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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Ranking

List of the most influential people in Communications,

#9651

Ekkehard Klemm

#140790

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Ekkehard Klemm , is a German conductor. Biography Klemm was born in Chemnitz, Germany, and studied conducting, composition and piano at the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber Dresden. He served as principal conductor of the Opera House in Greifswald , chief conductor of the Vorpommern Theater and conductor of the Staatstheater at the Gärtnerplatz in Munich until 1999.

#9652

Werner Güra

#175922

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Werner Güra is a German classical tenor in opera, concert and Lied, also an academic teacher in Zurich. Career Güra was born in Munich. He studied at the Mozarteum University of Salzburg. He continued his studies with Kurt Widmer at the Musik-Akademie der Stadt Basel and with Margreet Honig in Amsterdam. He took courses in acting with Ruth Berghaus and Theo Adam.

#9653

Joe Daley

#179437

Overall Influence

1918 - 1994 (76 years)

Joe Daley was an American jazz tenor saxophonist, composer, and music teacher. Daley was part of the Chicago jazz scene for 40 years. Musicians who studied with Daley include Grammy winners David Sanborn and Paul Winter, Emmy winner James DiPasquale, Richard Corpolongo, Chuck Domanico, and John Klemmer.

#9654

Richard Carlson

Richard Carlson

#90796

Overall Influence

1961 - 2006 (45 years)

Richard Carlson was an American author, psychotherapist, and motivational speaker. His book, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff... and it’s all Small Stuff , was USA Today's bestselling book for two consecutive years. and spent over 101 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list. It was published in 135 countries and translated into Latvian, Polish, Icelandic, Serbian and 26 other languages. Carlson went on to write 20 books.

#9655

William Kanengiser

#125371

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

William Kanengiser is a classical guitarist. He is one of the founding members of the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet . Kanengiser was born in Orange, New Jersey. He holds a Bachelor of Music and Master of Music from the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California, where he also serves as a faculty member.

#9656

Bjørn Ole Rasch

Bjørn Ole Rasch

#159440

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Bjørn Ole Rasch is a Norwegian artist , composer, arranger and producer. He is a professor of popular music at the Agder University College. With his wife, Annbjørg Lien, he runs the Kongshavn Studios in Kristiansand.

#9657

David Brown

#120857

Overall Influence

1947 - 2000 (53 years)

David Brown was an American musician. He was the bass player for the band Santana from 1967 until 1971, then again from 1974 until 1976. Brown played in Santana at Woodstock and at Altamont in 1969 and on the band's first three studio albums before leaving after the "Closing of the Fillmore West" gig on July 4, 1971. In 1974, he rejoined for the album Borboletta and remained with the band for the follow-up Amigos before leaving again in the spring of 1976. In 1998, Brown was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Santana.

#9658

Jerome Lowenthal

#153541

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

Jerome Lowenthal is an American classical pianist. He has served as chair of the piano department at the Juilliard School in New York. Additionally, Lowenthal is on the faculty at Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California.

#9659

Ralph Alessi

#170076

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Ralph Alessi is an American jazz trumpeter, composer, and ECM recording artist. Alessi is known as a virtuosic performer whose critically-acclaimed projects include his Baida Quartet, with Jason Moran, Drew Gress, and Nasheet Waits, and This Against That, his quintet with Andy Milne, Gress, Mark Ferber, and Ravi Coltrane. Alessi has also recorded and performed with artists including Steve Coleman, Uri Caine, Fred Hersch, and Don Byron.

#9660

Klauspeter Seibel

#177579

Overall Influence

1936 - 2011 (75 years)

Klauspeter Seibel was a German conductor. Trained at the Nuremberg Conservatory and the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München, he was principal conductor of the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra , the Kiel Philharmonic Orchestra , and the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra . He was notably the LPO's first music director, and after being succeeded by Carlos Miguel Prieto as principal conductor in 2005 he remained principal guest conductor of the LPO until his death. He last conducted the LPO in October 2010 when he led the orchestra in the world premiere of Stephen Dankner's Symphony No. 9. In ad...

#9661

Kenzie

#169504

Overall Influence

1986 - Present (40 years)

James MacKenzie , better known as Kenzie or James Kenzie, is a British rapper, DJ, actor and personal trainer, who was formerly a member of ten-piece hip-hop group Blazin' Squad. He was also part of the R&B/pop supergroup 5th Story, set up for The Big Reunion in 2013.

