The Most Influential People Across History
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).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people in Communications,
#8751
Darius Brubeck
#124232
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Darius Brubeck is an American jazz keyboardist and educator. He is the son of jazz legend Dave Brubeck. He spent many years in Durban, South Africa, as a professor and head of the Centre for Jazz and Popular Music at the University of Natal.
Go to Profile#8752
Charles Curtis
#134411
Overall Influence
Charles Curtis is a performer and composer of a wide variety of music, with particular emphasis on the avant-garde. Curtis is most strongly associated with minimalism, modern classical, and so-called "downtown music."
Go to Profile#8753
Bob Jackson
#101341
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Robert Jackson is an English rock musician most famous for being a member of Badfinger from 1974-75 and 1981-83, and of The Fortunes from 1995-2018. He currently tours under the name Badfinger in the United Kingdom.
Go to Profile#8754
Charles Leonhard
#54397
Overall Influence
1915 - 2002 (87 years)
Charles Leonhard was an American music educator and academic. He was one of the first to argue for a focus upon aesthetic education within music education. For most of his career, he was a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Go to Profile#8755
David Loeb
#173999
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
David Loeb is an American composer of contemporary classical music. Born in New York City, he has written extensively for early music instruments such as the viol, as well as instruments from China and Japan. He teaches at the Mannes College The New School for Music, and has additionally served as a member of the composition faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music.
Go to Profile#8756
David Schiff
#96743
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
David Schiff is an American composer, writer and conductor whose music draws on elements of jazz, rock, and klezmer styles, showing the influence of composers as diverse as Stravinsky, Mahler, Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy and Terry Riley. His music has been performed by major orchestras and festivals around the United States and by soloists David Shifrin, Regina Carter, David Taylor, Marty Ehrlich, David Krakauer, Nadine Asin and Peter Kogan. He is the author of books on the music of Elliott Carter, George Gershwin and Duke Ellington. His work has been honored by the League-ISCM National Compo...
Go to Profile#8757
Béla Kovács
#86417
Overall Influence
1937 - 2021 (84 years)
Béla Kovács was a Hungarian clarinetist. Education Kovács was born in Tatabánya, Hungary. He graduated from the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, Hungary. Performance career Kovács was principal clarinetist with the Hungarian State Opera Orchestra and the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra since 1956, until he retired in 1981.
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Kolleen Park
#140576
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Kolleen Park is an American-born South Korean-Lithuanian musical director, conductor, and actress, and is also a judge on the Korean talent show Korea's Got Talent. Background Kolleen was born in the United States to a Korean father and an American mother of Lithuanian descent. Kolleen has two sisters named Kim and Kelly. She is bilingual, being fluent in both English and Korean.
Go to Profile#8759
Rebecca Saunders
#142583
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Rebecca Saunders is a London-born composer who lives and works freelance in Berlin. In a 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000, Saunders' compositions received the third highest total number of votes , surpassed only by the works of Georg Friedrich Haas and Simon Steen-Andersen . In 2019, writers of The Guardian ranked Skin the 16th greatest work of art music since 2000, with Tom Service writing that "Saunders burrows into the interior world of the instruments, and inside the grain of Fraser's voice [...] and finds a revelatory world of heightened feeling."
Go to Profile#8760
Elaine Ryan Hedges
#92073
Overall Influence
1927 - 1997 (70 years)
Elaine Ryan Hedges was an American feminist who pioneered Women's Studies in the 1970s and advocated for curricula encompassing a more inclusive body of American literature which brought together works by ethnic and gendered minorities. A recognized expert in feminist literary criticism, she was awarded The Feminist Press Award for Contributions to Women's Culture in 1988 and inducted into the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame in 1998.
Go to Profile#8761
Holly Peterson
#59198
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Holly Peterson is an American producer, journalist, and novelist. The daughter of Peter George Peterson, she was a contributing editor for Newsweek magazine, an editor-at-large for Talk magazine, and a producer for ABC News, where she covered global politics.
Go to Profile#8762
Mark Wardell
#149333
Overall Influence
Mark Wardell was Assistant Organist at Chichester Cathedral from 1997 to 2009, serving for five of those years as Director of Music at the Prebendal School, the Cathedral Choir's School. He had previously held positions at Royal Holloway College, University of London, St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle and Christ's Hospital School, Horsham.
Go to Profile#8763
Claire Wilcox
#146147
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Claire Wilcox is senior curator of fashion at the Victoria and Albert Museum. She received an honorary doctorate in art and design from Middlesex University in July 2017. She sits on the editorial board of the journal Fashion Theory. She is professor of fashion curation at the London College of Fashion. She won the 2021 PEN/Ackerley Prize for Patch Work.
