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,

#8851

John Moore

#165730

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

John Moore is a British musician, best known for his work as the drummer in the Jesus and Mary Chain and as a member of Black Box Recorder. Biography John Moore joined the Jesus and Mary Chain in 1986, succeeding Bobby Gillespie on drum duties, later moving to guitar. When he left the Jesus and Mary Chain in 1988, he formed John Moore & The Expressway, releasing two albums. He later formed a new band called Revolution 9. who released several singles, and one album You Might as Well Live.

#8852

John Porter

#159408

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

#8853

Daniel Taylor

#165266

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Daniel John Taylor , is a Canadian countertenor and early music specialist. Taylor runs the Theatre of Early Music and teaches at the University of Toronto. Life and career Daniel Taylor completed his undergraduate studies in English, philosophy and music at the Faculty of Music of McGill University and his graduate work in religion and music at the Université de Montréal. He continued overseas at the Royal Academy of Music and Royal College of Music in London with leaders of the baroque movement including the countertenor Michael Chance.

#8854

Harold Mabern

#119636

Overall Influence

1936 - 2019 (83 years)

Harold Mabern Jr. was an American jazz pianist and composer, principally in the hard bop, post-bop, and soul jazz fields. He is described in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings as "one of the great post-bop pianists".

#8855

Maria Bittner

#160770

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Maria Bittner is Professor Emerita in Linguistics at Rutgers University. She is a fieldworker, semanticist, and logician whose work has focused on tense and cross-linguistic typology. She is best known for her descriptive and theoretical work on the Greenlandic language Kalaallisut, for which she has done some text documentation. She has long combined linguistic fieldwork, and to analyze her data she has developed a compositional dynamic update logic, building on DRT and Centering Theory, but with a novel architecture. She has also worked on the phenomena of case, questions, and causatives.

#8856

Doriot Anthony Dwyer

#148454

Overall Influence

1922 - 2020 (98 years)

Doriot Anthony Dwyer was an American flutist. She was one of the first women to be awarded principal chair for a major U.S. orchestra . She was the principal flute for the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1952 until 1990. She was second flute for the National Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. She was an Adjunct Professor of Music at Boston University.

#8857

John Morrison

#115948

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

John Morrison is an Australian jazz drummer, band leader, educator, and commercial pilot. While he is not as famous as his younger brother, trumpeter James Morrison, he is a significant musician in his own right. Voted as one of Australia's best big band drummers, his band Swing City was selected to open the Sydney 2000 Olympics. Throughout his career Morrison and his groups have headlined every major event and festival in Australia.

#8858

Jennifer Aylmer

#172987

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Jennifer Aylmer is an American operatic soprano noted for significant performances with the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, and as an oratorio soloist with major ensembles such as the National Symphony, and the Oratorio Society of New York.

#8859

Patrick Kennedy

#155198

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Patrick Kennedy is an English actor and director. He studied English literature and language at St John's College, Oxford, and then attended LAMDA. Kennedy's first screen role was in Peter Greenaway's The Tulse Luper Suitcases, followed by the role of Julian Bell in the BBC's Cambridge Spies.

#8860

John Cerminaro

#174302

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

John Paul Cerminaro, Jr. is an American horn player who is best known for his principal tenures with two notable American orchestras, the New York Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He was later principal horn of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra.

#8861

Mark Chung

#115656

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Mark Chung is a German musician and music publisher, probably best known for his work as the bass guitarist of the German band Einstürzende Neubauten. Biography From 1980 Chung was a member of the West German post-punk band Abwärts from Hamburg. He joined Einstürzende Neubauten in 1981. He assumed responsibility for business management of the band until leaving in 1994 to concentrate on his work in the music industry.

#8862

Rolf Riehm

#134181

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Rolf Riehm is a German composer who wrote stage and orchestral works as well as music for ensembles and solo instruments. He began as an oboist and music teacher and was later a professor of music theory at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt am Main for several years.

