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,

#9201

Alejandro Amenábar

Alejandro Amenábar

#145073

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Alejandro Fernando Amenábar Cantos is a Chilean-Spanish film director, screenwriter and composer. He has won nine Goyas—including a Goya Award for Best Director for his 2001 film The Others— two European Film Awards and one Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for The Sea Inside among other honors. He has written the screenplays to all seven of his films and composed almost all of their soundtracks.

#9202

Frank Glazer

#147855

Overall Influence

1915 - 2015 (100 years)

Frank Glazer was an American pianist, composer, and teacher of music. Career details Glazer was born in Chester, Wisconsin on February 19, 1915, the sixth child of Benjamin and Clara Glazer, Jewish emigrants from Lithuania. The family moved to Milwaukee in 1919. His first piano lessons were given by his sister Blanche ; later he was taught by several local musicians. Frank Glazer was educated in Milwaukee Public Schools, and graduated the city's North Division High School in 1932. In his teenage years, he played in his brothers' dance band, his high school band and vaudeville. Alfred Stre...

#9203

Sarah Hutchings

#150782

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (42 years)

Sarah Hutchings née Reneer is an American composer of contemporary opera, art song, and choral works. Life and career Hutchings was born Sarah Reneer in Lexington, Kentucky, on September 27, 1984, and raised in Durham, North Carolina, where she had her first music lessons at the age of four.

#9204

Fredrik Ullén

#150169

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Fredrik Ullén is a Swedish pianist. He has made recordings for the BIS, BMG Classics, Caprice, Danacord, dbProductions, and Phono Suecia labels. Born in 1968 in Västerås, Ullén studied at the Royal College of Music, Stockholm, where his teachers included Gunnar Hallhagen and Irène Mannheimer. Later studies at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki included work with Liisa Pohjola.

#9205

Linda Sillitoe

#92043

Overall Influence

1948 - 2010 (62 years)

Linda Buhler Sillitoe was an American journalist, poet and historian. She is best known for her journalistic coverage about Mark Hofmann and the "Mormon forgery murders." Her subsequent book Salamander, coauthored with Allen Roberts, examined Hofmann's creation of an industry for forged documents, the 1985 bombing murders of two people, and the police investigation, arrest and conviction. The murder investigation eventually revealed Hofmann's documents, initially seen as undermining the early history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, were forgeries. Sillitoe’s published wo...

#9206

Ben Vereen

#139610

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Benjamin Augustus Vereen is an American actor, dancer and singer. Vereen gained prominence for his performances in the original Broadway productions of the musicals Jesus Christ Superstar, for which he received a Tony Award nomination, and Pippin, for which he won the 1973 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical.

#9207

Mitsuo Yanagimachi

Mitsuo Yanagimachi

#137692

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Mitsuo Yanagimachi is a Japanese screenwriter and film director. Career Born in Namegata District, Ibaraki, Yanagimachi attended the Faculty of Law at Waseda University but began studying filmmaking. Working as a freelance assistant director after graduating, he started his own production company in 1974 and produced the documentary film God Speed You! Black Emperor about bōsōzoku. He made his fiction film debut in 1979 with Jūkyūsai no Chizu. That and the later Himatsuri were based on novels by Kenji Nakagami. His 1982 work Saraba Itoshiki Daichi showed in the Competition at the Berlin Film Festival.

#9208

Peter Holtslag

#172479

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Peter Holtslag is a Dutch recorder and flauto traverso virtuoso. Holtslag studied recorder at the Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam , Frans Brüggen being his great inspiration, graduating with distinction in 1980. He has toured worldwide as a recorder and flauto traverso player, performing with musicians such as Gustav Leonhardt, William Christie and Roy Goodman, as well as with ensembles such as The English Concert, Orchestra of the 18th Century, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, La Fontegara Amsterdam and Trio Noname. He has recorded numerous CDs for major labels, including Hyperion, DGG/...

#9209

Norman Fischer

#178304

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Norman Charles Fischer is an American cellist. Fischer is the Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Cello and director of chamber music at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. Biography Early Career A student of Richard Kapuscinski, Claus Adam and Bernard Greenhouse, Fischer is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. His professional solo debut was in 1983 in Symphony Space of Johann Sebastian Bach's complete cello suites which the The New York Times called "inspiring."

