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).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Communications,

#9601

Cuong Vu

#141867

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Cuong Vu , born 19 September 1969, is a Vietnamese-American jazz trumpeter. In addition to his own work as a bandleader, Vu was a member of the Pat Metheny Group. He is the first American person of Vietnamese descent to win a Grammy Award. He won twice for Best Contemporary Jazz Album through his work with the band. He is currently associate professor and chair of jazz studies at the University of Washington.

#9602

Hormoz Farhat

#127163

Overall Influence

1929 - 2021 (92 years)

Hormoz Farhat was a Persian-American composer and ethnomusicologist who spent much of his career in Dublin, Ireland. An emeritus professor of music, he was a fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. Described by the Irish Times as a "a gifted and distinctive composer of contemporary classical music," his compositions include orchestral, concertante, piano and choral music, as well string quartets and chamber works. He also wrote numerous film scores, including that of Dariush Mehrjui's 1969 film The Cow. However, his musicological research dominates his legacy; his writings on the music of Iran—a c...

#9603

Judith Lang Zaimont

#164775

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Judith Lang Zaimont is an American composer and pianist. Biography Judith Lang Zaimont was born in Memphis, Tennessee, to a Jewish family. Both Zaimont and her sister, Doris Lang Kosloff, began piano lessons with their mother, Bertha Lang, who was an accomplished pianist and singer. Bertha was very active in the music profession and served as a president of the New York State Music Teachers Association. Judith began lessons at Juilliard at age 12, where she studied piano and theory from 1958-1964. These lessons included piano with Rosina Lhévinne and theory and duo-piano with Ann Hull. Judith...

#9604

Christopher Yohmei Blasdel

#175381

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Christopher Yohmei Blasdel is a shakuhachi performer, researcher and writer specializing in the music of Japan and Asia. In 1972, while on foreign study in Tokyo, he was introduced to the Kinko Style shakuhachi master Goro Yamaguchi, whom he studied with until Yamaguchi’s death in 1999. In 1975, Blasdel began learning Aikido under Yasuo Kobayashi and performing with the butoh dancer Akira Kasai at his studio, Tenshikan. Blasdel presently holds a 5th degree black belt in Aikido.

#9605

Adriana Hölszky

#162007

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Adriana Hölszky is a Romanian-born German music educator, composer and pianist who has been living in Germany since 1976. Biography Hölszky was born in Bucharest. In the years 1959-1969 she studied piano with Olga Rosca-Berdan at the music school in Bucharest. In 1972, she began to study composition with Ştefan Niculescu as parallel to piano studies at the Bucharest Music Conservatory. In 1976 she moved with her family to Germany. Here she continued her studies, and in 1977-1980 she studied composition at the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart with Milko Kelemen, and chamber music with Günter Louegk.

#9606

Honor McKellar

#181766

Overall Influence

1920 - Present (106 years)

Winifred Honor McKellar is a New Zealand former mezzo-soprano opera singer and singing teacher, and was the first full-time lecturer in singing at the University of Otago in Dunedin. Her students have included Jonathan Lemalu, Patrick Power and Matt Landreth. In 1989, she was awarded a Queen's Service Medal for services to music, and in 2012, she was made a life member of the New Zealand Association of Teachers of Singing.

#9607

Anthony Dunne

#80863

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Anthony Dunne is a critical designer, educator and founder of the art group Dunne and Raby. He runs the studio with his long term partner and collaborator Fiona Raby. He was a reader at the Royal College of Art Design Interactions department from 2005 - 2015 before leaving and moving to New York to take up professorships in Design and Emerging Technologies at the New School.

#9608

Georg Grün

#126061

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Georg Grün is a German conductor. He studied church and school music, conducting, Catholic theology and musicology at the Musikhochschule Saarbrücken and the University of Saarland, and studied organ improvisation under Jean-Pierre Leguay in Paris. He is the conductor of the chamber choir KammerChor Saarbrücken, which he established in 1990. In 2000 he became a professor at the Music Conservatory in Mannheim and has given master classes internationally. In 2012 he became a professor at the Music Conservatory Saar in Saarbrücken.

#9609

Kristen Syrett

#174110

Overall Influence

Kristen Syrett is a linguist whose work focuses on language acquisition, psycholinguistics, semantics, and pragmatics. Career Syrett completed her Ph.D. at Northwestern University in 2007 as a student of Jeffrey Lidz, Christopher Kennedy, and Sandra Waxman, with a dissertation titled Learning about the structure of scales: Adverbial modification and the acquisition of the semantics of gradable adjectives.

