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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List of the most influential people in Communications,

#6051

Chris Jasper

#57709

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Christopher Howard Jasper is an American singer, composer, and producer. Jasper is a former member of the Isley Brothers and Isley-Jasper-Isley and is responsible for writing and producing the majority of the Isley Brothers music and Isley-Jasper-Isley music . He is also a successful solo musician and record producer, recording over 17 of his own solo albums, including 4 urban contemporary gospel albums, all written, produced and performed, both vocally and instrumentally, by Jasper. He also produces artists for his New York City-based record label, Gold City Records. Jasper's keyboard and ...

#6052

John Kingston

#137467

Overall Influence

John Kingston is an American linguist and Professor of Linguistics at University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is known for his works on phonology.

#6053

Arthur Alexander

#91373

Overall Influence

1940 - 1993 (53 years)

Arthur Alexander was an American country-soul songwriter and singer. Jason Ankeny, music critic for AllMusic, said Alexander was a "country-soul pioneer" and that, though largely unknown, "his music is the stuff of genius, a poignant and deeply intimate body of work on par with the best of his contemporaries." Alexander's songs were covered by such stars as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Otis Redding, Tina Turner, Pearl Jam, and Jerry Lee Lewis.

#6054

Abbey Simon

#93107

Overall Influence

1920 - 2019 (99 years)

Abbey Henry Simon was an American concert pianist, teacher, and recording artist. He was a protégé of Josef Hofmann at the Curtis Institute of Music and a winner of the Naumburg International Piano Competition in 1940. He was called a "supervirtuoso" by The New York Times.

#6055

A. Doak Barnett

#34886

Overall Influence

1921 - 1999 (78 years)

Arthur Doak Barnett , known as A. Doak Barnett, was an American journalist, political scientist, and public figure who wrote about the domestic politics and the foreign relations of China and United States-China relations. He published more than 20 academic and public interest books and edited still others. Barnett's parents were missionaries in China, and Barnett used his Chinese language ability while travelling widely in China as a journalist before 1949. He grounded his journalism and his scholarship in exact detail and clear language. Starting in the 1950s, when there were no formal dipl...

#6056

Frederick E. Emery

#141680

Overall Influence

#6057

Wolfman Jack

#65661

Overall Influence

1938 - 1995 (57 years)

Robert Weston Smith , known as Wolfman Jack, was an American disc jockey active for over 3 decades. Famous for the gravelly voice which he credited for his success, saying, "It's kept meat and potatoes on the table for years for Wolfman and Wolfwoman. A couple of shots of whiskey helps it. I've got that nice raspy sound."

#6058

Delbert McClinton

#69855

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Delbert McClinton is an American blues rock and electric blues singer-songwriter, guitarist, harmonica player, and pianist. From his first professional stage appearance in 1957 to his most recent national tour in 2018, he has recorded albums for several major record labels and singles which have reached the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, Mainstream Rock Tracks, and Hot Country Songs charts. His highest-charting single was "Tell Me About It", a 1992 duet with Tanya Tucker, which reached number 4 on the Country chart. Four of his albums have been number 1 on the Blues chart, and another reached number 2.

#6059

Mikhail Kissine

#111069

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Mikhail Kissine is a Belgian linguist who specialises in cognitive pragmatics, clinical linguistics and philosophy of language. Professor of linguistics and director of the Centre of Research in Linguistics in the Université Libre de Bruxelles , Kissine is focusing his research on the language and the cognition in the context of the Autistic Spectrum disorder. He has founded in 2015 a research group ACTE , the goal of which is to understand the obstacles to the language development in the context of autism.

#6060

Henk Bodewitz

#74239

Overall Influence

1939 - 2022 (83 years)

Hendrik Wilhelm "Henk" Bodewitz was a Dutch Sanskrit scholar. He was a professor at the Universities of Utrecht and later Leiden between 1976 and 2002. Career Between 1952 and 1958 he attended the gymnasium in Coevorden. He obtained a degree in classical languages at Utrecht University in 1963 and subsequently a further degree in Indo-Iranian studies in 1966.

