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,

#7301

Britt Woodman

#134480

Overall Influence

1920 - 2000 (80 years)

Britt Woodman was an American jazz trombonist. Career Woodman was a childhood friend of Charles Mingus, but first worked with Phil Moore and Les Hite. After service in World War II he played with Boyd Raeburn before joining with Lionel Hampton in 1946. During the 1950s he worked with Ellington. As a member of Ellington's band he can be heard on Such Sweet Thunder , Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Song Book , Black, Brown, and Beige and Ellington Indigos .

#7302

David Nelson

#94119

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

David Brian Nelson is an American musician, singer, and songwriter. He is perhaps best known as a co-founder and longtime member of the New Riders of the Purple Sage. Career Nelson started his musical career playing folk and bluegrass music, most notably as a member of The Wildwood Boys with Jerry Garcia. Shortly after his friend and former bandmate began to play rock music with The Warlocks , Nelson joined the similarly inclined New Delhi River Band. Although they lacked the managerial acumen and cultural cachet of the Grateful Dead and elected to remain in East Palo Alto, California unlike...

#7303

Paul Pesco

#71696

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Paul Pesco is an American session guitarist, singer-songwriter, film score composer and record producer. Biography Pesco was born in Canandaigua, New York, to a Sicilian father and Korean mother . The family lived for a time in Germany during Paul's youth before returning to New York. He graduated from Northport High School in 1977. As of November 2012, Pesco resides in Millbrook, New York, where he maintains a home recording studio.

#7304

Wendell Marshall

#126533

Overall Influence

1920 - 2002 (82 years)

Wendell Marshall was an American jazz double-bassist. Marshall was Jimmy Blanton's cousin. He studied at Lincoln University, then served in the Army during World War II. Following his discharge, he performed with Stuff Smith, then relocated to New York City, where he worked with Mercer Ellington. From 1948 to 1955, he performed with Duke Ellington.

#7305

Manuela Kay

#102159

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Manuela Kay is a German journalist, author and publisher. Life and career Kay worked from the first day of its founding until February 1991 as the editor and presenter of the first Berlin private Radio Station, Radio 100, including the gay-lesbian show ‘Eldoradio’. She is co-author and film producer of numerous video films on the theme of lesbian sexuality and feminist pornography.

#7306

Stephen Owen

#74346

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Stephen Owen is an American sinologist specializing in Chinese literature, particularly Tang dynasty poetry and comparative poetics. He taught Chinese literature and comparative literature at Harvard University and is James Bryant Conant University Professor, Emeritus; becoming emeritus before he was one of only 25 Harvard University Professors. He is a member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of American Philosophical Society.

#7307

Tony Rice

#87844

Overall Influence

1951 - 2020 (69 years)

David Anthony Rice was an American bluegrass guitarist. He was an influential acoustic guitar player in bluegrass, progressive bluegrass, newgrass and acoustic jazz. He was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 2013.

#7308

Neil Henry

#131033

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Neil Henry is an American journalist and professor who is former dean of the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. He served as dean of the school between 2007 and 2011. During his deanship Henry accelerated the school's transition to digital skills training in its curriculum with the support of the Ford Foundation, while attracting three $2 million endowed faculty chairs from private donors.

#7309

Bala

#64408

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Bala is an Indian film director, screenwriter, and producer, working in Tamil cinema. Bala has been praised for "revolutionizing Tamil cinema" through his realistic, dark and disturbing depiction of the working class on celluloid screen. Shaji N. Karun, who headed the jury of the 56th National Film Awards, said, "Bala is unique in many ways. The way he changed Tamil cinema's character was commendable ... There were many who tried for a change. Among the new generation of filmmakers, Bala leads the pack in bringing a change in Tamil cinema's outlook and approach."

#7310

Anton Kuerti

#119461

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Anton Emil Kuerti, OC is an Austrian-born Canadian pianist, music teacher, composer, and conductor. He has developed international recognition as a solo pianist. Early life Kuerti was born in Vienna, Austria. As a child, he immigrated to the United States and studied piano under Edward Goldman in Boston. Kuerti performed the Grieg Piano Concerto with the Boston Pops Orchestra at age eleven. Kuerti studied music at the Longy School of Music, at the Cleveland Institute of Music where he earned a Bachelor of Music degree, and at the Curtis Institute. His teachers included Arthur Loesser, Rudolf Serkin and Mieczysław Horszowski.

