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).
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List of the most influential people in Communications,
#8951
Michael D. Aeschliman
#75812
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Michael D. Aeschliman is a U.S.–Swiss educator, literary critic and scholar, Professor Emeritus at Boston University, Professor of Anglophone Culture at the Università della Svizzera italiana and Curriculum Advisor to The American School in Switzerland Foundation Board.
Go to Profile#8952
Ray Edenton
#39554
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (100 years)
Ray Quarles Edenton was an American guitarist and country music session musician. Early life Ray Edenton was born into a musical family on November 3, 1926, and grew up near Mineral, Virginia. His first instrument was a banjo ukelele, and by the age of six he was performing with his two brothers and cousins at square dances in the area.
Go to Profile#8953
John Harris
#166195
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
John Harris is an Irish linguist and Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at University College London. He is best known for his works on phonetics and phonology. A festschrift in his honor titled Sonic Signatures edited by Geoff Lindsey and Andrew Nevins was published in 2017.
Go to Profile#8954
Günter Bialas
#123491
Overall Influence
1907 - 1995 (88 years)
Günter Bialas was a German composer. Life Bialas was born in Bielschowitz in Prussian Silesia. His father was the business manager of a German theatre, and his musical aesthetic was influenced by the personal experiences and connections he made while spending time at that theatre in his youth. The adolescent Bialas received lessons in piano and music theory from Fritz Lubrich, a former student of Max Reger, in Kattowitz between 1922 and 1925. After graduating from the German Minority-Gymnasium in Kattowitz in 1926, he studied musicology, Germanistics, and history at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Breslau from 1927 to 1931.
Go to Profile#8955
Heber Bartolome
#133273
Overall Influence
1948 - 2021 (73 years)
Heber Gonzalez Bartolome was a Filipino folk and rock singer, songwriter, composer, poet, guitarist, bandurria player, bluesman, and painter. His music was influenced by the "stylistic tradition" of Philippine folk and religious melodies. He was the founder of Banyuhay, a "protest band" that carried the trademark sound of the kubing, a native musical instrument in the Philippines. His compositions were described as a "unique synthesis of rock and blues, and Philippine ethnic rhythms". Bartolome's song "Nena" became a hit in 1977. His song "Tayo'y Mga Pinoy" was a finalist during the 1978 ...
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Gene Bertoncini
#139419
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Gene J. Bertoncini is an American jazz guitarist. Biography A native of New York City, Bertoncini grew up in a musical family. His father, Mario Bertoncini , played guitar and harmonica. His brother Renny , played accordion and keyboards. Bertoncini began playing guitar at age seven and by age sixteen was appearing on television. He graduated from high school and attended the University of Notre Dame, where, in 1959, he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Architectural Engineering. He also played clarinet for the Notre Dame marching band. His first guitar teacher was Johnny Smith.
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Johannes Heesters
#162519
Overall Influence
1903 - 2011 (108 years)
Johan Marius Nicolaas Heesters , known professionally as Johannes Heesters, was a Dutch actor of stage, television and film, as well as a vocalist of numerous recordings and performer on the concert stage with a career dating back to the 1920s. He worked as an actor until his death and was one of the oldest performing entertainers in history, performing shortly before his death at the age of 108. Heesters was almost exclusively active in the German-speaking world from the mid-1930s and became a film star in Nazi Germany, which later led to controversy in his native country. He was able to main...
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Buddy Spicher
#106690
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Buddy Spicher is an American country music fiddle player. He is a member of The Nashville A-Team of session musicians, and is Grammy-nominated. He was nominated as Instrumentalist of the Year by CMA in 1983 and 1985. He was the first fiddler in the "Nashville Cats" series of the Country Music Hall of Fame . He recorded with virtually every major country star of the sixties, seventies, and early eighties, including Faron Young, Johnny Paycheck Little Jimmy Dickens, Reba McEntire, George Jones, Don Williams, Dolly Parton, Crystal Gayle, Loretta Lynn, Bob Wills, Asleep at the Wheel, Don Francisc...
Go to Profile#8959
Craig H. Russell
#168690
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Craig H. Russell is an American composer of classical music. Russell was educated at the University of New Mexico and then the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and began a career both as a classical guitarist and as a composer of classical music, in which he follows in the stylistic footsteps of Aaron Copland. He has also been associated with the vocal ensemble, Chanticleer, as well as holding a professorship at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.
