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,

#8501

Peter Westergaard

#145816

Overall Influence

1931 - 2019 (88 years)

Peter Talbot Westergaard was an American composer and music theorist. He was Professor Emeritus of music at Princeton University. Biography Westergaard was born on 28 May 1931 in Champaign, Illinois. He pursued undergraduate studies at Harvard University, graduating in 1953, and in 1956 obtained an M.F.A. degree from Princeton University. He studied with Roger Sessions, Walter Piston, Darius Milhaud, Edward Cone, Milton Babbitt and Wolfgang Fortner in Freiburg/Germany.

#8502

Robert Baxter

#171904

Overall Influence

1940 - 2010 (70 years)

Robert Baxter was an American performing-arts critic and academic who wrote theatre, opera, and classical music criticism for the Courier-Post for close to 30 years. The Philadelphia Inquirer stated that his "writing helped advance the South Jersey arts scene", and Opera News wrote that Baxter was "highly discerning and scrupulously honest, and had a well-deserved reputation as a tough but fair critic whose coverage of theater, opera and classical music in Philadelphia and southern New Jersey was highly valued and respected by his readers and by his colleagues."

#8503

Sivan Magen

#169682

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Sivan Magen is an Israeli harpist. Raised in Jerusalem in a musical family, the child of two cellists, Magen started his musical studies at the piano with Benjamin Oren and Talma Cohen, and first tried the harp when his family moved to France for a sabbatical. He continued his harp studies with Irena Kaganovski-Kessler in the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. Later he moved to France on his own, where his teachers included Germaine Lorenzini. Magen studied at the Conservatoire National Superieure in Paris, under the guidance of Isabelle Moretti, where he was a Premier Prix winner. Magen continued his studies at the Juilliard School with Nancy Allen, and earned a Master's degree.

#8504

Håkan Hardenberger

#151546

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Ulf Håkan Hardenberger is a Swedish trumpeter, conductor and professor at the Malmö Academy of Music. Taking up the trumpet at the age of eight under the guidance of hometown teacher Bo Nilsson, Hardenberger pursued further studies at the Paris Conservatoire, with Pierre Thibaud, and in Los Angeles with Thomas Stevens. Hardenberger is a pioneer of important virtuosic new trumpet works. He collaborated with contemporary composers Harrison Birtwistle, Brett Dean , HK Gruber , Hans Werner Henze, Betsy Jolas, György Ligeti and Mark-Anthony Turnage . In 2021, he premiered Jörg Widmann's Towards Paradise and in 2022 Helen Grime's Trumpet Concerto, night-sky-blue.

#8505

Marleen S. Barr

#77983

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Marleen S. Barr teaches communication and media studies at Fordham University, New York City. She is notable for her significant contributions to science fiction studies, for which she won a Pilgrim Award from the Science Fiction Research Association in 1997. Her primary contributions have been her foundational work in the field of feminist science fiction criticism; her 1981 anthology Future Females: A Critical Anthology "served as an introduction and eye-opener to the field of Feminist Science Fiction."

#8506

Avigdor Shinan

#24765

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Professor Avigdor Shinan is professor emeritus in the departments of Hebrew Literature, Yiddish and Comparative Jewish Folklore at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Shinan has served as head of the departments of General Studies, and of Hebrew Literature and as Dean of The Hebrew University. He has served as visiting professor at Yale, JTS, and Yeshiva University and has also taught at Ben-Gurion, Tel-Aviv, and at the Schechter Institute.

#8507

Jan Bach

#163118

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Jan Bach was an American composer. He taught at the University of Tampa from 1965 to 1966 and at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois from 1966 to 2002. His primary performing instrument was the horn, and he was renowned among hornists for his horn pieces. He also played the piano.

#8508

Odaline de la Martinez

#107854

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Odaline de la Martinez is a Cuban-American composer and conductor, currently residing in the UK. She is the artistic director of Lontano, a London-based contemporary music ensemble which she co-founded in 1976 with New Zealander flautist Ingrid Culliford, and was the first woman to conduct at the BBC Promenade Concerts in 1984. As well as frequent appearances as a guest conductor with leading orchestras throughout Great Britain, including all the BBC orchestras, she has conducted several leading ensembles around the world, including the Ensemble 2e2m in Paris; the New Zealand Symphony Orch...

