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,

#10901

Paul Kockelman

#187445

Overall Influence

#10902

Bill Russell

#159757

Overall Influence

1905 - 1992 (87 years)

William Russell was an American music historian and modernist composer. Named Russell William Wagner at birth, when he decided to become a classical music composer, he dropped his last name—as it already "was taken" by Richard Wagner. He was commonly known as "Bill Russell".

#10903

Justin O'Dell

#186794

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Justin O'Dell is an American clarinetist, international concert artist, Michigan State University professor, and orchestral and chamber musician. He earned degrees from Western Michigan University , Yale University , University of Michigan with further studies at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe in Germany.

#10904

Michelle Amato

#176053

Overall Influence

Michelle Amato is an American vocalist. She trained at the University of Miami's School of Music. She has toured or recorded with Quincy Jones, Jon Secada, Liza Minnelli, Al Green, Sandi Patty, Jon Hendricks, Donna Summer, Michael McDonald, Celia Cruz, and Rita Marley. She has been a featured soloist with the Memphis Symphony and the South Florida Pops.

#10905

Jo Grady

#119022

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (42 years)

Jo Grady is a senior lecturer in Employment Relations at The University of Sheffield, and a British trade union leader who serves as the general secretary of the University and College Union . Biography Grady was born in Wakefield in 1984, while her father was part of the UK miners' strike. She studied at Wakefield College, a further education institution, and then became the first member of her family to attend university, studying industrial relations at Lancaster University. Grady completed a PhD on trade union responses to neoliberal pensions reforms at Lancaster in 2011. In 2009, she beg...

#10906

Allan Gordon Bell

#183115

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Allan Gordon Bell, is a Canadian contemporary classical composer. Career Born in Calgary, Alberta, Bell received a Master of Music degree from the University of Alberta where he studied with Violet Archer, Malcolm Forsyth, and Manus Sasonkin, after completing undergraduate studies in philosophy. He also did advanced studies in composition at the Banff Centre for the Arts where his teachers were Jean Coulthard, Bruce Mather, and Oskar Morawetz. He has created works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, orchestra, band, and electroacoustic media.

#10907

Henrique de Curitiba

#135683

Overall Influence

1934 - 2008 (74 years)

Zbigniew Henrique Morozowicz, known as Henrique de Curitiba , was a Brazilian composer of Polish descent. He chose the pseudonym "Henrique de Curitiba" to become known in Brazil and abroad under a more commonly and better pronounceable name.

#10908

Yo Yo Honey Singh

Yo Yo Honey Singh

#170412

Overall Influence

1983 - Present (43 years)

Hirdesh Singh , known professionally as Yo Yo Honey Singh, or simply Honey Singh, is an Indian rapper, singer, music producer, and actor. He started in 2003 as a session and recording artist, and became a bhangra and hip hop, Punjabi music producer.

#10909

Leon Breeden

#171588

Overall Influence

1921 - 2010 (89 years)

Harold Leon Breeden was a jazz educator and musician. Biography When he was three his parents moved to Wichita Falls, Texas, where he grew up and graduated from high school. He attended Texas Wesleyan College in Fort Worth on a scholarship and later transferred to Texas Christian University where he completed both his bachelor's and master's degrees. While doing graduate work at Columbia University in New York City, he studied clarinet with Reginald Kell who had immigrated to the U.S. in 1948. Benny Goodman began studies with Kell in 1949.

#10910

Thomas Brandis

#152305

Overall Influence

1935 - 2017 (82 years)

Thomas Brandis was a German violinist, chamber music performer, pedagogue and former concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic. Biography Born in Hamburg in 1935, Brandis trained as a violinist in Hamburg and later in London with Max Rostal. After winning the first of the International ARD Competition he was concertmaster in Hamburg, moving later to Berlin to play with the Berlin Philharmonic. He became concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic at age 26, and served in the position until 1983. In 1976 he founded the Brandis-Quartet, which has performed virtually in all major festivals in Europe, Japan and the Americas.

#10911

Salvatore Martirano

#166770

Overall Influence

1927 - 1995 (68 years)

Salvatore Giovanni Martirano was an American composer of contemporary classical music. Born in Yonkers, New York, he taught for many years at the University of Illinois. He also worked in electronic music and invented electronic musical instruments.