#9210

Al Dimalanta

#170849

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Al Dimalanta is a Filipino musician, writer, public relations practitioner, photographer, visual artist, and professor. He is best known as the leader, co-founder and chief songwriter of the Philippine punk band Dead Ends and the leader and chief songwriter of punk-hardcore band Throw [2000–2019], considered one of the most important bands in the contemporary Philippine punk scene.

#9211

Adolfas Mekas

#134360

Overall Influence

1925 - 2011 (86 years)

Adolfas Mekas was a Lithuanian-born American filmmaker, writer, director, editor, actor and educator. With his brother Jonas Mekas, he founded the magazine Film Culture, as well as the Film-Makers' Cooperative and was associated with George Maciunas and the Fluxus art movement at its beginning. He made several short films, culminating in the feature Hallelujah the Hills in 1963, which was played at the Cannes Film Festival of that year and is now considered a classic of American film.

#9212

Marvin Sapp

#89105

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Bishop Marvin Louis Sapp is an American Gospel music singer-songwriter who recorded with the group Commissioned during the 1990s before beginning a record-breaking solo career. Early life and education Born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Sapp began singing in church at age four. In third grade he met MaLinda Prince, his future wife.

#9213

Chris Clark

#119807

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Christine Elizabeth Clark , better known as Chris Clark, is an American soul, jazz, and blues singer, who recorded for Motown Records. Clark became known to Northern Soul fans for hit songs such as 1965's "Do Right Baby Do Right" and 1966's "Love's Gone Bad" . She later co-wrote the screenplay for the 1972 motion picture Lady Sings the Blues starring Diana Ross, which earned Clark an Academy Award nomination.

#9214

William Schimmel

#142047

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

William Schimmel is one of the principal architects in the resurgence of the accordion, and the philosophy of "Musical Reality" . He holds Bachelor of Music, Master of Science and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees in composition from the Juilliard School, along with a diploma from the Neupauer Conservatory of Music in performance/composition. He performs music in many genres, has commissioned and premiered hundreds of new works, has composed over 4000 works in every medium, has written a number of books and articles and has made numerous recordings and videos. He has composed over 4000 works in...

#9215

Peter Hansen

#133603

Overall Influence

1921 - 2017 (96 years)

Peter Franklin Hansen was an American actor, best known for his role as lawyer Lee Baldwin, on the soap opera General Hospital, appearing in the role from 1963 to 1986, briefly in 1989 and 1990, and returning to the role from 1992 to 2004. In 1989, he appeared in the movie The War of the Roses.

#9216

Sam Harper

#158540

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Sam Harper is an American filmmaker. Career Harper was born into an artistic family with a father who was a painter and a mother who was a writer. After college, he worked as a reporter and associate editor for the advertising industry trade publication Advertising Age in New York City before coming to California to work as a story analyst. Harper's primary role has been a screenwriter but he has been a director and producer as well. Many of Harper's films have received mixed to neutral reviews from film critics but have been highly profitable at the box office in terms of gross receipts. He ...

#9217

Robert Hurst

#135301

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Robert Hurst is an American jazz bassist. Biography Hurst played guitar early in his career before concentrating on bass. He worked with Out of the Blue in 1985 and also did work with musicians such as Tony Williams, Mulgrew Miller, Harry Connick Jr., Geri Allen, Russell Malone, and Steve Coleman. From 1986 to 1991 Hurst played in Wynton Marsalis's ensemble, and played with Branford Marsalis in the early 1990s. He was also a member of The Tonight Show Band. His debut as a leader, 1993's Robert Hurst Presents, reached No. 13 on the Billboard Top Jazz Albums chart. He currently teaches jazz bas...

#9218

Dean Drummond

#172135

Overall Influence

1949 - 2013 (64 years)

Dean Drummond was an American composer, arranger, conductor and musician. His music featured microtonality, electronics, and a variety of percussion. He invented a 31-tone instrument called the zoomoozophone in 1978. From 1990 to his death he was the conservator of the Harry Partch instrumentarium.

