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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List of the most influential people in Communications,

#7901

Thomas Wilkins

#83236

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Thomas Alphonso Wilkins is an orchestra conductor. Wilkins lives in Florida with his wife, Sheri-Lee and is a proud father of twin daughters, Nicole and Erica. Early life and education Wilkins was born in Norfolk, Virginia and grew-up in a housing project, the son of a single mother and welfare recipient. His inspiration to become an orchestra conductor came from a performance of The Star-Spangled Banner he attended when he was eight years old.

#7902

Joe McPhee

#107966

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Joe McPhee is an American jazz multi-instrumentalist born in Miami, Florida, a player of tenor, alto, and soprano saxophone, the trumpet, flugelhorn and valve trombone. McPhee grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York, and is most notable for his free jazz work done from the late 1960s to the present day.

#7903

Dietrich Haugk

#136339

Overall Influence

1925 - 2015 (90 years)

Dietrich Haugk was a German film director and voice actor. He was born in Ellrich/Harz, Germany. He made his stage debut at a theater in Bielefeld in 1946 and has been a noted theater director since 1949 and served as the German dubbing voice of Vittorio Gassman, Dirk Bogarde, Montgomery Clift and Jean-Louis Trintignant.

#7904

James O'Donnell

#124704

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

James Anthony O'Donnell is a British organist, choral conductor and academic teacher who has been a professor of organ at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music in Connecticut, United States, since 2023.

#7905

Mark Honigsbaum

#85021

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Mark Honigsbaum is a medical historian and journalist specializing in the history and science of infectious disease. He is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Journalism at City, University of London.

#7906

Raul Ruiz

#68202

Overall Influence

1945 - 2019 (74 years)

Raul Ruíz was an American journalist, professor, and political activist for Chicano civil rights during the Chicano movement and for the Peace movement of the 1960s and '70s. Biography Ruiz was born in El Paso, Texas but moved to Los Angeles in his teen years. He attended California State University, Los Angeles where he earned both a bachelor's degree and a master's degree. As a reporter, and editor of La Raza, Ruíz covered the Chicano Moratorium. He notably photographed the police aiming tear gas launchers at the Silver Dollar Café, where Ruben Salazar was killed. Ruiz's photo, considered an essential historical image of the Chicano movement, ran on the cover of the L.A.

#7907

Robert Davidson

#112995

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Robert Davidson is an Australian composer and lecturer in music at the University of Queensland. Education He holds a Bachelor of Music from the University of Queensland , a Graduate Diploma in Music from Griffith University, and a PhD from the University of Queensland. He studied composition with Terry Riley in 1995 following studies with Philip Bračanin at UQ.

#7908

Gonzalo Rubalcaba

#116253

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Gonzalo Rubalcaba is a Cuban jazz pianist and composer. Early life Rubalcaba was born Gonzalo Julio González Fonseca in Havana, Cuba into a musical family. He adopted his great grandmother's name for professional use, just as did his father Guillermo Rubalcaba and his grandfather Jacobo Rubalcaba .

#7909

Gurukiran

#95989

Overall Influence

Gurukiran or Gurukiran Shetty is an Indian music director of the Kannada film industry in India. He started his career as a music director of the Kannada movie A, directed and acted by Upendra. His music for his next movie Upendra further consolidated his position in Kannada movie industry. He is a native of Mangalore and hails from Bunt Family. His mother tongue is Tulu. He has also acted in several movies in supporting character roles and also sung several songs and also composed in Tamil, Telugu and Tulu movies.

#7910

Kenneth Amis

#121552

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Kenneth Amis is a Bermudian tuba player best known for his association with the Empire Brass. He is also the assistant conductor of the MIT Wind Ensemble, a group he has been involved with since its creation in 1999. In addition, as of 2005, Amis is an Affiliated Artist of MIT.

#7911

Tansy Davies

#149823

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Tansy Davies is an English composer of contemporary classical music. She won the BBC Young Composers' Competition in 1996 and has written works for ensembles such as the London Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. In 2023 she was awarded the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Works Collections at The Ivors Classical Award in recognition of her outstanding achievements in composition.

