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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School

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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Communications,

#6451

Dursun Delen

#148990

Overall Influence

#6452

Jon L. Pierce

#148997

Overall Influence

#6453

Brian Harvey

#100901

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Brian Lee Harvey is a British singer from London. He was the lead singer of pop group East 17. The later incarnation of the band, E-17, had two top 20 singles on the UK Singles Chart between 1998 and 1999, with the album Resurrection peaking within the top 50 of the UK Albums Chart. After leaving E-17, Harvey signed a record deal with Edel Records and had two singles released in 2001, "Straight Up " and "Loving You ".

#6454

Ingeborg Heuser

#29607

Overall Influence

Ingeborg Heuser was a German dancer, choreographer and teacher who worked primarily in the Southwest United States. She is credited with popularizing and promoting ballet in El Paso, Texas. Biography Heuser was born in Berlin and her mother encouraged her love of the arts at a young age. Heuser began training in ballet at the age of seven. She started as an apprentice in the Deutsche Oper Corps de Ballet when she was 12 and made her solo debut at age 15. Heuser moved to the United States in 1949. First she worked in California and later she attended the University of Arizona in Tucson as a "s...

#6455

Timothy C. Brock

#149039

Overall Influence

#6456

Pamela Weston

#132532

Overall Influence

1921 - 2009 (88 years)

Pamela Theodora Weston was a British clarinetist, teacher and writer. Born in London, she attended Priors Field School. Following two years at the Royal Academy of Music she won a scholarship to the Guildhall School of Music before studying privately with the noted clarinetist Frederick Thurston. She was a professor of clarinet at the Guildhall from 1951 until 1969. She organised the International Clarinet Association Congress in 1984, the first ever held in the United Kingdom.

#6457

Marc Johnson

#106997

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Marc Alan Johnson is an American jazz bass player, composer and band leader. Johnson was born in Nebraska and grew up in Texas. He is married to the Brazilian jazz pianist and singer Eliane Elias. Career At the age of 19, Johnson was working professionally with the Fort Worth Symphony, and while at the University of North Texas, he played in the One O'Clock Lab Band and was also the principal bassist in the NTSU Symphony.

#6458

Albert Mangelsdorff

#100788

Overall Influence

1928 - 2005 (77 years)

Albert Mangelsdorff was a German jazz trombonist. Working mainly in free jazz, he was an innovator in multiphonics. Early life Mangelsdorff was born in Frankfurt on September 5, 1928, as the son of the bookbinder Emil Albert Joseph Mangelsdorff , born in Ingolstadt, and his wife Luise, née Becker , from Wertheim. He was given violin lessons as a child and was self-taught on guitar in addition to knowing trombone. His brother, Emil Mangelsdorff, had a jazz record collection, but during the Nazi period Albert's enthusiasm for the music had to be restrained. Mangelsdorff began his career as a pr...

#6459

Andrew Robinson

Andrew Robinson

#94692

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Andrew Jordt Robinson is an American actor and the former director of the Master of Fine Arts acting program at the University of Southern California. Originally a stage actor, he works predominantly in supporting roles on television and in low-budget films. He is known for his portrayals of the psychotic serial killer Scorpio in Dirty Harry , Larry Cotton in the horror film Hellraiser , and Elim Garak in the television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine . He and his wife Irene have a daughter, actress Rachel Robinson, who appeared in Deep Space Nine episode "The Visitor".

#6460

Johnnie Johnson

#75505

Overall Influence

1924 - 2005 (81 years)

Johnnie Clyde Johnson was an American pianist who played jazz, blues, and rock and roll. His work with Chuck Berry led to his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for breaking racial barriers in the military as a Montford Point Marine, where he endured racism and inspired social change while integrating the previously all-white Marine Corps during World War II.

#6461

Rob Frieden

#109272

Overall Influence

Rob Frieden holds the Pioneers Chair and serves as Professor of Telecommunications and Law at Penn State University in the United States. Frieden holds a B.A., with distinction, from the University of Pennsylvania and a J.D. from the University of Virginia .

#6462

David Axelrod

#82121

Overall Influence

1931 - 2017 (86 years)

David Axelrod was an American composer, arranger, and producer. After starting out as a staff producer for record companies specializing in jazz, Axelrod became known by the mid-1960s in soul and jazz circles for his recording skills. In 1968, Axelrod embarked on a solo career and released several albums during the 1970s that showcased his characteristic sound, which combined heavily microphoned drums and baroque orchestration, and avant garde themes ranging from the environment to heightened mental awareness.

#6463

Roger Miller

#93924

Overall Influence

Roger Clark Miller is an American singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist best known for co-founding Mission of Burma and performing in Alloy Orchestra/The Anvil Orchestra. His main instruments are guitar and piano. Guitar Player magazine describes Miller's guitar playing as balancing rock energy with cerebral experimentation. He also plays cornet, bass guitar and percussion.

