The Most Influential People Across History
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,
#11401
Michael Denhoff
#168766
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Michael Denhoff is a German composer and cellist. Life Denhoff has lived and worked in Bonn since 1982. He studied at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln, where his teachers included Günter Bialas and Hans Werner Henze , Siegfried Palm and Erling Blöndal Bengtsson and the Amadeus Quartet . As a composer and chamber musician, he occupied various teaching posts, including a lectureship in composition at the University of Mainz and a guest professorship at the National Conservatory of Hanoi . From 1985 to 1992 he also conducted the Akademische Orchester Bonn, which he founded. As a cellist, he formed the Denhoff Piano Trio with his brother Johannes and the pianist Richard Braun.
Go to Profile#11402
Mike Clark
#143790
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Mike Clark is an American heavy metal and punk rock guitarist. He is best known for being the rhythm guitarist with Suicidal Tendencies, a band he played with from 1987 to 2012, and was the only member besides Mike Muir to return to the band when it reunited. He originally played in the thrash metal band No Mercy of which Muir was also the vocalist. During Suicidal Tendencies' hiatus he was a member of the thrash/rap rock band Creeper.
Go to Profile#11403
Kalle Randalu
#151060
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Kalle Randalu is an Estonian pianist. Randalu was born in Tallinn, and trained at the Moscow Conservatory under Lev Vlassenko. In 1981-82 Randalu was awarded two competition prizes: he shared the VII Tchaikovsky Competition's 4th prize with Dmitri Gaiduk; and shared the VIII Schumann Competition's 3rd prize with Balázs Szokolay. He subsequently won the 1985 ARD Competition in Munich, and settled in Germany in 1988. He is a professor at the Musikhochschule Karlsruhe and an honorary doctor of the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre.
Go to Profile#11404
Chris Cutler
#185036
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Chris Cutler is an English percussionist, composer, lyricist and music theorist. Best known for his work with English avant-rock group Henry Cow, Cutler was also a member and drummer of other bands, including Art Bears, News from Babel, Pere Ubu and Gong/Mothergong. He has collaborated with many musicians and groups, including Fred Frith, Lindsay Cooper, Zeena Parkins, Peter Blegvad, Telectu and The Residents, and has appeared on over 100 recordings. Cutler's career spans over four decades and he still performs actively throughout the world.
Go to Profile#11405
Denis Bédard
#177150
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Denis Bédard is a Canadian composer of organ works and choral pieces . He founded Éditions Cheldar, which publishes his works. His compositions are performed internationally. Early life and education Bédard was born in Quebec City, Quebec. He was trained at the Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Québec where he obtained a deuxième prix harmony in 1966, a premier prix counterpoint in 1970, a premier prix fugue in 1971, premier prix organ in 1972, and a premier prix harpsichord and premier prix chamber music in 1973. Among his teachers at the conservatoire were Tania Krieger , Claude Lavoie , André Mérineau , Magdeleine Martin , and Donald Thomson .
Go to Profile#11406
JoAnn Turovsky
#181608
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
JoAnn Turovsky is a harp teacher in Los Angeles, California. She is an adjunct professor of harp at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California, and at Colburn School of Performing Arts. She performs with the Los Angeles Opera, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and has recorded for numerous motion pictures and television shows as a studio musician. She also serves on the faculty at the Music Academy of the West.
Go to Profile#11407
Martin Jarvis
#184831
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Martin Jarvis OAM is an Australian violinist and viola player, founder of the Darwin Symphony Orchestra, and professor and lecturer of music at Charles Darwin University in Darwin, Northern Territory.
Go to Profile#11408
Richard Campbell
#184921
Overall Influence
1956 - 2011 (55 years)
Richard John Campbell was an English classical musician, best known as a founder member of the early music ensemble Fretwork and for his newer association with the Feinstein Ensemble, specialising in historically accurate performance of 18th-century music.
Go to Profile#11409
Jorge Hankamer
#188876
Overall Influence
Jorge Hankamer is Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he is also chair of the Philosophy department. He earned his B.A. in Mathematics and Physics and M.A. in German Literature at Rice University before going on to complete a Ph.D in linguistics at Yale University. His dissertation, Constraints on Deletion in Syntax, has since been published under the title "Deletion in Coordinate Structures" by the Harvard University Press's Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics Series. A student of David Perlmutter, Hankamer has been one of the leading experts on th...