#9662

Eric Taylor

#180696

Overall Influence

1949 - 2020 (71 years)

Eric Taylor was an American singer-songwriter from Texas, known for his storytelling style, combining spoken word with anecdotal songs to create a theater-style performance. In addition to Taylor's nine solo releases, his songs have been recorded by Nanci Griffith, Lyle Lovett, Peter Cooper, and others.

#9663

Alex Munter

#137487

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Alexander Mathias Munter is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario , and a former elected official and business owner in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Advocacy Throughout his career, Munter has been at the forefront of numerous social change initiatives.

#9664

Michael Brimer

#175842

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

Michael Brimer was a South African-Australian pianist, organist, conductor, composer, musicologist, and academic. Biography Brimer was born in South Africa and studied with Eleanor Bonnar, a pupil of Leopold Godowsky. Brimer's school days were spent at the prestigious St George's Grammar School in Cape Town. He continued studies at the University of Cape Town, the Royal College of Music, the Royal School of Church Music in London and at the University of Cambridge. He also studied in Vienna and Australia, where he lived. He was music master at Brisbane’s Church of England Grammar School in the late 1950s.

#9665

Lloyd Spencer Davis

#181837

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Lloyd Spencer Davis is a New Zealand-based author, filmmaker, scientist and science communicator. Born in Napier in 1954, he is known particularly for his creative nonfiction writing about science and nature subjects. He has published ten books and been co-editor of another two, as well as authoring over 150 scientific papers.

#9666

Cecilia Vicuña

#124685

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Cecilia Vicuña is a Chilean poet and artist based in New York and Santiago, Chile. Her work is noted for themes of language, memory, dissolution, extinction and exile. Critics also note the relevance of her work to the politics of ecological destruction, cultural homogenization, and economic disparity, particularly the way in which such phenomena disenfranchise the already powerless. Her commitment to feminist forms and methodologies is considered to be a unifying theme across her diverse body of work, among which her fibre art quipus, knotted or unknotted strings, palabrarmas and precarios, made from natural, delicate materials, stand out.

#9667

David Dubery

#174636

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

David Dubery is a South-African born British composer, pianist, vocal coach and academic. Dubery has been a music staff tutor at Long Millgate, Elizabeth Gaskell and Didsbury Colleges, Manchester Polytechnic,/Metropolitan University, and Manchester School of Music for fourteen years , Manchester branch of The Actor’s Centre, Northern Actor’s Centre, and was vocal tutor/staff pianist & musical director for the Northern Ballet School for sixteen years . He also coached tenor Russell Watson.

#9668

Georg Hajdu

#170968

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Georg Hajdu is a German composer of Hungarian descent. His work is dedicated to the combination of music, science and computer technology. He is noted for his opera and the network music performance environment Quintet.net.

#9669

William Bakewell

William Bakewell

#132502

Overall Influence

1908 - 1993 (85 years)

William Robertson Bakewell was an American actor. He achieved his greatest fame as one of the leading juvenile performers of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Early years Bakewell was a native of Los Angeles, where he attended the Harvard School for Boys and Page Military Academy.

#9670

Elsie Ivancich Dunin

Elsie Ivancich Dunin

#137971

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Elsie Ivancich Dunin is a dance ethnologist , choreographer, professor and author specializing in folk dance from Croatia, Macedonia, and Romani in Macedonia. Her studies focus on Croatian diaspora communities and associated sword dances in both Old and New World contexts. She is Professor Emerita of dance ethnology from the University of California at Los Angeles and is currently a dance research advisor with the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research in Zagreb, Croatia. Her two daughters are Teresa and Elonka Dunin.

#9671

Jigna Desai

#137980

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Jigna Desai is a Professor in the Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies and Asian American Studies, currently at the University of Minnesota. She is a writer, teacher, mentor, artist, and engaged researcher whose scholarship crosses many fields of study including transnational feminism, Asian American Studies, queer studies, postcolonial feminism, critical disability studies, critical youth studies, feminist media studies, critical ethnic studies, and critical university studies. She has also written extensively on issues of racial and gender disparities and social justice.

#9672

Adam Ockelford

#165330

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Adam Ockelford is a Professor of Music and Director of the Applied Music Research Centre at the University of Roehampton, London. He wrote the official biography of Derek Paravicini entitled "In the Key of Genius: The Extraordinary Life of Derek Paravicini".