#6061

Sen Dog

#61333

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Senen Reyes , also known by his stage name Sen Dog, is a Cuban-American rapper and musician who is best known as a member of the rap group Cypress Hill and as the lead vocalist for the heavy metal band Powerflo. He has been developing a solo career in addition to his work with Cypress Hill and Powerflo, and is the lead vocalist for rap rock band SX-10.

#6062

Kirke Mechem

#111346

Overall Influence

1925 - Present (101 years)

Kirke Mechem is an American composer. His first opera, Tartuffe, with over 450 performances in nine countries, has become one of the most popular operas written by an American. He has composed more than 250 works in almost every form. In 2002, ASCAP registered performances of his music in 42 countries. He has been called the "dean of American choral composers". His memoir, Believe Your Ears: Life of a Lyric Composer, was published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2015; it won ASCAP Foundation's 48th annual Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award for outstanding musical biography.

#6063

Marco Minnemann

#82252

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Marco Minnemann is a German multi-instrumentalist and composer who primarily plays drums. Career Minnemann has released over a dozen solo albums as drummer, multi-instrumentalist, and vocalist, and performed on over 100 studio albums with dozens of artists and groups. He has previously been a member of the German funk-metal crossover band Freaky Fukin Weirdoz and has performed and recorded with German rock band H-Blockx and Grammy-nominated English musician Steven Wilson. He is the drummer for the Mute Gods, a trio led by Nick Beggs of British new wave band Kajagoogoo, and he has performed with Joe Satriani since 2013.

#6064

Maren Morris

#47608

Overall Influence

1990 - Present (36 years)

Maren Larae Morris is an American singer and songwriter. Rooted in the country genre, her music also blends elements of pop, R&B, and hip hop. Morris has won multiple accolades including a Grammy Award, an American Music Award and five Academy of Country Music Awards.

#6065

Jean M. Bartunek

#141779

Overall Influence

#6066

Mati Erelt

#108667

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Mati Erelt is an Estonian linguist. Mati Erelt was born in Tallinn. In 1965 he graduated from the University of Tartu with a degree in Estonian language and literature. He defended his doctoral dissertation there in 1981.

#6067

Karl Berger

#94395

Overall Influence

1935 - 2023 (88 years)

Karl Hans Berger was a German-American jazz pianist, vibraphonist, composer, and educator. He was a leading figure in jazz improvisation from the 1960s when he settled in the United States for life. He founded the educational Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, New York, in 1972 with his wife and Ornette Coleman, to encourage international students to pursue their own ideas about music.

#6068

Leon Redbone

#84683

Overall Influence

1949 - 2019 (70 years)

Leon Redbone was a singer-songwriter and musician specializing in jazz, blues, and Tin Pan Alley classics. Recognized by his hat , dark sunglasses, and black tie, Redbone was born in Cyprus of Armenian ancestry and first appeared on stage in Toronto, Canada, in the early 1970s. He also appeared on film and television in acting and voice-over roles.

#6069

Marc Shaiman

#63639

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Marc Shaiman is an American composer and lyricist for films, television, and theatre, best known for his collaborations with lyricist and director Scott Wittman and director Rob Reiner. Shaiman has received numerous accolades including a Grammy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Tony Award. He has also received seven Academy Awards nominations.

#6070

Chike Frankie Edozien

Chike Frankie Edozien

#48104

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Chiké Frankie Edozien is a Nigerian-American writer and journalist. He is currently the director of New York University, Accra. He directed the New York University Journalism Institute's Ghana based Reporting Africa program from 2008 to 2019. He is a journalist who honed his skills writing about government, health and cultural issues for a variety of publications.

#6071

Buck Ram

#76535

Overall Influence

1907 - 1991 (84 years)

Samuel "Buck" Ram was an American songwriter, and popular music producer and arranger. He was one of BMI's top five songwriters/air play in its first 50 years, alongside Paul Simon, Kris Kristofferson, Jimmy Webb, and Paul McCartney. He is best known for his long association with The Platters and also wrote, produced and arranged for the Penguins, the Coasters, the Drifters, Ike and Tina Turner, Ike Cole, Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, Ella Fitzgerald, and many others. He was also known as Ande Rand, Lynn Paul or Jean Miles.

