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,
#6501
Jack McDuff
#94302
Overall Influence
1926 - 2001 (75 years)
Eugene McDuff , known professionally as "Brother" Jack McDuff or "Captain" Jack McDuff, was an American jazz organist and organ trio bandleader who was most prominent during the hard bop and soul jazz era of the 1960s, often performing with an organ trio. He is also credited with giving guitarist George Benson his first break.
Go to Profile#6502
Barry Goldberg
#63050
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Barry Joseph Goldberg is an American blues and rock keyboardist, songwriter, and record producer. Goldberg has co-produced albums by Percy Sledge, Charlie Musselwhite, James Cotton, and the Textones, plus Bob Dylan's version of Curtis Mayfield's "People Get Ready".
Go to Profile#6503
M. M. Keeravani
#71986
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Koduri Marakathamani Keeravaani , professionally known as M. M. Keeravani, is an Indian music composer, record producer, singer and lyricist, who predominantly works in Telugu cinema. His accolades include, eleven Nandi Awards, eight Filmfare Awards, two National Film Awards, an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a LAFCA Award and a Critics' Choice Movie Award. In 2023, the Government of India honoured him with the Padma Shri for his contributions towards Indian cinema.
Go to Profile#6504
Jimmy McGriff
#90645
Overall Influence
1936 - 2008 (72 years)
James Harrell McGriff was an American hard bop and soul-jazz organist and organ trio bandleader. Biography Early years and influences Born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, United States, McGriff started playing piano at the age of five and by his teens had also learned to play vibes, alto sax, drums and upright bass. He played bass in his first group, a piano trio. When he joined the United States Army, McGriff served as a military policeman during the Korean War. He later became a police officer in Philadelphia for two years.
Go to Profile#6505
Franklin Diederich
#150177
Overall Influence
#6506
William David Chappelle III
#66114
Overall Influence
1938 - 1998 (60 years)
William David Chappelle III was an American professor of music and a civil rights organizer in Ohio. He spent much of his career at Antioch College, where he served as dean of students. Life and career Chappelle was born on December 16, 1938, in Columbia, South Carolina. He attended Brown University, and then graduated from Antioch College with a Bachelor of Arts in music.
Go to Profile#6507
Wolf-Dieter Hauschild
#78648
Overall Influence
1937 - 2023 (86 years)
Wolf-Dieter Hauschild was a German conductor, choirmaster, artistic director, composer, harpsichordist and university lecturer. After working for the Berliner Rundfunk from 1971, he was principal conductor of the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Rundfunkchor Leipzig from 1978 to 1985. In 1984 he was still awarded the National Prize of the German Democratic Republic, but in 1985 he came to terms with the GDR authorities and moved to the FRG.
Go to Profile#6508
Bernice Johnson Reagon
#57711
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Bernice Johnson Reagon is a song leader, composer, scholar, and social activist, who in the early 1960s was a founding member of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee's Freedom Singers in the Albany Movement in Georgia. In 1973, she founded the all-black female a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock, based in Washington, D.C. Reagon, along with other members of the SNCC Freedom Singers, realized the power of collective singing to unify the disparate groups who began to work together in the 1964 Freedom Summer protests in the South. The Albany Singing Movement became a vital catalyst for change through music in the early 1960s protests of the Civil Rights era.
Go to Profile#6509
Charles Brown
#84221
Overall Influence
1922 - 1999 (77 years)
Tony Russell "Charles" Brown was an American singer and pianist whose soft-toned, slow-paced nightclub style influenced West Coast blues in the 1940s and 1950s. Between 1949 and 1952, Brown had seven Top 10 hits in the U.S. Billboard R&B chart. His best-selling recordings included "Driftin' Blues" and "Merry Christmas Baby".
Go to Profile#6510
Leon Schidlowsky
#77574
Overall Influence
1931 - 2022 (91 years)
Jorge León Schidlowsky Gaete was a Chilean-Israeli composer and painter. He wrote music for orchestra, chamber ensemble, choir, and instruments including the piano, violin, cello, flute, mandolin, guitar, harp, organ. About 65 pieces were written in graphic notation. His compositions have been performed in numerous countries, with orchestra conductors including Aldo Ceccato, Clytus Gottwald, Erhard Karkoschka, Herbert Kegel, Lukas Foss, Zubin Mehta and Hermann Scherchen. The scores of his graphic music have been shown in exhibitions such as Staatsgalerie Stuttgart and the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum in Ludwigshafen.
