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,
#7101
Milford Graves
#95461
Overall Influence
1941 - 2021 (80 years)
Milford Graves was an American jazz drummer, percussionist, Professor Emeritus of Music, researcher/inventor, visual artist/sculptor, gardener/herbalist, and martial artist. Graves was noteworthy for his early avant-garde contributions in the 1960s with Paul Bley, Albert Ayler, and the New York Art Quartet, and is considered to be a free jazz pioneer, liberating percussion from its timekeeping role. The composer and saxophonist John Zorn referred to Graves as "basically a 20th-century shaman."
Go to Profile#7102
John Potter
#122855
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
John Potter is an English tenor and academic. Early life and education John Potter's musical education began as a chorister in the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, after which he became a scholar at The King's School, Canterbury and exhibitioner at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. His coaches included lieder specialist Walter Gruner, accompanist Paul Hamburger, and the tenor Peter Pears.
Go to Profile#7103
Tom Smith
#106116
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Thomas Michael Henry Smith is an English musician, best known as the lead singer, songwriter, keyboardist and rhythm guitarist of the indie rock band Editors. Early life Thomas Michael Henry Smith was born in Northampton on 29 April 1981, the son of high school science teachers Sylvia and John Smith. He grew up in Stroud, Gloucestershire, where he attended Woodchester Endowed Primary School and learned to play the guitar under the guidance of the school's headmaster. He then attended Archway School in Stroud, where his parents taught physics and chemistry. He later studied music technology at...
Go to Profile#7104
Philip Metres
#104400
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Philip Metres is an American writer, poet, translator, scholar, and essayist. His poetry books include Shrapnel Maps, Pictures at an Exhibition, and Sand Opera. He has published poems, essays, and reviews in literary journals and magazines including Poetry, American Poetry Review, New England Review, Tin House, Ploughshares, New American Writing, Massachusetts Review, and others. His work has been anthologized in Best American Poetry; The New American Poetry of Engagement; With Our Eyes Wide Open: Poems of the New American Century; A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Person...
Go to Profile#7105
Florence Graves
#111685
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (125 years)
Florence George Graves is an American journalist and the founding director of the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. She is an investigative reporter and editor whose work focuses on exposing abuses of government and corporate power, and on revealing inequities between the powerful and the powerless. She also is a Resident Scholar at the Brandeis Women's Studies Research Center. As an investigative reporter for The Washington Post, she and a colleague broke the Senator Bob Packwood sexual misconduct story, which led to an historic three-year Senate investigation followed by a Senate Ethics Committee vote to expel him and then his forced resignation.
Go to Profile#7106
Daniel Cohn-Bendit
#100699
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Daniel Marc Cohn-Bendit is a French-German politician. He was a student leader during the unrest of May 1968 in France and was also known during that time as Dany le Rouge . He was co-president of the group European Greens–European Free Alliance in the European Parliament. He co-chairs the Spinelli Group, a European parliament inter-group aiming at relaunching the federalist project in Europe. He was a recipient of the European Parliament's European Initiative Prize in 2016. Cohn-Bendit's 1970s writings on sexuality between adults and children later proved controversial in 2001 and 2013.
Go to Profile#7107
Richard A. Johnson
#60221
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Richard A. Johnson is an artist and retired professor in the Fine Arts department at the University of New Orleans. He was a recipient of the Rome Prize in the category of Visual Arts in 1968 . External links Profile of Richard A. Johnson
Go to Profile#7108
Fairuz
#103486
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Nouhad Wadie Haddad , known as Fairuz , is a Lebanese singer. She is considered by many as one of the leading vocalists and most famous singers in the history of the Arab world. Fairuz is considered the musical icon of Lebanon and is popularly known as "the soul of Lebanon".
Go to Profile#7109
Hizkias Assefa
#62897
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Hizkias Assefa is a conflict mediator known widely in Africa for his non-aligned work as a consultant who has mediated in most major conflict situations in sub-Saharan Africa in the past 20 years, as well as in a dozen countries elsewhere. He is also a professor of conflict studies. Of Ethiopian origin, he is based in Nairobi, Kenya. He was one of the founding faculty members in 1994 of the Conflict Transformation Program at Eastern Mennonite University.
