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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School

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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Communications,

#11601

Lucinda Williams

#177462

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Lucinda Gayl Williams is an American singer-songwriter and a solo guitarist. She recorded her first two albums, Ramblin' on My Mind and Happy Woman Blues , in a traditional country and blues style that received critical praise but little public or radio attention. In 1988, she released her third album, Lucinda Williams, to widespread critical acclaim. Regarded as "an Americana classic", the album also features "Passionate Kisses", a song later recorded by Mary Chapin Carpenter for her 1992 album Come On Come On, which garnered Williams her first Grammy Award for Best Country Song in 1994. Kn...

#11602

Ryan Scott Oliver

Ryan Scott Oliver

#146684

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (42 years)

Ryan Scott Oliver is an American musical theatre composer and lyricist. He is a 2011 Lucille Lortel Award Nominee and the recipient of both the 2009 Jonathan Larson Grant and the 2008 Richard Rodgers Award for Musical Theater. Oliver is an adjunct professor at Pace University in New York, and Artistic Director of the Pasadena Musical Theatre Program in California. He received his B.A. in Music Composition from UCLA and his M.F.A. in Musical Theatre Writing from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. He is also the creator of the blog Crazytown and a member of ASCAP. Oliver's wor...

#11603

Jeffrey Garten

#173847

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Jeffrey E. Garten is an American economist, author, businessman, and former government official who is Dean Emeritus at the Yale School of Management, where he teaches a variety of courses on global economy. From 1996 to 2005 he was the dean of the school, and from 2005 to 2015 he was the Juan Trippe Professor in international trade, finance, and business. Before that, he was Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade in the Clinton administration from 1993 to 1995, and had a career on Wall Street as a managing director for the Blackstone Group and Lehman Brothers.

#11604

Anthony Kerr

#183786

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Anthony Kerr is a British jazz vibraphone player, who has performed and recorded internationally with Georgie Fame, Charlie Watts, BBC Big Band, Robbie Williams, Joe Lovano, Jacqui Dankworth, and Courtney Pine. His compositions have been broadcast on BBC Radio.

#11605

Isabelle Bril

#189295

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Isabelle Bril is a senior researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research and a member of LACITO specializing in morphosyntax, semantics, typology, and Austronesian languages. Biography Bril completed her agrégation in 1977, subsequently working as an English teacher between 1978 and 1993, then as Assistant Professor at Tours University between 1998 and 2001. Her doctoral degree was awarded in 1995 by Paris Diderot University for a book-length treatment of utterance structure in the Austronesian language Nêlêmwa. In 2005 she received her habilitation. She became a researcher ...

#11606

Yevgeni Lazarev

Yevgeni Lazarev

#180637

Overall Influence

1937 - 2016 (79 years)

Yevgeni Nikolayevich Lazarev , also known as Eugene Lazarev, was a Russian-American actor and director. Biography He graduated from the Moscow Art Theatre School-Studio, and played in the Riga Russian Drama Theatre and Mayakovsky Theatre.

#11607

John Burge

#176504

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

John David Bryson Burge is a Canadian composer, music educator, and pianist. He has won a number of awards for his compositions, including the Alberta Culture Award , the William Erving Fairclough Scholarship , second prize in the Ithaca College Choral Composition Contest and Festival , and five PROCAN Young Composers' Competition prizes between 1985 and 1988 among others. In 2009 he won the Juno Award for Classical Composition of the Year for his Flanders Fields Reflections. Some music critics have likened his compositional style to that of Benjamin Britten and Maxwell Davies.

#11608

Christopher Murphy

#190583

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Christopher Murphy, is a British writer, designer and educator, who has worked as part of the digital arts collective Fehler, along with artists Christophe Behrens and Otaku Yakuza. Design work Fehler's works in various analogue and digital media have been featured in the design anthologies Radical Album Cover Art: Sampler 3 ; and CD Art: Innovation in CD Packaging Design . His work, on his own and as part of Fehler, has been exhibited in MUTEK in Montreal, Argos Centre for Art and Media in Brussels; Sintesi in Naples; Up Close in Malta ; and at Lovebytes in Sheffield.

