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,

#10651

Norman Simmons

#175991

Overall Influence

1929 - 2021 (92 years)

Norman Simmons was an American musician, arranger, composer, educator, and most prominently a pianist who worked extensively with Helen Humes, Carmen McRae, Sarah Vaughan, Anita O'Day, and Joe Williams among others.

#10652

Steve Rochinski

Steve Rochinski

#134906

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Stephen James Rochinski is an American jazz guitarist, composer, arranger, recording artist, author, and educator. He has worked and performed with Tal Farlow, Attila Zoller, Jimmy Raney, Pete Candoli, Conte Candoli, Tim Hagans, Joe Lovano, Greg Hopkins, Gary Foster, Pat Harbison, Jeff Sherman, Hal Melia, Chip Stephens, Hank Marr, Brad Goode, Joe Hunt, Scott Lee, Walt Weiskopf, Wade Beach, Amy Shook, Jeff Antoniuk, Tony Martucci, Chuck Redd, Richard Evans, Bob Freedman, entertainer and singer Anthony Tillman, as well as numerous studio, concert, club date, and international clinic appe...

#10653

Richard Cowan

#176466

Overall Influence

1957 - 2015 (58 years)

Richard Cowan was an American operatic bass-baritone. A national finalist in the 1985 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and winner of the Grand Prize in the 1987 Concours International de Chant de Paris, Cowan sang leading roles in the opera houses of Europe and North America and was the artistic director of the Lyrique en Mer opera festival in Belle Île, which he founded in 1998.

#10654

Thomas Dolby

#174665

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Thomas Morgan Robertson , known by the stage name Thomas Dolby, is an English musician, producer, composer, entrepreneur and teacher. Dolby came to prominence in the 1980s, releasing hit singles including "She Blinded Me with Science" and "Hyperactive!" . He has also worked as a producer and as a session musician.

#10655

Ely Jacques Kahn Jr.

#137282

Overall Influence

1916 - 1994 (78 years)

Ely Jacques Kahn Jr. was an American writer with The New Yorker for five decades. Biography Born in New York City, he was the son of architect Ely Jacques Kahn, and the brother of mystery editor and anthologist Joan Kahn. He attended the Horace Mann School and Harvard University, where he took his B.A. in 1937. He was hired by St. Clair McKelway at The New Yorker in 1937 and his first byline appeared there in the April 3, 1937 issue. Before World War II, he was drafted and served in the U.S. Army from 1941 to 1945. The New Yorker publishing 39 of his pieces on Army life that were later coll...

#10656

Robert Dick

#167977

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Robert Dick is a flutist, composer, teacher and author. His musical style is a mix of classical, world music, electronic and jazz. 2014, the National Flute Association awarded Dick its Lifetime Achievement Award. The New York Times said his “technical resources and imagination seem limitless" while JazzTimes called him “revolutionary.”

#10657

Lucie Robert

#181813

Overall Influence

Lucie Robert is a Canadian-American violinist, composer, and college professor. Personal life and career Robert was born in Montreal. When Robert was five years old, she taught her older sister how to play the violin. Robert was the youngest musician at the Conservatoire de Montréal when she was 11 or 12 years old. She attended Indiana University Bloomington when she was 18 years old to study with the well known violinist Josef Gingold at the Jacobs School of Music. During the last three years of her nine year stay in Bloomington, she was Gingold's assistant. At 26 years old, Robert became a teacher at the Manhattan School of Music where she has taught at for over 20 years.

#10658

Vivienne Olive

#180837

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Vivienne Olive is a British-German composer and music educator. Career Born in London, Vivienne Olive studied piano, harpsichord, organ and music theory at Trinity College of Music in London. After 1968, she continued her education at the University of York, where she graduated in composition in 1975. Her teachers included the composers Bernard Rands , Franco Donatoni , Roman Haubenstock-Ramati and Klaus Huber . She received her Ph.D. in composition from the University of York in 1975. She was awarded composition grants from the Department of Education and Science and the German Academic Ex...

#10659

Bill Pierce

#164116

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Bill Pierce is an American jazz saxophonist. He played with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers in the early 1980s and in Tony Williams's quintet in the mid-1980s to early 1990s. He also has released numerous CDs for which he is the band leader.