#8509

Scott Hamilton

#143210

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Scott Hamilton is an American jazz tenor saxophonist associated with swing and straight-ahead jazz. His eldest son, Shō Īmura, is the vocalist of the Japanese rock band Okamoto's. Career He was born in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Hamilton began to play the tenor saxophone at the age of sixteen. In 1976, he moved to New York City and played with Benny Goodman at the end of the decade. Most often he has been the leader of bands. He has worked with Ruby Braff and Warren Vache.

#8510

Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss

#128753

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss is an Austrian communications scholar and art/media educator. He is professor of media design and head of the institute of art and education at the University of Arts and Industrial Design Linz.

#8511

Kevin Bowyer

#152778

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Kevin John Bowyer is an English organist, known for his prolific recording and recital career and his performances of modern and extremely difficult compositions. Biography Bowyer was born on 9 January 1961 in Southend-on-Sea, England. He sang in a choir and learnt the piano accordion and organ as a child. When the church where he practised refused to let him carry on practising, he says: "I went and had a key cut to the church and I got in anyway." He attended Cecil Jones High School in Southend, and studied at the Royal Academy of Music from 1979 to 1982 with organists Christopher Bowers-Broadbent and Douglas Hawkridge, harpsichordist Virginia Black, and Paul Steinitz.

#8512

Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald

#126535

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Ann-Marie MacDonald is a Canadian playwright, author, actress, and broadcast host who lives in Toronto, Ontario. Life and career MacDonald is the daughter of a member of Canada's military; she was born at an air force base near Baden-Baden, West Germany. She is of partial Lebanese descent through her mother.

#8513

George Cables

#133550

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

George Andrew Cables is an American jazz pianist and composer. Early life Cables was born in New York City, United States. He was initially taught piano by his mother. He then studied at the High School of Performing Arts and later at Mannes College . He formed the Jazz Samaritans at the age of 18, a band that included Billy Cobham, Steve Grossman, and Clint Houston. Cables' early influences on piano were Thelonious Monk and Herbie Hancock.

#8514

Karla Gower

#137914

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Karla K. Gower is an American public relations professor, focusing in journalism and media and strategic communication, currently the Behringer Distinguished Professor in the Advertising and Public Relations at University of Alabama. Since 2008, she has been the director of The Plank Center for Leadership in Public Relations.

#8515

Gene Raymond

#141817

Overall Influence

1908 - 1998 (90 years)

Gene Raymond was an American film, television, and stage actor of the 1930s and 1940s. In addition to acting, Raymond was also a singer, composer, screenwriter, director, producer, and decorated military pilot.

#8516

Hillary Anger Elfenbein

#173524

Overall Influence

Hillary Anger Elfenbein is the John and Ellen Wallace Distinguished Professor of Organizational Behavior at Washington University in St. Louis, known for her research on emotion in the workplace and cross-cultural differences in emotion.

#8517

Neil Howlett

#173168

Overall Influence

1934 - 2020 (86 years)

Neil Howlett was an English operatic baritone who sang leading roles in major opera houses and festivals in the UK and abroad, including the Royal Opera House, Teatro Colón, and the English National Opera, where he was the Principal Baritone for seventeen years. Described by John Steane as "a vibrant voice somewhat in the Amato/Franci line", Howlett's repertoire included over 80 roles.

#8518

Mzilikazi Khumalo

#170352

Overall Influence

1932 - 2021 (89 years)

James Steven Mzilikazi Khumalo was a South African composer and professor emeritus of African languages at the University of the Witwatersrand. Early life Khumalo was born on the farm KwaNgwelu in Natal in 1932. Shortly after Khumalo's birth his parents were ordained as ministers in the Salvation Army, which ran the farm at the time. The family moved to Hlabisa, where Khumalo started school.

#8519

Heidi M. Anderson

#82987

Overall Influence

Heidi Milia Anderson is an American academic administrator serving as the president of the University of Maryland Eastern Shore since September 2018. She was previously the provost at Texas A&M University–Kingsville and the University of the Sciences.

#8520

Jeff Hamilton

#104854

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Jeff Hamilton is an American jazz drummer and co-leader of the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra. A former member of the L.A. Four, Hamilton has played with jazz pianist Monty Alexander, bandleader Woody Herman, and singer Rosemary Clooney, and has worked extensively with singer Diana Krall.