#8863

C. S. Kiang

#69460

Overall Influence

C.S. Kiang has served as Chairman of the Peking University Environment Fund and the Founding Dean of the College of Environmental Sciences at Peking University between 2002 and 2006. His vision is to set up the basic infrastructure for the development of leadership in sustainable development, exploring the world impact of what China can do for the world in the 21st century.

#8864

Rebecca Fortnum

#158800

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Rebecca Fortnum is a British artist, writer, and academic. Education and biography Fortnum studied English at Corpus Christi College in Oxford before gaining an MFA at Newcastle University. In 2009, she became reader and pathway leader of fine art at Camberwell College of Arts, one of London's leading art-education institutions. She was professor of fine art at Middlesex University, London. until 2016 and was professor of fine art at the Royal College of Art in London and founding editor of the of Contemporary Painting published by Intellect. She is currently professor of fine art and head o...

#8865

Heather Goad

#176712

Overall Influence

Heather Goad is a Canadian linguist. Her research explores areas of phonology and language acquisition, especially investigating the shapes of phonological systems, including contrasts in English, French, Korean, Portuguese, Italian and Nepali, as well as the developmental paths of acquiring speech sounds by first and second language learners.

#8866

Greg Johnson

#92569

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Greg Johnson is an American video game designer who has worked for Binary Systems and Electronic Arts, was co-founder with Mark Voorsanger of ToeJam & Earl Productions Inc., and in 2006 founded his own company, HumaNature Studios. He is known for the iconic ToeJam & Earl series , and his design credits additionally include Starflight , Game of the Year Starflight 2: Trade Routes of the Cloud Nebula , the multi-award-winning Orly's Draw-A-Story , Kung Fu Panda World , and Doki-Doki Universe , Back in the Groove ,

#8867

Valery Popov

#164724

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Valery Popov is a Russian bassoonist, described as the foremost of his era in Russia in his Grove Music Online entry. Biography Popov was born on 9 September 1937 in Moscow. His father, , was a trumpeter who was a soloist with the USSR State Radio Symphony Orchestra and the USSR State Symphony Orchestra. Valery Popov at first studied the trumpet, switching to the bassoon in 1957.

#8868

Peter Alexander

#169559

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Peter Alexander is an English actor and director. He is probably best known for playing the character of Phil Pearce in Emmerdale Farm for three years. He holds the unusual distinction of having appeared in all the main UK-made TV soap operas of the last 25 years, including EastEnders, Coronation Street, Brookside, Emmerdale and Hollyoaks.

#8869

Jerry Green

#80044

Overall Influence

Jerome Frederic Green was an American sports journalist and author. He was a staff writer for the Associated Press from 1956 to 1963 and for The Detroit News from 1963 to 2004. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2005 and the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame in 2003. He is the only sportswriter to have covered each of the first 56 Super Bowls, from 1967 to 2022.

#8870

Konstantinos Papadakis

#168722

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Konstantinos Papadakis is a Greek pianist. He has received the Golden Medal of superior talent. He has performed in worldwide major concert halls such as Carnegie Hall and Wigmore Hall. He studied with Anthony di Bonaventura at Boston University. Three years later, he joined the piano faculty at Boston University and was later appointed a "Samuel Barber" Artist in Residence at West Chester University of Pennsylvania where he remained for five years. In 2011 he joined the piano faculty of the New England Conservatory's Pre-College Division in Boston. He holds the prestigious Motoko and Gordon Deane Principal Chair of Boston's Atlantic Symphony Orchestra.

#8871

G. K. Venkatesh

#126546

Overall Influence

1927 - 1993 (66 years)

Gurusala Krishnadas Venkatesh was an Indian film score composer who primarily worked in Kannada cinema during the 1960s, 1970s and until the late-1980s. He also composed music for Telugu, Malayalam and Tamil films. He produced numerous master pieces of Kannada film music and also brought in Western background score into Kannada films and scored music for all Bond movies of Rajkumar in the 1960s to 1970s.

