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).
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List of the most influential people in Communications,
#6951
Astrid Gynnild
#125558
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Astrid Gynnild is professor of media studies at the Department of Information and Media Studies at the University of Bergen Norway. Gynnild is principal investigator of the trans-disciplinary research project ViSmedia 2015–19. Gynnild also heads the journalism program at the University of Bergen, which in 2017 will be integrated into Media City Bergen. Her research interests lie at the intersection of digital journalism, innovation and new technologies. She is also engaged in developing new forms of learning in profession oriented disciplines in higher education. Her scientific articles are ...
Go to Profile#6952
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich
#115892
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich is an American composer, the first female composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Her early works are marked by atonal exploration, but by the late 1980s, she had shifted to a postmodernist, neoromantic style. She has been called "one of America's most frequently played and genuinely popular living composers." She was a 1994 inductee into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame. Zwilich has served as the Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor at Florida State University.
Go to Profile#6953
David Essex
#115352
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
David Essex is an English singer, songwriter, and actor. Since the 1970s, he has attained 19 Top 40 singles in the UK and 16 Top 40 albums. Internationally, Essex had the most success with his 1973 single "Rock On". He has also had an extensive career as an actor.
Go to Profile#6954
Yukihide Takekawa
#138623
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
is a Japanese singer, songwriter and composer from Urawa-ku, Saitama, Saitama Prefecture. He is best known for being the vocalist to the band Godiego as well as his solo career and his work as an author. Some of his compositions have been featured in video game, anime, films, and television drama soundtracks. These include the Galaxy Express 999 film, Saiyūki, Genesis Climber MOSPEADA, Soul Blazer, and Choushinsei Flashman.
Go to Profile#6955
Jacob Hoftijzer
#61649
Overall Influence
1926 - 2011 (85 years)
Jacob Hoftijzer was a scholar of Semitic languages. He was Professor of Hebrew Language and Literature, the Israelite Antiquities and Ugaritic at Leiden University until his retirement in 1991. That year, a Festschrift was published in his honour, Studies in Hebrew and Aramaic Syntax: Presented to Professor J. Hoftijzer on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, which included contributions from Jan P. Fokkelman and Takamitsu Muraoka.
Go to Profile#6956
Charles Treger
#117742
Overall Influence
1935 - 2023 (88 years)
Charles Treger was an American violinist and teacher. He studied with violin pedagogue Ivan Galamian, Szymon Goldberg, William Engel and William Kroll. He was the first and only American to win first place in the Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition in Poznań, in Poland.
Go to Profile#6957
Antoine Bouchard
#137906
Overall Influence
1932 - 2015 (83 years)
Antoine Bouchard was a Canadian organist, composer, Roman Catholic priest, writer on music, organ builder, and music educator. He performed as an organist in the USA, France, and throughout eastern and central Canada. His recordings include Hommage à Henri Gagnon which included music by Henri Gagnon and two works by Bouchard: Postlude and Messe de Requiem. His music has been published by Ostiguy - Heritage Publishers. He wrote articles on organ building and organ performance for several Canadian music journals and for the European Music Council.
Go to Profile#6958
Aldo Abreu
#97320
Overall Influence
Aldo Abreu is a Venezuelan recorder player currently residing in the United States. Life and career Born in Caracas, Venezuela to famous harpsichordist Abraham Abreu and Janet Foxton, Abreu holds the Performer's and Teacher's Diplomas from the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, and a master's degree from Indiana University in Bloomington. His teachers have included Ricardo Kanji, Michael Barker, and Scott Martin Kosofsky. He lives in the Boston area and is a member of the faculties of the New England Conservatory, the Boston Conservatory, Boston University, and the Amherst Early Music Festival.
Go to Profile#6959
Alice Sheppard
#92776
Overall Influence
Alice Sheppard is a disabled choreographer and dancer from Britain. Sheppard started her career first as a professor, teaching English and Comparative Literature. After attending a conference on disability studies, she saw Homer Avila performed and was inspired. She became a member of the AXIS Dance Company and toured with them. She also founded her own dance company, Kinetic Light, which is an artistic coalition created in collaboration with other disabled dancers Laurel Lawson, Jerron Herman and Michael Maag, who also does lighting and is a video artist. A lot of Alice's work revolves inters...