#8521

Richard Westenburg

Richard Westenburg

#157739

Overall Influence

1932 - 2008 (76 years)

Richard Westenburg was a lauded American choral conductor. He notably founded the Musica Sacra Chorus and Orchestra in 1964, serving as its director until 2007 when Kent Tritle took over as director. He also founded the Basically Bach Festival at Lincoln Center in 1979, running the festival for a decade. He served as the music director of the Collegiate Chorale from 1973 to 1979 and was a popular lecturer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1979 to 1982.

#8522

Suzana Amaral

#156966

Overall Influence

1932 - 2020 (88 years)

Suzana Amaral Rezende was a Brazilian film director and screenwriter. She was best known for the 1985 film A Hora da Estrela . Career Amaral's film career started at the age of 37 when she entered the University of São Paulo film school. After graduating, she taught at the University for three years and began working for Radio and Television Cultura. In her 14-year career at Radio and Television Cultura she produced approximately 50 documentaries, films, and plays for the station. In 1976 she moved to New York to pursue a degree in film from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.

#8523

Larry Willis

#131504

Overall Influence

1940 - 2019 (79 years)

Lawrence Elliott Willis was an American jazz pianist and composer. He performed in a wide range of styles, including jazz fusion, Afro-Cuban jazz, bebop, and avant-garde. Willis was born in New York City. After his first year studying music theory at the Manhattan School of Music he began performing regularly with Jackie McLean. After he graduated he made his first jazz recording, McLean's Right Now! in January 1965, which featured two of Willis' compositions. His first recording of any type, however, was as a singer with the Music and Arts Chorale Ensemble, performing an opera by Aaron Copland under the direction of Leonard Bernstein.

#8524

Kramer

#84396

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Mark Kramer known professionally as Kramer, is a musician, composer, record producer and founder of the New York City record label Shimmy-Disc. He was a full-time member of the bands New York Gong, Shockabilly, Bongwater and Dogbowl & Kramer, has played on tour with bands such as Butthole Surfers, B.A.L.L., Ween, Half Japanese and The Fugs , and has also performed regularly with John Zorn and other improvising musicians of New York City's so-called "downtown scene" of the 1980s.

#8525

Rebeca Quintáns

#157042

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Rebeca Quintáns López is a Spanish journalist, research writer and teacher. Biography Rebeca Quintáns graduated in Spanish Philology by the University of Santiago de Compostela. She got a doctorate in Journalism from the Complutense University of Madrid with a thesis about the speech of Juan Carlos I.

#8526

James Cassidy

#95533

Overall Influence

James Cassidy is an American musician and educator who is one of the founding members of the band Information Society . He played bass and keyboards with the band from its beginning in the early 1980s until 1992, when the group released its final album as a trio, Peace & Love, Inc.

#8527

Michael Ahlers

#139685

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Michael Ahlers is a German music educator. Life Ahlers graduated as a teacher for secondary education in the subjects Germanistics and literature and music with the artistic main subject guitar as well as musicology. After his studies, he worked as managing editor of the journal Musikunterricht und Computer at . After the third issue, he took over editorial activities in the publishing house and additionally supervised individual projects in the areas of "Content Management" as well as "Network Administration". Since 2005, he worked as a research assistant at the Paderborn University and in 2008, he received his Dr.

#8528

Xiang Gao

#36878

Overall Influence

Xiang Gao is a Chinese violinist from Fuzhou. He has been cited by The New York Times as "a rare and soulful virtuoso". He has also been a featured soloist performing for world leaders including two U.S. Presidents, three Chinese Presidents, and Juan Carlos I.

#8529

Demian Conrad

#170123

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Demian Conrad is a Swiss designer whose work ranges from graphic design to visual arts. Conrad is an author of books on design, and also the creative director of cultural institutions and firms, such as the Center for Future Publishing and DADADUM. He is also known for having invented a process named Water Random Offset Printer .

#8530

Aurelio de la Vega

#150542

Overall Influence

1925 - 2022 (97 years)

Aurelio de la Vega was a Cuban-American composer, lecturer, essayist, and poet. He wrote numerous works in many forms and media and, from the early 1960s, was an active force on the United States musical scene. Many of his compositions are published and recorded, and the majority of them are played constantly nationally and internationally. His music and aesthetic ideas have been commented upon and analyzed in books, newspapers and reviews throughout the United States and Latin America. In 1978 he was awarded the coveted Friedheim Award of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washingto...

#8531

Michael McDonald

#95530

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Michael McDonald is an American costume designer who was nominated for both a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award in 2009 for his work on the Broadway revival of the musical Hair. Early life and education McDonald was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania and is a 1981 graduate of William Allen High School. He attended Muhlenberg College in Allentown, where he took his first costume design course and subsequently worked on several of Muhlenberg's theatrical productions.