#10660

Katja Andy

#182155

Overall Influence

1907 - 2013 (106 years)

Katja Andy was a German-American classical pianist and piano professor. Biography Youth and first career steps in Germany Katja Andy was born Käthe Aschaffenburg in 1907 in Mönchengladbach, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. She was the younger child of Otto Aschaffenburg , a Jewish fabric manufacturer, and his wife, Clara , an amateur pianist who had studied the piano with Clara Schumann. She started playing the piano at the age of three. Her parents were musical patrons and used to accommodate touring soloists of the local philharmonic concerts at the family home, including stars like Adolf Busch, Joseph Szigeti, Eugen d’Albert, and Walter Gieseking.

#10661

Larry Ridley

#109148

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Larry Ridley is an American jazz bassist and music educator. Biography Ridley was born and reared in Indianapolis, Indiana. He began performing professionally while still in high school in the 1950s. He studied at the Indiana University School of Music and later at the Lenox School of Jazz. Ridley has been involved in jazz education, heading the jazz program at Rutgers University.

#10662

Elaine Douvas

#173509

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Elaine Douvas has been Principal Oboe of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in New York City since 1977. She is also Instructor of Oboe and Chairman of the Woodwind Department at The Juilliard School. She also serves on the faculty of Mannes College The New School for Music in New York City, the Bard College Conservatory of Music in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, the Aspen Music Festival and School, Le Domaine Forget Academie , and the Hidden Valley Music Seminars .

#10663

Rüdiger Bohn

#142646

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Rüdiger Bohn is a German conductor and professor. Biography Born in Lübeck in 1960, Bohn studied piano and conducting at the Hochschule für Musik in Köln and the Hochschule für Musik "Robert Schumann" in Düsseldorf. He also attended masterclasses with Leonard Bernstein, Sergiu Celibidache and John Eliot Gardiner.

#10664

Paul Kling

#177363

Overall Influence

1929 - 2005 (76 years)

Paul Kling was a Czech-born Canadian violinist and Holocaust survivor. Early life Kling was born in Opava on 28 March 1929. He was a gifted musician very early in life, and by age seven he had performed Mozart's A Major Violin Concerto and Bach's A Minor Violin Concerto with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. In 1941, several months before the thirteen-year-old Kling was to receive the equivalent of a bachelor's degree in musical theory, he was expelled from school for being an 'undesirable element' and associated with the Jewish community.

#10665

David Evan Jones

#170013

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

David Evan Jones is an American pianist and composer of chamber music, opera, and computer music. Jones was a student of composers Roger Reynolds and Pauline Oliveros at University of California, San Diego. After serving as Composer-in-Residence at York University , he joined the faculty at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire in the 1980s before becoming professor of music at University of California, Santa Cruz. Jones has composed in residence at IRCAM in Paris, Elektronmusikstudion in Stockholm, and at Bregman Electronic Music Studio at Dartmouth College where he co-founded, with Jon Appleton...

#10666

Katherine Hoover

#169218

Overall Influence

1937 - 2018 (81 years)

Katherine Hoover was an American composer of Contemporary classical music and Chamber music, flutist, teacher of Musical composition and Music theory, poet, and later a conductor of her music. Her career as a composer began when few women composers earned recognition in Classical music in the 1970s. As shown in her list of known works, she has composed pieces for solo flute, mixed ensembles, chamber orchestra, choir, full orchestra, and many other combinations of instruments and voice. Some of her flute pieces incorporated Native American themes.

#10667

Armen Donelian

#173438

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Armen Hrant Donelian is a jazz pianist, composer, educator and author. Donelian was classically trained at the Westchester Conservatory of Music in White Plains, New York. He has appeared since 1975 as a featured soloist and bandleader, and with an array of jazz musicians, including Sonny Rollins, in international venues. A composer of over 100 works reflecting Classical, Middle Eastern and jazz influences, Donelian has produced 13 albums. He has received multiple awards as a Fulbright Senior Scholar and Specialist and an NEA Jazz Fellow. An educator at several New York institutions for 30 ye...

#10668

Herb Alpert

#172290

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Herb Alpert is an American trumpeter who led the band Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass in the 1960s. During the same decade, he co-founded A&M Records with Jerry Moss. Alpert has recorded 28 albums that have landed on the Billboard 200 chart, five of which became No. 1 albums; he has scored 14 platinum albums and 15 gold albums. Alpert is the only musician to hit No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 as both a vocalist and an instrumentalist .