Go to Profile#11410
Stuart Davis
#112930
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Stuart Davis is an American contemporary musician and songwriter. He has been performing throughout the United States and Europe since 1993. Davis regularly works with music producer Alex Gibson, who produced his last five studio albums.
Go to Profile#11411
Leonid Chizhik
#187453
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Leonid Chizhik, also known as Leonid Arkadievich Chishik, was born on January 1, 1947, in Chişinău, Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. He is a jazz pianist and university lecturer at the universities of Weimar and Munich. Since 1991, Leonid Chizhik and his family have been living in Munich, Germany.
Go to Profile#11412
Claude Monteux
#183075
Overall Influence
1920 - 2013 (93 years)
Claude Monteux was an American flutist and conductor. Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, the son of conductor Pierre Monteux, Monteux studied flute with Georges Laurent, then the principal flutist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He studied conducting with his father, both privately and at the Monteux School for conductors.
Go to Profile#11413
Charles Davis
#185874
Overall Influence
1925 - 2009 (84 years)
Charles Davis was an Irish character actor, writer and director. He was born in Dublin, Ireland. Career Davis started his acting career at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and had over 1,000 performances on Broadway.
Go to Profile#11414
Nicholas McCarthy
#165724
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Nicolas McCarthy is an American film director and writer based in Los Angeles. A lifelong lover of film, McCarthy struggled for the first decades of his career, receiving his first break into the motion picture industry at the age of 40 with the release of his 2012 feature film The Pact. In 2014 he released At the Devil's Door, establishing himself primarily as a maker of horror film.
Go to Profile#11415
Aleksandra Romanić
#187572
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Aleksandra Romaniċ was born 1958 in Zagreb into a family of musicians. She was awarded a scholarship at the age of sixteen to go to the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory. She graduated in 1981 summa cum laude. Completing her master's degree, she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to specialize with Gyorgy Sandor at the Juilliard School in New York.
Go to Profile#11416
Richard Thomas
#185823
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Richard Thomas is a British musician, writer, and comedy actor. He is best known for composing, writing and scoring the award-winning Jerry Springer: The Opera with book and additional lyrics co-written with Stewart Lee. Thomas collected the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Musical Score in 2004.
Go to Profile#11417
Mary Beth Fielder
#186892
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (125 years)
Mary Beth Fielder is an American writer, director and producer of television and feature films. She served on the faculty of the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts from 1994 to 2009.
Go to Profile#11418
Eduardus Halim
#145417
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Eduardus Halim is an Indonesian-American classical pianist. Born in Bandung, Indonesia of Chinese Indonesian parents, Halim made his public debut at the age of 11 playing Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3. A student of Sascha Gorodnitzki and Rudolf Firkušný at the Juilliard School where he attended on full scholarship, Halim later studied with Vladimir Horowitz, to whom he was recommended by Harold C. Schonberg and David Dubal. His experience working with the late maestro is documented in Schonberg's book, Horowitz: His Life and Music. He won 4th prize at the 1985 Sydney International Piano Competition, and 3rd prize at the 1988 competition.
Go to Profile#11419
Patricio Jara
#104456
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Patricio Jara Álvarez is a Chilean writer and journalist. Biography Patricio Jara grew up in Antofagasta and studied at the Jesuit Colegio San Luis, where he wrote his first stories. Later he entered , where he qualified as a journalist in 1996. In his time as a university student he won his first prizes. He worked at his alma mater and was coordinator of the literature program when it became the .
Go to Profile#11420
John Tuttle
#173988
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
John Tuttle is an organist and choral conductor living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is currently director of music at Trinity College, Toronto, and professor of organ and university organist at the University of Toronto,. He is also the founding conductor and former artistic director of the Exultate Chamber Singers, and was organist and choirmaster at St. Thomas's Anglican Church from 1989 until his retirement in 2016.