#10912

Kati Agócs

#177157

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Kati Ilona Agócs is a Canadian-American composer and a member of the composition faculty at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. Education Agócs attended the Juilliard School in New York where she earned a Master's and Doctoral degrees under the guidance of Milton Babbitt. She was a composition fellow at the Aspen Music Festival and School and the Tanglewood Music Center, where she held the ASCAP Leonard Bernstein Composer Fellowship in 2007.

#10913

James Douglas

#182339

Overall Influence

1932 - 2022 (90 years)

James Douglas was a Scottish composer, accompanist, conductor, recording artist, and organist. Douglas was born in Dumbarton, Scotland. He was based in Edinburgh, but he moved to live in North West Scotland in 2006. Douglas has composed a wide variety of music: instrumental, choral, organ, flute, orchestral, wind, brass, and violin.

#10914

Mikołaj Górecki

#181248

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Mikołaj Górecki is a Polish composer. He is the son of the composer Henryk Górecki . In 1995 he graduated with honours in composition from the Music Academy in Katowice. In 1996, he received two scholarships from The Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada. In 2000 he received a doctorate in composition from Indiana University, Bloomington in the United States. In 2001-2002 he lectured at McGill University in Montreal. He currently lives and works in the United States.

#10915

Lance Oppenheim

Lance Oppenheim

#167068

Overall Influence

1996 - Present (30 years)

Lance Oppenheim is an American filmmaker, documentarian, producer, and multi-instrumentalist from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. His work blends cinematic genres to explore the lives of people who create homes in unconventional spaces and places. His debut feature Some Kind of Heaven was an Official Selection at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

#10916

Paweł Jędrzejko

Paweł Jędrzejko

#173694

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Paweł Jędrzejko is a literary scholar and an Americanist, translation studies scholar, musician and yachtsman. Member of the Polish a cappella sextet Banana Boat. Family and education Born into the family of university professors, the botanist Krzysztof Jędrzejko and linguist Ewa Jędrzejko, Paweł Jędrzejko is the elder brother of Maciej Jędrzejko , the founder and lead vocalist of the Polish a cappella sextet Banana Boat. Following in his mother's footsteps, Jędrzejko chose to pursue his career in modern languages and letters. In 1995, he received his MA in English from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland.

#10917

Stephen Dickson

#171720

Overall Influence

1951 - 1991 (40 years)

Stephen Dickson was an American baritone who had an active career in operas and concerts from 1972 through 1990. He was active with the United States's most important opera companies during the 1980s, sharing the stage with many notable singers like Luciano Pavarotti, Jessye Norman, and Renata Scotto. He was particularly admired for his portrayal of Papageno in The Magic Flute, a role he sang throughout Europe and the United States. At the time of his premature death, Dickson had just reached the pinnacle of his career, having only recently gained a more substantial role at the Metropolitan ...

#10918

K. Chakravarthy

#129813

Overall Influence

1936 - 2002 (66 years)

K. Chakravarthi was an Indian music director who primarily worked in Telugu cinema. He made his debut in 1971 with Mooga Prema and went on compose music for over 949 films, predominantly in Telugu language , followed by Kannada . He won two Nandi Awards.

#10919

Heinz Winbeck

#172020

Overall Influence

1946 - 2019 (73 years)

Heinz Winbeck was a German composer, conductor and academic teacher. He is known for five large-scale symphonies, which he programmatically subtitled, such as "Tu Solus" and "De Profundis". As a composition teacher in Würzburg, he shaped a generation of students.

#10920

Elizabeth Pitcairn

#172998

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Elizabeth Pitcairn is a renowned American classical violinist who is noted for performing on the 1720 Red Mendelssohn Antonio Stradivari violin. In addition to a solo career, she is the President and Artistic Director of the Luzerne Music Center in Lake Luzerne, New York.

#10921

Michael Stewart

#156407

Overall Influence

1945 - 2002 (57 years)

Michael Gassen Stewart was an American musician, songwriter, and producer. Originally founding the San Francisco-based folk rock band We Five, he later went on to produce Billy Joel's breakthrough album Piano Man as well as artists such as Tom Jones and Kenny Rankin earning him two Grammy nominations.