#11609

Posani Krishna Murali

Posani Krishna Murali

#106476

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Posani Krishna Murali is an Indian screenwriter, actor, director and producer who primarily works in Telugu cinema. He worked as a writer for over 150 Telugu films and directed a number of films. In 2009, he also contested in Andhra Pradesh state legislative assembly elections from Chilakaluripet constituency but lost the elections.

#11610

Gabriel Osorio Vargas

Gabriel Osorio Vargas

#180085

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (42 years)

Gabriel Osorio Vargas is a Chilean film director. He is best known for directing, animating and writing the short animated film Bear Story , which won the Oscar in the category of Best Animated Short Film at the 88th Academy Awards; the first Chilean film to do so. He shared the win with producer Pato Escala Pierart. The film also entered various film festivals worldwide, receiving numerous awards and nominations. He has his own animation studio named Punkrobot. Since 2008, he has been directing various animated television series for children and television adverts.

#11611

Elena Ruehr

#182412

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Elena Ruehr is an American musician, music educator and composer. Life and career Elena Ruehr's parents were a mathematician and an English professor. She grew up in Houghton, Michigan and began piano lessons at age four. She studied composition at the University of Michigan with William Bolcom and at The Juilliard School with Vincent Persichetti and Bernard Rands. She also studied dance and has performed with Javanese and West African ensembles. In 1991 Ruehr took a teaching position at MIT. Her compositions have been performed internationally and some have been recorded and available on media.

#11612

Cecylia Barczyk

#179386

Overall Influence

Cecylia Barczyk is an American cellist based in Baltimore, Maryland. Education and early life Barczyk was born in Bytom, Poland and began studying cello at a young age. She studied at the Chopin Academy of Music , Moscow Conservatory of Music.

#11613

Ann-Mari Kornerup

#185058

Overall Influence

1918 - 2006 (88 years)

Emilie Anna Maria Kornerup née Bruzelius was a Swedish-Danish textile artist who specialized in embroidery and tapestry. She produced works for decorating public buildings and churches, including the Danish Parliament and Roskilde Cathedral. Kornerup was also active as a teacher with the Haandarbejdets Fremme textile guild and the Danish School of Arts and Crafts.

#11614

Wolfram Heicking

#179473

Overall Influence

1927 - Present (99 years)

Wolfram Heicking was a German composer, musicologist and music academy professor. Biography Wolfram Heicking was born and grew up in Leipzig. His higher-level studies began in 1946 in the newly liberated city at the University of Music and Theatre . Leipzig had ended up being administered as part of the Soviet occupation zone, relaunched in October 1949 as the Soviet sponsored German Democratic Republic and it was in East Germany that Heicking made his professional career. At the Mendelssohn Academy he studied piano with Hugo Steurer, music theory with Paul Schenk and composition with Wilhelm Weismann.

#11615

John McNeil

#188668

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

John McNeil is an American jazz trumpeter. He has performed with artists including Billy Hart, Rufus Reid, Horace Silver, Gerry Mulligan, and The Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra. External links

#11616

Richard Dyer

#175568

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Richard M. Dyer is an American music critic who specializes in classical music. Described by the music critic Alex Ross as "a dean of the profession", from 1976 to 2006 he was the chief classical music critic of The Boston Globe. Educated with degrees in English, Dyer had studied piano and been an opera fan since his youth. He embarked on music criticism following a well-received 1973 article in The New York Times on the soprano Renata Tebaldi, and soon joined the staff of the Globe. A diverse critic, his writings have extended to numerous other news publications, as well as music encyclopedias, liner notes and program notes.

#11617

Claude Baker

#181932

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

W. Claude Baker Jr. is an American composer of contemporary classical music. Biography Claude Baker attained a B.M. degree, magna cum laude, from East Carolina University in 1970. He subsequently studied composition at the Eastman School of Music with Samuel Adler and Warren Benson, and holds M.M. and D.M.A. degrees from that institution.

#11618

V. Gopalakrishnan

#182683

Overall Influence

1933 - 1998 (65 years)

Venkataraman Gopalakrishnan , was an Indian stage and film actor who was active in Tamil cinema during the latter half of the 20th century. He was well known for playing negative and supporting roles, but was also a successful character actor. In a career spanning close to five decades, he acted in more than 400 movies in Tamil, Telugu and Hindi. With his eloquent and stylish English. The film industry admired his strong English.

