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,

#11151

Judie Bamber

#183973

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Judie Bamber is an American artist in Los Angeles. Her often representational paintings explore themes of gender, sexuality, temporality, and memory. She teaches in the Master of Fine Arts program at Otis College of Art and Design and is best known for Are You My Mother?, featured in New American Paintings in 2003 and 2004. Her paintings, watercolors, and graffiti emphasize women's pleasure and permeate her family history.

#11152

Jeanne Leblanc

#187768

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Jeanne Leblanc is a Canadian film director and screenwriter from Quebec, whose full-length directoral debut Isla Blanca was released in 2018. Career She previously directed the short films Sortie de secours , Le temps des récoltes , One Night with You [Une nuit avec toi] , Sullivan's Applicant and Carla en 10 secondes .

#11153

Daniel Swain

#186488

Overall Influence

#11154

Tyler Posey

#175838

Overall Influence

1991 - Present (35 years)

Tyler Garcia-Posey is an American actor and musician. He performed in his early years in a number of children's film and television roles, for which he was twice nominated for a Young Artist Award. He was known for his roles as Raul Garcia in Doc and Ty Ventura in Maid in Manhattan . As an adult, he is known for playing the central character Scott McCall in the MTV series Teen Wolf , although he has since been cast in a number of film roles and has also performed in voice acting roles. In late 2011 to 2012, he won a number of youth acting awards, including a Teen Choice Award, and was nominated for several others.

#11155

Jan Ragnar Hagland

#126716

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Jan Ragnar Hagland is a Norwegian philologist; a professor of Old Norse at NTNU. He has worked at NTNU since 1972, and became professor in 1986. Hagland has translated several sagas of Icelanders to Nynorsk , translated the Frostathing Law to modern Norwegian, and was joint author of Handbok i norrøn filologi and Trøndersk språkhistorie , amongst others.

#11156

Hsu Tsang-Houei

#175505

Overall Influence

1929 - 2001 (72 years)

Hsu Tsang-Houei was a Taiwanese musician and music educator. As an ethnomusicologist, he has been called a "pioneering collector of Taiwanese folk songs." Early life and education Hsu was born in Hemei Village, Changhua County, Taichung, Taiwan, in the period of Japanese occupation, and went to Japan to study at the age of 12, majoring in violin. He came back to Taiwan and studied at Taichung Municipal Taichung First Senior High School in 1946 after war, and then studied at Taiwan Provincial Normal College department of music, serving as a violinist at Taiwan Provincial Symphony Orchestra a...

#11157

Keith Allan

#175414

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Keith Allan is an American actor and screenwriter. Projects he has worked on include Social Nightmare and Z Nation. Filmography Acting Writing External links

#11158

Ashley Hunt

#183943

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Ashley Hunt is an American artist, activist, writer and educator, primarily known for his photographic and video works on the American prison system, mass incarceration and the prison abolition movement. He is currently a faculty member of the School of Art at the California Institute of the Arts.

#11159

Alexander Rudin

Alexander Rudin

#173502

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Alexander Israilevich Rudin is a Russian classical cellist and conductor. Biography and career Rudin was born in 1960, in Moscow, and he studied piano and cello at the Gnessin Institute before later studying conducting at the Moscow Conservatory with Dmitri Kitayenko. He has won prizes in many international competitions, and has performed as a solo cellist with such orchestras as the Royal Philharmonic, the Vienna Symphony and the Danish Radio Orchestras. His interest in authentic performance practice has led him to play early music and baroque music on both the cello and viola da gamba, in ...

#11160

Melvyn "Deacon" Jones

#175231

Overall Influence

1943 - 2017 (74 years)

Melvyn "Deacon" Jones was a trumpet player and an organist and founding member of Baby Huey & the Babysitters. Biography In 1963 along with Johnny Ross and Jimmy Ramey, Jones formed Baby Huey & the Babysitters who went on to become a well known live attraction in Chicago. After Ramey's death in 1970 Jones embarked on a career that would see him work with Curtis Mayfield, Freddie King, and John Lee Hooker. During his career he worked with many noted musicians, including Gregg Allman, Elvin Bishop, Lester Chambers, Albert Collins, Pappo, and Buddy Miles. His brother is the drummer Harold Jones.

