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,

#6701

Richard J. Boland

#154614

Overall Influence

#6702

Paul Tanner

#79808

Overall Influence

1917 - 2013 (96 years)

Paul Tanner was an American musician and a member of the Glenn Miller Orchestra. He developed and played the Electro-Theremin, a theremin soundalike instrument that is best known for its use on the Beach Boys 1966 songs "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times," "Good Vibrations," and "Wild Honey".

#6703

Shamshad Begum

#79424

Overall Influence

1919 - 2013 (94 years)

Shamshad Begum was an Indian singer who was one of the first playback singers in the Hindi film industry. Notable for her distinctive voice and range, she sang over 6,000 songs in Hindustani, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, and Punjabi languages, among which 1287 were Hindi film songs. She worked with renowned composers of the time, such as Naushad Ali and O. P. Nayyar, for whom she was one of their favorites. Her songs from the 1940s to the early 1970s remain popular and continue to be remixed.

#6704

Tommy Brown

#115073

Overall Influence

1931 - 2016 (85 years)

Thomas A. Brown, known as Tommy Brown was an American R&B singer who achieved most of his success in the early 1950s, particularly on records with The Griffin Brothers. He also toured with his won group, Tommy B. and his Teardrops.

#6705

L. Bess Raymond

#154674

Overall Influence

#6706

Gillian Crampton Smith

#16432

Overall Influence

Gillian Crampton Smith is a British educator, interaction designer, and a pioneer of computer desktop publishing. Since the early 1980s she has developed several academic graduate programs focused on digital graphic design, typesetting and human-computer interaction, notably at Saint Martin's School of Art, the Royal College of Art , Interaction Design Institute Ivrea and Iuav University of Venice . She is an Honorary Professor at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam, and an advisor at the MIT Senseable City Lab.

#6707

Éric Le Sage

#141901

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Éric Le Sage is a contemporary French classical pianist. Biography After he finished his studies at the Conservatoire de Paris, Le Sage went to London to improve by Maria Curcio. Éric Le Sage is best known for his interpretations of romantic music, Schumann, but also for recording the complete piano music of Francis Poulenc.

#6708

George Walker

#122923

Overall Influence

1922 - 2018 (96 years)

George Theophilus Walker was an American composer, pianist, and organist, and the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, which he received for his work Lilacs in 1996. Walker was married to pianist and scholar Helen Walker-Hill between 1960 and 1975. Walker was the father of two sons, violinist and composer Gregory T.S. Walker and playwright Ian Walker.

#6709

Barry Baldwin

#87485

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Barry Baldwin is a classicist, journalist and author of mystery fiction. He gained a doctorate at the University of Nottingham and worked in Australia and Canada. For two years he contributed a regular column to the British Communist newspaper The Morning Star. He is now a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and Emeritus Professor of Classics at the University of Calgary. Barry Baldwin is best known in his academic field for his work on early Greek humorists and satirists, notably on the Philogelos, on Lucian, and on the Byzantine satire Timarion. He is a regular columnist for Fortean Times...

#6710

Éva Marton

#119430

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Éva Marton is a Hungarian dramatic soprano, particularly known for her operatic portrayals of Puccini's Turandot and Tosca, and Wagnerianian roles. Vocal training and early years Marton was born in Budapest, where she studied voice at the Franz Liszt Academy. She made her professional debut as Kate Pinkerton in Puccini's Madama Butterfly at Hungary's Margaret Island summer festival. At the Hungarian State Opera, she made her debut as Queen of Shemaka in Rimsky-Korsakov's The Golden Cockerel in 1968.

#6711

Murry Sidlin

#80210

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Murry Sidlin , is an American conductor and professor. Biography Born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1940, Sidlin studied at the Peabody Institute, graduating in 1968 with a Master's degree. Sidlin's first appointment after graduating was as Assistant Conductor at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra under Sergiu Comissiona. He was later appointed Resident conductor at the National Symphony Orchestra under Antal Doráti, and with Oregon Symphony Orchestra. He was also the Music Director of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra, and the Tulsa Philharmonic.