#9219

Olly Wilson

#140202

Overall Influence

1937 - 2018 (81 years)

Olly Woodrow Wilson, Jr. was an American composer of contemporary classical music, pianist, double bassist, and a musicologist. He was one of the most preeminent composers of African American descent in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He is known for developing a list of Heterogenous Sound Ideals that is widely used to dissect different aspects of music, with an emphasis on African culture. According to Wilson himself, "The essence of Africanness consists of a way of doing something, not simply something that is done" . This motto is the basis of Wilson's work in the realm of ethnomusicology.

#9220

Charles Tolliver

Charles Tolliver

#133369

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Charles Tolliver is an American jazz trumpeter, composer, and co-founder of Strata East Records. Biography Tolliver was born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1942 and moved with his family to New York City when he was 10. During his childhood, his grandmother gave him his first horn, a cornet he had coveted. Tolliver attended Howard University in the early 1960s as a pharmacy major, when he decided to pursue music as a career and return home to New York City. He came to prominence in 1964, playing and recording on Jackie McLean's Blue Note albums. In 1971, Tolliver and Stanley Cowell founded Strata-East Records, and Tolliver released many albums and collaborations on Strata-East.

#9221

Ivan Fedele

#171742

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Ivan Fedele is an Italian composer. He studied at the Milan Conservatory. Fedele's compositions are published by Edizioni Suvini Zerboni, and many of his works are recorded on Stradivarius Records. Selected works StageOltre Narciso, Cantata profana for una azione scenica [Secular Cantata for a Scenic Action] for mezzo-soprano, baritone, 2 dancers, male chorus and small orchestra ; libretto by the composerAntigone, opera in 7 scenes ; libretto after Sophocles by Giuliano Corti and the composer; premiere 24 April 2007, Teatro Comunale, Florence.OrchestraChiari Epos Carme for chamber orchestra C...

#9222

Gabriella Hermon

#180119

Overall Influence

Gabriella Hermon is an American linguist, professor emerita at the University of Delaware. Career Hermon received her Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Illinois in 1981, and has taught at San Diego State University, and the University of Illinois, as well as the University of Delaware.

#9223

Eiji Oue

#109189

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Eiji Oue is a Japanese conductor. Biography Oue began his conducting studies with Hideo Saito of the Toho Gakuen School of Music. In 1978, Seiji Ozawa invited him to spend the summer studying at the Tanglewood Music Center. There he met Leonard Bernstein, who became a mentor. Oue won the Tanglewood Koussevitzky Prize in 1980. He also studied under Bernstein as a conducting fellow at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute.

#9224

Mark David Lee

#74248

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Mark David Lee is an American musician known as the guitarist and a founding member of the Christian rock band, Third Day. He and vocalist Mac Powell were the only original members present throughout the band's entire history.

#9225

Lonnie Smith

#114866

Overall Influence

1942 - 2021 (79 years)

#9226

Glenn Price

#128435

Overall Influence

Dr. Glenn D. Price is a Canadian conductor who is the Director of Performing and Visual Arts at the California Institute of Technology , where he currently conducts the Symphony Orchestra and Wind Orchestra. He was formerly the Director of Wind Studies at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

#9227

Felix Ayo

#173521

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

Felix Ayo Losada was a Spanish-born Italian violinist. He was a founder of the Italian ensemble I Musici and of the Quartetto Beethoven di Roma. He played in major concert halls of the world as a soloist and especially as a chamber musician. In a career that spanned more than fifty years, he was a prolific recording artist, and an academic teacher.

#9228

Bharadwaj

#110546

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Ramani Bharadwaj is an Indian music composer, singer-songwriter, who predominantly known for his work in Tamil cinema. He is a recipient of the Kalaimamani Award for the year 2008 from the Tamil Nadu State Government.

#9229

Norro Wilson

#107810

Overall Influence

1938 - 2017 (79 years)

Norris Denton "Norro" Wilson was an American country music singer-songwriter, producer, and member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. Wilson wrote or co-wrote numerous hit songs during more than 40 years in the industry, including songs for David Houston, Jean Shepard, Charlie Rich, Charley Pride, George Jones, and Tammy Wynette, among many others. He also produced or co-produced songs for dozens of artists, including early Reba McEntire, Joe Stampley, Margo Smith, Sara Evans, Kenny Chesney, and Shania Twain.

