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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Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Communications,

#5801

Richard Engel

#81054

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Richard Engel is an American journalist and author who is the chief foreign correspondent for NBC News. He was assigned to that position on April 18, 2008 after serving as the network's Middle East correspondent and Beirut bureau chief. Before joining NBC in May 2003, Engel reported on the start of the 2003 war in Iraq for ABC News as a freelance journalist in Baghdad.

#5802

Luce Irigaray

#136761

Overall Influence

#5803

Colleen Fitzgerald

#122083

Overall Influence

Colleen M. Fitzgerald is an American linguist who specializes in phonology, as well as language documentation and revitalization, especially with Native American languages. Career and research She earned her doctorate in linguistics in 1997 at the University of Arizona. Her dissertation focused on prosody in Tohono O'odham, an Uto-Aztecan language. She has published on Tohono O'odham, as well as other languages. Her other publications are on the topic of service learning in linguistics, including in indigenous language revitalization courses.

#5804

La India

#79112

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Linda Viera Caballero , better known as La India, is a Puerto Rican singer and songwriter of salsa, house music and Latin pop. La India has been nominated for both Grammy and Latin Grammy Awards, winning the Latin Grammy Award for Best Salsa Album for the Intensamente La India Con Canciones De Juan Gabriel album.

#5805

Danny Bank

#117256

Overall Influence

1922 - 2010 (88 years)

Daniel Bernard Bank was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and flautist. He is credited on some releases as Danny Banks. He was born on July 17, 1922. Early in his career Bank played with Charlie Barnet , and would return to play with him repeatedly over the next few decades. He played with Benny Goodman, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Artie Shaw and Paul Whiteman in the 1940s. Following this he recorded with Charlie Parker, Rex Stewart, the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra, Johnny Hodges, Urbie Green, Clifford Brown and Helen Merrill, Art Farmer, Wes Montgomery, Quincy Jones, Jimmy Smith, Chico O’...

#5806

James Callis

#84841

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

James Nicholas Callis is an English actor. He is known for playing Dr. Gaius Baltar in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica miniseries and television series, and Bridget Jones's best friend Tom in Bridget Jones's Diary, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, and Bridget Jones's Baby. He joined the cast of the TV series Eureka, on Syfy, in 2010, and since 2017, he has voiced the character Alucard in the Netflix series Castlevania and Castlevania: Nocturne, based on the video game series of the same name. In 2022, he appeared in Season 2 of Star Trek: Picard as Jean-Luc's father in childhood flashb...

#5807

Edward Bernds

#85786

Overall Influence

1905 - 2000 (95 years)

Edward Bernds was an American screenwriter and director, born in Chicago, Illinois. Career While in his junior year in Lake View High School, he and several friends formed a small radio clique and obtained amateur licenses. In the early 1920s, there was considerable prestige for amateur operators to have commercial radio licenses, and Bernds was in a good position to enter broadcasting when he graduated in 1923, a year when radio stations began to be established all over Chicago. He found employment — at age 20 — as chief operator at Chicago's WENR.

#5808

Pablo Larraín

#67799

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Pablo Larraín Matte is a Chilean filmmaker. He is known for films such as the Academy Award-nominated films No , Neruda , Jackie , and Spencer . In 2017, Larraín and his brother Juan de Dios co-produced Sebastián Lelio's A Fantastic Woman, which was the first Chilean film to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. In 2021, Larrain directed the psychological romance horror miniseries Lisey's Story.

#5809

Ayesha Kidwai

#101217

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Ayesha Kidwai is an Indian theoretical linguist. She is a professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, and an awardee of the Infosys Prize for Humanities in 2013. Biography She is the grand-daughter of Anis Kidwai. Kidwai obtained a master's and doctoral degree in linguistics from the Jawaharlal Nehru University.

#5810

Billy Hart

#79459

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Billy Hart is an American jazz drummer and educator. He is known internationally for his work with Herbie Hancock's "Mwandishi" band in the early 1970s, as well as with Shirley Horn, Stan Getz, and Quest, among many others.