Go to Profile#8764
Donna Campbell
#105250
Overall Influence
Donna Campbell is a New Zealand Māori university teacher, curator, weaver and textile artist. She affiliates with Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Ruanui iwi. Her works are held in the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and in the British Museum. In 2019 Campbell completed a PhD at the University of Waikato with a thesis titled Ngā kura a Hineteiwaiwa: The embodiment of Mana Wahine in Māori fibre Arts.
Go to Profile#8765
Peter Walker
#143375
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Peter Walker is an American folk guitarist, known for his skillful performances that blend Indian classical and Spanish flamenco music traditions. He gained recognition primarily for his recorded work during the late 1960s. In recent years, his reputation has seen a resurgence among younger American and European outsider folk artists. He is now regarded as a prominent figure in the company of established American finger-pickers such as Sandy Bull, John Fahey, Robbie Basho and Leo Kottke. This renewed recognition has provided him with new opportunities for touring and recording.
Go to Profile#8766
Matthew Rose
#173404
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Matthew Rose is an English operatic bass. Biography Matthew Rose studied at Seaford College and the Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia. In 2003 he joined the Young Artists Programme at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
Go to Profile#8767
Gerhard Rühm
#100823
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Gerhard Rühm is an Austrian author, composer and visual artist. Biography Rühm studied the piano and music composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. Following his studies he undertook private lessons with the twelve-tone composer Josef Matthias Hauer. Since the beginning of the 1950s Rühm has produced sound poetry, spoken word, visual poetry, photomontages and books. He is a co-founder of the Wiener Gruppe , with Friedrich Achleitner, Hans Carl Artmann, Konrad Bayer und Oswald Wiener, as well as the publisher of an anthology by the same name. From 1972–1996 Rühm t...
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Robert Ward
#140549
Overall Influence
1938 - 2008 (70 years)
Robert June Ward, Sr. was an American blues and soul guitarist. He was known for founding the Ohio Untouchables, the band that later would become the Ohio Players. He played the guitar with a unique tone soaked in vibrato coming from a Magnatone amplifier.
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Azio Corghi
#143714
Overall Influence
1937 - 2022 (85 years)
Azio Corghi was an Italian composer, academic teacher and musicologist. He composed mostly operas and chamber music. His operas are often based on literature, especially in collaboration with José Saramago as librettist. His first opera, Gargantua, was premiered at the Teatro Regio in Turin in 1984, his second opera, Blimunda, was first performed at La Scala in Milan in the 1989/90 season, and his third opera, Divara – aqua e sangue, was premiered in 1993 at the Theater Münster, Germany. He taught composition at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, among other academies. In 2005,...
Go to Profile#8770
Sonny Chiba
#148832
Overall Influence
1939 - 2021 (82 years)
Shinichi Chiba, known internationally as Sonny Chiba, was a Japanese actor and martial artist. Chiba was one of the first actors to achieve stardom through his skills in martial arts, initially in Japan and later before an international audience.
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Nietzchka Keene
#170101
Overall Influence
1952 - 2004 (52 years)
Nietzchka Keene was an American film director and writer best known for The Juniper Tree, a feature film shot in Iceland starring the Icelandic singer Björk in her first film role. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in the spring of 2004 and died, aged 52, on October 20, 2004. She taught film making and editing at the University of Wisconsin–Madison until her death.
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Eric Guilyardi
#177977
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Eric Guilyardi is a climate scientist, professor in the department of meteorology at the University of Reading and directeur de recherche CNRS at LOCEAN at Institute Pierre Simon Laplace in Paris, France. He is an expert of the El Niño phenomenon. He has been a Lead Author for the IPCC AR5 report.
Go to Profile#8773
Rhian Samuel
#171025
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Rhian Samuel is a Welsh composer who resided in the USA for many years. She has composed over 140 published works, including orchestral, chamber, vocal, and choral music. She now divides her time between mid-Wales and London. She currently resides in the coastal town of Aberdyfi.
Go to Profile#8774
Alessandro Capone
#170157
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Alessandro Capone is an Italian linguist. He is full professor of linguistics at the University of Messina Education and career Capone is full professor of linguistics at the University of Messina, Department of Cognitive Science. He obtained his Doctorate in linguistics in 1998 at the University of Oxford with a thesis entitled ‘Modality and Discourse’, supervised by Yan Huang and examined by James Higginbotham and Sally McConnell-Ginet. He published more than 100 papers and authored several monographs on linguistic and philosophical issues, including quotation and reporting, modality, spe...