#10669

Stuart Sankey

#174627

Overall Influence

1927 - 2000 (73 years)

Stuart Sankey was a pedagogue of the double bass. His students included Gary Karr, the first bass player of the modern era to make a career as a solo artist, and Edgar Meyer. He taught for nearly 50 years at the Aspen Music School. He also held teaching positions at the University of Texas, Indiana University, and the University of Michigan. He made a large number of transcriptions for the double bass, increasing the literature for the instrument. Sankey was born in Los Angeles, Calif., in 1927. He attended the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and the Juilliard School of Music....

#10670

Lei Liang

#145822

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Lei Liang is a Chinese-born American composer who was a winner of the Grawemeyer Award and a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music. He is Chancellor's Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of California, San Diego.

#10671

Robert Blust

#186772

Overall Influence

#10672

Yegana Akhundova

#186130

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Yegana Akhundova is an Azerbaijani pianist, composer, and teacher. She has held the title of People's Artist of Azerbaijan since 2012. Biography Yegana Akhundova was born on May 22, 1960, in Sheki, Azerbaijan.

#10673

Vuk Kulenovic

#126727

Overall Influence

1946 - 2017 (71 years)

Vuk Kulenovic was a Bosnian composer and teacher based in Boston, Massachusetts. He taught counterpoint, orchestration and directed study at Berklee College of Music. He composed and had commissions from around the world. His influences were wide-ranging, including jazz, Indian ragas, Balkan folk music, rock and many other contemporary styles. He wrote over 100 works for symphony orchestra, solo instruments, chamber ensembles, choral and vocal pieces, ballet, and scores for film and stage music.

#10674

James K. Randall

#178734

Overall Influence

1929 - 2014 (85 years)

James K. Randall was an American composer, music theorist, and early adopter of electronic music. At the time of his death he was Professor of Music Emeritus at Princeton University. Life and career James Kirtland Randall was born in Cleveland, Ohio to Margaret Wright Randall and Edwin Templeton Randall. Miggie Randall was a violin teacher at the Cleveland Institute of Music and brought young James up as a music prodigy, with the ambition that he would become a famous piano player. When James was 17, a piano sonata that he composed was played at Carnegie Hall by his teacher, Leonard Shure.

#10675

Ramsey Faragher

#167761

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

Ramsey Faragher is the Founder, President, and CTO of Focal Point Positioning Ltd, and the Chairman and President of Focal Point Positioning Inc. He is also a Bye-Fellow of Queens' College and lives in Cambridge with his wife and three children. Previously he was a Senior Research Associate at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory in England, working in the Digital Technology Group on infrastructure-free smartphone positioning.

#10676

Ben Street

#173744

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Ben Street is an American jazz double bassist. Street has performed and recorded with many renowned artists, including John Scofield, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Mark Turner, Ben Monder, Michael Eckroth, Sam Rivers, Billy Hart, Danilo Perez, Aaron Parks, and Adam Cruz, among others.

#10677

Isidore Cohen

#176294

Overall Influence

1922 - 2005 (83 years)

For the composer born with this name, see Isidore de Lara Isidore Cohen was a renowned chamber musician and violinist and member, at different times, of both the Juilliard String Quartet and the Beaux Arts Trio.

#10678

Josef Luitz

#186784

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Josef Luitz is an Austrian cellist and cello teacher. He was solo cellist of the NÖ Tonkünstlerorchester and is co-founder of the international chamber music festival Allegro Vivo. Biography He spent his childhood in Gablitz near Vienna. His father was music director of the 1. Gablitzer Musikverein. He first became an apprentice to an instrument maker.

#10679

Vladimír Sommer

#162492

Overall Influence

1921 - 1997 (76 years)

Vladimír Sommer was a Czech composer. Sommer began his studies at the Prague Conservatory, where he studied violin with Bedřich Voldan and composition with Karel Janeček. He then continued his education at the Academy of Arts and Music with Pavel Bořkovec. His first job was a composition teacher, and he eventually became a professor in the Music Department of Charles University. Sommer wrote three symphonies, an overture, one cello concerto and one violin concerto, chamber music, and choral pieces. He died in 1997 in Prague.

#10680

Earl Zindars

#159107

Overall Influence

1927 - 2005 (78 years)

Earl Zindars was an American composer of jazz and classical music. Biography Trained as a classical and jazz percussionist, Zindars went on to compose works for both orchestra and piano. Many of his jazz piano works were recorded by his friend Bill Evans.

