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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School

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Ranking

List of the most influential people in Communications,

#10451

Domenico Modugno

#180496

Overall Influence

1928 - 1994 (66 years)

Domenico Modugno was an Italian singer, actor and, later in life, a member of the Italian Parliament. He is known for his 1958 international hit song "Nel blu dipinto di blu", for which he received Grammy Awards for Record of the Year and Song of the Year. He is considered the first Italian cantautore.

#10452

Yonty Solomon

#171801

Overall Influence

1937 - 2008 (71 years)

Jonathan "Yonty" Solomon was a South African pianist. He played with many of the world's best-known orchestras. Biography Solomon was born in Cape Town, the youngest of seven children of a family from Lithuania. At the age of six he showed an interest in boogie-woogie and jazz. After winning a musical scholarship, and receiving support from Kendall Taylor, he studied at the University of Cape Town, graduating with distinction in both music and psychology.

#10453

Gabriela Ortiz

#177379

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Gabriela Ortiz is a Mexican music educator and composer. Biography Gabriela Ortiz Torres was born in Mexico City of parents who were folk musicians. She learned folk music at home, and then studied in Paris at the Ecole Normale de Musique. She returned to Mexico City due to the illness of her mother, and studied composition there with Mario Lavista at the National Conservatory of Music. She continued her studies at the Guildhall School with Robert Saxton, and with Simon Emmerson at the University of London where she received a PhD in 1996. After completing her studies, she took a position at the National School of Music at the National Autonomous University in Mexico City.

#10454

Patricia Brooks

#178660

Overall Influence

1937 - 1993 (56 years)

Patricia Brooks was a lyric soprano, actress, and opera singer, who performed primarily with the New York City Opera. She was known for her acting ability as much as for her voice. Biography Brooks was born in Manhattan and attended the High School of Music and Art, studying dance with Martha Graham. Following a knee injury, she turned to theatrical performance, studied singing with Margaret Harshaw and Daniel Ferro, and studied acting with Uta Hagen.

#10455

Marion Lerner-Levine

#170733

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (95 years)

Marion Lerner-Levine is British-born American a painter, printmaker, and teacher who creates "emotionally expressive" still life paintings in oil and watercolor, which "transform the traditional form of the still life into whimsical portraits of everyday life."

#10456

Yael Sharvit

#184818

Overall Influence

Yael Sharvit is an American linguist who is Professor of Linguistics at UCLA. She specializes in semantics and the syntax-semantics interface. Education Sharvit received her PhD in linguistics from Rutgers University in 1997; she was the third person to graduate from the program. Her dissertation title was "The Syntax and Semantics of Functional Relative Clauses."

#10457

Lynne Arriale

#133771

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Lynne Arriale is an American jazz pianist, composer, bandleader and educator. She is Professor of Jazz Studies and Director of Small Ensembles at the University of North Florida. Awards and honors "The Lights Are Always On" #3 on JazzWeek Radio charts"The Lights Are Always On" #19 on JazzWeek Radio charts, CDs receiving the most airplay in 2020"Chimes of Freedom" #8 on JazzWeek Radio charts"Chimes of Freedom" #34 on JazzWeek Radio charts,CDs receiving the most airplay in 2020"Give Us These Days" #15 on JazzWeek Radio charts"Solo" #28 JazzWeek Radio charts"Convergence" #4 on JazzWeek Rad...

#10458

André J. Thomas

#176930

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

André Jerome Thomas is an American composer and conductor. He served as a professor of music at the College of Music at Florida State University and the artistic director for the Tallahassee Community Chorus. In addition to his conducting and composition credits, Thomas is a published author, having written Way Over in Beulah Lan': Understanding and Performing the Negro Spiritual, and numerous journal articles.

#10459

Jaye P. Morgan

#173516

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (95 years)

Jaye P. Morgan is a retired American popular music singer, actress, and game show panelist. Early life Morgan was born in Mancos in Montezuma County in far southwestern Colorado. Her family moved to California by the time she was in high school. Morgan had six siblings; five brothers and one sister. In the late 1940s, at Verdugo Hills High School in the Tujunga neighborhood of Los Angeles, she served as class treasurer and sang at school assemblies, accompanied by her brother on guitar. She was married briefly to Michael Baiano from 1954-1955.

