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,

#6401

Leif Segerstam

#95432

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Leif Selim Segerstam is a Finnish conductor, composer, violinist, violist and pianist, especially known for writing 354 symphonies , along with other works in his extensive oeuvre. Segerstam has conducted a variety of orchestras since 1963; mostly American, Australian and European. He is widely known through his recordings, which include the complete symphonies of Blomdahl, Brahms, Mahler, Nielsen, and Sibelius, as well as many works by contemporary composers, such as the American composers John Corigliano and Christopher Rouse, the Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara, Swedish composer All...

#6402

Marcia Ball

#104695

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Marcia Ball is an American blues singer and pianist raised in Vinton, Louisiana. Ball was described in USA Today as "a sensation, saucy singer and superb pianist... where Texas stomp-rock and Louisiana blues-swamp meet." The Boston Globe described her music as "an irresistible celebratory blend of rollicking, two-fisted New Orleans piano, Louisiana swamp rock and smoldering Texas blues from a contemporary storyteller."

#6403

Joseph Horovitz

#106251

Overall Influence

1926 - 2022 (96 years)

Joseph Horovitz was an Austrian-born British composer and conductor best known for his 1970 pop cantata Captain Noah and his Floating Zoo, which achieved widespread popularity in schools. Horovitz also composed music for television, including the theme music for the Thames Television series Rumpole of the Bailey, and was a prolific composer of ballet, orchestral , brass band, wind band and chamber music. He considered his fifth string quartet to be his best work.

#6404

Elgar Fleisch

#148110

Overall Influence

#6405

Helmut Winschermann

#122342

Overall Influence

1920 - 2021 (101 years)

Helmut Winschermann was a German classical oboist, conductor and academic teacher. He founded the Deutsche Bachsolisten ensemble for historically informed performances, and was their conductor from 1960 until his death. They made many recordings and toured internationally, especially to Japan.

#6406

Arnold McCuller

Arnold McCuller

#76217

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Arnold McCuller is an American vocalist, songwriter, and record producer, born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. He was active as a solo artist and session musician, but is perhaps best known for his work as a touring back-up singer with artists such as James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Phil Collins, Beck, Bonnie Raitt, and Todd Rundgren. He toured for forty-five years with Taylor and is an audience favorite for his featured vocal parts on the songs "Shower the People", "I Will Follow", and "Is That the Way You Look". He has also toured extensively with Collins and is one of the main lead vocalists on the live version of "Easy Lover".

#6407

Kariamu Welsh

#98832

Overall Influence

1949 - 2021 (72 years)

Kariamu Welsh Asante was an American contemporary dance choreographer and scholar whose awards include a National Endowment for the Arts, three Senior Fulbright Scholar awards, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She was a professor at Temple University's Boyer School of Music and Dance.

#6408

Leslie Howard

#113106

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Leslie John Howard is an Australian pianist, musicologist and composer. He is best known for being the only pianist to have recorded the complete solo piano works of Franz Liszt, a project which included more than 300 premiere recordings. He has been described by The Guardian as "a master of a tradition of pianism in serious danger of dying out".

#6409

Rena Torres Cacoullos

#139404

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Rena Torres Cacoullos is an American linguist known for her work on language variation and change, as well as her research on processes of grammaticalization and the linguistic outcomes of language contact. She is currently Professor of Spanish Linguistics in the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese at the Pennsylvania State University.

#6410

Luis de Pablo

#102863

Overall Influence

1930 - 2021 (91 years)

Luis de Pablo Costales was a Spanish composer belonging to the generation that Cristóbal Halffter named the Generación del 51. Mostly self-taught as a composer and influenced by Maurice Ohana and Max Deutsch, he co-founded ensembles for contemporary music, and organised concert series for it in Madrid. He published translations of notable texts about composers of the Second Viennese School, such as Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt's biography of Arnold Schoenberg and the publications of Anton Webern. He wrote music in many genres, including film scores such as Erice's The Spirit of the Beehive, and operas including La señorita Cristina.