#7912

Benet Casablancas

#130612

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Benet Casablancas Domingo is a Catalan composer and musicologist. Biography Casablancas started to study music in Barcelona's Conservatory of Music and privately with Josep Soler Sardà and then moved to Vienna, where he attended lessons in the Vienna Academy of Music with Friedrich Cerha and Karl Heinz Füssl. He also graduated in philosophy in Universidad Autònoma de Barcelona and has a PhD in musicology by the same university. He has always combined composition with teaching and research. In 2000 he published the book “El humor en la música” and in 2002 he was appointed Academic Director of...

#7913

David Dubal

#104803

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

David Dubal is an American pianist, teacher, author, lecturer, broadcaster, and painter. Musician and painter Dubal has given piano recitals and master classes worldwide, and has also judged international piano competitions . He recorded several albums jointly with pianist Stanley Waldoff for the Musical Heritage Society label, and four compact discs of these recordings have been released on the ArkivCD label. Dubal appeared in the 2013 Dutch film Nostalgia: The Music of Wim Statius Muller, commenting on the musical compositions of Wim Statius Muller, who was Dubal's teacher at Ohio State University.

#7914

Mark Harmon

#169531

Overall Influence

Mark Harmon is an American record producer, songwriter, and bassistist, best known for his work with the rock group the 77s. Harmon and 77s lead singer Michael Roe collaborated on the instrumental releases, DayDream and Orbis. Roe and Harmon also teamed up under the moniker 7&7iS to release their Fun with Sound album in 2004.

#7915

James Foley

#95304

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

James Foley is an American film director. His 1986 film At Close Range was entered into the 36th Berlin International Film Festival. Other films he has directed include Glengarry Glen Ross, based on the play of the same name by David Mamet, and The Chamber, based on the novel of the same name by author John Grisham. He also directed the two sequels to Fifty Shades of Grey: Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed .

#7916

Wolf-Eberhard von Lewinski

#119158

Overall Influence

1927 - 2003 (76 years)

Wolf-Eberhard Georg Felix von Lewinski was a German music and theatre critic. He studied violin, piano, trombone, conducting, theatre and opera direction, but turned to musical criticism early. He was chief critic for papers in the Rhein Main area, and worked for several newspapers and broadcasters. He wrote biographies of singers such as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Brigitte Fassbaender, and created television portraits of pianists such as Claudio Arrau and Wilhelm Kempff. He was also an academic lecturer of musical criticism.

#7917

Thomas Pasatieri

#127827

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Thomas Pasatieri is an American opera composer. Life and career Pasatieri was born in New York City, United States. He began composing at age 10 and, as a teenager, studied with Nadia Boulanger, although his main teachers were Vittorio Giannini and Vincent Persichetti. He entered the Juilliard School at age 16 and eventually became the school's first recipient of a doctoral degree.

#7918

Douglas Townsend

#123555

Overall Influence

1921 - 2012 (91 years)

Douglas Townsend was an American composer and musicologist. Born in Manhattan, Townsend became interested in composition while a student at the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, in New York City. He taught himself composition, counterpoint and orchestration. In 1941, he began studying composition privately, with Tibor Serly, Stefan Wolpe, Aaron Copland, Otto Luening and Felix Greissle, among others.

#7919

Ed Thigpen

#98947

Overall Influence

1930 - 2010 (80 years)

Edmund Leonard Thigpen was an American jazz drummer, best known for his work with the Oscar Peterson trio from 1959 to 1965. Thigpen also performed with the Billy Taylor trio from 1956 to 1959. Biography Born in Chicago, Illinois, United States, Thigpen was raised in Los Angeles, California, and attended Thomas Jefferson High School, where Art Farmer, Dexter Gordon and Chico Hamilton also attended. After majoring in sociology at Los Angeles City College, Thigpen returned to East St. Louis for one year to pursue music while living with his father who had been playing with Andy Kirk's Clouds of Joy.

#7920

Anisa Mehdi

#120040

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Anisa Marie Mehdi is an Iraqi-Canadian film director and journalist. She graduated from Wellesley College in 1978 and obtained her master's degree in journalism from Columbia University. She worked as an associate producer at CBS News in New York on the news magazine series West 57th. Her most notable documentary was Inside Mecca, which she produced and directed for National Geographic television. As executive producer of the PBS Frontline special "Muslims", she received the 2002 Cine Golden Eagle Award.