#10460

Christopher Glynn

#180934

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Christopher Glynn is a British classical pianist and festival director. He is especially known for his work as an accompanist with many leading singers and for his work as Artistic Director of the Ryedale Festival.

#10461

Ronaldo Miranda

#174113

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Ronaldo Miranda is a Brazilian composer and music professor. Miranda studied at the Escola de Música da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, under Henrique Morelenbaum for composition and Dulce de Saules for piano.

#10462

Jonathan Girard

#138521

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Jonathan Girard is an American-Canadian born conductor based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Education Girard received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in orchestral conducting from the Eastman School of Music after study with conductor Neil Varon. Girard completed his Bachelor of Music degree at the Hartt School of Music in West Hartford, Connecticut and his Master of Music degree in orchestral conducting at Boston University.

#10463

Jay Hoggard

#172297

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Jay Hoggard is an American jazz vibraphonist. Biography Jay Hoggard was raised in a religious family. He was born in Washington, D.C., but grew up in Mount Vernon, New York. His mother taught him how to play piano at a young age. At the age of 15, he started to play the vibraphone.

#10464

Kurt Ollmann

#169558

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Kurt Ollmann , is an American operatic baritone, known for his frequent musical association with composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein from 1982 until Bernstein's death in 1990. He has performed extensively, in opera, musical theatre, and solo recitals.

#10465

Mark G. Lawrence

Mark G. Lawrence

#115319

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Mark G. Lawrence is an American atmospheric scientist whose research focuses on a range of sustainable development topics at the science policy and science-society interface. He is scientific director at the Research Institute for Sustainability in Potsdam

#10466

Mike Johnson

#170310

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Mike Johnson is an American experimental rock guitarist and composer, best known as the co-founder and member of the Denver-based avant-rock group Thinking Plague. He has also been a member of Hamster Theatre and The Science Group, and has collaborated with several musicians, including Bob Drake, Susanne Lewis and Janet Feder.

#10467

Bernard Jackson

#137161

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Bernard Jackson is an American singer/bassist. He was the frontman for the 1980s/early 1990s R&B band, Surface from 1984 to 1994. He sang on hits like the No. 5 US/#1 US R&B "Shower Me With Your Love" and the No. 1 R&B and pop hit, "The First Time." He released his self-titled debut album in 2000.

#10468

Judith LeClair

#170550

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Judith LeClair , from Newark, Delaware, is an American bassoonist. She has been the principal bassoon in the New York Philharmonic since 1981 and on the faculty at the Juilliard School since 1985. LeClair began studying the instrument at age 11 and began her professional career at the age of 15 in a performance with the Philadelphia Orchestra playing the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante with colleagues from the Settlement Music School in Philadelphia, where she studied with Shirley Curtiss. She studied bassoon with K. David van Hoesen at the Eastman School of Music and held the principal chair in t...

#10469

Graham Sheen

#184194

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Graham Sheen AGSM is a British bassoonist, teacher, composer and arranger. He is principal bassoonist of both the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields . From 1979 he has been professor of bassoon at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where he also teaches chamber music, orchestral repertoire and bassoon ensemble. His published works include solo works for bassoon, chamber music for both winds and strings and three song cycles. He has made numerous arrangements for wind ensemble and three volumes of graded pieces for the bassoon are published by Faber Music.

#10470

Mari Kimura

#180660

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

is a Japanese violinist and composer best known for her use of subharmonics, which, achieved through special bowing techniques, allow pitches below the instrument's normal range. She is credited with "introducing" the use of violin subharmonics, which allow a violinist to play a full octave below the low G on the violin without adjusting the tuning of the instrument.

#10471

Butch Cassidy

#132281

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (125 years)

Danny Elliott Means II, better known by his stage name Butch Cassidy, is an American singer from Long Beach, California. He has worked with numerous West Coast hip hop musicians, including Nate Dogg, Snoop Dogg, Kurupt, Daz Dillinger, Ice Cube, Xzibit, Warren G, Mack-10, Tray Deee, E-40, WC, DJ Quik, DJ Battlecat, Tha Eastsidaz and more.

