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,
#5851
Tracey Weldon
#109296
Overall Influence
Tracey Weldon is an American linguist who studies variationist sociolinguistics, Gullah, Quantitative Sociolinguistics, and African American English. Education Weldon received her BA in English and French from Furman University in 1991 and her PhD in Linguistics from Ohio State University in 1998 with her dissertation Exploring the AAVE-Gullah connection: A comparative study of copula variability.
Go to Profile#5852
David G. M. Wood‐gush
#137561
Overall Influence
#5853
August Wenzinger
#85910
Overall Influence
1905 - 1996 (91 years)
August Wenzinger was a prominent cellist, viol player, conductor, teacher, and music scholar from Basel, Switzerland. He was a pioneer of historically informed performance, both as a master of the viola da gamba and as a conductor of Baroque orchestral music and operas.
Go to Profile#5854
Paul Wilson
#74406
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Paul Wilson is a music theorist and Professor of Music Theory and Composition at the University of Miami Frost School of Music, in the United States. He holds a B.A. from Harvard College, a M.A. from the University of Hawaiʻi, and M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees from Yale University, where he studied with Allen Forte.
Go to Profile#5855
Barry Le Va
#50417
Overall Influence
1941 - 2021 (80 years)
Barry Edward Le Va was an American sculptor and installation artist. Trained in his native California, he lived and worked in New York City. Le Va was among the leading figures of post-studio and process art to have emerged in the late 1960s. His abstract sculptures, installations, drawings, and editioned works are featured in major art collections around the world.
Go to Profile#5856
Boris Kuschnir
#98184
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Boris Kuschnir is a Ukrainian-born Austrian violinist and academic. Background and early life Born in Kyiv in 1948, he studied violin with at the Moscow Conservatoire and chamber music with Valentin Berlinsky of the Borodin Quartet.
Go to Profile#5857
Buster Williams
#76642
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Charles Anthony "Buster" Williams is an American jazz bassist. Williams is known for his membership in pianist Herbie Hancock's early 1970s group, working with guitarist Larry Coryell from the 1980s to present, working in the Thelonious Monk repertory band Sphere and as the accompanist of choice for many singers, including Nancy Wilson.
Go to Profile#5858
Michael Doucet
#105808
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Michael Louis Doucet is an American singer-songwriter and musician best known as the founder of the Cajun band BeauSoleil. Early life Doucet was born in Scott, Louisiana, to a Cajun family. Family parties in the 1950s always included "French music." Two of his paternal aunts sang ballads, and many family members played musical instruments. He learned banjo at age six, guitar at eight, and belonged to a Cajun rock band with his cousin, Zachary Richard, at twelve.
Go to Profile#5859
Sándor Végh
#90072
Overall Influence
1912 - 1997 (85 years)
Sándor Végh was a Hungarian, later French, violinist and conductor. He was best known as one of the great chamber music violinists of the twentieth century. Education Sándor Végh was born in 1912 in Kolozsvár, Transylvania, Austria-Hungary, . His parents were not professional musicians but folk music especially was an important part of family life. At the age of six he was given a violin, "Because", he says, "that was cheaper than a piano. My parents had no idea how much money I had to save later to be able to buy a Stradivari." He entered the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in 1924, taking violin studies with Jenő Hubay and composition with Zoltán Kodály.
Go to Profile#5860
Santiago Segura
#92874
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Santiago Segura Silva is a Spanish filmmaker and actor. He also worked to a lesser extent as a television presenter, voice actor and comic book writer, as well as being a collector of original comic books.
Go to Profile#5861
Bashiri Johnson
#53239
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Bashiri Johnson is a New York City-based percussionist, whose work has appeared on many records, as well as in commercials, films, television, videogames, and concert performances. He is known to be one of the most recorded percussionists in the music business, as well as one of the most visible. While he has recorded with such artists as Luther Vandross, Miles Davis, and Patti LaBelle, he has also been a part of numerous on-stage performances; he has performed on stage with artists such as Sting, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Lionel Richie, Aretha Franklin, and Steve Winwood.
Go to Profile#5862
Buddy DeFranco
#80942
Overall Influence
1923 - 2014 (91 years)
Boniface Ferdinand Leonard "Buddy" DeFranco was an Italian-American jazz clarinetist. In addition to his work as a bandleader, DeFranco led the Glenn Miller Orchestra for almost a decade in the 1960s and 1970s.