Go to Profile#7110
Meghan O. Moriarty Gerrard
#164214
Overall Influence
#7111
Pierre Billard
#133871
Overall Influence
1922 - 2016 (94 years)
Pierre Billard was a French journalist, film critic and historian of cinema. Career Born in Dieppe , Pierre Billard followed the courses of resistant Valentin Feldman during the Occupation of France. They would become close and the teaching of Feldman marked him permanently. He then went to study at the Sorbonne, before specializing in cinema.
Go to Profile#7112
Jerry Duplessis
#79319
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Jerry "Wonda" Duplessis is a Haitian music producer, film score composer, entrepreneur and philanthropist. His first major success was as a producer for the Fugees' 1996 album The Score. He also played the bass guitar with the Fugees, and group member Wyclef Jean is his cousin.
Go to Profile#7113
Lillian Turner De Tormes Eby
#164289
Overall Influence
#7114
Ángel Faus Belau
#160749
Overall Influence
1936 - 2020 (84 years)
Ángel Faus Belau was a Spanish journalist and professor emeritus of communications at the University of Navarre. He was considered a leading expert on European radio broadcasting. In 1979, he became the first Spaniard to earn a doctorate in information sciences.
Go to Profile#7115
Carmen Silva-Corvalan
#140756
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Carmen Silva-Corvalán is a Professor Emerita of Spanish and Portuguese Linguistics at the University of Southern California, where she taught since she obtained her doctoral degree at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1979. Silva-Corvalán has published extensively on bilingualism and language contact, and on the semantic and discourse-pragmatic constraints which condition syntactic variation. Silva-Corvalan was one of the four chief editors of Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, Cambridge University Press.
Go to Profile#7116
Greg Cohen
#112478
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Greg Cohen is an American jazz bassist who has been a member of John Zorn's Masada quartet and worked with numerous other noted musicians for over four decades. Career Cohen plays traditional jazz and other styles, including work with Ken Peplowski, Kenny Davern, Marty Grosz, and Woody Allen. He has also worked with Tom Waits, David Byrne, Elvis Costello, Dagmar Krause, David Sanborn, Susana Baca, Gal Costa, Marisa Monte, Laurie Anderson, Willie Nelson, Bill Frisell, Norah Jones, Dave Douglas, Tricky, Jesse Harris, Keith Richards and Charlie Watts, Joey Baron, Donovan, Crystal Gayle, Bob Dyla...
Go to Profile#7117
John Hill
#132657
Overall Influence
John Hill is an American guitarist best recognized as a member of The Apples in Stereo and Dressy Bessy. Hill, a college friend of drummer Hilarie Sidney and bassist Jim McIntyre, joined The Apples in January, 1994 after the departure of lead guitarist Chris Parfitt. At the time, The Apples needed a lead guitarist, but it was evident to the band members that Hill's jangly style was better suited to rhythm guitar. Frontman Robert Schneider thus became the band's lead guitarist. Hill has been a full-time recording and touring member of the band ever since.
Go to Profile#7118
Friedrich Goldmann
#120039
Overall Influence
1941 - 2009 (68 years)
Friedrich Goldmann was a German composer and conductor. Life Born on 27 April 1941 in Siegmar-Schönau , Goldmann's music education began in 1951 when he joined the Dresdner Kreuzchor. At age 18, he received a scholarship by the city of Darmstadt to study composition with Karlheinz Stockhausen at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in 1959, who further encouraged him over the following years. He moved on to study composition at the Dresden Conservatory from 1959, taking his exam two years early in 1962. From 1962 until 1964 he attended a master class at the Academy of Arts, Berlin with Rudolph Wagner-Régeny.
Go to Profile#7119
Lo Man-fei
#73510
Overall Influence
1955 - 2006 (51 years)
Lo Man-fei was a Taiwanese dancer and choreographer. She was a member of the Cloud Gate Dance Theater, founded by Lin Hwai-min, between 1979 and 1994. Lin subsequently founded her own dance troupe, Taipei Crossover Dance Company, and led Cloud Gate 2 from 1999 to her death.