#6072

Elisabet Engdahl

#99109

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Elisabet Britt Engdahl is a Swedish linguist and professor emerita of Swedish at the University of Gothenburg. She was the first linguist to investigate parasitic gaps in detail. Education After having completed an MA at Uppsala University, she was awarded a studentship from the Sweden-America Foundation and pursued graduate studies in general linguistics at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She received her PhD in 1980 for her dissertation on the Syntax and Semantics of Questions in Swedish, supervised by Barbara Partee.

#6073

Michael Bryant

#109747

Overall Influence

1928 - 2002 (74 years)

Michael Dennis Bryant was a British stage and television actor. Biography Bryant attended Battersea Grammar School and, after service in the Merchant Navy and the Army, attended drama school and appeared in many productions on the London stage. He made his film debut in 1955. He had a role as Mathieu in the BBC2 serial The Roads to Freedom, a 1970 adaptation of Jean-Paul Sartre's trilogy of the same name. His guest star appearance as Wing Commander Marsh, who feigns insanity in the 'Tweedledum' episode of the BBC drama series Colditz , is still widely remembered.

#6074

BeBe Winans

#71029

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Benjamin "BeBe" Winans is an American gospel and R&B singer and radio host. He is a member of the noted Winans family, most members of which are also gospel artists. Winans has released nine albums, seven with his sister CeCe as BeBe & CeCe Winans and one with three Winans brothers.

#6075

Arthur Russell

#83317

Overall Influence

1951 - 1992 (41 years)

Charles Arthur Russell Jr. was an American cellist, composer, producer, singer, and musician from Iowa, whose work spanned a disparate range of styles. After studying contemporary composition and Indian classical music in California, Russell relocated to New York City in the mid-1970s, where he became involved with both Lower Manhattan's avant-garde community and the city's burgeoning disco scene. His eclectic music was often marked by adventurous production choices and his distinctive voice.

#6076

Rachel Podger

#132199

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Rachel Podger FLSW is a British violinist and conductor specialising in the performance of Baroque music. Career Podger was born to a British father and a German mother. She was educated at a German Rudolf Steiner school then returned to study first with Perry Hart, then at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with David Takeno, Pauline Scott, and Micaela Comberti. During her studies, she co-founded Baroque chamber groups The Palladian Ensemble and Florilegium, and worked with period instrument ensembles such as the New London Consort and London Baroque.

#6077

Fanny Rubio

#89755

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Francisca Rubio Gámez , better known by the pseudonym Fanny Rubio, is a Spanish professor, researcher, and writer, an expert in contemporary Spanish poetry. Biography Born in Linares on 18 October 1949, Fanny Rubio began her university studies in Granada, then graduated in Hispanic Philology from the Complutense University of Madrid in 1971. She earned a PhD in Romance Philology from the University of Granada in December 1975, with a doctoral thesis about poetry magazines in Francoist Spain. Linked to the University of Granada since 1971 as a research fellow, she went to Fez, Morocco with her husband, Bernabé López García, a specialist in Arab History and Culture, in 1974.

#6078

Frederik Prausnitz

#77503

Overall Influence

1920 - 2004 (84 years)

Frederik William Prausnitz was a German-born American conductor and teacher. His grandfather, Wilhelm Prausnitz, was the dean of the medical school at Graz, as well as a Privy Counsellor. His family, of Lutheran background, emigrated from Cologne to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1937 because of deep disagreements with the Nazi regime. Upon graduation from the Juilliard School he won a conducting competition sponsored by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 1943, taught at Juilliard for some twenty years in the 1950s and 1960s, took over as conductor of the New England Conservatory Orchestra in B...

#6079

Paul Anderson

#95612

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Paul Anderson is a British journalist and academic, chiefly known as the editor of several political journals. Educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and the London College of Printing, Anderson was deputy editor of European Nuclear Disarmament Journal , reviews editor of Tribune , editor of Tribune , and deputy editor of the New Statesman , news editor of Red Pepper and deputy editor of the New Times . Since 1999 Anderson has worked as a contract subeditor on a number of publications, including The Guardian.

#6080

Marc Evans

#92876

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Marc Evans is a Welsh director of film and television, whose credits include the films House of America, Resurrection Man and My Little Eye. Biography Evans was born in 1963 in Cardiff, Wales. He studied for a history of art degree at the University of Cambridge, and then took a year out before taking a one-year course in film at the University of Bristol, where one of his contemporaries was Michael Winterbottom.

