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.

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List of the most influential people in Communications,

#10151

Tony Dagradi

#182076

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Anthony Arnold "Tony" Dagradi is an American jazz saxophonist. Biography Dagradi was born in New York City, and began playing alto saxophone when he was eight years old. In his professional career, he has primarily played tenor and soprano saxophone. He studied under Pepper Adams, Andy McGhee, Kidd Jordan, and Tony Aless in his youth, and was a student at Berklee College of Music . The following year he founded the ensemble Inner Visions, which included Ed Schuller and Gary Valente as sidemen. After touring with Archie Bell and the Drells, he relocated to New Orleans in 1977 and freelanced regularly with jazz and blues musicians in the city.

#10152

S. A. Rajkumar

#129094

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

S. A. Rajkumar is an Indian composer and lyricist. He has made music for all South Indian language films in Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, and Kannada. Early life Rajkumar's father was a vocalist performing in stage shows conducted by popular music directors such as Ilayaraja, Gangai Amaren, Deva among others. Rajkumar admired his father's musical career and developed an interest in music. It was his mother who encouraged his father to make him join music classes. Rajkumar underwent classical music training under the guidance of Subbaiah Bhagavathar for 3 years.

#10153

Nancy Weir

#168265

Overall Influence

1915 - 2008 (93 years)

Nancy Mary Weir was an Australian pianist and teacher. Biography Weir was born in Kew, Melbourne, on 13 July 1915. Her father was a publican who ran a small hotel in Lockhart, near Wagga Wagga, and she grew up "behind the bar". She studied piano in Melbourne with Edward Goll and Ada Corder . She was renowned as a child prodigy, performing to great acclaim. A review of her concert performance in December 1929 noted, With all her latent power, and natural gift for artistic expression, Nancy played Schumann's Scenes from Childhood, the work in which she exhibited her rare talent at the Town Hall some time ago.

#10154

Richard Greene

#114859

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Richard Greene is an American violinist who has been described as "one of the most innovative and influential fiddle players of all time". Greene is credited with introducing the chop to fiddle playing while working with Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, the invention of which he attributes to pain in his wrist and arm and "laziness". He featured the technique in his performances with Seatrain.

#10155

Matthew Taylor

#183140

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Matthew Taylor is an English composer and conductor. Biography Taylor was born in London and attended the Junior Royal Academy of Music. He first studied composition with Robin Holloway at Queens' College, Cambridge University and later at Guildhall School of Music and Drama and at the Royal Academy of Music. He later continued his composition training with Robert Simpson and Sir Malcolm Arnold. As a conductor he trained with Robin Page, Vilém Tauský, and with Leonard Bernstein at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik festival.

#10156

Anton Nel

#145370

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Anton Nel is a South African classical pianist. Biography Nel was born to Afrikaans-speaking parents in Johannesburg, South Africa. Nel made his debut at the age of twelve with Beethoven's C Major Concerto after only two years of study. A student of Adolph Hallis, he went on to win top honors in several South African national competitions while still in his teens, toured his native country extensively and became a well-known radio and television personality.

#10157

Saros Cowasjee

#160799

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (95 years)

Saros Dara Cowasjee was an Indian-born Canadian novelist, short story writer, commentator, critic, anthologist, and screenwriter, as well as a professor emeritus at University of Regina. Early life and education Cowasjee was born in Secunderabad, India on 12 July 1931, to Dara and Meher Cowasjee. He had a sister and a brother. He earned a B.A. from St. John's College, Agra in 1951. He completed a M.A. from Agra College in 1955. In 1960, Cowasjee completed a Ph.D. from University of Leeds. He researched Seán O'Casey under the supervision of G. Wilson Knight.

#10158

N. Rajam

#110820

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

N. Rajam is an Indian violinist who performs Hindustani classical music. She remained professor of music at Banaras Hindu University, eventually became head of the department and the dean of the Faculty of Performing Arts of the university.

#10159

Nigel Short

#177004

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Nigel Short is a British singer who is the founder and artistic director of the choir Tenebrae and Tenebrae Consort. He was previously a member of The King's Singers. Short was a chorister at Solihull Parish Church. He then studied singing and piano at the Royal College of Music before singing as a countertenor with a number of ensembles including The Tallis Scholars, Westminster Abbey and Westminster Cathedral choirs and The King's Consort. He then pursued a solo career in opera and oratorio, singing several roles in opera productions in Europe and for the English National Opera and Opera Nor...