#9610

Ewald Kooiman

#177189

Overall Influence

1938 - 2009 (71 years)

Ewald Kooiman , was a Dutch organist. He studied organ in Amsterdam with Piet Kee and with Jean Langlais in Paris. In addition, he was professor of Romance languages. Recordings He recorded the complete organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach twice on contemporary organs on LP and CD. A third recording cycle on Silbermann organs in Alsace, which Kooiman had started in April 2008 for the German label Aeolus was only partly completed at the time of his unexpected death.

#9611

Adrienne Shaw

#170962

Overall Influence

1983 - Present (43 years)

Adrienne Shaw is an American game studies scholar and Associate Professor at Temple University in the Klein College of Media and Communication. She is known for her work on queer theory and LGBTQ representation in video games. She is the author of Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture, the co-editor of Queer Game Studies, and the founder of the LGBTQ Video Games Archive.

#9612

Steven Greenberg

#110439

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Steven Greenberg is an American musician, record producer and the owner of the independent label October Records. He is best known for his band Lipps Inc.'s 1980 hit song "Funkytown" . Career Greenberg was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. In his twenties, Greenberg was a multi-instrumentalist who played in several bands. He had been trying for some time to secure a production deal, and he drew the interest of the Casablanca label with a disco track called "Rock It," which became a hit locally. Released nationally in late 1979, "Rock It" made it into the Top 20 on the Billboard Disco Charts.

#9613

Roger Goeb

#174746

Overall Influence

1914 - 1997 (83 years)

Roger John Goeb was an American composer. Biography Roger Goeb was born in Cherokee, Iowa. Although he had studied piano, trumpet, French horn, viola, violin, and woodwind instruments from an early age, he turned to the profession of music comparatively late. He studied agriculture at the University of Wisconsin , earning a BS degree in 1936. He then earned his living for two years playing in jazz bands before going to Paris to study composition at the Ecole Normale de Musique with Nadia Boulanger . Returning to the United States he studied composition privately with Otto Luening, followed by...

#9614

Michael Hearst

#140797

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Michael Marcus Hearst is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, writer, and producer. He is best known for his solo albums Songs For Ice Cream Trucks, Songs For Unusual Creatures, Songs For Fearful Flyers, Songs For Unconventional Vehicles and Songs For Extraordinary People, as well as the children's books Unusual Creatures, Extraordinary People, Curious Constructions and Unconventional Vehicles. He has composed the music for a number of films including The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin, Chicken People, To Be Takei, Magic Camp, and House of Suh. In 2014, he co-produced and co-directed Unusual Creatures, a ten episode series for PBS Digital Studios.

#9615

Yoritsune Matsudaira

Yoritsune Matsudaira

#168978

Overall Influence

1907 - 2001 (94 years)

Yoritsune Matsudaira was a Japanese composer of contemporary classical music. Matsudaira was descended, on his father's side of the family, from the Matsudaira clan, related to the Tokugawa clan who ruled Japan as shōgun during the Edo period , and on his mother's side of the family from the Fujiwara clan, who were court regents from the 7th to the 12th centuries. His style was influenced by gagaku, the ancient court music of Japan. His music has been frequently performed in Europe.

#9616

Mike Smith

#161273

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Michael Smith is an American jazz saxophonist who has released albums as leader on Delmark Records, and his own labels Fastrax and Underground Labs. Smith graduated in 1980 from the University of North Texas and played in the famed One O'Clock Lab Band. He studied with notable saxophone professor Jim Riggs.

#9617

Shane Keister

#95777

Overall Influence

Shane Keister is an American musician. He is known for his work as a studio musician, writer, arranger and producer. He plays synthesizer, piano, Hammond B3, Synclavier, Fairlight CMI, Fender Rhodes, and others.

#9618

Ray Chen

#123538

Overall Influence

1989 - Present (37 years)

Ray Chen is a Taiwanese-Australian violinist. He was the winner of the 2008 International Yehudi Menuhin Violin Competition and the 2009 Queen Elisabeth Competition. Since then, he has regularly collaborated with the world’s foremost orchestras and appeared at renowned concert halls.

#9619

Bob Merrill

#156081

Overall Influence

1921 - 1998 (77 years)

Henry Robert Merrill Levan was an American songwriter, theatrical composer, lyricist, and screenwriter. He was one of the most successful songwriters of the 1950s on the US and UK single charts. He wrote musicals for the Broadway stage, including Carnival! and Funny Girl .

