The Most Influential People Across History
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).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people in Communications,
#5751
Li Pei
#57580
Overall Influence
1917 - 2017 (100 years)
Li Pei , was a Chinese linguist and professor of English. Biography Born in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu, She majored in economics at Peking University in 1936. In 1947, she studied at Cornell University in the U.S. where, she met and married Guo Yonghuai who became later one of the founding fathers of China's nuclear bomb. Li and Guo returned to China from the U.S. in 1956.
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Camarón de la Isla
#90752
Overall Influence
1950 - 1992 (42 years)
José Monje Cruz , better known by his stage name Camarón de la Isla , was a Spanish Romani flamenco singer. Considered one of the all-time greatest flamenco singers, he was noted for his collaborations with Paco de Lucía and Tomatito, and the three of them were of major importance to the revival of flamenco in the second half of the 20th century.
Go to Profile#5753
Ed Brubaker
#47384
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Ed Brubaker is an American comic book writer, cartoonist and screenwriter who works primarily in the crime fiction genre. He began his career with the semi-autobiographical series Lowlife and a number of serials in the Dark Horse Presents anthology, before achieving industry-wide acclaim with the Vertigo series Scene of the Crime and moving to the superhero comics such as Batman, Catwoman, The Authority, Captain America, Daredevil and Uncanny X-Men. Brubaker is best known for his long-standing collaboration with British artist Sean Phillips, starting with their Elseworlds one-shot Batman: Got...
Go to Profile#5754
Billy Murray
#93859
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
William Albert Murray is an English actor, best known for playing Don Beech in The Bill from 1995 to 2004, Johnny Allen in the BBC soap opera EastEnders from 2005 to 2006, and Captain John Price in the video games Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
Go to Profile#5755
Jack Clement
#58993
Overall Influence
1931 - 2013 (82 years)
Jack Henderson Clement was an American singer, songwriter, as well as a record and film producer. Biography Early life Clement grew up and was educated in Memphis, Tennessee, Clement was performing at an early age, playing guitar and dobro. Before embarking on a career in music, he served in the United States Marines. In 1953, he made his first record for Sheraton Records in Boston, but he did not immediately pursue a full-time career in music, instead choosing to study at Memphis State University from 1953 to 1955. Nicknamed "Cowboy" Jack Clement, during his student days, he played steel guitar with a local band.
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Nikolaus P. Himmelmann
#135475
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Nikolaus P. Himmelmann is a German linguist. His interests include linguistic typology, grammar, prosody, and linguistic documentation. He obtained his doctorate at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in 1986 and habilitation at the University of Cologne in 1995. From 1996 to 1998, he was a research fellow at the Australian National University. Afterwards, he was a professor at Ruhr University in Bochum and at Westphalian Wilhelms-University in Münster . In 2010, he was appointed Professor of General Linguistics at the University of Cologne.
Go to Profile#5757
Kellie Bright
#92612
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Kellie Denise Bright is an English actress. Her roles include Linda Carter in the BBC soap opera EastEnders, for which she won the 2015 British Soap Award for Best Actress and Best Dramatic Performance, Julie in Ali G Indahouse, Joanna Burrows in The Upper Hand , Cassie Tyler in Bad Girls and Joan Trotter in Rock & Chips . In 2015, she was the runner-up in the 13th series of the BBC One show Strictly Come Dancing.
Go to Profile#5758
Joan Solà i Cortassa
#107708
Overall Influence
1940 - 2010 (70 years)
Joan Solà Cortassa was a Spanish linguist and philologist. He was professor of Catalan language and literature at the University of Barcelona from 1984 onwards, and vice president of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans from 2009.
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Helen Worth
#77043
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Helen Worth is an English actress. She is best known for portraying the role of Gail Platt in the ITV soap opera Coronation Street, a role that she has played since 1974. In 2014, she received the British Soap Award for Outstanding Achievement.
