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,
#9701
Margaret Rizza
#181205
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
Margaret Rizza is an English composer, primarily of church music. She taught singing at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama from 1977 to 1994. Life Margaret Rizza was born in 1929 into a musical family, where her mother played piano and her father was the organist for his local parish church. She attended the Royal College of Music from age 17 to study piano, at which she admits she was not particularly proficient. However, she soon switched to studying singing, and completed her training first at the National School of Opera in London and then at Siena and Rome in Italy, after which she pursued a career as an opera singer, using the name Margaret Lensky, for 25 years.
Go to Profile#9702
Alan Johnson
#146507
Overall Influence
1937 - 2018 (81 years)
Alan Johnson was a three-time Emmy Award-winning American choreographer, best known for his work on Mel Brooks films and for restaging Jerome Robbins' original choreography in live productions of West Side Story in the United States and internationally. Johnson was linked to West Side Story since making his Broadway debut in the show in 1957.
Go to Profile#9703
Radhika Parameswaran
#174902
Overall Influence
Radhika Parmeswaran holds an endowed Herman B. Wells chair at Indiana University, Bloomington. A professor and former chair of journalism there, Parameswaran has published in leading journals, contributing to analysis of the ways in which colonialism, nationalism and globalization shape the social construction of modernity and gender.
Go to Profile#9704
Dave Smith
#118088
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Dave Smith is an English composer, arranger and musical performer. Since 1971 he has been associated with the English school of experimental music. Life and career Smith was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, England. After attending Solihull School, he read music at Magdalene College, Cambridge. In the 1970s, Smith was a member of the Scratch Orchestra and a participant in several composer/performer ensembles. The first of these was a keyboard duo with John Lewis which played minimalist and systemic works by British and American composers as well as by themselves. Several concerts with Michael P...
Go to Profile#9705
Thomas Klinkowstein
#182779
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Tom Klinkowstein born January 23, 1950, in Trenton, New Jersey, USA is an artist and President of Media A, LLC, a design and consulting group. He is currently a professor at Hofstra University on Long Island, NY and an adjunct professor in the Graduate Communication Design Department at Pratt Institute in New York City.
Go to Profile#9706
Zvonimir Berković
#172164
Overall Influence
1928 - 2009 (81 years)
Zvonimir Berković was a Croatian film director and screenwriter. Berković had studied film directing at the Zagreb Academy of Drama Arts. His screenwriting career began in the mid-1950s, his most notable work being Nikola Tanhofer's 1958 film H-8, for which he co-authored the screenplay with Tomislav Butorac.
Go to Profile#9707
Anthony McGill
#139667
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Anthony McGill is the principal clarinetist for the New York Philharmonic, after having served for a decade as principal clarinet of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. Biography McGill is originally from Chicago, Illinois, growing up in the city's Chatham neighborhood.
Go to Profile#9708
Joe Gibbs
#163046
Overall Influence
1942 - 2008 (66 years)
Joe Gibbs born Joel Arthur Gibson was a Jamaican reggae producer. Biography Born in Salt Spring, St. James in 1942, Joe Gibbs studied electronics in Cuba and went on to work as an electronic technician for Stone and Webster in Montego Bay. He moved to Kingston where he set up an electrical repair shop in Beeston Street, with television repairs and sales as its main concern. It was in this shop that he first started to sell records. The fast growth of the local music scene encouraged him to get more involved in the music business, and in 1966 he started to record some artists in the back of hi...
Go to Profile#9709
Craig Taborn
#126366
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Craig Marvin Taborn is an American pianist, organist, keyboardist and composer. He works solo and in bands, mostly playing various forms of jazz. He started playing piano and Moog synthesizer as an adolescent and was influenced at an early stage by a wide range of music, including by the freedom expressed in recordings of free jazz and contemporary classical music.
Go to Profile#9710
Peter Kiesewetter
#175961
Overall Influence
1945 - 2012 (67 years)
Peter Kiesewetter was a modern classical composer, born in Marktheidenfeld, Germany to Silesian parents. External links Interview with Peter Kiesewetter Short Portrait in English and German
Go to Profile#9711
Paul Nelson
#181887
Overall Influence
1929 - 2008 (79 years)
Paul Nelson was an American musician and composer. His compositions—in all genres except opera—have been performed on four continents. Growing up Paul Nelson was born in Phoenix, Arizona on January 26, 1929. He attended public elementary school there, and graduated in 1947 as salutatorian from Phoenix Union High School.
