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,
#6201
Marty Paich
#71591
Overall Influence
1925 - 1995 (70 years)
Martin Louis Paich was an American pianist, composer, arranger, record producer, music director, and conductor. As a musician and arranger he worked with jazz musicians Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Kenton, Art Pepper, Buddy Rich, Ray Brown, Shorty Rogers, Pete Rugolo, Ray Charles and Mel Tormé. His long association with Tormé included one of the singer's earliest albums, Mel Tormé with the Marty Paich Dek-Tette. Over the next three decades he worked with pop singers such as Andy Williams and Jack Jones and for film and television. He is the father of David Paich, a founding member of the ...
Go to Profile#6202
Leon Kirchner
#94916
Overall Influence
1919 - 2009 (90 years)
Leon Kirchner was an American composer of contemporary classical music. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he won a Pulitzer Prize for his String Quartet No. 3.
Go to Profile#6203
Gerhard Pflüger
#107422
Overall Influence
1907 - 1991 (84 years)
Gerhard Friedrich Wilhelm Pflüger was a German conductor. Life Born in Dresden, Pflüger attended the citizen school and a grammar school in Dresden from 1913 to 1924. He then studied with Kurt Striegler and Fritz Busch at the orchestra school of the Staatskapelle Dresden until 1927. From 1927 to 1930 he was solo répétiteur, kapellmeister and choir conductor in Tilsit in East Prussia. From 1930 to 1932 he was first Kapellmeister in Stralsund and until 1935 in Gotha. From 1935 to 1938 he worked as musical director in Nordhausen. Until 1940 he was first Kapellmeister in Altenburg and afterwards in Meiningen.
Go to Profile#6204
Lutz Hachmeister
#93033
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Lutz Hachmeister is a German media historian, award-winning filmmaker and journalist. He particularly gained international attention for directing the 2005 film The Goebbels Experiment, co-produced by the BBC and the Canadian History channel, and featuring Kenneth Branagh as the narrator for the Goebbels Diaries. In 2006 Hachmeister established the Institute for Media and Communication Policy in Berlin and Cologne, which is strongly tied to the Anglo-American media scene.
Go to Profile#6205
Meryn Cadell
#22874
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (125 years)
Meryn Cadell is an American-Canadian writer and performance artist. He is an assistant professor of song lyrics and libretto writing in the Creative Writing Program at University of British Columbia.
Go to Profile#6206
David W. Lightfoot
#144106
Overall Influence
#6207
Nancy H. Hornberger
#144129
Overall Influence
#6208
Bugge Wesseltoft
#84790
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Jens Christian Bugge Wesseltoft is a Norwegian jazz pianist, composer, and producer, son of jazz guitarist Erik Wesseltoft. Career In 1989, Wesseltoft collaborated with the Knut Riisnæs Quartet and was soon after contacted by Arild Andersen to join in on commissioned work for Vossajazz—released on the album Sagn —and the follow-up Arv . He worked with Jan Garbarek on his Molde Canticle, a commission from Moldejazz, released on the 1990 album I Took Up the Runes.
Go to Profile#6209
Charles Bressler
#118876
Overall Influence
1926 - 1996 (70 years)
Charles Bressler was an American tenor. He was born in Kingston, Pennsylvania, and studied at the Juilliard School with Lucia Dunham. He became a founding member of the New York Pro Musica, with which he toured from 1953 to 1963. He taught at the Manhattan School of Music. In 1956 he appeared in "The Lark", starring Julie Harris, at the Longacre Theatre in New York City.
Go to Profile#6210
Emil Sitka
#88348
Overall Influence
1914 - 1998 (84 years)
Emil Sitka was an American actor, who appeared in hundreds of movies, short films, and television shows, and is best known for his numerous appearances with The Three Stooges and he was the unofficial "last Stooge", since he was tapped to be the new middle Stooge when Larry Fine suffered a stroke in 1970. He is one of only two actors to have worked with all six Stooges on film in the various incarnations of the group .