#8872

Liza Lim

#122832

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Liza Lim is an Australian composer. Lim writes concert music as well as music theatre and has collaborated with artists on a number of installation and video projects. Her work reflects her interests in Asian ritual culture, the aesthetics of Aboriginal art and shows the influence of non-Western music performance practice.

#8873

Zac Brown

#69702

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Zachry Alexander Brown is an American singer, songwriter, and musician. He is best known as the co-founder and lead singer of the country Zac Brown Band, as well as electronic dance music group Sir Rosevelt. In 2019, Brown released a pop surprise album titled The Controversy.

#8874

Joe Lo Truglio

#90612

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Joseph Vincent Lo Truglio is an American actor and comedian. Best known for his role as Charles Boyle on the Fox/NBC sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine, he also was a cast member on the television series The State and Reno 911!. His notable film roles include Wet Hot American Summer, I Love You, Man, Superbad, Paul, Role Models, and Wanderlust.

#8875

Timothy Brown

#173669

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Timothy Brown is an English choral conductor. Education He was a chorister at Westminster Abbey, and later an alto choral scholar at King's College, Cambridge, under the direction of Sir David Willcocks.

#8876

Larry Gottheim

#160494

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Larry Gottheim is an American avant-garde filmmaker. Early life Gottheim was born December 3, 1936. He attended a high school for music and the arts. Gottheim went to Oberlin College for undergraduate studies, where he became interested in poetry and fiction. He earned a Ph.D. in comparative literature at Yale University.

#8877

Stephanie Chase

#155102

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Stephanie Ann Chase is an American classical violinist. Life and career Chase was born in Evanston, Illinois. She is the daughter of two musicians, the noted arranger and composer Bruce Chase and violinist Fannie Chase. She gave her first public performance when only two years old and was recognized as a child prodigy. She studied first with her mother and then embarked on studies with Sally Thomas, then an assistant to Ivan Galamian at The Juilliard School. While still in her teens she moved to Belgium to study privately with Arthur Grumiaux, who is noted as "holding her in regard for her energy and the way in which she put into practice what he taught...

#8878

Muhanna Al-Dura

Muhanna Al-Dura

#102602

Overall Influence

1938 - 2021 (83 years)

Mohanna Durra , , was a Jordanian painter widely regarded as a pioneer of the Jordanian Arts Movement and for being the first to introduce Cubism and abstract art into the Jordanian visual arts community. He was a professor at the Faculty of Fine Art and Design at University of Jordan and served as the President of the Jordan Association of Fine Arts.

#8879

Bobby Sanabria

#123589

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Bobby Sanabria is an American drummer, percussionist, composer, arranger, documentary producer, educator, activist, radio show host, and writer of Puerto Rican descent who specializes in jazz and Latin jazz.

#8880

Enjott Schneider

#151668

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Enjott Schneider is a German businessman, composer, musicologist, and music educator. He is best known as the chairman of the board of the German collecting society GEMA. As a composer he is known for his film work, having won the Bavarian Film Award for Best Film Score in 1990, the Filmband in Gold in 1991, and the Deutscher Fernsehpreis in 2007, the latter for his work on March of Millions. He composed the soundtrack for the German language movie Stalingrad. He has also composed a good deal of concert music, and occasional pieces as well.

#8881

Isaiah Jackson

#82403

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Isaiah Allen Jackson is an American conductor who served a seven-year term as conductor of the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston, of which he has been named Conductor Emeritus. He was the first African-American to be appointed to a music directorship in the Boston area. Dr. Jackson currently teaches at the Berklee College of Music, the Harvard Extension School, and the Longy School of Music.

#8882

Marilu Madrunio

Marilu Madrunio

#112786

Overall Influence

Marilu Rañosa Madrunio is an applied linguist. Her works have been published in various international publications on World Englishes, Philippine English, English sociolinguistics, English language education and Forensic Linguistics.