Go to Profile#9712
James Smith
#172323
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
James Smith is an English actor. Smith is best known for his part in 22 episodes of the BBC's The Thick of It as senior special adviser Glenn Cullen, from 2005 to 2012. He also featured as Michael Rodgers, Director of Diplomacy at the Foreign Office, in the film spin off In the Loop.
Go to Profile#9713
Valery Polyansky
#157516
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Valery Kuzmich Polyansky is a Russian orchestral and choral conductor. He is a professor of the Moscow Conservatory, People's Artist of Russia , artistic director, chief conductor and founder of the State Symphony Capella of Russia.
Go to Profile#9714
Alfred Lipka
#155205
Overall Influence
1931 - 2010 (79 years)
Alfred Lipka was a German violist. Life Born in Schreckenstein near Aussig, Lipka studied violin and viola in Erfurt and at the conservatories of the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt, Weimar and the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig. He won prizes at the international viola competitions in Markneukirchen, Budapest and Geneva.
Go to Profile#9715
Ben Webb
#173564
Overall Influence
1957 - 2002 (45 years)
Benedict Webb , known as Ben Webb, was a Canadian journalist best known as editor of Sanity, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament monthly. After his death from cancer at 45, Britain's Guardian described him as "one of the mainstays of the left press of the 1980s and 1990s".
Go to Profile#9716
William Graham
#135244
Overall Influence
1926 - 2013 (87 years)
William A. Graham was an American television and film director. Career Beginning in 1958, Graham worked as a prolific television director; he helmed episodes for dozens of series including Kraft Television Theatre, Omnibus, Checkmate, Naked City, Breaking Point, 12 O'Clock High, The F.B.I., The Fugitive, Batman, CBS Playhouse, and The X-Files. In 1980, he was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for directing the television film Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones.
Go to Profile#9717
Willie Jones
#171436
Overall Influence
1929 - 1993 (64 years)
William Jones Jr. was a jazz drummer. He is known for playing and recording with Thelonious Monk, Lester Young, Elmo Hope, and Charles Mingus. Biography Jones was born in New York on October 20, 1929. He mainly taught himself to play the drums, and played left handed. He played and recorded with pianist Thelonious Monk in 1953, including on the album Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins. This recording, on November 13, was Jones' first. He also appeared with Monk on the television program The Tonight Show, on June 10, 1955. Jones was sideman for another pianist's recording in 1955 – Elmo Hope's Meditations; and for Randy Weston's The Modern Art of Jazz by Randy Weston in the following year.
Go to Profile#9718
Erol Erdinç
#157734
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Erol Erdinç is a Turkish conductor of classical music, composer, pianist and educator. Early life and education Erol Erdinç started out studying composition with Ahmet Adnan Saygun and piano with T. Çetiz at the Ankara State Conservatory. After graduating in composition he stayed on at the conservatory to teach, while also working as pianist for the Ankara Turkish State Opera and Ballet. In 1975, he went to Paris where he studied conducting under well-known musicians such as Jean Martinon at the Paris Conservatory; Pierre Dervaux at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris; composition with Nadia Boulanger and Pierre Petit; and accompaniment with Pierre Pontier.
Go to Profile#9719
John Webster
#118568
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
John Webster is a musician, engineer and producer who primarily plays keyboards. He began his musical career as a child, trained in classical piano until his early teens, and then moved on to playing in rock bands. One of his first bands, Stonebolt, landed a top 30 U.S. hit with its first release in 1978 and went on to record four successful albums.
Go to Profile#9720
Guillermo Galindo
#149770
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Guillermo Galindo is a Mexican composer, performer, and artist. Early life Composer Guillermo Galindo was born in Mexico City. As a young adult, he was trained in musical composition at the Escuela Nacional de Musica in Mexico City, while completing a BA in graphic design. He then attended Berklee College of Music, where he completed a film scoring and composition BA and Mills College in Oakland, California, where he received an MA in composition and electronic music. He would later collaborate with Chris Brown on the Transmission Series, an interactive performance and installation using homem...