Go to Profile#8960
Deborah Drattell
#139890
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Deborah Drattell is an American composer. She was born in Brooklyn, New York, and started her career in music as a violinist. Her compositions have been performed by the New York Philharmonic, Orchestra of St. Luke's, the Tanglewood and Caramoor Music Festivals, and many other groups and venues. She rewrote the role of the villain in Nicholas and Alexandra, Rasputin, from baritone to tenor when Plácido Domingo expressed interest in singing the role.
Go to Profile#8961
Ian Hobson
#173852
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Ian Hobson is an English pianist, conductor and teacher, and is a professor at University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and at Florida State University. His pianistic repertoire spans the baroque to the contemporary, but he specialises in the Romantic repertoire. Starting September 1st 2023 he will be serving as a guest conductor of Sinfonia Varsovia.
Go to Profile#8962
Charles Bernstein
#146356
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Charles Harold Bernstein is an American composer of film and television scores. He is a Daytime Emmy Award winner, and a two-time Primetime Emmy Award nominee. Since 1995, he has been a member of the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Music Branch. He has also been a member of the Board of Directors for both the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and the Society of Composers & Lyricists.
Go to Profile#8963
Steve Perry
#116902
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Stephen Henry Perry is an American musician, best known as lead singer, songwriter and rhythm guitarist for the Oregon ska-swing band the Cherry Poppin' Daddies. Early life Perry was born in Syracuse, New York, to a physicist and a social worker, and raised in Apalachin, outside the industrial city of Binghamton. He described Binghamton as being "a poor, run down, loner-class town", which would later serve as a significant influence on his songwriting.
Go to Profile#8964
Algimantas Puipa
#99017
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Algimantas Puipa is a Lithuanian film director and screenwriter. With more than 70,000 admissions, his film Whisper of Sin was a success in Lithuania. Other successful films include Forest of the Gods and Elze's Life.
Go to Profile#8965
Eduardo Hontiveros
#169455
Overall Influence
1923 - 2008 (85 years)
Rev Fr Eduardo Pardo Hontiveros, SJ , also known as "Fr. Honti", was a Filipino Jesuit composer and musician, best known as an innovative hymnwriter behind popular Philippine liturgical music. Biography He was born in Molo, Iloilo City, one of eight siblings, to José Hontiveros and Vicenta Pardo. He studied at the Capiz Elementary School and transferred to Ateneo de Manila High School, graduating in 1939. He entered the San José Seminary from 1939 to 1945, and entered the Society of Jesus in 1945; he professed his simple vows in 1947. He studied theology in the United States in 1951, and was...
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Alexander Kaidanovsky
#153353
Overall Influence
1946 - 1995 (49 years)
Alexander Leonidovich Kaidanovsky was a Soviet and Russian actor and film director. His best known roles are in films such as Stalker , At Home Among Strangers , and The Bodyguard . Prior to pursuing an acting career, Kaidanovsky attended technical college where he trained to become a welder. In 1965 he started studying acting at The Rostov Theatre School and the Shchukin theatrical school in Moscow. Before completing the course he took his first part in the film The Mysterious Wall and upon graduation in 1969, he worked as stage actor, making his debut at the Vakhtangov Theatre in 1969. In...
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Devi Sri Prasad
#78089
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Devi Sri Prasad , widely known by his initials DSP is an Indian composer, singer and lyricist. He is known for his works predominantly in Telugu cinema and Tamil cinema. He is the recipient of a National Film Award, a Nandi Award, ten Filmfare Awards, seven SIIMA Awards and five CineMAA Awards.
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Gary Taylor
#134347
Overall Influence
Gary Anthony Taylor, born in Los Angeles, California, is an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer. His songs have been recorded by a number of leading artists, including by Grover Washington, Jr. , Anita Baker , Walter Beasley, Lonnie Liston Smith, George Clinton & P-Funk Allstars, Vanessa Rubin , and The Whispers .
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Martin Bresnick
#137572
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Martin Bresnick is a composer of contemporary classical music, film scores and experimental music. Education and early career Bresnick grew up in the Bronx, and is a graduate of New York City's specialized High School of Music and Art. He was educated at the University of Hartford , Stanford University , and the Akademie für Musik, Vienna , and studied composition with John Chowning, György Ligeti and Gottfried von Einem. He went on to teach at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Stanford University and the Yale School of Music.