#5811

Ernst Schwarz

#115491

Overall Influence

1916 - 2003 (87 years)

Ernst Schwarz was an Austrian sinologist and translator. Life Ernst Schwarz came from a Jewish merchant family from Vienna. His father, Desiderius Schwarz, and his mother, Bertha Schwarz had a shop in Mariahilfer Straße. He had a brother , and two sisters . He studied Egyptology and medicine at the University of Vienna. After the annexation of Austria to the German Reich in March 1938, he was forced to leave the country. He traveled to Shanghai by sea with his brother Egon. There he learned Chinese through self-study, while he worked as a physical education teacher. Occasionally he stayed in Buddhist monasteries.

#5812

Earl King

#93024

Overall Influence

1934 - 2003 (69 years)

Earl Silas Johnson IV , known as Earl King, was an American singer, guitarist, and songwriter, most active in blues music. A composer of blues standardss such as "Come On" and "Big Chief" , he was an important figure in New Orleans R&B.

#5813

Geoffrey Khan

#65697

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Geoffrey Allan Khan FBA is a British linguist who has held the post of Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Cambridge since 2012. He has published grammars for the Aramaic dialects of Barwari, Qaraqosh, Erbil, Sulaymaniyah and Halabja in Iraq; of Urmia and Sanandaj in Iran; and leads the North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic Database .

#5814

Susan Hilferty

#71611

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Susan Hilferty is an American costume designer for theatre, opera, and film. Biography Early life and education Hilferty grew up in a big family in Arlington, Massachusetts, where her greatest source of joy was the library. "We didn’t have a television," she says. "Reading was my entertainment." says Hilferty, whose interest in art and designing clothing led to her making all of her own clothes by the age of 12.

#5815

Sunny Murray

#96271

Overall Influence

1936 - 2017 (81 years)

James Marcellus Arthur "Sunny" Murray was an American musician, and was one of the pioneers of the free jazz style of drumming. Biography Murray was born in Idabel, Oklahoma, where he was raised by an uncle who later died after being refused treatment at a hospital because of his race. He began playing drums at the age of nine. As a teen, he lived in a rough part of Philadelphia, and spent two years in a reformatory. In 1956, he moved to New York City, where he worked in a car wash and as a building superintendent. During this time, he played with musicians such as trumpeters Red Allen and Te...

#5816

Jeffrey Kiehl

#136710

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Jeffrey Theodore Kiehl is an American climate scientist. He is head of the Climate Change Research Section in the National Center for Atmospheric Research located in Boulder, Colorado. He completed his atmospheric science doctoral studies at the University at Albany, SUNY.

#5817

Bette Otto-Bliesner

#116290

Overall Influence

Bette Otto-Bliesner is an earth scientist known for her modeling of Earth's past climate and its changes over different geological eras. Education and career Otto-Bliesner graduated from William Fremd High School in Palatine, Illinois in 1968. She has a B.S. in meteorology from the University of Madison-Wisconsin . In 1974, she earned her M.S. from University of Wisconsin - Madison with a thesis titled "Isentropically time-averaged mass circulations in the Northern Hemisphere". She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1980, and was an associate scientist there from 1980 to 1986.

#5818

Andrea Ackerman

#52904

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Andrea Ackerman is an American artist, theorist and writer best known for her New Media artworks. She lives and works in New York. Biography At Yale, Ackerman studied physics and biophysics; afterward, she graduated from Harvard Medical School and practiced as a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. She has used digital technology since the mid-1990s in order to fabricate her work, which dabbles in the realms concerning technology, nature, aesthetics, and ethics. She imbues objects with qualities not ordinarily occurring in nature, and in doing so fabricates a “synthetic” nature. Specific aspects o...

#5819

Candy Reid

#67869

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Candida Reid is a British journalist who was a sports anchor for CNN International based in Atlanta, GA. She has since returned to the United Kingdom where she coaches youth tennis and serves as a tennis commentator on television video world feeds of Association of Tennis Professionals lower tier tournaments such as ATP 250 events, as well as world feeds of Women's Tennis Association events.

#5820

Jacquelyn Ford Morie

Jacquelyn Ford Morie

#83290

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Jacquelyn Ford Morie is an artist, scientist and educator working in the areas of immersive worlds, games and social networks. Until 2013 she was a senior research scientist at the Institute for Creative Technologies. In 2013 she started a spin-off company called All These Worlds, to take her work in virtual worlds and avatars to a broader audience.