Go to Profile#9721
Ruby Keeler
#147798
Overall Influence
1909 - 1993 (84 years)
Ethel Ruby Keeler was an American actress, dancer, and singer who was paired on-screen with Dick Powell in a string of successful early musicals at Warner Bros., particularly 42nd Street . From 1928 to 1940, she was married to actor and singer Al Jolson. She retired from show business in the 1940s, but made a widely publicized comeback on Broadway in 1971.
Go to Profile#9722
Ed Cash
#95164
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Edmond Martin Cash is a producer, songwriter, engineer, and multi-instrumentalist. He was named the "Producer of the Year" at the Gospel Music Awards for four consecutive years and gains recognition for his work with Christian singer Chris Tomlin. In addition to several Grammy Nominations and BMI Citations of Achievement, Cash has produced or written with artists such as Steven Curtis Chapman, Vince Gill, Dolly Parton, Colin Bernard, Amy Grant, Keith & Kristyn Getty, Bebo Norman, David Crowder Band, Bethany Dillon, Kari Jobe, Dave Barnes, Matt Wertz, Caedmon's Call, Casting Crowns, Annette Lee.
Go to Profile#9723
Sarah Buxton
#101353
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Sarah Jane Buxton is an American country music singer formerly signed to the independent Lyric Street Records. Between 2006 and 2008, she issued three singles from an extended play titled Almost My Record, in addition to co-writing her song "Stupid Boy", which was later recorded by Keith Urban. She released her self-titled debut album in early 2010, led off by the Top 25 single "Outside My Window," shortly before Lyric Street Records closed.
Go to Profile#9724
Jan Swafford
#124213
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Jan Swafford is an American author and composer. He earned his Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude from Harvard College and his M.M.A. and D.M.A. from the Yale School of Music. His teachers included Earl Kim at Harvard, Jacob Druckman at Yale, and Betsy Jolas at Tanglewood. He has written respected musical biographies of Charles Ives, Johannes Brahms, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as well as the Vintage Guide to Classical Music. He appeared in the award-winning 2018 German documentary The Unanswered Ives.
Go to Profile#9725
Aleksandr Adabashyan
#150199
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Aleksandr Artyomovich Adabashyan is Soviet and Russian film writer, artist, director and actor. Honored Artist of the RSFSR . Honored Artist of Russia . Biography Born in Moscow into a russified Armenian family of Artyom Adabashyan, an official at the Ministry of Construction Industry, and Valentina Barkhudarova, a teacher of German language. According to Aleksandr, he was raised inside the Russian culture, he doesn't speak Armenian language and he visited Yerevan only twice in his life. In 1962 he enrolled in the Stroganov Moscow State University of Arts and Industry, and in 1964 he went to serve in the army.
Go to Profile#9726
Jamal Joseph
#112466
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Jamal Joseph is an American writer, director, producer, poet, activist, and educator. Joseph was a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. He was prosecuted as one of the Panther 21. He spent six years incarcerated at Leavenworth Penitentiary.
Go to Profile#9727
Markus Becker
#173431
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Markus Becker is a German pianist and academic teacher. He is focused on chamber music, and on piano concertos from the time around 1900. His recording of the complete piano works by Max Reger earned him awards. He is also a jazz pianist, and has been professor of piano and chamber music at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover since 1993.
Go to Profile#9728
Todd Coolman
#134359
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Todd Coolman is a jazz bassist and a retired tenured Professor of Music at the Jazz Studies Program in the Conservatory of Music at Purchase College in Westchester County, New York. He is also the former Artistic Director of the Skidmore Jazz Institute.
Go to Profile#9729
Charles Gray
#146011
Overall Influence
Charles Gray is an American musician, best known for his tenure as the guitarist for the Orange County rock band The Aquabats, of which he served as a member from 1995 to 2000 under the stage name of Ultra Kyu and later The Mysterious Kyu . He also wrote all the songs for The Goodwin Club, a Ska band from Orange County, from 1993 to 1995.
