films and directed several feature-length films, including A Walk to Remember, Bringing Down the House, The Pacifier, and the musicals Hairspray and Disenchanted.

#5621

Arno Paduch

#125873

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Arno Paduch is a German cornetto player, conductor and musicologist. After highschool degree in Friedberg , Paduch studied musicology at Goethe University Frankfurt and afterwards cornetto and historic performance practice at Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basle . Still being a student, in 1992 he received a teaching assignment for cornetto and ensemble playing at the early music division of University of Music and Theatre Leipzig which he has been keeping until today. In 1995 Paduch founded the Johann Rosenmüller Ensemble Leipzig, specialised on music of the 17th and 18th centuries.

#5622

Fazıl Say

#75300

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Fazıl Say is a Turkish pianist and composer. Life and career Fazıl Say was born in 1970. His father, Ahmet Say was an author and musicologist. His mother, Gürgün Say was a pharmacist. His grandfather Fazıl Say, whose name he shares, was a member of the Spartakusbund. Say was a child prodigy, who was able to do basic arithmetic with 4-digit numbers at the age of two. His father, having found out that he was playing the melody of "Daha Dün Annemizin" on a makeshift flute with no prior training, enlisted the help of Ali Kemal Kaya, an oboist and family friend. At the age of three, Say started ...

#5623

Matrena Vakhrusheva

Matrena Vakhrusheva

#91240

Overall Influence

1918 - 2000 (82 years)

Matrena Vakhrusheva 12 April 1918 – 1 January 2000 Early life Matrena Pankratjevna Vakhrusheva was born on 12 April 1918 in in the Kondinsky District of the Ostyak–Vogul National Okrug of Soviet Russia to Ekaterina Semenovna and Pankratia Mikhailovich Vakhrushev. The family of six children were raised on their ancestral lands, where their father engaged in farming, raising cattle, horses, and Siberian huskies. Prior to her marriage, Vakhrusheva's mother had worked in domestic service to the merchant Popov family in Nakhrachi. At 9, Vakhrusheva began attending school at the public school. The teacher, Kapitolina Andreevna taught in a one-room school with children of a broad range of ages.

#5624

Viacheslav Chirikba

#101064

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Viacheslav Chirikba is a linguist and politician from Abkhazia. He was Minister for Foreign Affairs of Abkhazia between 2011 and 2016. Personal life Chirikba was born on 17 March 1959 in Gagra. From 1966 until 1976, he attended School No.5 in Gagra. Chirikba is married and has three sons.

#5625

Daron Hagen

#96874

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Daron Aric Hagen is an American composer, writer, and filmmaker. Biography Early life Daron Hagen was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and grew up in New Berlin, a suburb west of Milwaukee. Hagen was the youngest of the three sons of Gwen Hagen, a visual artist, writer and advertising executive who studied creative writing with Mari Sandoz and enjoyed a successful advertising career as creative director of Exclusively Yours Magazine and Earl Hagen . Hagen began composing prolifically in 1974, when his older brother Kevin gave him a recording and score of Benjamin Britten's Billy Budd. Two years...

#5626

Lisa Lopes

#39978

Overall Influence

1971 - 2002 (31 years)

Lisa Nicole Lopes , better known by her stage name Left Eye, was an American rapper and singer. She was a member of the R&B girl group TLC, alongside Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins and Rozonda "Chilli" Thomas. Besides rapping and singing backing vocals on TLC recordings, Lopes was the creative force behind the group, receiving more co-writing credits than the other members. She also designed some of their outfits and the stage for their FanMail Tour and contributed to the group's image, album titles, artworks, and music videos. Through her work with TLC, Lopes won four Grammy Awards.

#5627

Liam O'Flynn

#89075

Overall Influence

1945 - 2018 (73 years)

Liam O'Flynn, Óg Flynn was an Irish uilleann piper and Irish traditional musician. In addition to a solo career and as a member of Planxty, O'Flynn recorded with: Christy Moore, Dónal Lunny, Andy Irvine, Kate Bush, Mark Knopfler, the Everly Brothers, Emmylou Harris, Mike Oldfield, Mary Black, Enya and Sinéad O'Connor.

#5628

J. Martin Holman

#84380

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

James Martin Holman Jr. is a literary translator, professor, puppeteer, and puppet theater director. He did his graduate work in Japanese literature at the University of California, Berkeley. Holman lived in Japan for more than 14 years as a missionary, graduate student, professor of Japanese literature, and resident director of two study centers: the Japan Center for Michigan Universities in Hikone and the Associated Kyoto Program Center at Doshisha University in Kyoto. He was the first non-Japanese to train and perform in Japan as a traditional puppeteer in the style of puppetry commonly ...