#7921

Walter Zimmermann

#114896

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Walter Zimmermann is a German composer associated with the Cologne School. Born in Schwabach, Germany, Zimmermann studied composition in Germany with Werner Heider and Mauricio Kagel, the theory of musical intelligence at the Institute of Sonology in Utrecht , and computer music at Colgate University in New York.

#7922

Sam Phillips

#151054

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (42 years)

Sam Phillips is an English actor and writer. Phillips is the son of television director Nic Phillips and graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Phillips is perhaps best known for his roles in children's comedy Hotel Trubble as Jamie and as Spencer Cavendish in the third series of Kay Mellor's The Syndicate starring alongside Anthony Andrews, Alice Krige, Lenny Henry, and Richard Rankin.

#7923

Rainer Zepperitz

#116830

Overall Influence

1930 - 2009 (79 years)

Rainer Zepperitz was a German double bassist. Background Zepperitz was born in Bandung . In his childhood he first learned the violin before moving to the relocation of his family to Germany at the Düsseldorf Conservatory at Arthur Däwel and he learned the double bass . In 1937 he returned to Germany with his family, moving in 1940 to Düsseldorf where he studied at the Robert Schumann Conservatory of Music. At age eighteen, he became a member of the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra. Between 1949 and 1951 Rainer Zepperitz was soloist of the Bonn State Orchestra. In 1951 he became the youngest me...

#7924

Merle Kilgore

#83565

Overall Influence

1934 - 2005 (71 years)

Wyatt Merle Kilgore was an American singer, songwriter, and manager. Born in Chickasha, Oklahoma, he was raised in Shreveport, Louisiana. At the time of his death, he was the personal manager of Hank Williams Jr.

#7925

Paul Lewis

#126655

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Paul Lewis is an English classical pianist. Early life Lewis's father worked at the Liverpool Docks and his mother was a local council worker; there were no musicians in his family background. Lewis began by playing the cello, the only instrument for which his school could offer him tuition. At the age of 14 he was accepted by Chetham's School of Music in Manchester, where his piano studies blossomed. His teachers included Ryszard Bakst , Joan Havill and Alfred Brendel, whom Lewis acknowledges as a mentor. His first international achievement was the second prize at the 1994 World Piano Competition in London.

#7926

Boris Berezovsky

Boris Berezovsky

#138496

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Boris Vadimovich Berezovsky is a Russian pianist. Biography Berezovsky's original name was Elyashberg, Boris Vadimovich. His parents changed the last name to Berezovsky when he was seven years old. He studied at the Moscow Conservatory with Eliso Virsaladze and privately with Alexander Satz. Following his London début at the Wigmore Hall in 1988, The Times described him as "an artist of exceptional promise, a player of dazzling virtuosity and formidable power." In 1990, he won First Prize at the International Tchaikovsky Competition.

#7927

Marilyn Crispell

#122370

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Marilyn Crispell is an American jazz pianist and composer. Scott Yanow described her as "a powerful player... who has her own way of using space... She is near the top of her field." Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote: "Hearing Marilyn Crispell play solo piano is like monitoring an active volcano... She is one of a very few pianists who rise to the challenge of free jazz." In addition to her own extensive work as a soloist or bandleader, Crispell is also known as a longtime member of saxophonist Anthony Braxton's quartet in the 1980s and '90s.

#7928

William Bennett

#147198

Overall Influence

1936 - 2022 (86 years)

William Ingham Brooke Bennett was a British flautist and teacher. He played in many English orchestras and chamber music ensembles, and as a soloist. He made more than 100 recordings, including chamber music with partners including George Malcolm, Osian Ellis, and Yehudi Menuhin. He premiered flute concertos written for him, by William Mathias, Diana Burrell and Raimundo Pineda. Bennett taught at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg in Germany and the Royal Academy of Music, and held master classes worldwide.

#7929

Joanna Frueh

#111208

Overall Influence

1948 - 2020 (72 years)

Joanna Frueh was an American artist, writer, and feminist scholar. Early life Frueh was born on January 18, 1948, in Chicago, Illinois to Erne Rene Frueh and Florence Frueh. Both parents were well educated; her father in visual arts and her mother in classical piano. Together they authored a book about stained glass in Chicago, which was published by Loyola University Press in 1983. Their two successive homes in Highland Park were designed by architects Crombie Taylor and Robert Bruce Tague.

