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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List of the most influential people in Communications,

#10551

Raul Ramirez

#182545

Overall Influence

1946 - 2013 (67 years)

Raul Ramirez was an accomplished and widely published print and broadcast journalist and executive, educator, and activist in promoting independent reporting and diversity in the profession. Early life Ramirez was born in Havana, Cuba. In April 1962 his parents sent him and his sister, Miriam, to live with relatives in Florida because they were disappointed in what they saw as the failed promise of the Cuban Revolution. He graduated from the University of Florida at Gainesville with a degree in journalism. He once said he studied journalism as a way to improve his English.

#10552

Mariapaola D'Imperio

#177656

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Mariapaola D’Imperio is an Italian linguist and Distinguished Professor at the Department of Linguistics at Rutgers University. She is president of the Association for Laboratory Phonology and is known for her works on phonology. Previously D'Imperio was a professor at Aix-Marseille University and head of the Prosody Group at the Laboratoire Parole et Langage . She is an associate editor of the Journal of Phonetics since 2016.

#10553

Mihai Brediceanu

Mihai Brediceanu

#170921

Overall Influence

1920 - 2005 (85 years)

Mihai Brediceanu was a Romanian composer, conductor, and musicologist. Biography He was born in Brașov, the son of composer Tiberiu Brediceanu and grandson of Coriolan Brediceanu. He studied the piano at the Brașov Conservatory, and music theory, composition and conducting at the National University of Music Bucharest. His teachers were Mihail Jora, , Florica Musicescu, Silvia Șerbescu, and Ionel Perlea. He also pursued graduate courses in law and mathematics at the University of Bucharest.

#10554

Doina Rotaru

#142501

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Doina Rotaru is a Romanian composer best known for orchestral and chamber works. Biography Marilena Doinița Rotaru was born in Bucharest and studied with Tiberiu Olah at the Bucharest Conservatory in Bucharest from 1970-1975. In 1991, she continued her studies with Theo Loevendie in Amsterdam. In 1991 she also took a position as a professor at the National University of Music, and has served several times as a guest lecturer in Darmstadt, Germany and the Gaudeamus Composers Workshop in Amsterdam. Her music has been commissioned and performed internationally in Europe, Asia and the Americas. S...

#10555

Hermann Michael

#170096

Overall Influence

1937 - 2005 (68 years)

Hermann Michael was a German symphonic and opera conductor. He studied piano and cello at the Stuttgart Conservatory and had not formally studied conducting when he audited a master class led by Herbert von Karajan in Berlin in 1960. Michael then took a three-week master class with conductor Hans Swarowsky and was invited to the first Cantelli Conducting Competition in Italy, which he won.

#10556

Donald Harris

#172466

Overall Influence

1931 - 2016 (85 years)

Donald Harris was an American composer who taught music at Ohio State University for 22 years. He was Dean of the College of the Arts from 1988 to 1997. Harris earned a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in Music from the University of Michigan. He completed further studies at the Tanglewood Music Center and the Centre Français d'Humanisme Musical in Aix-en-Provence. He studied with Ross Lee Finney, Max Deutsch, Nadia Boulanger, Boris Blacher, Lukas Foss, and André Jolivet. He founded the Contemporary Music Festival at Ohio State in 2000. Prior to joining the faculty at Ohio State, he se...

#10557

Edgar Krapp

#132144

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Edgar Krapp is a German organist and music professor. Krapp is a member of the Board of the Neue Bachgesellschaft in Leipzig and the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts. Biography Krapp's first organ lessons were as a member of the cathedral choir. After graduation he studied organ with Franz Lehrndorfer in Munich and with Marie-Claire Alain in Paris. During his studies he won many prizes at international music competitions.

#10558

Stuart Ewen

#186315

Overall Influence

#10559

Linda McKnight

#175670

Overall Influence

Linda McKnight is a double bassist particularly known for her teaching and solo performances. She is part of the music faculties at Manhattan School of Music, Columbia University, New York University, Columbia Teachers College, and Montclair State University.