#11161

Gerhard Erber

#184128

Overall Influence

1934 - 2021 (87 years)

Gerhard Erber was a German classical pianist and academic teacher. He played as a member of the East German ensemble Gruppe Neue Musik Hanns Eisler, which focused on contemporary chamber music. He was a professor of piano at the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig, and organised a Bach competition in Köthen.

#11162

Thomas Oboe Lee

#177308

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Thomas Oboe Lee is a Chinese American composer. Life Lee was born in Beijing, China. His family left Communist China in 1949 and lived in Hong Kong until 1959, when he moved to São Paulo, Brazil. He emigrated to the United States in the summer of 1966.

#11163

Mina F. Miller

#183006

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Mina Florence Miller , credited as Mina F. Miller and Mina Miller, is an American classical pianist, writer, and founder and artistic director of Music of Remembrance in Seattle, Washington. Career Miller studied piano performance under Artur Balsam at the Conservatory of Manhattan School of Music, and was awarded a Ph.D. in Music at New York University. She became Associate Professor of Music at the University of Kentucky in 1977, was appointed Assistant Professor in 1984 and was named a University Research Professor for the year 1988–89. She has performed in solo recitals in England and Sca...

#11164

Gwen Thompson

#180919

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Gwendoline Linda Louise Thompson is a Canadian violinist and music educator. She has been a member of two notable chamber music ensembles with whom she has made several commercial recordings: the Masterpiece Trio and Viveza, the latter of which she formed in 1989 with Lee Duckles , Wilmer Fawcett , Mark Koenig , and Linda Lee Thomas . She has also appeared in concert as a soloist with several Canadian orchestras, including the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Victoria Symphony and the British Columbia Chamber Orchestra.

#11165

Katrin Laur

#180363

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Katrin Laur is an author, film director, and professor who currently lives in Estonia and Germany. In 1973 in Soviet-occupied Tallinn she graduated from a school that gave an excellent command of English , she then had different jobs. Laur learned photography at the Tallinn Technical School N°2 and studied philosophy for one year at the Moscow State University. From 1977 to 1982 Laur studied feature film directing at the Moscow State Institute of Cinematography , in the masterclass of Sergey Gerasimov, and graduated in 1982 with a diploma summa cum laude . After graduating from the film schoo...

#11166

Nassos Vakalis

#183939

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Nassos Vakalis is an animation director and animator. Early life Nassos Vakalis was born and raised in Athens, Greece. Since childhood, he demonstrated an interest in art, submitting his early work in various contests and winning numerous prizes and distinctions.

#11167

Robert M. Cundick

Robert M. Cundick

#185031

Overall Influence

1926 - 2016 (90 years)

Robert Milton Cundick Sr. was a Latter-day Saint composer. Cundick's interest in music started at a young age, and he studied under Mormon Tabernacle organist Alexander Schreiner and later under Leroy J. Robertson. He also served for many years as an organist at the Salt Lake Tabernacle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . This included accompanying the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and playing organ solos on the weekly broadcast, Music & the Spoken Word. Cundick served in World War II and enrolled at the University of Utah where he received his BFA, MFA, and PhD. He joined the musi...

#11168

Elliot Schrage

#173805

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Elliot J. Schrage is an American lawyer and business executive. Until June 2018, he was vice president of global communications, marketing, and public policy at Facebook, where he directed the company's government affairs and public relations efforts. He then served as vice president of special projects at Facebook.

#11169

Young MC

#168576

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Marvin Young , better known by his stage name Young M.C., is a British-born American rapper, singer and actor. He is best known for his 1989 hit "Bust a Move". His debut album Stone Cold Rhymin' found international acclaim. Young has also appeared in film in acting roles and cameo appearances and has appeared in several television programs.

#11170

Olga Kern

#158284

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Olga Vladimirovna Kern is a Russian-American classical pianist. She became an American citizen in 2016. Early life Olga Kern was born on 23 April 1975 in Moscow into a family of musicians with the last name of Pushechnikova. Her parents are both pianists, and she is related to the Russian socialite and memoirist Anna Petrovna Kern. Her great-grandmother was the mezzo-soprano Vera Pushechnikova. Kern began studying piano at age five with Professor Evgeny Timakin at the Central Music School of Moscow and gave her first concert at age seven in the same city. She won her first international competition, the Concertino Praga Competition, at age 11 in the Czech Republic.