#5629

Alice Louise Davison

#88951

Overall Influence

1940 - 2017 (77 years)

Alice Davison was an American linguist who specialized in the syntax of South Asian languages, in particular Hindustani. Early life and education Davison grew up in Washington, D.C. She graduated from the Potomac School in McLean, Virginia in 1955, and the Madeira School in McLean in 1958. She then went to Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, graduating in 1962. She received her PhD from the University of Chicago in 1972, writing her dissertation on performative verbs.

#5630

Idris Muhammad

#91049

Overall Influence

1939 - 2014 (75 years)

Idris Muhammad was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. He had an extensive career performing jazz, funk, R&B, and soul music and recorded with musicians such as Ahmad Jamal, Lou Donaldson, Pharoah Sanders, Bob James, and Tete Montoliu.

#5631

James Spaulding

James Spaulding

#89703

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

James Ralph Spaulding Jr. is an American jazz saxophonist and flutist. Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, United states, Spaulding attended the Chicago Cosmopolitan School of Music. Between 1957 and 1961, he was a member of Sun Ra's band. In the 1960s, he worked as a studio musician at Blue Note Records, recording with Wayne Shorter, Horace Silver, and Stanley Turrentine. He was also a member of Freddie Hubbard's quintet and the World Saxophone Quartet.

#5632

James E. Katz

#108621

Overall Influence

James E. Katz is an American communication scholar with an expertise in new media . He has published widely and is frequently invited to comment on his research at both academic and public policy forms as well as to give interviews to media outlets.

#5633

Jose Rodriguez

#30509

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. is an American former intelligence officer who served as Director of the National Clandestine Service of the Central Intelligence Agency . He was the final CIA deputy director for operations before that position was expanded to D/NCS in December 2004. Rodriguez was a central figure in the 2005 CIA interrogation videotapes destruction, leading to The New York Times Editorial Board and Human Rights Watch to call for his prosecution.

#5634

Annette Lemieux

Annette Lemieux

#68784

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Annette Lemieux is an American artist who emerged in the early 1980s along with the "picture theory" artists . Lemieux brought to the studio a discipline equally based on introspection, and the manifestations of an ideological minimalism. Process is a key component in the execution of her works over the past three decades, creating the lure to the confrontation of issues of social and historical urgency. Lemieux has been the recipient of awards from the National Endowment of the Arts and the Keiser Wilhelm Museum, Germany and an honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Monserrat College of Art....

#5635

David Benoit

#78850

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

David Bryan Benoit is an American jazz pianist, composer and producer, based in Los Angeles, California, United States. Benoit has charted over 25 albums since 1980, and has been nominated for three Grammy Awards. He is also music director for the Pacific Vision Youth Symphony and the Asia America Youth Orchestra. Furthermore, crediting Vince Guaraldi as an inspiration, Benoit has participated both as performer and music director for the later animated adaptations of the Peanuts comic strip, such as the feature film, The Peanuts Movie, restoring Guaraldi's musical signature to the franchise...

#5636

A. T. Ummer

#69651

Overall Influence

1933 - 2001 (68 years)

Anjukandy Thalakkal Ummer was a Malayalam music composer from Kerala, India. He is known for composing many soft melodies for 174 Malayalam moviess. Born in Anjukandy in Kannur district on 10 March 1933, as the son of A. T. Moideen Kunhi and Sainaba, Ummer made his debut in the 1967 film Thalirukkal. In 1969 he composed songs for the film Almaram, directed by A. Vincent. Two years later, Ummer composed music for Vincent's musical film Abhijathyam.

#5637

Heidrun Gerzymisch

Heidrun Gerzymisch

#87205

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Heidrun Gerzymisch is a German Translation scholar and emeritus professor at Saarland University in Saarbrücken, where she held the Chair for "English Linguistics and Translation Science" from 1993 to 2009. She is in 2014 responsible for the international PhD prep school "MuTra" at Saarland University’s Graduate Center GradUS and lectures Translation at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences .

#5638

Liz Anderson

#89428

Overall Influence

1927 - 2011 (84 years)

Elizabeth Jane Anderson was an American country music singer-songwriter who was one in a wave of new-generation female vocalists in the genre during the 1960s to write and record her own songs on a regular basis. Writing in The New York Times Bill Friskics-Warren noted, "Like her contemporary Loretta Lynn, Ms. Anderson gave voice to female survivors; inhabiting their struggles in a soprano at times alluring, at times sassy."