#10560

Ghulam Sadiq Khan

Ghulam Sadiq Khan

#81105

Overall Influence

1939 - 2016 (77 years)

Ustad Ghulam Sadiq Khan was an Indian classical vocalist. He belonged to the Rampur-Sahaswan gharana. Musical career He was initiated into music at the age of nine by his father Ustad Ghulam Jafar Khan, who was an Indian sarangi player. Later, he continued his training under the guidance of Ustad Mushtaq Hussain Khan, who was the first recipient of the Padma Bhushan award in India.

#10561

Melina Mercouri

#177984

Overall Influence

1920 - 1994 (74 years)

Maria Amalia "Melina" Mercouri was a Greek actress, singer, activist, and politician. She came from a political family that was prominent over multiple generations. She received an Academy Award nomination and won a Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Award for her performance in the film Never on Sunday . Mercouri was also nominated for one Tony Award, three Golden Globes and two BAFTA Awards in her acting career. In 1987 she was awarded a special prize in the first edition of the Europe Theatre Prize.

#10562

Carter Pann

#172875

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Carter Pann is an American composer. He studied composition and piano at the Eastman School of Music and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he earned a Doctor of Musical Arts degree. His teachers include Samuel Adler, William Albright, Warren Benson, William Bolcom, David Liptak, Joseph Schwantner, and Bright Sheng, and piano with Barry Snyder.

#10563

Joseph Middleton

#183612

Overall Influence

Joseph Middleton is a British classical pianist and lied accompanist. Biography Middleton was born in Cirencester, Gloucestershire. At school he played piano, violin, flute and organ. He read music at the University of Birmingham where he graduated with the concerto and conducting awards, a first class BMus and MPhil, and went on to study on an EMI Entrance Scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music. At the academy he studied with Malcolm Martineau and Michael Dussek and won all the academy's piano accompaniment awards, in addition to those at the Wigmore Hall International Song Competition., ...

#10564

Senad Bašić

#147385

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Senad Bašić is a Bosnian film, theater and television actor, and comedian. He graduated from the Academy of Performing Arts in Sarajevo in 1987. Bašić works as a professor at the academy, specializing in acting.

#10565

Giorgi Latso

#150748

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Giorgi Latso is a Georgian-American concert pianist, film composer, arranger, adjudicator, improviser and Doctor of Musical Arts. He is listed on the list of famous alumni from USC Thornton School of Music. Latso has won several international piano competitions and awards. He is best known for his interpretations of Chopin and Debussy. His concerts have been broadcast on radio and television in Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

#10566

John Lee Hooker Jr.

John Lee Hooker Jr.

#176841

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

John Lee Hooker Jr. is an American blues musician. He is the son of influential blues singer John Lee Hooker . The younger Hooker's musical style is markedly modernized, featuring contemporary arrangements.

#10567

Richard Rood

#138775

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Richard Rood is an American Grammy Award-winning violinist based in New York City. His career has spanned classical music, chamber music, contemporary jazz, and commercial music including Broadway and film soundtracks.

#10568

Cynthia Haymon

#172616

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Cynthia Haymon-Coleman is an American soprano She is known for the beauty of her voice and seeming ease with which she uses it, and more recently as a voice teacher. She received a bachelor's degree of music in vocal performance from Northwestern University. In 2016, she retired from the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and presently teaches privately from her studio in Champaign, Illinois.

#10569

Joe Roberts

#179830

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (42 years)

Joe Roberts is an English soul/dance singer, active in the 1990s. Prior to Roberts starting to record with business and life-partner Melanie Williams, he also had solo hits with "Lover", "Back in My Life" and "Adore", originally by Prince on his Sign “☮” the Times album. Together with Williams, Roberts covered "You Are Everything", previously recorded by the Stylistics and later covered by Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye.

#10570

Giorgi Shengelaia

#144368

Overall Influence

1937 - 2020 (83 years)

Giorgi Shengelaia was a Georgian and Soviet film director. He directed 14 films since 1961. His film Pirosmani won the Grand Prize at the Chicago International Film Festival in 1974 and went on to international critical acclaim. His 1985 film The Journey of a Young Composer was entered into the 36th Berlin International Film Festival where he won the Silver Bear for Best Director.

#10571

Lam Bun-Ching

#179659

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Lam Bun-Ching is a Chinese American composer, pianist, and conductor. Early life and training Lam holds a B.A. degree in piano performance from the Chinese University of Hong Kong . She obtained a scholarship from the University of California at San Diego, where she studied composition with Bernard Rands, Robert Erickson, Roger Reynolds, and Pauline Oliveros, earning a Ph.D. in 1981.