#6712

Edwin Yoder

#66339

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Edwin Milton Yoder, Jr. is an American journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner. Life Yoder was educated at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, graduating in English in 1956. He then won a Rhodes Scholarship to Jesus College, Oxford, and studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics from 1956 to 1958. While at Oxford, Yoder was a member of the Oxford University basketball team with teammates Willie Morris and Paul Sarbanes. He was then an editorial writer for various newspapers including the Charlotte News, the Greensboro Daily News and the Washington Star. During his time at the Washington Star, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing in 1979.

#6713

Claire Hoffman

#104169

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Claire Denise Hoffman is an American journalist, author, and assistant professor of journalism at the University of California, Riverside. Biography Claire Denise Hoffman was born in Iowa City, Iowa, March 5, 1977. From kindergarten through high school was raised in Fairfield, Iowa, where her divorced mother was part of the Transcendental Meditation movement. She attended Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment. She has a master's degree in Religious Studies from the University of Chicago Divinity School and a master's degree from the Columbia School of Journalism.

#6714

William Bender

#90765

Overall Influence

1930 - 2014 (84 years)

William Bender was an American music critic who reviewed for the American Record Guide. A former music critic with the New York Herald Tribune and the World Journal Tribune, he was chief music critic for Time magazine from 1968 to 1978. He is the author of the Emmy Award winning documentary on Leopold Stokowski which aired on the National Educational Television and BBC networks in 1970. He is the co-author of the 1974 book The Tenors in which he profiled the life and career of opera singer Richard Tucker.

#6715

Clemens Ganz

#113489

Overall Influence

1935 - 2023 (88 years)

Clemens Ganz was a German organist. Ganz studied with Hermann Schroeder and Josef Zimmermann church music and school music at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne . From 1964 to 1976 he was cantor at St. Marien in Köln-Kalk. From 1971 to 1998 he taught as professor at the Hochschule für Musik. From 1985 to 2001 he was organist of Cologne Cathedral.

#6716

Joaquín Nin-Culmell

#123201

Overall Influence

1908 - 2004 (96 years)

Joaquín María Nin-Culmell was a Cuban-Spanish composer, internationally known concert pianist, and emeritus professor of music at the University of California, Berkeley. Early life Joaquín Nin-Culmell was born in Berlin, Germany, the youngest child of Joaquín Nin, a Cuban pianist and composer, and Rosa Culmell, a classically trained Cuban singer. After his parents separated, his mother moved Nin-Culmell, his sister Anaïs and brother Thorvald, to New York City, where they lived for nine years.

#6717

Richard Danielpour

#86175

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Richard Danielpour is a music professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Early life Danielpour was born in New York City of Persian Jewish descent and grew up in New York City and West Palm Beach, Florida. He studied at Oberlin College and the New England Conservatory of Music, and later at the Juilliard School of Music, where he received a DMA in composition in 1986. His primary composition professors at Juilliard were Vincent Persichetti and Peter Mennin. Danielpour previously taught at the Manhattan School of Music and the Curtis Institute of Music ,.

#6718

James McMurtry

#99694

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

James McMurtry is an American rock and folk rock/americana singer, songwriter, guitarist, bandleader, and occasional actor . He performs with veteran bandmates Daren Hess, Cornbread and Tim Holt. His father, novelist Larry McMurtry, gave him his first guitar at age seven. His mother, an English professor, taught him how to play it: "My mother taught me three chords and the rest I just stole as I went along. I learned everything by ear or by watching people."

#6719

Lights

#82164

Overall Influence

1987 - Present (39 years)

Lights Poxleitner-Bokan , known mononymously as Lights , is a Canadian musician, singer, and songwriter. Her debut album, The Listening , included the singles "Drive My Soul" and "Saviour". Her second album, Siberia, which featured the single "Toes", was released in 2011. Her work has earned multiple Canadian Independent Music Awards, and Juno Awards including Pop Album of the Year for her third album Little Machines, which included the single "Up We Go", and fourth album Skin & Earth, in 2015 and 2018, respectively. Lights' fifth studio album, PEP, was released in 2022.

