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,

#10701

Michel Donato

#180701

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Michel Donato is a Canadian jazz double bass player, composer, and singer and pianist. According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, "[h]is association with both [Oscar] Peterson and [Bill] Evans marks Donato as one of Canada's foremost jazz bassists...". He was made a member of the Order of Canada in 2007.

#10702

Andrew Lewis

#180569

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Andrew Lewis is a British composer known mainly for his acousmatic music, that is, electroacoustic music heard only over loudspeakers, though he also composes some chamber and orchestral music. Education He studied music at the University of Birmingham in England, first as an undergraduate , then as a postgraduate studying composition with Jonty Harrison. It was during this time that he became one of the original members of BEAST, performing electroacoustic music throughout the United Kingdom under Harrison's direction. After gaining a PhD in 1992 he worked briefly in the Music department at the University of Surrey before becoming lecturer at the Bangor University .

#10703

Ann Hampton Callaway

Ann Hampton Callaway

#124633

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Ann Hampton Callaway is an American jazz singer, songwriter, and actress. She wrote and sang the theme song for the TV series The Nanny. Career Callaway is a native of Chicago. Her father, John Callaway, was a journalist and her mother was a singer, pianist, and vocal coach. She learned scat singing from her father and a love of jazz from his record collection, and she learned classical music from her mother. Her sister, Liz Callaway, is a singer and actress on Broadway. Callaway performed in musicals at New Trier High School in Winnetka. After graduation, she studied acting for two years at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

#10704

Norio Maeda

#179627

Overall Influence

1934 - 2018 (84 years)

was a Japanese jazz composer and pianist. Maeda learned piano as a young child, and moved to Tokyo to play and arrange jazz professionally in 1955. There he played with Shungo Sawada's ensemble and founded a group called the Wind Breakers. He joined the West Liners, led by Konosuke Saijo, as a pianist and arranger in 1959. Known as a composer, he penned pieces for The Blue Coats, Tatsuya Takahashi, Nobuo Hara, and Toshiyuki Miyama. He also founded We 3 with and Takeshi Inomata, and later worked with Inomata again in a trio with .

#10705

Koji Toyoda

#128564

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

Koji Toyoda is a Japanese classical musician. He was born in Hamamatsu in 1933. Biography Violinists Toshiya Eto and Koji Toyoda were amongst the first students of the famous music educator Shinichi Suzuki after he returned to Japan from studying in Germany. At that time, Koji Toyoda was only three and a half. During World War II, his studies with Suzuki were discontinued when Koji was evacuated from Tokyo. After losing both parents during the war, Koji stayed with his uncle and worked at a sake shop. Post war efforts of Suzuki to locate his student by radio announcement brought Koji under Suzuki's care.

#10706

Jörg Duda

#180442

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Jörg Duda is a German composer of classical music. Life and career Born in Munich, Duda was influenced by the church music of Scheyern Abbey. He took lessons in organ and improvisation with Harald Feller, in theory and composition with Dieter Acker. From 1988 to 1992 he studied church music at the Musikhochschule München. He studied choral conducting with Roderich Kreile and was a member in his choir Junge Kantorei München. He played organ concerts and worked as a Korrepetitor for the choir of the Bayerischer Rundfunk and the Philharmonischer Chor München. From 1992 Duda studied composition w...

#10707

Kevin Cobb

#184196

Overall Influence

Kevin Cobb is an American trumpet player who joined the American Brass Quintet in fall 1998. He also became a faculty member of The Juilliard School and the Aspen Music Festival. Currently, he teaches at the Yale School of Music and at SUNY Stony Brook.

#10708

Vladimir Mendelssohn

Vladimir Mendelssohn

#181738

Overall Influence

1949 - 2021 (72 years)

Vladimir Mendelssohn was a Romanian composer, violist, and professor. He had served as Director of the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival since August 2005. Biography Mendelssohn was born into a family of musicians and attended the National University of Music Bucharest. He taught at a number of conservatories, such as the Conservatoire de Paris, where he served as a professor of chamber music. He was also a professor at the Folkwang University of the Arts and the Royal Conservatory of The Hague.

#10709

Gerald Levinson

#172837

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Gerald Charles Levinson is an American composer of contemporary classical music. Life At university, he studied with George Crumb, Richard Wernick, and George Rochberg. After college, Levinson went to study composition with Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatory. He was inspired by Messiaen's use of birdsong and his unique harmonic ideas, as well as the musics of Bali and India. Levinson has also worked with Simon Rattle, Ralph Shapey, and Seiji Ozawa.