#8883

Umar Garba

#121901

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Umar Garba Danbatta, is a Nigerian author, philanthropist, administrator and professor of electrical, telecommunications engineer. He served as the executive vice-chairman and chief executive Officer of Nigerian Communications Commission since November 2015 to April 2020 and was reappointed in July 2020 to October 2023 by the confirmation from the Senate house. Prior to his appointment, he has been acting vice-chancellor of Kano State University of Science and Technology since its establishment in 2001 and became acting vice-chairman of Nigerian Communications Commission in August 2014.

#8884

Daniel Katzen

#169793

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Daniel Katzen is a French horn teacher and player, and, since September 2008, has been the Associate Professor of Horn at the University of Arizona's Fred Fox School of Music in Tucson. Prior to that, he was Second Horn in the Boston Symphony Orchestra from April 1979 to August 2008. He is a recitalist, chamber musician, clinician and soloist and has appeared in 22 states and 25 countries in 5000 performances and master classes. He can be heard on virtually all recordings with the BSO and the Boston Pops from 1979–2000, and has also recorded with the Empire Brass and other chamber groups.

#8885

Fred Hopkins

#168723

Overall Influence

1947 - 1999 (52 years)

Fred Hopkins was an American double bassist who played a major role in the development of the avant-garde jazz movement. He was best known for his association with the trio Air with Henry Threadgill and Steve McCall, and for his numerous performances and extensive recordings with major jazz musicians such as Muhal Richard Abrams, Arthur Blythe, Oliver Lake, and David Murray. He was a member of the AACM, and a frequent participant in the loft jazz scene of the 1970s. He also co-led a number of albums with the composer and cellist Diedre Murray. Gary Giddins wrote that Hopkins' playing "fused a...

#8886

Billy Joe Walker Jr.

#100466

Overall Influence

1952 - 2017 (65 years)

Billy Joe Walker Jr. was an American songwriter, record producer and recording artist. He composed singles for Eddie Rabbitt, including "I Wanna Dance with You", "That's Why I Fell in Love with You" and "B-B-B-Burnin' Up with Love". He produced the first three albums of Bryan White, and for Pam Tillis, Collin Raye and Travis Tritt. He was also a session musician who played guitar. Between 1987 and 1994, he recorded seven solo albums, all for major labels.

#8887

Alice Caffarel

#176058

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Alice Marie-Claude Caffarel-Cayron is a French-Australian linguist. She is an Honorary Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Sydney. Caffarel is recognized for the development of a Systemic Functional Grammar of French which has been applied in the teaching of the French language, Discourse analysis and Stylistics at the University of Sydney. Caffarel is recognised as an expert in the field of French Systemic Functional Linguistics .

#8888

Rivka Golani

#149210

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Biography Golani was born in Tel Aviv. Her father Yakov Gulnik was from Warsaw, and had lost his family in the Holocaust. Her mother Liza Goldstein was from Polish Galicia. Golani took up the violin at age 7, while her sister Bela learned the cello. Golani was a mathematics prodigy.

#8889

Jody Williams

#128708

Overall Influence

1935 - 2018 (83 years)

Joseph Leon "Jody" Williams was an American blues guitarist and singer. His singular guitar playing, marked by flamboyant string-bending, imaginative chord voicings and a distinctive tone, was influential in the Chicago blues scene of the 1950s.

#8890

Jan-Hendrik Rootering

#159504

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Jan-Hendrik Rootering is a German-born operatic bass, son of the Dutch tenor Hendrikus Rootering from whom he had his first lessons. After further study at Hamburg's Musikhochschule he began singing minor roles with the Staatsoper Hamburg and made a debut at the Bayerischen Staatsoper München in 1982 as the Spirit Messenger in Die Frau ohne Schatten. In 1987 he received the title of Bayerischer Kammersänger. Rootering was the bass soloist in the Beethoven Ninth Symphony conducted by Leonard Bernstein in celebration of the fall of the Berlin wall—in the no-longer-divided city of Berlin—at...