#10472

Peter Damm

#155413

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Peter Damm is a German horn player. He began his musical education aged eleven, on the violin, and started playing the horn in 1951 and graduated from the Franz Liszt Academy in 1957. In 1959 he was appointed as principal horn of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and from 1969 to 2002 he was principal horn at the Dresden Staatskapelle. On his retiring, the orchestra made him an honorary member. He is professor of horn at the Carl Maria von Weber music conservatoire in Dresden.

#10473

John Young

#176579

Overall Influence

1922 - 2008 (86 years)

John Merritt Young was an American jazz pianist. Young played with Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Dexter Gordon, and many others. He recorded with his own trio in the 1950s and 1960s, and was a sideman for Von Freeman, Gene Ammons and others. He remained active in the Chicago jazz scene until a few years before his death.

#10474

Reinhold Friedrich

#177376

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Reinhold Friedrich is a German trumpeter and university lecturer in Karlsruhe. Career Born in Weingarten, Friedrich was from 1983 to 1999 Solo trumpeter at the Radio-Sinfonie-Orchester Frankfurt. In 1986 he was awarded a prize at the ARD International Music Competition in Munich. Since 1989 he has been professor for trumpet at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe. As a peculiarity, Friedrich masters the playing on the keyed trumpet of which he presented various recordings. Friedrich also cultivates the playing of historical baroque trumpet and teaches trumpet playing in the sense of the histori...

#10475

Dejan Miladinović

#182702

Overall Influence

1948 - 2017 (69 years)

Dejan Miladinović, was a Serbiann opera director. He was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in a family of opera artists . He graduated with a bachelor's degree in Theatre Direction from the Academy for Theatre in Belgrade and received the title Master of Theatrical Arts from the same Academy. He died in Belgrade on 3 August 2017.

#10476

David Schnaufer

#173853

Overall Influence

1952 - 2006 (54 years)

David Schnaufer was an American folk musician. He is widely credited with restoring the popularity of the Appalachian dulcimer. Schnaufer was born in Hearne, Texas, and grew up in La Marque, Texas. Schnaufer was an award-winning dulcimer player and session musician. He moved to Nashville, Tennessee, during the 1980s, and in 1995, accepted a position at Vanderbilt University's Blair School of Music, where he taught dulcimer as an associate adjunct professor. He established himself as one of the country's premier dulcimer players. He played the dulcimer on recordings with The Judds, Emmylou Harris, Johnny Cash, and Chet Atkins, among others.

#10477

George Hearn

#151186

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

George Hearn is an American actor and singer, primarily in Broadway musical theatre. Some of his Broadway credits include Albin in La Cage aux Folles, the title role in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, John Dickinson in 1776, Max von Mayerling in Sunset Boulevard, Mr. Otto Frank in The Diary of Anne Frank, and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in Wicked.

#10478

Scott Tucker

#171723

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Scott Arthur Tucker is an American conductor. He is most widely known as the artistic director of The Choral Arts Society of Washington from 2012 to 2022, and as the director of choral music at Cornell University from 1995 to 2012.

#10479

Thurman Barker

#174527

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Thurman Barker is an American jazz drummer. Barker's first professional experience was at age sixteen with Mighty Joe Young. Barker took his bachelor's at Empire State College, then studied at the American Conservatory of Music under Harold Jones and at Roosevelt University. He next served as an accompanist for Billy Eckstine, Bette Midler, and Marvin Gaye. He was house percussionist at the Shubert Theater in Chicago for ten years. In 1968, he joined Joseph Jarman's first ensemble, and soon after became a member of the AACM in its early days. Aside from Jarman, he played in the late 1960s and...

