Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

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Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Communications,

#6301

Antal van den Bosch

Antal van den Bosch

#113467

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Antal P.J. van den Bosch is a Dutch-language researcher. He has been director of the Meertens Institute since January 2017. He previously was a professor at Tilburg University and Radboud University Nijmegen.

#6302

Robert Strassburg

#102040

Overall Influence

1915 - 2003 (88 years)

Robert Strassburg was a leading American conductor, composer, musicologist and music educator of the twentieth century. His studies in music were completed under the supervision of such leading composers as Igor Stravinsky, Walter Piston and Paul Hindemith, with whom he studied at Tanglewood. His formal academic studies were completed at the New England Conservatory of Music and Harvard University, where he obtained a fellowship in composition. He also completed a doctorate in Fine Arts at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles. As a musicologist, Dr. Strassburg is regarded as a leading au...

#6303

William Mathias

#115443

Overall Influence

1934 - 1992 (58 years)

William James Mathias CBE was a Welsh composer noted for choral works. Biography William Mathias was born in Whitland, Carmarthenshire. A child prodigy, he started playing the piano at the age of three and began composing at the age of five. At Aberystwyth University Mathias was a member of the Elizabethan Madrigal Singers and wrote 'Gloria in Excelsis Deo' for them in 1954. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music under Lennox Berkeley, where he was elected a Fellow in 1965. In 1968, he was awarded the Bax Society Prize of the Harriet Cohen International Music Award. He was professor of musi...

#6304

Don Menza

#97327

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Don Menza is an American jazz saxophonist. Career Menza was born in Buffalo, New York. After serving in the U.S. Army, he was part of the Maynard Ferguson Orchestra from 1960 to 1962 and then briefly worked for Stan Kenton. From 1964 to 1968 he lived in Germany. Back in the U.S., he became a member of the Buddy Rich band in 1968 and recorded a well-known solo with that band on "Channel One Suite". In the 1970s he was a member of The Tonight Show Band. He later lived in California and played with Elvin Jones and Louie Bellson.

#6305

Malcolm Cecil

#56719

Overall Influence

1937 - 2021 (84 years)

Malcolm Cecil was a British jazz bassist, record producer, engineer, electronic musician and teacher. He was a founding member of a leading UK jazz quintet of the late 1950s, the Jazz Couriers, before going on to join a number of British jazz combos led by Dick Morrissey, Tony Crombie and Ronnie Scott in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He later joined Cyril Davies and Alexis Korner to form the original line-up of Blues Incorporated. Cecil subsequently collaborated with Robert Margouleff to form the duo TONTO's Expanding Head Band, a project based on a unique combination of synthesizers whic...

#6306

K. David van Hoesen

#144168

Overall Influence

1926 - 2016 (90 years)

Karl David van Hoesen was former principal bassoonist of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and Professor emeritus of the University of Rochester, Eastman School of Music as chair of the Wind, Brass and Percussion Department. In 1950 he graduated from the Eastman School of Music in New York, USA, with a bachelor's degree. From 1950 to 1954 he was professor of bassoon at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and at the Cleveland Institute of Music after which he joined the Eastman faculty. He was also the second bassoonist of the Cleveland Orchestra from 1952-1954.

#6307

Peter Lieberson

#102979

Overall Influence

1946 - 2011 (65 years)

Peter Goddard Lieberson was an American composer of contemporary classical music. His song cycles include two finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Music: Rilke Songs and Neruda Songs; the latter won the 2008 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition and both were written for his wife, the mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. His three piano concertos were each premiered by the pianist Peter Serkin, with the 1st and 3rd also being Pulitzer finalists.

#6308

Dimitrie Osmanli

#81535

Overall Influence

1927 - 2006 (79 years)

Dimitrie Osmanli was a Macedoniann film, television and theater director. He was the first academically graduated Macedonian, both film and theater, director. Osmanli was a multimedia director. Highly respected for introducing modern themes and genres in the age of socialist and patriotic realism, introducing the new creative approach with his first feature films, the short film "Puppets` Rebellion" , and especially with the modern comedy "Peaceful Summer" , a film keeping its charm and freshness up to date. One of the founders, the first dean, and a professor in the Faculty of Dramatic Arts of the St.st.