#8532

T. Graham Brown

#99706

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Anthony Graham Brown , known professionally as T. Graham Brown, is an American country music singer. Active since 1973, Brown has recorded a total of thirteen studio albums, and has charted more than twenty singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. Three of these singles — "Hell and High Water" and "Don't Go to Strangers" from 1986, and "Darlene" from 1988 — reached Number One, and eight more made Top Ten.

#8533

Adolf Winkelmann

Adolf Winkelmann

#136300

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Adolf Winkelmann is a German film director, film producer and screenwriter. He is also a professor of film design in the department of design at the Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts.

#8534

Henriette Puig-Roget

#170252

Overall Influence

1910 - 1992 (82 years)

Henriette Marie Eulalie Puig-Roget was a French pianist, organist and music educator. Biography Born in Bastia, she began her musical studies at the Conservatoire de Paris in 1919. She won 6 first prizes between 1926 and 1930 in the classes of Isidore Philipp, Jean Gallon and Noël Gallon, Maurice Emmanuel and Marcel Dupré: piano, harmony, music history, piano accompaniment, counterpoint, fugue, organ. She was also a student of Charles Tournemire in chamber music.

#8535

Robert Wells

#143593

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Robert Henry Arthur Wells is a Swedish singer, songwriter and musician best known for the musical , which contains elements of rock, classical and boogie-woogie. Early life and career Wells was born in Stockholm. He attended the Adolf Fredrik's Music School in Stockholm at the age of 7 in 1969 and four years later, at the age of 11, became the youngest person ever to attend the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. At the age of 16 in 1978, Wells won two major Swedish talent contests. Wells has also participated twice in Melodifestivalen.

#8536

Michael Hawley

#172478

Overall Influence

1961 - 2020 (59 years)

Michael Jerome Hawley was an American academic and artist working in the field of digital media. Previously at MIT’s Media Laboratory where he was a professor and held the Alexander W. Dreyfoos, Jr. endowed chair, Hawley was the founder or co-founder of several major research programs and projects including MIT's GO Expeditions program, Things That Think, Toys of Tomorrow, Counter Intelligence , and founder of the nonprofit organization Friendly Planet. He notably was the scientific director of the American Expedition on Mount Everest in 1998, one of the first major scientific expeditions on Everest.

#8537

Alicia Terzian

#152723

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Alicia Terzian is an Argentine conductor, musicologist and composer of Armenian descent. Biography Alicia Terzian was born in Córdoba, Argentina. She studied at the National Conservatory of Buenos Aires under Alberto Ginastera, Gilardo Gilardi, Roberto García Morillo and Floro Ugarte. She received a degree in piano in 1954 and a degree in composition in 1958. In 1962 she continued her studies in electronic music and medieval Armenian church music with Father Leoncio Dayan at the Mekhitarist Monastery of San Lazzaro degli Armeni, Venice.

#8538

Toshiyuki Shimada

#102060

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Toshiyuki Shimada is a Japanese-born American orchestral conductor. He is Music Director of both the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra in New London, CT; the Orchestra of the Southern Finger Lakes in Corning, NY; and the New Britain Symphony Orchestra. He had been Music Director of the Yale Symphony Orchestra of Yale University from 2005 to 2019, and currently he is Director of Orchestral Activity at the Connecticut College. He is also Music Director Laureate of the Portland Symphony Orchestra, in Portland, Maine, of which he was Music Director from 1986 to 2006. Prior to Portland, he was Associate Conductor of the Houston Symphony Orchestra for six years, beginning in 1981.

#8539

Sally Grace

#147987

Overall Influence

1938 - 2016 (78 years)

Sally Grace is an English actress who has worked extensively on radio and television and in animation. Life and career Grace was born in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England, and trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

#8540

Peter Baldwin

#163067

Overall Influence

1931 - 2017 (86 years)

Peter DuBois Baldwin was an American actor and director of film and television. Biography Baldwin started his career as an actor, employed as a contract player at Paramount Studios. He played Johnson in the film Stalag 17 and Lieutenant Walker in Little Boy Lost, both made in 1953. In 1962 he played the role of murderer Tony Benson in the Perry Mason episode, "The Case of the Melancholy Marksman", and appeared in the 1970 Italian thriller The Weekend Murders.