#7930

Albert Leman

#150323

Overall Influence

1915 - 1998 (83 years)

Albert Semionovich Leman was a Soviet composer of classical music. Albert Leman received his music education in the Leningrad Conservatory under Mikhail Gnessin and Vladimir Vladimirovich Nil'sen. In 1941-42 he was the chief of musical department at the Leningrad Regiment for Art of Leningrad Executive Committee. From 1942 he was living in Kazan, where he became in 1945 a professor at the Kazan Conservatory . From 1964 he was a member of the Communist Party of the UdSSR.

#7931

John Bergamo

#137654

Overall Influence

1940 - 2013 (73 years)

John Bergamo was an American percussionist and composer known for his film soundtrack contributions and his work with numerous other notable performers. From 1970 until his death, he was the coordinator of the percussion department at the California Institute of the Arts.

#7932

Graeme Dunphy

#111951

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Graeme Dunphy is a British professor of translation. Biography Dunphy was born in Glasgow in 1961. He studied German at the University of Stirling between 1979 and 1984, and Hebrew and the Old Testament at the University of St Andrews between 1984 and 1987. He completed his PhD in medieval German literature in 1998.

#7933

Larry Polansky

#103763

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Larry Polansky is a composer, guitarist, mandolinist, and professor emeritus at Dartmouth College and the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is a founding member and co-director of Frog Peak Music : . He co-wrote HMSL with Phil Burk and David Rosenboom.

#7934

Victoria Santa Cruz

#111798

Overall Influence

1922 - 2014 (92 years)

Victoria Eugenia Santa Cruz Gamarra was an Afro-Peruvian choreographer, composer and activist. Victoria Santa Cruz would go on to be called "the mother of Afro Peruvian dance and theatre." Along with her brother, Nicomedes Santa Cruz, she is credited as significant in a revival of Afro-Peruvian culture in the 1960s and 1970s. They both came from a long-line of artists and intellectuals. For her part she is said to have had "Afrocentrism" influences in her view of dance trying to discover "ancestral memory" of African forms. She helped to found the Cumanana company.

#7935

Noa Eshkol

#66553

Overall Influence

1924 - 2007 (83 years)

Noa Eshkol was an Israeli dance composer and textile artist. Eshkol is best known for her co-invention, alongside architect Avraham Wachman, of the Eshkol-Wachman Movement Notation System. She and Wachman worked together for over two decades to refine the system and develop its various applications.

#7936

Roman Twardy

#105973

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Roman Twardy is a German teacher, academic lecturer and the conductor of the Wiesbadener Knabenchor boys' choir in Wiesbaden, Hesse, Germany. The choir appears internationally and has made recordings. From 2019, Twardy is also interim conductor of the church choir Chor von St. Bonifatius in Wiesbaden.

#7937

Donald O'Connor

Donald O'Connor

#116521

Overall Influence

1925 - 2003 (78 years)

Donald David Dixon Ronald O'Connor was an American dancer, singer and actor. He came to fame in a series of films in which he co-starred with Gloria Jean, Peggy Ryan, and Francis the Talking Mule. O'Connor was born into a vaudeville family, where he learned to dance, sing, play comedy, even slapstick. The most distinctive characteristic of his dancing style was its athleticism, for which he had few rivals. Yet it was his boyish charm that audiences found most engaging, and which remained an appealing aspect of his personality throughout his career. In his early Universal films, O'Connor closely mimicked the smart alec, fast-talking personality of Mickey Rooney of rival MGM Studio.

#7938

Scott Henderson

#86363

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Scott Henderson is an American jazz fusion and blues guitarist best known for his work with the band Tribal Tech. Biography Scott Henderson is a highly regarded virtuoso who emerged in the 1980s with his legendary band Tribal Tech, and has since become one of the top guitarists/ composers in jazz fusion. Scott grew up in South Florida where he played blues-rock and funk, and was influenced by Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, Ritchie Blackmore, and his favorite blues guitarist Albert King. Even though Henderson began his career as a blues-rock player, it was the influence of jazz that led him to the style of playing and composing that he's now famous for.

#7939

John Ritchie

#167799

Overall Influence

1921 - 2014 (93 years)

John Anthony Ritchie was a New Zealand composer and professor of music at the University of Canterbury. Biography Born in Wellington in 1921, Ritchie attended the University of Otago, graduating with a Diploma of Music in 1943 and a MusB the following year. He also trained as a teacher at Dunedin Teachers' College. Later, between 1956 and 1957, he undertook postgraduate study with Walter Piston at Harvard University. He was the father of composer Anthony Ritchie.