Go to Profile#6511
Cedric Bixler-Zavala
#74705
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Cedric Bixler-Zavala is an American singer. He is the lead singer and lyricist of the progressive rock band the Mars Volta and the only constant member of the post-hardcore group At the Drive-In, for which he was the lead singer and occasional guitarist. He is also the lead singer of the band Antemasque, and sings and plays guitar in his band Zavalaz.
Go to Profile#6512
Henry P. Jr. Sims
#150362
Overall Influence
#6513
Michael John LaChiusa
#78891
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Michael John LaChiusa is an American musical theatre and opera composer, lyricist, and librettist. He is best known for musically esoteric shows such as Hello Again, Marie Christine, The Wild Party, and See What I Wanna See. He was nominated for four Tony Awards in 2000 for his score and book for both Marie Christine and The Wild Party and received another nomination in 1996 for his work on the libretto for Chronicle of a Death Foretold.
Go to Profile#6514
Bruce Broughton
#83519
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Bruce Harold Broughton is an American orchestral composer of television, film, and video game scores and concert works. He has composed several highly acclaimed soundtracks over his extensive career and has contributed many pieces to music archives, including the 1994 version of the 20th Century Studios fanfare with short versions for 20th Television and Foxstar Productions and conducting the Cinergi Pictures logo composed by Jerry Goldsmith. He has won ten Emmy Awards and has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score. Broughton is currently a lecturer in composition at UCL...
Go to Profile#6515
Anouar Benmalek
#100582
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Anouar Benmalek is an Algerian novelist, journalist, mathematician and poet. After the 1988 riots in Algeria in protest of government policies, he became one of the founders of the Algerian Committee Against Torture. His novel Lovers of Algeria was awarded the Prix Ragid. The novel, The Child of an Ancient People, won the Prix RFO du livre.
Go to Profile#6516
Ray Bryant
#118028
Overall Influence
1931 - 2011 (80 years)
Raphael Homer "Ray" Bryant was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. Early life Bryant was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on December 24, 1931. His mother was an ordained minister who had taught herself to play the piano; his father also played the piano and sang. His brothers were the bass player Tommy, drummer and singer Len, and Lynwood. Ray began playing the piano around the age of six or seven, following the example of his mother and his sister, Vera. Gospel influences in his playing came from being part of the church at this stage in his early life. He had switched from classical music to jazz by his early teens and played the double bass at junior high school.
Go to Profile#6517
Hans Gruber
#99678
Overall Influence
1925 - 2001 (76 years)
Hans Gruber was a Canadian conductor of Austrian birth. Born in Vienna, Gruber became a naturalised Canadian citizen in 1944. He entered The Royal Conservatory of Music in 1939 where he was a conducting student of Allard de Ridder. He also studied conducting in the summers at the Tanglewood Music Center from 1943-1947 with such teachers as Fritz Mahler, Leonard Bernstein, and Pierre Monteux. In 1948 he succeeded Melvin Knudsen as the conductor of the Victoria Symphony, a post he held until 1963. He also served on the music faculty of the University of Toronto for several years where he notabl...
Go to Profile#6518
J. E. Stevenson
#150548
Overall Influence
#6519
Malcolm Le Grice
#119504
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Malcolm Le Grice is a British artist known for his avant-garde film work. Biography The British Film Institute claims that he "is probably the most influential modernist filmmaker in British cinema".
Go to Profile#6520
Li Bulou
#29042
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Li Bulou is a Chinese translator and philosopher with a specialization in western philosophy and Marxism. He is also a member of the Academy of Social Sciences of Hubei, China. Li was previously a provincial official of the Publicity Department of the Chinese Communist Party.