#10160

Todd Hunter

#97569

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Todd Stuart Hunter is a New Zealand musician and composer known for his involvement in the band Dragon. Their best known songs are "April Sun in Cuba", "Are You Old Enough?", "Still in Love With You", and "Rain". Hunter also composed John Farnham's hit song "Age of Reason" with Johanna Pigott and music for film Daydream Believer and TV series Heartbreak High .

#10161

Gyula Gazdag

#182351

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Gyula Gazdag is a Hungarian film director, screenwriter and actor. Filmography DirectorThe Long Distance Runner [Hosszú futásodra mindig számíthatunk...] The Selection [A válogatás] The Whistling Cobblestone [A sípoló macskakő] The Resolution [A határozat] Singing on the Treadmill [Bástyasétány hetvennégy] Swap [A kétfenekű dob] The Banquet [A bankett] Lost Illusions [Elveszett illúziók] Package Tour [Társasutazás] A Hungarian Fairy Tale [Hol volt, hol nem volt...] Stand Off [Túsztörténet] Hungarian Chronicles [Chroniques hongroises] A Poet on the Lower east Side [Egy költö a Lower East Side-ról] Actor25, Firemen's Street Tüzoltó utca 25.

#10162

Ruth Lomon

#177271

Overall Influence

1930 - 2017 (87 years)

Ruth Lomon was a Canadian classical composer. A native of Montreal, Canada, she was born in Montreal and died in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She attended le Conservatoire de Quebec and McGill University. She continued her studies with Francis Judd Cooke at the New England Conservatory of Music and later with Witold Lutosławski at Dartington College in England.

#10163

Jaron Lanier

#184840

Overall Influence

#10164

Courtney Bryan

#126660

Overall Influence

Courtney Bryan is an American composer and pianist whose work combines influences from jazz and gospel traditions. Early life and education Bryan was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. She obtained her Bachelor of Music from Oberlin College , her Master of Music from Rutgers University , and a Doctor of Musical Arts from Columbia University , where her advisor was composer and trombonist George Lewis.

#10165

Riccardo Picchio

#72906

Overall Influence

1923 - 2011 (88 years)

Riccardo Picchio is an Italian and Slavic linguist. He graduated in Slavic Studies at the Sapienza University of Rome. In 1947 he was an editor in the magazine L'Avanti. For two years he taught Italian at the University of Warsaw, where, under the influence of Tadeusz Lehr-Spławiński, he focused on paleoslavistics and later specialized in Bulgarian at Paris under Roger Bernard and old Russian literature at Andre Mazon. Between 1953 and 1961 he was a professor at the Universities of Florence and Pisa, and then headed the Institute of Slavic Philology at the University of Rome, La Sapienza . I...

#10166

Shashi Caan

#73918

Overall Influence

Shashi Caan a design futurist, educator and author, her dedication to furthering human betterment through and by design is reflected in her 25-year design career. Biography Shashi Caan is of Indian origin and was educated at the Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland, BFA, and later at Pratt Institute, New York City, two master’s degrees, the first in Industrial Design and the second in Architecture.

#10167

David Long

#177799

Overall Influence

David Long is a musician, composer and producer. In 2020 he won best score at the APRA Silver Scrolls for the BBC drama series, The Luminaries. He composes mainly for film and television but also contemporary dance. He has worked on all of Peter Jackson’s films of the last two decades. He performs with two bands, The Labcoats and Teeth .

#10168

Ulrich Leyendecker

#170181

Overall Influence

1946 - 2018 (72 years)

Ulrich Leyendecker was a German composer of classical music. His output consisted mainly of symphonies, concertos, chamber and instrumental music. Life Leyendecker studied composition with Ingo Schmitt and Rudolf Petzold , and piano with Günter Ludwig. In 1971 he became a lecturer at the Hamburg Academy for Music and Performing Arts, and in 1976 he was appointed Professor of Composition and Theory at the Hamburg Music and Theatre Hochschule. In 1994, he became Professor of Composition at the State Hochschule for Music and the Performing Arts of Heidelberg-Mannheim.

