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,
#6101
Kenny Kirkland
#81542
Overall Influence
1955 - 1998 (43 years)
Kenneth David Kirkland was an American pianist and keyboardist. Biography Early life Born in Brooklyn, New York, United States, Kirkland was six when he first sat down at a piano keyboard. After years of Catholic schooling, Kirkland enrolled at the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied classical piano performance, classical theory and composition.
Go to Profile#6102
Mónica de Miranda
#93887
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Mónica de Miranda is a Portuguese visual artist, photographer, filmmaker, and researcher of Angolan ancestry known for her artwork on socially inspired themes, including postcolonial issues of geography, history, and subjectivity related to Africa and its diaspora. Her media include photography, mixed media and video. De Miranda first became known for her photographic records of the ruins of modern hotels in post-war Angola, and their surrounding sociopolitical circumstances. Her photographic series, videos, short films, and installations have been internationally exhibited at art biennales, galleries, and museums, some of which keep her work in their permanent art collections.
Go to Profile#6103
Shirō Yabu
#116276
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
is a Japanese scholar of the languages of Burma. He is a professor emeritus at Osaka University. He joined the Department of Burmese language of Osaka University in 1982 as an assistant professor and worked there until 2009.
Go to Profile#6104
John Heskett
#28875
Overall Influence
1937 - 2014 (77 years)
John Heskett was a British writer and lecturer on the economic, political, cultural and human value of industrial design. Heskett taught primary in the fields of design history and design thinking, and was a professor at the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology and the School of Design at Hong Kong Polytechnic University , where he became the acting dean . He was also a visiting professor at various universities in Turkey, Japan, Chile, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland.
Go to Profile#6105
Paul Young
#105892
Overall Influence
1947 - 2000 (53 years)
Paul Young was a British singer and songwriter. He achieved success in the bands Sad Café and Mike + the Mechanics. Life and career Young was born on 17 June 1947 in the Wythenshawe district of Manchester, England.
Go to Profile#6106
Dieter Schnebel
#87025
Overall Influence
1930 - 2018 (88 years)
Dieter Schnebel was a German composer, theologian and musicologist. He composed orchestral music, chamber music, vocal music and stage works. From 1976 until his retirement in 1995, Schnebel served as professor of experimental music at the Hochschule der Künste, Berlin.
Go to Profile#6107
Muriel Porter
#96812
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Muriel Lylie Porter is an Australian journalist based in Melbourne, Victoria. She is a frequent contributor to The Age newspaper and The Melbourne Anglican diocesan newspaper, for which she mostly writes about issues concerning the Anglican Church of Australia in which she is a prominent layperson. Porter is a representative of the Anglican Diocese of Melbourne on the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Australia.
Go to Profile#6108
Diana Maynard
#125315
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Diana Maynard is a British computer scientist and computational linguist who works as a senior research fellow in the Natural Language Processing Group of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Sheffield.
Go to Profile#6109
D. Kimbrough Oller
#137493
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
D. Kimbrough Oller , also known as Kim Oller, is an American scientist who has contributed to the fields of the evolution of language, child phonology, speech-language pathology , and to the fields of bilingualism and second-language acquisition. He is currently Professor and Plough Chair of Excellence at the University of Memphis, where he directs the Origin of Language Laboratories. He is also an external faculty member of the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research and a permanent member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the LENA Foundation of Boulder, Colorado. Olle...
Go to Profile#6110
David E. Kaplan
#36057
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
David E. Kaplan is an investigative reporter and former director of the Center for Public Integrity's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Before this post, he worked for the American newsweekly U.S. News & World Report.
Go to Profile#6111
Jörg Matthes
#142534
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
#6112
Lars Mathiassen
#142544
Overall Influence
#6113
Daniele Gatti
#99989
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Daniele Gatti is an Italian conductor. He is currently chief conductor of Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, artistic advisor of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and music director of the Orchestra Mozart. Biography Gatti was born in Milan. He was the music director of the Orchestra Dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome from 1992 to 1997. In 1997, he became the music director of the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna. He has also served as principal guest conductor of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. In 2005, alongside Zubin Mehta and Christian Thielemann, Gatti was invited t...
Go to Profile#6114
Gianni Amelio
#75686
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Gianni Amelio is an Italian film director. Early life Amelio was born in San Pietro di Magisano, province of Catanzaro, Calabria. His father moved to Argentina soon after his birth. He spent his youth and adolescence with his mother and his grandmother. The absence of a paternal figure would be a constant in Amelio's future works.
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Jimmy Knepper
#97659
Overall Influence
1927 - 2003 (76 years)
James Minter Knepper was an American jazz trombonist. In addition to his own recordings as leader, Knepper performed and recorded with Charlie Barnet, Woody Herman, Claude Thornhill, Stan Kenton, Benny Goodman, Gil Evans, Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, Toshiko Akiyoshi and Lew Tabackin, and, most famously, Charles Mingus in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Knepper died in 2003 of complications of Parkinson's disease.