#9673

John Allen Hendricks

#178559

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

John Allen Hendricks is a professor whose research focuses on political communication, social media/new media technologies, and the broadcasting industry and is the author of more than ten books on the subjects. He has served as academic department chair since 2009.

#9674

Nakamura Shidō II

Nakamura Shidō II

#151363

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Mikihiro Ogawa, better known by the stage name Nakamura Shidō II, is a Japanese kabuki and film actor. Life Born in Tokyo, the son of kabuki actor Nakamura Shidō I, young Nakamura made his kabuki debut at the age of eight. He took the name Shidō the following year, following his father's retirement. Twenty-one years later, despite being a relative latecomer to the silver screen, the 30-year-old Kabuki actor was in his first film, Ping Pong , in which he portrayed a skin-headed, demonically intense table tennis champion nicknamed Dragon. His film debut won Nakamura a Best Newcomer award at the 2003 Japanese Academy Awards.

#9675

Theodore J. Flicker

#126126

Overall Influence

1930 - 2014 (84 years)

Theodore Jonas Flicker was an American playwright, theatrical producer, television and film director, actor, television writer, screenwriter, author and sculptor. Early life Born in 1930 at Freehold Borough, New Jersey, Flicker attended Admiral Farragut Academy in Tom's River, New Jersey from 1947 to 1949. From 1949 to 1951, he studied at Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, alongside fellow drama students Joan Collins and Larry Hagman.

#9676

Doru Popovici

#173845

Overall Influence

1932 - 2019 (87 years)

Ionel Doru Popovici was a Romanian composer, musicologist, writer and musical concerts manager. Biography Ionel Doru Popovici was born in Reșița, Romania, a city close to the border of what was formerly Yugoslavia, now Serbia. His father was Ioan Popovici, a surgeon who was assassinated in 1959 in the Gherla political prison, accused of being an "Enemy of the Romanian State" because he helped write the Hungarian Counter-Revolution. His mother, Eugenia Popa, was the daughter of an Orthodox priest.

#9677

Samantha Womack

Samantha Womack

#170836

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Samantha Zoe Womack is an English actress, singer, model and director who has worked in film, television and stage. Womack initially planned a career in singing and she represented the United Kingdom in the 1991 Eurovision Song Contest. Her song for the contest, "A Message to Your Heart", was released as her first single in April 1991 and reached number 30 in the UK Singles Chart.

#9678

Alan Fletcher

#176116

Overall Influence

1931 - 2006 (75 years)

Alan Gerard Fletcher was a British graphic designer. In his obituary, he was described by The Daily Telegraph as "the most highly regarded graphic designer of his generation, and probably one of the most prolific".

#9679

Helmut Eder

#177696

Overall Influence

1916 - 2005 (89 years)

Helmut Eder was an Austrian composer. Eder studied until 1948 at the Linz Conservatory, later studying with Johann Nepomuk David in Stuttgart and Carl Orff in Munich. Returning to Linz, he became a teacher at the Linz Conservatory, accepting a position as full professor in 1962. He also conducted the Singakademie in Linz from 1953 to 1960 and founded an electronic music studio in the city in 1959. He became professor of composition at the Salzburg Mozarteum in 1967.

#9680

Jaime Martín

#73561

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Jaime Martín is a Spanish conductor and flautist. Biography Born in Santander, Spain, Martín began his music studies on the flute at age 8, and became a member of the National Youth Orchestra of Spain at age 13. He was a pupil of Antonio Arias in Madrid and later with Paul Verhey in The Hague. He began his career as a flautist. He attained posts as principal flute with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the last post with the LPO for 3 years. He also worked regularly as a member of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. In 1991, he made his debut as soloist at Carnegie Hall with the Flute Concerto by Nielsen.

#9681

Charles Fox

#162409

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Charles Ira Fox is an American composer for film and television. His compositions include the sunshine pop musical backgrounds which accompanied every episode of the 1970s ABC-TV show Love, American Style; the theme song for the late 1970s ABC series The Love Boat; and the dramatic theme music to ABC's Wide World of Sports and the original Monday Night Football; as well as the Grammy-winning hit song "Killing Me Softly with His Song", written in collaboration with Lori Lieberman and Fox's longtime writing partner, Norman Gimbel.