#10681

Bill Bowers

#173627

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Bill Bowers is an American mime artist and actor based in New York City. As an actor, mime and educator, Bill has performed throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia. He is a Movement for Actors Instructor at NYU Tisch School for the Arts and also teaches at the William Esper Studio and the Stella Adler Studio in NYC.

#10682

Harold Meltzer

#177619

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Harold Meltzer is an American composer. Harold is inspired by a wide variety of stimuli, from architectural spaces to postmodern fairy tales and messages inscribed in fortune cookies. In Fanfare Magazine, Robert Carl commented that he "seems to write pieces of scrupulous craft and exceptional freshness, which makes each seem like an important contribution." The first recording devoted to his music, released in 2010 by Naxos on its American Classics label, was named one of the CDs of the year in The New York Times and in Fanfare; new all-Meltzer recordings will issue from Open G Records , Bridge Records , and BMOP/Sound .

#10683

Martha Gonzalez

Martha Gonzalez

#153225

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Martha Gonzalez is a Chicana artist, activist, musician and feminist music theorist. She is an associate professor in the Intercollegiate Department of Chicana/o Latina/o Studies at Scripps College. She is also a lead singer, percussionist, and songwriter for the band Quetzal, which won a Grammy Award for Best Latin Pop, Rock or Album in 2013. In 2022, Gonzalez was named a MacArthur Fellow by the MacArthur Foundation.

#10684

Mimi Lerner

#173100

Overall Influence

1945 - 2007 (62 years)

Mimi Lerner was a Polish-American mezzo-soprano, and later head of the voice department at Carnegie Mellon University. Life and career Lerner was born Emilia Lipczer in 1945 in Sambir, Ukraine to Jewish parents. At the time of her birth, her family had been hiding for several years in the woods to avoid Nazi persecution, and Lerner's first year of life was spent living in secret in the forest. Her grandparents died in Nazi concentration camps in Poland. After the end of World War II, the family moved to Paris where they resided for seven years.

#10685

Abby Ginzberg

#126974

Overall Influence

Abby Ginzberg is an independent documentary film director and producer and founder of Ginzberg Productions. For the past 30 years, Ginzberg has been creating films that tackle discrimination and the legal profession.

#10686

Josef Protschka

#157386

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Josef Protschka is a German operatic tenor who also sang lieder and oratorio and made many recordings. A long-term member of the Cologne Opera, he appeared at international opera houses and festivals, with a focus on Mozart's roles such as Tamino. As an academic voice teacher, he was rector of the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln from 2002 to 2009.

#10687

Dafnis Prieto

#140556

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Dafnis Prieto is a Cuban-American drummer, composer, bandleader, and educator. Career In his home town of Santa Clara, Cuba, Prieto studied percussion and guitar. During his teens, he moved to Havana to study at the National School of Music. He concentrated on classical music and Afro-Cuban music before paying more attention to jazz. In 1999, when he was twenty-five, Prieto moved to New York City, where he worked with Eddie Palmieri, Carlos Barbosa-Lima, Arturo O'Farrill, Dave Samuels, and Michel Camilo, among many others.

#10688

Igor Dronov

#186814

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Igor Arturovich Dronov is a Moscow-born Russian conductor and Honoured Artist of Russia who graduated from the Moscow Conservatory where he studied under Boris Tevlin and Dmitry Kitaenko. From 1991 to 1996 he worked as a conductor at the Bolshoi Theatre, where he conducted music for such productions as Aleko, Faust, both The Fallen Woman and Giuseppe Verdi's Il Trovatore, Miserly Knight and Eugene Onegin. In 1992 he became professor of conducting at the same place he graduated from and is still works there. Currently he works as principal conductor at the Studio for New Music where he records his CDs.

#10689

L. Patrick Devlin

#101449

Overall Influence

L. Patrick Devlin was a specialist in media and politics. Devlin was a professor of communication at the University of Rhode Island, having held the post for over thirty years until 2008, when he retired. He authored books such as Contemporary Political Speaking and Political Persuasion in Presidential Campaigns .