Go to Profile#6116
David Newman
#85297
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
David Louis Newman is an American composer and conductor known particularly for his film scores. In a career spanning more than thirty years, he has composed music for nearly 100 feature films, as well as the 1997 and 1998 versions of the 20th Century Fox fanfare. He received an Academy Award nomination for writing the score to the 1997 film Anastasia, contributing to the Newmans being the most nominated Academy Award extended family, with a collective 92 nominations in various music categories.
Go to Profile#6117
Leon Major
#107832
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Leon Major is a Canadian opera and theatre director. He is the Artistic Director of The Maryland Opera Studio for the University of Maryland, College Park. From 1998-2003 he was Artistic Director of Boston Lyric Opera and from 2003–2007 he was artistic consultant for Opera Cleveland.
Go to Profile#6118
Charlie Peacock
#63507
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Charles William Ashworth , known professionally as Charlie Peacock, is an American singer, songwriter, pianist, record producer, and author. His albums include Love Press Ex-Curio, Arc of the Circle and No Man's Land . He is the founder of re:think, a record label that signed acts such as Switchfoot.
Go to Profile#6119
David Hayman
#94615
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
David Hayman is a Scottish film, television and stage actor and director. His acting credits include Sid and Nancy , Hope and Glory , Rob Roy , The Jackal , Trial & Retribution , Legionnaire , Ordinary Decent Criminal , Vertical Limit , The Tailor of Panama , Flood , The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas , The Paradise , Taboo , Our Ladies , The Nest , Bull , and Andor .
Go to Profile#6120
Eneko Agirre
#142749
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
#6121
Joe Newman
#116247
Overall Influence
1922 - 1992 (70 years)
Joseph Dwight Newman was an American jazz trumpeter, composer, and educator, best known as a musician who worked with Count Basie during two periods. Early life and education Newman was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, to Dwight, and Louise Newman, a musical family, having his first music lessons from David Jones. He attended Alabama State College, where he joined the college band , became its leader, and took it on tour.
Go to Profile#6122
Ivan Lubennikov
#49146
Overall Influence
1951 - 2021 (70 years)
Ivan Leonidovich Lubennikov was a Russian painter, who lived and worked in Moscow. Early life and education Lubennikov spent his childhood in Siberia whose memory, especially hunting and fishing, spreads through his pictorial and literary artworks. He moved to Moscow at 14 years old and entered the Surikov Art Institute in Moscow a few years later in the monumental art department.
Go to Profile#6123
Holly Hughes
#39273
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Holly Hughes is an American lesbian performance artist. She began as a feminist painter in New York City but is best known for her connection with the NEA Four, with whom she was denied funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, and for her work with the Women's One World Cafe. Her plays explore sexuality, body images and the female mind. She is the recipient of several awards including the Lambda Book Award and an Obie Award. She is a professor of art and design as well as theater and drama at the University of Michigan School of Art & Design.
Go to Profile#6124
John Hajek
#98415
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
John Hajek is an Australian linguist and professor at the University of Melbourne. Hajek has held research fellowships in the United Kingdom and Australia. He is currently director of RUMACCC and a past president of LCNAU .
Go to Profile#6125
Shlomo Dubnov
#52926
Overall Influence
Shlomo Dubnov is an American-Israeli computer music researcher and composer. He is a professor in the Music Department and Affiliate Professor in Computer Science and Engineering and a founding faculty of the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute in the University of California, San Diego, where he has been since 2003. He is the Director of the Center for Research in Entertainment and Learning at UC San Diego's Qualcomm Institute.
Go to Profile#6126
J. Guy Lyons
#142866
Overall Influence
#6127
Del the Funky Homosapien
#63318
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Teren Delvon Jones , better known by his stage name Del the Funky Homosapien or Sir DZL, is an American rapper. Music career 1988–1997: Early life and beginnings Born in Oakland, California, he is the cousin of seminal West Coast rapper Ice Cube, and began his career writing lyrics for Ice Cube's group Da Lench Mob. In 1991, with the help of Ice Cube, Del released his first solo album, I Wish My Brother George Was Here, at the age of 19. The album was a commercial success largely due to the popularity of the hit single "Mistadobalina". Ultimately Del, who was not pleased with the limited mus...