Go to Profile#5863
Duke Jordan
#99813
Overall Influence
1922 - 2006 (84 years)
Irving Sidney "Duke" Jordan was an American jazz pianist. Biography Jordan was born in New York and raised in Brooklyn where he attended Boys High School. An imaginative and gifted pianist, Jordan was a regular member of Charlie Parker's quintet during 1947–48, which also featured Miles Davis. He participated in Parker's Dial sessions in late 1947 that produced "Dewey Square", "Bongo Bop", "Bird of Paradise", and the ballad "Embraceable You". These performances are featured on Charlie Parker on Dial.
Go to Profile#5864
Steven Stucky
#85634
Overall Influence
1949 - 2016 (67 years)
Steven Edward Stucky was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer. Life and career Stucky was born in Hutchinson, Kansas. At age 9, he moved with his family to Abilene, Texas, where, as a teenager, he studied music in the public schools and, privately, viola with Herbert Preston, conducting with Leo Scheer, and composition with Macon Sumerlin. He attended Baylor University and Cornell. Stucky worked with Karel Husa and Daniel Sternberg.
Go to Profile#5865
Charles Burnett
#69061
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Charles Burnett is an American film director, film producer, writer, editor, actor, photographer, and cinematographer. His most popular films include Killer of Sheep , My Brother's Wedding , To Sleep with Anger , The Glass Shield , and Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation . He has been involved in other types of motion pictures including shorts, documentaries, and a TV series.
Go to Profile#5866
Julian Priester
#93290
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Julian Priester is an American jazz trombonist and occasional euphoniumist. He is sometimes credited "Julian Priester Pepo Mtoto". He has played with Sun Ra, Max Roach, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, and Herbie Hancock.
Go to Profile#5867
David Chiang
#96378
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
David Chiang Tai-wai is a Hong Kong actor, director, producer and martial artist. A well-known martial arts actor formerly from Shaw Brothers Studio in the 1970s, he has appeared in over 130 films and 30 television series.
Go to Profile#5868
Andrew Wyatt
#51252
Overall Influence
Andrew Wyatt Blakemore is an American musician, singer, songwriter and record producer. Born and raised in Manhattan, New York, he began his career playing in New York bands such as The A.M. and Black Beetle. He gained wider notability as the frontman of the Swedish electronic pop band Miike Snow, which released its acclaimed debut album in 2009. Since that time, Wyatt has released two other albums with the band as well as his solo debut Descender on Downtown Records in 2013.
Go to Profile#5869
Alfred Young Man
#49565
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Alfred Young Man, Ph.D. or Kiyugimah (Eagle Chief) (born 1948) is a Cree artist, writer, educator, and an enrolled member of the Chippewa-Cree tribev located on the Rocky Boy Indian Reservation, Montana. He is a former Department Head (2007–2010) of Indian Fine Arts at the First in Regina, Saskatchewan and former Chair (1999–2007) of Native American Studies, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Lethbridge and University of Regina. Young Man attended the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico (1963–1968) where the German painter Fritz Scholder was his painting teacher for two years (1966–68).
Go to Profile#5870
Ido D. Dagan
#137833
Overall Influence
#5871
Christopher Callison-burch
#137844
Overall Influence
#5872
Brian Klaas
#48587
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Brian Paul Klaas is an American political scientist and contributing writer at The Atlantic. He is an associate professor in global politics at University College London. He is the author of Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us. He is also the co-author of How to Rig an Election.
Go to Profile#5873
John Philip Shenale
#75668
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
John Philip Shenale is a Canadian composer, arranger, musician and producer based in Los Angeles. Background Shenale was born in Canada in 1951. His family relocated to the United States in the late-1950s. His earliest memories of music consisted of hearing his father, an avid lover of classical music, play the violin, cello and mandolin in their home during his childhood. After attending a Latin High Mass at the age of five, he recalls being drawn to the piano in an attempt to recreate the music he had heard during the ceremony. The experience awakened his passion for the art and he soon found himself improvising his own music.