#5639

André Louis Delbecq

#134103

Overall Influence

#5640

Joe Williams

#79739

Overall Influence

1918 - 1999 (81 years)

Joe Williams was an American jazz singer. He sang with big bands such as the Count Basie Orchestra and the Lionel Hampton Orchestra and with his combos. He sang in two films with the Basie orchestra and sometimes worked as an actor.

#5641

Tony Garnier

#92799

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Tony Garnier is an American bassist, best known as an accompanist to Bob Dylan, with whom he has played since 1989. Early life Garnier was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota on May 10, 1955. His grandfather, D'Jalma "Papa" Garnier, was a New Orleans jazz trumpeter and bandleader. Garnier's brother, also named D'Jalma, is a Creole fiddler. Garnier grew up in southern California.

#5642

William Vacchiano

#69609

Overall Influence

1912 - 2005 (93 years)

William Vacchiano was a trumpeter and trumpet instructor. Originally from Portland, Maine, Vacchiano studied trumpet at age 12. At 14 years old, he was playing in the Portland Symphony. For five years , he studied under Max Schlossberg at the latter's studio in The Bronx. He joined the New York Philharmonic in 1935 as third/assistant principal trumpet and appointed principal trumpet in 1942 by Bruno Walter. He taught at the Juilliard School for 67 years . He was also a professor at the Mannes College of Music from 1937–83 and the Manhattan School of Music from 1935-2002. His students include...

#5643

Richard Holmes

#58757

Overall Influence

1931 - 1991 (60 years)

Richard Arnold "Groove" Holmes was an American jazz organist who performed in the hard bop and soul jazz genre. He is best known for his 1965 recording of "Misty". Career Holmes's first album, on Pacific Jazz with guest Ben Webster, was recorded in March 1961. He recorded many albums for Pacific Jazz, Prestige, Groove Merchant, and Muse, many of them with Houston Person.

#5644

Helen Forrest

#85120

Overall Influence

1917 - 1999 (82 years)

Helen Forrest was an American singer of traditional pop and swing music. She served as the "girl singer" for three of the most popular big bands of the Swing Era , thereby earning a reputation as "the voice of the name bands."

#5645

Lyle Mays

#64932

Overall Influence

1953 - 2020 (67 years)

Lyle David Mays was an American jazz pianist, composer, and member of the Pat Metheny Group. Metheny and Mays composed and arranged nearly all of the group's music, for which Mays won eleven Grammy Awards.

#5646

Takashi Niigaki

#115986

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

is a Japanese composer and music teacher, known for having composed pieces on behalf of the celebrated allegedly-deaf composer Mamoru Samuragochi, and for admitting his role in this deception in 2014 prior to the use of one of his pieces at the 2014 Winter Olympics by figure skater Daisuke Takahashi.

#5647

Pascal Boeckx

#134218

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

#5648

Paul Griffin

#77389

Overall Influence

1937 - 2000 (63 years)

Paul Griffin was an American pianist and session musician who recorded with hundreds of musicians from the 1950s to the 1990s. Career Born in Harlem, New York, he began as the touring pianist in the backing band for King Curtis and eventually worked with Bob Dylan, Steely Dan, Don McLean, the Isley Brothers, Van Morrison, the Shirelles, and Dionne Warwick. He may be best known for his colourful and distinctive playing on the Bob Dylan albums Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, and also on Steely Dan's Aja. He is extensively featured playing a virtuoso performance of gospel piano on Don...

#5649

Richard Vernon

#101306

Overall Influence

1925 - 1997 (72 years)

Richard Evelyn Vernon was a British actor. He appeared in many feature films and television programmes, often in aristocratic or supercilious roles. Prematurely balding and greying, Vernon settled into playing archetypal middle-aged lords and military types while still in his 30s. He is perhaps best known for originating the role of Slartibartfast in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Other notable roles included the lead role of Edwin Oldenshaw in The Man in Room 17 , Sir James Greenley alias "C" in The Sandbaggers , and Sir Desmond Glazebrook in Yes Minister and its sequel series Yes, P...

#5650

Hariharan

#60936

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Hariharan Anantha Subramani is an Indian playback, bhajan and ghazal singer who predominantly sings in Tamil, Hindi and Telugu languages. He has also sung over 15,000 notable songs in 10 languages including Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Sinhala, Bhojpuri, Odia, Bengali, Sanskrit, Gujarati and English. He is an established ghazal singer and one of the pioneers of Indian fusion music.

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