Go to Profile#9730
Wojciech Rajski
#143657
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Wojciech Rajski is a Polish conductor, and the founder and current Artistic Director of the Polish Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra Sopot. His recordings can be heard on such labels as Deutsche Grammophon, Dux Records, and EMI Classics.
Go to Profile#9731
Chandrabose
#136922
Overall Influence
1947 - 2010 (63 years)
Chandrabose was an Indian composer and singer. He composed music for more than 300 films between 1977 and 1995. In 2007 he made his debut on the silver screen as an actor. Personal life Chandrabose's son, Bose Santhosh, has also worked in films as a composer, working in the Malayalam film Sandwich and the Tamil films, Meenkothi and Deva Kumaran. He is married twice, since 2007 he started acting in Kalaignar TV serials.
Go to Profile#9732
Janice Harsanyi
#175512
Overall Influence
1929 - 2007 (78 years)
Janice Harsanyi was an American soprano singer and college professor. Janice was born in Arlington, Massachusetts, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister and lived in the Hamilton Square section of Hamilton Township, Mercer County, New Jersey at an early age. Harsanyi married Nicholas Harsanyi, a violist who went to school with Béla Bartók in Hungary. Nikki founded the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra in 1979, his wife, Janice, was known as "first lady" of the TSO. Nicholas Harsanyi died in 1987.
Go to Profile#9733
Johnny Downs
#120358
Overall Influence
1913 - 1994 (81 years)
John Morey Downs was an American actor, singer and dancer. He began his career as a child actor, most notably as Johnny in the Our Gang short comedy film series from 1923 to 1926. He remained active in films, television and theatre through the early 1960s.
Go to Profile#9734
Karl Kohn
#128421
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (100 years)
Karl Georg Kohn is an Austrian-born American composer, teacher and pianist. He taught at Pomona College for more than 40 years. Biography Kohn began playing the piano as a child in Vienna; after he emigrated to the United States at the age of 13, he continued his education at the New York College of Music and at Harvard where he studied composition with Walter Piston, Irving Fine, and Randall Thompson. He is W. M. Keck Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at Pomona College, where he taught for over forty years. His students at Pomona included Douglas Leedy, David Noon and Susan Morton ...
Go to Profile#9735
Prabhat Ranjan
#106298
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Prabhat Ranjan is a Hindi novelist, fiction writer, and translator. He is currently professor of Hindi at Zakir Husain Delhi College in the University of Delhi, Delhi. He runs an online literary website Jankipul.com since 10 years.
Go to Profile#9736
Frans Helmerson
#175816
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Frans Helmerson is a Swedish cellist, pedagogue, and conductor. Biography Helmerson was born in 1945 and by the age of 8 began playing cello. Later on, he studied with Guido Vecchi in Götheborg, Giuseppe Selmi in Rome, and with William Pleeth in London. His first concert was in Stockholm, Sweden after which he went on to travel throughout Europe, Asia, United States, and Russia. He has performed under many conductors, including Sir Colin Davis, Maxim Shostakovich, Neemi Järvi, Evgeny Svetlanov, Gennadi Roshdestvensky, Kurt Sanderling, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Rostropovich, Herbert Blomstedt, Seiji Ozawa, Yuri Temirkanov und Esa-Pekka Salonen and many others.
Go to Profile#9737
Suzannah Clark
#162014
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Suzannah Clark is a Canadian-British musicologist and music theorist specializing in the music of Franz Schubert, the history of music theory, and medieval music. She is currently Morton B. Knafel Professor of Music and in 2019 was named Harvard College Professor at Harvard University and from 2016–2019 served as chair of the Music Department at Harvard.
Go to Profile#9738
Lütfi Ömer Akad
#147401
Overall Influence
1916 - 2011 (95 years)
Lütfi Ömer Akad was a Turkish film director, screenwriter, and academician. Who directed movies from 1948 to 1990. In 1949, he debuted as a film director with Vurun Kahpeye an adaptation of Halide Edib Adıvar's book of the same title. He became one of the pioneers of the period in the "Director Generation". His 1970s trilogy comprising The Bride, The Wedding and The Sacrifice, is considered his masterpiece. Afterwards, he withdrew from movie making instead directing adaptations for TV.