#11171

József Simándy

#149723

Overall Influence

1916 - 1997 (81 years)

József Simándy was a Hungarian tenor with German origins. His name in Hungarian form is Simándy József, his original family name is Schulder. A student of Emilia Posszert, he joined the chorus of the Hungarian State Opera in 1940; in 1946, he made his debut as Don José in Carmen in Szeged. In 1947, he returned to the Budapest Opera, where he was the leading heroic tenor until 1984. He performed regularly in Munich as well, from 1956 until 1960. Besides heroic tenor roles, Simándy took on lyric and spinto parts as well; he was best known for his Radames, Lohengrin, and Otello. Recordings ...

#11172

Charles Vernon

#170083

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Charles "Charlie" Gary Vernon is the bass trombonist for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and serves as professor of trombone at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. Education A native of Asheville, North Carolina, Vernon attended Brevard College and Georgia State University. His principal teachers were bass trombonist Edward Kleinhammer and tubist Arnold Jacobs, both former members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

#11173

Seymour Lipkin

#176653

Overall Influence

1927 - 2015 (88 years)

Seymour Lipkin was an American concert pianist, conductor, and educator. Early life and piano career Lipkin was born in Detroit. At age 11, he entered the Curtis Institute of Music where he studied with David Saperton, Rudolf Serkin and Mieczysław Horszowski At age 17 he served as accompanist to Jascha Heifetz on a USO tour of Europe during World War II. He received his degree in 1947.

#11174

Betty Jackson King

#183539

Overall Influence

1928 - 1994 (66 years)

Betty Jackson King was an American pianist, singer, teacher, choral conductor, and composer. She was best known for her vocal works. Biography King was born in 1928 in Chicago. She first started learning music from her mother, Gertrude Jackson Taylor. King's father, Reverend Frederick D. Jackson a pastor at the Community Church of Woodlawn, helped expose her to church hymns and spirituals. Along with her mother and sister Catherine, she sang in the Jacksonian Trio. In 1969 when King began teaching at Wildwood High School in New Jersey, she integrated the high school's public school teaching s...

#11175

Aaron Sheehan

#180412

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Aaron Sheehan is an American vocal tenor and professor of music who has been described as one of "the leading Early Music singers in the world". He was one of the recipients of the 2015 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording.

#11176

Rolf Agop

#179268

Overall Influence

1908 - 1998 (90 years)

Rolf Agop was a German conductor and academic teacher of Armenian descent. Career Born in Munich where he studied, Agop worked first for the Bayerische Landesbühne, a touring theatre, and then for three years as Kapellmeister and choir director at the Kärntner Grenzland-Theater in Klagenfurt. From 1945 to 1948 he was Kapellmeister at the Nürnberg Opera.

#11177

Sigrid Norris

#182390

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Sigrid Norris is a New Zealand linguist and academic. She is currently a full professor at the Auckland University of Technology. Academic career After an undergraduate in Russian literature and a 2002 PhD titled 'A theoretical framework for multimodal discourse analysis presented via the analysis of identity construction of two women living in Germany' both from the Georgetown University, she moved to the Auckland University of Technology, rising to full professor.

#11178

Brad Jones

#176123

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Bradley Christopher Jones is an American jazz bassist who performs on both bass guitar and double-bass. Jones started on drums as a child and first began playing bass guitar at age 12. At age 18 he added double bass, studying under Lisle Atkinson, and he took a bachelor's degree in music education at Jersey City State College in 1986. In the late 1980s he worked regularly with Dave Tronzo and Jim Nolet, and played in the Jazz Passengers and in groups led by Marc Ribot.

#11179

Jan Hendrych

#178236

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Jan Hendrych is a Czech sculptor, painter, restorer, curator and professor emeritus at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. Life Jan Hendrych was born in Prague-Střešovice in the family of the lawyer Jaroslav Hendrych and the sculptor Olga Hendrychová, née Tobolková , a pupil of Prof. Otakar Španiel.

#11180

Ralph Mullins

#123040

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (97 years)

Ralph K. Mullins aka Diz Mullins is an American jazz trumpet player, arranger, composer, and collegiate educator. He grew up in Oklahoma but spent most of his professional career in the Los Angeles area. After years of playing trumpet in Southern California, Mullins is still playing and leads his own band.

#11181

John Fonville

#181754

Overall Influence

John Fonville is a flutist and composer. Fonville specializes in extended techniques on the flute, especially microtonality, and performs on instruments including a complete set of quarter tone flutes. He has premiered works by composers including Ben Johnston, Salvatore Martirano, Joji Yuasa, Roger Reynolds, Hiroyuki Itoh, and Paul Koonce.