Go to Profile#5874
Rex Burns
#97155
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Rex Burns , born Raoul Stephen Sehler, is an American author of crime fiction. He has published numerous books, stories, articles, and reviews. Personal life Burns graduated from Stanford University with a degree in English and Creative Writing. He went on to pursue a PhD in American Studies at the University of Minnesota, but his studies were temporarily interrupted by a term in the US Marine Corps, where he rose to the rank of Captain. Until 2000, when he retired, Burns was a professor of American literature at the University of Colorado Denver.
Go to Profile#5875
Oliver Butterworth
#79364
Overall Influence
Oliver Butterworth, ARAM is a British violinist, music educator, and arts administrator. Biography Butterworth entered the Royal Academy of Music in 1965 as Sterndale Bennett Scholar and studied with Manoug Parikian. He then studied at the Prague Conservatory with Jaroslav Pekelský and later with Viktor Lieberman in Rotterdam.
Go to Profile#5876
Luis Alcoriza
#92978
Overall Influence
1918 - 1992 (74 years)
Luis Alcoriza de la Vega was a respected Mexican screenwriter, film director, and actor. Alcoriza was born in Spain and, exiled because of the Spanish Civil War, established himself in Mexico from 1940. His 1962 film Tlayucan was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. His 1987 film Life Is Most Important was entered into the 15th Moscow International Film Festival.
Go to Profile#5877
Igor Maslennikov
#104629
Overall Influence
1931 - 2022 (91 years)
Igor Fyodorovich Maslennikov was a Soviet and Russian film director. Biography Maslennikov was born in Nizhny Novgorod. In 1954 he completed his education in the department of journalism of the Leningrad University and worked as an editor, script writer, and cameraman on Leningrad television. In 1965 he entered the Higher Directors' Courses of Lenfilm , at end of which he became the director of this motion picture studio.
Go to Profile#5878
Cecil Payne
#93312
Overall Influence
1922 - 2007 (85 years)
Cecil Payne was an American jazz baritone saxophonist born in Brooklyn, New York. Payne also played the alto saxophone and flute. He played with other prominent jazz musicians, in particular Dizzy Gillespie and Randy Weston, in addition to his solo work as bandleader.
Go to Profile#5879
Tuli Kupferberg
#68550
Overall Influence
1923 - 2010 (87 years)
Naphtali "Tuli" Kupferberg was an American counterculture poet, author, singer, cartoonist, publisher, and co-founder of the rock band The Fugs. Biography Naphtali Kupferberg was born into a Jewish, Yiddish-speaking household in New York City. A cum laude graduate of Brooklyn College in 1944, Kupferberg founded the magazine Birth in 1958.
Go to Profile#5880
Tetsuya Chikushi
#39079
Overall Influence
1935 - 2008 (73 years)
was a Japanese journalist, TV presenter and news anchor. Career Chikushi was born in Hita, Ōita on 23 June 1935. He graduated from Waseda University's school of political science and economics, and joined the Asahi Shimbun newspaper in 1959 as a reporter.
Go to Profile#5881
Richard Sonnenfeldt
#72526
Overall Influence
1923 - 2009 (86 years)
Richard Wolfgang Sonnenfeldt was a Jewish American engineer and corporate executive most notable for being the U.S. prosecution team's chief interpreter in 1945 prior to the Nuremberg Trial after World War II.
Go to Profile#5882
Julie Fowlis
#86456
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Julie Fowlis is a Scottish folk singer and multi-instrumentalist who sings primarily in Scottish Gaelic. Early life Fowlis grew up on North Uist, an island in the Outer Hebrides, in a Gaelic-speaking community. Her mother was a Gaelic-speaking islander from a family of fishermen and crofters which originated on the remote island of Heisgeir, while her father hailed originally from Pitlochry on mainland Scotland. Her parents ran a hotel for many years on North Uist. She moved with her parents to Ross-shire on the mainland when she was 15 years old after her father took a new job. The family lived in Strathpeffer and Fowlis finished her secondary education at Dingwall Academy.
Go to Profile#5883
Louie Bellson
#66721
Overall Influence
1924 - 2009 (85 years)
Louie Bellson , often seen in sources as Louis Bellson, although he himself preferred the spelling Louie, was an American jazz drummer. He was a composer, arranger, bandleader, and jazz educator, and is credited with pioneering the use of two bass drums.