#7311

Vladimir Vasiliev

Vladimir Vasiliev

#121296

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Vladimir Viktorovich Vasiliev is a Soviet and Russian ballet dancer and choreographer. He was a principal dancer with the Bolshoi Ballet and its director from 1995 to 2000. He was best known for his role of Spartacus and his powerful leaps and turns. He received the People's Artist of the USSR .

#7312

David Phelps

#104899

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

David Norris Phelps is an American Christian music vocalist, songwriter, vocal arranger, and producer who is best known for singing tenor in the Gaither Vocal Band. He has also released several solo albums, including four Christmas collections. On January 13, 2008, Phelps appeared on Extreme Makeover Home Edition for the Woodhouse family.

#7313

Lois Andison

#176851

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Lois Andison is an installation artist whose mixed materials installations explore intersections of technology, geography and the body. She currently teaches sculpture and digital media at the University of Waterloo.

#7314

Mikael Svonni

#149175

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Enok Mikael Svonni is a Swedish Sámi linguist, professor, and translator. Early life Svonni grew up in a reindeer-herding family in the Gabna Sami village in the municipality of Kiruna, spending the first two years of his life living in a peat goahti. One of the places he spent time was at his family's camp on Lake Rautas .

#7315

Chris Nance

#119041

Overall Influence

1940 - 2014 (74 years)

Chris Nance was an American conductor and music educator. Primarily active as an opera conductor, he served on the conducting staff of the New York City Opera from 1969-1974 and was the music administrator and conductor of the Houston Grand Opera from 1974-1977. Thereafter he worked as a freelance conductor with opera companies throughout the world. He became particularly associated with George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess for which he was frequently hired to conduct at opera houses both in the United States and abroad.

#7316

Melissa Bradshaw

#128524

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (125 years)

Melissa Bradshaw is a writer and journalist based in London. Bradshaw is known primarily for her work in music. She is the daughter of Steve Bradshaw and Jenny Richards. Education Bradshaw won an academic scholarship to Bryanston School and later attended North London Collegiate School.

#7317

Ursula Oppens

#98430

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Ursula Oppens is an American classical concert pianist and educator. She has received five Grammy Award nominations. Biography Ursula Oppens was born on February 2, 1944, in New York City into a highly musical family from Jewish parents who had fled Prague in 1938. She obtained a high school diploma from the Brearley School a Bachelor of Arts degree from Radcliffe College and an M.S. degree from the Juilliard School . She began early piano studies with her mother Edith Oppens, a noted piano pedagogue, and went on to study with American pianist Leonard Shure. At Juilliard she studied with Rosina Lhévinne and Felix Galimir.

#7318

Paul Johnson

#122338

Overall Influence

1971 - 2021 (50 years)

Paul Leighton Johnson was an American house disc jockey and record producer. He was known for his self-taught DJ style of house music, mentoring and inspiring younger producers, and for a series of singles, including his 1999 worldwide hit single "Get Get Down".

#7319

Robert Glasper

#63588

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Robert Andre Glasper is an American pianist, record producer, songwriter, and musical arranger. His music embodies numerous musical genres, primarily centered around jazz. To date, Glasper has won five Grammy Awards and received eleven nominations across eight categories.

#7320

Lester Novros

#112125

Overall Influence

1909 - 2000 (91 years)

Lester Novros was an American artist, animator, and teacher. Early life Lester Novros was born in Passaic, New Jersey, on January 27, 1909. Novros studied painting at the National Academy of Design in New York City, was an active member of the Art Students League of New York and studied at the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain.

#7321

Harry Lawton

#90261

Overall Influence

1927 - 2005 (78 years)

Harry Wilson Lawton was an American writer, journalist, editor and historian who wrote several books about Native Americans in California. One of them, Willie Boy: a Desert Manhunt, was made into a movie in 1969, by the title Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, starring Robert Redford.

#7322

Roger Mason

#134255

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Roger Ashley Mason is an Australian keyboardist who has been a member of new wave groups Models, Absent Friends and Icehouse. He was a session and backing musician for United Kingdom's Gary Numan and for various Australian artists. From the early 1990s he has composed music for television and feature films.

#7323

Frank Callaway

#90971

Overall Influence

1919 - 2003 (84 years)

Sir Frank Callaway was an influential music educator and administrator. He was born in New Zealand but spent the major part of his life and career in Perth, Western Australia, where he built the UWA School of Music . He was one of the most highly honoured musicians and music educators in Australian history.