#6464

Julie Tetel Andresen

#105790

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Julie Tetel Andresen is a prominent American linguistic historiographer and romance novelist. Andresen is a professor at Duke University, where she has taught since 1986. Her primary appointment is in the Department of English. She has secondary appointments in the Departments of Cultural Anthropology and Slavic and Eurasian Studies. She is currently the chair of the Interdepartmental Program in Linguistics.

#6465

Carl J. Caspersen

#149198

Overall Influence

#6466

John L. Locke

#149215

Overall Influence

#6467

Chris Buck

#84117

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Christopher James Buck is an American film director, animator, and screenwriter known for co-directing Tarzan , Surf's Up , Frozen , which won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature in 2014, and Frozen II . He also worked as a supervising animator and story artist on Pocahontas and Home on the Range .

#6468

Linda Yueh

#16517

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Linda Yi-Chuang Yueh is a British/American economist, broadcaster, and author, born in Taiwan and of dual British and American citizenship. Yueh is an adjunct professor of economics at London Business School, and a Fellow in Economics at St Edmund Hall, Oxford University. She was also a Visiting Professor at Peking University and associated with both the Centre for Economic Performance and IDEAS research centres at the London School of Economics . She is a TV and radio presenter, including for BBC programmes such as Radio 4 Analysis, Business Daily on BBC World Service, and Radio 4 Today programme.

#6469

Candy Dulfer

#85402

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Candy Dulfer is a Dutch jazz and pop saxophonist. She is the daughter of jazz saxophonist Hans Dulfer. She began playing at age six and founded her band Funky Stuff when she was fourteen. Her debut album Saxuality received a Grammy nomination. She has performed and recorded with Hans Dulfer, Prince, Dave Stewart, Van Morrison, Angie Stone, Maceo Parker and Rick Braun and has performed live with Alan Parsons , Pink Floyd , and Tower of Power . She hosted the Dutch television series Candy Meets... , in which she interviewed musicians. In 2013, she became a judge in the 5th season of the Dutch ...

#6470

Evan Ziporyn

#107043

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Evan Ziporyn is an American composer of post-minimalist music with a cross-cultural orientation, drawing equally from classical music, avant-garde, various world music traditions, and jazz. Ziporyn has composed for a wide range of ensembles, including symphony orchestras, wind ensembles, many types of chamber groups, and solo works, sometimes involving electronics. Balinese gamelan, for which he has composed numerous works, has compositions. He is known for his solo performances on clarinet and bass clarinet; additionally, Ziporyn plays gender wayang and other Balinese instruments, saxophone...

#6471

David Kirby

#75538

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

David Kirby was an American journalist based in Brooklyn, New York, and was formerly a regular contributor to The New York Times since 1998. He was the author of Evidence of Harm , Animal Factory , Death at Sea World ,and When They Come for You . Kirby wrote on thiomersal and vaccines and has criticized factory farms.

#6472

Khandi Alexander

Khandi Alexander

#63546

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Harriet Rene "Khandi" Alexander is an American dancer, choreographer, and actress. She began her career as a dancer in the 1980s, and was a choreographer for Whitney Houston's world tours from 1988 to 1992.

#6473

Eugenius Uhlenbeck

#149419

Overall Influence

1913 - 2003 (90 years)

Eugenius Marius Uhlenbeck was a Dutch linguist and Indologist. He was a professor in Javanese at Leiden University. In 1967 he became member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Family His brother was George Uhlenbeck, the theoretical physicist, and the linguist C.C. Uhlenbeck was a cousin of his father.

#6474

Zoltán Kocsis

#77055

Overall Influence

1952 - 2016 (64 years)

Zoltán Kocsis was a Hungarian pianist, conductor and composer. Biography Studies Born in Budapest, he began his musical studies at the age of five and continued them at the Béla Bartók Conservatory in 1963, studying piano and composition. In 1968 he was admitted to the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, where he was a pupil of Pál Kadosa, Ferenc Rados and György Kurtág, graduating in 1973.

#6475

Robert S. Williams

#104938

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Robert S. Williams is an American bassoonist. Education Robert Williams began playing bassoon in junior high school and graduated from Catalina High School in Tucson, Arizona in 1967. He received a Bachelor of Music with honors from the University of Arizona and did further study at the University of Southern California. His bassoon teachers include Wendal Jones in Arizona, Leonard Sharrow at Aspen Music School and Norman Herzberg at Music Academy of the West and University of Southern California.