Go to Profile#11421
Brent E. Huffman
#186019
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Brent Edward Huffman is an American director, writer, and cinematographer of documentaries and television programs, including Saving Mes Aynak . His work has been featured on Netflix, Discovery Channel, The National Geographic Channel, VICE, NBC, CNN, PBS, Time, The New York Times, Al Jazeera America and Al Jazeera English and premiered at International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam , and many other U.S. and international film festivals. He is also a professor at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University where he teaches documentary production and theory.
Go to Profile#11422
Doug Powell
#181833
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Doug Powell is an American musician, Christian apologist, author, novelist, graphic designer, and programmer. Biography Music Powell's music career began after giving songwriter Jules Shear a tape of demos in 1989. This led to a contract with Elektra Records and a demo produced by Shear. Elektra nurtured Powell with equipment and vocal coaching, but ultimately passed on making a record. Powell then signed with RCA Records and recorded Ballad of the Tin Men. Powell co-produced with engineer Pete Coleman and played all the instruments except drums, strings, and one guitar solo. After sitting on the shelf for a year, the record was bought by Mercury Records.
Go to Profile#11423
Donald Leake
#178133
Overall Influence
1931 - 1997 (66 years)
Donald Lewis Leake was an oral surgeon, and inventor of the alloplastic tray, a method for reconstruction of jaws without the need for bone grafts. He gained his D.M.D. from Harvard University in 1962, and an M.D. from Stanford University in 1969. In 1970, Leake was employed at Harvard Medical School as an oral surgeon, and since 1971, Leake had been a Professor of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at UCLA.
Go to Profile#11424
John Miller Jr.
#186286
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
John Miller is a musician and bassoonist. Miller received his early musical training at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore and the New England Conservatory in Boston. He also holds a BS degree in humanities and engineering from MIT and was awarded a Fulbright grant for music study in Amsterdam. While in Boston, he founded the Bubonic Bassoon Quartet and made the premier recording of the Hummel Bassoon Concerto, released along with the Weber Concerto on Cambridge Records.
Go to Profile#11425
André White
#181319
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
André Keith White is a Canadian musician, composer, recording engineer and educator. He is an associate professor in jazz studies at the Schulich School of Music in Montreal. Early life André White grew up in Roxboro, Quebec. He is the only child of Keith White, a schoolteacher and jazz pianist and Jeannine Cossette, a sales clerk and homemaker. He attended Riverdale High School, Vanier College, Concordia University, where he earned a BA in English Literature, and McGill University, where he earned a master's degree in Sound Recording .
Go to Profile#11426
Johannes Kretz
#186688
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Johannes Kretz is an Austrian composer and teacher for computer music and music theory. He lives and works in Vienna and created various compositions in the fields of new music, among those: music theatre, orchestra works, chamber music, sacred music and works with electronics. He won an Austrian State Prize for music in 2004.
Go to Profile#11427
D'Arcy Boulton
#173218
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
D'Arcy Jonathan Dacre Boulton is a Canadian medieval historian, and heraldic author and artist. Education and career Having obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Trinity College and a Master of Arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania, Boulton completed a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford, studying at St. John's College, in 1976 and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978. He taught at Davidson College and Harvard University before becoming a faculty member at the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Indiana where he retired as Emeritus Professo...
Go to Profile#11428
Robert Rich
#134150
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Robert Rich is an ambient musician and composer based in California, United States. With a discography spanning over 30 years, he has been called a figure whose sound has greatly influenced today's ambient music, New-age music, and even IDM.
Go to Profile#11429
Günter Pichler
#176966
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Günter Pichler is an Austrian violinist, teacher and conductor. He was the 1st violin in the Alban Berg Quartett. Biography Günter Pichler was born and raised in Kufstein, Tyrol, Austria. He was accepted at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna in 1955. He joined the Vienna Symphony as concertmaster under Wolfgang Sawallisch at the age of 18. At 21, he was made concertmaster by the Vienna Philharmonic thanks to a tie-breaking vote on his appointment by conductor Herbert von Karajan.
Go to Profile#11430
Doug Ford
#178900
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Douglas John Ford is an Australian rock guitarist and songwriter since the mid-1960s. He was lead guitarist of rock n roll group, the Missing Links , then during 1968–72, he joined the pop-rock band, the Masters Apprentices. He established a writing partnership with that group's lead singer, Jim Keays. Ford participated in some of the reunions of the Masters Apprentices from 1988 to 1991 and 1997. At the ARIA Music Awards of 1998 the group were inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame.