#10710

Eleanor Yule

#181431

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Eleanor Yule is a Scottish film director, best known for her feature film Blinded and her television documentaries with Michael Palin. She also directed Ghost Stories for Christmas a TV mini-series with Christopher Lee for BBC2.

#10711

Teun A. Van Dijk

#186873

Overall Influence

#10712

Jonathan King

#175662

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Jonathan King is an English singer, songwriter and record producer. He first came to prominence in 1965 when "Everyone's Gone to the Moon", a song that he wrote and sang while still an undergraduate, achieved chart success. King's career in the music industry was effectively ended in 2001, when he was convicted of sexually abusing five teenage boys.

#10713

John Debney

#173616

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

John Cardon Debney is an American composer and conductor of film, television, and video game scores. His work encompasses a variety of mediums and genres including comedy, horror, thriller, fantasy and action-adventure. He is a long-time collaborator of The Walt Disney Company, having written music for their films, television series, and theme parks. He has also collaborated with film directors such as Jon Favreau, Garry Marshall, Tom Shadyac, Peter Hyams, John A. Davis, Brad Anderson, Howard Deutch, Mark Dindal, Robert Rodriguez and Paul Tibbitt.

#10714

Mari Yaguchi

#161590

Overall Influence

1983 - Present (43 years)

Mari Yaguchi is a Japanese singer, actress, and television personality. She joined the girl group Morning Musume in 1998 as a second generation member and was the leader of subgroups within Hello! Project, such as Mini-Moni, Morning Musume Sakuragumi, and ZYX. After leaving Morning Musume in 2005, Yaguchi has continued to appear on television in dramas and variety shows.

#10715

Michel Longtin

#178908

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Michel Longtin is a Canadian composer and music educator based in Montreal. An associate of the Canadian Music Centre and a member of the Canadian League of Composers, he won the Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music in 1986 for Pohjatuuli.

#10716

Stephen Westfall

#91985

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Stephen Westfall is an American painter, critic, and professor at Rutgers University and Bard College. Biography When Stephen Westfall was an adolescent, he was fascinated by the social spaces created by architecture. By age twelve, he was bringing home books about Louis Kahn, Le Corbusier, and Luis Barragán, architects who carved up space with colored walls. Barragan was more polychromatic, but even white was a color for Corbusier, who also added color to his interior walls in his chapel masterpiece. Stephen Westfall attended University of California, Santa Barbara with a B.A. and M.F.A. in...

#10717

Jassie Gift

#88790

Overall Influence

Jassie Gift is an Indian cinematic music composer and playback singer. He composes songs and sings for Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu films. He became famous after the release of the song "Lajjavathiye" from the film 4 The People. which became a huge chartbuster. He won the Best Music Director award at The Bangalore Times Film Awards 2011.Some of his other well-known songs include "Themma Themma Themmadikkatte" and "Nillu Nillu". He is credited with popularising Rapping and Hip-hop in Kerala. He is also known for Sanju Weds Geetha , Anniyan and Myna .

#10718

Ian Lake

#185068

Overall Influence

1935 - 2004 (69 years)

Ian Lake was a pianist and composer who taught for many years at the Royal College of Music in London. The son of working-class parents, he was educated at Trent College after winning a scholarship. After leaving school, he joined the army to undertake his National Service, playing the clarinet and viola in an army band. He subsequently entered the Royal College of Music on another scholarship. He began teaching at the college in 1966, eventually becoming a professor of piano.

#10719

Charles Jones

#175203

Overall Influence

1910 - 1997 (87 years)

Charles Jones was a Canadian-born music educator and composer of contemporary classical music who lived and worked mainly in the United States. Early life and education Jones was born in Tamworth, Lennox and Addington County, Ontario, Canada. He moved to Toronto at the age of ten, eventually traveling to New York City in 1928. He studied at The Juilliard School, where his primary instructor was Bernard Wagenaar.

#10720

Birgitta Bergvall-Kåreborn

#173934

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Birgitta Bergvall-Kåreborn is a Swedish academic and professor of information systems. Since December 1, 2017 Bergvall-Kåreborn is the Vice-Chancellor at Luleå University of Technology. Bergvall-Kåreborn defended her thesis in 2002 at Luleå University of Technology. Since 2009 she is professor of information systems. She has also been the university's Pro Vice Chancellor.

