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,

#8451

Vinny Golia

#140767

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Vinny Golia is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist specializing in woodwind instruments. He performs in the genres of contemporary music, jazz, free jazz, and free improvisation. Career As a composer, Golia fuses the rich heritage of jazz, contemporary classical music and world music. Also a bandleader, he has presented his music to concert audiences in Europe, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the United States in ensembles varying dramatically in size and instrumentation. Golia has won numerous awards as a composer, including grants from the National Endowment of...

#8452

Laura Penny

#104689

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Laura Penny is a Canadian academic and the author of the bestselling Your Call is Important to Us: The Truth About Bullshit, a study of the phenomenon of bullshit and its role in modern society. Penny was featured on 60 Minutes with Princeton professor Harry Frankfurt, author of the similarly themed treatise, On Bullshit. Penny is an occasional contributor to The Globe and Mail. She has also written for the National Post, Saturday Night, Chatelaine, and Toronto Life .

#8453

María Isabel Siewers

#104780

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

María Isabel Siewers is an Argentine classical guitarist. A pupil of María Luisa Anido, her international performance career began after winning the 2nd Prize at the Concours International de Guitarre de Paris in 1974.

#8454

Lionel Grigson

#163812

Overall Influence

1942 - 1994 (52 years)

Lionel Grigson was an English jazz pianist, cornettist, trumpeter, composer, writer and teacher, who in the 1980s started the jazz course at the Guildhall School of Music. As Simon Purcell wrote in The Independent, "Whether he inspired or inflamed, Grigson's energies often acted as a catalyst and his interest in, and support for, young jazz musicians contributed significantly to the growth and consolidation of jazz education in Britain....Within the context of a leading international conservatoire, the Guildhall School of Music, in London, Grigson did much to demonstrate and explain the under...

#8455

Chris Rodriguez

#78036

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Chris Rodriguez is an American contemporary Christian musician and singer/songwriter. Biography Rodriguez was born in The Bronx on March 7, 1960, and moved to Nashville, becoming a veteran of the scene in the early 1990s. He sang jingles for fast food companies and worked as a backup singer and guitarist in Christian music, country music, and pop, appearing on recordings by Michael Bolton, Steven Curtis Chapman, Vince Gill, Amy Grant, Faith Hill, Billy Joel, Wynonna Judd, Kenny Loggins, Michael McDonald, Rich Mullins, Dolly Parton, Michael W. Smith, Shania Twain, and Jaci Velasquez. He also worked as a songwriter, with credits including "Help You Find Your Way" by Michael W.

#8456

Céline Marie Tabary

Céline Marie Tabary

#104292

Overall Influence

1908 - 1993 (85 years)

Céline Marie Tabary was an artist and arts professor at Howard University who championed African-American art in 1940s Washington, D.C. She emigrated from France in 1938, teaching and working in Washington, D.C. through the 1950s, before returning to France. Tabary won the Landscape Prize in 1944 from the National Museum, Washington, D.C.

#8457

Norman Hollyn

#148190

Overall Influence

1952 - 2019 (67 years)

Norman Hollyn was an American film editor and Michael Kahn Endowed Chair in Editing at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. Biography Hollyn was born in New York on May 11, 1952, and attended Stony Brook University. He taught at the University of Southern California as the first Michael Kahn Endowed Chair in Editing within the School of Cinematic Arts. Hollyn died in Yokohama, Japan, on March 17, 2019, where he was serving as a guest lecturer at the Tokyo University of the Arts.

#8458

Karen Tuttle

#115325

Overall Influence

1920 - 2010 (90 years)

Karen Tuttle was an American viola teacher, most famous for developing the Karen Tuttle Coordination Technique, which emphasizes being comfortable while playing the instrument. She began performing on violin at the age of sixteen before switching to viola in 1941. Tuttle actively performed and taught at a number of institutions until her retirement in 2005.

#8459

Pasquale Chessa

#153242

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Pasquale Chessa, born in Alghero, is an Italian historian and journalist. He first appeared on cultural programs for the Italian National Radio and then, in turn, worked on the Italian magazines L'espresso, L'Europeo, Epoca and Panorama.