#6476

Bob Duckett

#149516

Overall Influence

#6477

Evelina Fedorenko

#104277

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Evelina G. Fedorenko is a Russian-born American cognitive neuroscientist. Early life and education Born in 1980 in Volgograd in the Soviet Union, Fedorenko moved to the United States in 1998. In 2002, she graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor's degree in psychology and linguistics. She then went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology for her graduate degree in cognitive science and neuroscience, receiving her Ph.D in 2007.

#6478

Vidyasagar

#71414

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Vidyasagar is an Indian composer, musician and singer who works predominantly in the Tamil, Malayalam, and Telugu film industries. After working with several composers as assistant and conductor, Vidyasagar made his debut as a film composer in the 1989 Tamil film Poo Manam and nicknamed as Melody King Working for over 225 feature films, he is the recipient of a National Award, multiple State Awards and five Filmfare Awards and is widely regarded as one of the finest and most acclaimed composers in the history of Indian Cinema.

#6479

Sonny Sharrock

#90490

Overall Influence

1940 - 1994 (54 years)

Warren Harding "Sonny" Sharrock was an American jazz guitarist. His first wife was singer, Linda Sharrock, with whom he recorded and performed. One of only a few prominent guitarists who participated in the first wave of free jazz during the 1960s, Sharrock was known for his heavily chorded attack, highly amplified bursts of feedback, and use of aggressive sustain to achieve saxophone-like lines on guitar. His early work also features creative use of a slide.

#6480

Ofir Turel

#149658

Overall Influence

#6481

Ronald Shannon Jackson

#82872

Overall Influence

1940 - 2013 (73 years)

Ronald Shannon Jackson was an American jazz drummer from Fort Worth, Texas. A pioneer of avant-garde jazz, free funk, and jazz fusion, he appeared on over 50 albums as a bandleader, sideman, arranger, and producer. Jackson and bassist Sirone are the only musicians to have performed and recorded with the three prime shapers of free jazz: pianist Cecil Taylor, and saxophonists Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler.

#6482

Krishna

#66484

Overall Influence

1943 - 2022 (79 years)

Ghattamaneni Siva Rama Krishna Murthy , known mononymously as Krishna, was an Indian actor, director and producer known for his work predominantly in Telugu cinema. In a career spanning more than five decades, he starred in over 350 films in a variety of roles. He is referred to as "Superstar" in the Telugu media. In 2009, the government of India honoured him with the Padma Bhushan for his contributions to Indian cinema. He was elected as a Member of Parliament for the Congress party in 1989. In 1997, he received the Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award – South in addition to Honorary doctorate from Andhra University in 2008.

#6483

Johannes Fritsch

#105734

Overall Influence

1941 - 2010 (69 years)

Johannes Georg Fritsch was a German composer. At the age of seven, Fritsch found a violin in the attic of his uncle's house in Bensheim-Auerbach, Germany, and began lessons with a village music teacher named Knapp. When he was ten, his family moved to Cologne, and he began studying with the principal violist in the Gürzenich Orchestra.

#6484

Maureen Fleming

#99924

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Maureen Fleming is an American dancer, performance artist, and choreographer from New York City. She studied butoh dance in Japan, and was described by The New Yorker magazine as "perhaps the foremost American practitioner of Butoh."

#6485

Sammy Figueroa

#85070

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Sammy Figueroa is an American percussionist. At 18 he joined the band of bassist Bobby Valentín and also co-led the Brazilian/Latin fusion group Raíces. As of 2023, he is living in South Florida and performs with the Sammy Figueroa and His Latin Jazz Explosion band.

#6486

Vanja Y. Watkins

#73249

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Vanja Yorgason Watkins is a prolific writer of hymns of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . She composed the music for "Press Forward Saints" and "Families Can Be Together Forever", hymns that appear in the 1985 English-language hymnal of the LDS Church. She also wrote the music to a number of songs in the Primary's Children's Songbook, including the 13 "Articles of Faith" songs.

#6487

Sunnyland Slim

#95961

Overall Influence

1906 - 1995 (89 years)

Albert Luandrew , known as Sunnyland Slim, was an American blues pianist who was born in the Mississippi Delta and moved to Chicago, helping to make that city a center of postwar blues. Chicago broadcaster and writer Studs Terkel said Sunnyland Slim was "a living piece of our folk history, gallantly and eloquently carrying on in the old tradition".

#6488

Paul Ellingworth

#58192

Overall Influence

1931 - 2018 (87 years)

Paul Ellingworth was an Honorary Professor in New Testament at the School of Divinity, History & Philosophy of the University of Aberdeen and former translation consultant for the United Bible Societies. He wrote several books on biblical matters, notably on Hebrews. He lived in Aberdeen.