#10169

Adolph Baller

#174119

Overall Influence

1909 - 1994 (85 years)

Adolph Baller was an Austrian-American pianist who played classical and romantic music. He performed with Yehudi Menuhin for several years, toured internationally for decades with the Alma Trio, and was a renowned piano teacher at Stanford and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

#10170

Steve Davis

#163055

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Steve Davis is an American jazz trombonist. Early life and education Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, Davis was raised in Binghamton, New York. He grew up with jazz music being played in his household. He studied jazz under Jackie McLean at the University of Hartford Hartt School.

#10171

Vachagan Khalatyan

#126722

Overall Influence

1932 - 2004 (72 years)

Vachagan Khalatyan is a Deaf educator, PhD, originator of Armenian manual alphabet. Biography Early life and career Vachagan Khalatyan was born in Urut. Receiving a village school education and later on, a high school education in Stepanavan, he moved to Yerevan. In 1949-54 Vachagan successfully graduated from the Yerevan State Linguistic University named after Valery Brusov , department of French Language and Literature. In 1954 Khalatyan was drafted into the Soviet Army. In 1958 Vachagan started working at boarding school for deaf and dumb children in Yerevan as a teacher of Armenian la...

#10172

Philippe Capdenat

#175558

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Philippe Capdenat is a French composer and academic teacher. First a mining engineer, he started composing avant-garde music, but turned to chamber music, music for the stage and vocal music, using traditional instruments. He has been a teacher at several French universities and conservatories.

#10173

Nicholas Rowe

#121899

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

Nicholas Christopher Rowe is an American record producer, audio engineer, mixing engineer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. He is the former guitarist of the New York City alternative metal band Bloodsimple, and won a Grammy Award for his work on the Vampire Weekend record Modern Vampires of the City

#10174

Maria Grenfell

#152552

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Maria Grenfell is an Australian music teacher and composer. Early life and education Maria Grenfell was born in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia in 1969. She grew up and was educated in Christchurch, New Zealand, where she graduated from the University of Canterbury with a Master of Music degree. She subsequently went to the US, where she completed a Master of Arts at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and a doctorate from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, while also lecturing in music there. While in the USA she was taught by Stephen Hartke, Erica Muhl, James Hopk...

#10175

Cara Wrigley

#182587

Overall Influence

Cara Wrigley is an Australian industrial designer, design researcher and author. She is professor of design innovation at The University of Queensland. Her research interests include design thinking, design-led innovation, design education, and emotional design.

#10176

Ruy Duarte de Carvalho

#169347

Overall Influence

1941 - 2010 (69 years)

Ruy Alberto Duarte Gomes de Carvalho was an Angolan author and filmmaker, whose work, which over more than three decades spanned poetry, metafiction, and anthropology, focused on the Kuvale people of the southern Angola. Writing for Carvalho's entry in the Dictionary of African Biography , Livia Apa commented that even if "In their complexity, Ruy Duarte de Carvalho's works are some of the most interesting and original works in contemporary Portuguese literature. Curiously, in spite of its importance, his work is rarely translated or taught abroad. Only a few of his books have been recently p...

#10177

Allan Jones

#171813

Overall Influence

1907 - 1992 (85 years)

Allan Jones was an American tenor and actor. Jones is best remembered as the male romantic lead actor in the first two films the Marx Brothers starred in for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races , as well as the film musicals Show Boat and The Firefly , where he introduced the "The Donkey Serenade", which became his signature song.

#10178

Marianne Schech

Marianne Schech

#175407

Overall Influence

1914 - 1999 (85 years)

Marianne Schech was a German operatic soprano and academic who appeared internationally. She was a member of the Bavarian State Opera from 1946 to 1970. She is known for leading roles in works by Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss, playing, for example, the Dyer's Wife in the U.S. premiere of Die Frau ohne Schatten by Richard Strauss at the San Francisco Opera in 1959. She made several recordings, including in 1951 the role of Elisabeth in Wagner's Tannhäuser, conducted by Robert Heger, in 1960 the role of Chrysothemis in Elektra by Richard Strauss, conducted by Karl Böhm, Senta in Wagner's ...