Go to Profile#8970
David Baker
#172691
Overall Influence
David Baker is an American musician best known as a founding member and the former lead singer of the indie rock band Mercury Rev, formed in Buffalo, New York in the late 1980s, and after as vocalist for Variety Lights.
Go to Profile#8971
Jonathan Stalling
#98153
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Jonathan Stalling is an American poet, scholar, editor, translator, professor, and inventor who works at the intersection of English and Chinese. He is the Harold J & Ruth Newman Chair for US-China Issues and co-director of the Institute for US-China Issues, and is Professor of International and Area Studies at the University of Oklahoma. He is also the affiliate English professor at the University of Oklahoma where he serves as the founding curator of the Chinese Literature Translation Archive , and as a founding editor of Chinese Literature Today journal and as the editor of the CLT and CLT book series published by the University of Oklahoma Press.
Go to Profile#8972
William VerMeulen
#173745
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
William VerMeulen is an American horn player and horn professor. He has been Principal Horn of the Houston Symphony Orchestra since 1990. He is also Professor of Horn at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University in Houston, Texas. In addition, he is Brass Artist-in-Residence at the Glenn Gould School of Music in Toronto and Visiting Professor of Horn at the Eastman School of Music. Before joining the HSO, he was a member of the Columbus Symphony, Honolulu Symphony, and Kansas City Philharmonic. In addition, he maintains an active solo and chamber music career with appearances at Music@M...
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Joan Morris
#140481
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Joan Morris is an American mezzo-soprano and cabaret singer. Life and career Born in Portland, Oregon, her musical partner and husband is composer/pianist William Bolcom. The couple specializes in older popular songs, primarily from the first half of the 20th century, but extending beyond that to include both contemporary cabaret, popular songs of the Gay Nineties, and a number of songs dating back to the 1860s.
Go to Profile#8974
Brandon Fields
#114315
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Brandon Fields is a saxophonist, flutist, and clarinetist from Indiana. He has recorded with Alex Acuña, David Benoit, Stanley Clarke, Harry Connick Jr., Luis Conte, Terence Trent D'Arby, Neil Diamond, George Duke, David Garfield, Robben Ford, Al Jarreau, Elton John, Quincy Jones, Los Lobotomys , Neil Larsen, Michael McDonald, Bill Meyers, Alphonse Mouzon, Ricky Peterson, Tom Petty, Lionel Richie, The Rippingtons, Tower of Power, Luther Vandross, Dave Weckl, Nancy Wilson and Phil Upchurch. He recorded also with Ray Charles, appearing on the posthumously-released album Genius Loves Company .
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Marta Portal
#90035
Overall Influence
1930 - 2016 (86 years)
Marta Portal Nicolás was a Spanish writer, critic, journalist, and professor associated with the Generation of '50. She was a recipient of the Premio Planeta de Novela. Career Portal held a degree in philosophy and literature and a PhD in Information Sciences, and taught Hispano-American literature at the Complutense University of Madrid. In her work as a journalist she wrote news articles and literary criticism, as well as opinion columns in media such as ABC, El Alcázar, and .
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Diana Carlin
#117166
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Diana B. Carlin is a Professor Emerita of Communication at Saint Louis University. She is known for her work centering on debate communication, specifically her focus on political debates. Carlin has authored several scholarly articles, and has co-authored several books, including her most recent, Gender and the American Presidency: Nine Presidential Women and the Barriers They Faced. Carlin has also been featured in The New York Times regarding the value of debate. Carlin views presidential debates as valuable due to their ability to summarize a candidates platform, put both candidates on di...
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Klaus Storck
#137205
Overall Influence
1928 - 2011 (83 years)
Klaus Storck was a German cellist who appeared internationally as soloist and chamber musician. He also edited music for cello. He often appeared in a duo with his wife, the harpist Helga Storck, and composers wrote music for them.
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Peter Hirsch
#93715
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Peter Hirsch is a German conductor, especially of opera. He has conducted several premieres, including Hans Zender's Stephen Climax at the Oper Frankfurt, and is focused on the work by Bernd Alois Zimmermann. Hirsch has appeared at international opera houses and festivals.
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Chaya Czernowin
#121501
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Chaya Czernowin is an Israeli American composer, and Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music at Harvard University. She is the lead composer at the Schloß Solitude Sommerakademie, a biannual international academy of composers and resident musicians at the landmark Schloß Solitude, in Stuttgart, Germany. She is a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow.