#10721

Enrico Elisi

#186705

Overall Influence

Enrico Elisi is an Italian pianist from Bologna, Italy. He has gained international recognition for his performances across four continents. He has been lauded for his "mastery of elegance, refinement, and fantasy" and "remarkable sensitivity, imagination, and polish" . Elisi's career spans numerous prestigious venues and collaborations, establishing him as a distinguished pianist.

#10722

Bodil Kjær

#95519

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

Bodil Kjær is a Danish architect, furniture designer, professor and researcher, who has specialized in interior design and city planning. Today she is recognized above all for the flexible series of office furniture she designed in the 1960s.

#10723

Ingrid Monson

#173378

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Ingrid Monson is Quincy Jones Professor of African-American Music, supported by the Time Warner Endowment, and Professor of African and African American studies at Harvard University. Education Monson earned a Bachelor of Music from New England Conservatory of Music and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she studied economics. She later earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in musicology from New York University.

#10724

Beverley Peck Johnson

#163797

Overall Influence

1904 - 2001 (97 years)

Beverley Peck Johnson was an American voice teacher, soprano, and pianist who taught on the faculties of several institutions, including Manhattan School of Music and The Juilliard School. Her pupils included several prominent opera singers, actors, and entertainers, including sopranos Renée Fleming, Renata Tebaldi, Anna Moffo, tenor Anthony Dean Griffey, and actors Madeline Kahn, Kevin Kline, Constance Towers, and Juilliard voice professor Cynthia Hoffmann among others. Music critic Anthony Tommasini wrote that "Johnson was particularly valued by students for a keen ability to find individua...

#10725

Kiyoshige Koyama

#132856

Overall Influence

1914 - 2009 (95 years)

Kiyoshige Koyama, was a Japanese composer for orchestras, vocal, and traditional Japanese instrumentation. He was born in Nagano City, Nagano Prefecture. Although nationalistic he did not compose until his thirties, which was after the period of Imperial expansionism.

#10726

John Godfrey

#175368

Overall Influence

John Godfrey is a composer and performer, co-founder and musical director of Icebreaker , founder member of Crash Ensemble , founder of the Quiet Music Ensemble, and lecturer in music at National University of Ireland, Cork.

#10727

Per Gessle

#173772

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Per Håkan Gessle is a Swedish singer, songwriter and guitarist. He is best known as the male half and primary songwriter of the pop rock duo Roxette, which he formed with Marie Fredriksson in 1986 and which was disbanded after her death in 2019. The duo achieved international success in the late 1980s and early 1990s with their albums Look Sharp! and Joyride , and topped the charts in the US four times, most notably with "It Must Have Been Love" which was featured in the film Pretty Woman. Prior to the formation of Roxette, he had a successful career in his native Sweden as the frontman for Gyllene Tider.

#10728

Robert P. Murray

#184014

Overall Influence

Robert Pfenning Murray was an American violinist, scholar and teacher. He premiered the 5th Sonata for Violin and Piano by Pulitzer Prize winning composer Leo Sowerby. Murray was the first violinist to record the four sonatas of Anton Rubinstein. More recently, he has partnered with Ardyth Lohuis in a violin and pipe organ duo which brought attention to the large body of musical repertoire available for this combination of instruments through concerts and recordings. Several well known contemporary composers have written pieces for Murray and Lohuis, and have worked closely with Murray and L...

#10729

Mark Eddinger

#164583

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Mark Eddinger is an American keyboardist, composer, arranger, music producer, record company executive, and music and entertainment industry consultant. Eddinger is also involved as an executive and consultant in other business sectors unrelated to the entertainment industry.

#10730

Sean Nelson

#174032

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Sean Nelson is an American musician and journalist. He was the lead singer of the alternative rock group Harvey Danger. Music career Nelson is a graduate of Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia and was a classmate of Paul DePodesta and Courtenay Bram Anderson.

#10731

Donna Bruton

#183266

Overall Influence

1954 - 2012 (58 years)

Donnamaria Bruton was a painter and faculty member at the Rhode Island School of Design, known for her mixed media paintings and collages. Bruton worked at RISD starting in 1992, serving as Painting Department head from 2001–03, and as interim dean of Graduate Studies from 2003–05.

#10732

Márta Gulyás

#183422

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Márta Gulyás is a performing pianist and a professor of piano and chamber music. Biography Márta Gulyás studied piano at the Liszt Ferenc University for Music in Budapest, Hungary with Erzsébet Tusa and István Lantos. In 1976, she received the artistic and pedagogic diplomas there. She then completed a post-graduate program at the Tschaikowski Conservatory in Moscow with professor Dmitri Bashkirow. In 2001, Márta Gulyás habilitated herself at the Liszt Ferenc University and was awarded the title of Magistra Habilitatam.