#11619

Babar Ali

#138438

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Babar Ali is a Pakistani film and television actor. He started his career at age sixteen. Babar Ali is known for playing ‘Bali’ in the drama serial Landa Bazaar directed by Khalil-ur-Rehman Qamar.

#11620

Mark Kilstofte

#138693

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Mark Kilstofte is an American composer, and professor at Furman University, Greenville, South Carolina, reared in Pueblo, Colorado. Life Kilstofte was trained as a singer at St. Olaf College and also studied conducting in addition to his compositional studies. He earned his doctorate at the University of Michigan. His primary composition teachers were William Albright, Leslie Bassett, William Bolcom and Eugene Kurtz. Before coming to Furman, Kilstofe taught for two years at Wayne State University.

#11621

Lawrence Schkade

#132972

Overall Influence

1930 - 2017 (87 years)

Lawrence L. Schkade was an American information systems and management science researcher. Schkade was a native of Port Arthur, Texas, who earned his doctorate at Louisiana State University. He taught at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of North Texas before joining the University of Texas at Arlington. At UTA, he was Ashbel Smith Professor of Information Systems and Management Sciences, later held the Jenkins Garrett Professorship in Information Systems and Operations Management, and also served as dean of the College of Business Administration. Schkade was granted emeritus status in October 2004.

#11622

Siegfried Fink

#167114

Overall Influence

1928 - 2006 (78 years)

Siegfried Fink was a German percussionist, composer and professor. He is recognized as an important figure in the development of the professional percussion scene in Germany after World War II. Life From 1948 to 1951, Fink studied timpanis and percussion in the class of Alfred Wagner at the University of Music in Weimar . He also studied composition in the class of Helmut Riethmüller at the same institution. After several orchestral and teaching positions in Weimar, Magdeburg, Lübeck and Hannover, he attained a permanent teaching position for timpanis and percussion at the Hochschule für Musik Würzburg.

#11623

Arnaldo Cohen

#169402

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Arnaldo Cohen is a Brazilian pianist. Biography Parallel to his piano studies, he also received degrees in Engineering and Violin from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and started his professional career as a violinist of the Rio de Janeiro Opera House Orchestra. Soon he decided to devote more time to playing piano and continued his studies with Jacques Klein, Bruno Seidlhofer and Dieter Weber. In 1972 he won the first prize of the Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition.

#11624

David Tronzo

#161851

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

David Tronzo is an American guitarist, best known for his innovation of pairing the techniques of electric slide guitar with the genres of bebop, modern jazz, rock, downtown music, and experimental music. He has recorded with former David Bowie guitarist Reeves Gabrels, Wayne Horvitz, David Sanborn, and The Lounge Lizards.

#11625

Gran Wilson

#179823

Overall Influence

Gran Wilson is an American operatic lyric tenor. Wilson was born in Bessemer, Alabama, and studied at Samford University and Indiana University School of Music. He has appeared with the New York City Opera , Opéra de Nice, The Netherlands Opera, Teatro São Carlos, Michigan Opera Theatre, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Flemish Opera, Opéra de Toulon, Athens Opera, Central City Opera, Oper Frankfurt, Opera/Columbus, Knoxville Opera Company, Edmonton Opera, Opera Company of Philadelphia, and Glimmerglass Opera. For the Houston Grand Opera, and Lincoln Center and Edinburgh Festivals, he sang in Robert Wilson's production of Four Saints in Three Acts.

#11626

Shoshana Bean

#176342

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Shoshana E. Bean is an American singer, songwriter, YouTuber, and stage actress. She has released three records and has appeared on many theater cast recordings and film soundtracks. In 2022, Bean received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her performance as Susan Young in Mr. Saturday Night.

#11627

E. W. Ziebarth

#115832

Overall Influence

1910 - 2001 (91 years)

E. W. Ziebarth was a Peabody Award winning radio broadcaster as well as a professor and administrator at the University of Minnesota. Born in 1910 in Columbus, Wisconsin, Ziebarth attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison for his undergraduate and master's degrees before coming to the University of Minnesota to begin his doctoral studies in speech and communication in 1937. Ziebarth would remain at the University of Minnesota as a professor of speech for over 40 years. He also served as the dean of the College of Liberal Arts from 1963 to 1973 and as interim university president in 1974 a...