Go to Profile#8980
Alison Etheridge
#77921
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Alison Mary Etheridge is Professor of Probability and Head of the Department of Statistics, University of Oxford. Etheridge is a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. Education Etheridge was educated at Smestow School and the University of Oxford where she was awarded a Master of Arts degree followed by a Doctor of Philosophy in 1989 for research supervised by David Albert Edwards.
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James Martin Charlton
#161266
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
James Martin Charlton is an English playwright, theatre director and filmmaker. He was born in Romford, Greater London, United Kingdom in 1966. Career His play Fat Souls won the 1992 International Playwriting Festival at Warehouse Theatre, Croydon, where it premièred in 1993. Fat Souls and the plays which followed it - Groping in the Dark and Coming Up - use verse dialogue, soliloquies and emblematic characterisation all strapped to contemporary stories. The spiritual/anarchist strain in his writing continued in Divine Vision, a biographical play about the relationship between William Blake a...
Go to Profile#8982
Dan Welcher
#136273
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Dan Welcher is an American composer, conductor, and music educator. Biography Welcher was born in Rochester, New York and earned degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the Manhattan School of Music, studying bassoon, piano, and composition. He served the Louisville Orchestra as its principal bassoonist and taught composition and theory at the University of Louisville from 1972 to 1978. He also taught composition and bassoon at the Aspen Music Festival and School from 1976 until 1990. In 1978, he joined the faculty of the Butler School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin, where he founded the UT New Music Ensemble.
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Antonio Monda
#128218
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Antonio Monda is an Italian writer, filmmaker, essayist, and professor at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. He is a promoter of the arts, in particular film and literature. Family and early life Monda was born in Velletri into a family of liberal Catholic politicians, and currently remains a practicing Catholic himself. His father, who died of a heart attack when Monda was 15, was mayor of Cisterna di Latina, a city south to Rome, and helped finance films, including some by the Taviani brothers, who employed the young Monda in 1981. His brother Andrea, currently editor of L’Osservatore Romano is also a writer, and has published several books on Tolkien, C.
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Jim Cooper
#170061
Overall Influence
#8985
Larry Byrom
#88282
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
#8986
Priyadarshini
#94040
Overall Influence
Priyadarshini Ram, also known as Priyadharshi Ram or mononymously as Priyadarshini, is a Singaporean-Indian playback singer who has performed in more than 180 movies in the Tamil, Kannada, Telugu and Hindi cinema industries. She has also sung more than 800 songs for devotional and private albums in 10 languages.
Go to Profile#8987
Zakir Hussain
#122549
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Ustad Zakir Hussain is an Indian tabla player, composer, percussionist, music producer and film actor. He is the eldest son of tabla player Alla Rakha. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1988, the Padma Bhushan in 2002, and the Padma Vibhushan in 2023, by the Government of India. On 8 February 2009 for 51st Grammy Awards, Hussain won the Grammy in the Contemporary World Music Album category for his collaborative album Global Drum Project with Mickey Hart, Sikiru Adepoju & Giovanni Hidalgo.
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Peter Aston
#165957
Overall Influence
1938 - 2013 (75 years)
Peter Aston was an English composer, academic and conductor best known for his choral works. Born in Birmingham, he studied at Birmingham School of Music and the University of York. In 1964, he became a lecturer in music in the University of York and in 1974 he was appointed professor of music in the University of East Anglia, where he subsequently became Emeritus Professor of composition.
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Beverly Emmons
#127758
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Beverly Emmons is an American lighting designer for the stage, dance and opera. Career Emmons graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1965 and then worked as an assistant to Jules Fisher. Her first credit as a lighting designer was with the Off-Broadway play Sensations in 1970. Emmons first Broadway work was A Letter for Queen Victoria in 1975. She has been the lighting designer for many Broadway plays and musicals since then, most recently the revival of Annie Get Your Gun in 1999 and Stick Fly in 2011.
Go to Profile#8990
Tiger Okoshi
#120009
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Toru "Tiger" Okoshi is an American jazz fusion trumpeter born in Ashiya, Japan. After studying at Kwansei Gakuin University, Okoshi moved to the U.S. in 1972. In 1975 he completed studies at the Berklee College of Music. Okoshi collaborated in the 1970s with Gary Burton, and played with the Mike Gibbs Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in 1974. Following this he toured with Buddy Rich. In the early 1990s, he played in George Russell's Living Time Orchestra and recorded with Bob Moses. In the early 2000s he recorded several songs on the album Orpheus Again by Bruce Arnold.