#10922

Emili Boix-Fuster

#177205

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Emili Boix-Fuster is a sociolinguist. His main academic interests are sociolects, intergenerational language transmission and linguistic ideologies in Catalan-speaking territories. Education Boix-Fuste studied Catalan Philology and Hispanic Philology at the University of Barcelona. From 1983 to 1985 he did his PhD courses in Sociolinguistics at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, USA

#10923

Akira Ogata

#174814

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

is a Japanese film director. He was given the Directors Guild of Japan New Directors Award for his debut film, Boy's Choir, in 2000, and then won the award for best director at the 31st Yokohama Film Festival for Nonchan Noriben.

#10924

Sol Berkowitz

#175429

Overall Influence

1922 - 2006 (84 years)

Sol Berkowitz was an American composer and music educator. Life Sol Berkowitz was born in Warren, Ohio, and lived in New York from 1925. He received music degrees from Queens College in 1942 and Columbia University in 1946. He studied piano with Abby Whiteside and composition with Karol Rathaus, Harold Morris and Otto Luening.

#10925

Jesús Castro-Balbi

#186176

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Jesús Castro-Balbi is an internationally recognized cellist, pedagogue, higher education and community leader. As of July 2022, Dr. Castro-Balbi assumed the position of Interim Associate Dean at Kennesaw State University Journey Honors College .

#10926

María Ugarte

#48689

Overall Influence

1914 - 2011 (97 years)

María de la Purificación Ugarte España was a Spanish-Dominican journalist, writer, academician, historian and palaeographer. Ugarte was the first woman who worked as a journalist in the Dominican Republic, and also the first woman to become a member of the Dominican Academy of History.

#10927

Basil Poledouris

Basil Poledouris

#172124

Overall Influence

1945 - 2006 (61 years)

Basil Konstantine Poledouris was an American composer, conductor, and orchestrator of film and television scores, best known for his long-running collaborations with directors John Milius and Paul Verhoeven. Among his works are scores for the films Conan the Barbarian , Red Dawn , Iron Eagle , RoboCop , The Hunt for Red October , Free Willy , Starship Troopers and Les Misérables . Poledouris won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Composition for a Limited Series, Movie, or Special for his work on the four-part miniseries Lonesome Dove in 1989, and was a four-time recipient of the...

#10928

Christa Schwertsik

#177084

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Christa Schwertsik is an Austrian singer, actress, director and university lecturer. Life and career Schwertsik attended grammar school in Vienna and then studied psychology at the University of Vienna. She received her vocal training from Hedda and Edwin Szamosi and Ruthilde Boesch. She also took acting lessons from Dorothea Neff and Eva Zilcher in Vienna.

#10929

Frank Bencriscutto

#154856

Overall Influence

1928 - 1997 (69 years)

Frank Bencriscutto , nicknamed "Dr. Ben," was an American conductor and composer of concert band music. Bencriscutto was Director of Bands and Professor of Music at the University of Minnesota for thirty-two years.

#10930

Marianne Ahrne

#166803

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Siv Marianne Ahrne is a Swedish film director and screenwriter. She has directed ten films between 1970 and 1997. Her 1976 film Near and Far Away won the award for Best Director at the 13th Guldbagge Awards. Her 1978 film The Walls of Freedom was entered into the 11th Moscow International Film Festival. According to film historian Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Ahrne was one of the first women to make documentary films in Sweden, and Foster noted that Ahrne's films have received little attention in the United States.

#10931

Erica Lindsay

#184295

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Erica Lindsay is an American jazz saxophone player and composer. Music career Lindsay's parents, both teachers, lived in Europe in the 1960s. She began her studies in composition with Mal Waldron in Munich when she was fifteen years old. She played clarinet, then alto and tenor saxophone. In 1973, she studied for a year at the Berklee School of Music in Boston and then went back to Europe, where she began her music career. She formed and a local quartet and went on tour. Since 1980, she has lived in New York.