#6309

Erick Friedman

#76214

Overall Influence

1939 - 2004 (65 years)

Erick Friedman was an American violinist. He performed around the world as guest soloist with orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He collaborated with conductors such as Karajan, Stokowski, Steinberg, Leinsdorf, Previn, and Ozawa. He won a Grammy Award in 1996.

#6310

Robert David Galliers

#146267

Overall Influence

#6311

Walter Salles

#84879

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Walter Moreira Salles Júnior is a Brazilian filmmaker. Early life Salles was born on 12 April 1956 in Rio de Janeiro and attended the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. He is the son of Brazilian banker, politician and philanthropist Walter Moreira Salles.

#6312

Michael Gibbs

#109306

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Michael Clement Irving Gibbs is a Rhodesian-born English jazz composer, conductor, arranger and producer as well as a trombonist and keyboardist. He is known for collaborations with vibraphonist Gary Burton, his student, and for his use of rock elements in orchestral jazz.

#6313

John Bright

#109080

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

John Bright is a British costume designer who is best known for his work for Merchant Ivory Productions. He and fellow collaborator Jenny Beavan have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Costume Design six times, winning once for A Room with a View .

#6314

José Luis Cuerda

José Luis Cuerda

#98461

Overall Influence

1947 - 2020 (73 years)

José Luis Cuerda Martínez was a Spanish film director, screenwriter and producer. He was born in Albacete and died on 4 February 2020 at the age of 72 in Madrid from an embolism. He won four Goya Awards: in 1987, 1988, 2000 and 2009.

#6315

Alba D'Urbano

#131097

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Alba D'Urbano is a textile and video artist. D'Urbano's most notable work was 1995's "hautnah" ; a series of garments imprinted with life-size digital photographs of her own skin. After an exhibition in 1999, critics stated she depicted nudity as fashionable, provoked voyeurism, and made skin just another interface in a world. In addition to her own work, D'Urbano has been a critic and an art philosopher. Since 1995, D'Urbano has been a professor at Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, in Leipzig, Germany.

#6316

Freddie Washington

#60414

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

"Ready" Freddie Washington is an American session bassist who has played with artists such as Herbie Hancock, Michael Jackson, Al Jarreau, Aaron Neville, Lionel Richie, Anita Baker, B.B. King, Elton John, Patrice Rushen, Stevie Wonder and Whitney Houston, Donald Fagen, The Crusaders, George Benson, Deniece Williams, Johnny Mathis, Burt Bacharach, Kenny Loggins and Steely Dan.

#6317

Antônio Roberto Monteiro Simões

#123613

Overall Influence

Antônio Roberto Monteiro Simões is a Brazilian-born linguist interested in the phonetics and phonology of the Romance languages. Simões is an associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese linguistics at the University of Kansas, in Lawrence, USA, where he teaches Hispanic linguistics. He has authored books, textbooks and articles contrasting the Portuguese and Spanish languages. Simões is currently conducting research work on speech models and foreign language learning models, especially in relation to phonetics and phonology. Simões work on modeling is a continuation of his Ph.D. thesis; an a...

#6318

Shane Cotton

#57067

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Shane William Cotton is a New Zealand painter whose work explores biculturalism, colonialism, cultural identity, Māori spirituality, and life and death. Life Cotton was born in Upper Hutt with Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Rangi, Ngāti Hine and Te Uri Taniwha iwi affiliations . Cotton studied at the Ilam School of Fine Arts in Christchurch, graduating in 1988 and then went on to gain a Diploma of Education from Christchurch College of Education. After finishing his studies he lectured at Massey University, Palmerston North, in the Māori visual arts programme until 2005 when he left to concentrate on his art practice full-time.

#6319

Michał Krzyżanowski

#146461

Overall Influence

#6320

Jack El-Hai

#84070

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Jack El-Hai is an American journalist and author who focuses most of his work on the history of medicine, the history of science, and other historical topics. Career El-Hai graduated from Carleton College in 1979. He was the president of the American Society of Journalists and Authors. He has been a contributor to the Atlantic Monthly, the Washington Post Magazine, American Heritage, and other publications. El-Hai has also taught courses on nonfiction writing at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the Creative Writing Program of the University of Minnesota, the Split Rock Arts Program, the Mayo Clinic, and the Loft Literary Center.