Go to Profile#6128
Iwan Edwards
#92856
Overall Influence
1937 - 2022 (85 years)
Iwan Edwards was a Welsh-born Canadian choral conductor. Over a forty-year span he founded and conducted several choirs. He was appointed Member of the Order of Canada in 1995. Early life Edwards was born in Wales on October 5, 1937. He studied music at the University College of Wales, graduating with a Bachelor of Music in 1961. He was then awarded a scholarship in orchestral conducting at the Royal Academy of Music, but turned it down in favour of professional teaching and directing. Edwards left Wales in 1965 and relocated to Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Go to Profile#6129
Manthia Diawara
#101061
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Manthia Diawara is a Malian writer, filmmaker, cultural theorist, scholar, and art historian. He holds the title of University Professor at New York University , where he is Director of the Institute of Afro-American Affairs.
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Jennifer Bolande
#82863
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Jennifer Bolande is an American postconceptual artist whose work employs various media—primarily photography, sculpture, film and site-specific installations in which she explores affinities between particular sets of objects and images and the mercurial meanings they manufacture.
Go to Profile#6131
Paul Lakeland
#61652
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Paul Lakeland is the Rev. Aloysius P. Kelley, S.J., Professor of Catholic Studies and Chair of the Center for Catholic Studies at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut and was the 2005 Fairfield University Teacher of the Year. Lakeland was awarded the first place 2004 Catholic Press Award, in the category of theology, for his book, The Liberation of the Laity: In Search of an Accountable Church .
Go to Profile#6132
Joonas Kokkonen
#101514
Overall Influence
1921 - 1996 (75 years)
Joonas Kokkonen was a Finnish composer. He was one of the most internationally famous Finnish composers of the 20th century after Sibelius; his opera The Last Temptations has received over 500 performances worldwide, and is considered by many to be Finland's most distinguished national opera.
Go to Profile#6133
Joe Henry
#72088
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Joseph Lee Henry is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer. He has released 15 studio albums and produced multiple recordings for other artists, including three Grammy Award-winning albums.
Go to Profile#6134
Donald Martino
#92085
Overall Influence
1931 - 2005 (74 years)
Donald James Martino was a Pulitzer Prize winning American composer. Biography Born in Plainfield, New Jersey, Martino attended Plainfield High School. He began as a clarinetist, playing jazz for fun and profit. He attended Syracuse University, where he studied composition with Ernst Bacon, who encouraged him in that direction. He then attended Princeton University as a graduate student, where he worked with composers Roger Sessions and Milton Babbitt. He also studied with Luigi Dallapiccola in Italy as a Fulbright Scholar.
Go to Profile#6135
Arthur Winograd
#79697
Overall Influence
1920 - 2010 (90 years)
Arthur Winograd was the music director of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra and the founding cellist of the Juilliard String Quartet. Born in New York City, Winograd studied at the New England Conservatory of Music and the Curtis Institute of Music before founding the Juilliard quartet in 1946.
Go to Profile#6136
William Revelli
#98382
Overall Influence
1902 - 1994 (92 years)
William D. Revelli was an American music educator and conductor best known for his association with the University of Michigan, where he directed the university's bands including the Michigan Marching Band 1935 to 1971. During his 36 years as director, the Michigan Marching Band won international acclaim for its musical precision. Revelli is also credited with innovations that moved college marching bands across the country away from rigid military formations. Among other things, Revelli’s Michigan Marching Band was the first to synchronize music and movement and the first to use an announ...
Go to Profile#6137
James Dean Brown
#143080
Overall Influence
#6138
Graham Waterhouse
#108899
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Graham Waterhouse is an English composer and cellist who specializes in chamber music. He has composed a cello concerto, Three Pieces for Solo Cello and Variations for Cello Solo for his own instrument, and string quartets and compositions that juxtapose a quartet with a solo instrument, including Piccolo Quintet, Bassoon Quintet and the piano quintet Rhapsodie Macabre. He has set poetry for speaking voice and cello, such as Der Handschuh, and has written song cycles. His compositions reflect the individual capacity and character of players and instruments, from the piccolo to the contrabasso...
Go to Profile#6139
Belle Adler
#143116
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (125 years)
Belle Adler is an associate professor of journalism at Northeastern University School of Journalism. Adler specializes in television news. Before teaching at the university, Adler was a local television news executive where she was an investigative producer and tape editor. She had previously been employed by several broadcasting stations like KGO-TV, WCBS-TV, and KQED and cable stations like CNN, A&E, Discovery Channel, and Animal Planet. Adler has won two Northern California Emmy’s for her work.
Go to Profile#6140
Ulrich Windfuhr
#100051
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Ulrich Windfuhr is a German conductor. Life Born in Heidelberg, Windfuhr grew up as the son of the Heine researcher and editor , first in his hometown and later in Düsseldorf. From 1978 Windfuhr studied orchestral conducting in Cologne, Vienna and Florence and attended master classes with Franco Ferrara, Carlo Maria Giulini, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Leonard Bernstein and Günter Ludwig. In 1985 Windfuhr won the International Conducting Competition Vittorio Gui and in 1986 the International Conducting Competition Janos Ferencic in Budapest.