#6720

Paul Alvre

#77856

Overall Influence

1921 - 2008 (87 years)

Paul Alvre was an Estonian linguist. Early life and career Paul Alvre was born in Tartu to parents Juhan Alvre, a shoemaker, and Emilie Kottart. He studied at Hugo Treffner Gymnasium from 1933 until 1940. From 1940 until 1943, he studied at the University of Tartu in the field of Estonian and related languages, and in 1943 at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Turku, for a short time also at the Suomenlinna Naval School.

#6721

Susanne Marsee

#125891

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Susanne Marsee is an American mezzo-soprano of note, particularly acclaimed as a singing-actress. Her principal teacher was Nadine Conner, and her educational background includes a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California at Los Angeles, and advanced studies at the American Opera Center of The Juilliard School. She is of Greek, English, and French heritage.

#6722

James Newton

#82955

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

James W. Newton is an American jazz and classical flutist. Biography He was born in Los Angeles, California, United States. From his earliest years, James Newton grew up immersed in the sounds of African-American music, including urban blues, rhythm and blues, and gospel. In his early teens he played electric bass guitar, alto saxophone, and clarinet. In high school he took up the flute, influenced by Eric Dolphy. In addition to taking lessons in classical music on flute, he also studied jazz with Buddy Collette. He completed his formal musical training at California State University, Los An...

#6723

Terumasa Hino

#110366

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Terumasa Hino is a Japanese jazz trumpeter. He is considered one of Japan's finest jazz musicians. His instruments include the trumpet, cornet, and flügelhorn. Early life He was born in Tokyo, Japan, and his father was a trumpeter and tap dancer. Hino started tap dancing at age four and playing trumpet at age nine. As a teenager, he transcribed solos by Clifford Brown, Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, and Lee Morgan.

#6724

Frank Gambale

#88410

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Frank Gambale is an Australian jazz fusion guitarist. He has released twenty albums over a period of three decades, and is known for his use of the sweep picking and economy picking techniques. Recording career

#6725

Adams Bodomo

#133426

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Adams B. Bodomo is a Ghanaian and Austrian Professor of African Linguistics and Literatures at the University of Vienna since 2013 with a research focus on Africa–China Studies and Linguistics. In 1988 he received a Master of Arts degree in linguistics from the University of Ghana and in 1997 a Ph.D. in Linguistics/African Studies from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology on the thesis Paths and Pathfinders: Exploring the Syntax and Semantics of Complex Verbal Predicates in Dagaare and other Languages.

#6726

Marika M. Holland

#155194

Overall Influence

#6727

Yoonjung Kang

#153378

Overall Influence

Yoonjung Kang is a Korean linguist and Professor of Linguistics at the University of Toronto. She is known for her works on phonetics and phonology and is an editor of the journal Phonology. She is a member of editorial boards of Studies in Phonetics, Phonology and Morphology, Language and Research and Korean Linguistics.

#6728

Sheila Benson

#96558

Overall Influence

1930 - 2022 (92 years)

Sheila Benson was an American journalist and film critic. She served as film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 1981 to 1991. Early life and education Benson was born in New York City on December 4, 1930. Her father, Dwight Franklin, was employed as a costume designer and her mother, Mary C. McCall Jr., worked as a screenwriter and novelist.

#6729

Hank Cochran

#72426

Overall Influence

1935 - 2010 (75 years)

Garland Perry "Hank" Cochran was an American country music singer and songwriter. Starting during the 1960s, Cochran was a prolific songwriter in the genre, including major hits by Patsy Cline, Ray Price, Eddy Arnold, and others. Cochran was also a recording artist between 1962 and 1980, scoring seven times on the Billboard country music charts, with his greatest solo success being the No. 20 "Sally Was a Good Old Girl." In 2014, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

#6730

Nikolai Demidenko

#130755

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Nikolai Demidenko is a Russian-born classical pianist. Biography Demidenko studied at the Gnessin State Musical College with Anna Kantor and at the Moscow Conservatoire under Dmitri Bashkirov. He was a finalist at the 1976 Montreal International Piano Competition and the 1978 Tchaikovsky International Competition. He taught at the Yehudi Menuhin School in the UK, where he has been a resident since 1990. He was granted British citizenship in 1995 and currently holds a visiting professorship at the University of Surrey. In addition to a vast amount of the standard Germanic and Russian repertor...