#6321

Mysskin

#78090

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Shanmugha Raja, known professionally as Mysskin, is an Indian film director, screenwriter, actor, singer, producer and composer. He made his directorial debut in 2006 with Chithiram Pesuthadi. His subsequent films Anjathe , Nandalala and Onaayum Aattukkuttiyum and Pisaasu received critical acclaim. He made his acting debut with Nandalala , where he portrayed a mentally disabled man. In 2023 he debuted as music director in the tamil movie named as Devil. He is considered a great auteur in Tamil Cinema.

#6322

Alan Gilbert

#96068

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Alan Gilbert is an American conductor and violinist. He is Principal Conductor of the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra and Music Director of Royal Swedish Opera. He was Music Director of the New York Philharmonic from 2009 to 2017.

#6323

Masato Harada

#101186

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Masato Harada is a Japanese film director, film critic, and sometimes an actor; he is best known to foreign audiences as Omura in The Last Samurai and as Mr Mita in Fearless. In both his acting roles he portrayed the villain who wants Japan to westernize under the Meiji Restoration in the meantime trying to remove the old ways.

#6324

Iain R. Webb

#114319

Overall Influence

Iain R. Webb is a British writer, curator and academic, appointed Professor of Fashion & Design at Kingston School of Art in 2016, also an associate lecturer at Central Saint Martins and Bath Spa University.

#6325

Dika Newlin

#101319

Overall Influence

1923 - 2006 (83 years)

Dika Newlin was a composer, pianist, professor, musicologist, and punk rock singer. She received a Ph.D. from Columbia University at the age of 22. She was one of the last living students of Arnold Schoenberg and was a Schoenberg scholar and a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond from 1978 to 2004. She performed as an Elvis impersonator and played punk rock while in her seventies in Richmond, Virginia.

#6326

Luis Alfaro

#55805

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Luis Alfaro is a Chicano performance artist, writer, theater director, and social activist. He grew up in the Pico Union district near Downtown Los Angeles, and graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in East Los Angeles. His plays and fiction are set in Los Angeles's Chicano barrios, including the Pico Union district, and often feature gay and lesbian and working-class themes. Many of Alfaro's plays also deal with the AIDS pandemic in Latino communities. Noted plays include "Bitter Homes and Gardens," "Pico Union," "Downtown," "Cuerpo Politizado," "Straight as a Line," "Breakfast, Lunch &...

#6327

Paul Lansky

#94396

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Paul Lansky is an American composer. Biography Paul Lansky is an American composer. He was educated at Manhattan's High School of Music and Art, Queens College and Princeton University, studying with George Perle and Milton Babbitt, among others. He received his Ph.D. in music from Princeton in 1973. His doctoral dissertation consisted of an essay titled "Affine music" and a composition of string quartet. Originally intending to pursue a career in performance, during 1965–66 he played the French horn with the Dorian Wind Quintet. He left the group to attend graduate school. From 1969 until ...

#6328

Janyce M. Wiebe

#146626

Overall Influence

#6329

John Perry

#109568

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

John M. Perry is an English musician, songwriter, and author. He came to prominence in the mid-1970s as the guitarist for the English rock band the Only Ones. The Only Ones came out of London during the first wave of punk and, rather like the New York bands the Heartbreakers and Television with whom they later toured, suffered from being too musical for lumpen-punk but too "new" for conservative record business sensibilities. Though they were lumped in with the new wave vanguard, the band were too musically literate—not to mention long in the tooth—to be punks. Rather they were sophisticated guitar rockers whose sound embraced all flavors of 1950s and 1960s rock.

#6330

Joshua Redman

#61179

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Joshua Redman is an American jazz saxophonist and composer. He is the son of jazz saxophonist Dewey Redman . Life and career Joshua Redman was born in Berkeley, California, to jazz saxophonist Dewey Redman and dancer and librarian Renee Shedroff. He is Jewish. He was exposed to many kinds of music at the Center for World Music in Berkeley, where his mother studied South Indian dance. Some of his earliest lessons in music and improvisation were on recorder with gamelan player Jody Diamond. He was exposed at an early age to a variety of musics and instruments and began playing clarinet at age nine before switching to what became his primary instrument, the tenor saxophone, one year later.