#5821

Thundercat

#53195

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (42 years)

Stephen Lee Bruner , better known by his stage name Thundercat, is an American musician, singer, record producer, and songwriter from Los Angeles. First coming to prominence as a member of crossover thrash band Suicidal Tendencies, he has since released four solo studio albums and is noted for his work with producer Flying Lotus and his appearances on Kendrick Lamar's 2015 album To Pimp a Butterfly. In 2016, Thundercat won a Grammy for Best Rap/Sung Performance for his work on the track "These Walls" from To Pimp a Butterfly. In 2020, Thundercat released his fourth studio album, It Is What It ...

#5822

Michael Hyde

#102015

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Michael Hyde is an American linguist, currently a University Distinguished Professor at Wake Forest University. He received a Distinguished Scholar Award in 2013 from the National Communication Association, and in 2019 he won the Association's Communication Ethics Top Book Award for his 2018 book The Interruption that We Are: The Health of the Lived Body, Narrative, and Public Moral Argument.

#5823

Odd Einar Haugen

#93660

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Odd Einar Haugen is professor of Old Norse Philology at the University of Bergen, Norway. He was born and grew up in Lunde, Telemark, but moved to Bergen in 1973 when he began his studies at the university. He is not related to the American linguist Einar Haugen.

#5824

Fernando Andacht

#46256

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Fernando Torres Andacht is a Uruguayan-born semiotician. Andacht studied Letters at the University of the Republic, graduating in 1978. Afterwards he obtained an MA in General Linguistics at Ohio University , a Doctorate in Latin American Studies at the University of Bergen, Norway and a PhD in Communication and Information, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre . Currently he is a Member of the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies at the University of Ottawa.

#5825

Bill Randle

#94431

Overall Influence

1923 - 2004 (81 years)

Bill Randle was an American disc jockey, lawyer and university professor. Biography Randle was born William McKinley Randle Jr. in Detroit, Michigan. In Detroit, he hosted a popular show on WJLB-AM radio called The Interracial Goodwill Hour, featuring rhythm and blues music and hot jazz. As a pioneering disc jockey at radio station WERE in Cleveland, Ohio, he helped change the face of American music. In the 1950s, Time magazine called Randle the top DJ in America. His popularity and huge listening audience allowed him to bolster the careers of a number of young musicians, including the Four Lads, Bobby Darin, and Fats Domino.

#5826

John Hoyt

#93102

Overall Influence

1905 - 1991 (86 years)

John Hoyt was an American actor. He began his acting career on Broadway, later appearing in numerous films and television series. He is perhaps best known for his roles in the films The Lawless , When Worlds Collide , Julius Caesar , Blackboard Jungle , Spartacus , Cleopatra , Flesh Gordon and the television series Gimme a Break! .

#5827

Theo Hermans

#75034

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Theo Hermans is a Belgian scholar best known for his work in Translation Studies. He is currently Professor of Dutch and Comparative Literature at University College London. He is a corresponding member of the Flemish Academy and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Manchester’s Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies. Since October 2006 he holds the honorary post of Adjunct Professor at the Department of Translation at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Hermans is also editor of the journal Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies.

#5828

Stefan Koelsch

#65017

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Stefan Koelsch is a German-American-Norwegian psychologist, neuroscientist, and bestselling author. Biography Stefan Koelsch studied instrumental and vocal music at the University of Arts Bremen, and then psychology as well as sociology at Leipzig University. He graduated in 1994 with an artistic degree, 1998 with a diploma in psychology, and 2000 with a diploma in sociology. With his thesis Brain and Music: A contribution to the investigation of central auditory processing with a new electrophysiological approach, which was compiled at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, he was awarded with a PhD at Leipzig University.

#5829

Francis Travis

#76135

Overall Influence

1921 - 2017 (96 years)

Francis Travis was an American-born Swiss orchestral conductor. Born in Detroit, Michigan, his advanced musical studies were at the University of Zurich, with a Ph.D. in musicology after writing a dissertation on Giuseppe Verdi. He was a pupil of Hermann Scherchen, later his assistant.

#5830

Juan María Solare

#103243

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Juan María Solare is an Argentine composer and pianist. Education Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Solare studied and received his diploma in piano , composition and conducting at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música Carlos López Buchardo. He also studied privately with Francisco Kröpfl.