#6411

Kornelije Kovač

#72908

Overall Influence

1942 - 2022 (80 years)

Kornelije "Bata" Kovač was a Serbian composer. Early life Born in Niš during World War II in the Nazi-occupied Serbia to a Hungarian father and a Serbian mother, Kovač grew up in a prominent artistic family - his grandfather was a conductor, his father a music professor and a violinist, his mother a singer in the opera choir.

#6412

Franz Biebl

#124660

Overall Influence

1906 - 2001 (95 years)

Franz Xaver Biebl was a German composer of classical music. Most of his compositions were for choral ensembles. Biebl was born in Pursruck, now part of Freudenberg, Bavaria, in 1906. He studied composition at the Musikhochschule in Munich. Biebl served as choir director at the Catholic church of St Maria in München-Thalkirchen from 1932 until 1939, and as an assistant professor of choral music at the Mozarteum, an academy of music in Salzburg, Austria, beginning in 1939, where he taught voice and music theory.

#6413

Barry Guy

#103173

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Barry John Guy is an English composer and double bass player. His range of interests encompasses early music, contemporary composition, jazz and improvisation, and he has worked with a wide variety of orchestras in the UK and Europe. He studied at the Guildhall School of Music under Buxton Orr, and later taught there.

#6414

Dag Haug

#131551

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Dag Trygve Truslew Haug is a Norwegian linguist and associate professor of Latin at the University of Oslo. Career Dag Haug attended a French high school before he began studying at the University of Oslo, and he received his master's degree in 1996. He majored in Greek in 1998 and was then a research fellow. In 2001 he received his doctorate with a thesis on the language of the Iliad, and then carried out research until 2003 at the University of Freiburg. Since then he has been at the University of Oslo, first as a postdoctoral fellow, and since 2005 as an associate professor.

#6415

Charlotte Moorman

#75409

Overall Influence

1933 - 1991 (58 years)

Madeline Charlotte Moorman was an American cellist, performance artist, and advocate for avant-garde music. Referred to as the "Jeanne d'Arc of new music", she was the founder of the Annual Avant Garde Festival of New York and a frequent collaborator with Korean American artist Nam June Paik.

#6416

York Höller

#99556

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

York Höller is a German composer and professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik Köln. Biography Höller was born in Leverkusen. Between 1963 and 1970 he studied at the Cologne Musikhochschule: composition with Joachim Blume and Bernd Alois Zimmermann, piano with Else Schmitz-Gohr and Alfons Kontarsky, and orchestral conducting with Wolfgang von der Nahmer. Parallel to this, he studied musicology and philosophy at the University of Cologne. He did further musical studies at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt with Pierre Boulez, and in 1967 sat his examination i...

#6417

Eberhard Feltz

#103373

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Eberhard Feltz is a German classical violinist and chamber music pedagogue. Feltz became internationally known especially as a mentor for string quartets and chamber music ensembles. He is often called the "guru of the string quartet".

#6418

Tomas Riad

#109207

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Tomas Staffan Riad is a Swedish linguist, specialised in Swedish phonology and prosody. He received his Ph.D. from Stockholm University in 1992 and is professor at the Department of Scandinavian languages there. Riad is also a violinist, trained at the Royal College of Music in London and has worked as a full-time musician. He was elected a member of the Swedish Academy on 29 September 2011 .

#6419

Stuart Duncan

#64007

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Stuart Ian Duncan is an American bluegrass musician who plays the fiddle, mandolin, guitar, and banjo. Life Duncan was born in Quantico, Virginia, and raised in Santa Paula, California, where he played in the school band. He is married with three children.

#6420

Chris Wood

#125022

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Chris Wood is an English songwriter and composer who plays fiddle, viola and guitar, and sings. He is a practitioner of traditional English dance music , including Morris and other rituals and ceremonies, but his repertoire also includes much French folk music and traditional Québécois material. He worked for many years in a duo with button accordion/melodeon player Andy Cutting: Wood & Cutting were one of the most influential acts on the English folk music scene. Q Magazine gave their "Live at Sidmouth" album four stars and put the duo "at the forefront of the latest wave of British music acts".