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Chucho Valdés
#84259
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Jesús Valdés Rodríguez, better known as Chucho Valdés , is a Cuban pianist, bandleader, composer and arranger whose career spans over 50 years. An original member of the Orquesta Cubana de Música Moderna, in 1973 he founded the group Irakere, one of Cuba's best-known Latin jazz bands.
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Abdul-Nabi Isstaif
#61050
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Abdul-Nabi Isstaif is a professor of comparative literature, critical theory and translation at Damascus University. Abdul-Nabi Isstaif was educated at the University of Damascus and St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, where he received his D.Phil. in comparative criticism in 1983. He is a specialist in modern Arabic literature and criticism with special reference to Western influences. Isstaif has taught at the University of Oxford , Sanaa University , King Saud University , New College of the University of South Florida and Roger Williams University , University of Jaumi I , Deakin ...
Go to Profile#5886
Phillip Mann
#97347
Overall Influence
1942 - 2022 (80 years)
Anthony Phillip Mann was a British-born New Zealand science fiction author. He studied English and drama at Manchester University and later in California before moving to New Zealand where he established the first drama studies position at a New Zealand university in 1970; at the Victoria University of Wellington in Wellington. He retired from the position of professor of drama at Victoria in 1998 to concentrate on other projects.
Go to Profile#5887
Syreeta Wright
#67755
Overall Influence
1946 - 2004 (58 years)
Syreeta Wright , who recorded professionally under the mononym Syreeta, was an American singer-songwriter, best known for her music during the early 1970s through the early 1980s. Wright's career heights were songs in collaboration with her ex-husband Stevie Wonder and musical artist Billy Preston.
Go to Profile#5888
Bob Mintzer
#78790
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Robert Alan Mintzer is an American jazz saxophonist, composer, arranger, and big band leader. Early life Mintzer was born and raised in a Jewish family in New Rochelle, New York, on January 27, 1953. He attended the Interlochen Arts Academy, Michigan from 1969 to 1970, then was at the Hartt School of Music, Hartford, Connecticut for two years, before attending the Manhattan School of Music from 1972 to 1974.
Go to Profile#5889
Kim Medcalf
#95585
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Kim Louise Medcalf is an English actress and singer. She is known for portraying the role of Sam Mitchell in the BBC soap opera EastEnders between 2002 and 2005 and from 2022 onwards. Career EastEnders In late 2001, Medcalf took over the role of Sam Mitchell from recovering-addict Danniella Westbrook. She filmed her first scenes with Barbara Windsor in Spain, which aired on 29 January 2002. She won the best newcomer award at The National Television Awards in 2002 and was nominated for the sexiest female award at The British Soap Awards in 2003. Medcalf opted to leave EastEnders in 2005 along with co-star Michelle Ryan, who played Zoe Slater.
Go to Profile#5890
Josef Greindl
#101216
Overall Influence
1912 - 1993 (81 years)
Josef Greindl was a German operatic bass, remembered mainly for his performances of Wagnerian roles at Bayreuth beginning in 1943. Josef Greindl was born in Munich and studied at the Munich Music Academy with Paul Bender. His opera debut was in 1936, as Hunding in Wagner's Die Walküre in the State Theatre in Krefeld. In 1944, Adolf Hitler included him in the Gottbegnadeten list , which exempted him from the requirement to serve in the German military. He played the part of King Marke in the 1952 Furtwängler recording of Tristan und Isolde. This vintage recording often appears in critics list of the top 100 greatest recordings, since Kirsten Flagstad was also in the cast.
Go to Profile#5891
Shin-ik Hahm
#47419
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Shinik Hahm is a Korean American conductor and a professor in the Practice of Conducting and Music Director of the Yale Philharmonia. Hahm has led North American, South American, European, and Far Eastern orchestras. Recent appearances include debuts in Geneva, Switzerland, and Besançon, France; at Bolshoi Hall in St. Petersburg, Russia, with the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra; and reengagement with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at Disney Hall. He is an active opera conductor and has led productions with the Silesian National Opera in Poland, has collaborated with musicians inclu...
