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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Person Name

School

Gender

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Communications,

#7451

Beatrix Busse

#156452

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Beatrix Busse is Professor of English Linguistics and the Vice-Rector for Student Affairs and Teaching at the University of Cologne. From 2011 to 2019 she held the Chair of English Linguistics at Heidelberg University where she was appointed as Vice-Rector for Teaching and Student Affairs twice, from 2013 to 2019.

#7452

Taehong Cho

#158876

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Taehong Cho is a Korean linguist and Professor of Linguistics at Hanyang University. He is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Phonetics and a member of the editorial board of Laboratory Phonology. Cho is known for his works on phonetics, laboratory phonology, speech production and speech perception.

#7453

Stefania Giannini

#105180

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Stefania Giannini is an Italian politician and linguist. She served as Minister of Education, Universities and Research from 2014 until 2016. She is currently Assistant-Director General for Education at UNESCO in Paris.

#7454

David Behrman

#124462

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

David Behrman is an American composer and a pioneer of computer music. In the early 1960s he was the producer of Columbia Records' Music of Our Time series, which included the first recording of Terry Riley's In C. In 1966 Behrman co-founded Sonic Arts Union with fellow composers Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier and Gordon Mumma. He wrote the music for Merce Cunningham's dances Walkaround Time , Rebus , Pictures and Eyespace 40 . In 1978, he released his debut album On the Other Ocean, a pioneering work combining computer music with live performance.

#7455

Frank Otto

#147847

Overall Influence

1936 - 2017 (81 years)

Frank Otto was an American educator, pioneer in computer-assisted language learning , entrepreneur, and the founding executive director of CALICO . Early academic career Otto received his PhD in 1960 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. During his program there he conducted dissertation research in the area of foreign languages in the elementary school. With support from publisher Heath de Rochemont, a division of D.C. Heath, he investigated alternative approaches to staffing foreign language programs. His projects involved working with the publisher’s efforts to broadcast their Parlons ...

#7456

Jon Laukvik

#119519

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Jon Laukvik is a Norwegian organist. Laukvik studied church music, organ and piano in Oslo. Afterwards, he worked with Michael Schneider and Hugo Ruf in Cologne and Marie-Claire Alain in Paris. In 1980, he was appointed professor of organ at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Stuttgart. In 2001, he was appointed professor at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo. Since 2003, he is also a guest professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

#7457

Bradley Nowell

#75195

Overall Influence

1968 - 1996 (28 years)

Bradley James Nowell was an American musician and the lead singer and guitarist of the ska punk band Sublime. Born and raised in Belmont Shore, Long Beach, California, Nowell developed an interest in music at a young age. His father took him on a trip to Jamaica during his childhood years, which exposed him to reggae and dancehall music; he then gained a strong interest in rock music once he learned how to play guitar. Nowell played in various bands until forming Sublime with bassist Eric Wilson and drummer Bud Gaugh, whom he had met while attending California State University, Long Beach. In his lifetime, Sublime released the albums 40oz.

#7458

Trevor Lawrence

#96495

Overall Influence

Trevor Lawrence is an American saxophonist , composer, arranger and record producer. As a session musician, Lawrence has performed both as a studio musician and as a touring musician in the horn sections for groups including the Rolling Stones with Steve Madaio and Bobby Keys and with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band along with Madaio, David Sanborn and Gene Dinwiddie that performed at the Woodstock music festival in 1969.

#7459

Tom Kitt

#80692

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Thomas Robert Kitt is an American composer, conductor, orchestrator, and musician. For his score for the musical Next to Normal, he shared the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama with Brian Yorkey. He has also won two Tony Awards and an Outer Critics Circle Award for Next to Normal, as well as Tony and Outer Critics Circle nominations for If/Then and SpongeBob SquarePants. He has been nominated for eight Drama Desk Awards, winning one, and a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album for Jagged Little Pill in 2021.

#7460

Mike Figgis

#118927

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Michael Figgis is an English film director, screenwriter, and composer. He was nominated for two Academy Awards for his work in Leaving Las Vegas . Figgis was the founding patron of the independent filmmakers' online community Shooting People.

#7461

Stephen Hartke

#128336

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Stephen Paul Hartke is an American composer. Hartke is best known as the composer of Meanwhile – Incidental Music to Imaginary Puppet Plays, winner of the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition in 2013.