#7324

Sandra Braman

#83909

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Sandra Braman is a full professor in the Department of Communication at Texas A&M University. Braman's work on the macro-level effects of digital technologies and their policy implications has been supported by the United States National Science Foundation and by the Ford, Rockefeller, and Soros Foundations. Her recent work includes Change of State: Information, Policy, and Power and the edited volumes Communication Researchers and Policy-making , Biotechnology and Communication: The Meta-Technologies of Information , and The Emergent Global Information Policy Regime . In recent years, Brama...

#7325

Lorne Balfe

#95795

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Lorne Balfe is a Scottish composer and record producer of film, television, and video game scores. A veteran of Hans Zimmer's Remote Control Productions, Balfe's scoring credits include the films 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, Terminator Genisys, and Mission: Impossible – Fallout, as well as the video games Assassin's Creed: Revelations, Assassin's Creed III, Crysis 2, Skylanders, and the Call of Duty franchise. He has also scored the television series The Bible, Marcella, The Crown, and Genius, the latter for which he earned a nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstandin...

#7326

Red Holloway

#109585

Overall Influence

1927 - 2012 (85 years)

James Wesley "Red" Holloway was an American jazz saxophonist. Biography Born in Helena, Arkansas, Holloway started playing banjo and harmonica, switching to tenor saxophone when he was 12 years old. He graduated from DuSable High School in Chicago, where he had played in the school big band with Johnny Griffin and Eugene Wright, and went on to attend the city's Conservatory of Music. He joined the Army when he was 19 and became bandmaster for the U.S. Fifth Army Band, and after completing his military service returned to Chicago and played with Yusef Lateef and Dexter Gordon, among others. In...

#7327

François Morel

#168247

Overall Influence

1926 - 2018 (92 years)

François Morel may refer to:François Morel , French actorFrançois Morel , Canadian composerFrançois M. M. Morel , French-American biogeochemist

#7328

Louis Moyse

#142981

Overall Influence

1912 - 2007 (95 years)

Louis Moyse was a French flute player and composer. He was the son of influential French flutist Marcel Moyse, a co-founder of the Vermont Marlboro Music Festival, and taught many world-class flutists all over the world. He died of heart failure at age 94.

#7329

P. Susheela

#58965

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Pulapaka Susheela , popularly known as P. Susheela, is an Indian playback singer associated with the South Indian cinema primarily from Andhra Pradesh for over six decades and is referred to as Evergreen Nightingale of Indian cinema. She is one of the greatest and best-known playback singers in India. She has been recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as well as by the Asia Book of Records for performing a record number of songs in different Indian languages. She is also the recipient of five National Film Award for Best Female Playback Singer and numerous state awards. Susheela i...

#7330

Alan Silva

#107351

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Alan Silva is an American free jazz double bassist and keyboard player. Biography Silva was born a British subject to an Azorean/Portuguese mother, Irene da Silva, and a black Bermudian father known only as "Ruby". He emigrated to the United States at the age of five with his mother, eventually acquiring U.S. citizenship by the age of 18 or 19. He adopted the stage name of Alan Silva in his twenties.

#7331

John Scott

#145729

Overall Influence

1956 - 2015 (59 years)

John Gavin Scott was an English organist and choirmaster who reached the highest levels of his profession on both sides of the Atlantic. He directed the Choir of St Paul's Cathedral in London from 1990 to 2004. He then directed the Choir of Men and Boys of Saint Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue in New York City until his death at age 59. Whilst training countless young musicians, he maintained an active career as an international concert performer and recording artist, and was acclaimed as "the premier English organist of his generation".

#7332

Roger Voisin

#150667

Overall Influence

1918 - 2008 (90 years)

Roger Louis Voisin was an American classical trumpeter. In 1959, The New York Times called him "one of the best-known trumpeters in this country." Performing career Among the most influential trumpet performers and teachers of the twentieth century, Voisin joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra as assistant principal trumpet in 1935 at age seventeen, and became principal trumpet in 1950. He performed in the Boston Symphony for 38 years, until 1973. During this period, he was also principal trumpet with the Boston Pops Orchestra.

#7333

Angelin Chang

#91136

Overall Influence

Angelin Chang is a Grammy award-winning classical pianist and professor of music at Cleveland State University. She heads the university's keyboard studies program coordinates the university's chamber music program, and teaches music and law. Prior to joining Cleveland State, she was faculty at Rutgers University.