#6731

Nirmal Kumar Sidhanta

#97305

Overall Influence

Nirmal Kumar Sidhanta was a renowned Bengali Indian scholar of English literature, at the University of Lucknow and at the University of Calcutta. He was educated at the renowned Scottish Church College in Calcutta, and at the University of Cambridge, from where he earned an MA degree. After starting out as a lecturer at the Scottish Church College, he moved on to be a professor of English and as dean of the faculty of Arts at the University of Lucknow. He would serve as the Vice Chancellor of the University of Calcutta from 15 May 1955 to 9 October 1960.

#6732

Thomas Wilson

#127818

Overall Influence

1927 - 2001 (74 years)

Thomas Wilson CBE FRSE was an American-born Scottish composer of classical music. Early life and education Thomas Brendan Wilson was born in Trinidad, Colorado to British parents and moved to Britain with his family when he was 17 months old.

#6733

Grigory Chukhray

Grigory Chukhray

#76988

Overall Influence

1921 - 2001 (80 years)

Grigory Naumovich Chukhray was a Ukrainian Soviet and Russian film director and screenwriter. People's Artist of the USSR . He's the father of the Russian film director Pavel Chukhray. Early life Grigory Chukhray was born in Melitopol to Red Army soldiers Naum Zinovievich Rubanov and Claudia Petrovna Chukhray. He was of Ukrainian origin. His parents divorced when he was three years old. He was raised by a stepfather, Pavel Antonovich Litvinenko, the head of kolkhoz. His mother Claudia Chukhray took an active part in the collectivization and dekulakization of the Ukrainian SSR, then worked as...

#6734

Batia Laufer

#155293

Overall Influence

#6735

Peter Wood

#106493

Overall Influence

1927 - 2016 (89 years)

Peter Wood was an English theatre and film director. Biography Wood was born on 8 October 1925 in Colyton, Devon. His father Frank Wood was a basketmaker and his mother, Lucy Eleanor , née Meeson was a seamstress. Wood developed his interest in acting while at Taunton School. After school, he spent his National Service with the RAF in Canada and on his return he studied English at Downing College, Cambridge. Wood joined an acting troupe after university, and by 1955 he was running the Oxford Playhouse. The following year, he became resident director at the London Arts Theatre, working alongsi...

#6736

Benny Carter

#96150

Overall Influence

1943 - 2014 (71 years)

Binford Taylor Carter, Jr., known as Benny Carter or Bennie Carter, was an American contemporary visual artist. His primary focus was as a painter and sculptor within the genres of folk art and outsider art.

#6737

Konstanze Vernon

#89181

Overall Influence

1939 - 2013 (74 years)

Konstanze Vernon was a German ballet dancer, academic teacher and director of a ballet academy and a ballet company. She was from 1963 to 1981 prima ballerina of the ballet at the Bayerische Staatsoper. She taught at the Hochschule für Musik München and founded the ballet academy Heinz-Bosl-Stiftung in memory of her partner on stage Heinz Bosl. After retiring from the stage, she was founding director of the now independent ballet company .

#6738

Angelika Kratzer

#155308

Overall Influence

#6739

Kashif

#70220

Overall Influence

1959 - 2016 (57 years)

Kashif Saleem was an American multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, record producer, artist, composer, author, director and educator from New York City. As a teenager, Kashif joined the funk group B. T. Express. He studied Islam and changed his name from Michael Jones to Kashif. He later signed with Arista Records enjoying success as a solo artist.