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Vinson Cole
#150200
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Vinson Cole is an American operatic tenor. Early life A native of Kansas City, the tenor studied at the Conservatory of Music and Dance at the University of Missouri-Kansas City; the Philadelphia Musical Academy; and at the Curtis Institute of Music with Margaret Harshaw.
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Stephon Alexander
#117389
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Stephon Haigh-Solomon Alexander is a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, musician and author. Personal life and education Alexander was born in Trinidad and moved to the United States when he was eight. He grew up in the Bronx, New York City and attended DeWitt Clinton High School where his physics teacher Daniel Kaplan inspired him to study physics.
Go to Profile#8777
David Thornton
#153326
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
David Thornton is a British solo euphonium player for the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band. Biography Thornton began learning the euphonium at the age of eight and was soon after accepted as the first ever euphonium student at Chetham's School of Music in Manchester, England. During this time he held the principal euphonium position of the National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain. David went on to the Royal Northern College of Music, where he studied with Steven Mead, graduating in 2000. In July 2000 he was appointed as principal euphonium of the Black Dyke Band.
Go to Profile#8778
B. J. Fogg
#178011
Overall Influence
#8779
Paul Jackson
#123451
Overall Influence
1947 - 2021 (74 years)
Paul Jerome Jackson Jr. was an American jazz electric bassist and composer. He was a founding member of the Headhunters and played on several of Herbie Hancock's albums, including Head Hunters and Thrust. Jackson subsequently moved to Japan and started a voluntary concert called Jazz for Kids, with the intent of familiarizing students there with African-American history.
Go to Profile#8780
Anthony Joseph
#125587
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Anthony Joseph FRSL is a British/Trinidadian poet, novelist, musician and academic. In 2023, he was awarded the T. S. Eliot Prize for his book Sonnets for Albert. Biography Joseph was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, where he was raised by his grandparents. He began writing as a young child and cites his main influences as calypso, surrealism, jazz, the spiritual Baptist church that his grandparents attended, and the rhythms of Caribbean speech. Joseph has lived in the United Kingdom since 1989.
Go to Profile#8781
Maria Tipo
#159215
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Maria Tipo is an Italian pianist. Biography Tipo was born in Naples. She was taught originally by her mother, Ersilia Cavallo, who was a pupil of Ferruccio Busoni. She went on to study under Alfredo Casella and Guido Agosti.
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Jim Wilson
#122308
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Jim Wilson is an Australian sports journalist, reporter and radio presenter. Wilson has previously had a 28 year career at the Seven Network as a sport presenter, reporter and sports editor for Seven News initially starting in the Melbourne newsroom before moving to Sydney. Prior to joining the Seven Network he was a sport reporter at the Nine Network in Brisbane.
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Victor Nuñez
#103401
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Victor Nunez is a film director, professor at the Florida State University College of Motion Picture, Television and Recording Arts, and a founding member of the Independent Feature Project. He is best known for directing Ulee's Gold, a critically acclaimed movie starring Peter Fonda and Patricia Richardson. Nunez was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame in 2008 and Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2016.
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Florence Piron
#177187
Overall Influence
1966 - 2021 (55 years)
Florence Piron was a French-born Canadian anthropologist and ethicist. She was full professor in the Department of Communication and Information at Laval University. She also acted as a Knight of the International Order of Academic Palms of CAMES . Her focus was on open access to knowledge and to enhance the scientific "heritage" of places like Africa and Haiti.
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Paul Patterson
#149849
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Paul Patterson is a British composer and Manson Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music. Patterson studied trombone and composition at the Royal Academy of Music. One of his teachers was Richard Rodney Bennett. He returned there to become Head of Composition and Contemporary Music until 1997, when he became Manson Professor of Composition. A regular guest on composition competition panels both in the UK and further afield, his devotion to new music, along with his desire to introduce the music of contemporary masters to students , has resulted in the creation of annual festival...
Go to Profile#8786
Don Thompson
#152741
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Donald Winston Thompson, OC is a Canadian jazz musician who plays double bass, piano, and vibes. Thompson's career as a performer, recording artist, producer, session musician, and music educator has lasted for more than 50 years.
Go to Profile#8787
Gordon Frederick Arnold
#178055
Overall Influence
1920 - 1999 (79 years)
Gordon Frederick Arnold was a British linguist and Emeritus Reader in Phonetics at University College London. Biography Born in 1920 in Braintree, Essex, Arnold read French at University College London. In 1947 he was appointed Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Phonetics by the head of department Daniel Jones. During his life he played a substantial role in the administration of the college, becoming Senior Tutor in 1979.
