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,

#8801

Samuel Jones

#167047

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Samuel Jones is an American composer and conductor. Biography Samuel Jones, a native of Mississippi , graduated from the Central High School in Jackson and received his undergraduate degree with highest honors at Millsaps College. He acquired his professional training at the Eastman School of Music, where he earned his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in composition under Howard Hanson, Bernard Rogers, and Wayne Barlow. His mentors in conducting include Richard Lert and William Steinberg.

#8802

Micaela Comberti

#177318

Overall Influence

1952 - 2003 (51 years)

Micaela "Mica" Comberti was an English violinist. Her concert career lasted from 1977 until her death. Born to a German mother and an Italian father, she was taught at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, the Royal Academy of Music and the Mozarteum University Salzburg. Comberti was involved in early music and played for The English Concert, St. James' Baroque, Ex Cathedra and the Collegium Musicum 90. She also taught at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the Royal College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music. An award and position at the Royal Academy of Music are nam...

#8803

Dorothy Taubman

#49578

Overall Influence

1917 - 2013 (96 years)

Dorothy Taubman was an American music teacher, lecturer, and founder of the Taubman Institute of Piano. She developed the "Taubman Approach" to piano playing, though her approach provoked controversy.

#8804

Mohan Joshi

#100688

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Mohan Joshi is an Indian film, television and theater actor. He has worked in Hindi, Marathi and Bhojpuri films. Career Joshi started his career as a theatre artist in Pune. He was noticed in the play Kuryat Sada Tingalam. Along with Anand Abhyankar and Suhasini Deshpande, the show was performed more than 1000 times.

#8805

Giorgio Amitrano

#68461

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Giorgio Amitrano is an Italian Japanologist, translator and essayist, specializing in Japanese language and literature. Life and career Amitrano grew up in Naples, graduating from the University of Naples "L'Orientale"; his professors included Maria Teresa Orsi, Luigi Polese Remaggi and Namkhai Norbu. He won a scholarship to Tokyo in 1984. The following year he moved to Osaka, where he stayed until 1989, also teaching at Osaka University.

#8806

Dorothy A. Leonard

#133585

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Dorothy A. Leonard is an American professor of business administration specialized in knowledge management. She is the William J. Abernathy professor of business administration emerita at the Harvard Business School.

#8807

Lucio San Pedro

Lucio San Pedro

#123083

Overall Influence

1913 - 2002 (89 years)

Lucio Diestro San Pedro, Sr. was a Filipino composer and teacher who was proclaimed a National Artist of the Philippines for Music in 1991. Today, he is remembered for his contribution to the development of Filipino regional band music and for his well-known compositions such as the Filipino lullaby, "Sa Ugoy ng Duyan" and the symphonic poem, "Lahing Kayumanggi".

#8808

Richard Edward Wilson

#113126

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Richard Edward Wilson is an American composer and pianist. Rejecting serialism, to some extent Wilson engages in tonality, though often with the use of considerable chromaticism. His oeuvre includes orchestral, operatic, instrumental, and chamber music among other genres.

#8809

Leroy Vinnegar

#114977

Overall Influence

1928 - 1999 (71 years)

Leroy Vinnegar was an American jazz bassist. Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States, the self-taught Vinnegar established his reputation in Los Angeles, California, during the 1950s and 1960s. His trademark was the rhythmic "walking" bass line, a steady series of ascending or descending notes, and it brought him the nickname "The Walker". Besides his jazz work, he also appeared on a number of soundtracks and pop albums, notably Van Morrison's 1972 album, Saint Dominic's Preview.

#8810

Lewis Nash

#114455

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Lewis Nash is an American jazz drummer. According to Modern Drummer magazine, Nash has one of the longest discographies in jazz and has played on over 400 records, earning him the honor of Jazz's Most Valuable Player by the magazine in its May 2009 issue.

#8811

Fuat Mansurov

#108002

Overall Influence

1928 - 2010 (82 years)

Fuat Mansurov was a Soviet and Russian conductor. Biography Mansurov was born in Almaty. He graduated from Al-Farabi University in 1950 as a mathematician and then became a faculty member of the School of Math and Sciences there.