#8541

Nicola Botting

#171020

Overall Influence

Nicola Botting is a language and communication scientist whose work focuses on language and psychological outcomes of children with low birth weight, autism spectrum disorder, developmental language disorder, and other developmental disabilities. She is Professor of Developmental Disorders, Language & Communication Science at the City University of London. Botting is editor-in-chief of the journal Autism & Developmental Language Impairments.

#8542

Guy Fletcher

#138952

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Mervyn Guy Fletcher is an English record producer, singer and songwriter who, in partnership with Doug Flett, wrote several hits for other artists. As a singer, he had a small hit in the Netherlands and other European countries with the song "Mary in the Morning" .

#8543

Nikki Iles

#170782

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Nikki Anne Iles is a British jazz composer, pianist and educator. Early life Iles was born in Dunstable, Bedfordshire, on 16 May 1963. She started her musical education at primary school, where she learnt to play the harmonica and the clarinet, and at eleven years old she won a junior exhibition at the Royal Academy of Music, where she studied clarinet and piano from 1974 to 1981. She became a member of the Bedfordshire Youth Jazz Orchestra. She went on to the Leeds College of Music .

#8544

Ingram Marshall

#130711

Overall Influence

1942 - 2022 (80 years)

Ingram Douglass Marshall was an American composer and a onetime student of Vladimir Ussachevsky and Morton Subotnick. Early life and education Marshall was born in Mount Vernon, New York. He was the son of Bernice Douglass and Harry Reinhard Marshall, Sr. Marshall's early interest in music was the result of encouragement provided by his mother, herself an accomplished pianist and vocalist. As a youth, he performed as a soprano in the Boy's Choir at the Mt. Vernon Community Church, and during his high school years was influenced early by noted music instructor Victor Laslo. After graduating f...

#8545

Abrahm Lustgarten

#122268

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (125 years)

Abrahm Lustgarten is a senior environmental reporter for ProPublica who frequently works in partnership with the New York Times Magazine. He focuses on the intersections of business, climate and energy.

#8546

Ouseppachan

#93793

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Mechery Louis Ouseppachan , known mononymously as Ouseppachan, is an Indian film composer and singer who primarily works in Malayalam films. He is a recipient of National Film Award, Filmfare Award and Kerala State Film Awards for his numerous film soundtrack albums and background scores.

#8547

Farhan Akhtar

#106685

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Farhan Akhtar is an Indian actor, filmmaker, singer and songwriter who works in Hindi films. Born in Mumbai to screenwriters Javed Akhtar and Honey Irani, Akhtar, after establishing a production company named Excel Entertainment along with Ritesh Sidhwani in 1999, made his directorial debut with the coming-of-age comedy-drama Dil Chahta Hai and received widespread critical acclaim for portraying realistic modern Indian youth in the film, which won the National Award for Best Hindi Film and the Filmfare Award for Best Film . Following this, he directed the cult war film Lakshya and made his ...

#8548

Bill Bridges

#80307

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Bill Bridges is an American role-playing game developer and fantasy author. He designed the role-playing games Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Mage: The Ascension, and Promethean: The Created. He additionally worked on a video game based on his Fading Suns role-playing game Emperor of the Fading Suns. He is currently a developer at Holistic Design.

#8549

Jost Hochuli

#165087

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

Jost Hochuli is a Swiss graphic designer known for his book designs. He is also the author of Detail in Typography, which has been translated into several languages. Early career Jost Hochuli attended the school of arts and crafts in St. Gallen from 1952 to 1954 and then worked from 1954 to 1955 as an apprentice with Rudolf Hostettler at the Zollikofer & Co. AG printing house, St. Gallen. He completed an apprenticeship as a typographer from 1955 to 1958 partly at the Zollikofer press and partly in typesetting class at the Zurich School of Applied Arts, where he also attended typesetting cours...

#8550

Eddie Jones

#155826

Overall Influence

1929 - 1997 (68 years)

Eddie Jones was an American jazz double bassist. Jones grew up in Red Bank, New Jersey, and played early in the 1950s with Sarah Vaughan and Lester Young. Jones taught music in South Carolina from 1951 to 1952, and became a member of Count Basie's orchestra in 1953, remaining there until 1962. He recorded frequently with this ensemble, and also played with Basie in smaller ensembles; these featured both Basie sidemen and others . Jones quit music in 1962 and took a job with IBM; he later became vice president of an insurance company. In the 1980s he returned to jazz and played on and off in ...

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