#9682

Angel Blue

#140715

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (42 years)

Angel Joy Blue is an American soprano. She won the Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording for the Metropolitan Opera production of Porgy and Bess in the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards. Her voice has been recognized for its shining and agile upper register, "smoky" middle register, beautiful timbre, and ability to switch from a classical to a contemporary sound. She has performed internationally and won numerous awards including a Grammy Award, Operalia and Miss Hollywood. According to family lore, her father Sylvester predicted her to be "the next Leontyne Price" when she was born.

#9683

Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson

#165094

Overall Influence

1932 - 2004 (72 years)

Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson was an American composer whose interests spanned the worlds of jazz, dance, pop, film, television, and classical music. Professionally he was often known as "Coleridge Perkinson".

#9684

James Deese

#46552

Overall Influence

1921 - 1999 (78 years)

James Earle Deese was an American psychologist. He joined the faculty of the University of Virginia in 1970 after having taught for many years at Johns Hopkins University. During his tenure at Johns Hopkins, Deese became Chairman of the Psychology Department and also served a term as Chairman of the American Psychological Association. Deese later became the Chairman of the Psychology Department at University of Virginia until his partial retirement, later remaining as professor emeritus. He received the Hugh Scott Hamilton award for his distinguished service.

#9685

Blanche Thebom

#153130

Overall Influence

1915 - 2010 (95 years)

Blanche Thebom was an American operatic mezzo-soprano, voice teacher, and opera director. She was part of the first wave of American opera singers that had highly successful international careers. In her own country she had a long association with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City which lasted 22 years. Opera News stated, "An ambitious beauty with a velvety, even-grained dramatic mezzo, Thebom was a natural for opera: she commanded the stage with the elegantly disciplined hauteur of an old-school diva, relishing the opportunity to play femmes du monde such as Marina in Boris Godunov, He...

#9686

Harold Blumenfeld

#177740

Overall Influence

1923 - 2014 (91 years)

Murray Harold Blumenfeld was an American classical composer. He wrote over thirty musical compositions. He was also a conductor, a music critic, and an educator, having taught in the Washington University in St. Louis music department for almost thirty years.

#9687

Erik Werba

#169789

Overall Influence

1918 - 1992 (74 years)

Erik Werba was an Austrian classical pianist who is especially known as an accompanist of singers. He was also a music critic, conductor, composer, author and academic teacher. Career Werba was born in Baden bei Wien, the son of Ludwig Werba , who was born in Graz and became a composer, music director and vice-president of the Österreichisch-ungarischer Musikerverband, founded in 1896. Ludwig Werba died in a bombing raid on 2 April 1945.

#9688

J. D. Parran

#154869

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

J. D. Parran is an American multi-woodwind player, educator, and composer specializing in jazz and free improvisation. He plays the soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, and bass saxophone, as well as the E-flat clarinet, alto clarinet, bass clarinet, contra-alto clarinet, piccolo, alto flute, bamboo flute, Native American flute, bamboo saxophone, and nagaswaram.

#9689

Bruce Fowler

#175564

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Bruce Fowler is an American classical tenor who has had a major international performance career in operas and concerts since the early 1990s. He is particularly known for his appearances in bel canto operas. His first recording, as the tenor soloist for Handel's Messiah with Telarc, was nominated for a Grammy Award. He has also recorded Gioachino Rossini's Stabat Mater for Harmonia Mundi, Rossini's Armida for Sony, Jacques Ibert's Angelique for Fonit Cetra, Georg Philipp Telemann's Der Tag des Gerichts and Hugo Weisgall's Six Characters in Search of an Author on New World Records.

#9690

Đặng Thái Sơn

#144719

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Đặng Thái Sơn is a Vietnamese-Canadian classical pianist. In 1980, he won the X International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, becoming the first pianist from Asia to do so. He has received particular acclaim for the sonority and poetry in his interpretations of Chopin and the French repertoire.

#9691

Viktor Tretiakov

Viktor Tretiakov

#124562

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Viktor Viktorovich Tretiakov is a Russian violinist and conductor. Other spellings of his name are Victor, Tretyakov and Tretjakov. Biography The son of a musician who played in the military band in Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, he showed an extraordinary musical talent very early, and started to play violin at the age of seven. He came to Moscow in 1954 and first studied in the junior division of the Moscow Conservatory Music College, and in 1956 entered Yuri Yankelevich's class at the Moscow Central Music School, later studying with him in the Moscow Conservatoire.