Go to Profile#6960
Bob Ostertag
#117075
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Robert "Bob" Ostertag is an American musician, writer, and political activist based in San Francisco. He has published seven books, one feature film, a DVD, twenty-six albums, and collaborated with numerous musicians.
Go to Profile#6961
Chuck Jackson
#76249
Overall Influence
1937 - 2023 (86 years)
Charles Benjamin Jackson was an American R&B singer who was one of the first artists to record material by Burt Bacharach and Hal David successfully. He performed with moderate success starting in 1961. His hits include “I Can’t Break Away”, "I Don't Want to Cry", "Any Day Now", "I Keep Forgettin'", and "All Over the World".
Go to Profile#6962
Ralph Shapey
#107169
Overall Influence
1921 - 2002 (81 years)
Ralph Shapey was an American composer and conductor. Biography Shapey was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is known for his work as a composition professor at the University of Chicago, where he taught from 1964 to 1991 and where he founded and directed the Contemporary Chamber Players. Shapey studied violin with Emanuel Zeitlin and composition with Stefan Wolpe. He served in the United States Army in World War II before moving to New York City, where he worked as a violinist, composer, conductor, and pedagogue. In 1963, he conducted the orchestra and chorus at the University of Pennsy...
Go to Profile#6963
Ian Partridge
#136479
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Ian Partridge is a retired English lyric tenor, whose repertoire ranged from Monteverdi, Bach and Handel, the Elizabethan lute songs, German, French and English songs, through to Schoenberg, Weill and Britten, and on to contemporary works. He formed a renowned vocal-piano duo with his sister Jennifer Partridge, with whom he worked for over 50 years. While concentrating mainly on songs, oratorio and lieder, he also recorded opera, and has an extensive discography. He is now a teacher and adjudicator, and conducts master classes in many countries.
Go to Profile#6964
Michael Clarke
#85990
Overall Influence
1946 - 1993 (47 years)
Michael Clarke was an American musician, best known as the drummer for the 1960s rock group the Byrds from 1964 to 1967. He died in 1993, at age 47, from liver failure, a direct result of more than three decades of heavy alcohol consumption.
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Emily Nussbaum
#86820
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Emily Nussbaum is an American television critic. She served as the television critic for The New Yorker from 2011 until 2019. In 2016, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Early life Nussbaum was born in the United States to mother Toby Nussbaum and Bernard Nussbaum, who served as White House Counsel to President Bill Clinton.
Go to Profile#6966
Michael Cotey Morgan
#160239
Overall Influence
#6967
Gordon Mumma
#114203
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Gordon Mumma is an American composer. He is known most for his work with electronics, many devices of which he builds himself, and for his performances on horn. Biography Mumma entered the University of Michigan in 1952 at age 17, after dropping out of high school. He dropped out of Michigan after a year, but the connections he made in Ann Arbor were the foundation of much of his musical career. His early work was in piano, and his musical development drew on traditional composers such as Bach and Haydn, as well as modern composers such as Bartók, Schoenberg, Webern, and Ives.
Go to Profile#6968
David Robertson
#115612
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
David Eric Robertson is an American conductor. He was chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and was formerly music director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra from 2005 until 2018. He is Director of Orchestral Studies at Juilliard.
Go to Profile#6969
Ellen Broselow
#149615
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Ellen Broselow is an experimental linguist specializing in second language acquisition and phonology. Since 1983, she has been on the faculty of SUNY Stony Brook University, where she has held the position of Professor of Linguistics since 1993.
Go to Profile#6970
David L. Collinson
#160346
Overall Influence
#6971
Stefan Michael Newerkla
#109740
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Stefan Michael Newerkla is an Austrian linguist, Slavist and philologist. He has taught as Professor of West Slavic Linguistics at the University of Vienna since 2004 and has been Full Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences since 2018.