#11628

Antonio Franco

#173106

Overall Influence

1947 - 2021 (74 years)

Antonio Franco Estadella was a Spanish journalist. He served two times as editor-in-chief of El Periódico de Catalunya. He also worked as deputy editor of El País and as editor of its Catalan-language edition.

#11629

Christian Heim

#171482

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Christian Heim is an Australian psychiatrist, composer and public lecturer. Early life and education Heim was born in Sydney. He studied under Peter Sculthorpe and finished a PhD in music under Anne Boyd at the University of Sydney. Further conducting and composition studies took him to Vienna, Paris and New York. Many of his works – mainly for orchestra, percussion and vocal ensembles – are of a spiritual or meditative nature and include Prayer Dances, Journey, and Transformation.

#11630

Brandon Rogers

#176209

Overall Influence

1988 - Present (38 years)

Brandon George Rogers is an American YouTuber, actor, comedian, and composer. He plays many characters in his eponymous YouTube channel and co-wrote the adult animated web series Helluva Boss, in which he voices the main character Blitzø.

#11631

Şirin Pancaroğlu

#133623

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Şirin Pancaroğlu is a Turkish harpist. She performs both popular-folk and classical pieces. She has premiered pieces written for her by Gerardo Dirié, Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, Jeeyoung Kim, Ricardo Lorenz, Hasan Uçarsu and Meliha Doguduyal. In addition, she has been expanding her repertoire by transcribing for harp from an array of musical traditions. Over the years she has collaborated in chamber music with violinist Ignace Jang, violist Tatjana Masurenko, flutist Kornelia Brandkamp, harpist Tine Rehling and soprano Ayşe Sezerman, and recently with Israeli percussionist Yinon Muallem, creating an...

#11632

Aladár Pege

#184282

Overall Influence

1939 - 2006 (67 years)

Aladár Pege was a jazz musician from Hungary. He was well known for his work and was dubbed "the Paganini of double bass". He was chosen as best soloist of Europe in 1970, performed at Carnegie Hall and worked with Herbie Hancock. This was quite rare during the communist era, when Hungarian artists were seriously restricted in foreign travel. He spent his last decades teaching at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest.

#11633

Kathron Sturrock

#186513

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Kathron Sturrock is a British pianist who studied with Cyril Smith, Joan Trimble, Alfred Brendel and Rostropovich, and worked with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. She is a professor at the Royal College of Music and has recorded for Hyperion, Chandos, Pickwick, Sain, Gamut, ASV, Naxos and Black Box Records. Sturrock is the artistic director of the Fibonacci Sequence. She is also the only pianist to have twice won the prize for the best accompanist at the Sofia International Opera Competition.

#11634

Jacques Wildberger

#185248

Overall Influence

1922 - 2006 (84 years)

Jacques Wildberger was a Swiss composer. Life and career Born in Basel, Wildberger became a member of the Swiss Party of Labour in 1944 and composed battle songs for the Basel workers' cabaret Scheinwerfer and the Neue Volksbühne Basel; in 1947 he left the PdA as a reaction to Stalin's politics.

#11635

László Gyimesi

#187008

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

László Gyimesi is a Hungarian pianist. Biography He attended the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, where he was a winner of the Academy's Grand Prize. His teachers at the Academy included Peter Solymos and Albert Simon. Subsequently he studied with Géza Anda in Zurich, György Sebők at the Indiana University in Bloomington and Stefan Askenase in Bonn.

#11636

Dick Kimball

#95665

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Dick Kimball is an American former diving champion and diving coach at the University of Michigan. He was the NCAA springboard champion in 1957 and the Professional World Diving champion in 1963. He coached the University of Michigan diving team from 1958 to 2002 and also coached the U.S. Olympic diving teams in 1964, 1980, 1984, 1988 and 1992. He has been inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame and the University of Michigan Athletic Hall of Honor.