#8812

Consequence

#85817

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Dexter Raymond Mills Jr., better known by his stage name Consequence, is an American rapper from Queens, New York City, New York. He is best known for his collaborative work with A Tribe Called Quest and Kanye West. He later squashed his feud with rapper Pusha T in 2016.

#8813

Brian Johnson

#148146

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Brian Johnson is a British designer and director of film and television special effects. Life and career Born Brian Johncock, he changed his surname to Johnson during the 1960s. Joining the team of special effects artist Les Bowie, Johnson started his career behind the scenes for Bowie Films on productions such as On The Buses, and for Hammer Films. He is known for his special effects work on TV series including Thunderbirds and films including Alien , for which he received the 1980 Academy Award for Best Visual Effects . Previously, he had built miniature spacecraft models for Stanley Kubr...

#8814

Marina Rosenfeld

#135288

Overall Influence

Marina Rosenfeld is an American composer, sound artist and visual artist based in New York City. Her work has been produced and presented by the Park Avenue Armory, Museum of Modern Art, Portikus , Donaueschinger Musiktage, and such international surveys as documenta 14 and the Montreal, Liverpool, PERFORMA, and Whitney biennials, among many others. She has performed widely as an improvising turntablist, and served as co-chair of Music/Sound in the MFA program at the Milton Avery School of the Arts, Bard College, from 2007 to 2020. She has also taught at Harvard, Yale, Brooklyn College, and Da...

#8815

Jacob Avshalomov

#159722

Overall Influence

1919 - 2013 (94 years)

Jacob Avshalomov was a composer and conductor. Early life and education Jacob Avshalomov was born on March 28, 1919, in Tsingtao, China. His father was Aaron Avshalomov, the Siberian-born composer known for "oriental musical materials cast in western forms and media"; his mother was from San Francisco. Jacob received musical instruction from his father starting at a young age. At eight years old Avshalomov visited Portland from China with his parents and were guests of Jacques Gershkovitch for several months in 1927. Aaron Avshalomov had become friends with Gershkovitch in the Orient . Howev...

#8816

Flavio Testi

#168856

Overall Influence

1923 - 2014 (91 years)

Flavio Testi was an Italian composer of contemporary classical music and musicologist. Biography He studied with Giulio Cesare Gedda and Luigi Perrachio at the Turin Conservatory, and took an arts degree at Milan University . He then worked for Suvini Zerboni and Ricordi while also composing, pursuing his interest in music history and working on various radio projects for the RAI. From 1972 he devoted himself to educational activities, teaching music history at the Padua Conservatory and then taking up teaching posts at the Milan Conservatory and Florence Conservatory.

#8817

Ottmar Hörl

#71854

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Ottmar Hörl is a German conceptual artist, sculptor, installation, action, photography, and object artist. He achieved worldwide popularity due to his radical, avant-garde art concepts as well as large-scale projects featuring serial sculptures in public spaces, based on his distinctive definition of sculpture as an organisational principle. He is considered an "offensive and direct strategist campaigning for a new type of public art" and the most successful artist creating multiples, an artist implementing his vision of art for everyone and promoting the democratisation of sculpture like no other so far.

#8818

Michael Zearott

#156660

Overall Influence

1937 - 2019 (82 years)

Michael Zearott , was an American conductor, composer, pianist and music educator. A First Prize, Gold Medal winner of the Dimitri Mitropoulos International Conducting Competition, he conducted the New York Philharmonic in Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and was also invited to conduct for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Chamber Symphony, California Chamber Symphony, San Diego Symphony and others in the United States as well as Europe. Zearott was the first student to earn a Ph.D. in composition at University of California, Los Angeles .

#8819

John LaPorta

#128898

Overall Influence

1920 - 2004 (84 years)

John Daniel LaPorta was a jazz clarinetist and composer. Early life and education A native of Philadelphia, LaPorta started playing clarinet at the age of nine and studied at the Mastbaum School in Philadelphia, where one of his classmates was Buddy DeFranco. As a teenager he played in Philadelphia bands with Charlie Ventura and Bill Harris. He studied classically with Joseph Gigliotti of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Leon Russianoff at the Manhattan School of Music.