#6421

Robert Reed

#75240

Overall Influence

1932 - 1992 (60 years)

Robert Reed was an American actor. He played Kenneth Preston on the legal drama The Defenders from 1961 to 1965 alongside E. G. Marshall, and is best known for his role as patriarch Mike Brady, opposite Florence Henderson's role as Carol Brady, on the ABC sitcom The Brady Bunch, which aired from 1969 to 1974. He later reprised his role of Mike Brady on several of the reunion programs. In 1976, he earned two Primetime Emmy Award nominations for his guest-starring role in a two-part episode of Medical Center and for his work on the miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man. The following year, Reed earned ...

#6422

Peter Case

#88446

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Peter Case is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. His career is wide-ranging, from rock n' roll and blues, to folk rock and solo acoustic performance. Biography Early career Case was born in Buffalo, New York and lived in nearby Hamburg, New York. He wrote his first song "Stay Away," in 1965, at the age of eleven. A veteran of several rock bands and the local bar scene as a teenager, Case dropped out of high school when he was fifteen , and after several years of traveling arrived in 1973 in San Francisco, where he performed as a street musician. During this period a documentary about the local music scene, Nightshift, directed by Bert Deivert, captured the young Case on film.

#6423

Igor Fesunenko

#58032

Overall Influence

1933 - 2016 (83 years)

Igor Fesunenko was a Soviet and Russian journalist, foreign affairs writer, and teacher at the MGIMO. Biography Father Sergey Fesunenko worked as a chief mechanic at the Zaporozhye aluminum plant, the whole family moved there when the war broke out, they were evacuated to the Urals aluminum plant, and there my father worked in the production of aluminum for aircraft. Mother Evdokia Ivanovna graduated from law school Fesunenko in Irkutsk, was a housewife, in 1944 returned to his father in Kiev on recovery plant.

#6424

Marshall Allen

#71939

Overall Influence

1924 - Present (102 years)

Marshall Belford Allen is an American free jazz and avant-garde jazz alto saxophone player. He also performs on flute, oboe, piccolo, and EWI . Allen is best known for his work with Sun Ra, having recorded and performed mostly in this context since the late 1950s, and having led The Sun Ra Arkestra since 1995, after Sun Ra's death in 1993 and John Gilmore's death two years later. Critic Jason Ankeny describes Marshall as "one of the most distinctive and original saxophonists of the postwar era."

#6425

Robert Duke

#49041

Overall Influence

Robert Duke is an American music scholar, currently the Marlene and Morton H. Meyerson Centennial Professor of Music and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at University of Texas at Austin.

#6426

Reinbert de Leeuw

#104827

Overall Influence

1938 - 2020 (82 years)

Lambertus Reiner "Reinbert" de Leeuw was a Dutch conductor, pianist and composer. Life Lambertus Reinier de Leeuw's mother and father were both psychiatrists: Cornelis Homme 'Kees' de Leeuw and Adriana Judina 'Dien' Aalbers . From age 7, he took piano lessons. He studied music theory and piano at the Amsterdam Conservatoire and composition with Kees van Baaren at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague.

#6427

Yolande E. Chan

#85765

Overall Influence

Yolande E. Chan is a Jamaican-Canadian information systems professor. Chan joined the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University as Dean and James McGill Professor in August 2021. Her research focuses on innovation, knowledge strategy, digital strategy, and business-IT alignment. Chan has long been a champion for women and under-represented groups in academia. In her role as Dean of the Desautels Faculty of Management, she has made equity, diversity and inclusion a major strategic priority.

#6428

Wendy Melvoin

#58743

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Wendy Ann Melvoin is an American guitarist and singer-songwriter, best known for her work with Prince as part of his backing band The Revolution, and for her collaboration with Lisa Coleman as one half of the duo Wendy & Lisa.

#6429

Jerry D. Cohen

#148576

Overall Influence

#6430

Skylar Tibbits

#61334

Overall Influence

Skylar Tibbits is an American designer and computer scientist known for his work on self-assembly and 4d printing. Education Skylar Tibbits graduated from Philadelphia University with a Bachelor of Architecture and received a Master of Science in Computer Science as well as a Master of Science in Design and Computation from MIT.