#10690

Dag Gundersen

#171188

Overall Influence

1928 - 2016 (88 years)

Dag Gundersen was a Norwegian linguist and lexicographer, dictionary editor and professor. Born in Ringsaker, he was a professor at the University of Oslo from 1985 to 1997 and was the editor of several dictionaries of the Norwegian language. He was a member of the Norwegian Language Council from 1990 to 2000, and since 1993 a member of Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

#10691

David Farquhar

#183575

Overall Influence

1928 - 2007 (79 years)

David Andross Farquhar was a New Zealand composer and professor of music at Victoria University of Wellington. Biography Farquhar was born in Cambridge, New Zealand, in 1928 but spent most of his early years in Fiji. He was educated in New Zealand, and was a pupil at St Peter's School in Cambridge and Wanganui Collegiate School. He was an accomplished sportsman and academic at both schools, captaining the cricket team in summer and hockey team in winter. He also broke many of their short- and middle-distance running records. He began his university studies in Christchurch before completing his degree at Victoria University College where he studied with Jenny McLeod and Douglas Lilburn.

#10692

Chuck Davis

#134449

Overall Influence

1937 - 2017 (80 years)

Charles Rudolph Davis, also known as Baba Chuck Davis, was an American dancer and choreographer whose work focused on traditional African dance. He was the founder of DanceAfrica, the Chuck Davis Dance Company, and the African American Dance Ensemble.

#10693

Vernon Midgley

#178960

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Vernon Midgley is an English tenor. Life and career Midgley was born in Worcester Park, Surrey. His parents were the tenor Walter Midgley and the pianist Gladys Midgley. His sister is the soprano Maryetta Midgley.

#10694

Yang Yang

#184967

Overall Influence

1974 - 2019 (45 years)

Yang Yang was a Chinese operatic tenor and music professor at the Capital Normal University in Beijing. He won top prizes at four Italian opera festivals. including the Pesaro Festival, and was named one of China's top ten tenors in 2012 by China Central Television. He died by suicide in 2019, at the age of 44.

#10695

Ed Xiques

#170017

Overall Influence

1939 - 2020 (81 years)

Edward Fabian "Ed" Xiques, Jr. was an American jazz saxophonist. Early life and education Xiques was born on Staten Island and raised in Pelham Manor, New York. When he was nine years old, his father gave him a soprano saxophone, which he carried to school every day, wrapped in a blanket. Xiques received his bachelor's degree in music education from Boston University in 1962, where he played with Jaki Byard and Herb Pomeroy.

#10696

Kelly Gray

#112399

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Kelly Gray is an American record producer and guitarist. Best known for playing with Queensrÿche and vocalist Geoff Tate's Operation: Mindcrime. Career Gray grew up with his mother and brother Howard D. Gray in a rural area near Redmond, Washington. He started playing guitar in the late 1970s, learning the style of Ritchie Blackmore. He attended Redmond High School, and graduated there in the same year as Scott Rockenfield, with whom he would play in the bands Queensrÿche and Slave to the System.

#10697

Michael Moore

#168121

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Michael Moore is an American jazz musician who has lived in the Netherlands since 1982. Background and career The son of a semi-professional musician, Moore was born and raised in Eureka, California. He studied music at Humboldt State and in 1977 graduated from the New England Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Jaki Byard and Gunther Schuller, and was a classmate of Marty Ehrlich. He played in a variety of musical contexts, especially those in support of theatre and dance groups. By 1982 he was a regular member of Misha Mengelberg's Instant Composers Pool and had moved to Amsterdam....

#10698

Miku Nishimoto-Neubert

#178512

Overall Influence

Miku Nishimoto-Neubert is a classical pianist. Born in Tokyo, she studied at the Tokyo University of the Arts . On a recommendation of Karl-Heinz Kämmerling she completed her studies in Hannover at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater, where she took the concert exam in 2001. She won awards in international competitions, including in 1994 a first prize at the Concurso Internacional de Musica da Cidade do Porto in Portugal, in 1997 a finalist prize at the Clara Haskil International Piano Competition in Vevey and a finalist prize at the Esther Honens International Piano Competition in Calgary, and in 1998 third prize at the Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in Leipzig.

#10699

Eleanor Cory

#179596

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Eleanor Cory is an American composer. Cory studied at Sarah Lawrence College, Harvard University, New England Conservatory, and Columbia University. She has taught at Yale University, Baruch College, Manhattan School of Music, Sarah Lawrence College, Brooklyn College, and The New School for Social Research and currently teaches at Mannes College of Music Prep Division and Kingsborough Community College, CUNY.

#10700

Jens Josef

#181784

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Jens Josef is a German composer of classical music, a flutist and academic teacher. Career Jens Josef received flute instructions from Rita Eggenweiler and Klaus Grünow, principal flute of the Staatstheater Kassel, and took composition classes with Jörn Tegtmeyer, the director of church music of Hann. Münden.

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