#9620

Elizabeth Stephens

#99885

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Elizabeth M. "Beth" Stephens is an American filmmaker, artist, sculptor, photographer, professor and two time Chair of the Art Department at UC Santa Cruz. Stephens, who describes herself as "ecosexual", collaborates with her wife since 2002, ecosexual artist, radical sex educator, and performer Annie Sprinkle.

#9621

Martin Kennedy

#180555

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Martin Kennedy is a pianist and composer of contemporary classical music. Biography Martin Kennedy was born in Wakefield, England and grew up in Pennsylvania and Alabama. He holds a Doctorate in Music Composition from the Juilliard School where he studied as a C.V. Starr fellow under Milton Babbitt and Samuel Adler. He completed his master's degree in composition at the Jacobs School of Music, where he also received his bachelor's degrees in composition and piano performance.

#9622

Richard Bell

#170813

Overall Influence

1946 - 2007 (61 years)

Richard Bell was a Canadian musician best known as the pianist for Janis Joplin and her Full Tilt Boogie Band. He was also a keyboardist with the Band during the 1990s. Early life and career Richard Bell was the son of the Canadian composer and musician Dr. Leslie Bell. Richard started playing the piano at the age of four and studied music at Canada's Royal Conservatory of Music.

#9623

Violaine Prince

Violaine Prince

#182406

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Violaine Prince is a French-Lebanese composer. Works Arabesques. Cycle du jour. Violin SonatasDe Profundis.Requiem

#9624

Jean-Pierre Bekolo

#168384

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Jean-Pierre Bekolo is a Cameroon film director. Background and career Jean-Pierre Bekolo was born in 1966 in Yaounde, Cameroon. He studied physics at the University of Yaounde in Cameroon from 1984 to 1987. He then studied in the National Institution of Audiovisuals in Bry-sur-Marne, France, under French film theorist Christian Metz. He returned to Cameroon to work as an editor for Cameroonian television.

#9625

Brian Brockless

#180278

Overall Influence

1926 - 1995 (69 years)

Brian Brockless was an English composer, organist and conductor and, for much of his life, was the Director of Music at the Priory Church of St Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield, London where he succeeded Paul Steinitz in 1961. He was a much respected Choral Trainer and his annual performances of Bach's St John Passion were noted for their musicality. He was the founder of Pro Cantione Antiqua, originally known as the St Bartholomew Singers.

#9626

Salli Terri

#140808

Overall Influence

1922 - 1996 (74 years)

Salli C. Terri was a singer, arranger, recording artist, and composer. Record audiences still cite Terri's "haunting" vocals, with Hi-Fi Review originally describing her as "a mezzo soprano whose velvet voice and astonishing flexibility has hardly an equal at present."

#9627

Anshel Brusilow

#169978

Overall Influence

1928 - 2018 (90 years)

Anshel Brusilow was an American violinist, conductor, and music educator at the collegiate level. Early life and education Brusilow was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1928, the son of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants Leon and Dora Brusilow . He began his violin study at the age of five with William Frederick Happich and subsequently studied with Jani Szanto . Brusilow entered the Curtis Institute of Music when he was eleven and studied there with Efrem Zimbalist. Throughout most of his childhood and adolescence, he was known as "Albert Brusilow". Later, at the urging of his girlfriend , he...

#9628

Dudley Knight

#177684

Overall Influence

1939 - 2013 (74 years)

Dudley Knight was an American voice, speech, and dialect expert, as well as a stage and television actor. He was best known for his long career as a speech and dialect teacher and voice director for professional theatre. He conducted workshops and lectures on voice and speech for actors and voice teachers worldwide.

#9629

David Noon

#165273

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

David Noon is a contemporary classical composer and educator. He has written over 200 works from opera to chamber music. Noon's composition teachers have included Karl Kohn, Darius Milhaud, Charles Jones, Yehudi Wyner, Mario Davidovsky, and Wlodzimierz Kotonski. He was a distinguished member of the faculty at the Manhattan School of Music for 30 years.

#9630

Steven Lubin

#144797

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Steven Lubin is an American pianist and musical scholar. He is best known for his performances on the fortepiano, the early version of the piano. Studies Lubin studied piano with Lisa Grad, Nadia Reisenberg, Seymour Lipkin, Rosina Lhévinne and Beveridge Webster, and viola with Florence Nicolaides. He attended New York's Music & Art High School; graduated from Harvard College, majoring in philosophy; he earned a master's degree in piano at the Juilliard School; and he completed his Ph.D. in musicology at New York University, where he wrote a dissertation entitled "Techniques for the Analys...