#6331

Leonid Murzin

#116969

Overall Influence

1930 - 1996 (66 years)

Leonid Nikolayevich Murzin was a Soviet and Russian linguist, the Dean of philological faculty at Perm State University , the founder and the head of General and Slavonic linguistics department at Perm State University; the head of Perm derivatology school; he founded the Institute of dynamic linguistics. Perm derivatology school encouraged the development of such linguistic school as "Computer based simulation of verbal communication".

#6332

Malcolm Gillies

Malcolm Gillies

#45958

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Malcolm George William Gillies AM is an Australian musicologist and linguist, who served as vice-chancellor of City University, London, from 2007 to 2009, and of London Metropolitan University from 2009 to 2014.

#6333

Harvey Fuqua

#47630

Overall Influence

1929 - 2010 (81 years)

Harvey Fuqua was an American R&B singer, songwriter, record producer, and record label executive. Fuqua founded the seminal R&B/doo-wop group the Moonglows in the 1950s. He is notable as one of the key figures in the development of the Motown label in Detroit, Michigan. His group gave Marvin Gaye a start in his music career. Fuqua and his wife at the time, Gwen Gordy, distributed the first Motown hit single, Barrett Strong's "Money ", on their record label, Anna Records. Fuqua later sold Anna Records to Gwen's brother Berry Gordy and became a songwriter and executive at Motown.

#6334

Bill Graham

#47651

Overall Influence

1951 - 1996 (45 years)

Bill Graham was an Irish journalist and author. He attended Blackrock College and Trinity College, Dublin and resided in Howth. In addition to authoring several books, Graham wrote for Hot Press magazine from its founding. He died of a heart attack at forty-four on 11 May 1996 being survived by his mother Eileen.

#6335

Kathleen Coen Buckwalter

#146696

Overall Influence

#6336

Daniel Newman

#92637

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Daniel Lawrence Newman is a British writer, scholar and translator of Arabic literature. He serves as a special advisor to the Islamic Criminal Justice Project at the Centre for Criminal Law & Justice, Durham Law School, and served as a member of council at the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies from 2008 to 2012.

#6337

Daniel Massey

#102081

Overall Influence

1933 - 1998 (65 years)

Daniel Raymond Massey was an English actor and performer. He is possibly best known for his starring role in the British TV drama The Roads to Freedom, as Daniel, alongside Michael Bryant. He is also known for his role in the 1968 American film Star!, as Noël Coward , for which he won a Golden Globe Award and an Oscar nomination.

#6338

Terry Adkins

#74594

Overall Influence

1953 - 2014 (61 years)

Terry Roger Adkins was an American artist. He was Professor of Fine Arts in the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania. Early life Adkins was born in Washington, D.C., on May 9, 1953, into a musical household. His father, Robert H. Adkins, a chemistry and science teacher and Korean War veteran, sang and played the organ; his mother, Doris Jackson, a nurse, was an amateur clarinetist and pianist. Adkins' grandfather was the Rev. Andrew Adkins, pastor of the historic Albert Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia. His aunt Alexandra Alexander was a mathematician and NSA code breaker.

#6339

Michael Garrick

#118551

Overall Influence

1933 - 2011 (78 years)

Michael Garrick was an English jazz pianist and composer, and a pioneer in mixing jazz with poetry recitations and in the use of jazz in large-scale choral works. Biography Garrick was born in Enfield, Middlesex, and educated at University College, London, from which he graduated in 1959 with a BA in English literature. As a student there he formed his first quartet, featuring vibraphonist Peter Shade. Recordings of this are on HEP . Aside from some lessons at the Ivor Mairants School of Dance Music, Garrick was "an entirely self-taught musician" , though he attended Berklee College, Boston,...

#6340

John Medeski

#78772

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Anthony John Medeski is an American jazz keyboard player and composer. Medeski is a veteran of New York's 1990s avant-garde jazz scene and is known popularly as a member of Medeski Martin & Wood. He plays the acoustic piano and an eclectic array of keyboards, including the Hammond B3 organ, melodica, mellotron, clavinet, ARP String Ensemble, Wurlitzer electric piano, Moog Voyager Synthesizer, Wurlitzer 7300 Combo Organ, Vox Continental Baroque organ, and Yamaha CS-1 Synthesizer, among others. When playing acoustic piano, Medeski usually plays the Steinway piano and is listed as a Steinway Art...