#8460

John Noble

#161542

Overall Influence

1931 - 2008 (77 years)

John Noble was an English baritone. He was Ralph Vaughan Williams's favourite in the title role of the composer's opera The Pilgrim's Progress. Early life Born in Southampton, the son of a gardener, Noble's love of music and performance began at Godalming Grammar School, Surrey. He gained a scholarship to Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, where he graduated in geography. While there, he studied singing with the baritone Clive Carey, and George Guest arranged for him to join the choir of St. John's College for a postgraduate year.

#8461

Ramon Barnils i Folguera

Ramon Barnils i Folguera

#119276

Overall Influence

1940 - 2001 (61 years)

Ramón Barnils Folguera was a Spaniard journalist and translator. He worked for several media such as Tele/eXpres, El Noticiero Universal, Agència EFE, El Temps, and La Vanguardia. He helped publish the satirical magazine El be negre amb potes rosses. He also helped publish Ajoblanco, Solidaridad Obrera and participated in Catalunya Ràdio from the day of its foundation.

#8462

Donna M. Brinton

#153070

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Donna Mary Brinton is an American applied linguist, author, and global educational consultant on second language education. She is the daughter of Mary Mies Brinton and Robert K. Brinton and the sister of epidemiologist Louise A. Brinton and linguist Laurel J. Brinton.

#8463

Theo Bleckmann

#167968

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Theodor Raoul Bleckmann is a German singer and composer. Biography Bleckmann was born in Dortmund, West Germany. He planned to be an ice skater before becoming a vocalist. In 1989 he moved to New York City and recorded his first two albums, Theo & Kirk and Looking Glass River with Kirk Nurock. His mentor was Sheila Jordan, and he appeared on her album Jazz Child .

#8464

Alfonso Sánchez-Tabernero

#152095

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Alfonso Sánchez-Tabernero is a full professor of media management and the current president of the University of Navarra. Early life and education Alfonso Sánchez-Tabernero was born on 17 September 1961 in Salamanca to a family steeped in the livestock industry. His paternal grandfather was a doctor and his father a lawyer. On his mother’s side, both his great-grandfather and his great-great-grandfather served as president of the University of Salamanca. He has three siblings. He studied in a school run by the Marist Order. At 18 he moved to Pamplona to take a degree in journalism at the Univ...

#8465

Joe Maneri

#131466

Overall Influence

1927 - 2009 (82 years)

Joseph Gabriel Esther Maneri , was an American jazz composer, saxophone and clarinet player. Violinist Mat Maneri is his son. Boston Microtonal Society In 1988, Maneri founded the Boston Microtonal Society, dedicated to microtonal music and tuning. It is currently led by James Bergin and Julia Werntz.

#8466

Ricardo Larraín

#119328

Overall Influence

1957 - 2016 (59 years)

José Ricardo Larraín Pineda was a Chilean director, screenwriter, producer, and film editor known for his work in cinema, television, and advertising. Among his notable works are the films La frontera and El entusiasmo.

#8467

Judy McGregor

#104390

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Dame Judith Helen McGregor is a New Zealand lawyer, journalist, public servant and academic. She is currently a full professor at Auckland University of Technology and chairs the Waitematā District Health Board.

#8468

Niccolò Castiglioni

#136888

Overall Influence

1932 - 1996 (64 years)

Niccolò Castiglioni was an Italian composer, pianist, and writer on music. Castiglioni was born and raised in Milan, where he began studying piano at the age of 7. He received his performer's diploma from the Milan Conservatory in 1952, and graduated there in composition in 1953. His student compositions were marked by Stravinsky's neo-classicism, but after graduation his style changed under the influence of the Second Viennese School. His interest in twelve-tone technique was joined with musical-political engagement, though this was short-lived. The Impromptus I–IV, identified by the compose...

#8469

Vladimir Chernov

#142431

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Vladimir Nikolaïevitch Chernov is a Russian baritone, particularly associated with the Russian and Italian opera repertories. Early life Vladimir Chernov was born in a small village near the town of Krasnodar in southern Russia. He studied at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow. After graduating, he became a member of the Kirov Opera in Saint Petersburg in 1981. That same year he won a Special Jury Prize in the Glinka Competition. In 1982 the Kirov sent him to the Accademia della Scala where he studied with Giulietta Simionato. In 1983, he won second prize at the vocal competition "Voci Verdiane" in Verdi's hometown of Busseto, Italy.