#10572

Giuliano Urbani

#114107

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Giuliano Urbani is an Italian academic and politician. He was the minister of cultural heritage from 2001 to 2005. Early life Urbani was born in Perugia, Umbria, on 9 June 1937. Career and activities Urbani is an academic by profession. He taught political sciences at Bocconi University in Milan until 1994. He was also a collaborator of Fininvest.

#10573

Herschel Garfein

#159584

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Herschel Garfein is an American composer, librettist, stage director, and faculty member of the Steinhardt School of Music at New York University, where he teaches Script Analysis. Garfein is widely known for his libretto written for Robert Aldridge's Elmer Gantry, which won two 2012 Grammy Awards including "Best Contemporary Classical Composition" won by Garfein and Aldridge. He also collaborated with Aldridge on the oratorio Parables. In his compositions for the musical Suenos he found an inspiration in Hispanic rhythms. Garfein also composed the music and libretto for an opera based on th...

#10574

Kazimierz Rymut

#74808

Overall Influence

1935 - 2006 (71 years)

Kazimierz Rymut was a Polish linguist, onomastician. His area of expertise was the etymology of towns and geographical features in Poland. Biography He studied Polish studies at the Jagiellonian University; He got his doctorate in 1968, habilitated in 1972. From 1979, he worked as an associate professor. He was long-standing director the Polish Onomastics Department at the Institute of the Polish Language of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Krakow, the editor-in-chief of the "Onomastica" magazine, chairman of the Slavonic Onomastic Commission in the International Committee of Slavs, and in t...

#10575

Keith Copeland

#182258

Overall Influence

1946 - 2015 (69 years)

Keith Copeland was a jazz drummer and music educator. Career His father, Ray Copeland, was a jazz trumpeter, and he learned by watching him, but he decided to play drums after studying Art Blakey's records with The Jazz Messengers.

#10576

Jacob Lateiner

#172169

Overall Influence

1928 - 2010 (82 years)

Jacob Lateiner was a Cuban-American pianist. Early life and studies Though born on March 31, 1928, Lateiner's father did not get around to registering his birth until May 31 the same year. He was the brother of violinist Isidor Lateiner.

#10577

Paul Smith

#182665

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Paul Charles Smith is a Contemporary Christian Music performer and songwriter. He is best remembered for his early years with influential gospel group The Imperials. Smith spent four years with that group, recording four albums and one live video. Smith was inducted into the Gospel Music Association's Gospel Music Hall of Fame as a member of The Imperials. He has recorded several solo albums and is a songwriter.

#10578

M. David Lee III

#178884

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

M. David Lee III is an American film director, producer, writer, editor and director of photography. Lee is noted for his use of a version of the Dogme95 principals originally developed by Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg in his films. His production company, Triple Sticks Productions, has produced four feature films since 1997 and several short films dating back to the late '70s. Triple Sticks Productions is also distributing their film, Slow Down… You're Dating Too Fast!. Lee has also spent time as a sports anchor with Comcast SportsNet Mid-Atlantic, SNY, WHBQ, KNTV, KDOC, and KCOY-TV.

#10579

Edward T. McDougal

Edward T. McDougal

#181965

Overall Influence

Edward T. McDougal grew up in Winnetka, Illinois, and graduated from Colorado College in Colorado Springs. He is the son of C. Bouton McDougal, Vice President and General Counsel for R. R. Donnelley and former president of The Chicago Sunday Evening Club, a long-running religious radio and television broadcast program, which had world renowned speakers that included Billy Graham, Martin Luther King, Jr., John R.W. Stott, Ben Haden, Lloyd John Ogilvie, Bruce Larson, Stuart Briscoe, Jill Briscoe, Joni Eareckson Tada, Madeleine L'Engle, and Elisabeth Elliot.

#10580

Ledisi

#159126

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Ledisi Anibade Young , better known simply as Ledisi, is an American R&B and jazz recording artist, songwriter, music producer, author and actress. Her name means "to bring forth" or "to come here" in Yoruba.