#7462

Augusta Read Thomas

#121469

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Augusta Read Thomas is an American composer and professor. Biography Thomas studied composition with Oliver Knussen at Tanglewood Music Center; Jacob Druckman at Yale University; Alan Stout and Bill Karlins at Northwestern University; and at the Royal Academy of Music in London . She was a Bunting Fellow at Radcliffe College in 1990–91 and a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard University from 1991 to 1994. Thomas was the longest-serving Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, for Daniel Barenboim and Pierre Boulez, from 1997 to 2006. This residency culmi...

#7463

Bertram Turetzky

#108782

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

Bertram Jay Turetzky is a contemporary American double bass soloist, composer, teacher, and author of The Contemporary Contrabass , a book that looked at a number of new and interesting ways of playing the double bass including featuring it as a solo performance vehicle with no other instrumental accompaniment.

#7464

Ted Turner

#127304

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

David Alan "Ted" Turner is an English guitarist and vocalist best known for his work with the 1970s rock band Wishbone Ash, in which he was famed for his twin lead guitar instrumental arrangements with Andy Powell. Turner also contributed lap steel guitar to a variety of Wishbone Ash recordings.

#7465

Zaza Aleksidze

#70498

Overall Influence

1935 - 2023 (88 years)

Zaza Aleksidze was a Georgian historian and linguist who specialized in Armenian and Oriental studies. He is best known internationally for deciphering the Caucasian Albanian script. Biography Zaza Aleksidze was born on 18 October 1935 in Telavi in then-Soviet Georgia, into the family of agricultural scientist Nikoloz Aleksidze and his wife, pianist Eugenia Aleksidze. He graduated from Tbilisi State University with a degree in history in 1958 and earned a doctorate in 1969 and a post-doctorate in 1984.

#7466

Ousseina Alidou

#96769

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Ousseina D. Alidou is an Africanist scholar focusing on Muslim women, and a professor in the Department of African, Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Literature at Rutgers University. She received a Master of Arts degree in linguistics at the Université Abdou Moumouni in Niamey, Niger, and a MA degree in applied linguistics at Indiana University Bloomington where she also obtained a theoretical linguistics PhD. She was a member of the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa and the 2022 president of the African Studies Association.

#7467

Norio Torimoto

#89760

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Norio Torimoto is one of the best-known representatives of origami art. Since 1971, he has been represented in museums, exhibitions and participated in other events where Japanese culture has been the focus. Torimoto now lives in Sweden.

#7468

Hilda Koopman

#162106

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Hilda Judith Koopman is a linguist who does research and fieldwork in the areas of syntax and morphology. She is a professor in the department of Linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles, and is the director of the SSWL database. The SSWL, which she together with Dennis Shasha inherited from Chris Collins at New York University NYU, is an open-ended database of syntactic, morphological, and semantic properties.

#7469

Alan Broadbent

#95661

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Alan Leonard Broadbent is a New Zealand jazz pianist, arranger, and composer known for his work with artists such as Sue Raney, Charlie Haden, Woody Herman, Chet Baker, Irene Kral, Sheila Jordan, Natalie Cole, Warne Marsh, Bud Shank, and many others.

#7470

Scott Miller

#67509

Overall Influence

1960 - 2013 (53 years)

Scott Warren Miller was an American singer, songwriter and guitarist, best known for his work as leader of the 1980s band Game Theory and 1990s band The Loud Family, and as the author of a 2010 book of music criticism. He was described by The New York Times as "a hyperintellectual singer and songwriter who liked to tinker with pop the way a born mathematician tinkers with numbers", having "a shimmery-sweet pop sensibility, in the tradition of Brian Wilson and Alex Chilton."

#7471

Nobuhiko Obayashi

Nobuhiko Obayashi

#74934

Overall Influence

1938 - 2020 (82 years)

Nobuhiko Obayashi was a Japanese director, screenwriter and editor of films and television advertisements. He began his filmmaking career as a pioneer of Japanese experimental films before transitioning to directing more mainstream media, and his resulting filmography as a director spanned almost 60 years. He is best known as the director of the 1977 horror film House, which has garnered a cult following. He was notable for his distinct surreal filmmaking style, as well as the anti-war themes commonly embedded in his films.