#10733

Lincoln Goines

#175770

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Lincoln Goines is a double bassist and bass guitarist from Oakland, California. Biography A mainstay of the New York City jazz/Latin/studio scene since the early 1980s, Goines' career includes performance credits as sideman to Sonny Rollins, Paquito D'Rivera, Michel Camilo, Mike Stern, and Carly Simon. He is also an educator and author, having written "Funkifying The Clave: Afro-Cuban Grooves for Bass and Drums” with drummer Robby Ameen/Alfred Publishing 1996.

#10734

Eugene Izotov

#172745

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Eugene Izotov is a Russian-born oboist and recording artist. He is Principal Oboist of the San Francisco Symphony appointed by Michael Tilson Thomas in 2014. He is the first Russian-born oboist in any major U.S. symphony orchestra. Previously, he was Principal Oboist of the Chicago Symphony, Principal Oboist of the Metropolitan Opera, Principal Oboist of the Kansas City Symphony, and has appeared as guest Principal Oboe with the Boston Symphony and New York Philharmonic. He studied with American oboist Ralph Gomberg at Boston University, from which he received the Distinguished Alumnus Award....

#10735

Nicole Mitchell

#168377

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Nicole Mitchell is an American jazz flautist and composer who teaches jazz at the University of Virginia. She is a former chairwoman of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians . Early life and education Mitchell was born in Syracuse, New York, and moved to Anaheim, California at the age of eight. Her first instruments were piano and viola, which she started playing in fourth grade. She was classically trained in flute and played in youth orchestras as a teenager. Though she intended to major in computer science in college, she took a class in improvisation from Jimmy Cheatham at University of California, San Diego, and started busking in the streets playing jazz flute.

#10736

Boris Berlin

#151381

Overall Influence

1907 - 2001 (94 years)

Boris Berlin was a Canadian pianist, music educator, arranger, and composer of Russian birth. He is primarily remembered for his work within the field of piano pedagogy, having published an extensive amount of material in that area and teaching a large number of notable pianists. His more than 20 books on the subject of piano pedagogy sold more than 4 million copies. In 2000 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada with the citation "Known as the teacher of teachers, he profoundly influenced musical instruction in our country. Having taught some of Canada's most illustrious musicians, h...

#10737

Jonathan Mills

#151063

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Sir Jonathan Mills, AO, FRSE is an Australian composer and festival director. He was born and raised in Sydney and has dual Australian and UK citizenship. His work includes two operas, an oratorio, a ballet, song cycles, concertos, and chamber music. He has directed a number of arts festivals in Australia, and from 2006 to 2014 he was director of the Edinburgh International Festival.

#10738

Dorothy Warenskjold

Dorothy Warenskjold

#165985

Overall Influence

1921 - 2010 (89 years)

Dorothy Lorayne Warenskjold was an American lyric soprano who had an active career in operas and concerts from the mid-1940s through the early 1960s. She made several recordings for Capitol Records.

#10739

Chris Murray

#169245

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Chris Murray is a Canadian-singer-songwriter and guitarist working primarily in the genre of ska. In Canada, he was a member of the now-defunct ska band King Apparatus during the late 1980s and early 1990s. He now lives in the Los Angeles, California area, where he performs regularly, both solo as well as with the Chris Murray Combo. From 2003 until the venue's closure in 2009, Murray organized a weekly ska/reggae show called "The Bluebeat Lounge" which featured both local and out of town artists every Wednesday at the Knitting Factory in Hollywood.

#10740

Milo Aukerman

#42486

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Milo Jay Aukerman is an American singer, songwriter, and former research molecular biologist. Aukerman is most widely known for being the lead vocalist of the punk rock band the Descendents, a group widely considered to be pioneers of pop-punk. A caricature of Aukerman serves as the band's mascot.

#10741

Alexander Sukhanov

#146453

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Alexander Alekseevich Sukhanov is a Soviet and Russian poet, composer, bard and mathematician who created more than two hundred songs. Biography Alexander Sukhanov was born on 25 May 1952 in Saratov, Russia, USSR. During childhood he studied music, graduating from music school as a violin major. In 1974 Sukhanov earned an undergraduate degree from the Mechanics and Mathematics Department of Moscow State University. He later earned a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the same institution. He taught mathematics at Gagarin Air Force Academy; since 1981 he has worked at the computational methods la...