#5831

Tamsyn Imison

#104072

Overall Influence

1937 - 2017 (80 years)

Dame Tamsyn Imison, DBE was a prominent British educator and "educational strategist" whose first career was as a scientific illustrator. Imison was educated at Somerville College, Oxford. After having a family of three, she went into teaching science in 1972 and taught for nearly 30 years. Between 1984 and 2000, she was Headteacher of the Hampstead School in north London. Imison wrote, researched and lectured on numerous topics related to academia, including Leadership, ICT, Comprehensive Schooling, Creativity, Learning, Schools of the Future, Post 16 and Women Leaders.

#5832

Rich Hall

#79843

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Richard Travis Hall is an American comedian, writer, documentary maker, and musician, first coming to prominence as a sketch comedian in the 1980s. He wrote and performed for a range of American networks, in series such as Fridays, Not Necessarily the News , and Saturday Night Live.

#5833

Jodi Forlizzi

#88851

Overall Influence

Jodi L. Forlizzi is a professor and Geschke Director, as well as an interaction designer and researcher, at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. On August 29, 2022, Forlizzi was named a Herbert A. Simon Professor at Carnegie Mellon. Her research ranges from understanding the limits of human attention to understanding how products and services evoke social behavior. Current research interests include interaction design, assistive, social, and aesthetic technology projects and systems, and notification systems. In 2014, Forlizzi was inducted into the CHI Academ...

#5834

Vivian E. Browne

Vivian E. Browne

#35182

Overall Influence

1929 - 1993 (64 years)

Vivian E. Browne was an American artist. Born in Laurel, Florida, Browne was mostly known for her African-American protest paintings, and linking abstraction to nature. She has received multiple awards for her work, been an activist, professor and a founder of many galleries. According to her mother, Browne died at 64 from bladder cancer.

#5835

Jack Bender

#88876

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Jack Bender is an American television and film director, television producer and actor best known for his work as a director on Lost, The Sopranos and Game of Thrones. Biography Bender grew up in a secular Jewish family in Los Angeles. His father was a furrier to the Hollywood community. He studied art with Los Angeles artist Martin Lubner and then went into acting "because it seemed like what I could do and make a living." As an actor, Bender guest-starred on All in the Family, The Bob Newhart Show and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. He co-starred in The Million Dollar Duck, Savage and McNaughton's Daughter.

#5836

Ai

#77076

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

, known mononymously as Ai , is a Japanese-American singer-songwriter, rapper, record producer, spokeswoman, and actress. Born in Los Angeles, California, Ai moved to Kagoshima, at age 4. Motivated to become a singer, Ai returned to Los Angeles during her adolescence, attending the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. While in Los Angeles, Ai performed as part of a gospel choir at a Mary J. Blige concert and appeared as a backup dancer in Janet Jackson's music video, "Go Deep". She briefly joined the Asian girl group SX4 in 1999 until she graduated high school.

#5837

Terry Callier

#90219

Overall Influence

1945 - 2012 (67 years)

Terrence Orlando "Terry" Callier was an American soul, folk and jazz guitarist and singer-songwriter. Life and career Callier was born in the North Side of Chicago, Illinois, and was raised in the Cabrini–Green housing area. He learned piano, was a childhood friend of Curtis Mayfield, Major Lance and Jerry Butler, and began singing in doo-wop groups in his teens. In 1962, he took an audition at Chess Records, where he recorded his debut single, "Look at Me Now". At the same time as attending college, he then began performing in folk clubs and coffee houses in Chicago, becoming strongly influenced by the music of John Coltrane.

#5838

Keb' Mo'

#69177

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Kevin Roosevelt Moore , known as Keb' Mo', is an American blues musician and eight-time Grammy Award winner. He is a singer, guitarist, and songwriter, living in Nashville, Tennessee. He has been described as "a living link to the seminal Delta blues that travelled up the Mississippi River and across the expanse of America." His post-modern blues style is influenced by many eras and genres, including folk, rock, jazz, pop and country. The moniker "Keb Mo" was coined by his original drummer, Quentin Dennard, and picked up by his record label as a "street talk" abbreviation of his given name.