#7472

Michael Winslow

Michael Winslow

#96019

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Michael Leslie Winslow is an American actor, comedian and beatboxer billed as The Man of 10,000 Sound Effects for his ability to make realistic sounds using only his voice. He is best known for his roles in all seven Police Academy films as Larvell Jones. He has also appeared in Spaceballs, Cheech and Chong's Next Movie and Nice Dreams, The Love Boat, and commercials for Cadbury and GEICO.

#7473

Rolf Lislevand

#153058

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Rolf Lislevand , is a Norwegian performer of Early music specialising on lute, vihuela, baroque guitar and theorbo. Biography From 1980 to 1984, Lislevand studied classical guitar at the Norwegian Academy of Music. In 1984 he entered the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Switzerland, under the tutelage of lutenists Hopkinson Smith and Eugen Dombois up to 1987 when he moved to Italy. From 1990 he was a teacher at the conservatory in Toulouse, France, from 1993 professor at the Music Academy in the German town of Trossingen.

#7474

Eyvind Kang

#98848

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Eyvindur Y. Kang is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist. His primary instrument is viola, but has also performed on violin, tuba, keyboards and others. In addition to his solo work, Kang has worked extensively with Bill Frisell and John Zorn. His wife and musical partner is vocalist Jessika Kenney.

#7475

Wallace Roney

#96722

Overall Influence

1960 - 2020 (60 years)

Wallace Roney was an American jazz trumpeter. He has won 1 Grammy award and has two nominations. Roney took lessons from Clark Terry and Dizzy Gillespie and studied with Miles Davis from 1985 until the latter's death in 1991. Wallace credited Davis as having helped to challenge and shape his creative approach to life as well as being his music instructor, mentor, and friend; he was the only trumpet player Davis personally mentored.

#7476

Robert Saxton

#135697

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Robert Saxton is a British composer. Biography Robert Saxton was born in London and started composing at the age of six. He was educated at Bryanston School. Guidance in early years from Benjamin Britten and Elisabeth Lutyens was followed by periods of study at Cambridge and Oxford Universities with Robin Holloway and Robert Sherlaw Johnson respectively, and also with Luciano Berio. Saxton won the Gaudeamus International Composers Award in the Netherlands at age 21. In 1986, he was awarded the Fulbright Arts Fellowship to the USA, where he was in residence at Princeton and an assistant to Oliver Knussen at Tanglewood.

#7477

Harry Duncan

#90416

Overall Influence

1916 - 1997 (81 years)

Harry Alvin Duncan was a hand-press printer, author, librettist, translator, and publisher under his imprint the Cummington Press. He was known for publishing early works by Robert Lowell, Tennessee Williams, Wallace Stevens, Allen Tate, Marianne Moore, William Logan, Stephen Berg, and Dana Gioia. A 1982 Newsweek article about the rebirth of the hand press movement said that Duncan was "considered the father of the post-World War II private-press movement."

#7478

Peter Watchorn

#146174

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Peter Watchorn is an Australian-born harpsichordist who has combined a virtuosic keyboard technique, musical scholarship and practical experience in the construction of harpsichords copied from original instruments of the 17th and 18th centuries. As well as presenting many solo public performances and broadcasts of baroque keyboard music and participating in choral and orchestral performances, he has made numerous commercial CD recordings of solo harpsichord music from the 17th and 18th centuries.

#7479

Renato Zanettovich

#127551

Overall Influence

1921 - 2021 (100 years)

Renato Zannetovich was an Italian violinist and teacher. Biography Zanettovich was born in Trieste. While still a student of Umberto Nigri in 1933, he founded the Trieste Trio together with cellist Libero Lana and pianist Dario de Rosa.

#7480

Lars Huldén

#166424

Overall Influence

1926 - 2016 (90 years)

Lars Evert Huldén was a Swedish-speaking Finn writer, scholar and translator. Born in Jakobstad, Finland, he was professor at Helsinki university 1964–1989. In 1986 Huldén received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Humanities at Uppsala University, Sweden. He was a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters from 1993.

#7481

Dave Douglas

#42368

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (47 years)

David Alan Douglas is an American musician, most widely known for being the drummer of the American rock band Relient K. Douglas joined the band after their former drummer, Stephen Cushman, departed in late 2000. Douglas had initially played the drums and provided background vocals for the band for seven years. In 2014, he returned to playing in the band in a touring capacity, and became a full member again in 2022.