Go to Profile#6521
Dorothy DeLay
#87507
Overall Influence
1917 - 2002 (85 years)
Dorothy DeLay was an American violin instructor, primarily at the Juilliard School, Sarah Lawrence College, and the University of Cincinnati. Life Dorothy DeLay was born on March 31, 1917, in Medicine Lodge, Kansas to parents who were musicians and teachers. She began studying violin at age 4. At age 14, she graduated from Neodesha High School, where her father was superintendent. DeLay studied for one year at the Oberlin Conservatory with Raymond Cerf, a student of César Thomson, and transferred to broaden her education at Michigan State University, where she earned a B.A. in 1937 at age 20....
Go to Profile#6522
Larry Austin
#90787
Overall Influence
1930 - 2018 (88 years)
Larry Don Austin was an American composer noted for his electronic and computer music works. He was a co-founder and editor of the avant-garde music periodical Source: Music of the Avant Garde. Austin gained additional international recognition when he realized a completion of Charles Ives's Universe Symphony. Austin served as the president of the International Computer Music Association from 1990 to 1994 and served on the board of directors of the ICMA from 1984 to 1988 and from 1990 to 1998.
Go to Profile#6523
Della Davidson
#126337
Overall Influence
1951 - 2012 (61 years)
Mary Adele "Della" Davidson was an American modern dancer, choreographer, and dance professor at the University of California, Davis Department of Theatre and Dance. Life Mary Adele Davidson was born in Texas, but grew up in Michigan. While she had trained in ballet since elementary school, she discovered modern dance in college, attending Michigan State, the University of Utah, and the University of Arizona. She joined the faculty of the University of California, Davis in 2001. While there, she co-created The Weight of Memory with Ellen Bromberg, a choreographer/dance filmmaker, and Collapse , with the KeckCAVES institute.
Go to Profile#6524
Claire Smith
#124657
Overall Influence
Claire Smith is an American sportswriter, who covered Major League Baseball for the Hartford Courant, The New York Times, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. She is currently a news editor for ESPN. Smith was the first woman to be honored with the J. G. Taylor Spink Award by the Baseball Writers' Association of America.
Go to Profile#6525
Dirk Brossé
#127429
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Dirk, Knight Brossé is a Belgian conductor and composer. He has composed over 200 works, including concerti, oratorios, lieder, chamber music and symphonic works. Brossé has also composed extensively for stage, cinema, television. His score for the BBC/HBO series Parade's End was nominated for an Emmy Award. Dirk Brossé is currently music director of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and of the Ghent Film Festival. John Williams chose him as Principal Conductor of the Star Wars in Concert World Tour. Brossé is also professor of composition and conducting at the Royal Conservatory of Ghent.
Go to Profile#6526
Bahia Shehab
#107928
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Bahia Shehab is an Egyptian multidisciplinary artist, designer, historian, creative director, educator and activist based in Cairo. Her work is concerned with identity and cultural heritage, and uses Islamic art history and in particular Islamic calligraphy and graphic design to explore contemporary Arab politics, feminist discourse and social issues.
Go to Profile#6527
Graeme Bell
#117763
Overall Influence
1914 - 2012 (98 years)
Graeme Emerson Bell, AO, MBE was an Australian Dixieland and classical jazz pianist, composer and band leader. According to The Age, his "band's music was hailed for its distinctive Australian edge, which he describes as 'nice larrikinism' and 'a happy Aussie outdoor feel.
Go to Profile#6528
Ardis Butterfield
#127062
Overall Influence
Ardis Butterfield is a scholar of medieval music and literature. She is the Marie Borroff Professor of English, and Professor of Music and French at Yale University United States. Education Butterfield read English at Trinity College, Cambridge, followed by a Master's degree in medieval literature at the University of Bristol, both in England, after which she returned to Trinity College to complete a PhD. Her PhD was entitled 'Interpolated lyric in medieval narrative poetry' .
Go to Profile#6529
Norbert Brainin
#110013
Overall Influence
1923 - 2005 (82 years)
Norbert Brainin, OBE was the first violinist of the Amadeus Quartet, one of the world's most highly regarded string quartets. Because of Brainin's Jewish origin, he was driven out of Vienna after Hitler's Anschluss of 1938, as were violinist Siegmund Nissel and violist Peter Schidlof. Brainin and Schidlof met in a British internment camp. Like many Jewish refugees they had the misfortune to be confined by the British as "enemy alienss" after reaching the UK. Brainin was released after a few months, but Schidlof remained in the camp, where he met Nissel. Finally Schidlof and Nissel were releas...