Go to Profile#7120
Benjamin Boretz
#78847
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Benjamin Aaron Boretz is an American composer and music theorist. Life and work Benjamin Boretz was born in Brooklyn, New York to Abraham Jacob Boretz and Leah Boretz. He graduated with a degree in music from Brooklyn College in 1954, studied composition with Tadeusz Kassern, and later studied composition at Brandeis University with Arthur Berger and Irving Fine, with Darius Milhaud at the Aspen Music Festival and School, with Lukas Foss at UCLA, and with Milton Babbitt and Roger Sessions at Princeton University. Boretz was one of the first composers to work with computer-synthesized sound ....
Go to Profile#7121
Jeanette Gundel
#139160
Overall Influence
1942 - 2019 (77 years)
Jeanette Gundel was an American linguist noted for her work on information structure and pragmatics. Academic career Gundel received her PhD in Linguistics from the University of Texas, Austin, in 1974. Her dissertation, "The Role of Topic and Comment in Linguistic Theory", was published in 1977 by the Indiana University Linguistics Club, and in 1988, in the Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics Series by Garland.
Go to Profile#7122
Kate Ford
#95689
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Kate Ford is an English actress. She is known for her portrayal of Tracy Barlow in the ITV soap opera Coronation Street . Ford was born in Salford, Greater Manchester. She attended Queen Elizabeth School in Kirkby Lonsdale, Cumbria and Blackpool and The Fylde College, Lancashire. She later trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art.
Go to Profile#7123
Douglas Lilburn
#117078
Overall Influence
1915 - 2001 (86 years)
Douglas Gordon Lilburn was a New Zealand composer. Early life Lilburn was born in Whanganui and spent his early years on the family sheep farm in the upper Turakina River valley at Drysdale. He attended Waitaki Boys' High School from 1930 to 1933, before moving to Christchurch to study journalism and music over the next three years at Canterbury University College, then part of the University of New Zealand. In 1936 his career in music was set when his tone poem Forest won visiting composer Percy Grainger's national composition competition. In 1937 he began studying at the Royal College of Music in London, tutored in composition by Ralph Vaughan Williams until 1939.
Go to Profile#7124
Malcolm Goldstein
#119021
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Malcolm Goldstein is an American-Canadian composer, violinist and improviser who has been active in the presentation of new music and dance since the early 1960s. He received an M.A. in music composition from Columbia University in 1960, having studied with Otto Luening. In the 1960s in New York City, he was a co-founder with James Tenney and Philip Corner of the Tone Roads Ensemble and was a participant in the Judson Dance Theater, the New York Festival of the Avant-Garde and the Experimental Intermedia Foundation. Since then, he has toured extensively throughout North America and Europe, wi...
Go to Profile#7125
Siegmund Nimsgern
#124502
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Siegmund Nimsgern is a German bass-baritone, born in Sankt Wendel, Saarland, Germany. After leaving school in 1960 he studied singing and musical education at the Hochschule für Musik Saar with Sibylle Fuchs, Jakob Stämpfli and Paul Lohmann.
Go to Profile#7126
Alexander Mitta
#99320
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Alexander Naumovich Mitta is a Soviet and Russian film director, screenwriter and actor. Mitta's birth name was Alexander Naumovich Rabinovich . He studied engineering , then worked as a cartoonist in art and humour magazines. In 1960 Mitta graduated at the film directing faculty of the VGIK.
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Ken G. Hall
#99246
Overall Influence
1901 - 1994 (93 years)
Kenneth George Hall was an Australian film producer and director, considered one of the most important figures in the history of the Australian film industry. He was the first Australian to win an Academy Award.
Go to Profile#7128
Salvatore Accardo
#118045
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Salvatore Accardo is an Italian violinist and conductor, who is known for his interpretations of the works of Niccolò Paganini. Accardo owns one Stradivarius violin, the "Hart ex Francescatti" and had the "Firebird ex Saint-Exupéry" .
Go to Profile#7129
Ji Xianlin
#89025
Overall Influence
1911 - 2009 (98 years)
Ji Xianlin was a Chinese Indologist, linguist, paleographer, historian and writer who has been honored by the governments of both India and China. Ji was proficient in many languages including Chinese, Sanskrit, Arabic, English, German, French, Russian, Pali and Tocharian, and translated many works. He published a memoir, The Cowshed: Memories of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, about his persecution during the Cultural Revolution.