#6740

Harald Vogel

#93620

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Harald Vogel is a German organist, organologist, and author. He is a leading expert on Renaissance and Baroque keyboard music. He has been professor of organ at the University of the Arts Bremen since 1994.

#6741

Larry Goldings

#88533

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Lawrence Sam "Larry" Goldings is an American jazz keyboardist and composer. His music has explored elements of funk, blues, and fusion. Goldings has a comedic alter ego known as Hans Groiner. Life and career Goldings was born in Boston. His father was a classical music enthusiast, and Goldings studied classical piano until the age of twelve. Through his father he met pianist Dave McKenna and studied with pianists Ran Blake and Keith Jarrett. Among his other influences were and Bill Evans, Red Garland, Erroll Garner, and Oscar Peterson. He studied at The New School with Fred Hersch and Jaki Byard.

#6742

James D. Westphal

#155357

Overall Influence

#6743

William Hickey

#103667

Overall Influence

1927 - 1997 (70 years)

William Edward Hickey was an American actor. He is best known for his Academy Award-nominated role as Don Corrado Prizzi in the John Huston film Prizzi's Honor , as well as Uncle Lewis in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation and the voice of Dr. Finkelstein in Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas .

#6744

Sue Nicholls

#87019

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Susan Frances Harmar Nicholls is an English actress, known for her roles on British television in Crossroads , The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin and, Rentaghost and especially for her long-running part as Audrey Roberts in the soap opera Coronation Street . She also appeared on Broadway in the 1974 revival of the comedy London Assurance.

#6745

Stanley Jordan

#94296

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Stanley Jordan is an American jazz guitarist noted for his playing technique, which involves tapping his fingers on the fretboard of the guitar with both hands. Music career Jordan was born in Chicago, Illinois, United States. When he was six, he started on piano, then at eleven switched to guitar. He later began playing in rock and soul bands. In 1976, he won an award at the Reno Jazz Festival. At Princeton University, he studied music theory and composition with Milton Babbitt and computer music with Paul Lansky. He also took freshman calculus with Edward Nelson. While at Princeton he playe...

#6746

Beth Henley

#71832

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Elizabeth Becker Henley is an American playwright, screenwriter, and actress. Her play Crimes of the Heart won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the 1981 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best American Play, and a nomination for a Tony Award. Her screenplay for Crimes of the Heart was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

#6747

Paul Rosenthal

#74235

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Paul Rosenthal is an American violinist. Rosenthal has played the violin since the age of three, going on to attend the Juilliard School in New York City and the University of Southern California under acclaimed master Jascha Heifetz.

#6748

Sarah Blasko

#98317

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Sarah Elizabeth Blaskow , known professionally as Sarah Blasko, is an Australian singer, songwriter, musician and record producer. From April 2002, Blasko developed her solo career after fronting Sydney-based band, Acquiesce, between the mid-1990s and 2001. She had performed under her then married name, Sarah Semmens, and, after leaving Acquiesce, as Sorija in a briefly existing duo of that name. As a solo artist Blasko has released six studio albums, The Overture & the Underscore , What the Sea Wants, the Sea Will Have – which peaked at No. 7 on the ARIA Albums Chart, As Day Follows Night –...

#6749

Dan Higgins

#76202

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Dan Higgins is an American saxophone and woodwind player. He has worked with such artists as John Williams, Seth MacFarlane, Aerosmith, Stevie Wonder, Neil Diamond, Al Jarreau, Maroon 5, Kenny Loggins, Barry Manilow, Elton John, Go West, The Temptations, Lionel Richie, Joe Cocker, Lisa Stansfield, and Eros Ramazzotti. He has over 800 motion picture soundtracks to his credit. He is also known as the saxophone sound of Bleeding Gums Murphy from The Simpsons.

#6750

Simon Bainbridge

#123427

Overall Influence

1952 - 2021 (69 years)

Simon Bainbridge was a British composer. He was also a professor and head of composition at the Royal Academy of Music, London, and visiting professor at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, in the United States.

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