#10480

Robert Gale

#180182

Overall Influence

Robert Gale is principal trombone with The Philadelphia Brass, the Opera Company of Philadelphia, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and a member of the pit orchestra of the Walnut Street Theatre. He has been a member of the music faculties of Swarthmore College and Valley Forge Military Academy and is currently on the faculty of The College of New Jersey. He has performed with the St. Louis and Richmond Symphonies and has recorded extensively for many vocal artists, television and major motion pictures. After graduating from the University of Illinois Bob began fifteen years of touring wit...

#10481

Rudi Tröger

#174563

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (97 years)

Rudi Tröger is a German painter and university professor. From 1967 to 1992 he was a professor for painting art at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. Personal life In his early years, Tröger received since 1946 private painting and drawing lessons by the German painter Wilhelm Beindorf in his home village Marktleuthen. Due to these early student years, he had the privilege of a first and basic artistic education. Tröger: "For myself this time was a gift, it was inspiring and important."

#10482

Jim McKay

#170302

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Jim McKay is an American film and television director, producer and writer. He has directed episodes of The Wire, Treme, Better Call Saul, Big Love, Criminal Intent and Mr. Robot as well as writing and directing Everyday People and Angel Rodriguez.

#10483

Gary Schocker

#178353

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Gary Schocker is an American flutist, composer, and pianist who has performed with the New York Philharmonic , the Philadelphia Orchestra, the New Jersey Symphony, the Dallas Symphony, the West German Sinfonia, and I Solisti Italiani. He has toured and taught in Colombia, Panama, Canada, Australia, Taiwan, Japan, Germany, France, and Italy.

#10484

Andrew Ball

#180685

Overall Influence

1950 - 2022 (72 years)

Andrew Ball was a British pianist, best known for his interpretations of Michael Tippett’s piano sonatas, which he studied with the composer. Ball was born in Southampton and was educated at Barton Peveril Grammar School in Eastleigh. One of his first appearances as a pianist was with the Havant Chamber Orchestra in 1966. He studied music at Queen’s College, Oxford and then at the Royal College of Music in London with Kendall Taylor, Maurice Cole and David Wilde.

#10485

John Watson

#147368

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

John Watson is a British film and television producer, he is best known for the film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, a production that he also co-wrote the screenplay Early life and education Watson, the son of the Somerset cricketer of the same name, was born in the village of Poyntington in Dorset, in South West England.

#10486

Konstantin Stepankov

Konstantin Stepankov

#179913

Overall Influence

1928 - 2004 (76 years)

Kostiantyn Petrovich Stepankov was a Ukrainian soviet actor. He appeared in more than fifty films between 1958 and 1999. He was a member of the jury at the 11th Moscow International Film Festival. Biography Kostiantyn Stepankov was born in a village Pechesky, Khmelnytskyi Oblast in Western Ukraine in family of the priest. In 1950-53 he studied in the Karpenko-Karyi Memorial Kyiv Institute of Theatrical Arts

#10487

Lester Strong

#150730

Overall Influence

Lester Strong was a reporter and news anchor at WHDH-TV from June 1984 until 2000. He was also the host of a public affairs show called Urban Update. Personal life A native of Braddock, Pennsylvania, Strong holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature from Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina. He graduated from Columbia Business School's Institute for Nonprofit Management.

#10488

Zakir Hussain

#152998

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Zakir Hussain is an Indian actor who primarily appears in Hindi films. He is known for his negative and comic roles. His best-known performances include those of Rashid in Ramgopal Varma's 2005 film Sarkar, Shardul in Sriram Raghavan's 2007 film Johnny Gaddaar and Prakash Rao in Rohit Shetty's Singham Returns .

#10489

Nolan Gasser

#152796

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Nolan Ira Gasser is an American composer, pianist, and musicologist. He was the chief musicologist for Pandora Media, Inc. and the architect of the Music Genome Project, the proprietary musical analysis system that underlies the popular Internet radio service. His classical compositions have been performed by orchestras, chamber ensembles, and soloists around the world, in such venues as Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and the Rose Bowl.

#10490

Jodi Levitz

#177890

Overall Influence

Jodi Levitz is an American viola player and academic. She has performed throughout Europe, South America, the US, and the Far East as a solo violist and has recorded works for the viola on several record labels including Erato Records. She is the violist of the Ives Quartet.