#6081

Ulrich Wickert

#82353

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Ulrich Wickert is a German journalist. He is one of the best-known broadcasters in Germany. Early life Born in Tokyo, Japan, Wickert grew up in Heidelberg and Paris as a result of his father Erwin Wickert being employed with NATO as a German diplomat. In the 1960s, he studied law and political sciences at the University of Bonn. In 1962, he spent a year at Wesleyan University on a Fulbright scholarship.

#6082

Peter Aldhous

#142078

Overall Influence

#6083

Ari Glass

#78752

Overall Influence

1989 - Present (37 years)

Ari Glass is an American painter, designer and musician. Biography Glass grew up in the Rainier Valley, Seattle. Glass attended art classes at Franklin High School and briefly studied graphic design at Seattle Central College, but otherwise has no formal artistic training.

#6084

Cristóbal Halffter

#93136

Overall Influence

1930 - 2021 (91 years)

Cristóbal Halffter Jiménez-Encina was a Spanish classical composer. He was the nephew of two other composers, Rodolfo and Ernesto Halffter and is regarded as the most important Spanish composer of the generation of composers designated the Generación del 51.

#6085

Marceline Day

#108678

Overall Influence

1908 - 2000 (92 years)

Marceline Day was an American motion picture actress whose career began as a child in the 1910s and ended in the 1930s. Early life Marceline Newlin was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, the daughter of Frank and Irene Newlin and the younger sister of film actress Alice Day. She attended Venice High School.

#6086

John Douglas

#78399

Overall Influence

1956 - 2010 (54 years)

John Douglas was an American conductor, voice teacher, vocal coach, and accompanist. Life and career Born in Morgantown, West Virginia, Douglas graduated from Tates Creek High School in Lexington, Kentucky in 1973. In 1977 he graduated from Wittenberg University with a Bachelor of Music degree, and in 1979 he earned a Master of Music in piano performance from Bowling Green State University. In 1979 he joined the faculty of the New England Conservatory where he served as the head of the music staff through 1989. He concurrently served on the voice faculty of the Boston Conservatory as an instructor of European diction from 1980 to 1989.

#6087

Maurizio Trifone

#113660

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Maurizio Trifone is an Italian linguist and lexicographer. Biography Trifone is professor of Italian language at the University of Cagliari. From 1995 to 2005 he was professor of Lexicography and Lexicology at the Foreigners University of Siena.

#6088

Denise Bernot

#106370

Overall Influence

1922 - 2016 (94 years)

Denise Bernot was a French academic who was professor of Burmese at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales from 1960 to 1989. She was the widow of who was professor at the Collège de France in the chair 'Sociographie de l'Asie du Sud-Est'. She was an alumna of the École des Chartes.

#6089

Amanda Petrusich

#65306

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (125 years)

Amanda Petrusich is an American music journalist. She is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of three books: Pink Moon , It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American Music , and Do Not Sell at Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World's Rarest 78rpm Records .

#6090

Bill Dixon

#83007

Overall Influence

1925 - 2010 (85 years)

William Robert Dixon was an American composer and educator. Dixon was one of the seminal figures in free jazz and late twentieth-century contemporary music. His was also a prominent activist for artist's rights and African American music tradition. He played the trumpet, flugelhorn, and piano, often using electronic delay and reverb.

#6091

John Gardner

#104540

Overall Influence

1917 - 2011 (94 years)

John Linton Gardner, CBE was an English composer of classical music. Early life John Gardner was born in Manchester, England and grew up in Ilfracombe, North Devon. His father Alfred Linton Gardner was a local physician and amateur composer who was killed in action in the First World War. His grandfather was John Twiname Gardner, also a general practitioner and composer. His mother, Emily Muriel Pullein-Thompson, was the sister of Captain Harold J "Cappy" Pullein-Thompson, who was the father of Josephine, Diana and Christine Pullein-Thompson and their brother, the playwright Denis Cannan.