#10932

Peter Edelmann

#180436

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Peter Edelmann is an Austrian operatic baritone. Since 1 January 2018, he has been the artistic director of the Seefestspiele Mörbisch. Life Born in Vienna, Edelmann graduated in singing from the under his father, the bass Otto Edelmann. He made his debut as an opera singer at the Theater Koblenz as Heerrufer in Richard Wagner's Lohengrin. His brother is Paul Armin Edelmann, another baritone.

#10933

David Parker

#178102

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

David Parker is an Australian cinematographer, film producer, screenwriter, and film director. Films written by Parker include Malcolm, Rikky and Pete, The Big Steal, Amy, and Matching Jack . Parker won the AFI Best Screenplay awards for Malcolm and The Big Steal.

#10934

Giuseppe Chiari

#169520

Overall Influence

1926 - 2007 (81 years)

Giuseppe Chiari was an Avant-Garde Florentine conceptual artist and experimental musician active in Neo-Dada circles, specifically the Fluxus art movement. Chiari was a supporter of intermedia work conducted between music, speech, gesture and image.

#10935

Antonio Ciacca

#176085

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Antonio Ciacca is a jazz pianist. Early life Ciacca was born in Germany and brought up in Italy. He began playing the piano at the age of seven. He has been taught by Steve Grossman, Kenny Barron, Marcus Belgrave and Barry Harris.

#10936

Steven Spooner

#179605

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Steven Spooner is an American pianist, and currently Professor of Piano at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. Biography As a performing artist, Spooner has given solo recitals at such major venues as Carnegie Hall, Muziekcentrum Vredenburg in Utrecht, the Salle Cortot in Paris, Budapest's Great Hall of the Liszt Academy, Geneva's Fête de la Musique and numerous other halls across Europe, Latin America, South America, Asia, and the United States. Spooner has recently completed an enormous recital series comparable to Anton Rubinstein's historic recitals of 1885. These concerts consis...

#10937

Clark Ross

#178675

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Clark Winslow Ross is a Canadian composer, guitarist, and music educator of Venezuelan birth. A composer of mainly works for orchestra and chamber music, he has won first prize in composition competitions held by the Hamilton Philharmonic , the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra , Symphony Nova Scotia , and the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters . He has received grants from a number of notable organizations, including the Canada Council, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra, and the Royal Bank of Canada among others. His compositions have been performed ...

#10938

Jennylyn Mercado

#174766

Overall Influence

1987 - Present (39 years)

Jennylyn Anne Pineda Mercado-Ho is a Filipino actress, singer, and songwriter. She was the winner of the first season of the reality talent competition StarStruck. Mercado garnered acclaim at a young age for her acting performances on television and film. She starred in multiple commercially successful films, including English Only, Please , The Prenup , Walang Forever , and Just the 3 of Us . With GMA Records and Viva Records, Mercado has released three albums, which have several popular singles such as "Sa Aking Panaginip", "Moments Of Love" in collaboration with Janno Gibbs, "Basta't Nandito Ka", and "Kahit Sandali".

#10939

Marie Therese Henderson

#186280

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Marie Thérèse Henderson is a Scottish music director and composer. She teaches at the Sophia University Institute of the Focolare Movement. She is linked to the music group Gen Verde.

#10940

Murray Boren

#183151

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Murray Boren is a composer of opera, symphonic, chamber, and vocal works. He has written nine operas and over 100 songs and chamber compositions. He also contributed to the Joseph Sonnets. Among his operas are Book of Gold and Emma; both are based on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints history. In 2007, he retired from his position as composer-in-residence at the College of Music of the College of Fine Arts and Communications of Brigham Young University .

#10941

John Buckley

#176871

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

John Buckley is an Irish composer and pedagogue, a co-founder of the Ennis Summer School and member of Aosdána. Biography John Buckley was born in Templeglantine, County Limerick. He grew up in a rural environment and was introduced to traditional music learning the button accordion from the local player Liam Moloney when he was 9 years of age. In 1969 he moved to Dublin to study for the Teacher's Diploma at St Patrick's College, Drumcondra. Here he had his first opportunity to hear live classical and modern music including contemporary and avantgarde works by Irish composers including Aloys ...