#9230

Jeremy Commons

#147718

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

Jeremy Paul Axford Commons is a New Zealand opera historian, scholar, impresario and librettist. He is an authority on nineteenth-century Italian opera and has published major works on the composers Gaetano Donizetti and Nicola Vaccaj.

#9231

Hertha Töpper

#127997

Overall Influence

1924 - 2020 (96 years)

Hertha Töpper was an Austrian contralto in opera and concert, and an academic voice teacher. A member of the Bavarian State Opera, she appeared in leading roles at major international opera houses and festivals.

#9232

Michel Delville

#150015

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Michel Delville is a Belgian musician, writer and critic. Delville teaches literature at the University of Liège. He is the author of books about comparative poetics and interdisciplinary studies. He was awarded the 1998 SAMLA Book Award, the Choice Outstanding Book Award, the Léon Guérin Prize, the 2001 Alumni Award of the Belgian American Educational Foundation, the rank of Officer of the Order of Leopold I , and the 2009 Prix Wernaers pour la recherche et la diffusion des connaissances.

#9233

Linda George

#121515

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Linda George is an Assyrian-American singer known for her sentimental ballads and dance songs. The vast majority of her songs are sung in her native Syriac-Aramaic language, though a few are in English and Arabic.

#9234

László Polgár

#171624

Overall Influence

1947 - 2010 (63 years)

László Polgár was a Hungarian operatic bass. He was a singer in the Opera, Oratorio and Lieder genres and was renowned for his silky voice and outstanding declamation and musicality. His art is well represented on compact disc, particularly in opera.

#9235

Jonathan Kramer

#119163

Overall Influence

1942 - 2004 (62 years)

Jonathan Donald Kramer was an American composer and music theorist. Biography Kramer received his B.A. magna cum laude from Harvard University and his MA and PhD in music from the University of California, Berkeley . His composition teachers included Karlheinz Stockhausen, Roger Sessions, Leon Kirchner, Seymour Shifrin, Andrew Imbrie, Richard Felciano, Jean-Claude Éloy, Billy Jim Layton, Edwin Dugger, and Arnold Franchetti. He studied theory with David Lewin, criticism with Joseph Kerman, and computer music with John Chowning.

#9236

Barry Vercoe

#119876

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Barry Lloyd Vercoe is a New Zealand-born computer scientist and composer. He is best known as the inventor of Csound, a music synthesis language with wide usage among computer music composers. SAOL, the underlying language for the MPEG-4 Structured Audio standard, is also historically derived from Csound.

#9237

Sarah Dougher

#124013

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Sarah Dougher is an American singer-songwriter, author, and teacher. Dougher began her musical career playing the Farfisa organ in the Portland, Oregon based band The Crabs, and later joined Cadallaca with Sleater-Kinney frontwoman Corin Tucker. She has also released multiple solo albums.

#9238

Gerre Hancock

#170430

Overall Influence

1934 - 2012 (78 years)

Gerre Edward Hancock was an American organist, improviser, and composer. Hancock was Professor of Organ and Sacred Music at the University of Texas at Austin. He died of cardiac arrest in Austin, Texas, on Saturday, January 21, 2012.

#9239

Will Johnson

#180486

Overall Influence

Will Johnson is an American composer and improviser. Johnson, who was raised in Marietta, Georgia, earned a B.A. in music from Princeton University and an M.A. in music composition from the University of California, Berkeley. In 1966–67 he attended the composition seminar given by visiting professor Karlheinz Stockhausen at the University of California, Davis.

#9240

Lilly Irani

#153741

Overall Influence

Lilly Christine Irani is an American academic whose research spans topics in computer science, communication studies, feminist studies, entrepreneurship, and microwork. She is an associate professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California, San Diego.