#8470

Ross Lee Finney

#120500

Overall Influence

1906 - 1997 (91 years)

Ross Lee Finney Junior was an American composer who taught for many years at the University of Michigan. Life and career Born in Wells, Minnesota, Finney received his early training at Carleton College and the University of Minnesota and also studied with Nadia Boulanger, Edward Burlingame Hill, Alban Berg and Roger Sessions . In 1928 he spent a year at Harvard University and then joined the faculty at Smith College, where he founded the Smith College Archives and conducted the Northampton Chamber Orchestra. In 1935, his setting of poems by Archibald MacLeish won the Connecticut Valley Prize, and in 1937, his First String Quartet received a Pulitzer Scholarship Award.

#8471

Sabine Henze-Döhring

#146053

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Sabine Henze-Döhring is a German musicologist and opera researcher. Career Henze-Döhring was born in Höxter, 10 December 1953. After her studies of German, history and musicology in Marburg, she passed the state examination for teaching at grammar schools in 1977. In 1981, she received her doctorate in musicology. From 1982 to 1985, she worked as a research assistant in the music history department of the German Historical Institute in Rome.

#8472

Jeffrey Milarsky

#136880

Overall Influence

Jeffrey Milarsky is a conductor of contemporary music in New York City. In the United States and abroad, he has premiered and recorded works of composers including Charles Wuorinen, Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, Lasse Thoresen, Gerard Grisey, Jonathan Dawe, Tristan Murail, Ralph Shapey, Luigi Nono, Mario Davidovsky, and Wolfgang Rihm. His wide-ranging repertoire has enabled him to lead such groups as the American Composers Orchestra, the New York New Music Ensemble, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Columbia Sinfonietta, Speculum Musicae, Cygnus Ensemble, the Fromm Players at ...

#8473

Dean Ween

#88692

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Michael Melchiondo Jr., better known by his stage name Dean Ween, is an American guitarist, singer and a founding member of the alternative rock group Ween. He is currently active in the groups Ween, Moistboyz and The Dean Ween Group.

#8474

Kenny Roberts

#157275

Overall Influence

1926 - 2012 (86 years)

George S. Kingsbury Jr. , better known as Kenny Roberts, was an American country music singer. He is best known for his recordings of "I Never See Maggie Alone" and "Choc'late Ice Cream Cone", and was a member of The Down Homers with Bill Haley.

#8475

Art Lande

#168196

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Art Lande is an American musician who was born in New York City, United States, on 5 February 1947. Born in New York, Lande began piano at age 4. He attended Williams College and moved to San Francisco in 1969. In 1973 he recorded Red Lanta, an album of duets with Norwegian musician Jan Garbarek. With Mark Isham on trumpet, he started the Rubisa Patrol group in 1976. They performed in the Bay Area and toured extensively in Europe by van. This group made two records for ECM: Rubisa Patrol , Desert Marauders , and one for 1750 Arch Records, The Story of Ba-Ku .

#8476

William Leap

#155550

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

William Leap is an emeritus professor of anthropology at American University and an affiliate professor in the Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program at Florida Atlantic University . He works in the overlapping fields of language and sexuality studies and queer linguistics, and queer historical linguistics.

#8477

Pheeroan akLaff

#142992

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Pheeroan akLaff is an American jazz drummer and percussionist. He began playing in his hometown of Detroit, Michigan and Ann Arbor, with R & B keyboardist Travis Biggs, funk keyboardist Nimrod “The Grinder” Lumpkin, The Ebony Set and The Last Days. He moved to New Haven, Connecticut, and formed a group with saxophonist/flautist/percussionist Dwight Andrews. He debuted with saxophonist Bill Barron in 1975, followed by a tenure in Leo Smith's ‘New Dalta Ahkri’ .