#8820

Claudio Ambrosini

#125422

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Claudio Ambrosini is an Italian composer and conductor. Biography He studied foreign languages and literature at the Università di Milano graduating with an MA in 1972. Afterwards, he studied electronic music with Alvise Vidolin at the Venice Conservatory from 1972 to 1975. He also studied early instruments there from 1975 to 1978 and music history at the Università di Venezia, where he received an MA in 1978. He was influenced in his compositions by his encounters with Bruno Maderna and Luigi Nono.

#8821

Gerhard Oppitz

#101524

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Gerhard Oppitz is a German classical pianist. He studied with Paul Buck, Hugo Steurer and Wilhelm Kempff. In 1981 he was appointed professor at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Münchenthe youngest in the history of the institutewhere he still teaches. As a soloist he has appeared with many famous conductors and orchestras of the world. In the summer 1977, at the age of 24, Oppitz was the first German to win the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in Tel Aviv, Israel.

#8822

Wilma Lipp

#151002

Overall Influence

1925 - 2019 (94 years)

Wilma Lipp was an Austrian operatic soprano and academic voice teacher. A long-time member of the Vienna State Opera, she was particularly associated with the role of the Queen of the Night in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, a role she performed internationally more than 400 times. She was awarded the title Kammersängerin at age 28, and was an honorary member of the Vienna State Opera, among other honours.

#8823

Junior Cook

#140039

Overall Influence

1934 - 1992 (58 years)

Herman "Junior" Cook was an American hard bop tenor saxophone player. Biography Cook was born in Pensacola, Florida. A member of a musical family, he started on alto saxophone before switching to tenor during his high school years.

#8824

Hiroyuki Yoshida

#178286

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

#8825

Rain

#113866

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (44 years)

Jung Ji-hoon , better known by his stage name Rain , is a South Korean singer, songwriter, dancer, actor, and record producer. Rain's musical career includes seven albums , 28 singles and numerous concert tours around the world. He achieved breakthrough success with his third Korean album, It's Raining , which spawned the number one single of the same name. The album sold a million copies in Asia, and established Rain as an international star.

#8826

Gerard Presencer

Gerard Presencer

#149828

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Gerard Presencer is an English jazz trumpeter. Biography Presencer showed his first interest in what was to become his chosen instrument, the trumpet, at nine. He attributes his early determination to become a trumpeter to hearing Roy Eldridge's solo from a Jazz at the Philharmonic concert. He has cited Dizzy Gillespie, Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Kenny Wheeler, Woody Shaw, and Clifford Brown as early influences.

#8827

Frank Tiberi

#140996

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (98 years)

Frank Tiberi is an American saxophonist and the leader of the Woody Herman Orchestra. He was born in Camden, New Jersey, United States. He was picked by Woody Herman shortly before Herman's death and has led the band since 1987.

#8828

Peter Jablonski

#169194

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Peter Jablonski is a Swedish concert pianist. Biography Peter Jablonski was born in Lyckeby, Sweden to a Swedish mother and Polish father. He studied percussion and piano at Malmö Conservatory from 1982 to 1986. He performed as a drummer at the Village Vanguard jazz club in New York at the age of nine. He debuted as a pianist in Sweden at the age of 12, with Mozart concerto k 453. In 1989 he moved to the United Kingdom. There he studied composition, conducting and piano at the Royal College of Music in London. He signed to Decca Records in 1991, with a debut recording of Gershwin's piano con...

#8829

Lambert Orkis

#147606

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Lambert Orkis is an American classical pianist. His career has been based on many differing roles: ranging from being the collaborative pianist for Anne-Sophie Mutter for works of piano and violin chamber music since 1988 . In 2000, the duo was honored by a Grammy Award for their interpretation of the Beethoven violin sonatas.

#8830

Rob Johnson

#157088

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Robert Arthur Johnson is a Canadian musician currently based in Vancouver, British Columbia. He played bass guitar in the punk and alternative rock bands SNFU and the Wheat Chiefs, in addition to recording his own hip hop and hard rock music in various incarnations.

#8831

Wendy Sadler

#120249

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Wendy Sadler FInstP FHEA FLSW is a British science communicator and lecturer at Cardiff University. She is the founding director of Science Made Simple, which focuses on engaging audiences with the physical sciences. Her areas of interest include inspiring the next generation of scientists, engineers and communicators; women in STEM; and making STEM subjects accessible to diverse audiences.