#6431

Flora Purim

#82099

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Flora Purim is a Brazilian jazz singer known primarily for her work in the jazz fusion style. She became prominent for her part in Return to Forever with Chick Corea and Stanley Clarke. She has recorded and performed with numerous artists, including Dizzy Gillespie, Gil Evans, Opa, Stan Getz, George Duke, Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead, Santana, Jaco Pastorius, and her husband Airto Moreira.

#6432

Tamás Vásáry

#90097

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

Tamás Vásáry is a Hungarian concert pianist and conductor. Biography and career Vásáry was born in Debrecen, Hungary, and made his stage debut at the age of 8, performing Mozart's Piano Concerto in D major, K.107 in the city of his birth, where he gave a solo recital the following year. He then began to concertize regularly as a child prodigy. At this time he was introduced to Ernő Dohnányi, a leading figure of musical life in Hungary, who made a unique exception by offering to accept the gifted youth as a pupil in spite of his age. Vásáry studied only a short time under his tutelage, however...

#6433

Maria Inês Nassif

#148625

Overall Influence

Maria Inês Nassif is a Brazilian journalist. In her professional career, she was associated with several media outlets, such as Valor Econômico and GGN, usually in the fields of politics and the economy. In recognition of her work as a reporter at the GGN, she was awarded the Woman Press Trophy in the category "Reporter for News Sites" in the year 2014.

#6434

Matias del Campo

#52649

Overall Influence

Matias del Campo is a Chilean born Austrian architect, designer and educator, co-founder of the architectural practice SPAN. Education and early career Matias del Campo graduated from the University of Applied Arts Vienna in 2003, receiving a Master of Architecture with distinction.

#6435

Kathryn Miles

#103783

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Kathryn Miles is an American journalist, writer, and environmental theorist. She is the author of three books including Superstorm: Nine Days Inside Hurricane Sandy, All Standing and Adventures with Ari.

#6436

Bhimsen Joshi

#62260

Overall Influence

1922 - 2011 (89 years)

Pandit Bhimsen Gururaj Joshi , also known by the honorific prefix Pandit, was one of the greatest Indian vocalists from Karnataka, in the Hindustani classical tradition. He is known for the khayal form of singing, as well as for his popular renditions of devotional music . Joshi belongs to the Kirana gharana tradition of Hindustani Classical Music. He is noted for his concerts, and between 1964 and 1982 Joshi toured Afghanistan, Italy, France, Canada and USA. He was the first musician from India whose concerts were advertised through posters in New York City. Joshi was instrumental in organisi...

#6437

Robert Mellin

#116402

Overall Influence

1902 - 1994 (92 years)

Israel Melnikoff , known professionally as Robert Mellin, was a Russian Empire-born American composer and lyricist and music publisher. He was born in Kyiv and raised in Chicago, where his first job was music plugger at Remick Music. In the early 1940s, he moved to New York, where he founded his own company in 1947.

#6438

Gary King

#130930

Overall Influence

1947 - 2003 (56 years)

Gary W King was an American jazz bassistist, songwriter, composer, and arranger. He was born in Middletown, New York. King appeared on many albums released by CTI Records, especially those by Bob James, and later on James' own album label, Tappan Zee Records. He also played bass on a number of albums by Gato Barbieri, Roberta Flack, Grover Washington Jr., and on The Jacksons' album Destiny, notably the track "Blame It on the Boogie".

#6439

Jamie Foxx

#75724

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Eric Marlon Bishop , known professionally as Jamie Foxx, is an American actor, comedian, and singer. He received acclaim for his portrayal of Ray Charles in the film Ray , winning the Academy Award, BAFTA, Screen Actors Guild Award, and Golden Globe Award for Best Actor. That same year, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the crime film Collateral.

#6440

Eduardo Mata

#105876

Overall Influence

1942 - 1995 (53 years)

Eduardo Mata was a Mexican conductor and composer. Career Mata was born in Mexico City. He studied guitar privately for three years before enrolling in the National Conservatory of Music. From 1960 to 1963 he studied composition under Carlos Chávez, and Julián Orbón. In 1964 he received a Koussevitzky Memorial Fellowship to study at Tanglewood. There, he studied conducting with Max Rudolf and Erich Leinsdorf and composition with Gunther Schuller.