Go to Profile#6141
Andrew C. Billings
#132501
Overall Influence
Andrew C. Billings is a professor and the Ronald Reagan Chair of Broadcasting in the Department of Journalism and Creative Media at The University of Alabama. He is the current director of the sports communication program. His research primarily focuses on the study of Sport Communication. Billings received his PhD in Communication & Culture from Indiana University in 1999. He was the founding chair of both the Communication and Sport Division of the National Communication Association and the Sport Communication Interest Group of the International Communication Association. He has also chaired...
Go to Profile#6142
Emmanuel Nunes
#97524
Overall Influence
1941 - 2012 (71 years)
Emmanuel Nunes was a Portuguese composer who lived and worked in Paris from 1964. Biography Nunes was born in Lisbon, where he studied composition, first from 1959 to 1963 at the Academia de Amadores de Música with Francine Benoit, and then with Fernando Lopes-Graça at the university . He then attended courses at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse , and in 1964 moved to Paris. A year later he moved to Cologne and enrolled at the Hochschule für Musik Köln, and studied composition with Henri Pousseur, electronic music with Jaap Spek, and phonetics with Georg Heike, while also taking courses with Karlh...
Go to Profile#6143
Alison Hennegan
#76661
Overall Influence
Alison Hennegan is a lecturer at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity Hall. She is also a prominent campaigner for gay and lesbian rights in the UK and a journalist. Hennegan's academic work focuses on lesbian and gay themes in English literature, particularly in British Modernism. She began writing her PhD thesis, “Literature and the Homosexual Cult, 1890–1920” in Cambridge in 1970, but her heavy involvement in gay activism forced her to put her research on hold. She returned to the academy in the 1980s and has published articles on the lesbian reader, Oscar Wilde and the Symbolist and decadent movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Go to Profile#6144
Roger Reynolds
#85121
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Roger Lee Reynolds is an American composer. He is known for his capacity to integrate diverse ideas and resources, and for the seamless blending of traditional musical sounds with those newly enabled by technology. Beyond composition, his contributions to musical life include mentorship, algorithmic design, engagement with psychoacoustics, writing books and articles, and festival organization.
Go to Profile#6145
Zack Furness
#110055
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Zachary Mooradian Furness is an American cultural studies scholar, punk musician and author. Biography Born in 1977 in Pittsburgh, Furness earned a bachelor's degree in English from Pennsylvania State University, a master's degree and doctorate in Communication studies from the University of Pittsburgh, as well as a doctoral certificate in Women's Studies. He is currently associate professor of communications at Penn State Greater Allegheny where he also serves as Communications Program Coordinator and the WMKP Radio General Manager. Prior to working at Penn State, Furness taught in the Cultur...
Go to Profile#6146
John Sinclair
#101307
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
John Sinclair is an English keyboardist who has played for bands such as The Babys, Heavy Metal Kids, Savoy Brown, The Cult, but is probably best known for his time in Uriah Heep and playing for Ozzy Osbourne's band. He also is credited with styling keyboard parts for This Is Spinal Tap.
Go to Profile#6147
Harry Edison
#94100
Overall Influence
1915 - 1999 (84 years)
Harry "Sweets" Edison was an American jazz trumpeter and a member of the Count Basie Orchestra. His most important contribution was as a Hollywood studio musician, whose muted trumpet can be heard backing singers, most notably Frank Sinatra.
Go to Profile#6148
Bill Schnee
#55281
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
William S. Schnee is an American musician, music producer, and audio engineer. Schnee has been nominated 11 times for the Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical Grammy Award and worked on a multitude of other Grammy nominated and awarded albums. He has won two Grammys, an Emmy for Outstanding Sound for a Television Special, and a Dove Award. In a 45+ year career of very diverse artists, Schnee has received over 135 gold and platinum records and has recorded/mixed over 50 top twenty singles.
Go to Profile#6149
Gordon Douglas
#95147
Overall Influence
1907 - 1993 (86 years)
Gordon Douglas Brickner was an American film director and actor, who directed many different genres of films over the course of a five-decade career in motion pictures. Early life Born Gordon Douglas Brickner in New York City, he began his career as a child actor, appearing in some films directed by Maurice Costello. He also worked at MGM as a book-keeper.
Go to Profile#6150
Maria Burmaka
#92749
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Maria Burmaka is a Ukrainian singer, TV personality, musician, and songwriter in the genres of rock, pop, folk, and world music. She also holds the title of People's Artist of Ukraine. Biography and education Burmaka was born into a family of teachers. She began singing Ukrainian songs while studying in guitar class in a musical school. She graduated from that school, specializing in guitar. In 1987, she entered the faculty of philology of Kharkiv University of Karazin. As a student, she began to write original songs.
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