#8832

Jenő Jandó

#103457

Overall Influence

1952 - 2023 (71 years)

Jenő Jandó was a Hungarian pianist and Professor of the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest. He was the first house pianist for Naxos Records and recorded more than 60 albums. Background and education Jandó studied piano at the Liszt Academy with Katalin Nemes and Pál Kadosa, later going on to win many major international piano competitions, including the Georges Cziffra and Ciani Piano Competitions. His professional career began when he took third prize at the Beethoven Piano Competition at the age of 18. He was also the winner of the 1973 Hungarian Piano Concours and took first prize i...

#8833

Saul Williams

#115388

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Saul Stacey Williams is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, musician, poet, writer, and actor. He is known for his blend of poetry and alternative hip hop, and for his lead roles in the 1998 independent film Slam and the 2013 jukebox musical Holler If Ya Hear Me.

#8834

Roque Cordero

#157631

Overall Influence

1917 - 2008 (91 years)

Roque Cordero was a Panamanian composer. Life Born in Panama City, he studied composition under Ernst Krenek and conducting under Dimitri Mitropoulos, Stanley Chapple, and Léon Barzin before becoming director of the Institute of Music and Artistic Director and conductor of the National Symphony of his native country. Later he was assistant director of the Latin American Music Center , professor of composition at Indiana University, and, from 1972, distinguished professor emeritus at Illinois State University. His students included Panamanian composer Marina Saiz-Salazar.

#8835

Carl Jackson

#105662

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Carl Eugene Jackson is an American country and bluegrass musician. Jackson's first Grammy was awarded in 1992 for his duet album with John Starling titled "Spring Training." In 2003 Jackson produced the Grammy Award-winning CD titled Livin', Lovin', Losin': Songs of the Louvin Brothers – a tribute to Ira and Charlie Louvin. He also recorded one of the songs on the CD, a collection of duets featuring such artists as James Taylor, Alison Krauss, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, and others.

#8836

Viktor Suslin

#164342

Overall Influence

1942 - 2012 (70 years)

Viktor Yevseyevich Suslin was a Russian composer. An associate of Sofia Gubaidulina's, together with her and Vyacheslav Artyomov he formed the improvisatory ensemble 'Astraea' in 1975. He emigrated to Germany in 1981.

#8837

Francisco Aguabella

#135808

Overall Influence

1925 - 2010 (85 years)

Francisco Aguabella was an Afro-Cuban percussionist whose career spanned folk, jazz, and dance bands. He was a prolific session musician and recorded seven albums as a leader. Biography In Cuba Aguabella was born in Matanzas, Cuba. He demonstrated a special aptitude for drumming at an early age, and was initiated into several Afro-Cuban drumming traditions, including batá, iyesá, arará, olokún, and abakuá. Aguabella also grew up with rumba.

#8838

Jeffrey Khaner

#162567

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Jeffrey Khaner is the principal flutist of the Philadelphia Orchestra. He has also served as principal flutist with the Cleveland Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Symphony. Khaner teaches at the Curtis Institute of Music, The Juilliard School, and the Lynn University Conservatory of Music. In September 2012, he launched the Online Classical Flute School with Jeffrey Khaner through ArtistWorks.

#8839

Ellen Faull

#139401

Overall Influence

1918 - 2008 (90 years)

Ellen Hartla Faull was an American operatic soprano and voice teacher. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she was primarily associated with New York City Opera, where she sang from 1947 until 1978 and created the role of Abigail Borden in Jack Beeson's opera Lizzie Borden in its 1965 world premiere. After her retirement from the opera stage, she taught singing at Sarah Lawrence College, the Manhattan School of Music and the Juilliard School and later privately at her home in Camas, Washington.

#8840

Ellie Mannette

#137982

Overall Influence

1926 - 2018 (92 years)

Elliott Anthony "Ellie" Mannette was a Trinidadian musical instrument maker and steel pan musician, also known as the "father of the modern steel drum". Life Born in Sans Souci, Trinidad, Mannette as a young child developed a passion for metal and tools for metalworking, and would become engaged in the evolution of the phenomenon of sounding steel. At the age of 11, he was a member of Alexander's Ragtime Band created by Alexander Ford. From the middle of the 1930s, percussion bands of different quarters of Port-of-Spain were in competition with each other. Legend says that Mannette was the fi...