#10742

Marina Piccinini

#179568

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Marina Piccinini is an Italian American virtuoso flautist. She is noted for her performances of compositions by Mozart and Bach, and has performed with many of the world's top orchestras and conductors.

#10743

Faraj Garayev

#179658

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Faraj Gara oglu Garayev ; December 19, 1943 in Baku In 1966, Garayev graduated from the Azerbaijan State Conservatoire, specialising in music composition, taught by his father Gara Garayev. In 1971, he finished his post-graduate studies. From 1966 to 2003, he taught composition, instrumentation and polyphony at the Azerbaijan State Conservatoire and from 1994 he has been a professor there. From 1991, he has been living in Baku and Moscow. In 1991, he became professor of the faculty of music theory at the Moscow State Conservatoire. In 2003, he became professor of composition the faculty of the Kazan State Conservatoire.

#10744

John S. Hilliard

#170548

Overall Influence

1947 - 2019 (72 years)

John Stanley Hilliard was an American composer. Born in Hot Springs, Arkansas, United states, into a family of musical amateurs, John Hilliard began his musical training by studying piano at the age of 6 from his cousin, Barbara Dodson, a local piano teacher and composer. His father, Sherlon Hilliard , possessed a fine tenor voice and was a popular gospel-style singer with their county Protestant Church of the Nazarene congregations. While his mother, Laurine H. Hilliard , was an amateur accordionist and pianist. Hilliard’s grandfather, John Milton Hilliard, had also been well known as a congregational song leader for the rural areas of central Arkansas in the 1930s and 1940s.

#10745

Nóirín Ní Riain

#132814

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Nóirín Ní Riain is an Irish singer, writer, teacher, theologian, and authority on Gregorian Chant . She is primarily known for spiritual songs, but also sings Celtic music, sean-nós and Indian songs. Nóirín plays an Indian harmonium , shruti box and feadóg . She was Artist-in-Residence for Wexford and Laois. She performs with her sons Eoin and Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin under the name A.M.E.N. and gives workshops about "Sound as a Spiritual Experience".

#10746

Kevin Willmott

#107532

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Kevin Willmott is an Academy Award Winning American film director and screenwriter He is known for work focusing on black issues including writing and directing Ninth Street, C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America, and Bunker Hill. His The Only Good Indian was a feature film about Native American children at an Indian boarding school and the forced assimilation that took place. In Jayhawkers , he followed the life of Wilt Chamberlain, Phog Allen and the 1956 Kansas Jayhawks basketball team. Willmott has collaborated with Spike Lee, with whom he shared an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for BlacKkKlansman.

#10747

William Preucil

#122667

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

William Preucil is an American violinist. During a musical career spanning several decades, he served as concertmaster for four major American orchestras, most notably the Cleveland Orchestra from 1995, until he was dismissed in 2018. He also played with the Cleveland Quartet, which won a Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance in 1997. He was a longtime member of the faculty at Cleveland Institute of Music until his resignation in 2018, following allegations of sexual misconduct.

#10748

Ruth Anderson

#171660

Overall Influence

1928 - 2019 (91 years)

Ruth Anderson was an American composer, orchestrator, teacher, and flutist. Biography Evelyn Ruth Anderson was born March 21, 1928, in Kalispell, Montana. She was a composer of orchestral and electronic music. Her extensive education spanned two decades, and was spent at eight different institutions. Throughout this time, Anderson was the recipient of a multitude of awards and grants, including two Fulbright awards to study composition with Darius Milhaud and Nadia Boulanger in Paris. After completing her education, Anderson spent time as a freelance composer, orchestrator, and choral arrang...

#10749

Jill Dolan

#165389

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Jill Susan Dolan is an American educator, author, blogger and feminist. She writes on theatre, sexuality studies, and feminist theory. Since July 2015, Dolan has been the Dean of the College at Princeton University, where she is also the Annan Professor in English and a professor of theatre studies in the Lewis Center for the Arts. Prior to Princeton, Dolan served as the Department Head of Theater and Dance at the University of Texas at Austin, and as Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dolan's notable works include her blog The Feminist Spectator, for which she received the 2011 George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism, and Theater and Sexuality.

#10750

Marc Singer

#139014

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Marc Singer is an English documentary filmmaker. He was born and raised in London, England, and moved to Florida, United States, when he was 16. After graduating from high school, he moved to New York City.

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