#8478

Klaas de Vries

#147524

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Klaas de Vries is a Dutch composer. De Vries taught composition at the Rotterdam Conservatory until his retirement in 2009. Biography Klaas de Vries was born on 15 July 1944 in Terneuzen, in the province of Zeeland in the Netherlands. From 1965 to 1972 he studied piano, theory and composition on the conservatory of Rotterdam. He continued studying composition from 1972 at the conservatory of The Hague with the Dutch composer , winning the composition prize there in 1974. After winning this prize de Vries studied with the Croatian composer Milko Kelemen in Stuttgart, Germany. De Vries won the ...

#8479

Paul Anderson

#145379

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Paul Anderson is an English film and television actor who came to prominence for portraying Arthur Shelby Jr. in Peaky Blinders, Mr Anderson in the 2015 film The Revenant, and Sebastian Moran in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.

#8480

Otto Joachim

#154083

Overall Influence

1910 - 2010 (100 years)

Otto Joachim, CQ was a German-born Canadian violist and composer of electronic music. Early life and education Joachim was born in Düsseldorf, Joachim to Jewish parents. His father was an opera singer. He trained as a violinist at Düsseldorf and at the Rheinische Musikschule in Cologne.

#8481

Andy Pratt

#153447

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Andy Pratt is an American rock singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. In the 1970s, he made a number of experimental records, of which "Avenging Annie" was a commercial hit. Career Pratt's demo recording of Avenging Annie was given to the Brown University radio station WBRU in 1972. In early 1973, Pratt signed to Columbia Records by Clive Davis. He went into Aengus Studios, of Fayville, Massachusetts and released Andy Pratt in 1973, which had modest commercial success. The single, Avenging Annie, peaked at number 78 on the Billboard Hot 100, spending ten weeks on the chart. The song was re-recorded by The Who singer Roger Daltrey for his album One of the Boys in 1977.

#8482

Joe Morris

#163108

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Joseph Francis Michael Morris is an American jazz guitarist, bassist, composer, and educator. Early life Morris was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on September 13, 1955. He switched from trumpet to guitar at the age of fourteen. He was self-taught. His interest in jazz began two years later, after attending a John McLaughlin concert and listening to John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Pharoah Sanders recordings.

#8483

Robert Marcellus

#140379

Overall Influence

1928 - 1996 (68 years)

Robert Marcellus was an American classical clarinetist and teacher. Marcellus is best known for his long tenure as principal clarinetist of the Cleveland Orchestra. Biography Robert Marcellus was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on June 1, 1928. He began his musical studies with piano lessons at the age of four. He took up the clarinet at eleven and began serious study of the instrument at Minneapolis with Earl Handlon of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra at twelve.

#8484

David Moss

#132907

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

David Moss is an American composer, percussionist and self-taught vocalist, founder of the David Moss Dense Band; co-founder and artistic director of the Institute for Living Voice, Antwerp. His performances are noted for their innovative style, multimedia approach and improvisation. Moss has lived in Berlin, Germany since 1991, when he received a fellowship from the prestigious Berlin Artist Program of the DAAD.

#8485

David Holt

#126036

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

David Holt is a musician who performs traditional American music and stories. A four-time Grammy Award winner, Holt plays 10 acoustic instruments and has released recordings of traditional mountain music and southern folktales, hosted Riverwalk, a jazz program on public radio, Folkways, a television program on folk music and culture, Great Scenic Railway Journeys, and North Carolina Mountain Treasures on North Carolina public television.

#8486

Julius Berger

#73102

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Julius Berger is a German cellist, musicologist and an academic of chamber music and cello at the Leopold Mozart Centre of the Augsburg University. He recorded the sonatas and concertos by Luigi Boccherini, but also contemporary music by John Cage, Toshio Hosokawa, Adriana Hölszky and Sofia Gubaidulina. He is the artistic director of music festivals.

#8487

Michael Friedman

#132700

Overall Influence

1975 - 2017 (42 years)

John Michael Friedman was an American composer and lyricist. He was a Founding Associate Artist of theater company The Civilians. His musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson opened on Broadway in October 2010.

#8488

Els Aarne

#168195

Overall Influence

1917 - 1995 (78 years)

Els Aarne was an Estonian composer and pedagogue. She was born in Makiivka, Russian Empire and studied at Tallinn Conservatory, graduating as a music teacher in 1939, in 1942 as pianist and in 1946 as composer under Heino Eller. Els was famous, among other things, as a chamber music composer ; in addition, she wrote two symphonies.