#6489

Joseph Schwantner

#99624

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Joseph Clyde Schwantner is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer, educator and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 2002. He was awarded the 1970 Charles Ives Prize. Schwantner is prolific, with many works to his credit. His style is coloristic and eclectic, drawing on such diverse elements as French impressionism, African drumming, and minimalism. His orchestral work Aftertones of Infinity received the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Music.

#6490

Jennifer Jones

#79330

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Jennifer Jones is an American dancer and actress. In 1987, she became the first African American Radio City Music Hall Rockette. Life and education Jones was born on August 1, 1967, in Newark, New Jersey and was raised in Randolph, where she attended Randolph High School and County College of Morris.

#6491

Zeynep Ergun

#106207

Overall Influence

1953 - 2022 (69 years)

Zeynep Ergun was a professor at Institute of Social Sciences English Language and Literature Department of Istanbul University. Education and career Ergun graduated from Robert College high school in 1972 and received her BA from Boğaziçi University English Language and Literature Department in 1978. She received her PhD in 1988 from Istanbul University Institute of Social Sciences English Language and Literature Department. Between 1988 and 1995, she worked at the same institution as an assistant associate professor. She became the chair of the department in 1997 and a full professor in 199...

#6492

Mark Keil

#149819

Overall Influence

#6493

Red Mitchell

#96578

Overall Influence

1927 - 1992 (65 years)

Keith Moore "Red" Mitchell was an American jazz double-bassist, composer, lyricist, and poet. Biography Mitchell was born in New York City. His younger brother, Whitey Mitchell, also became a jazz bassist.

#6494

Tamara Sinyavskaya

#122843

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Tamara Ilyinichna Sinyavskaya is a Russian mezzo-soprano from the Bolshoi Theatre. She was awarded the title of People's Artist of the USSR in 1982. In 1997, planet 4981 Sinyavskaya was named in her honor.

#6495

Jörg Widmann

#111293

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Jörg Widmann is a German composer, conductor and clarinetist. In 2018, Widmann was the third most performed contemporary composer in the world. Formerly a clarinet and composition professor at the University of Music Freiburg, he is composition professor at the Barenboim–Said Akademie. His most important compositions are the two operas Babylon and Das Gesicht im Spiegel, an oratorio Arche, Kantate and the concert overture Con brio. Widmann has written musical tributes to Classical and Romantic composers. He was awarded the Bavarian Maximilian Order for Science and Art in 2018 and the Bach Pri...

#6496

Ben Shepherd

#40765

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Hunter Benedict Shepherd is an American musician best known as the bassist of rock band Soundgarden. Shepherd has won two Grammy Awards as a member of Soundgarden. Born in Okinawa, Shepherd grew up in Washington and developed an interest in music after watching Johnny Cash on TV. He played in various punk-rock bands and eventually joined Soundgarden as a bassist in 1990. Shepherd contributed to the band's musical evolution and played a significant role in songwriting. In 1993, he formed a side project, Hater, with Matt Cameron and John McBain. Soundgarden broke up in 1997, leading Shepherd to struggle with addiction and personal issues.

#6497

Clarence Barlow

#100752

Overall Influence

1945 - 2023 (78 years)

Clarence Albertson Barlow was a British composer of classical and electroacoustic works. He was an academic teacher internationally, at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague from 1990 and at the University of California, Santa Barbara, from 2006, among others. He taught at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse from 1982 to 1994.

#6498

Vered Noam

#53237

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Vered Noam is a professor of Talmud at Tel Aviv University. In 2020, she received the Israel Prize for Talmud, the first woman to receive the prize in Talmud studies. Biography Vered Noam was born in Jerusalem in 1960 to Professor Yehuda Elitzur and children's author Rivka Elitzur. In 1985 she earned her BA in Talmud and Archaeology; in 1989 she earned her MA in Talmud; and in 1997 she earned her PhD in Talmud –– all of these degrees having been completed at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The topic of her doctorate was Megillat Ta'anit and its Scholion. She has been on the faculty of the ...

#6499

Annie Zaenen

#73497

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Annie Else Zaenen is an adjunct professor of linguistics at Stanford University, California, United States. Career Zaenen obtained her Ph.D. at Harvard University with her doctoral thesis Extraction Rules in Icelandic in 1980. After a postdoc at MIT, she taught syntax at the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell University, and Harvard, before joining PARC and Stanford. During the ‘90s, she was the manager of the Natural Language group of the Xerox Research Centre Europe in Grenoble, France. After Zaenen retired from PARC in 2011, she joined a research group on Language and Natural Reasoning ...

#6500

Suresh Wadkar

#73993

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Suresh Ishwar Wadkar is an Indian playback singer. He performs in both Hindi and Marathi films. He has sung songs in some Bhojpuri films, Odia albums and bhajans and in Konkani films. He was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for 2018 for Sugam Sangeet. In 2020, the Government of India honoured him with the Padma Shri.

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