Go to Profile#6530
Deborah Voigt
#98073
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Deborah Voigt is an American dramatic soprano who has sung roles in operas by Wagner and Richard Strauss. Biography and career Early life and education Debbie Joy Voigt was born into a religious Southern Baptist family in 1960 and raised in Wheeling, Illinois, just outside Chicago. At age five, she joined the choir at a Baptist church and began learning the piano. Her mother sang and played piano at church while her two younger brothers sang in rock music bands. Those early experiences in church inspired her interest in music. When she was 14, her family moved to Placentia in Orange County, California.
Go to Profile#6531
Francesc de Borja Moll i Casasnovas
#92000
Overall Influence
1903 - 1991 (88 years)
Francesc de Borja Moll Casanovas was a Catalan linguist, philologist and editor from Menorca. He wrote many books on the Catalan language and its varieties spoken on the Balearic Islands. He was also the main collaborator with Father Antoni Maria Alcover in his .
Go to Profile#6532
Bruce Fairbairn
#41138
Overall Influence
1949 - 1999 (50 years)
Bruce Earl Fairbairn was a Canadian record producer. He was active as a producer from 1976 to 1999, and is considered one of the best of his era. His most successful productions are Slippery When Wet and New Jersey by Bon Jovi, Permanent Vacation, Pump, and Get a Grip by Aerosmith, The Razors Edge by AC/DC, and Balance by Van Halen, each of which sold at least three million copies. He was originally a trumpet player, then started a career as a record producer for Canadian rock band Prism. Fairbairn won the Canadian music industry Producer of the Year Juno Award three times. He produced albums...
Go to Profile#6533
Siobhan Leachman
#123769
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Siobhan Leachman is a New Zealand citizen scientist, open knowledge advocate, and Wikimedian whose work focuses on natural history. Life and career Leachman is a lawyer by background and a self-described "stay-at-home mother of two". Bored after her children began attending kindergarten, she began her volunteer work at the instigation of her twin sister Victoria Leachman with the Smithsonian Transcription Center, transcribing diaries and field journals such as those of Vernon and Florence Bailey and categorising bumblebee collections of Arthur Wilson Stelfox. She moved on to volunteer project...
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Mike Gordon
#58996
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Michael Eliot Gordon is an American bass guitarist and vocalist most recognized as a founding member of the band Phish. In addition to bass, Gordon is an accomplished banjo player, and is proficient at piano and guitar. He is also a filmmaker and author . He has released six solo studio albums and three studio albums with acoustic guitar pioneer Leo Kottke.
Go to Profile#6535
Jonny Lang
#79032
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Jon Gordon Langseth Jr. , known as Jonny Lang, is an American blues, gospel, and rock singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He has made five albums that have charted on the top 50 of the Billboard 200 chart and won a Grammy Award for Turn Around.
Go to Profile#6536
Ceil Lucas
#114636
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Ceil Lucas is an American linguist and a professor emerita of Gallaudet University, best known for her research on American Sign Language. Early life and education Lucas was born in the United States but raised from ages five through twenty-one in Guatemala City and in Rome, Italy.
Go to Profile#6537
Frank Armand Biocca
#150892
Overall Influence
#6538
Sarah J. Tracy
#63831
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Sarah J. Tracy is an organizational communication scholar and full professor in Arizona State University’s Hugh Downs School of Human Communication. Tracy earned a B.A. in 1993 from the University of Southern California, and received her Master of Arts and Ph.D. degrees in communication from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she was advised by Stanley A. Deetz. While at Colorado, she became a co-author with Deetz and Jennifer Lyn Simpson of the book Leading Organizations through Transition: Communication and Cultural Change . Her doctoral thesis on Emotional labor and correctional o...
Go to Profile#6539
Christian Grube
#93573
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Christian J Grube is a German choral conductor. Education Christian Grube was born in Hanover, Germany. He studied at the Hochschule für Musik and at the Kirchenmusikschule in Hanover, majoring in conducting, voice, flute, organ, and Renaissance instruments. During his studies he became an experienced oratorio soloist, and also organized choral workshops in Germany and Switzerland.