#8489

Tamara Miansarova

Tamara Miansarova

#155095

Overall Influence

1931 - 2017 (86 years)

Tamara Grigoryevna Miansarova was a Soviet Ukrainian lyric soprano, pop singer and professor of Russian Academy of Theatre Arts, best known for her hit May There Always Be Sunshine. Biography She was born on March 5, 1931, in Zinovievsk.

#8490

Jim Beard

#106755

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

James Arthur Beard is an American jazz pianist and keyboardist, composer, arranger and producer who has worked with Wayne Shorter, John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, John Scofield, Mike Stern, Dennis Chambers and Bob Berg, among others.

#8491

Martin Masai Andersen

#174165

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Martin Masai Andersen is a Danish photographer, art director and designer, based in South London. He also lectures at a number of universities. Andersen has made long-term documentary photography projects on football fans and dog shows, and made music videos for The Breeders, Lush and Iceage. His animation work has won a Clio Award and been shown in group exhibitions at Manchester Art Gallery and at SeaCity Museum in Southampton.

#8492

Michael Small

#170788

Overall Influence

1939 - 2003 (64 years)

Michael Small was an American film score composer known for his scores to thriller movies such as Klute, The Parallax View, Marathon Man, and The Star Chamber. Personal life Small was born in New York City but grew up in Maplewood, New Jersey. His father, Jack Small, was an actor and later, the general manager of the Shubert Theater in New York City. Small did his undergraduate work at Williams College where he was graduated with a degree in English. He later studied for a year at Harvard University.

#8493

Tank

#112885

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (44 years)

Lü Jianzhong , better known by his stage name Tank, is a Taiwanese singer-songwriter. He is currently signed to HIM International Music. His debut album, Fighting was released on 23 February 2006. His latest album, The 3rd Round, was released on 31 May 2009.

#8494

Minami Takayama

#161727

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

is a Japanese voice actress, narrator and singer who is currently affiliated with 81 Produce. She is also the main vocalist of Two-Mix and ES CONNEXION when it was active. Her uncle is a former New Japan Pro-Wrestling managing director Hisashi Shinma.

#8495

Irene Dalis

#154246

Overall Influence

1925 - 2014 (89 years)

Irene Dalis was an American mezzo-soprano singer, who had a long international career at the highest levels of world opera. In 1946, she received her bachelor's degree from San Jose State College , where she regarded herself not as a singer, but as a pianist.

#8496

Barry Alexander Brown

#169308

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Barry Alexander Brown is an English born-American film director and editor. As a film editor, he is best known for collaborations with film director Spike Lee, editing some of Lee's best known films including Do the Right Thing , Malcolm X , He Got Game , 25th Hour , Inside Man , and BlacKkKlansman , the latter of which earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Film Editing at the 91st Academy Awards.

#8497

Joe Salmons

#172202

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Joseph Curtis "Joe" Salmons is an American linguist who is Professor of Language Sciences at University of Wisconsin – Madison. Biography Salmons received his BA in Philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte 1978, and his PhD in Germanic Linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1984. His dissertation supervisor was Edgar C. Polomé.

#8498

Yang Jingyuan

#123889

Overall Influence

1923 - 2015 (92 years)

Yang Jingyuan also known by her pen name Yuan Qing , was a Chinese translator. Yang is most notable for being one of the main translators into Chinese of the works of the English novelists Charlotte Brontë and Emily Brontë.

#8499

Robert Greenberg

#137304

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Robert M. Greenberg is an American composer, pianist, and musicologist who was born in Brooklyn, New York. He has composed more than 50 works for a variety of instruments and voices, and has recorded a number of lecture series on music history and music appreciation for The Great Courses.

#8500

Kenzie

#92831

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Kim Yeon-jung , known professionally as Kenzie, is a South Korean songwriter and record producer who signed under SM Entertainment. She has composed, arranged and written mostly songs for SM artists such as BoA, Isak N Jiyeon, Super Junior, The Grace, TVXQ, Girls' Generation, Shinee, f, Exo, Red Velvet, SuperM, and NCT, as well as non-SM acts such as Twice, CIX, BAE173, and The Boyz.

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