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Hsinchun Chen
#23379
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Hsinchun Chen is the Regents' Professor and Thomas R. Brown Chair of Management and Technology at the University of Arizona and the Director and founder of the Artificial Intelligence Lab . He also served as lead program director of the Smart and Connected Health program at the National Science Foundation from 2014 to 2015. He received a B.S. degree from National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan, an MBA from SUNY Buffalo and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Information Systems from New York University.
Go to Profile#5761
E. Keith Eddington
#108973
Overall Influence
1923 - 2007 (84 years)
Elmo Keith Eddington was an American artist and graphic designer from Utah. He fought in World War II. He was a professor at the University of Utah, and later at Brigham Young University. He is noted for his portraiture and for his large painting of Jesus Christ that hangs in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building at Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah.
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Pilar Vergara
#128279
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Pilar Vergara is a Chilean journalist, winner of the National Prize for Journalism in 1993. Career Pilar Vergara is the daughter of Ruperto Vergara Santa Cruz, a publicist and farmer from La Calera, and Olga Tagle. She is the granddaughter of distinguished jurist and diplomat Ruperto Vergara Bulnes. She studied at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile , graduating in 1968.
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Betsy Jolas
#111861
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (100 years)
Elizabeth Jolas is a Franco-American composer. Biography Jolas was born in Paris in 1926. Her mother, the American translator Maria McDonald, was a singer. Her father, the poet and journalist Eugene Jolas, founded and edited the magazine transition, which published over ten years most of the great names of the interwar period.
Go to Profile#5764
Richard Parncutt
#32888
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Richard Parncutt is an Australian-born academic. He has been professor of systematic musicology at Karl Franzens University Graz in Austria since 1998. Education Parncutt studied music and physics at the University of Melbourne, and physics at the University of New England, Australia. In 1987, he was awarded a PhD from the University of New England. He was a guest researcher under Ernst Terhardt , Johan Sundberg , Annabel Cohen , Al Bregman , Helga de la Motte-Haber and John Sloboda . From 1996 to 1998 he held a position as a lecturer in psychology at Keele University, UK.
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Tibor Varga
#101211
Overall Influence
1921 - 2003 (82 years)
Tibor Varga was a Hungarian violinist, conductor, and world renowned music teacher who developed pedagogic methods for teaching string music. He was a founding member of the string department in the Detmold music conservatory.
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Larry Taylor
#78250
Overall Influence
1942 - 2019 (77 years)
Samuel Lawrence Taylor was an American bass guitarist, best known for his work as a member of Canned Heat from 1967. Before joining Canned Heat he had been a session bassist for The Monkees and Jerry Lee Lewis. He was the younger brother of Mel Taylor, long-time drummer of The Ventures.
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John Willard Rohrbaugh
#136140
Overall Influence
#5768
Alec Marantz
#136157
Overall Influence
#5769
Donald E. Gibson
#88509
Overall Influence
Donald E. Gibson is an American academic administrator and author. He is a professor of management and marketing as well as the dean of the O'Malley School of Business at Manhattan College. Previously he was a dean of the Fairfield University Dolan School of Business and former executive director of the International Association for Conflict Management.
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Donald Hunsberger
#89149
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Donald Hunsberger was an American conductor and arranger. He served as the conductor of the Eastman Wind Ensemble from 1965 until 2002. He also held the position of Professor of conducting at the Eastman School of Music. Generally regarded as a key contributor to the rise of the modern wind ensemble in the twentieth century, Hunsberger's notable contributions include conducting, recording, and arranging music for winds.
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Paul Hanley
#105039
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Paul Hanley is an English writer and podcaster. He is also one of the two drummers in the rock band House of All. He has previously been the drummer for the Fall , Tom Hingley and the Lovers, and Brix & the Extricated, all alongside his brother Steve Hanley.
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Jennifer Mercieca
#103856
Overall Influence
Jennifer Mercieca is an American scholar of rhetoric. She is a professor of communication at Texas A&M University. She has written about the rhetorical style of Donald Trump, and the founding narratives that informed the political culture of the United States.