Go to Profile#6211
David Eric Yarowsky
#144248
Overall Influence
#6212
Ellen Roseman
#80252
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Ellen Roseman is a Canadian writer, journalist and lecturer specializing in personal finance and consumer issues. She currently writes a column handling consumer complaints for the Toronto Star and teaches at Ryerson University and the University of Toronto. She has been an editor and columnist for the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail. She is the author of a number of books and co-author with Phil Edmonston of The Canadian Consumers’ Survival Book. She lives in Toronto, Ontario and is married to Edward Trapunski. She has two children.
Go to Profile#6213
Michael Samuels
#101803
Overall Influence
1920 - 2010 (90 years)
Michael Louis Samuels was a British Ashkenazi historical linguist, responsible for the Historical Thesaurus of English. Life Samuels was born 14 September 1920 in London, the son of Harry Samuels, and Céline Aronowitz: his sister was actress Miriam Karlin . His was an orthodox Jewish upbringing, but he later said he was an atheist.
Go to Profile#6214
Emma Briant
#68949
Overall Influence
Emma L. Briant is a British scholar and academic researcher on media, contemporary propaganda, surveillance and information warfare who was involved in exposing the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal concerning data misuse and disinformation. She became Associate Professor of News and Political Communication at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia in 2023. Before this she was an associate researcher at Bard College and taught in the School of Communication at American University. Briant became an honorary associate in Cambridge University Center for Financial Reporting & Accountab...
Go to Profile#6215
John Joubert
#109912
Overall Influence
1927 - 2019 (92 years)
John Pierre Herman Joubert was a British composer of South African birth, particularly of choral works. He lived in Moseley, a suburb of Birmingham, England, for over 50 years. A music academic in the universities of Hull and Birmingham for 36 years, Joubert took early retirement in 1986 to concentrate on composing and remained active into his eighties. Though perhaps best known for his choral music, particularly the carols Torches and There is No Rose of Such Virtue and the anthem O Lorde, the Maker of Al Thing, Joubert composed over 160 works including three symphonies, four concertos and s...
Go to Profile#6216
Tom Plate
#100318
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Thomas Gordon Plate was an American journalist, university professor and op-ed columnist. Since 1996 his continuing column on Asia - and now specifically on the U.S. China relationship - has appeared in leading newspapers across the globe, including, of late, the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, where he is now a regular overseas opinion-section contributor, from Los Angeles; and before that in The Straits Times in Singapore, The Khaleej Times out of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, The Japan Times in Tokyo, The Korea Times in South Korea, The Jakarta Post, the International Herald Tribune , and many others.
Go to Profile#6217
Frank Moretti
#107524
Overall Influence
1943 - 2013 (70 years)
Frank Anthony Moretti was a Professor of Communications, Computing, and Technology at Teachers College, Columbia University and Visiting Professor in the Columbia University School of Journalism. He was a researcher in the area of new media teaching and learning and the use of digital technology in education, as well as co-founder and Executive Director of the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning. He earned a Ph.D. in History and an M. Phil from Columbia University, an M.Ed. from Teachers College and a B.A. in Greek and Latin from St. Bonaventure University. Dr. Moretti's 1983 dissertation was entitled "Augustus and Vergil: Pietas and the Pedagogy of Power".
Go to Profile#6218
Todd Barry
#89952
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Todd Barry is an American actor and stand-up comedian, best known for his deadpan comedy. Life and career Barry was born in The Bronx, New York, and grew up in Florida. He graduated from the University of Florida with a degree in English in 1986. Before starting in stand-up comedy, he was a drummer in the indie rock band The Chant from 1984 to 1985. In 1999, his Comedy Central Presents aired. He wrote, directed and starred in the short film Borrowing Saffron , co-starring H. Jon Benjamin. He has made guest appearances on shows like Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, Home Movies, Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Wonder Showzen, Tom Goes to the Mayor, and Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
Go to Profile#6219
Joseph G. May James W. Littler J. William Mccarthy
#144544
Overall Influence
#6220
Peter Serkin
#103087
Overall Influence
1947 - 2020 (73 years)
Peter Adolf Serkin was an American classical pianist. He won the Grammy Award for Most Promising New Classical Recording Artist in 1966, and he performed globally, known for not only "technically pristine" playing but also a "commitment to contemporary music". He taught at the Curtis Institute of Music, the Juilliard School, Yale University, and Bard College.