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Billy Dean
#83239
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
William Harold Dean Jr. is an American country music singer and songwriter. He first gained national attention after appearing on the television talent competition Star Search. Active as a recording artist since 1990, he has recorded a total of eight studio albums and a greatest hits package which is also certified gold. His studio albums have accounted for more than 20 hit singles on the Billboard country charts, including 11 Top Ten hits.
Go to Profile#7131
Robert Wells
#121893
Overall Influence
1922 - 1998 (76 years)
Robert Wells was an American songwriter, composer, script writer and television producer. During his early career, he collaborated with singer and songwriter Mel Tormé, writing several hit songs, most notably "The Christmas Song" in 1945. Later, he became a prolific writer and producer for television, for such shows as The Dinah Shore Chevy Show, as well as for numerous variety specials, such as If They Could See Me Now, starring Shirley MacLaine. He was nominated for several Academy Awards and won six Emmys and a Peabody Award.
Go to Profile#7132
Suzette Forgues Halasz
#147925
Overall Influence
1918 - 2004 (86 years)
Suzette Forgues Halasz was a Canadian cellist and music educator. She held the post of principal cellist of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra from 1942 to 1946 and worked in the same capacity at the New York City Opera for many years. She was married to conductor Laszlo Halasz for over 50 years.
Go to Profile#7133
Rudolph Mathar
#164936
Overall Influence
#7134
Edmund Gussmann
#136487
Overall Influence
1945 - 2010 (65 years)
Edmund Gussmann was a Polish linguist, phonologist, English philologist, Icelandist, celtologist. Career He graduated in English Philology from the University of Warsaw in 1968. In the years 1968–1970 he also studied Icelandic and Germanic linguistics at the University of Reykjavik. In 1970, he joined the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, where in 1973 he defended his doctorate, and in 1978 he obtained his habilitation. In the years 1979–1980 he was the Director of the Institute of English Studies at UMCS. In 1981 he became the director of the Institute of English Philology at the Catholic University of Lublin.
Go to Profile#7135
Johann-Mattis List
#153270
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Johann-Mattis List is a German scientist. He is known for his work on quantitative comparative linguistics. List is currently professor at the University of Passau, Germany, where he leads the Chair of Multilingual Computational Linguistics.
Go to Profile#7136
Osvaldas Balakauskas
#93044
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Osvaldas Jonas Balakauskas is a Lithuanian composer of classical music and diplomat. Career Balakauskas graduated from Vilnius Pedagogical University in 1961. After his mandatory service in the Soviet Army between 1961 and 1964, he studied composition with Boris Lyatoshinsky and Myroslav Skoryk at the Kiev Conservatory until 1969. From 1992 to 1994 he was the ambassador of Lithuania to France, Spain and Portugal . In 1996 he was awarded with the Lithuanian National Award, the highest artistic and cultural distinction in Lithuania. He is currently head of the Composition Department of the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre.
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Mark Boal
#93267
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Mark Boal is an American journalist, screenwriter, and film producer. Boal initially worked as a journalist, writing for outlets like Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, Salon, and Playboy. Boal's 2004 article "Death and Dishonor" was adapted for the film In the Valley of Elah, which Boal also co-wrote.
Go to Profile#7138
Marc Marschark
#165025
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
#7139
Norman Gimbel
#121191
Overall Influence
1927 - 2018 (91 years)
Norman Gimbel was an American lyricist and songwriter of popular songs and themes to television shows and films. He wrote the lyrics for songs including "Ready to Take a Chance Again" and "Canadian Sunset". He also co-wrote "Killing Me Softly With His Song". He wrote English-language lyrics for many international hits, including "Sway", "Summer Samba", "The Girl from Ipanema", "How Insensitive", "Drinking-Water", "Meditation", "I Will Wait for You" and "Watch What Happens". Of the movie themes he co-wrote, five were nominated for Academy Awards and/or Golden Globe Awards, including "It Goes Like It Goes", from the film Norma Rae, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for 1979.
Go to Profile#7140
Clarence Carter
#79810
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Clarence George Carter is an American singer, songwriter, musician and record producer. His most successful songs include "Slip Away", "Back Door Santa" , "Patches" and "Strokin" . Early life Born blind in Montgomery, Alabama, on January 14, 1936, Carter attended the Alabama School for the Blind in Talladega, Alabama, and Alabama State University in Montgomery, graduating in August 1960 with a Bachelor of Science degree in music.