#9631

Richard Wilson

#99527

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Richard Wilson is an English sculptor, installation artist and musician. Biography Born in Islington, London, Wilson studied at the London College of Printing, Hornsey College of Art and Reading University. He was the DAAD resident in Berlin in 1992, Maeda Visiting Artist at the Architectural Association in 1998 and nominated for the Turner Prize in both 1988 and 1989 .

#9632

Richard Aaker Trythall

#104888

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Richard Aaker Trythall was an American and Italian composer and pianist of contemporary classical music. Early life and education Trythall was born on July 25, 1939, in Knoxville, Tennessee, the younger brother of composer Gil Trythall. His family, related to composer Edvard Grieg, has Welsh and Norwegian ancestry, and moved to the United States from Norway.

#9633

John Zdechlik

#168467

Overall Influence

1937 - 2020 (83 years)

John Zdechlik was an American composer, music teacher, and conductor. He was elected to the American Bandmasters Association and many of his compositions became standard concert band repertoire, including Chorale and Shaker Dance.

#9634

Kathleen S. Kelly

#180351

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Kathleen S. Kelly is an American public relations theorist and academic administrator. She is a professor and chair of the department of public relations at University of Florida. Kelly was the Hubert J. Bourgeois Research Professor in Communication at University of Louisiana at Lafayette. She served as associate dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism. Kelly is a Fellow of the PRSA.

#9635

Jimmy Nelson

#153752

Overall Influence

1919 - 2007 (88 years)

James Nelson , known as Jimmy "T99" Nelson, was an American jump blues and rhythm and blues shouter and songwriter. With a recording career that spanned over 50 years, Jimmy "T99" Nelson became a distinguished elder statesman of American music. His best known recordings are "T-99 Blues" and "Meet Me With Your Black Dress On". Nelson notably worked with Duke Robillard and Otis Grand.

#9636

Noam Sheriff

#112311

Overall Influence

1935 - 2018 (83 years)

Noam Sheriff was an Israeli composer, conductor, educator and arranger. He was Artistic Director of Israel Netanya Kibbutz Orchestra ; Music Director of the Israel Symphony Orchestra Rishon LeZion ; Professor of Composition and Conducting at the Tel Aviv University's Samuel Rubin Academy of Music since 1990 and the Academy's director ; Artistic Director of the Israel Chamber Orchestra ; and Artistic Director of the Haifa Symphony Orchestra .

#9637

Dick Oatts

#166652

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Richard Dennis Oatts is an American jazz saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and educator. Biography While growing up in Des Moines, Iowa, Oatts gained an interest in music from his father, Jack Oatts, who was a saxophonist himself and a respected music educator in the Midwest. After high school, Oatts attended Drake University for one year before dropping out and moving to Minneapolis to begin a career in music in 1972. In 1977, he was called by Thad Jones to join The Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, which later became the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra. Oatts moved to New York City to joi...

#9638

Evan Chambers

#168440

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Evan Chambers is a composer, traditional Irish fiddler, and Professor of Composition at the University of Michigan. He received a Doctorate in music composition from the University of Michigan. His teachers include William Albright for whose Requiem he composed Lament, Leslie Bassett, Nicholas Thorne, and Marilyn Shrude, with studies in electronic music with George Wilson and Burton Beerman. He is a member of the Lindisfarne Association.

#9639

Peter Jacobs

#176808

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Peter Jacobs is an English pianist. Jacobs was born in London and studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London with Alexander Kelly and Eric Fenby . For a while he was Director of Music at Taunton School, but returned to London to begin his career as a concert pianist, examiner and adjudicator. His initial public performances were in chamber groups, and as part of a pianist duo with Elizabeth Lightoller before making his solo debut at the Wigmore Hall on 9 May 1975 with a programme of little-known 20th century composers.

#9640

Daniel Crozier

#153033

Overall Influence

Daniel Crozier is an American composer and academic. He is associate professor of Theory and Composition at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. Career Works by Crozier have received performances in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Boston, Toronto, Syracuse , at Washington's Kennedy Center, the Aspen Music Festival, the Oregon Bach Festival Composers' Symposium, and by the Bach Festival Society of Winter Park, and have been recorded by MARK Records and Navona Records as well as for broadcast by the Belgian Radio and Television Network. "Ceremonies for Orchestra", Triptych, his first symphony, has been recorded by the Seattle Symphony under conductor Gerard Schwarz.