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Seth Lakeman
#102900
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Seth Bernard Lakeman is an English singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who is most often associated with the fiddle and tenor guitar, but also plays the viola and banjo. Nominated for the 2005 Mercury Music Prize, Lakeman has belonged to several musical ensembles, including one with his two brothers, fellow folk musicians Sam Lakeman and Sean Lakeman, but has most recently established himself as a solo act.
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Frank Capp
#82831
Overall Influence
1931 - 2017 (86 years)
Francis Cappuccio , known professionally as Frank Capp, was an American jazz drummer. Capp also played on numerous rock and roll sessions and is considered to be a member of the Wrecking Crew. Biography Capp was born Francis Cappuccio in Worcester, Massachusetts, United States. He began playing with Stan Kenton in early 1952 and remained with Kenton until the end of that year. He then joined Neal Hefti's group. He often accompanied Peggy Lee on her road dates and subsequently went to Los Angeles where he joined Billy May, and recorded with The Wrecking Crew. He played with Ella Fitzgerald, Harry James, Charlie Barnet, Stan Getz, Art Pepper, and Dave Pell.
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Dave
#82134
Overall Influence
1998 - Present (28 years)
David Orobosa Michael Omoregie , also known as Santan Dave, or just Dave, is a British rapper. He has gained acclaim for his socially conscious lyricism and wordplay. Dave released his debut extended play Six Paths in 2016, after the release of several successful singles including the grime song "Thiago Silva" with AJ Tracey. In the same year, Canadian rapper Drake premiered a remix single of Dave's song "Wanna Know" featuring himself on OVO Sound Radio. Dave released his second EP Game Over in 2017. In 2018, his political song "Question Time", which directed criticism towards the British Government, won the Ivor Novello Award for Best Contemporary Song.
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James Mtume
#60528
Overall Influence
1947 - 2022 (75 years)
James Forman , known professionally as Mtume or James Mtume, was an American jazz and R&B musician, songwriter, record producer, activist, and radio personality. He came to prominence as a jazz musician, working with Miles Davis between 1971 and 1975. Mtume's R&B group, also called Mtume, is best known for the 1983 R&B hit song "Juicy Fruit", which has been repeatedly sampled. Mtume the band also had a top-five R&B hit with the single "You, Me, and He".
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Fontella Bass
#75759
Overall Influence
1940 - 2012 (72 years)
Fontella Marie Bass was an American R&B and soul singer-songwriter best known for her number-one R&B hit "Rescue Me" in 1965. She has been nominated for a Grammy Award twice. Early life Fontella Bass was born in St. Louis, Missouri. She was the daughter of gospel singer Martha Bass, who was a member of the Clara Ward Singers, and the older sister of R&B singer David Peaston. At an early age, Fontella showed great musical talent. At the age of five, she provided the piano accompaniment for her grandmother's singing at funeral services, she sang in her church's choir at six, and by the time she...
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Pee Wee Ellis
#86375
Overall Influence
1941 - 2021 (80 years)
Alfred James Ellis , known as Pee Wee Ellis due to his diminutive stature, was an American saxophonist, composer, and arranger. With a background in jazz, he was a member of James Brown's band in the 1960s, appearing on many of Brown's recordings and co-writing hits like "Cold Sweat" and "Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud". He also worked with Van Morrison.
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Reinhard Goebel
#104764
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Reinhard Goebel is a German conductor and violinist specialising in early music on authentic instrumentss and professor for historical performance at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. Goebel received his first violin lessons at the age of twelve. He studied the violin with , the leader of the Collegium Aureum, Saschko Gawriloff, an expert in difficult modern scores, and baroque violinists in The Hague and Eduard Melkus in Vienna.
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Anne M. Thompson
#92538
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Anne Mee Thompson is an American scientist, who specializes in atmospheric chemistry and climate change. Her work focuses on how human activities have changed the chemistry of the atmosphere, climate forcing, and the Earth's oxidizing capacity. Thompson is an elected fellow of the American Meteorological Society, American Geophysical Union, and AAAS.