#8841

Meleko Mokgosi

#94745

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

Meleko Mokgosi is an artist and associate professor of painting and drawing at the School of Art at Yale University. His work includes large-scale paintings that explore themes of colonialism, democracy, nationalism, and life in Southern Africa.

#8842

Peter Michael Hamel

#121452

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Peter Michael Hamel is a German composer. His works have been associated with the minimalist style of composition, and in the late 1970s with the New Simplicity movement. He is the son of the film director Peter Hamel. Hamel studied musical composition, psychology and sociology in Munich and Berlin with teachers including Günter Bialas and Carl Dahlhaus. He then continued his education abroad, spending several extensive periods in Asia.

#8843

Graham Yost

#93142

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Graham John Yost is a Canadian film and television screenwriter. His best-known works are the films Speed, Broken Arrow, and Hard Rain and the TV series Justified. Early life, family and education Yost was born in Etobicoke in the Toronto metropolitan area. He is the son of Canadian television personality Elwy Yost, the longtime host of the public broadcaster TVOntario's Saturday Night at the Movies.

#8844

Maria de Medeiros

Maria de Medeiros

#164871

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Maria Esteves de Medeiros Victorino de Almeida, DamSE , known professionally as Maria de Medeiros , is a Portuguese actress, director, and singer who has been involved in both European and American film-productions.

#8845

Günter Sommer

#146333

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Günter "Baby" Sommer is a German jazz drummer. Career Sommer was born in Dresden on 25 August 1943. His first instrument was the trumpet, which he studied at school. He started playing the drums aged 15 or 16. He studied music at Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber in Dresden. A solo percussion album, Hormusik, was released by FMP in 1979. In the same year, FMP also released a trio album recorded with Peter Kowald and Wadada Leo Smith. He has worked with Smith intermittently throughout his career. During the 1980s he also worked with Peter Brötzmann, Irene Schweizer, Cecil Taylor, and with the writer Gunter Grass.

#8846

Elisabeth Scholl

#125095

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Elisabeth Scholl is a German soprano and academic teacher. Career Elisabeth Scholl was the first girl to sing with the boys choir Kiedricher Chorbuben. From 1982 to 1987 she sang the role of the First Boy in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte at the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden. After her Abitur she studied musicology, English studies and history of art at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz and took private singing lessons with Eduard Wollitz. She continued her studies at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis with René Jacobs and Richard Levitt and attended master classes with Ingrid Bjoner, Helmut Deutsch, Luisa Bosabalian, Ileana Cotrubas and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

#8847

Chen Kaige

#135951

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Chen Kaige is a Chinese film director and a leading figure of the fifth generation of Chinese cinema. His films are known for their visual flair and epic storytelling. Chen won the Palme d'Or at 1993 Cannes Film Festival and the International Federation of Film Critics Award in 1993 for directing Farewell My Concubine.

#8848

Oscar Shumsky

#119996

Overall Influence

1917 - 2000 (83 years)

Oscar Shumsky was an American violinist and conductor. Biography Oscar Shumsky was born to Russian-Jewish parents. He started learning the violin at the age of three, and made his concert debut at the age of seven with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski, who declared him to be "the most astounding genius I have ever heard". Fritz Kreisler took a special interest in him, and he played Kreisler's own cadenzas to the Beethoven violin concerto to him after learning them by ear. He was a pupil of Leopold Auer from 1925 and studied at the Curtis Institute of Music from 1928 to 1936, continuing his studies with Efrem Zimbalist after Auer's death in 1930.

#8849

Carmen McRae

#138790

Overall Influence

1920 - 1994 (74 years)

Carmen Mercedes McRae was an American jazz singer. She is considered one of the most influential jazz vocalists of the 20th century and is remembered for her behind-the-beat phrasing and ironic interpretation of lyrics.

#8850

Dori Tunstall

#118994

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Elizabeth "Dori" Tunstall is a design anthropologist, researcher, academic leader, writer, and educator. She is dean of the faculty of design at OCAD University in Toronto, Canada, and the first black dean of a faculty of design anywhere. Tunstall holds a PhD and an MA in anthropology from Stanford University [1994–1999] and a BA in anthropology from Bryn Mawr College [1990–1994].

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