Go to Profile#6221
Kay Amert
#117698
Overall Influence
1947 - 2008 (61 years)
Kay Amert was an American scholar of French Renaissance printing and a typographer and letterpress printer. She was the director of the University of Iowa Typography Library from 1972 to 2006 where she was a professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Go to Profile#6222
Rick Karr
#100984
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Rick G. Karr is a journalist and educator who reports primarily on media and technology's impact on culture. He served as correspondent for the PBS series Bill Moyers Journal. Prior to that, he reported and co-wrote the documentary Net @ Risk, which aired in October 2006 as part of journalist Bill Moyers' series Moyers on America. The show examined the impact of legislation on net neutrality and the future of the U.S. internet, as well as broader issues involving telecommunications and democracy.
Go to Profile#6223
Michiru Ōshima
#117808
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Michiru Oshima is a Japanese composer and arranger. She works on music in wide range of areas, such as anime, films, television series, video games and concerts. She has written scores for over 100 movies, over 200 television titles, video games, various types of events, concerts, theaters, among others. Ōshima is one of the most prolific living composers for film, anime and video game. She has released over 300 CDs including film soundtracks and artist CDs. Her works include composition for Godzilla vs. Megaguirus, Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla, and Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. movies and scores f...
Go to Profile#6224
Will Eisner
#90171
Overall Influence
1917 - 2005 (88 years)
William Erwin Eisner was an American cartoonist, writer, and entrepreneur. He was one of the earliest cartoonists to work in the American comic book industry, and his series The Spirit was noted for its experiments in content and form. In 1978, he popularized the term "graphic novel" with the publication of his book A Contract with God. He was an early contributor to formal comics studies with his book Comics and Sequential Art . The Eisner Award was named in his honor and is given to recognize achievements each year in the comics medium; he was one of the three inaugural inductees to the Wi...
Go to Profile#6225
Scott Crossley
#118204
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Scott Andrew Crossley is an American linguist. He is a professor of applied linguistics at Vanderbilt University, United States. His research focuses on natural language processing and the application of computational tools and machine learning algorithms in learning analytics including second language acquisition, second language writing, and readability. His main interest area is the development and use of natural language processing tools in assessing writing quality and text difficulty.
Go to Profile#6226
Akiyoshi Wada
#144711
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
#6227
Vladimir Jurowski
#89625
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Vladimir Mikhailovich Jurowski is a Russian conductor. He is the son of conductor Michail Jurowski, and grandson of Soviet film music composer Vladimir Michailovich Jurowski. Early life Born in Moscow, Jurowski began his musical studies at the Moscow Conservatory. In 1990, he moved with his family, including his brother Dmitri and his sister Maria to Germany, where he completed his education at the music schools at the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber Dresden and the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler. He studied conducting with Rolf Reuter and vocal coaching with Semion Skigin. He participated in a conducting master class with Sir Colin Davis on Sibelius' Symphony No.
Go to Profile#6228
Eric Peterson
#89413
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Eric Neal Peterson is a Canadian stage, television, and film actor, known for his roles in three major Canadian television series – Street Legal , Corner Gas , and This is Wonderland . Career Stage In 1971, Peterson began his acting career when he helped found the collective theatre company Tamahnous Theatre in Vancouver, British Columbia. There he received major roles in versions of The Bacchae and Nijinsky, both directed by John Gray.
Go to Profile#6229
Paul Davis
#89810
Overall Influence
1948 - 2008 (60 years)
Paul Lavon Davis was an American singer and songwriter, best known for his radio hits and solo career that started worldwide in 1970. His career encompassed soul, country, and pop. His most successful songs are 1977's "I Go Crazy", a No. 7 pop hit that once held the record for the longest chart run on the Billboard Hot 100, and 1982's "'65 Love Affair", which at No. 6 is his highest-charting single. Another pop hit, "Cool Night", was released in 1981. In the mid-1980s, he also had two No. 1 country hits as a guest vocalist on songs by Marie Osmond and Tanya Tucker.