Go to Profile#8991
Nathan Davis
#124667
Overall Influence
1937 - 2018 (81 years)
Nathan Tate Davis was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist who played the tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, and flute. He is known for his work with Eric Dolphy, Kenny Clarke, Ray Charles, Slide Hampton and Art Blakey.
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Friedhelm Brusniak
#160645
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Friedhelm Brusniak is a German music educator Life Born in Korbach, Brusniak visited the humanistic branch of the . After graduating from high school, he studied school music at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts from 1971. His teachers were Branka Musulin and Poldi Mildner , Richard Rudolf Klein and Helmuth Rilling . He studied musicology with Lothar Hoffmann-Erbrecht and Ludwig Finscher as well as history at the Goethe University Frankfurt. In 1975/77, he passed the First Staatsexamen for teaching at grammar schools. In 1980, he was awarded a Dr. phil. He completed his practical training at the Studienseminar Kassel I .
Go to Profile#8993
Ava June
#175123
Overall Influence
1931 - 2013 (82 years)
Ava June Wiggins was an English opera singer noted for her roles with the Sadler's Wells Opera . She joined the Opera in 1953 and switched from a mezzo to soprano on the persuasion of her teacher Clive Carey. June left the company in 1963 and also won a gold medal at the Sofia International Competition for young opera singers. She rejoined Sadler's Wells Opera seven years later and made her first performance in the United States in 1974 with the San Francisco Opera. June's last professional appearance as a singer came in 1983 and retired the following year to enter into a coaching role for the next generation of singers.
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William Reid
#89497
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
William Adam Reid is a Scottish musician, best known for being the lead guitarist, main songwriter, co-founder and occasional singer of the Scottish alternative rock band, The Jesus and Mary Chain. Musical career
Go to Profile#8995
Tom Neff
#121546
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Thomas Linden Neff -, known as Tom Neff, is an American film executive, director and producer, born in Chicago, Illinois. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee. Education Neff received his Bachelor of Arts from Lawrence University with a major in English. In 1981, he completed a Master of Fine Arts at the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California.
Go to Profile#8996
Hideki Noda
#169253
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Hideki Noda is a Japanese actor, playwright and theatre director who has written and directed more than 40 plays in Japan, and is working to bring modern Japanese theatre to an international audience.
Go to Profile#8997
Christoph Caskel
#173408
Overall Influence
1932 - 2023 (91 years)
Christoph Caskel was a German percussionist and teacher. Life Born in Greifswald, Caskel began learning percussion at an early age, taking lessons at the age of five with a military musician and as a schoolboy with a percussionist from the Berlin State Opera. He studied percussion formally from 1949 to 1953 with Wenzel Pricha at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Cologne. During these years, he began taking an interest in contemporary music under the influence of another lecturer at the Hochschule, the cellist Maurits Frank. After completing his conservatory training, he studied musicolog...
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Idrees Sulieman
#135629
Overall Influence
1923 - 2002 (79 years)
Idrees Sulieman was an American bop and hard bop trumpeter. Biography He was born Leonard Graham in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States, later changing his name to Idrees Sulieman, after converting to Islam. He studied at the Boston Conservatory, and gained early experience playing with the Carolina Cotton Pickers and the wartime Earl Hines Orchestra .
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David Carroll
#171123
Overall Influence
1913 - 2008 (95 years)
David Carroll was an American studio arranger, conductor, and musical director. Biography Carroll was born in Taylorville, Illinois. He wrote and recorded many songs of his own, played by musicians such as Tiny Hill, Bobby Christian, Earl Backus, Paul Severson, Mike Simpson, Sarah Vaughan, Vic Damone and Patti Page. While Carroll was musical director at Mercury Records , Quincy Jones composed some songs for him.
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Lisa Bowerman
#122067
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Lisa Bowerman is a British actress. She is best known for portraying Sandra Mute, the paramedic, in the BBC One medical drama Casualty, in the first two series . She also stars as Doctor Who companion Professor Bernice Summerfield in a series of the same name and many Doctor Who audios for Big Finish Productions productions, as well as directing many series for the company.
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