#7940

Amit Schejter

#51705

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Amit Schejter is Professor of Communication Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel and Visiting Professor of Communications and co-director of the Institute for Information Policy at the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications of the Pennsylvania State University. He is the former President of Oranim College.

#7941

Lewis Spratlan

#97371

Overall Influence

1940 - 2023 (83 years)

Meriwether Lewis Spratlan Jr. was an American music academic and composer of contemporary classical music. Biography Lewis Spratlan, recipient of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in music and the Charles Ives Opera Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, was born in 1940 in Miami, Florida. His music, often praised for its dramatic impact and vivid scoring, is performed regularly throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. He held undergraduate and graduate degrees from Yale University, where he studied with Mel Powell and Gunther Schuller. From 1970 until his retirement in 2006 h...

#7942

Vern Gosdin

#95232

Overall Influence

1934 - 2009 (75 years)

Vernon Gosdin aka Country music’s “The Voice”, was an American country music singer. He had 19 top-10 solo hits on the country music charts from 1977 through 1990. Three of these hits went to Number One: "I Can Tell By the Way You Dance ", "Set 'Em Up Joe", and "I'm Still Crazy".

#7943

Dieter Kaufmann

#110395

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Dieter Kaufmann is an Austrian composer. Biography Kaufmann was born in Vienna and grew up in Carinthia. He studied music, German philology, art history, violoncello, composition and electro-acoustic music in Vienna and Paris.

#7944

Girl Talk

#87295

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

Gregg Michael Gillis , known by the stage name Girl Talk, is an American disc jockey who specializes in mash-ups and digital sampling. Gillis has released five LPs on the record label Illegal Art and EPs on both 333 and 12 Apostles. He was trained as an engineer.

#7945

Juan Orrego-Salas

#157210

Overall Influence

1919 - 2019 (100 years)

Juan Antonio Orrego-Salas was a Chilean composer, musicologist, music critic, and academic. Life and career Born Juan Antonio Orrego-Salas in Santiago on January 18, 1919, Orrego-Salas studied at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música , the music school of the University of Chile, in his native city where he was a pupil of Pedro Humberto Allende and Domingo Santa Cruz Wilson . He also earned of Bachelor of Arts in architecture in addition to earning his diploma in music composition from the University of Chile.

#7946

Johnny Dorelli

#151681

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Giorgio Guidi , known professionally as Johnny Dorelli, is an Italian actor, singer and television host. Early life Dorelli was born in Meda, Italy. In 1946 he moved to New York City with his family, where his father, Nino D'Aurelio , found work as opera singer. Dorelli studied double bass and piano at the High School of Music and Art in New York. He took the stage name Dorelli in imitation of how the surname D'Aurelio was pronounced in English.

#7947

Don Pullen

#116840

Overall Influence

1941 - 1995 (54 years)

Don Gabriel Pullen was an American jazz pianist and organist. Pullen developed a strikingly individual style throughout his career. He composed pieces ranging from blues to bebop and modern jazz. The great variety of his body of work makes it difficult to pigeonhole his musical style.

#7948

Sylvia Syms

#138863

Overall Influence

1917 - 1992 (75 years)

Sylvia Syms was an American jazz singer. Biography Syms was born Sylvia Blagman in Brooklyn, New York. As a child, she had polio. As a teenager, she went to jazz nightclubs on New York's 52nd Street and received informal training from Billie Holiday. She made her debut in 1941 at Kelly's Stable.

#7949

Jacques Zoon

#135544

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Jacques Zoon is a Dutch flutist. Education Following a gymnasium education in Alkmaar, Zoon studied flute at the Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam with Koos Verheul and Harrie Starreveld, graduating with honors. He continued his studies at the Banff Center for the Arts in Canada, where he took master classes with Geoffrey Gilbert and András Adorján.

#7950

John Dawson

#100463

Overall Influence

1945 - 2009 (64 years)

John Collins Dawson IV , nicknamed "Marmaduke", was an American musician, singer, and songwriter. He was best known as the leader and co-founder of the country rock band the New Riders of the Purple Sage. He sang lead vocals on most of the band’s songs.

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