Go to Profile#6230
Willem H. Van Riemsdijk
#144779
Overall Influence
#6231
Robert T. Harms
#127983
Overall Influence
1932 - 2016 (84 years)
Robert Thomas Harms was an American linguist and emeritus professor of linguistics at University of Texas at Austin. He is known for his research on grammar of Estonian and phonological theory. Books Introduction to Phonological Theory, 1968Estonian Grammar, 1962Finnish Structural Sketch, 1964
Go to Profile#6233
Howard Shanet
#96540
Overall Influence
1918 - 2006 (88 years)
Howard Shanet was a U.S. conductor and composer. He was also a music professor at Columbia University, and the chairman of its music department from 1972–1978. Biography Howard Shanet was born on 9 November 1918 in Brooklyn, New York, and started his musical career as a cellist, gaining a Bachelor's degree from Columbia in 1939 and a Master's in Musicology in 1941.
Go to Profile#6234
Oliver Lake
#90849
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Oliver Lake is an American jazz saxophonist, flutist, composer, poet, and visual artist. He is known mainly for alto saxophone, but he also performs on soprano and flute. During the 1960s, Lake worked with the Black Artists Group in St. Louis. In 1977, he founded the World Saxophone Quartet with David Murray, Julius Hemphill, and Hamiet Bluiett. Lake worked in the group Trio 3 with Reggie Workman and Andrew Cyrille. Lake has appeared on more than 80 albums as a bandleader, co-leader, and side musician. He is the father of drummer Gene Lake. Lake has been a resident of Montclair, New Jersey.
Go to Profile#6235
Simon Fischer
#104554
Overall Influence
Simon Fischer is a contemporary violinist and pedagogue. Born in Sydney, Australia, son of Raymond Fischer whom he has been accompanied by in some of his recitals. Started to learn at age of 7, then at age of 11 he studied shortly at the Junior Guildhall with Christopher Polyblank and Clive Lander At age 13 he studied privately first with Homi Kanger, then with Eli Goren, then Perry Hart, then Sydney Fixman. Then at the Senior Guildhall by Yfrah Neaman and as a postgraduate in New York with Dorothy DeLay, first through Sarah Lawrence College and then through the Juilliard School. After finishi...
Go to Profile#6236
Morton Subotnick
#83862
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Morton Subotnick is an American composer of electronic music, best known for his 1967 composition Silver Apples of the Moon, the first electronic work commissioned by a record company, Nonesuch. He was one of the founding members of California Institute of the Arts, where he taught for many years.
Go to Profile#6237
Bob Cooper
#117426
Overall Influence
1925 - 1993 (68 years)
Bob Cooper was a West Coast jazz musician known primarily for playing tenor saxophone, but also for being one of the first to play jazz solos on oboe. Career Cooper worked in Stan Kenton's band starting in 1945 and married the band's singer, June Christy, two years later. The union produced a daughter, Shay Christy Cooper , with the marriage lasting 44 years, until Christy's death in 1990. His last studio recording was on Karrin Allyson's album Sweet Home Cookin' on which he played tenor saxophone.
Go to Profile#6238
Bessie Schonberg
#48510
Overall Influence
1906 - 1997 (91 years)
Bessie Schonberg was a highly influential dancer, choreographer and teacher of the 20th century. She was at the center of contemporary modern dance from her beginning at Bennington College up until her death in 1997. Her career spanned sixty-five years and she helped mold a new generation of modern dancers including Lucinda Childs, Elizabeth Keen, Meredith Monk and Carolyn Adams .
Go to Profile#6239
Lorenza Mondada
#144969
Overall Influence
#6240
Charles Bruck
#121046
Overall Influence
1911 - 1995 (84 years)
Charles Bruck was a French-American conductor and teacher. Bruck was born in a Jewish family in Temesvár, Banat, then in the Kingdom of Hungary, part of Austro-Hungarian Empire, since 1920 Timișoara in Romania.
Go to Profile#6241
Nina Gilden Seavey
#103381
Overall Influence
Nina Gilden Seavey is a documentary filmmaker and Research Professor of History and Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University . She was the Director of the Documentary Center at GW, which she founded in October 1990, before stepping down in 2020. In 2017, Seavey was named a visiting research scholar at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University.