#6092

Sherrie Tucker

#42620

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Sherrie Jean Tucker is a musicologist, music historian, book author, professor, and journal editor. Tucker is co-editor-in-chief of American Studies, peer-reviewed academic journal. Education Tucker holds three degrees from San Francisco State University, including: a BA in Creative Writing, graduating summa cum laude in 1991, an MA in Creative Writing in 1992, and an MA in Women's Studies in 1994. Tucker earned a Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in History of Consciousness in 1999.

#6093

Gerard Schwarz

#96467

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Gerard Schwarz , also known as Gerry Schwarz or Jerry Schwarz, is an American symphony conductor and trumpeter. As of 2019, Schwarz serves as the Artistic and Music Director of Palm Beach Symphony and the Director of Orchestral Activities and Music Director of the Frost Symphony Orchestra at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami.

#6094

Arthur Maria Rabenalt

#111974

Overall Influence

1905 - 1993 (88 years)

Arthur Maria Rabenalt was an Austrian film director, writer, and author. He directed more than 90 films between 1934 and 1978. His 1958 film That Won't Keep a Sailor Down was entered into the 1st Moscow International Film Festival. Two years later, his 1960 film Big Request Concert was entered into the 2nd Moscow International Film Festival. His career encompassed both Nazi cinema and West German productions. He also wrote several books on the 1930s and 1940s wave of German cinema.

#6095

Chuck Taylor

#72113

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Chuck Taylor is an American music journalist. He served as a reporter, senior writer, columnist and senior editor at Billboard magazine from 1995 to 2009. There, he held the titles of Senior Editor/Talent, Senior Writer, Radio Editor, host of the Billboard Radio Countdown , columnist of AirWaves and, Single Reviews Editor since 1998; as well as Managing Editor of Top 40/AC for affiliated publication Billboard Radio Monitor, and senior editor/features and AC format editor for Billboard sister Radio & Records.

#6096

Mia Brownell

#56906

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Mia Brownell is an American painter whose work has been described by the Boston Globe art critic Cate McQuaid as "a 21st-century take on the 17th-century genre, pulled off with thrilling technique -- a postmodern fruit cocktail that marries today's fascination with genetics and the building blocks of life with old-style painterly seduction."

#6097

Sonia

#96792

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Sonia Evans , known mononymously as Sonia, is an English pop singer from Liverpool. She had a 1989 UK number one hit with "You'll Never Stop Me Loving You" and became the first female UK artist to achieve five top 20 hit singles from one album. She represented the United Kingdom in the 1993 Eurovision Song Contest, where she finished second with the song "Better the Devil You Know". Between 1989 and 1993, she had 11 UK top 30 hits, including "Listen to Your Heart" , "Counting Every Minute" and "Only Fools " . In 1994, she starred as Sandy in a West End revival of the musical Grease, while on ...

#6098

Franco Rossi

#96960

Overall Influence

1919 - 2000 (81 years)

Franco Rossi was an Italian film screenwriter and director, mainly known for having directed the six-hour Italian-German-British-Swiss TV mini-series Quo Vadis? in 1985. Biography Rossi was born in Florence, Italy. He studied law and then began to work on theatre. He was assistant director of Mario Camerini, Luis Trenker, Renato Castellani, Aldo Vergano. Rossi made his debut as a director with the crime thriller I Falsari. He went on to have his first success with , starring by Alberto Sordi, and among Rossi's other films were The Woman in the Painting , Odissea Nuda , Three Nights of Love ...

#6099

Celia Pearce

#51598

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Celia Pearce is an American game designer currently teaching at Northeastern University as a full professor. She is a co-founder and current Festival Chair of IndieCade, an international festival of independent games. She is currently a professor at Northeastern University and occasionally talks and shows games at art and game events such as Different Games and Incubate Arcade.

#6100

Farooq Qaiser

#121803

Overall Influence

1945 - 2021 (76 years)

Farooq Qaiser was a Pakistani artist, newspaper columnist, TV show director, puppeteer, script writer, and voice actor. He was known as the creator of the fictional puppet character Uncle Sargam introduced in 1976 in children's television show Kaliyan. Farooq was also a cartoonist, newspaper columnist and wrote for the newspaper Daily Nai Baat in Lahore and under the pen name "Meethay Karelay" .

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