#7482

Jun Mitsuhashi

#90319

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

is a Japanese entomologist, author, and a retired professor at the Tokyo University of Agriculture. Biography Mitsuhashi graduated from the Faculty of Agriculture program at the University of Tokyo, receiving a Bachelor of Agriculture degree in 1955. In 1965, he received a Doctor of Agriculture degree at the University of Tokyo. He was a professor at the Tokyo University of Agriculture until 2012. His entomology works include scholarly articles and books.

#7483

Miguel Bosé

#117891

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Miguel Bosé is a Spanish pop singer and actor. Early life Bosé was born in San Fernando Hospital in Panama City, Panama, the son of Italian actress Lucia Bosè and Spanish bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguín. Bosé grew up surrounded by art and culture: Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway were close friends of the family. The film director Luchino Visconti was his godfather while Pablo Picasso was the godfather to his sister Paola Dominguín.

#7484

Donald Grantham

#136851

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Donald Grantham is an American composer and music educator. Grantham was born in Duncan, Oklahoma. After receiving a Bachelor of Music from the University of Oklahoma, he went on to receive his MM and DMA from the University of Southern California. For two summers he studied under famed French composer and pedagogue, Nadia Boulanger at the American Conservatory in France. His music has won many prestigious awards, including the Prix Lili Boulanger, the ASCAP Rudolf Nissim Prize, and First Prize in the National Opera Association's Biennial Composition Competition. Grantham is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and three separate grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.

#7485

Siegfried Jerusalem

#118799

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Siegfried Jerusalem is a German operatic tenor. Closely identified with the heldentenor roles of Richard Wagner, he has performed Siegfried, Siegmund, Lohengrin, Parsifal, and Tristan to wide acclaim. Since the 1990s, he has focused on lieder, particularly those by Strauss, Mahler and Schumann.

#7486

Laszlo Varga

#158326

Overall Influence

1924 - 2014 (90 years)

Laszlo Varga was a Hungarian-born American cellist who had a worldwide status as a soloist, recording artist, and authoritative cello teacher. Biography As a Jew, Varga lost his position at the Budapest Symphony during WW II and was later interned by Hungarian authorities in a Nazi labor camp.

#7487

Freddy Wittop

#90363

Overall Influence

1911 - 2001 (90 years)

Freddy Wittop was a costume designer. He enjoyed secondary careers as a dancer and college professor. Born Frederick Wittop Koning in Bussum, Netherlands, Wittop emigrated with his family to Brussels, where he apprenticed at the age of thirteen with the resident designer at the Brussels Opera. Moving to Paris in 1931, he designed for the Folies Bergère and other music halls, creating costumes for Mistinguett and Josephine Baker, among others. He studied Spanish dance and, as Frederico Rey, began a professional career that led to international acclaim as he and his first partner, La Argentinita, performed worldwide.

#7488

Tom Gilb

#13434

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Tom Gilb is an American systems engineer, consultant, and author, known for the development of software metrics, software inspection, and evolutionary processes. Biography Tom Gilb was born in 1940 in Pasadena, California, United States. He emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1956 and to Norway in 1958. He took his first job with IBM in 1958 and became a freelance consultant in 1960.

#7489

Nils Ušakovs

#96912

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Nils Ušakovs is a Latvian Russian politician, former mayor of Riga and former journalist. He has been the board chairman of the left-wing party alliance Harmony Centre and afterwards board chairman of the Social Democratic Party "Harmony" . In 2009 Ušakovs was elected the Mayor of Riga, becoming the first Riga Mayor of Russian descent since Latvia's restoration of sovereignty in 1991, a position he continuously held until his dismissal in 2019.

#7490

Lucy Parham

#160252

Overall Influence

Lucy Parham is a British concert pianist and academic. She is a professor at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama. In 1984 she won Piano Class BBC Young Musician. Biography Parham grew up in Guildford, Surrey. She was educated at Bedales School, Hampshire and studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama under concert pianist, Professor Joan Havill.

#7491

Julian Philips

#142299

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Julian Philips is a British composer. Philips' works have been performed at major music festivals, including The Proms, Tanglewood, Three Choirs Festival, at the Wigmore Hall, South Bank Centre and Berlin Philharmonic Chamber Music Hall and by international artists such as Gerald Finley, Dawn Upshaw, Sir Thomas Allen, the Vertavo String Quartet, the Tanglewood Festival Orchestra, the BBC orchestras and the Aurora Orchestra.