#5839

Gillian Wigglesworth

#118434

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Professor Gillian Wigglesworth is an Australian linguist, Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, and former Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Arts at The University of Melbourne.

#5840

Mary Lou Zhao F. And Gero John S. Maher

#137408

Overall Influence

#5841

Michael Anthony

Michael Anthony

#61980

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Michael Anthony Sobolewski is an American musician who was the bassist and backing vocalist for the hard rock band Van Halen from 1974 to 2006. He performed on Van Halen's first 11 albums and was their longest-tenured bassist. Following his 2006 departure, Anthony has collaborated with fellow former Van Halen bandmate Sammy Hagar for the supergroupss Chickenfoot and Sammy Hagar and the Circle. In addition to his music career, he markets a line of hot sauces named Mad Anthony and related products. Anthony was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Van Halen in 2007.

#5842

Terence Blanchard

#62930

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Terence Oliver Blanchard is an American trumpeter, pianist and composer. He started his career in 1982 as a member of the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, then The Jazz Messengers. He has composed more than forty film scores and performed on more than fifty. A frequent collaborator with director Spike Lee, he has been nominated for two Academy Awards for composing the scores for Lee's films BlacKkKlansman and Da 5 Bloods . He has won five Grammy Awards from fourteen nominations.

#5843

Alan Thurlow

#105729

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Alan John Thurlow is an English organist. He is best known as having been Organist and Master of the Choristers of Chichester Cathedral between 1980 and 2008. Education Thurlow was educated at Bancroft's School, Woodford Green. He read Music at Sheffield University before going on to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, for a period of research into pre-Reformation English Church Music.

#5844

Misha Mengelberg

#94091

Overall Influence

1935 - 2017 (82 years)

Misha Mengelberg was a Dutch jazz pianist and composer. A prominent figure in post-WWII European Jazz, Mengelberg is known for his forays into free improvisation, for bringing humor into his music, and as a leading interpreter of songs by fellow pianists Thelonious Monk and Herbie Nichols.

#5845

Danny Tenaglia

#77550

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Daniel "Danny" Tenaglia is an American DJ and record producer. He is a Grammy nominee for the best remixed recording . He is also a three time International Dance Music Award winner, 3 time DJ Awards winner and 2 time Muzik Awards recipient.

#5846

Chuck Brown

#77493

Overall Influence

1936 - 2012 (76 years)

Charles Louis Brown was an American guitarist, bandleader and singer known as "The Godfather of Go-Go". Go-go is a subgenre of funk music developed around the Washington, D.C., area in the mid-1970s. While its musical classification, influences, and origins are debated, Brown is regarded as the fundamental force behind the creation of go-go music.

#5847

Anne Storch

#51638

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Anne Storch is a German linguist and professor of African studies at the University of Cologne. Career Storch studied African linguistics, ethnology, and history at Frankfurt am Main. From 1995 to 1999, she worked as a researcher at the University of Frankfurt. As a doctoral student, she documented the Hõne language during several research trips to Nigeria. In 1999, she completed her PhD in African linguistics. From 2000 to 2004, she held a junior professorship position at the Institute for African Linguistics at the University of Frankfurt. Since 2004, she has been a full professor and membe...

#5848

Johnette Napolitano

#81634

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Johnette Napolitano is an American musician best known as the lead vocalist, songwriter, and bassist for the alternative rock group Concrete Blonde. Early life Johnette Napolitano was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, the eldest of five children in an Italian American family.

#5849

Rajat Kapoor

#76947

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Rajat Kapoor is an Indian actor, filmmaker and playwright who works in Hindi cinema. Early life and career Rajat Kapoor was born in Delhi, India and grew up in Old Delhi. He mainly focused on acting at first. In 1983 he joined the theatre group Chingari in Delhi, later in 1985 moving to Pune to attend the Film and Television Institute of India .

#5850

Richard Erdman

#81031

Overall Influence

1925 - 2019 (94 years)

Richard Erdman was an American character actor and occasional film and television director. He appeared in more than 160 films and television productions between 1944 and 2017, mostly in supporting roles. He is most known for his roles in the classic films Stalag 17 and Tora! Tora! Tora! . In his final years, Erdman found renewed fame through his portrayal of Leonard in the critically acclaimed comedy series Community .

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