Go to Profile#9739
Timothy Rhea
#106134
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Dr. Timothy Brett Rhea is director of bands and music activities at Texas A&M University. As director of bands, he leads the university band program, serves as conductor of the Texas A&M Wind Symphony, and coordinates the Fightin' Texas Aggie Band marching band. As director of music activities, he administratively oversees the activities of the jazz, orchestra, and choral programs. Rhea also served as the 79th president of the American Bandmasters Association from 2016-2017.
Go to Profile#9740
Warner P. Woodworth
#105976
Overall Influence
Warner P. Woodworth is a global social entrepreneur and professor emeritus in the Department of Management in the Marriott School of Business at Brigham Young University . He is a leading advocate of development of microcredit and has been involved in researching as well as developing such programs.
Go to Profile#9741
Karen Ashcraft
#149414
Overall Influence
Karen Ashcraft is an American communication scholar and professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her area of research is in social justice and organizational studies. She looks at identity in the workplace and organizational structures. Specifically she studies issues of diversity, hybrid organizations, gender and power. Being an organizational communication scholar, she sees discourse as central to understanding our human condition as well as how communication amounts to organizing. She examines discourse through a lens of a feminist communicology model to look at the critical ro...
Go to Profile#9742
Conrad Herwig
#141613
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Lee Conrad Herwig III is an American jazz trombonist from New York City. Biography Herwig began his career in Clark Terry's band in the early 1980s and has been a featured member in the Joe Henderson Sextet, Tom Harrell's Septet and Big Band, and the Joe Lovano Nonet . He also performs and records with Eddie Palmieri's La Perfecta II and Afro-Caribbean Jazz Octet, Michel Camilo's 3+3, the Mingus Big Band , the Jon Faddis Jazz Orchestra, and Jeff "Tain" Watts Family Reunion Band, among many others.
Go to Profile#9743
Pete Williams
#173013
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Pete Williams is an English singer/songwriter and musician, known for his work with Dexys Midnight Runners, The Bureau and These Tender Virtues. He is an original member of Dexys Midnight Runners and played on the number one single "Geno".
Go to Profile#9744
Marla Gibbs
#136492
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Marla Gibbs is an American actress, singer, comedian, writer and television producer whose career spans seven decades. Gibbs is known for her role as George Jefferson's maid, Florence Johnston, in the CBS sitcom The Jeffersons , for which she received five nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.
Go to Profile#9745
David Geringas
#155848
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
David Geringas is a Lithuanian cellist and conductor who studied under Mstislav Rostropovich. In 1970 he won the gold medal at the International Tchaikovsky Competition. He also plays the baryton, a rare instrument associated with music of Joseph Haydn.
Go to Profile#9746
Peter Gill
#150044
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
#9747
Cardon V. Burnham
#138009
Overall Influence
1927 - 2005 (78 years)
Cardon Vern Burnham Jr. was an American composer, arranger, conductor, and performer of musical genre. His work included classical, choral, jazz, orchestral, operatic, and chamber music, most notably the opera entitled "Nitecap" which he composed in 1955.
Go to Profile#9748
Gorō Yamaguchi
#169385
Overall Influence
1933 - 1999 (66 years)
Gorō Yamaguchi was a Japanese shakuhachi player who worked in both solo and ensemble performances. He was noted for his influential recordings of Traditional Japanese music and one of his pieces was selected by NASA to be included on the Voyager Golden Record and launched into space.
Go to Profile#9749
Ted Stevens
#153300
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Ted Stevens is an American rock musician from Omaha, Nebraska, best known as the guitarist and backup singer for the band Cursive, as well as fronting Mayday. He previously fronted the indie folk band Lullaby for the Working Class.
Go to Profile#9750
Hagnon of Tarsus
#149254
Overall Influence
Hagnon of Tarsus was an ancient Greek rhetorician, an Academic Skeptic philosopher, and a pupil of Carneades. Quintilian chides him for writing a book called Rhetorices accusatio in which he denied that rhetoric was an art.
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