#7492

Walter W. Müller

#96630

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

Walter Wilhelm Müller is a German specialist in the field of ancient South Arabia and Semitic epigraphy. After studying Semitic and Arabic studies at the University of Tübingen Müller graduated in 1962. He subsequently worked as an academic assistant at the Institute for Semitic Studies; he became a professor in 1968 and in 1973 was appointed an extraordinary professor. In 1975 he was called to be an ordinary professor for Semitic Studies at the Philipps-Universität in Marburg. In 2001 he became professor emeritus. Since 1978 Müller has been a corresponding member of the German Archaeological...

#7493

Rosa Lamoreaux

#169101

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Rosa Lamoreaux is an American soprano, appearing mostly in concert, both as a soloist and in vocal ensembles. She has appeared at festivals such as the Carmel Bach Festival and the Rheingau Musik Festival, and has recorded works by Johann Sebastian Bach with different conductors.

#7494

Naomi Jackson Groves

#119955

Overall Influence

1910 - 2001 (91 years)

Naomi Jackson Groves was a Canadian painter, art historian and linguist. An expert on German expressionist artist Ernst Barlach, she translated a number of his works in addition to releasing a series of books about her uncle, painter A. Y. Jackson, and translations of artist Jens Rosing's writing.

#7495

Mario Costa

#156164

Overall Influence

1904 - 1995 (91 years)

Mario Costa was an Italian actor, director and screenwriter, active from 1934 to 1971. Selected filmography Stadium The Last of the Bergeracs Guest for One Night The Barber of Seville Pagliacci Mad About Opera Cavalcade of Heroes Song of Spring Trieste mia! Repentance Melody of Love I Always Loved You Perdonami! For You I Have Sinned Pietà per chi cade The Lovers of Manon Lescaut Revelation Arrivano i dollari! Attack of the Moors Cavalier in Devil's Castle Queen of the Pirates The Centurion Kerim, Son of the Sheik Gladiator of Rome Buffalo Bill, Hero of the Far West Latin Lovers Rough Justice

#7496

Mamoru Watanabe

#106752

Overall Influence

1931 - 2013 (82 years)

Mamoru Watanabe was a Japanese film director, screenwriter and actor, known for his work in the pink film genre. Along with directors Genji Nakamura and Banmei Takahashi, Watanabe was known as one of the "Three Pillars of Pink".

#7497

Heinrich Sutermeister

Heinrich Sutermeister

#120743

Overall Influence

1910 - 1995 (85 years)

Heinrich Sutermeister was a Swiss composer, most famous for his opera Romeo und Julia. Life and career Sutermeister was born in Feuerthalen. During the early 1930s he was a student at the Akademie der Tonkunst in Munich, where Carl Orff was his teacher. Orff thereafter remained a powerful influence on his music. Returning to Switzerland in the mid-1930s, Sutermeister devoted his life to composition. He wrote some works for the radio, starting with Die schwarze Spinne in 1936, before turning later to television opera. His most successful stage work was Romeo und Julia, premiered in Dresden in...

#7498

Peter Katin

#141917

Overall Influence

1930 - 2015 (85 years)

Peter Roy Katin was a British classical pianist and teacher. Biography Katin was born in London; his father was sign-painter Jerrold Katin and mother Gertrude. Katin was educated at private schools in Balham, Caterham, and East Grinstead and the Henry Thornton School in Clapham, and was admitted to the Royal Academy of Music at the age of 12, four years younger than the official entry age, where he studied under Harold Craxton. Katin made his debut at the Wigmore Hall on 13 December 1948 where the programme included works by Scarlatti, Mozart, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin and Chopin. ...

#7499

Steve Wynn

#115416

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Steven Lawrence Wynn is an American singer, musician and songwriter. He led the band The Dream Syndicate from 1981 to 1989 in Los Angeles, afterward began a solo career, and then reformed The Dream Syndicate in 2012.

#7500

Gilberto Mendes

#125901

Overall Influence

1922 - 2016 (94 years)

Gilberto Mendes was a 20th-century Brazilian avant-garde composer, and one of the pioneering fathers of the company New Consonant Music. Biography Gilberto Mendes was born in Santos, Brazil, in 1922. He studied piano with Antonieta Rudge and harmony with Sabino de Benedictis. The influence of Villa-Lobos is evident in his early works, in some way preceding the advent of bossa nova in his early songs. His contact with the poets of the Noigandres group gave him the ideological inspiration to feed his talent.

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