Go to Profile#6972
Christopher James Earley
#160419
Overall Influence
#6973
Christian Kluttig
#152705
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Christian Kluttig is a German conductor, pianist and Hochschullehrer. From 1979 to 1990, he was chief conductor of the . Appointed General Music Director in 1983, he worked as such at the theatres in Halle and Theater Koblenz. The Handel interpreter rendered special services to the implementation of Historically informed performance in the Saale city, which made him one of the most important protagonists in this field in the GDR. He also devoted himself to Neue Musik, premiering Reiner Bredemeyer's opera Candide.
Go to Profile#6974
Ibtihal Al-Khatib
#112111
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Ibtihal Al-Khatib is a Kuwaiti academic, journalist, and prominent advocate of secular liberal values in Middle Eastern societies. She is a professor at the Kuwait University in the department of English Language and Literature. She has been the subject of controversy because of her outspoken defense of secularism, separation of church and state, and civil rights, including gay rights.
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Lynn Hershman Leeson
#83191
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Lynn Hershman Leeson is a multimedia American artist and filmmaker. Her work combines art with social commentary, particularly on the relationship between people and technology. Leeson is a pioneer in new media, and her work with technology and in media-based practices helped legitimize digital art forms. Her interests include feminism, race, surveillance, and artificial intelligence and identity theft through algorithms and data tracking. She has been referred to as a "new media pioneer" for the prescient incorporation of new science and technologies in her work. She is based in San Francis...
Go to Profile#6976
Albert Schmidt
#129547
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Albert Schmidt OSB is a German Benedictine monk and presiding abbot of the Beuronese Congregation, an association of eighteen mostly German or German-speaking Benedictine monasteries and convents, headed by Beuron Abbey in the upper Danube Valley. This makes him the Congregation's highest ranking dignitary and a High Superior in church law terms.
Go to Profile#6977
Butch Morris
#88830
Overall Influence
1947 - 2013 (66 years)
Lawrence Douglas "Butch" Morris was an American cornetist, composer and conductor. He was known for pioneering his structural improvisation method, Conduction, which he utilized on many recordings. Biography Morris was born in Long Beach, California, United States. Before beginning his musical career, he served in the U.S. Army as a medic in Germany, Japan and Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Morris came to attention with saxophonist David Murray's groups in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Morris's brother, double bassist Wilber Morris, sometimes performed and recorded with Murray during this period.
Go to Profile#6978
Eduard Artemyev
#89076
Overall Influence
1937 - 2022 (85 years)
Eduard Nikolayevich Artemyev was a Soviet and Russian composer of electronic music and film scores. Outside of Russia, he is mostly known for his soundtracks for films such as At Home Among Strangers, Solaris, Siberiade, Mirror, Stalker, and Burnt by the Sun. He was awarded the title People's Artist of Russia in 1999.
Go to Profile#6979
Lionel Hampton
#93389
Overall Influence
1908 - 2002 (94 years)
Lionel Leo Hampton was an American jazz vibraphonist, pianist, percussionist, and bandleader. Hampton worked with jazz musicians from Teddy Wilson, Benny Goodman, and Buddy Rich, to Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, and Quincy Jones. In 1992, he was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, and he was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1996.
Go to Profile#6980
Anthony Newley
#109728
Overall Influence
1931 - 1999 (68 years)
Anthony Newley was an English actor, singer, songwriter, and filmmaker. A "latter-day British Al Jolson", he achieved widespread success in song, and on stage and screen. "One of Broadway's greatest leading men", from 1959 to 1962 he scored a dozen entries on the UK Top 40 chart, including two number one hits. Newley won the 1963 Grammy Award for Song of the Year for "What Kind of Fool Am I?", sung by Sammy Davis Jr., and wrote "Feeling Good", which became a signature hit for Nina Simone. His songs have been sung by a wide variety of singers including Fiona Apple, Tony Bennett, Barbra Streis...