Go to Profile#5781
Douglas D. O'shaughnessy
#136435
Overall Influence
#5782
Yellowman
#64130
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Winston Foster , better known by the stage name Yellowman, is a Jamaican reggae and dancehall deejay, also known as King Yellowman. He first became popular in Jamaica in the 1980s, rising to prominence with a series of singles that established his reputation.
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Arthur Berger
#104344
Overall Influence
1912 - 2003 (91 years)
Arthur Victor Berger was an American composer and music critic who has been described as a New Mannerist. Biography Born in New York City, of Jewish descent, Berger studied as an undergraduate at New York University, during which time he joined the Young Composer's Group, as a graduate student under Walter Piston at Harvard, and with Nadia Boulanger and at the Sorbonne under a Paine Fellowship.
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William P. Malm
#55459
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (98 years)
William Malm is an American musicologist known for his studies of Japanese traditional music. As a composer, teacher, and scholar of Japanese music, Malm shaped the study of ethnomusicology in the United States. Malm authored the first major scholarly study in English of the history and instruments of Japanese music, Japanese Music and Musical Instruments . He was a faculty member at the University of Michigan from 1960 to 1994. Malm served as president of the Society for Ethnomusicology from 1977 to 1979 and was named an Honorary Member of that organization in 2004. Malm was awarded the Fumio Koizumi Prize in 1992 for his contributions to the study of Japanese music.
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Will Sanders
#92798
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Will Sanders is a Dutch classical horn player, conductor, and music school professor. Biography Sanders was born in Venlo, the Netherlands. He trained in music at the Maastricht Academy of Music, where he graduated with honours in 1988. In 1985, while still a student, he became a member of the European Youth Orchestra, conducted by Claudio Abbado. A year later he joined the Mannheim National Theatre Orchestra in Germany, serving as understudy horn soloist, and in 1988 he joined the Südwestfunk Baden Baden Radio Symphony Orchestra as horn soloist. In 1990 he joined Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in the same capacity.
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Razi Hirmandi
#89292
Overall Influence
Razi Hirmandi Hirmandi was born in 1948 in Sistan, Southeast Iran. He studied English literature at Mashhad University and later got his M.A. in general linguistics from Tehran University. Hirmandi has written and translated more than 100 books. So far, he has won several national awards and IBBY Certificate of Honor for his literary translations, mainly for children.
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Akira Senju
#101072
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
is a Japanese composer, arranger and conductor. Biography Senju studied composition at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music and received his master's degree with honors. Between 1994 and 2003, he produced series of cover albums Utahime for Japanese singer Akina Nakamori with more than million sold copies overall.
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Walter Berry
#108385
Overall Influence
1929 - 2000 (71 years)
Walter Berry was an Austrian lyric bass-baritone who enjoyed a prominent career in opera. He has been cited as one of several exemplary operatic bass-baritones of his era. Professional career Walter Berry was born in Vienna. He studied voice at the Vienna Music Academy and made his stage debut with the Vienna State Opera in 1947. He became a permanent member of the company in 1950, remaining with that ensemble for his entire career, although he undertook frequent guest appearances elsewhere in Europe and in the UK.
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Cornelius L. Reid
#62781
Overall Influence
1911 - 2008 (97 years)
Cornelius Lawrence Reid , was a well-known vocal pedagogue in New York City, specialist in the bel canto technique, and author of books on bel canto. Life Childhood As a boy of nine Reid became a chorister in the choir of Trinity Church, New York. This time of regular singing in a good choir at a young age had a profound influence on him: "Retrospectively, one of the great advantages of the training given the choirboys of Trinity Church at that time was that the technique of tone production was never a matter for discussion. To the contrary, we were simply encouraged to sing musically and to pronounce the words distinctly.
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Keng Leng Siau
#136603
Overall Influence
#5791
Bruce LaBruce
#82146
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Bruce LaBruce is a Canadian artist, writer, filmmaker, photographer, and underground director based in Toronto. Life and career LaBruce was born in Tiverton, Ontario. He has claimed both Justin Stewart and Bryan Bruce as his birth name in different sources. He studied film at York University in Toronto and wrote for Cineaction magazine, curated by Robin Wood, his teacher.