#7334

Mario Naves

#85228

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Mario Naves-- is an American artist, art critic, professor and blogger. Mario Naves studied painting and drawing at the University of Utah, receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1984. He subsequently studied at Pratt Institute, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1987, having majored in painting with a minor emphasis in art criticism.

#7335

Radovan Vlatković

Radovan Vlatković

#161138

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Radovan Vlatković is a Croatian-born horn player. He was the former principal horn of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra . He left that post in 1990 to devote himself to a solo career and has recorded many of the major works for horn. He is now professor of horn at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria and at the Reina Sofía School of Music in Madrid. Vlatković also participates as a senior artist at the Marlboro Music Festival, and has performed in chamber music and solo recital for the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society.

#7336

Yehudi Wyner

#91795

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (97 years)

Yehudi Wyner is an American composer, pianist, conductor and music educator. Life and career Wyner, who grew up in New York City, was raised in a musical family. His father, Lazar Weiner, was an eminent composer of Yiddish art songs. Wyner attended Juilliard, Yale and Harvard, and was a student of Paul Hindemith and Walter Piston. He has written music in a variety of genres, including compositions for orchestra, chamber ensembles, solo voice and solo instruments, as well as theatrical music and settings of the Jewish liturgy. Among his best-known works are the Friday Evening Service and "Tor...

#7337

Mark Armstrong

#167431

Overall Influence

Mark Armstrong is a British jazz trumpeter, musical director, composer, arranger, and educator. Biography Armstrong was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, northern England. At the age of five he moved to Amersham and attended Dr Challoner's Grammar School, playing with the Aylesbury Music Centre Dance Band and Buckinghamshire County Youth Orchestra. He studied then for a degree in music at the University of Oxford, when he played with the Oxford University Jazz Orchestra and helped to reform the Oxford University Big Band. He subsequently took a postgraduate course in jazz and studio music at the G...

#7338

Rie Kugimiya

#133469

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (47 years)

is a Japanese voice actress and singer. She is best known for her voice performances in anime, which include Alphonse Elric in the Fullmetal Alchemist series, Kagura in Gin Tama, and Happy in Fairy Tail and Edens Zero, and in video games, such as Haruka Sawamura in the Yakuza series. Because of her roles for characters such as Shana in Shakugan no Shana, Louise in The Familiar of Zero, Nagi Sanzenin in Hayate the Combat Butler, Taiga Aisaka in Toradora!, Aguri Madoka/Cure Ace in DokiDoki! PreCure, and Aria Holmes Kanzaki in Aria the Scarlet Ammo, some of her fans have nicknamed her the "Queen ...

#7339

André Watts

#72427

Overall Influence

1946 - 2023 (77 years)

André Watts was an American classical pianist. Over the six decades of his career, Watts performed as soloist with every major American orchestra and most of the world's finest orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, and London Symphony Orchestra. Watts recorded a variety of repertoire, concentrating on Romantic era composers such as Frédéric Chopin and Franz Liszt, but also including George Gershwin. In 2020, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society. He won a Grammy Award for Best New Classical Artist in 1964. Watts was also on the faculty at...

#7340

Lee Thornton

#138815

Overall Influence

1941 - 2013 (72 years)

Lee Thornton, is an American journalist and correspondent for CBS, CNN, NPR, and professor at Howard University and the University of Maryland. She was also the first African American woman to cover the White House. She was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame in 2013.

#7341

Anna Abulafia

#93966

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Anna Brechta Sapir Abulafia, is a British academic who specialises in religious history. The main focus of her research is medieval Christian-Jewish relations within the broad context of twelfth and thirteenth-century theological and ecclesiastical developments. Since 2015, she has been the professor of the Study of the Abrahamic Religions in the Faculty of Theology and Religion at University of Oxford and a fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.

#7342

Chris Chaney

#63460

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Christopher A. Chaney is an American musician. He is best known as the former bassist of alternative rock band Jane's Addiction, and as a member of Alanis Morissette's touring and recording band for six years. Chaney was also a member of Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail Riders and Camp Freddy. A prolific and versatile session musician, he has played with a variety of recording artists ranging from Joe Satriani, Joe Cocker, Shakira, Slash, Beth Hart, Adam Lambert, Alanis Morissette, Avril Lavigne, Bryan Adams, Sara Bareilles, Gavin Degraw, Cher, John Fogerty, Lisa Marie Presley, Meat Loaf, Rob ...