#9692

A. R. Rahman

#139396

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Allah Rakha Rahman is an Indian music composer, record producer, singer, songwriter, musician, multi-instrumentalist and philanthropist, popular for his works in Indian cinema; predominantly in Tamil and Hindi films, with occasional forays in international cinema. He is a winner of six National Film Awards, two Academy Awards, two Grammy Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, fifteen Filmfare Awards and seventeen Filmfare Awards South. In 2010, the Indian government conferred him with the Padma Bhushan, the nation's third-highest civilian award.

#9693

Brian Lynch

#106036

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Brian Michael Lynch is an American film and comic book writer. Lynch was the initial writer and co-creator with Joss Whedon of Angel: After the Fall for IDW Publishing, and is best known for writing the screenplays for the films Puss in Boots , Minions , The Secret Life of Pets , The Secret Life of Pets 2 , and Minions: The Rise of Gru . He has also written an unproduced film adaptation of The Sims. In addition to the unproduced Sims film, Lynch also wrote an unproduced film for The Muppets that was titled “The Next Muppet Movie.”

#9694

Marcos Young

#177997

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (125 years)

Marcos Young is an associate senior lecturer in broadcast journalism at Coventry University's Department of Media and Communication. Marcos has worked as a broadcast journalist at the BBC since 1991. He has written and presented radio documentaries and features for BBC Radio 3, the BBC World Service and worked in local radio at BBC Oxford since 1994, where he is a producer.

#9695

Paul Harding

#159997

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Paul Harding is an American musician and author, best known for his debut novel Tinkers , which won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2010 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize among other honors. He is currently the director of the Creative Writing and Literature MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton, as well as Interim Associate Provost of SUNY-Stony Brook's Lichtenstein Center.

#9696

Riccardo Brengola

Riccardo Brengola

#176045

Overall Influence

1917 - 2004 (87 years)

Riccardo Brengola was an Italian violinist and professor. He was associated with early Italian chamber music and with the performance of contemporary Italian classical music. For several decades, he was the Professor Emeritus of chamber music at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, and from 1939 to 1966, he was the leader of the only piano quintet ensemble, the Quintetto Chigiano. His influence as a teacher also spread beyond Siena, through courses or classes at other major Italian Conservatories and to Ireland, Argentina, Spain and Japan. He maintained his career as a concert violin sol...

#9697

Leonard Kastle

#126967

Overall Influence

1929 - 2011 (82 years)

Leonard Gregory Kastle was an American opera composer, librettist, and director, although he is best known as the writer/director of the 1970 film The Honeymoon Killers, his only venture into the cinema, for which he did all his own research. He was an adjunct member of the SUNY Albany music faculty.

#9698

Susan B. Anthony II

#67186

Overall Influence

1916 - 1991 (75 years)

Susan Brownell Anthony II was an American journalist and writer, activist and substance abuse counselor. She grew up in Easton, Pennsylvania, and attended the University of Rochester, graduating in 1938. During her schooling, she became an activist in progressive causes, but she also struggled with alcoholism. She supported pacifism, the anti-fascist movement, housing desegregation, and women's rights, including advocacy to remove the poll tax as an obstacle to women's suffrage, as well as childcare centers for working mothers. She worked as a reporter for The Washington Star and completed a ...

#9699

Ben Sherwood

#172594

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Benjamin Berkley "Ben" Sherwood is an American writer, journalist, and producer who was formerly the President of Disney-ABC Television Group and ABC News. Early life and education Sherwood was born to a wealthy Jewish family in Los Angeles, California. His mother, Dorothy Lipsey Romonek, was a trustee of the California Institute of the Arts. His father, Richard E. Sherwood, was a partner in a Los Angeles law firm, and long time leader of the American Jewish Committee.

#9700

Javier Álvarez

#171350

Overall Influence

1956 - 2023 (67 years)

Javier Álvarez Fuentes was a Mexican composer known for compositions that combined a variety of international musical styles and traditions, and that often utilized unusual instruments and new music technologies. Many of his works combine music technology with diverse instruments and influences from around the world. He taught internationally, in the UK and Sweden, and back in Mexico later in his career.

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