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Jimmy Rogers
#77393
Overall Influence
1924 - 1997 (73 years)
Jimmy Rogers was an American Chicago blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player, best known for his work as a member of Muddy Waters's band in the early 1950s. He also had a solo career and recorded several popular blues songs, including "That's All Right" , "Chicago Bound", "Walking by Myself" , and "Rock This House". He withdrew from the music industry at the end of the 1950s, but returned to recording and touring in the 1970s.
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George Coleman
#80749
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
George Edward Coleman is an American jazz saxophonist known for his work with Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock in the 1960s. In 2015, he was named an NEA Jazz Master. Early life Coleman was born in Memphis, Tennessee. He was taught how to play the alto saxophone in his teens by his older brother Lucian Adams, inspired by Charlie Parker. Among his schoolmates were Harold Mabern, Booker Little, Frank Strozier, Hank Crawford, and Charles Lloyd.
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Edward Maibach
#50443
Overall Influence
Edward Wile Maibach is a professor at George Mason University who works on public health and climate change communication. Maibach received a B.A. in social psychology from the University of California at San Diego , a M.P.H from San Diego State University and a Ph.D. in communication research from Stanford University . Before joining the faculty at George Mason, Maibach was the associate director of the National Cancer Institute, Worldwide Director of Social Marketing at Porter Novelli and a professor of Public Health at Emory University.
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Mike Melvoin
#92922
Overall Influence
1937 - 2012 (75 years)
Mike Melvoin was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. He served as chairman and president of The Recording Academy and worked as a prolific studio musician, recording with Frank Sinatra, John Lennon, The Jackson 5, Natalie Cole, and The Beach Boys. Melvoin was nominated for the 2003 Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Solo for "All or Nothing at All" from his album It's Always You.
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Gabriel Dessauer
#89472
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Gabriel Dessauer is a German cantor, concert organist, and academic. He was responsible for the church music at St. Bonifatius, Wiesbaden from 1981 to 2021, conducting the Chor von St. Bonifatius until 2018. He is an internationally-known organ recitalist, and was an organ teacher on the faculty of the Hochschule für Musik Mainz. In 1985, he founded the German-English project choir, Reger-Chor. He has lectured at international conferences, especially about the music of Max Reger, who was a member of the St. Bonifatius parish.
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Susan Tsu
#59095
Overall Influence
Susan Tsu is an American costume designer who, as of 2017, was the Bessie F. Anathan Professor at Carnegie Mellon University and is featured in Who’s Who in Fine Arts Higher Education and Who’s Who of American Women.
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William Ennis Thomson
#80053
Overall Influence
1927 - 2019 (92 years)
William Ennis Thomson was an American music educator at the collegiate level, music theorist, composer, former Music School Dean and professor at the Thornton School of Music, University of Southern California from 1980 to 1992. His interest in research centered around the cognitive and perceptual foundation of music, insight for which is found in his 2006 article, "Pitch Frames as Melodic Archetypes", Empirical Musicology Review, 1.2, 1–18.
Go to Profile#5799
Barry Blue
#93431
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Barry Blue is an English singer, producer, and songwriter. As an artist, he is best known for his hit songs "Dancin' " and "Do You Wanna Dance" . Blue has also been a prolific songwriter and producer for many artists and has had over forty worldwide hits, including those by Andrea Bocelli, Diana Ross, Celine Dion, The Saturdays, The Wanted, and Pixie Lott. In film and television, Blue has provided soundtracks and/or themes for productions including Eyes of Laura Mars, The Long Good Friday, and Escape to Athena.
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Jannis Kallinikos
#53984
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Jannis Kallinikos is an organization and communication scholar and intellectual. He was born in the town of Preveza, western Greece. He is also a citizen of Sweden. Kallinikos is currently a professor in the Information Systems and Innovation Group, Department of Management at the London School of Economics and Political Science . His scholarly projects have over the years covered several themes ranging from the significance writing and notation has assumed in the making of modern organizations through the understanding of markets as semiotic systems to the study of bureaucracy and institutions.
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