#10179

Teresa Montoya

#147281

Overall Influence

Teresa Montoya is a Diné media maker and social scientist with training in socio-cultural anthropology, critical Indigenous studies, and filmmaking. Early life Teresa grew up in Western Colorado. Teresa received a Bachelor of Arts at the University of San Diego in Spanish and Interdisciplinary Humanities with an emphasis in Art History in 2006. She then went on to pursue a Master of Arts in Anthropology at the University of Denver with an emphasis in Museum Studies, which she completed in 2011. In 2019, she completed her Doctorate in Anthropology at New York University. Her dissertation, ti...

#10180

Ettore Campogalliani

#155431

Overall Influence

1903 - 1992 (89 years)

Ettore Campogalliani was an Italian composer, musician and teacher. Campogalliani studied piano in 1921, graduating from the Conservatory of Bologna. He then studied composition at the Conservatory of Parma in 1933. Finally he studied singing at the Conservatory of Piacenza in 1940.

#10181

Dennis Morgan

#130395

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Dennis Morgan is an American songwriter and music publisher, best known for writing songs for Aretha Franklin, Faith Hill, Barbara Mandrell, and Eric Clapton. He has also published hit songs by Garth Brooks, All-4-One, Feargal Sharkey, and Trisha Yearwood.

#10182

John Lurie

#147025

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

John Lurie is an American musician, painter, actor, director, and producer. He co-founded the Lounge Lizards jazz ensemble; has acted in 19 films, including Stranger than Paradise and Down by Law; has composed and performed music for 20 television and film works; and he produced, directed, and starred in the Fishing with John television series. In 1996 his soundtrack for Get Shorty was nominated for a Grammy Award, and his album The Legendary Marvin Pontiac: Greatest Hits has been praised by critics and fellow musicians.

#10183

Hugh McLean

#178624

Overall Influence

1930 - 2017 (87 years)

Hugh John McLean CM was a Canadian organist, choirmaster, pianist, harpsichordist, administrator, teacher, musicologist, composer, and editor. Early life Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, McLean was a boy chorister at All Saint's Anglican Church in Winnipeg. While in Winnipeg, he studied piano and organ with Russell Standing for ten years, then studied organ for two years with Hugh Bancroft in Vancouver, before taking his first position as organist at St. Luke's Anglican Church, Winnipeg, age 15. He was first heard in recital, as an organist, on the CBC in 1947.

#10184

Scott Grimes

#153905

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Scott Christopher Grimes is an American actor and singer. Some of his most prominent roles include appearances in the 1984 cult classic The Night They Saved Christmas, ER as Dr. Archie Morris, Party of Five as Will McCorkle, Band of Brothers as Technical Sergeant Donald Malarkey, and the animated sitcom American Dad!, voicing Steve Smith. He is also well known by cult movie fans for his role as Bradley Brown in the first two Critters films. Since 2017, he has been a regular on the Fox/Hulu sci-fi comedy drama The Orville as Gordon Malloy.

#10185

Rose Goldblatt

#179798

Overall Influence

1913 - 1997 (84 years)

Rose Goldblatt was a Canadian administrator, pianist and teacher. She made her professional debut in Montreal in 1927 and then had her European debut eight years later. Goldblatt performed on radio, featured on recordings by the CBC and taught music at the Faculty of Music at McGill University from 1955 to 1978. She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1987 and an annual award presented by the Quebec Music Teachers' Association was named for her.

#10186

Jaap Schröder

#176771

Overall Influence

1925 - 2020 (95 years)

Jaap Schröder or Jaap Schroeder was a Dutch violinist, conductor, and pedagogue. He studied at the Amsterdam Conservatory and at the Sorbonne in France. In the 1960s he was a member of the Dutch early music group Concerto Amsterdam and made recordings with Gustav Leonhardt, Anner Bylsma, Frans Brüggen and others. Since 1981 he served as the director and concertmaster of the Academy of Ancient Music, and in 1982 he was appointed the visiting music director of the Smithsonian Chamber Players. He served as a faculty member at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, Yale School of Music and the Luxemb...

#10187

Erik Gunnes

#114215

Overall Influence

1924 - 1999 (75 years)

Erik Gunnes was a Norwegian historian. He was born in Bodø to Bjørnulf Røe Gunnæs and Antonie Berg. He studied theology in France, and served as Catholic priest in Oslo until 1965. He then focused on the study of Norwegian Middle Age history. From 1977 to 1991 he was appointed at the University of Oslo, eventually with a professorship in history.