#10491

Manfred Stahnke

#170522

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Manfred Stahnke is a German composer and musicologist from Hamburg. He writes chamber music, orchestral music and stage music. His music makes extensive use of microtonality. He plays piano and viola.

#10492

Kebu

#169239

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Sebastian "Kebu" Teir is a Finnish keyboard player, arranger and composer. Career Teir's musical career began in 1999, playing keyboards in the progressive rock band Prime Mover, with whom he released three albums and a demo. He has also played keyboards in the progressive metal band Kouzin Bedlam. In 2008 he joined the soul/funk band Vinyl Jam on their single Test of Wind where he played organ, Moog synthesizer, and Hohner Clavinet. The band recorded their vinyls with the principle that everything in the signal chain had to be analog. This inspired Teir to make his debut album in a similar way, with the addition of using analog synthesizers as the only instruments.

#10493

Mike Walker

#182260

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Mike Walker is a British jazz guitarist. Career Walker was influenced by his father's piano playing, his mother's singing, and his brother's guitar playing. He went on to discover a passion for jazz guitarists Wes Montgomery, Joe Pass, Pat Metheny, John Scofield, Larry Coryell, and Tal Farlow.

#10494

Danjulo Ishizaka

#168882

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (47 years)

Danjulo Ishizaka is a German cellist and professor at the Berlin University of Arts and City of Basel Music Academy Life Ishizaka, born in Bonn, Germany, is the son of the German piano teacher Ruth Nathrath and Japanese immigrant Junkichi Ishizaka. His sister is the pianist Kimiko Douglass-Ishizaka. He began taking cello lessons at the age of 4. He was a student of Boris Pergamenschikow in Berlin from 1998 until Pergamenschikow's death in 2004, at which point he completed his studies with Tabea Zimmermann.

#10495

Lauren Kalman

#177541

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Lauren Kalman is a contemporary American visual artist who uses photography, sculpture, jewelry, craft objects, performance, and installation. Kalman's works investigate ideas of beauty, body image, and consumer culture. Kalman has taught at institutions including Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Currently she is an associate professor at Wayne State University.

#10496

Francis Judd Cooke

Francis Judd Cooke

#161662

Overall Influence

1910 - 1995 (85 years)

Francis Judd Cooke was an American composer, organist, cellist, pianist, conductor, choir director, and professor. Life Cooke was born December 28, 1910, in Honolulu, Hawaii, to a family of New England missionaries turned cattle ranchers. He was the great grandson of Gerrit P. Judd, the first doctor to reside in Hawaii, and grandson of Albert Francis Judd, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Hawaii. His mother was Sophie Boyd Judd, and father was George Paul Cooke, grandson of Amos Starr Cooke and Juliette Montague Cooke, founders of the Royal School of Hawaii.

#10497

Emily Floyd

#174557

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Emily Floyd is an Australian artist working in public art, sculpture and print making. Her family were toy makers in traditional European styles — carefully crafted of wood. She learned the skills and use of machinery, which are reflected and used in many of her sculptural works. She has been commissioned to produce multiple public art sculptures in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia.

#10498

Nasr Abdel Aziz Eleyan

#111864

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Nasr Abdel Aziz Eleyan is a Palestinian-born painter, professor, television production designer, and television producer. He lives in Amman, Jordan, where he teaches fine arts at the University of Jordan.

#10499

David Garvey

#173465

Overall Influence

1922 - 1995 (73 years)

David William Garvey was an American pianist and academic. He is known as the regular accompanist of Leontyne Price and other performers, including violinists Itzhak Perlman, Michael Rabin and Wanda Wiłkomirska.

#10500

Tiit-Rein Viitso

#141545

Overall Influence

1938 - 2022 (84 years)

Tiit-Rein Viitso was an Estonian linguist. In 1962, he graduated from Tartu State University in Estonian philology. In the years 1965–1973 he worked at Tartu State University's Computational Centre . During 1973–1993 he worked at Estonian Language Institute, and from 1986 – at Tartu State University .

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