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Stanley Glasser
#123839
Overall Influence
1926 - 2018 (92 years)
Stanley 'Spike' Glasser , was a South African-born British composer and academic, the elder son of first-generation Jewish immigrants from Lithuania. He first came to the UK in 1950 to study with Benjamin Frankel and Mátyás Seiber, then read music at Cambridge. Returning to South Africa he became a music lecturer at Cape Town University for four years.
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Harry Connick Jr.
#119851
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Joseph Harry Fowler Connick Jr. is an American singer, pianist, composer, actor, and former television host. As of 2019, he has sold over 30 million records worldwide. Connick is ranked among the top60 best-selling male artists in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America, with 16million in certified sales. He has had seven top20 US albums, and ten number-one US jazz albums, earning more number-one albums than any other artist in U.S. jazz chart history as of 2009.
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Srinivas
#94951
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Srinivasan Doraiswamy, known by his stage name Srinivas, is an Indian playback singer who has sung over 2000 songs in Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada and Hindi. He has also worked independently as a music composer, working on films and private albums.
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Dale Pollock
#119976
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Dale M. Pollock is an American film producer, writer and film professor. A journalist whose works have been published in a number of magazines and newspapers, Pollock is also the author of a biography of George Lucas. Pollock has produced thirteen feature films, one of which received an Academy Award nomination for Cinematography. He was Professor of Cinema Studies at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts from January 2007 to December 2019. He served as Interim Dean from January 1 to July 31, 2021, and is currently Emeritus Professor in the School of Filmmaking.
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Mike McQueen
#175543
Overall Influence
1957 - 2009 (52 years)
Mike McQueen was an American journalist who served as the Associated Press bureau chief for Louisiana and Mississippi. McQueen graduated from Florida State University. He later earned his master's degree in communications from Florida Atlantic University.
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Mary Miller
#152570
Overall Influence
1929 - 2020 (91 years)
Mary Elizabeth Miller was an English television and stage actress, who was a founding member of the National Theatre Company in 1963. Career Early years Mary Miller first appeared on television in 1959 as Alice Chandler in episode one of the 6-part series The Golden Spur, with Ronald Fraser and Oliver Reed. In the same year, she took the role of Ann Elsden in "The Talking Doll", the first instalment of the UK TV police drama, No Hiding Place.
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David Watkins
#85312
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
David Watkins is a British artist who has designed the medals for the London 2012 Olympics. Watkins was also a special effects maker for the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Life Watkins was born in Wolverhampton in 1940 and he is a graduate of the University of Reading where he met his lifelong partner Wendy Ramshaw.
Go to Profile#8795
Kenneth Radnofsky
#125119
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Kenneth A. Radnofsky is an American classical saxophonist. He specializes in the alto saxophone, but plays the soprano and other sizes as well. He currently teaches at the New England Conservatory of Music, and Boston University.
Go to Profile#8796
Saeed Hajjarian
#48677
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Saeed Hajjarian is an Iranian reformist political strategist, journalist, pro-democracy activist and former intelligence officer. He was a member of Tehran's city council, and advisor to the president Mohammad Khatami. On 12 March 2000, he was shot in the face by an assailant and severely disabled, an act many Iranians believe was in retaliation for his help in uncovering the chain murders of Iran and his significant help to the Iranian reform movement in general, according to the BBC.
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Imani Sanga
#38171
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Imani Sanga is Professor of Music in the Department of Creative Arts, formerly called Department of Fine and Performing Arts, in the College of Humanities at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He teaches courses in Ethnomusicology, Philosophy of Music, Composition and Choral Music. And he conducts the university choir.
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Tommy Tune
#131316
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Thomas James Tune is an American actor, dancer, singer, theatre director, producer, and choreographer. Over the course of his career, he has won ten Tony Awards, the National Medal of Arts, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
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Chapman To
#107431
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Chapman To , born Edward Ng Cheuk-cheung , is a Hong Kong actor. He is best known for his roles in films such as Infernal Affairs and Initial D. He is also the founder of his own multimedia platform known as "Chapman To's Late Show". In 2022, To officially naturalised in Taiwan.
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Sergio Mena
#169588
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Sergio Mena is a Spanish journalist and university professor. Biography He has a Ph.D. in Journalism from the Complutense University in Madrid with the thesis Structure and Programming of Multimedia Channels of Public Transport: The Spanish Case , tutored by Luis Miguel Martínez Fernández. Since 2012 He is studying a Ph.D. in Contemporary History at the Autonomous University of Madrid, investigating the representation and interpretation of World War II in American Cinema with the thesis The Pacific War at American Cinema. Representation and Interpretation of a Historical Event tutored by Carmen de la Guardia.
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