#10581

Sheryl WuDunn

#141659

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Sheryl WuDunn is an American business executive, writer, lecturer, and Pulitzer Prize winner. A senior banker focusing on growth companies in technology, new media and the emerging markets, WuDunn also works with double bottom line firms, alternative energy issues, and women entrepreneurs. She has also been a private wealth adviser with Goldman Sachs and was previously a journalist and business executive for The New York Times. She is now senior managing director at Mid-Market Securities, a boutique investment banking firm in New York serving small and medium companies.

#10582

Fernando Rivas Inostroza

#180827

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Fernando Enrique Rivas Inostroza is a Chilean journalist. Biography He was born on 25 March 1964 in Santiago, the capital of Chile. He completed his high school education at the Instituto Nacional General José Miguel Carrera in 1979.

#10583

Nishat Khan

#158251

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Nishat Khan is an Indian sitar player from an illustrious musical family and the foremost sitar virtuoso of his generation. As a composer and music producer he has collaborated with some of the world's leading musicians such as Paco Peña, John McLaughlin, Philip Glass and Evelyn Glennie. His sitar concerto "Gate of the Moon" premiered with the BBC National Orchestra for the Proms at Royal Albert Hall in 2013.

#10584

Sheila Silver

#172482

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Sheila Jane Silver is an American composer. Early life and studies Sheila Silver was born in Seattle, Washington in 1946, the youngest daughter of Robert and Fannie Silver. She started piano studies at the age of five. After two years at the University of Washington, she transferred to the University of California where she received a Bachelor of Arts in 1968. She then studied with Erhard Karkoschka at the State University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart, and with György Ligeti in Berlin and later in Hamburg. She attended the 1970 Darmstadt Summer Institute, and spent a summer at the Tanglewood Music Center where she studied with Jacob Druckman.

#10585

Cong Su

#146539

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

This is a Chinese name; the family name is Su.Cong Su is a Chinese composer. He studied at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, then in Germany. He has lectured on music theory, music analysis, film music, and ballet music at the Musikhochschule in Munich. Since 1991, he has been a professor of film and media composition at the newly-founded State Film Academy in the Stuttgart area.

#10586

Donna Amato

#176594

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Donna Marie Amato is an American pianist. She teaches at University of Pittsburgh. Life Amato studied under the renowned teacher and virtuoso, Ozan Marsh throughout her early musical training. After receiving her BMA from the University of Arizona in 1983, Amato traveled to Europe to study with Louis Kentner, in London and with Gaby Casadesus, in Paris. She also received a scholarship to play for Guido Agosti's masterclass series in Siena, Italy with a Diploma d'Onore.

#10587

Anthony Bramall

#162978

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Anthony Bramall is a British conductor. Career Born in London, Bramall studied singing at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and subsequently completed postgraduate studies in conducting there with Maestro Vilem Tausky. At the same time he was musical director of the Southend Symphony Orchestra and the New Westminster Chorus.

#10588

Mikhail Kollontay

Mikhail Kollontay

#182348

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Mikhail Georgiyevich Kollontay , Russian composer and pianist. Also known under his mother's name, Ermolaev. His father, Georgiy Fyodorovich Kollontay , an artist, was sent to the camps in 1938 ; his mother, Ekaterina Ilyinichna Ermolaeva , was a translator . In 2022, Kollontay became citizen of Republic of China.

#10589

Tove Bull

#119811

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Tove Bull is a Norwegian linguist. Born in Alta, Bull was appointed associate professor at the University of Tromsø in 1984, and was promoted to professor in 1990. Bull served as pro rector from 1990 to 1995, and then became the first female rector of the University of Tromsø, holding this position from 1996 to 2001.

#10590

Yuri Belov

#175133

Overall Influence

1930 - 1991 (61 years)

Yuri Andreevich Belov was a Soviet film and theatre actor. He was one of the most popular actors of Soviet cinema in the 1950s and 1960s. Biography and career Yurii Belov was born July 31, 1930, in Rzhev . He spent his childhood in the Kuril Islands, as Yuri's father was a military man, and the last place of his service became the Far East.

#10591

Bob Woodruff

#178979

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Bob Woodruff is an American country music singer and songwriter. Initially, he was a member of a country rock band called The Fields before beginning a career as a solo artist. He released four studio albums and has charted two singles on the Billboard country music charts, as well as a third on the RPM Country Tracks chart in Canada.