Go to Profile#11431
Alexander Abercrombie
#177354
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
John Ralph Alexander Giles Abercrombie was a British pianist, composer, and mathematician. Biography Hailing from London, Abercrombie's parents were Nigel Abercrombie, Professor of French at Magdelen College and later a distinguished writer and civil servant and General Secretary of the Arts Council from 1963–68, and Elisabeth Abercrombie, an operatic soprano. Educated at Worth and the Royal College of Music, he gave his professional debut recital at the Purcell Room in London in 1972.
Go to Profile#11432
Trine Dyrholm
#178461
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Trine Dyrholm is a Danish actress, singer and songwriter. Dyrholm received national recognition when she placed third in the Dansk Melodi Grand Prix as a 14-year-old singer. Four years later, she again achieved national recognition when she won the Bodil Award for Best Actress in her debut film: the teenage romance Springflod. Dyrholm has won the Bodil Award for Best Actress five times and a Bodil award for Best Supporting Actress twice as well as six Robert Awards in her acting career.
Go to Profile#11433
José Cuéllar
#156079
Overall Influence
José B. Cuéllar is a professor of Chicano Studies at San Francisco State University. He is the band leader of the musical group Dr. Loco's Rockin' Jalapeño Band. Cuéllar holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology and is a scholar of Chicano culture.
Go to Profile#11434
Eve Andree Laramee
#99187
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Eve Andree Laramee is an installation artist whose works explores four primary themes: legacy of the atomic age, history of science, environment and ecology, social conditions. Her interdisciplinary artworks operate at the confluence of art and science. She is currently full professor and chair of the Department of Art and Art History at Pace University. Laramee currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is also the founder and director of ART/MEDIA for a Nuclear Free Future.
Go to Profile#11435
David M. Rosenthal
#171085
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
David Mitchell Rosenthal is an American screenwriter, film director, and producer. He has directed the films A Single Shot, How It Ends, Janie Jones, and The Perfect Guy, among others. Early life Rosenthal was born in New York City, New York, the son of Dr. Mitchell S. Rosenthal, founder and Chairman of Phoenix House, and cookbook author Ellen Wright.
Go to Profile#11436
Emma Tahmizian
#178567
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Emma Tahmizian is a Bulgarian pianist of Armenian descent. She debuted at an international level at 11, representing Bulgaria at a concert series in Moscow. She has performed and recorded internationally regularly since she won the 1977 Robert Schumann Competition.
Go to Profile#11437
Rafał Augustyn
#180244
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Rafał Augustyn is a composer of classical music, and a pianist, music critic, writer and scholar of Polish philology. As a composer he has written symphonies, chamber orchestra works, vocal and electronic music, as well as music for theatre. Since the mid-1990s, Augustyn has collaborated with visual artists, architects and photographers on numerous multimedia art works.
Go to Profile#11438
Nell Znamierowski
#187222
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Nell Znamierowski was an American textile artist. Znamierowski was born in Amsterdam, New York. She was born Aniela Znamierowska, the only child of Waclaw & Helena Wojnar Znamierowski and graduated from the Wilbur H. Lynch High School in Amsterdam in 1949.
Go to Profile#11439
Marija Gluvakov
#185973
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Marija Gluvakov – Medenica , is a Serbian pianist and piano teacher. Education Gluvakov was born in Senta, Serbia, formerly Yugoslavia. She received her early training in music schools in Novi Kneževac, Bihać and Zemun. She graduated from the Faculty of Music in Belgrade in 1995, as the best student of the year. She completed there, with the highest marks, her postgraduate studies in both Piano Performance and Chamber Music . Her primary teacher were Srebrenka Široki, Zorana Grbić, Miloš Ivanović and Olivera Djurdjević. She also studied with Dušan Trbojević, Arbo Valdma, Rita Kinka and with Russian pianists Dorensky and Pisarev, professors at the Moscow Conservatory.
Go to Profile#11440
Stefan Bratkowski
#65002
Overall Influence
1934 - 2021 (87 years)
Stefan Tadeusz Aleksander Bratkowski was a Polish journalist and writer. He was an opposition activist during the Polish People's Republic.