#11182

Ivan Tcherepnin

#182407

Overall Influence

1943 - 1998 (55 years)

Ivan Alexandrovich Tcherepnin was an experimental, then later modernist/postmodernist, composer and a noted innovator in the field of electronics and modular synthesizers. Ivan was born into a highly musical family, his father and grandfather, Alexander and Nikolai, being distinguished Russian composers, and his mother Ming a well-known pianist. His elder brother, Serge is also a composer. He studied with Leon Kirchner, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Henri Pousseur, and Pierre Boulez. After teaching briefly at both the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Stanford University, he became director ...

#11183

E. H. S. Simmonds

#185133

Overall Influence

1919 - 1994 (75 years)

Edward Harold Stuart Simmonds was a British linguist and professor of the languages and literatures of South East Asia at SOAS University of London. Born in England, Stuart Simmonds was an academic based at SOAS between 1948 and 1982, who specialized in the language and history of the Thai people. He was Director of the Royal Asiatic Society from 1965 to 1968 and its president from 1973 to 1976.

#11184

Elmore D

#182425

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Elmore D is a Belgian blues musician. His is a professor at the University of Liège, where he lectures on the history and culture of Wallonia. The name Elmore is a reference to Elmore James, whose slide guitar sound he used to imitate at the beginning of his career. In 1988, he was nominated for the Paris-Bagneux Blues Contest and played in "avant-première" of the Chicago Blues Festival. In 1997, he created the Elmore D Band with two ex-members of the Electric Kings, Big Dave and Willie Maze , and the "sterguitarist" Lazy Horse . They performed at various festivals:12e Spring Blues Festival...

#11185

Falko Steinbach

Falko Steinbach

#185299

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Falko Steinbach is a German/American pianist, composer and piano pedagogue. As a Steinway Artist, Steinbach is an expert in the classical repertory, but is also a specialist in contemporary music, acclaimed for his inexhaustible fantasy, “mesmerizing sound,” and versatile piano technique. In 1999 he joined the music faculty at the University of New Mexico and became a full professor of piano in 2010. He was granted US citizenship in 2011, and now as a dual national, he continues an extended international performance career as a soloist, recording artist and collaborative performer in America, Europe and Asia.

#11186

Mátti Kovler

#183477

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Mátti Kovler is a Russian-born Israeli-American composer and creator of new music theatre. Called by Steve Smith of The New York Times “a potentially estimable operatic composer in the making,” his music has been compared to Leonard Bernstein's.

#11187

Cao Ying

#130047

Overall Influence

1923 - 2015 (92 years)

Sheng Junfeng , better known by his pen name Cao Ying , was a Chinese translator. Sheng was one of the main translators of the works of Russian novelists Leo Tolstoy and Mikhail Sholokhov into Chinese. In 1987, he was honored by the Government of the Russian Federation with the Maxim Gorky Literature Prize. He was the only Chinese translator to have won that award.

#11188

Dana Reason

#133314

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Dana Reason is a Canadian composer, recording artist, keyboardist, producer, arranger, and sound artist working at the intersections of contemporary musical genres and intermedia practices. She appears on more than 17 commercially released recordings, including as a member of The Space Between trio with American electronic music pioneer Pauline Oliveros. She has also performed with Cecil Taylor, Roscoe Mitchell, George E. Lewis, Tim Berne, Fred Frith, Joelle Leandre, DJ Spooky, and Joe McPhee.

#11189

Richard Torigi

#187206

Overall Influence

1917 - 2010 (93 years)

Richard Torigi was an American baritone and voice teacher. He had an active singing career in operas, concerts, and musicalss from the 1940s through the 1980s. While still performing, he embarked on a second successful career as a voice teacher which led to teaching positions at a variety of institutions, including the Juilliard School, the Eastman School of Music, and the Academy of Vocal Arts.

#11190

Ilana Harris-Babou

#187825

Overall Influence

1991 - Present (35 years)

Ilana Harris-Babou is an American sculptor and installation artist. Harris-Babou was born in Brooklyn, New York. Her upbringing was discussed in an interview on the Amy Beecher Show in August 2019. She is currently assistant professor of art and the Luther Gregg Sullivan Fellow in Art at Wesleyan University.

#11191

Mendi Rodan

#109890

Overall Influence

1929 - 2009 (80 years)

Mendi Rodan was an Israeli conductor and educator. Biography Mendi Rodan was born in Iaşi, Romania, one of three children of Solomon and Miriam Rosenblum. Mendi began playing the violin at the age of five. His parents made sure that all the children got extra tuition in languages, mathematics, physical education and music. In 1941 Mendi's father and many of his relatives were murdered in pogroms carried out against the Jews of Iaşi. Mendi, his mother and his brothers survived the war but suffered from extreme financial hardship.

#11192

Beverly Sills

#182432

Overall Influence

1929 - 2007 (78 years)

Beverly Sills was an American operatic soprano whose peak career was between the 1950s and 1970s. Although she sang a repertoire from Handel and Mozart to Puccini, Massenet and Verdi, she was especially renowned for her performances in coloratura soprano roles in live opera and recordings. Sills was largely associated with the operas of Donizetti, of which she performed and recorded many roles. Her signature roles include the title role in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, the title role in Massenet's Manon, Marie in Donizetti's La fille du régiment, the three heroines in Offenbach's Les conte...

#11193

Lee Paul

#174722

Overall Influence

1939 - 2019 (80 years)

Paul Lee Kroll, also known as Lee Paul, was an American film and television actor. He was perhaps best known for playing as the bodyguard of "Doyle Lonnegan" in the 1973 film The Sting, alongside actor Charles Dierkop who played the role of "Floyd".

#11194

Di Wu

#180812

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (42 years)

Di Wu is a Chinese-American pianist. Early life and education Born into a musical family in Nanjing, Jiangsu, Di Wu entered Beijing's Central Conservatory of Music at age 12. She made her professional debut at age 14 with the Beijing Philharmonic, and thereafter toured widely to positive reviews. In 1999, Wu came to the United States to continue her music studies, first with Zenon Fishbein at the Manhattan School of Music, then with Gary Graffman at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia from 2000 to 2005. Wu earned a Master of Music degree at The Juilliard School under Yoheved Kapli...

#11195

Sheena Howard

#168323

Overall Influence

1983 - Present (43 years)

Sheena C. Howard is an African-American academic, author and producer. She is a professor of communication at Rider University. She is also the past chair of the Black Caucus and the founder of Power Your Research, and academic branding company. Howard is the recipient of the 2014 Eisner Award for her first book Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation .

#11196

Virgilio Mortari

Virgilio Mortari

#178264

Overall Influence

1902 - 1993 (91 years)

Virgilio Mortari was an Italian composer and teacher. Biography Mortari was born in Passirana di Lainate, near Milan in 1902. He studied at the Milan Conservatory with Costante Adolfo Bossi and Ildebrando Pizzetti. He graduated from the Parma Conservatory in 1928, having studied piano and composition. Already in 1924 he had won first prize with his composition Sonata per pianoforte, violino e violoncello at the Società Italiana di Musica Contemporanea competition.

#11197

Dennis Johnson

#172507

Overall Influence

1938 - 2018 (80 years)

Dennis Lee Johnson was a mathematician and minimal composer. He is the namesake of the Johnson homomorphism in the study of mapping class groups of surfaces. Johnson’s early talent for mathematics earned him a full scholarship to the Phillips Exeter Academy, New Hampshire, where he completed high school. He enrolled to study mathematics at the California Institute of Technology in 1956. But after a year he became disillusioned, and although he had studied the piano only casually as a child, he decided to transfer to the University of California, Los Angeles , to study music.

#11198

Pat Thomas

#156207

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Pat Thomas is a San Francisco-based musician, music journalist and compiler of music reissues. Compilation Thomas was the founder in 1988 of Heyday Records. He later moved on to Water Records, and currently compiles reissues at Omnivore Recordings.

#11199

Nicole Carignan

#187053

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Nicole Carignan is a Canadian composer and music educator living in Quebec. She is a professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal. Early life and education Carignan was born in Plessisville and earned a bachelor's degree in Music Education from the Université du Québec à Montréal , a B.Mus. and a M.Mus. in composition and a PhD in comparative and intercultural education from the Université de Montréal.

#11200

Pietro Spada

#184872

Overall Influence

1935 - 2022 (87 years)

Pietro Spada was an Italian pianist and musicologist. He was particularly noted for his technically masterful and vivid interpretations of works by lesser-known composers and his recordings of the piano music of John Field are highly regarded.

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