#7343

Michael Rubbo

#98775

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Michael Dattilo Rubbo is an Australian documentarian/filmmaker. Early life Rubbo was born in Melbourne, the son of Australian microbiologist Sydney Dattilo Rubbo, and the grandson of the painter Antonio Dattilo Rubbo. He is one of four children and the brother of artist Kiffy Rubbo . He attended the private Scotch College, and studied anthropology at Sydney University. He earned a Fulbright scholarship to study film at Stanford University, California; in 1965, he graduated with a Master's degree in Communication Arts.

#7344

Gustavo Becerra-Schmidt

#113838

Overall Influence

1925 - 2010 (85 years)

Gustavo Becerra-Schmidt was a Chilean composer. Biography and Career Becerra-Schmidt was born in Temuco, Chile. He studied at The Chilean National Conservatory, and was taught by Pedro Humberto Allende. Then in Europe from 1953 to 1956, where he brought back the avant-garde music culture from Europe to Chile. 3 years later, Becerra-Schmidt became the director of the Instituto de Extension Musical in 1959 to 1962, the IEM was an establishment by Domingo Santa Cruz, it aimed to centralize and manage the Chilean music repertoire and to support Chilean music organizations. During this time and a...

#7345

Steve Smith

#114417

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Steven Smith Jr. is a Canadian actor, writer and comedian. He is best known as the co-creator and star of the sketch comedy show The Red Green Show , for which he portrayed the title character. Early life Smith was born in Toronto on Christmas Eve 1945. Before turning to comedy, he studied engineering at the University of Waterloo and then worked a variety of jobs. In 1979, he began to produce, write, and star in Smith & Smith, a sketch comedy series with a cast consisting of Smith and his wife, Morag Smith. The show was produced for Hamilton, Ontario's CHCH-TV and syndicated to other televi...

#7346

Clio Gould

#119960

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Clio Gould is an English violinist, professor, director of the Royal Academy Soloists and leader of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Gould has appeared as soloist with a number of orchestras, including the London Sinfonietta, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, the Ulster Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. In 2002, she became the first woman to serve as the leader of a London orchestra , and is currently the leader of the London Sinfoniett...

#7347

Barrington Levy

#77993

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Barrington Ainsworth Levy is a Jamaican reggae and dancehall artist. Career Levy was born in Clarendon, Jamaica. He formed a band called the Mighty Multitude, with his cousin, Everton Dacres; the pair released "My Black Girl" in 1977. Levy established his solo career the following year with the release of "A Long Time Since We Don't Have No Love"; though the single was a failure, the fourteen-year-old was a popular performer at Jamaican dancehalls. In an August 2014 interview with Midnight Raver, record producer Delroy Wright revealed that it was his brother Hyman Wright who first met Barrington Levy in the mid-1970s through Wade "Trinity" Brammer.

#7348

Alan Pasqua

#79820

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Alan Pasqua is an American rock and jazz pianist. He studied at Indiana University and the New England Conservatory of Music. His album Standards with drummer Peter Erskine was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2008. As a session musician, he has toured and recorded with Bob Dylan, Santana, Cher, Michael Bublé, Eddie Money, Allan Holdsworth, Joe Walsh, Pat Benatar, Rick Springfield, and John Fogerty. He co-composed the original CBS Evening News theme. He has also had an extensive career in pop and rock music, most notably as a founding member, keyboardist, and songwriter of the 1980s hard rock ...

#7349

Hamiet Bluiett

#108972

Overall Influence

1940 - 2018 (78 years)

Hamiet Bluiett was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer. His primary instrument was the baritone saxophone, and he was considered one of the finest players of this instrument. A member of the World Saxophone Quartet, he also played the bass saxophone, E-flat alto clarinet, E-flat contra-alto clarinet, and wooden flute.

#7350

Mel Powell

#111930

Overall Influence

1923 - 1998 (75 years)

Mel Powell was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, and the founding dean of the music department at the California Institute of the Arts. He served as a music educator for over 40 years, first at Mannes College of Music and Queens College, then Yale University, and finally at CalArts. During his early career he worked as a jazz pianist. His classic Big Band compositions include "Mission to Moscow", "My Guy's Come Back", "Clarinade", "The Earl", and "Bubble Bath".

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