Go to Profile#6981
Roger Nichols
#96818
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Roger Stewart Nichols is an American composer and songwriter. He is a multi-instrumentalist who plays violin, guitar, bass, and piano. Career Nichols co-wrote many songs with lyricists Paul Williams, Tony Asher, and Bill Lane.
Go to Profile#6982
Christoph Gutknecht
#139971
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Christoph Gutknecht is a German linguist, author, and a voice actor. He was a professor of English studies from 1972 to 2001 at the University of Hamburg. Academic career Gutknecht studied German studies, English studies, philosophy, and education at the University of Hamburg, Germany. He received a PhD for his linguistic thesis Die mittelhochdeutsche Versnovelle 'Von zwein koufmannen' des Ruprecht von Würzburg about the work in Middle High German by Ruprecht of Würzburg in 1966.
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Judith Tonhauser
#119443
Overall Influence
Judith Tonhauser is a Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Stuttgart. Education and career Tonhauser received her Ph.D. in Linguistics from Stanford University in 2006. Her dissertation was titled The Temporal Semantics of Noun Phrases: Evidence from Guaraní. From 2006 to 2020, she was on the faculty of the Linguistics department at The Ohio State University. Since 2020 she has been Professor and Chair of English Linguistics at the University of Stuttgart.
Go to Profile#6984
Andrej Dyńko
#97490
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Andrej Dyńko is a Belarusian journalist. In 2000-2006 he served the chief editor of the oldest Belarusian weekly newspaper Naša Niva. Later he headed magazines Nasha Historyja , Arche, and publications for children in the Belarusian language Dudu and Asciarozhna: dzieci!
Go to Profile#6985
Taha Mahmoud Taha
#127442
Overall Influence
1929 - 2002 (73 years)
Taha Mahmoud Taha , an Egyptian professor and translator. One of his most famous works is the translation of Ulysses, a novel by James Joyce. Biography Taha Mahmoud Taha was born in 1929. After high school, he attended the Faculty of Arts at Ain Shams University, where he graduated and was appointed a teaching assistant. After Taha had obtained his master's degree, he received a doctoral scholarship at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, 1957. His PhD dissertation was about Aldous Huxley whom Taha had been sending mails since 1955. Taha returned to Cairo in February 1961 after he had obtained his PhD degree, and he joined the Faculty of Arts at Ain Shams University.
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Sean Beavan
#47984
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Sean Beavan is a musician, record producer, and audio engineer best known for his work with Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, Guns N' Roses, God Lives Underwater, and Slayer. His production style is typically heavy, with heavily saturated guitars, but his work is diverse and wide-ranging as exemplified by bands like No Doubt to System of a Down, to indie bands like Thrice, Envy on the Coast, Hypernova , 8mm, and even death metal band Morbid Angel.
Go to Profile#6987
Kenneth H. Blanchard
#160712
Overall Influence
#6988
Daniel Roth
#129801
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
François Daniel Roth is a French organist, composer, musicologist, and pedagogue. He was titular organist from 1985 until 2023 at the church of Saint-Sulpice in France's capital, Paris, alongside Sophie-Véronique Cauchefer-Choplin, and as of February 2023, will remain as emeritus titular organist.
Go to Profile#6989
Garth Paltridge
#52200
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Garth William Paltridge is a retired Australian atmospheric physicist. He is a visiting fellow at the Australian National University and emeritus professor and honorary research fellow at the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Oceans Studies , University of Tasmania.
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Frank Wilson
#84473
Overall Influence
1940 - 2012 (72 years)
Frank Edward Wilson was an American songwriter, singer and record producer for Motown Records. Biography In 1963, Berry Gordy asked the producers Hal Davis and Marc Gordon to set up an office of Motown in Los Angeles. Wilson accepted an offer to join the team. In December 1963, "Stevie" by Patrice Holloway was the first single released from the West Coast operation and featured Wilson in the songwriting credits. Asked by Gordy to re-locate to Detroit, Wilson went on to write and produce hit records for Brenda Holloway, Marvin Gaye, the Supremes, the Miracles, the Four Tops, the Temptations, Eddie Kendricks, and more.