Go to Profile#7141
Steve Miller
#59673
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Steve Miller is an American science fiction writer from Waterville, Maine, best known for his works set in the Liaden universe, written in collaboration with his wife Sharon Lee. Background Miller was born on July 31, 1950, in Baltimore, Maryland. He attended Franklin High School in Reisterstown, Maryland, graduating in 1968; and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in the late 1960s and 1970s, where he was news editor and managing editor of the campus newspaper, The Retriever and founding president of the Infinity Circle, the school's first science fiction club. He served as founding Curator of the UMBC Albin O.
Go to Profile#7142
Michael D. Balter
#165108
Overall Influence
#7143
Mason Jones
#125120
Overall Influence
1919 - 2009 (90 years)
Mason Jones was an American horn player and music educator who had a lengthy association with the Philadelphia Orchestra as principal hornist under conductor Eugene Ormandy. He also served as principal hornist of the United States Marine Band during World War II and was the head of the horn faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music from 1946–1995. He was a founding member of the Philadelphia Woodwind Quintet and the Philadelphia Brass Ensemble.
Go to Profile#7144
John Campbell
#102730
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
John James Campbell is a New Zealand journalist and radio and television personality. He is currently a presenter and reporter at TVNZ; before that, he presented Checkpoint, Radio New Zealand's drive time show, from 2016 to 2018. For ten years prior to that , he presented Campbell Live, a current affairs programme on TV3. He was a rugby commentator for Sky Sports during the All Blacks' test against Samoa in early 2015 — a fixture he had vocally campaigned for while hosting Campbell Live.
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Daniel Charles
#110847
Overall Influence
1935 - 2008 (73 years)
Daniel Paul Charles was a French musician, musicologist and philosopher. He was born on 27 November 1935 in Oran and died on 21 August 2008 in Antibes . Biography He was a student of Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatory of Music , he received the aggregation in philosophy in 1959 and a PhD under the direction of Mikel Dufrenne in 1977.
Go to Profile#7146
Tarik O'Regan
#115185
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Tarik Hamilton O'Regan is a British and American composer. His compositions number over 130 and are partially represented on 47 recordings which have been recognised with two Grammy nominations. He is also the recipient of two British Composer Awards. O'Regan has served on the Faculties of Columbia University as a Fulbright Chester Schirmer Fellow, The Radcliffe Institute of Harvard University as a Radcliffe Fellow, Yale University, Trinity College in the University of Cambridge, Rutgers University, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton as Director's Visitor.
Go to Profile#7147
Stuart Dempster
#103818
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Stuart Dempster is a trombonist, didjeridu player, improviser, and composer. Biography After Dempster completed his studies at San Francisco State College, he was appointed assistant professor at the California State College at Hayward, and instructor at the San Francisco Conservatory . During this period he was also a member of the Performing Group at Mills College, and from 1962 to 1966 was first trombonist in the Oakland Symphony Orchestra.
Go to Profile#7148
Devyani Sharma
#136933
Overall Influence
Devyani Sharma is a sociolinguistics professor and chair of the Linguistics department at Queen Mary University of London. Education Sharma holds a PhD and MA in linguistics from Stanford University and a BA in anthropology/ linguistics and fine art from Dartmouth College.
Go to Profile#7149
Alex Kanevsky
#60805
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Alex Kanevsky is a painter currently based in Tamworth, New Hampshire. His works combine abstraction and figuration in multilayered portraits that capture movement and the constant flow of time, resisting adherence to a single moment. Kanevsky's work is rooted in the artistic traditions of Eastern Europe, where he grew up, and the United States, where he now lives.
Go to Profile#7150
Joe Beck
#113045
Overall Influence
1945 - 2008 (63 years)
Joe Beck was an American jazz guitarist who was active for over 30 years. Biography Born in Philadelphia, Beck moved to Manhattan in his teens, playing six nights a week in a trio setting, which gave him an opportunity to meet various people working in the thriving New York music scene. By the time he was 18, Stan Getz hired him to record jingles, and in 1967 he recorded with Miles Davis. By 1968, at age 22, he was a member of the Gil Evans Orchestra. Beck described his early success in an interview near the end of his life:
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