#10592

Chan Hok-lam

#171488

Overall Influence

1938 - 2011 (73 years)

Chan Hok-lam was a Hong Kong-born historian of China. His obituary in the Journal of Song-Yuan Studies considered that "his works have inescapably influenced the research of nearly all those after him who have entered into the uniquely challenging sub-discipline of middle-period Chinese studies." Focusing on the period from the 9th to the 15th centuries, he was the author of 19 volumes of history in English and Chinese, a major contributor to two other large collaborative works, and over a hundred essays and reviews in history journals.

#10593

Anthony Brown

#180359

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

Anthony Jamar Brown is an American urban contemporary gospel artist and musician, whose background singers are called Group Therapy, stylized group therAPy. He started his music career, in 2012, with the release of, Anthony Brown & Group TherAPy, by Tyscot Records. This was a Billboard breakthrough release, with chartings The Billboard 200, the Top Gospel Albums, and the Independent Albums chart. He is the worship leader at First Baptist Church of Glenarden, located in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, where he has served since June 2008.

#10594

Ivan Ivanovich Petrov

#167084

Overall Influence

1920 - 2003 (83 years)

Ivan Ivanovich Petrov was a Soviet and Russian bass opera singer. People's Artist of the USSR . Born Ivan Krauze , the family took the name Petrov in 1936 after moving from Siberia to Moscow due to the suspicions of anyone with a German surname. He entered the Bolshoi Theatre in 1942 after three years with the Moscow Philharmonic spent traveling giving concerts for the troops. He continued singing until 1970 when diabetes began to affect his voice, then concentrated on teaching.

#10595

Joy Singarayer

#175077

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Joy Sargita Singarayer is a British climate scientist and Professor of Palaeoclimatology at the University of Reading, where she is joint Head of the Department of Meteorology. She has made contributions to understanding past climate change and has used that knowledge to constrain current and future environmental changes. Her work focuses on interactions between humans, land cover/use and climate, and future implications for agriculture and water resources.

#10596

Kendall Durelle Briggs

#184369

Overall Influence

Kendall Durelle Briggs is an American composer of classical music and music theorist. He is a professor of music theory, music history and analysis at the Juilliard School in New York City. He is considered an authority on common practice harmony and counterpoint and has authored two books on the subject, The Language and Materials of Music and Tonal Counterpoint. He is a recipient of the Charles Ives Prize in composition from The Academy of Arts and Letters.

#10597

Erich Witte

#177604

Overall Influence

1911 - 2008 (97 years)

Erich Witte was a German stage actor, operatic tenor and opera director. He was based for almost five decades at the Berlin State Opera, and performed leading roles at major opera houses in Europe and at the Metropolitan opera. He participated in world premieres, including Louise Talma's Die Alkestiade and Alan Bush's Joe Hill.

#10598

Rogier Blokland

#138358

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Rogier Philip Charles Eduard Blokland is a Dutch linguist and Professor of Finno-Ugric languages at Uppsala University. Life and Research Blokland studied at the University of Groningen, where he completed his master's degree in 1997, and received his Doctorate under the supervision of Cornelius Hasselblatt. After his studies, he held posts as docent, visiting docent and research and teaching fellow at various universities, including the University of Tallinn, the University of Tartu, the University of Greifswald and the Humboldt University of Berlin.

#10599

Milan Horvat

#170882

Overall Influence

1919 - 2014 (95 years)

Milan Horvat was a Croatian conductor. Horvat was born in Pakrac. He studied with Igor Markevitch and started his professional career in 1946 with the Radio Symphony Orchestra Zagreb, followed in 1953 by the post of chief conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra in Dublin for five years.

#10600

Arthur Greene

#185330

Overall Influence

Arthur Greene is an American pianist and educator. Career Greene won gold medals at both the 1978 Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition and the William Kapell International Piano Competition. The Washington Post' wrote "For 99 out of every 100 contestants in a competition, playing the Brahms B-flat would be a mistake. It is an enormous challenge, and is really meant to be played only by the masters. But Arthur Greene assumed the risk and won - in more ways than one. It was a virtuoso reading. But that was not what mattered most about it. For above all one was conscious throughout that...

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