#6341

Harry Styles

#84125

Overall Influence

1994 - Present (32 years)

Harry Edward Styles is an English singer. His musical career began in 2010 as part of One Direction, a boy band formed on the British music competition series The X Factor after each member of the band had been eliminated from the solo contest. They became one of the best-selling boy groups of all time before going on an indefinite hiatus in 2016.

#6342

Marina Nespor

#111406

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Marina Nespor is a Professor of linguistics at the Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati in Trieste, Italy, and senior researcher in the ERC PASCAL Project, a project investigating language acquisition and the nature of the biological endowment that allows humans to learn language. Much of Dr. Nespor's research focuses on the interaction of phonology and syntax: what the prosodic structure of an utterance communicates about its grammatical structure.

#6343

Birju Maharaj

#76856

Overall Influence

1938 - 2022 (84 years)

Pandit Birju Maharaj was an Indian dancer, composer, singer, and exponent of the Lucknow "Kalka-Bindadin" Gharana of Kathak dance in India. He was a descendant of the Maharaj family of Kathak dancers, which includes his two uncles, Shambhu Maharaj and Lachhu Maharaj, and his father and guru, Acchan Maharaj. He also practised Hindustani classical music and was a vocalist. After working along with his uncle, Shambhu Maharaj at Bhartiya Kala Kendra, later the Kathak Kendra, New Delhi, he remained head of the latter, for several years, until his retirement in 1998 when he opened his own dance sch...

#6344

Geoffrey Owen

#97750

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Sir Geoffrey Owen is a British journalist, academic and author. He was formerly editor of the Financial Times newspaper and is currently Head of Industrial Policy at the think tank Policy Exchange in London. He is also a Visiting Professor in Practice in the Department of Management, London School of Economics.

#6345

Jesús Martín-Barbero

#90201

Overall Influence

1937 - 2021 (84 years)

Jesús Martín-Barbero was a Spanish-Colombian communication scientist. Biography Born in Ávila, Spain in 1937, he lived in Colombia since 1963; he also published as Jesús Martin B. He was a Doctor of Philosophy , and was a specialist in culture and media. Most of his published books are in Spanish; some have been translated into other languages.

#6346

James Schamus

#60320

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

James Allan Schamus is an American screenwriter, producer, business executive, film historian, professor, and director. He is a frequent collaborator of Ang Lee, the co-founder of the production company Good Machine, and the co-founder and former CEO of motion picture production, financing, and worldwide distribution company Focus Features, a subsidiary of NBCUniversal. He is currently president of the New York–based production company Symbolic Exchange, and is Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University, where he has taught film history and theory since 1989.

#6347

Patricia Carpenter

Patricia Carpenter

#91789

Overall Influence

1923 - 2000 (77 years)

Patricia Carpenter , a music theorist, was a professor of music theory at Barnard College and Columbia University. Her areas of scholarly interest included music theory, the history of music theory, musical analysis, and the aesthetics of music. She was born in Santa Rosa, California.

#6348

Tilman Baumgärtel

Tilman Baumgärtel

#70928

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Tilman Baumgärtel is a German author, media theorist, curator and journalist. He is currently professor of media theory at the University of Applied Sciences, Mainz. Life Tilman Baumgärtel has published books on media culture, Internet art, computer games, and Independent cinema in Southeast Asia. From 2005 to 2009 he taught at the University of the Philippines in Manila media and film studies. From 2009 to 2012, he taught at the Royal University of Phnom Penh in Cambodia at the Department of Media and Communication. Currently he is professor for media theory at the Hochschule Mainz.

#6349

Trevor James

#111307

Overall Influence

Trevor James was the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, Dunedin, New Zealand, from March 17, 2009 until June 3, 2018. James was educated at King's College London. He has taught at universities in Australia, Hong Kong and New Zealand. He was Dean of Theology at the University of Auckland from 1993 until his appointment as Dean.

#6350

Ken Howard

#105868

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Kenneth Charles Howard is an English songwriter, lyricist, author and television director. Life and career Early years Howard was born in Worthing, West Sussex. From 1947 to 1956, he attended University College School in London, where he became friends with Alan Blaikley, and from 1956 to 1957 he attended Aiglon College in Villars, Switzerland. After a year working with Granada Television in London, he went to Edinburgh University where he read Social Anthropology. Cast vocally together with fellow London student Eva Hermann in Varsity Vanities of 1959, they became known as the vocal duo "E...

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