#10942

Ian Morris

#174205

Overall Influence

1957 - 2010 (53 years)

Ian Gordon Morris was a musician, record producer, recording engineer and songwriter from New Zealand. Musical career Ian Morris and his brother Richard were born in England but emigrated with their family to New Zealand in 1966. They attended Sacred Heart College, Auckland.

#10943

Titus Hjelm

#111218

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Titus Hjelm is an academic and musician from Helsinki, Finland. Academics Hjelm is a Doctor of Theology and an Associate Professor in the Study of Religion at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Previously he was a Reader in Sociology and a lecturer of Finnish Society and Culture at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, a part of University College London , where he teaches culture, social science, and literature courses. He studied Comparative Religion, History and Sociology at The University of Helsinki and has written several books concerning perspectives of popular culture ...

#10944

Frederick Bianchi

Frederick Bianchi

#151924

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Frederick Bianchi is an American-born composer and music technologist . Central to his work is the integration of acoustic instruments with electronic/computer-generated sound. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, honors, and citations including the ASCAP Young Composers Award, the Russolo-Pratella International Electronic Music Competition in Italy, the Bourges International Computer Music competition in France, the Kennedy Center's Friedheim Award competition in orchestral composition, the National Orchestral Association's Orchestral Fellow Award in New York City, and the United Sta...

#10945

Roberto Eyzaguirre

#174925

Overall Influence

1923 - 2013 (90 years)

Roberto Eyzaguirre was a Peruvian-American classical pianist and famed piano pedagogue. He was a longtime friend and pupil of the legendary 20th-century virtuoso pianist Claudio Arrau, who had studied under a pupil of Franz Liszt. He was noted for his colorful playing and "big tone."

#10946

Kaushik Ganguly

Kaushik Ganguly

#172048

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Kaushik Ganguly is an Indian film director, screenwriter and actor in Bengali cinema. Multiple National Film Awards winner Actor-Director, Kaushik Ganguly is known for making films that explore various aspects sexuality, like Ushnatar Janye , which deals with a lesbian relationship, and Arekti Premer Golpo , which examines transgender identity & Nagarkirtan , an LGBTQ Movie. In 2019, Film Companion ranked Ridhi Sen's performance in Nagarkirtan which was directed by Ganguly, among 100 Greatest Performances of the decade.

#10947

Elías López Sobá

#170765

Overall Influence

1927 - Present (99 years)

Elías López Sobá was a Puerto Rican classical music pianist and educator. Together with musical director Justino Diaz, Elias López Sobá co-directed the annual Casals Festival from 2010. Some sources considered him one of the most outstanding pianists and instrumentalists in 20th century Puerto Rico.

#10948

Werner Neumann

#186471

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Werner Neumann is a German jazz guitarist and music lecturer. Life Neumann grew up in Gelnhausen, where he took his first guitar lessons, before studying music at the University of Cologne. He then spent a year studying jazz guitar at the Musikhochschule Arnheim and finally studying jazz guitar at the Musikhochschule Köln. He took additional lessons with Pat Metheny, Attila Zoller, Mick Goodrick, Scott Henderson, Frank Gambale, Michael Brecker, Hal Galper, Adam Nussbaum, David Liebman and Robben Ford.

#10949

Maximilian Schönherr

#177173

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Maximilian Schönherr is a German journalist, musician, and photographer. Life Schönherr was born on December 27, 1954, in Haßfurt, Bavaria, Germany. After studying mathematics and physics at the Universities of Würzburg and Munich, he worked for Bavarian Broadcasting. In 1986, he received the Kurt-Magnus-Preis for Bit, byte, gebissen, the first series on computers on ARD radio, one of the most important radio awards in Germany. From 1987 to 1988, he traveled to Great Britain and the United States, as well as shorter stays in South Korea, Japan and China. Since 1995, he has worked regularly fo...

#10950

Martha Sheil

#180163

Overall Influence

Martha Sheil is an American operatic soprano who made her professional opera debut as the Contessa in Le nozze di Figaro at the New York City Opera under the baton of Julius Rudel. She went on to be a professor of voice at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance for over 30 years before her retirement in 2015.

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