#9241

Martin Gatt

#143888

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Martin Gatt is a British classical bassoonist. He studied under Archie Camden at the Royal College of Music in London. He served as principal bassoonist of the London Philharmonic Orchestra from 1958 to 1966, after which he was appointed principal bassoonist of the English Chamber Orchestra from 1966 to 1976. He also held the post of principal bassoon of the London Symphony Orchestra from 1977 to 1998, and was the bassoonist in the Barry Tuckwell Wind Quintet from 1967 to 1991. He is also active in music education. At the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts he founded the Department of Wind, Brass and Percussion.

#9242

Christophe Desjardins

#175887

Overall Influence

1962 - 2020 (58 years)

Christophe Desjardins was a French violist and specialist in contemporary music. Biography Born in Caen, Christophe Desjardins entered the Conservatoire de Paris in 1982, at the age of 20, in Serge Collot's class. He also studied at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. In 1990, he was solo violist at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels. He joined the Ensemble InterContemporain in Paris in 1990.

#9243

Robert Beatty

#138425

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

Robert Beatty is an American artist and musician based in Lexington, Kentucky, best known for his noise band Hair Police, his solo project Three Legged Race, and most recently for his work designing album covers, including Tame Impala's Currents , Kesha's Rainbow , and limited-edition artwork for The Weeknd's Dawn FM .

#9244

Karl Ulrich Schnabel

#170692

Overall Influence

1909 - 2001 (92 years)

Karl Ulrich Schnabel was an Austrian pianist. Schnabel was the son of pianist Artur Schnabel and operatic contralto and lieder singer Therese Behr and elder brother of the American actor Stefan Schnabel. An internationally celebrated teacher of the piano, his students include, among others, Leon Fleisher, Claude Frank, Richard Goode, Kwong-Kwong Ma, Stanislav Ioudenitch, Jon Nakamatsu, Murray Perahia, and Peter Serkin.

#9245

Akiko Kobayashi

#114762

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

, also known by her alias Holi, is a Japanese singer, songwriter, composer and arranger. Kobayashi collaborated with Brian Eno and U2 on their 1995 project, the Passengers. Her smash hit debut song, from 1985s popular show "Kinyōbi no Tsumatachi e" made her famous in Japan.

#9246

D'Anna Fortunato

#175591

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

D'Anna Fortunato is an American mezzo-soprano. She has long been an admired favorite on the American orchestral-concert scene, while establishing herself as a respected operatic artist as well. Of her New York City Opera debut in Handel's Alcina, the New Yorker called her "a Handelian of crisp accomplishment".

#9247

Doris Troy

#149619

Overall Influence

1937 - 2004 (67 years)

Doris Troy was an American R&B singer and songwriter, known to her fans as "Mama Soul". Her biggest hit was "Just One Look", a top 10 hit in 1963. Life and career She was born as Doris Elaine Higginsen, in the Bronx, the daughter of a Barbadian Pentecostal minister. She later took her grandmother's name and grew up as Doris Payne. Her parents disapproved of "subversive" forms of music like rhythm & blues, so she cut her teeth singing in her father's choir. At age 16, she was working as an usherette at the Apollo where she was discovered by James Brown. Under the name Doris Payne, she began so...

#9248

Philip Bailey

#131342

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Philip James Bailey is an American singer, songwriter and percussionist, best known as an early member and one of the two lead singers of the band Earth, Wind & Fire. Noted for his four-octave vocal range and distinctive falsetto register, Bailey was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Vocal Group Hall of Fame as a member of Earth, Wind & Fire. Bailey was also inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame for his work with the band.

#9249

Walburga Litschauer

#154895

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Walburga Litschauer is an Austrian musicologist and Franz Schubert scholar. Life Born in Klagenfurt, Carinthia, Litschauer studied music and theatre studies at the University of Vienna and completed piano training at the Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna. In 1979, she passed the State examination in piano, in 1980 she received her doctorate and in 2005 her habilitation at the University of Vienna. In 2015, the professional title "Professor" was conferred on her.

#9250

Kevin Locke

#169563

Overall Influence

1954 - 2022 (68 years)

Kevin Edward Locke was of Lakota descent of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and Anishinaabe of White Earth. He was a preeminent player of the Native American flute, a traditional storyteller, cultural ambassador, recording artist and educator. He was best-known for his hoop dance, The Hoop of Life.

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