#6441

Joey Baron

#92357

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Bernard Joseph Baron is an American avant-garde jazz drummer who plays frequently with Bill Frisell and John Zorn. Music career Baron, who is of Jewish heritage, was born on June 26, 1955, in Richmond, Virginia. When he was nine, he taught himself how to play the drums. As a teenager, he played in rock bands and dixieland jazz groups and was given his first gig opportunity at the age of 13 when pianist BJ Doyle's regular drummer took ill and she knew he was a keeper after just minutes. After high school, he spent a year at the Berklee College of Music. He moved to Los Angeles in the early 1970s and embarked on a professional career, playing with Carmen McRae and Al Jarreau.

#6442

Capleton

#71108

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Clifton George Bailey III , better known by his stage name Capleton, is a Jamaican reggae and dancehall musician. He is also referred to as King Shango, King David, The Fireman and The Prophet. His record label is called David House Productions. He is known for his Rastafari views expressed in his songs.

#6443

Martin Kilduff

#66478

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Martin Kilduff is a British academic. He is the Professor of Management at the UCL School of Management. Early life Martin Kilduff grew up in the Camden Town area of London, England. He attended Primrose Hill primary school followed by Quintin grammar school. His higher education was pursued in the U.S. He received his BA and MBA from Washington State University and his MS and PhD from Cornell University.

#6444

Paul Williams

#89930

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Paul Williams is an Irish media personality and writer on crime. His TV credits include Dirty Money and the self-regarding title Paul Williams Investigates—The Battle for the Gas Fields. In 2011 he joined the Irish Sun, where he is employed as "Investigations Editor", after the closure of the Irish News of the World.

#6445

Heiner Goebbels

#98449

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Heiner Goebbels is a German composer, conductor and professor at Justus-Liebig-University in Gießen and artistic director of the International Festival of the Arts Ruhrtriennale 2012–14. His composition Stifters Dinge received five votes in a 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000, and writers for The Guardian ranked his composition Hashirigaki the ninth greatest classical composition of the same period.

#6446

Billy Harper

#114995

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Billy Harper is an American jazz saxophonist, "one of a generation of Coltrane-influenced tenor saxophonists" with a distinctively stern, hard-as-nails sound on his instrument. Biography He was born in Houston, Texas, United States. In 1965, Harper earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of North Texas.

#6447

Angela Winbush

#62309

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Angela Lisa Winbush is an American R&B/soul singer-songwriter, musician and record producer who rose to fame first in the 1980s R&B duo René & Angela, also scoring hits as a solo artist. To date, Winbush has sold over 10 million albums and singles worldwide.

#6448

Marianne Thorsen

#112108

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Marianne Thorsen is a Norwegian violinist. Biography and career Born in Trondheim, Thorsen was taught by Bjarne Fiskum before studying at The Purcell School for Young Musicians in Hertfordshire, and later tutored by György Pauk at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where she won the Roth Prize and the Academy's highest award for performance, the DipRAM.

#6449

Kumaar

#88298

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (125 years)

Rakesh Kumar Pal, known mononymously as Kumaar, is an Indian lyricist active in Bollywood cinema. Some of his more successful songs include "Rula Ke Gaya Ishq", "Tu Bhi Royega", "Dil Ki Aadat", "Baby Doll', "Chittiyaan Kalaiyaan", "Sooraj Dooba Hain", "Lovely", "Desi Look", "Nachan Farrate", "Main Hoon Hero Tera" and "Jhoome Jo Pathaan". He was nominated for Filmfare Awards for the song "Sooraj Dooba Hain" from the film Roy.

#6450

George Edward Cheney

#82096

Overall Influence

George E. Cheney is an educator, writer, speaker, facilitator, and consultant. Together with his wife and colleague, Sally Planalp, he has a primary residence in Moab, Utah. Cheney is an internationally recognized leader in the area of organizational communication and focuses his work on the improvement of organizational processes with special attention to the triple bottom line and the pursuit of socially and environmentally responsible economic development. Cheney draws from a variety of disciplines and professions in his work, including sociology, economics, political science, philosophy, ...

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