#9641

Malcolm Binns

#176730

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Malcolm Binns is a British classical pianist. Biography Malcolm Binns was born in Nottingham, England, in 1936. He studied music at the Royal College of Music in London from 1952 to 1956, including piano with Arthur Alexander. He made his London debut in 1957 and his Wigmore Hall debut in 1958.

#9642

Paul Cameron

#110771

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

DIRECTORS REELCINEMATOGRAPHERS WEBSITE Paul A. Cameron is a Canadian-born American cinematographer. He is best known for his work on the film Collateral , as well as the HBO series Westworld. Biography Paul Cameron, ASC’s visually groundbreaking work as a director and a director of photography has helped shape the craft of cinematography in the 21st century. Cameron recently directed multiple episodes of “Special Ops: Lioness”, created by Taylor Sheridan for Paramount+, as well as multiple episodes of HBO’s acclaimed “Westworld” series. Previously, Cameron lensed “Reminiscence”, starring Hugh Jackman and Rebecca Ferguson, “21 Bridges”, and “The Commuter”, starring Liam Neeson.

#9643

John D'earth

#135940

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

John D'earth is an American post-bop/hard bop jazz trumpeter born in Framingham, Massachusetts, who has appeared on recordings by Dave Matthews and Bruce Hornsby as well as recording a number of CDs on his own. He currently resides in Charlottesville, Virginia.

#9644

Károly Binder

#125635

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Károly Binder is a Hungarian jazz pianist, composer and educator. Early life Binder was born in Budapest on 2 April 1956. He was five years old when he started playing the piano and studied jazz in Budapest at the Béla Bartók Musical Training College from 1976 to 1979.

#9645

John Rahn

#123048

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

John Rahn, born on February 26, 1944, in New York City, is a music theorist, composer, bassoonist, and Professor of Music at the University of Washington School of Music, Seattle. A former student of Milton Babbitt and Benjamin Boretz, he was editor of Perspectives of New Music from 1983 to 1993 and since 2001 has been co-editor with Benjamin Boretz and Robert Morris.

#9646

Radoslav Kvapil

Radoslav Kvapil

#170501

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Radoslav Kvapil is an internationally acclaimed Czech pianist. At the end of the 20th century, he devoted his concert programmes to works by Frédéric Chopin, particularly in France, in the Chopin International Piano Festival in Nohant. On 21 October 2016 Radoslav gave a recital of Beethoven, Chopin, Dvořák, Janáček and Martinů at St Mary's Parish Church in Hay-on-Wye. He has recorded a CD for Alto of Chopin Complete Ballades and Impromptus, some of which he performed at the concert.

#9647

Tyshawn Sorey

#128847

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Tyshawn Sorey is an American composer, multi-instrumentalist, and professor of contemporary music. Sorey has received accolades for performances, recordings, and compositions ranging from improvised solo percussion to opera, with work in best-of lists for both classical and jazz music. The New Yorker included Sorey in their annual "Notable Performances and Recordings" lists for 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020; the pandemic-era entry was for premieres "cast in unconventional concerto form". His prolific output during a time of heavy restrictions on live performance led a New York Times critic to ca...

#9648

John Macklin

#176995

Overall Influence

1947 - 2014 (67 years)

John Joseph Macklin was a Northern Irish scholar of Hispanic studies. He held posts at a number of British universities, and from 2001 to 2005 was principal and vice-chancellor of the University of Paisley . At the time of his death he was professor of Hispanic studies at the University of Glasgow and head of the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, and a visiting professor at the University of Ulster. In 1994, he was made a Commandor of the Order of Isabella the Catholic by King Juan Carlos for his services to Spanish studies.

#9649

Barry Conyngham

#127871

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Barry Ernest Conyngham, , is an Australian composer and academic. He has over seventy published works and over thirty recordings featuring his compositions, and his works have been premiered or performed in Australia, Japan, North and South America, the United Kingdom and Europe. His output is largely for orchestra, ensemble or dramatic forces. He is an Emeritus Professor of both the University of Wollongong and Southern Cross University. He is former Dean of the Faculty of the Fine Arts and Music at the University of Melbourne.

#9650

James Freeman

#112518

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

James Freeman is Professor Emeritus of Music at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, PA. He is also the artistic director and conductor of Philadelphia's renowned contemporary music chamber orchestra and ensemble, Orchestra 2001, which he founded in 1988. He was trained at Harvard University , Tanglewood, and Vienna's Akademie für Musik. He counts among his principal teachers pianists Artur Balsam and Paul Badura-Skoda and his father, double bassist Henry Freeman.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions