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,

#11351

Irving Saraf

#174741

Overall Influence

1932 - 2012 (80 years)

Irving Saraf was a Polish-born American film producer, film editor, film director and academic. Saraf won an Oscar for producing the 1991 documentary film, In the Shadow of the Stars. In total, Saraf had more than one hundred fifty film and television production credits. His resume included Poland, Communism's New Look, a 1965 television film; USA Poetry: Twelve Films About Modern Poets in 1966; and the 2009 documentary Empress Hotel following the residents of a low-income hotel in Tenderloin, San Francisco.

#11352

James Hill

#179884

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

James Hill is a Canadian classically trained musician who has focused on the ukulele, both as his primary instrument and as a method of music instruction for school children. He earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of British Columbia.

#11353

Ron Dewar

#184912

Overall Influence

Ron Dewar is a jazz tenor saxophone player in the Chicago area. He has toured and recorded with many well-known musicians, including Elvis Presley, Clark Terry, Sarah Vaughan, and Louis Bellson. In the 1970s, Dewar was the leader of the traditional jazz band The Memphis Nighthawks. Memphis Nighthawks recordings include the albums Jazz Lips on Delmark Records and Live at the Stabilizer.

#11354

John Doe

#159698

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

John Nommensen Duchac , known professionally as John Doe, is an American singer, songwriter, actor, poet, guitarist and bass player. Doe co-founded LA punk band X, of which he is still an active member. His musical performances and compositions span rock, punk, country and folk music genres. As an actor, he has dozens of television appearances and several movies to his credit, including the role of Jeff Parker in the television series Roswell.

#11355

Thomas Carr

#177610

Overall Influence

1907 - 1997 (90 years)

Thomas Howard Carr was an American actor and film director of Hollywood movies and television programs. Often billed as "Tommy Carr", he later adopted his more formal "Thomas Carr" birth name as his billing name.

#11356

Nina Matviienko

#133539

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Nina Mytrofanivna Matviienko was a Ukrainian singer, People's Artist of Ukraine. Life and career Matviienko was born on 10 October 1947 in village of Nedilyshche, Yemilchyne Raion, Zhytomyr Oblast at the time in the Ukrainian SSR in the Soviet Union . She was the fifth of eleven siblings, her mother was Antonina Ilkivna and father, Mytrofan Ustynovych. She began at a local residential school, then worked as a copyist and then a crane-operator's assistant. She completed her studies in Ukrainian philology at the Kyiv University in 1975. She had previously entered the vocal studio of the Ukrainian State Folk Choir named after Hryhory Veriovka in 1968, before becoming a soloist.

#11357

Patricia Kern

#181770

Overall Influence

1927 - 2015 (88 years)

Patricia Kern was a British mezzo-soprano and voice teacher. Early years Patricia Kern was born in Swansea, Wales, the only daughter of a master shipwright, Clifford James Kern, and Doris Hilday . Patricia started her music career as a child star in cabarets and concerts at the age of five, wearing top hats and tails. During the Great Depression, Patricia became the family's chief breadwinner when her father lost his job.

#11358

Aira Naginevičiūtė

#186948

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Aira Naginevičiūtė is a Lithuania-born, international dance artist, producer and composer. She established a contemporary dance company in 1989 called Fluidis. In 1998 she began teaching at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre. To date she has developed 20+ dance productions and compositions. Some of her most acclaimed works include: Processus, Pregnant Silence Ego and Id, and The Moon Does Not Care about Barking Dogs.

#11359

Igor Vishnevetsky

Igor Vishnevetsky

#177384

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Igor Georgievich Vishnevetsky is a Russian-born poet, novelist, screenwriter, and editor. He has been a contributor and editor in numerous literary journals, anthologies, and scholarly periodicals since the 1980s. Some of his work has been published in English, including a translated version of his first novel, Leningrad .

#11360

Minuetta Kessler

Minuetta Kessler

#178468

Overall Influence

1914 - 2002 (88 years)

Minuetta Shumiatcher Borek Kessler was a Russian-born Canadian and later American concert pianist, classical music composer, and educator. A child prodigy, she performed her first composition at a recital at the age of 5 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and went on to study at the Juilliard School in New York City. She composed hundreds of pieces, including music for piano, violin, voice, flute, clarinet and cello, as well as for chamber ensembles. She performed all over Canada and in Boston and New York, including performances at Carnegie Hall and The Town Hall, and with the Boston Civic Symphony and the Boston Pops.

#11361

Steven Drukman

#156091

Overall Influence

Steven Drukman is an American playwright and journalist. Biography In 2000, Drukman received a Ph.D. from New York University, where he is currently an associate professor. Drukman spent many years writing for the Arts and Leisure section of The New York Times.

#11362

Witold Abramowicz

#188742

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Witold Abramowicz may refer to:Witold Abramowicz , Lithuanian politicianWitold Abramowicz , Polish scientist

#11363

Edward Kilenyi Jr.

#150401

Overall Influence

1910 - 2000 (90 years)

Edward Kilenyi Jr. was a classical pianist. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on May 7, 1910. Kilenyi studied in Hungary with the composer/pianist Ernő Dohnányi at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, earning a diploma in 1930. He later became a Professor of Music at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida in 1953, four years after Dohnanyi began teaching there. He died on January 6, 2000. A collection of recordings of his concerts is located at the International Piano Archives at the University of Maryland .

#11364

Ike Moriz

#185439

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Eike Moriz , better known as Ike Moriz, is a German-South African singer, songwriter, musician, record producer and actor. He has released 20 albums in the indie rock, pop, Latin, easy listening, dance, lounge, blues, jazz and swing genres.

#11365

Kemal Gekić

#172337

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Kemal Gekić is a Croatian-born American concert pianist and Full Professor of Piano Performance at Florida International University in Miami, Florida, USA. Early life Kemal Gekić was born in Split, Croatia, to a Croatian mother and a Bosniak father. The maternal side of his family was extremely musical, and his father, an orthopedic surgeon, displayed a lifelong passion for music. Gekić displayed his musical gift extremely early even by the usual child prodigy standards - by picking up melodies by ear and accurately playing them on the piano at the age of one-and-half. Kemal received most of his early training from his maternal aunt, Prof.

#11366

Yolanda Marculescu

Yolanda Marculescu

#182121

Overall Influence

1923 - 1992 (69 years)

Yolanda Marculescu was a Romanian American coloratura soprano and diva of the Romanian National Opera in Bucharest from 1948 to 1968. Fleeing the communist bloc, Marculescu became a naturalized American citizen in 1974. In the United States she founded the International Festival of the Art Song at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in 1981. The festival was held biennially until her death in 1992.

#11367

Douglas Knehans

#178916

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Douglas Knehans is an American/Australian composer. He is the Norman Dinerstein Professor of Composition Scholar at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. Knehans is also the director of Ablaze Records, a company which records and produces music by living composers.

#11368

Leo Smit

#169744

Overall Influence

1921 - 1999 (78 years)

Leo Smit was an American composer and pianist. Life Leo Smit was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a child his mother took him to the Soviet Union where he studied with the composer Dmitri Kabalevsky. He later studied piano in New York with Isabella Vengerova and José Iturbi and composition with Nicolas Nabokov. While working as George Balanchine's rehearsal pianist, he met Igor Stravinsky.

#11369

Robert Theodore Anderson

#176818

Overall Influence

1934 - 2009 (75 years)

Robert Theodore Anderson was an American organist, composer and pedagogue. Biography He was born on October 5, 1934, in Chicago. He received his musical training at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago and at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Illinois . Further studies followed at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City and 1957–1959 with Helmut Walcha in Frankfurt am Main. In addition, Anderson studied organ with Heinrich Fleischer and Frederick Marriott, composition with Harold Friedell and Seth Bingham and harpsichord with Maria Jager. Beginning in 1960, he ...

#11370

Paul Kelly

#185001

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Paul Kelly is an English film director, musician, photographer and designer. Music The son of an RAF fighter pilot - he took up flying aged fourteen, making his first solo flight on his seventeenth birthday. However, a passion for music and electric guitars eventually led him to follow a musical path. In the early 1980s he formed the band Episode Four with his brother Martin. Changing their name to East Village the band went on to join Heavenly Records with whom they recorded an album Drop Out in 1990. The band split in 1991 after releasing three singles. The album was eventually released in ...

#11371

Jonathan Little

#172551

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Jonathan David Little FCLM, FISM, FRSA is an Australian contemporary classical composer, arts educator and author on cultural history based in the UK and Australia. In 2008, his first CD was voted one of the top recordings of the year by US Fanfare magazine . He was subsequently featured in a news article in Musical Opinion in early 2009. As a composer, he first came to prominence in America in 2006 when The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers ran an article on him having five of his works accepted for recording by the US-headquartered French contemporary music label ERM , aimed at showcasing international contemporary composers.

#11372

Jiři Balik

#92987

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Jiři Balik is a Czech Agroscientist, University Professor and Rector of the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague . Biography Balik was born in Tábor on November 30, 1953; he is married and has two children. The Professor of Agrochemistry and Plant Nutrition was 2010 until January 2018 Rector of the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague .

#11373

Florian Ross

#180706

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Florian Ross is a German jazz pianist, composer and arranger. Life and career Ross was born in Pforzheim in 1972. His debut recording as leader was made for Naxos Records in 1998 – Seasons & Places. In 2011, he was commissioned to write a new arrangement of a Bobby Wellins composition for the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra.

#11374

Chen Zhi

#166506

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Chen Zhi is a Chinese guitar teacher and promoter, who is today known for the exceptionally high level that his classical guitar students reach. He is one of China's best-known personalities of the guitar in general .

#11375

Steffen Schorn

#185510

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Steffen Schorn is a German jazz musician . He is one of the most outstanding musicians and composers of German jazz and contemporary music. He is also the director of jazz department of Nürnberger Musikhochschule.

#11376

Tsvetan Teophanov

#147601

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Tsvetan Theophanov , is a Bulgarian orientalist, author and university professor who is noted for his research and translations of Islamic religious books and Classical Arabic literature. Theophanov created the first academic translation of the Quran into Bulgarian.

#11377

Hans Leygraf

#179040

Overall Influence

1920 - 2011 (91 years)

Hans Leygraf was a Swedish pianist, music educator, conductor and composer. Life Born in Stockholm, Leygraf studied piano with in Stockholm and Anna Hirzel-Langenhan in Switzerland. He was one of Sweden's most internationally renowned musicians and also a famous educator. He taught at Edsbergs musical institute outside Stockholm, in Darmstadt, Hanover, Berlin and Salzburg. In Salzburg he was professor of piano at the Mozarteum between 1972 and 1990, but continued until 2007 to give lessons for particularly talented students. He gave concerts back in 2010 and was probably best known for hi...

#11378

Hershey Felder

#181732

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Hershey Felder is a pianist, actor, and playwright known for his portrayals of classical and American composers on the theatrical stage. Early life Felder was born in Montreal, Quebec, to Jacob Felder and Eva Surek Felder . He was raised in a Yiddish-speaking home mainly, from age 13, by his widower father.

#11379

Wendell Logan

#172854

Overall Influence

1940 - 2010 (70 years)

Wendell Morris Logan , was an American jazz and concert music composer who created the jazz department at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Biography Wendell Logan was born in Thomson, Georgia on November 24, 1940. His first musical studies were with his father, an amateur alto saxophonist. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in music in 1962 from the historically black Florida A&M University, which he had attended on a football scholarship. At Florida A&M in 1962, Logan heard Igor Stravinsky's Firebird Suite for the first time. This initial exposure to the twelve-tone technique led Logan to undertake a path leading to a career as a composer.

#11380

Ross Bauer

#168063

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Ross Bauer is an American composer, conductor, and music educator. A professor emeritus of the University of California, Davis, he was awarded the Walter Hinrichsen Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2005.

#11381

Shoichiro Hokazono

#179008

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Shoichiro Hokazono is a euphonium player and soloist. He most notably played with the Central Band of the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force and plays on euphoniums made by Besson. Background Hokazono studied at the Shobi Conservatory in Tokyo, Japan under Toru Miura, graduating in 1994. He then continued his studies under Kaoru Tsuyuki and Steven Mead.

#11382

Anna Rubin

#155379

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Anna Rubin is an American composer of electroacoustic and instrumental music. Biography Anna Rubin studied with composers Mel Powell, Earle Brown, Pauline Oliveros, and Paul Lansky, and graduated with a doctorate in composition from Princeton University. After completing her studies, she taught composition at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music at Oberlin College. She also taught at Lafayette College and in 2002 took a teaching position at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

#11383

Pharez Whitted

#172300

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Pharez Whitted is an American jazz trumpeter and educator from Indianapolis. In January 2011, Whitted was nominated for the 10th Annual Independent Music Awards in the Jazz Album category for Transient Journey.[2] In December 2016 he was named one of six "Chicagoans of the Year" by the Chicago Tribune.[3]

#11384

Robert Folk

#172637

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Robert Folk is an American film and television composer and conductor who has written many movie scores, as well as other orchestral music in a classical style. Life and career Robert Folk is a graduate and former faculty member of the Juilliard School in New York City. Since completing his doctorate, Dr. Folk has composed and conducted the musical scores for over 95 feature films. His extensive credits include Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, Nothing To Lose, Tremors , The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter, Toy Soldiers, Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time, Police Academy, Kung Pow...

#11385

Ann McNamee

#148185

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Ann Kosakowski McNamee is a music theorist, singer-songwriter and musical theater composer/lyricist based in San Francisco, California and a retired Professor Emerita of music at Swarthmore College notable for her contribution to music theory; her song writing; and her musical performances with the bands the Flying Other Brothers and Moonalice known for their cutting edge technology, particularly in the area of social media, as well as their performances at festivals such as Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, Nateva, Summer Camp Music Festival, Oregon Country Fair, Gathering of the Vibes; and with her band Ann Atomic during the 2010 revival of Lilith Fair.

#11386

Willis Patterson

#182462

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (96 years)

Willis Charles Patterson is an American bass-baritone, editor, music arranger, and professor emeritus/longtime Associate Dean of the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance. A Fulbright Scholar and the winner of the Marian Anderson Award, he has performed in opera houses and concert halls internationally. He has served as president of the National Association of Negro Musicians and as executive secretary of the National Black Music Caucus. In 1977, he edited what The New York Times described as a "groundbreaking anthology of black art songs."

#11387

Thomas Christoph Heyde

#186336

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Thomas Christoph Heyde is a German composer, media artist and curator. He is chairman of the Forum Zeitgenössischer Musik Leipzig. Life Heyde was born in Leipzig in 1973 as the son of a pastor. From the age of seven he was trained on the piano and later received private composition lessons from Lorenz Stolzenbach. Without passing his Abitur he first completed a pharmaceutical education and worked as a nurse in a Leipzig hospital. Via a special test he studied musical composition with Peter Herrmann and electroacoustic music with Eckhard Rödger at the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig from 1994 on.

#11388

Red Allen

#174572

Overall Influence

1930 - 1993 (63 years)

Harley Allen , better known as Red Allen, was an American bluegrass singer and guitarist known for his powerful tenor voice. Biography Allen, born in Pigeon Roost Hollow, near Hazard, Kentucky, grew up in the music-rich hills of eastern Kentucky, and following a stint in the Marines, settled in Dayton, Ohio, in 1949, where he began performing professionally. In 1952, Allen discovered a young teenage mandolin virtuoso named Frank Wakefield, who had moved to Dayton from Harriman, Tennessee. Soon Wakefield became a member of Allen's first band, the Blue Ridge Mountain Boys. The band also included the legendary Ohio 5-string banjo player Noah Crase.

#11389

Theodore Lettvin

#175062

Overall Influence

1926 - 2003 (77 years)

Theodore Lettvin was an American concert pianist and conductor. He was one of the four children of Solomon and Fannie Lettvin, two Jewish-Ukrainian immigrants who settled in Chicago. Neurophysiologist and MIT professor Jerome Lettvin was his eldest brother.

#11390

Peter Rösel

#182809

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Peter Rösel is a German concert pianist. Appearances Rösel has appeared for years at international festivals and with many major orchestras, such as Los Angeles Philharmonic and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Berlin Philharmonic.

#11391

Marilyn Shrude

#175589

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Marilyn Shrude is an American composer of contemporary classical music and pianist, and Distinguished Artist Professor of composition at Bowling Green State University, since 1977. Life Born in Chicago, Illinois, Shrude graduated from Alverno College and Northwestern University. Her composition instructors include Alan Stout and M. William Karlins.

#11392

Maurizio Diana

#168168

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Maurizio Diana is an Italian geologist, physicist and painter. In his scientific research activities he is remembered particularly for his efforts in the development of technologies in the field of Cultural Heritage.

#11393

Gakuryū Ishii

#120962

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Gakuryu Ishii, formerly known as Sogo Ishii, is a Japanese filmmaker known for his stylistic punk films, which helped spark the cyberpunk movement in Japan. A number of contemporary filmmakers including Quentin Tarantino have cited Ishii's films as an influence.

#11394

J. R. Mitchell

#183853

Overall Influence

1937 - 2004 (67 years)

James Roland "J. R." Mitchell was an American jazz drummer and educator who sought to promote awareness of the African American music experience. In the early 1980s, jazz journalist and Washington Post music critic W. Royal Stokes wrote, "J. R. Mitchell is the renaissance man of jazz."

#11395

Eva Enciñias

#187808

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Eva Enciñias is an American flamenco dancer, choreographer, and teacher. Eva began teaching flamenco at the age of 14 and in 1973 established a touring dance company, Ritmo Flamenco. In 1976 she started teaching Flamenco at the University of New Mexico Department of Theatre and Dance, eventually establishing a flamenco concentration, the only such concentration in the United States. In 1987 she founded the first Festival Flamenco Internacional de Alburquerque, a festival which has continued into the present. In 1992 she founded the National Institute of Flamenco, and in 2010 founded the Tierra...

#11396

Ildikó Raimondi

Ildikó Raimondi

#186467

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Ildikó Raimondi is a Hungarian-Austrian operatic soprano and academic voice teacher. She has been a member of the Vienna State Opera since 1991, and has performed leading roles internationally, especially in Mozart operas. She also works in concert and lied, including contemporary compositions. She has received Austrian awards.

#11397

Geoffrey King

#184132

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Geoffrey King is a British composer and teacher. Biography Born in Croydon, England, King's first musical studies were at the Royal School of Church Music at Addington Palace. Later, at the Royal College of Music, he studied with Humphrey Searle, Justin Connolly and Alexander Goehr. As a postgraduate, he undertook further work with Alexander Goehr at University of Southampton and also with Jonathan Harvey. With an Italian government scholarship, he went to study with Ernesto Rubin de Cervin at the Conservatorio "Benedetto Marcello" in Venice.

#11398

Débria Brown

#184889

Overall Influence

1936 - 2001 (65 years)

Débria M. Brown was an American operatic mezzo-soprano who had an active international career that spanned five decades. She was part of the first generation of black opera singers to achieve wide success and is viewed as part of an instrumental group of performers who helped break down the barriers of racial prejudice in the opera world. She also worked occasionally as a dramatic actress on the stage and on television.

#11399

Steve Tittle

#176631

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Steve Tittle is a Canadian composer and music educator. Biography Tittle was born in Willard, Ohio. He studied composition at Kent State University with Harold Miles, John White and Fred Coulter, and at University of Wisconsin–Madison with Hilmar Luckhardt, Robert Crane and Burt Levy. He was a school music teacher 1962-65 in Ohio, and his early performance experience was as a trumpet player in US Navy bands and in ensembles in Ohio and Wisconsin.

#11400

Stephen Deutsch

#186220

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Stephen Deutsch is a filmmaker, professor, and film score composer who has composed over 30 scores for film, theatre, radio, and television. His many collaborations with the playwright Peter Barnes include Jubilee , the Olivier Award-winning play Red Noses and the feature film Hard Times .

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