Go to Profile#6540
Neil R. Anderson
#150927
Overall Influence
#6541
Dave Green
#76517
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
David Green is an American film and music video director. He is well known for directing several music videos and short films, especially working with Miles Fisher. He made his directorial debut with the 2014 film Earth to Echo, going on to directed other films such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows and later the Warner Bros. Pictures film Coyote vs. Acme.
Go to Profile#6542
Endre Brunstad
#123253
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Endre Otto Brunstad is a Norwegian linguist and professor of Nordic studies education at the University of Bergen's Institute of Linguistics, Literature, and Aesthetic Studies. Brunstad is from Sykkylven in Møre og Romsdal County. Brunstad was chairman of the Norwegian Language Association from 2003 to 2005, and he holds a PhD in Nordic linguistics. His research interests include language planning, linguistic purism, and language teaching.
Go to Profile#6543
Karen Brazell
#71073
Overall Influence
1938 - 2012 (74 years)
Karen Brazell was an American professor and translator of Japanese literature. Her English language edition of The Confessions of Lady Nijō won a U.S. National Book Award in category Translation. She died in 2012 at the age of 73.
Go to Profile#6544
Parviz Meshkatian
#111608
Overall Influence
1955 - 2009 (54 years)
Parviz Meshkatian was an Iranian musician, composer, researcher and university lecturer. Biography Born in Nishapur, Meshkatian entered the Tehran Academy of Arts, where he studied music theory and was introduced to radif by the masters Nour Ali Boroumand, Dariush Safvat, Mohammad Taghi Massoudieh, and Mehdi Barkeshli. He focused on the radif of Mirza Abdollah for santur and setar.
Go to Profile#6545
Brian Fahey
#131467
Overall Influence
1919 - 2007 (88 years)
Brian Michael Fahey was a British musical director, composer and arranger, best known for composing "At the Sign of the Swingin' Cymbal", the signature tune to BBC Radio's long running programme Pick of the Pops. From 1972 he was principal conductor of the BBC Scottish Radio Orchestra, until it was disbanded in 1981.
Go to Profile#6546
Alice Marwick
#68849
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Alice E. Marwick is a communication scholar, academic, and author, who currently works as an Associate Professor in the Communication department and Principal Researcher at the Center for Information, Technology and Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and an affiliated researcher with the Data and Society Research Institute. Marwick has written for publications such as the New York Times, and the Guardian. Her works include the examination of politics, race, social media and gender. She has been a keynote speaker for various universities throughout the United States...
Go to Profile#6547
Kyle Abraham
#50179
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Kyle Abraham is an American choreographer and dancer. He founded his own company A.I.M by Kyle Abraham in 2006 in New York City and has produced many original works for A.I.M such as The Radio Show , Absent Matter , Pavement , Dearest Home , Drive , INDY , Studies on Farewell , and An Untitled Love . Kyle has also been commissioned to create new works for international dance companies such as Untitled America for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, The Runaway for New York City Ballet, The Bystander for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Only The Lonely for Paul Taylor American Modern Dan...
Go to Profile#6548
Anthony Perkins
#101603
Overall Influence
1932 - 1992 (60 years)
Anthony Perkins was an American actor, director, and singer. Perkins played the role of Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's suspense thriller Psycho, which made him an influential figure in pop culture and in horror films.
Go to Profile#6549
David Rosenboom
#85542
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
David Rosenboom is a composer, performer, interdisciplinary artist, author, and educator known for his work in American experimental music. Rosenboom has explored various forms of music, languages for improvisation, new techniques in scoring for ensembles, multi-disciplinary composition and performance, cross-cultural collaborations, performance art and literature, interactive multi-media, new instrument technologies, generative algorithmic systems, art-science research and philosophy, and extended musical interface with the human nervous system. He is a pioneer in the use of neurofeedback an...
Go to Profile#6550
Olaf Bär
#130765
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Olaf Bär is a German operatic baritone. Life Bär received his musical training in his home city of Dresden, studying at the city's Hochschule für Musik. His career has concentrated on lieder and on the lyric baritone roles of the operatic repertoire. Many of his early lieder performances were accompanied by Geoffrey Parsons.
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