Go to Profile#6242
Giovanni Garbini
#45155
Overall Influence
1931 - 2017 (86 years)
Giovanni Garbini was an Italian Orientalist and Semitist. His biblical studies revealed historical omissions and helped scholars to interpret the biblical narrative in the larger context of the history of the ancient Near East. He worked as a university lecturer in the Istituto Universitario Orientale in Naples, at the Scuola Normale in Pisa and finally in Sapienza in Rome until his retirement. He was a member of the Lincean Academy since 1990, and a member of the Leone Caetani foundation for Islamic studies.
Go to Profile#6243
Gaby Casadesus
#127164
Overall Influence
1901 - 1999 (98 years)
Gaby Casadesus was a French classical pianist and teacher born in Marseilles, France. She was married to the French pianist Robert Casadesus and their son Jean was also a notable pianist. Biography Born Gabrielle l'Hôte, she studied at the Paris Conservatory with Louis Diémer and Marguerite Long and was awarded the first prize in piano at age 16. She met Claude Debussy at this time, as he was the judge for one of her competitions. She was also friendly with Debussy's daughter Claude-Emma who died soon after of diphtheria. Gaby later won the Prix Pagès, which was the most prestigious award in...
Go to Profile#6244
Eckart Altenmüller
#112562
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Eckart Altenmüller is a German physician and musician and one of the leading researchers in the field of neurophysiology and neuropsychology of musicians. Life Born in Rottweil, Altenmüller studied medicine in Eberhard-Karls-Universität and Hôtel-Dieu in Paris from 1974 to 1981 and music at the Musikhochschule Freiburg from 1979 to 1985 . After receiving his doctorate in medicine from the Albert Ludwigs University in Freiburg, he also trained as a specialist in neurology.
Go to Profile#6245
Sergiu Luca
#86180
Overall Influence
1943 - 2010 (67 years)
Sergiu Luca was a Romanian-born American violinist, renowned as an early music pioneer; during his career he performed and recorded on both baroque and modern violins. Biography Sergiu Luca was born in Bucharest, Romania, but his family moved to Israel at his age of 7, and as a 9 year old he debuted with the Haifa Symphony Orchestra. Before going to the United States to study at the Curtis Institute with Ivan Galamian, he studied in London and Switzerland.
Go to Profile#6246
James Walker Benét
#79423
Overall Influence
1914 - 2012 (98 years)
James Walker Benét was an American journalist, author, and reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle and KQED. Benét was one of the last surviving veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, a group of American volunteers during the Spanish Civil War who fought for the Republicans as part of the International Brigades.
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Dave Samuels
#92436
Overall Influence
1948 - 2019 (71 years)
David Alan Samuels was an American vibraphone and marimba player who spent many years with the contemporary jazz group Spyro Gyra. His recordings and live performances during that period also reflect his prowess on the steelpan, a tuned percussion instrument of Trinidadian origin.
Go to Profile#6248
Daniel Ling
#117450
Overall Influence
1926 - 2003 (77 years)
Daniel Ling, , was a preeminent figure in the development of methods for teaching speech to deaf children. His techniques have gained global recognition and widespread use. He served as a professor of Graduate Studies in Aural Habilitation at McGill University from 1973 to 1984. Concurrently, in the early 1980s, Ling ventured into the art of violin-making. Following his tenure at McGill, he held the position of Dean of the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Western Ontario from 1984 to 1991.
Go to Profile#6249
Erling Blöndal Bengtsson
#92770
Overall Influence
1932 - 2013 (81 years)
Erling Blöndal Bengtsson was a Danish cellist. Born in Copenhagen, Bengtsson gave his first public performance there in 1936, when he was four years old. He was admitted at the age of sixteen to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where he studied with Gregor Piatigorsky, who engaged him as a teaching assistant in 1949. From 1950 to 1953, Bengtsson taught his own cello class at the Institute, before being appointed to the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen. In 1980, he became a professor at the Hochschule für Musik Köln. He returned to America in 1990 and taught at the Uni...
Go to Profile#6250
Nina Hyams
#126481
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Nina Hyams is a distinguished research professor emeritus in linguistics at the University of California in Los Angeles. Education and career Hyams received her PhD in linguistics in 1983 from Graduate Center of the City University of New York, with a dissertation entitled, The acquisition of parameterized grammars. It was published by Springer in 1986, and it remains a widely cited and influential classic.
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