#10188

Kenneth Hamilton

#179495

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Kenneth Hamilton is a Scottish pianist and writer, known for virtuoso performances of Romantic music, especially Liszt, Alkan and Busoni. Hamilton's playing is characterized by spontaneity, technical assurance, and a wide variety of keyboard colour. He was a student of Alexa Maxwell, Lawrence Glover and the Scottish composer-pianist Ronald Stevenson, whose music he champions.

#10189

Rudi Spring

#172912

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Rudi Spring is a German composer of classical music, pianist and academic. He is known for vocal compositions on texts by poets and his own, and for chamber music such as his three Chamber Symphonies.

#10190

Renina Katz

#88906

Overall Influence

1925 - Present (101 years)

Renina Katz Pedreira , known as Regina Katz, is a Brazilian engraver, printmaker, and watercolorist. Together with Edith Behring and Fayga Ostrower, she is part of the generation of Brazilian women engravers that art historian Geraldo Edson de Andrade calls the "matriarchy of engraving in Brazil".

#10191

Dena DeRose

#156753

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Dena DeRose is an American jazz pianist, singer and educator. Although she began her career just as a pianist, medical problems with her hand forced her to become a vocalist as well. She has released seven solo albums.

#10192

James Sommerville

#170879

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

James Sommerville is a Canadian orchestral hornist and conductor. He was the current principal hornist for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and former Conductor and Music Director of the Hamilton Philharmonic, in Hamilton, Ontario.

#10193

Marta Ptaszynska

#177472

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Marta Ptaszyńska is a Polish composer, percussionist and professor of music at the University of Chicago. She has been described by the Polish Music Center of the University of Southern California as "one of the best known Polish woman composers" as well as "a virtuoso percussionist specializing in performances of contemporary music".

#10194

Duke Redbird

#137143

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Dr.Duke Redbird is an Indigenous Canadian poet, journalist, activist, businessman, actor and administrator, best known as a key figure in the development of First Nations literature in Canada. An Ojibwe from the Saugeen First Nation in Southwestern Ontario, he became a ward of the Children's Aid Society at nine months of age after his mother died in a house fire. Raised predominantly by white foster families, he began writing as a way to deal with the anti-indigenous racism he faced in schools.

#10195

Jayne Loader

#158633

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Jayne Loader is an American director and writer best known for the 1982 Cold War documentary The Atomic Cafe. Early life She was born in 1951 in Weatherford, Texas. She graduated from Reed College and the University of Michigan .

#10196

Jim Wilson

#163990

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Jim Wilson is a film producer. He won the Academy Award for Best Picture for Dances with Wolves . Career Producing In 1990, Wilson produced Dances with Wolves. It was adapted by Michael Blake, based on his novel. It was the highest-grossing Western film of all time, $424.2 million worldwide, and won 7 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Sound, Best Score, and Best Film Editing.

#10197

Myra Melford

#130408

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Myra Melford is an American avant-garde jazz pianist and composer. A 2013 Guggenheim Fellow, Melford was described by the San Francisco Chronicle as an "explosive player, a virtuoso who shocks and soothes, and who can make the piano stand up and do things it doesn't seem to have been designed for."

#10198

Daniel Bukvich

#172196

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Daniel Bukvich is an American composer and percussionist. He has been a professor of percussion and music theory at the Lionel Hampton School of Music at the University of Idaho since 1978. He is heavily involved in the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival and DancersDrummersDreamers, both major events on campus.

#10199

Kwangchul Youn

#150006

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Kwangchul Youn is a South Korean operatic bass and academic voice teacher. He made an international career based in Germany, from 1994 to 2004 at the Berlin State Opera. He has performed leading roles at international opera houses and festivals, such as Gurnemanz in Parsifal at the Bayreuth Festival, Mephisto in Faust at the Vienna State Opera, and King Marke in Tristan und Isolde at the Metropolitan Opera.

#10200

Awadagin Pratt

#139569

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Awadagin Pratt is an American concert pianist born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Life Awadagin Pratt began piano lessons at six with Leslie Sompong and after moving to Normal, Illinois, violin lessons at age nine. With a violin scholarship he enrolled in University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign at the age of 16, then transferred to the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore where he was the school's first student to receive diplomas in three different performance areas: piano, violin, and conducting.

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