Go to Profile#6991
Arline Fisch
#111840
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Arline Fisch is an American artist and educator. She is known for her work as a metalsmith and jeweler, pioneering the use of textile processes from crochet, knitting, plaiting, and weaving in her work in metal. She developed groundbreaking techniques for incorporating metal wire and other materials into her jewelry.
Go to Profile#6992
Lejaren Hiller
#74451
Overall Influence
1924 - 1994 (70 years)
Lejaren Arthur Hiller Jr. was an American composer. Career In 1957 he collaborated with Leonard Isaacson on his String Quartet No. 4, Illiac Suite, the first significant use of a computer to compose music. In 1958 Hiller founded the Experimental Music Studios at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His notable pupils included composers James Fulkerson, Larry Lake, Ilza Nogueira, David Rosenboom, Margaret Scoville, Michael Ranta, Bernadette Speach and James Tenney.
Go to Profile#6993
Michael Ronald Buckley
#160842
Overall Influence
#6994
Cynthia Clopper
#112715
Overall Influence
Cynthia Clopper is an American linguist and professor and chair of the linguistics department at Ohio State University. Clopper is known for her work on dialect perception. She currently serves as co-editor of the journal Language and Speech and is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Phonetics. Clopper is currently the president of the Association for Laboratory Phonology
Go to Profile#6995
Gordan Nikolitch
#106239
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Gordan Nikolitch, also spelled Gordan Nikolić, is a Franco-Serbian violinist. He was the first concertmaster of the London Symphony Orchestra for nearly 20 years, having stepped down in October 2017 to concentrate on directing and teaching.
Go to Profile#6996
Talat Mahmood
#86198
Overall Influence
1924 - 1998 (74 years)
Talat Mahmood was an Indian playback singer who is considered one of the popular male Indian film song and ghazal singers. Although he tried his luck as a film actor, he did not succeed a great deal in acting.
Go to Profile#6997
Karin Gundersen
#100654
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Karin Gundersen is a Norwegian literary scholar and translator. A professor of French literature at the University of Oslo, she is also a translator of French literary works. She was awarded the Bastian Prize in 1993, for her translation of Stendhal's novel The Charterhouse of Parma into Norwegian. She received the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature in 2006, for translation of Stendhal's autobiography The Life of Henry Brulard into Norwegian langue. She was awarded the Dobloug Prize in 2006.
Go to Profile#6998
Jake Paltrow
#101812
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Jake Paltrow is an American film director, screenwriter and actor. Coming from a family of actors, he is the younger brother of Gwyneth Paltrow and the son of Bruce Paltrow and Blythe Danner. Personal life Paltrow is the son of producer-director Bruce Paltrow and actress Blythe Danner. He had a Bar Mitzvah. He is a first cousin of actress Katherine Moennig and a second cousin of former U.S. congresswoman Gabby Giffords.
Go to Profile#6999
Christopher Guest
#94047
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Christopher Haden-Guest, 5th Baron Haden-Guest , known professionally as Christopher Guest, is an American-British screenwriter, composer, musician, director, actor, and comedian. Guest is most widely known in Hollywood for having written, directed, and starred in his series of comedy films shot in mockumentary style. Many scenes and character backgrounds in Guest's films are written and directed, although actors have no rehearsal time and the ensemble improvises scenes while filming them. The series of films began with This Is Spinal Tap and continued with Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, ...
Go to Profile#7000
Mark Williams
#89937
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Mark Turner Williams is a choral conductor and organist. Since January 2017, he has held the post of Informator Choristarum, Organist and Tutorial Fellow in Music at Magdalen College, Oxford. He was Assistant Organist at St Paul's Cathedral from 2000 to 2006, and between 2009 and 2016 held the position of Director of Music at Jesus College, Cambridge. Williams was organ scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1997 to 2000, under Richard Marlow. After graduating from Trinity College he became Assistant Organist at St Paul's Cathedral, and Director of Music at St Paul's Cathedral School. At 21 he was the youngest person ever to be appointed to these positions.
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