#8891

Michael Gross

#38264

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Michael Gross is a British science writer based at Oxford and has been awarded an honorary research fellowship at the School of Crystallography, Birkbeck, University of London. Biography Gross studied engineering and chemistry at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, and he holds a doctorate in physical biochemistry from Regensburg University, both German institutions. During seven years of post-doctoral research in protein biochemistry at the University of Oxford, he wrote science journalism as a hobby. In 2000, he switched to writing full-time. Occasionally he also acts as a translator, editor, and lecturer.

#8892

Amanda Roocroft

#170536

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Amanda Jane Roocroft is an English operatic soprano, who in the course of her career has sung leading roles in the opera houses of Europe and North America. She is also a voice professor at London's Royal College of Music and a Fellow of the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester where she herself had trained as a singer. She also became a visiting tutor at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire in 2018. Roocroft was the winner of the 2007 Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera for her performance in the title role of Jenůfa at the English National Opera.

#8893

Ettore Sottsass

Ettore Sottsass

#117623

Overall Influence

1917 - 2007 (90 years)

Ettore Sottsass was a 20th-century Italian architect, noted for also designing furniture, jewellery, glass, lighting, home and office wares, as well as numerous buildings and interiors — often defined by bold colours.

#8894

Barry Harris

#166675

Overall Influence

Barry Harris is a Canadian record producer, DJ, remixer, singer and songwriter. He created the recording act he named Kon Kan in early 1988 which had worldwide success with "I Beg Your Pardon". The song, initially issued on the now defunct Toronto-based indie label Revolving Records, was quickly discovered and signed by Atlantic Records' A&R rep, Marc Nathan.

#8895

Herb Denenberg

#101310

Overall Influence

1929 - 2010 (81 years)

Herbert S. Denenberg was an American television journalist, lawyer, consumer advocate, and insurance regulator. He is best remembered by audiences in the Philadelphia television market as a long time consumer affairs reporter on WCAU .

#8896

Michael Matthews

#149592

Overall Influence

Michael Matthews is a South African writer, producer and director. In 2017, he directed Five Fingers for Marseilles, a film that won best film category at 14th Africa Movie Academy Awards. Early life Matthews was born in Durban. He studied filmmaking at the CityVarsity Cape Town campus.

#8897

John Corbett

#147456

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

John Corbett is an American writer, musician, radio host, teacher, record producer, concert promoter, and gallery owner based in Chicago, Illinois. He is best known among musicians and music fans as a champion of free jazz and free improvisation. In recent years he has become known in the visual art world as well through his Corbett vs. Dempsey gallery.

#8898

Meyer Kupferman

#154228

Overall Influence

1926 - 2003 (77 years)

Meyer Kupferman was an American composer and clarinetist. Life Meyer Kupferman was born in New York City to Jewish parents. A self-taught composer, Kupferman first gained attention in the late 1940s when his early opera "In A Garden" was premiered at the Tanglewood and Edinburgh Festivals. From 1951 to 1993 he was on the faculty of Sarah Lawrence College. He also served as Chairman of the Music Department for five terms.

#8899

John O'Conor

#125962

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

John O'Conor is an Irish pianist and pedagogue, and former director of the Royal Irish Academy of Music. Early career Born in Dublin, O'Conor attended Belvedere College in that city. During his early Dublin studies, his main piano teacher was J. J. O'Reilly. Later he was awarded an Austrian Government scholarship that enabled him to study in Vienna with the renowned pedagogue Dieter Weber. He also made a special study of Beethoven with the legendary German pianist Wilhelm Kempff. In 1973 O'Conor was unanimously awarded First Prize at the International Beethoven Piano Competition in Vienna whi...

#8900

David Rothenberg

#109485

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

David Rothenberg is a professor of philosophy and music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, with a special interest in animal sounds as music. He is also a composer and jazz musician whose books and recordings reflect a longtime interest in understanding other species such as singing insects by making music with them.

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