Go to Profile#11441
Manfred Weiss
#178046
Overall Influence
1935 - 2023 (88 years)
Manfred Weiss was a German composer especially of symphonies, concertos and vocal music, based in Dresden. He taught composition and music theory at the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber from 1959, as professor from 1983 to 1997, influencing generations of composers, and instrumental in the restructuring of the music department after the German reunification.
Go to Profile#11442
Tom Tykwer
#182474
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Tom Tykwer is a German film director, producer, screenwriter, and composer. He is best known internationally for directing the thriller films Run Lola Run , Heaven , Perfume: The Story of a Murderer , and The International . He collaborated with The Wachowskis as co-director for the science fiction film Cloud Atlas and the Netflix series Sense8 , and worked on the score for Lana Wachowski's The Matrix Resurrections . Tykwer is also well known as the co-creator of the internationally acclaimed German television series Babylon Berlin .
Go to Profile#11443
James Robinson
#176620
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Dr. James Robinson is an American filk music songwriter and performer whose songs focus on scientific themes, particularly paleontology. Robinson earned a doctorate in biology from UCLA in 1976, and went on to teach at the University of California, Berkeley.
Go to Profile#11444
Matthew Hoch
#117458
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Matthew Hoch is an American academic and teacher of singing. Hoch is currently professor of voice at Auburn University, where he teaches applied voice, lyric diction, and vocal literature courses. From 2006–2012 he was assistant professor of voice at Shorter University in Rome, Georgia, where he was a member of the voice faculty, taught vocal literature, and served as coordinator of voice studies. From 2006–2008, he conducted the Shorter Chorus. Before coming to Shorter University, he was assistant professor of music and director of choral activities at the University of Wisconsin–Barron County.
Go to Profile#11445
Annerose Schmidt
#186068
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Annerose Schmidt was the professional name used by Annerose Boeck, a German pianist. She received official recognition as a concert pianist from what later became the East German state in 1948, which was the year of her twelfth birthday.
Go to Profile#11446
Laszlo Gardony
#175450
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Laszlo Gardony is a Hungarian-born American jazz pianist and composer. Gardony performs as a solo artist and leads his own trio, quartet and sextet. He is also a featured sideman with several other groups.
Go to Profile#11447
Allen Cohen
#167332
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Allen Cohen is an American composer, arranger, conductor, vocal coach, pianist and university professor. Education Cohen holds his Bachelor of Arts degree in Music and Drama from Ripon College and Master of Fine Arts in Music Composition from the State University of New York at Purchase. He received a doctorate in composition from the City University of New York, where he studied with Thea Musgrave, Bruce Saylor, and David Del Tredici.
Go to Profile#11448
Brandon Moore
#182422
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Brandon Moore is an American composer known for Universal's Aliens Ate My Homework and the sequel Aliens Stole My Body featuring the voice talents of William Shatner and George Takei. He’s also known for the comedy-horror series Killer Sisters' Midnight Hour for Hulu, and the IFS Festival's Best Drama winner The Year I Did Nothing . Brandon was a musician at an early age and a life-long film music fan. Upon completing his undergrad in music theory and composition in Fort Worth, TX, he moved to Los Angeles to attend USC's Film Scoring program. Brandon has composed a wide range of scores for a variety of film projects and genres.
Go to Profile#11449
Katharine Graham
#178981
Overall Influence
1917 - 2001 (84 years)
Katharine Meyer Graham was an American newspaper publisher. She led her family's newspaper, The Washington Post, from 1963 to 1991. Graham presided over the paper as it reported on the Watergate scandal, which eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. She was the first 20th century female publisher of a major American newspaper and the first woman elected to the board of the Associated Press.
Go to Profile#11450
Kathleen Man Gyllenhaal
#144545
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Kathleen Man Gyllenhaal is an American filmmaker from Hawaii. Education Man Gyllenhaal graduated from Yale University with a Bachelor of Arts in Film studies and received her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa. Man Gyllenhaal was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in Paris, France where she directed an award-winning short film titled L'Entretien . Man Gyllenhaal then served as a professor at Vassar College where she was awarded tenure. While at the college, Man Gyllenhaal directed a short film as a collaboration with her students titled, Walk the Fish.
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