Go to Profile#5892
Jeff Bova
#64246
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Jeff Bova is an American musician. He has been active in the music industry since the mid-1970s, contributing to recordings by significant mainstream artists like Celine Dion, Michael Jackson, Blondie, Eric Clapton, Joe Cocker, Cyndi Lauper, Bill Laswell and Herbie Hancock, Bernard Edwards and Tony Thompson, Meat Loaf, Missing Persons, Iron Maiden and Billy Joel among others.
Go to Profile#5893
Jaki Byard
#83825
Overall Influence
1922 - 1999 (77 years)
John Arthur "Jaki" Byard was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist, composer, and arranger. Mainly a pianist, he also played tenor and alto saxophones, among several other instruments. He was known for his eclectic style, incorporating everything from ragtime and stride to free jazz.
Go to Profile#5894
Ernest Ranglin
#71827
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Ernest Ranglin is a Jamaican guitarist and composer who established his career while working as a session guitarist and music director for various Jamaican record labels including Studio One and Island Records. Ranglin played guitar on many early ska recordings and helped create the rhythmic guitar style that defined the form. Ranglin has worked with Theophilus Beckford, Jimmy Cliff, Monty Alexander, Prince Buster, the Skatalites, Bob Marley and the Eric Deans Orchestra. He is noted for a chordal and rhythmic approach that blends jazz, mento and reggae with percussive guitar solos incorporat...
Go to Profile#5895
Abdullah El Tayib
#63461
Overall Influence
1921 - 2003 (82 years)
Abdullah El Tayib, also referred to as 'Abd Allāh al-Tayyib al-Majdhūb was a prominent Sudanese writer and scholar of Sudanese literature and the Arabic language. He was born in Tamirab, a village near Ad-Dāmar in Sudan, during the Anglo-Egyptian condominium and received his primary education in Kassala, Ad-Damar and Berber. After graduating from Gordon Memorial College , he continued his studies until his PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in 1950.
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Reggie Watts
#74217
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Reginald Lucien Frank Roger Watts is an American comedian, actor, beatboxer, and musician. His improvised musical sets are created using only his voice, a keyboard, and a looping machine. Watts refers to himself as a "disinformationist" who aims to disorient his audience in a comedic fashion. He was the regular house musician on the spoof IFC talk show Comedy Bang! Bang!. From 2015 to 2023, Watts led the house band for The Late Late Show with James Corden.
Go to Profile#5897
Nakul Dev Mahajan
#48373
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Nakul Dev Mahajan is an Indian-American Bollywood dancer and choreographer best known for his choreography on So You Think You Can Dance. He is the founder and artistic director of NDM Bollywood Dance Productions and Studios, a Bollywood dance company based in Artesia, California. Mahajan has served as a talent show judge for reality television productions. His dance choreography is prominent in the Disney Junior animated series Mira, Royal Detective.
Go to Profile#5898
Marshall Van Alstyne
#22837
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Marshall W. Van Alstyne is the Questrom Professor in Management at Boston University and a research associate at the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy. He co-developed the theory of two-sided markets with Geoffrey G Parker. His work focuses on the economics of information. This includes a sustained interest in information markets and in how information and technology affect productivity with a new emphasis on “platforms” as an extension of the work on two-sided markets.
Go to Profile#5899
Fred Wesley
#48692
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Fred Wesley is an American trombonist who worked with James Brown in the 1960s and 1970s, and Parliament-Funkadelic in the second half of the 1970s. Biography Wesley was born the son of a high school teacher and big band leader in Columbus, Georgia, and was raised in Mobile, Alabama. As a child, he took piano and later trumpet lessons. He played baritone horn and trombone in school, and at around age 12 his father brought a trombone home, whereupon he switched to trombone.
Go to Profile#5900
Bart Howard
#112920
Overall Influence
1915 - 2004 (89 years)
Bart Howard was an American composer and songwriter, most notably of the jazz standard "Fly Me to the Moon", which has been performed by Kaye Ballard, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald, Nancy Wilson, Della Reese, Bobby Womack, Diana Krall, Paul Anka, June Christy, Brenda Lee, Astrud Gilberto, Nat King Cole, Peggy Lee, and Sia, among others. It is played frequently by jazz and popular musicians around the world. Howard wrote the song for his partner of 58 years, Thomas Fowler.
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