#11637

Calvin Jackson

#183375

Overall Influence

1961 - 2015 (54 years)

Calvin Jackson was an American drummer from north Mississippi. He is considered an innovator in the Hill country blues style of drumming, having incorporated elements of the regional Fife and drum bands style in the blues band setting.

#11638

Shawn Roy

#189044

Overall Influence

Shawn Roy is an American operatic bass-baritone and academic. Since 1998, he has served as the head of the opera program at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Life and career Roy was born and raised in Louisiana. He is a graduate of the University of Southwestern Louisiana and the University of Cincinnati – College-Conservatory of Music .

#11639

Mohammed Haddad

#181192

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Mohammed Haddad is a Bahraini composer and music critic. He is an active artist in the music scene of Bahrain and a leading composer in the film scores of Bahraini films. He is best known for his work on the soundtrack of the critically acclaimed Bahraini motion picture A Bahraini Tale.

#11640

Bill Smith

#186304

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

William Ernest Smith is a Canadian writer, editor, record producer, saxophonist, and clarinetist of English birth. He has served as the editor of CODA magazine since 1976, and is a co-founder of Sackville Records, a Canadian record label that specialized in jazz.

#11641

Semyon Aranovich

#180571

Overall Influence

1934 - 1996 (62 years)

Semyon Davidovich Aranovich was a Soviet and Russian film director. Life and career Aranovich attended the Supreme Naval Aviation School in Nikolaev, graduating in 1955, and served for two years in the Soviet naval aviation troops. In 1965, he graduated from VGIK, where he studied under Roman Karmen. While working at the Leningrad Documentary Studio in 1965–1970, Aranovich directed the biographical Time That Is Always with Us and The Friend of Gorky’s — Andreeva , among other works. Two of his documentaries—one about Maksim Gorky’s last years, made in 1967, and one co-directed with Aleksandr...

#11642

Howard Johnson

#182261

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Howard Williams Johnson is a former American soul/disco singer, and founder of the group Niteflyte. He charted two songs on the Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart during the 1980s – "So Fine", which spent one week at No. 1 in 1982, and "Let This Dream Be Real," which reached No. 19 in 1983.

#11643

Marylène Dosse

#189399

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Marylène Dosse is a French-born American classical pianist. Biography Marylene Dosse was born in Domfront in Normandy, France - the only place in which her mother could find a hospital which had not been taken over by the invading German armed forces.

#11644

David Roussève

#153123

Overall Influence

David Roussève is an American choreographer, writer, director and filmmaker. He founded his company, David Roussève/REALITY in 1988 and has since choreographed, written and directed 14 evening-length works for the group. His latest work for REALITY, Halfway to Dawn premiered in October 2018 at REDCAT in Los Angeles before touring nationally and internationally. His work addresses issues of racism, sexism, and homophobia.

#11645

David Downes

#178495

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

David Downes is a composer, pianist, producer, and music director who is known for both contemporary composition as well as work in the commercial field, particularly with Riverdance and as founder of Celtic Woman.

#11646

Tina Benko

#177844

Overall Influence

Tina Benko is an American actress and acting teacher known for her roles in film, theatre, and television acting. She has appeared in numerous productions on and off Broadway, including A Midsummer Night's Dream. In addition to her stage work, she has also appeared in several TV series, including Flesh and Bone, The Good Wife and Brotherhood, and in films such as The Adults.

#11647

Robert Blocker

#137571

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Robert Blocker, DMA is an American classical pianist, music educator, and university administrator, who served as Dean of the Yale School of Music since July 1995 until 2023. He is a Steinway artist.

#11648

David Bell

#183090

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

David A. Bell in Middletown, Ohio, is an American composer, known for his music for television shows. He grew up in Monroe, Ohio, where his father Paul Bell was the high school music teacher and his mother, Maria, was active in the community. David attended Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, and Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. From 1984 to 1991 he contributed music to 79 episodes of Murder, She Wrote, 5 episodes of "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman", followed by 66 episodes of Star Trek shows from 1994 to 2003. In 2002 he won the ASCAP Award for Enterprise, shared with the series' othe...

#11649

Gabriel Chodos

#184290

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Gabriel Chodos is an American pianist who has performed throughout the United States, Europe, Japan and Israel. Education Chodos's principal teacher was Aube Tzerko, a student of Schnabel. He also studied piano with Leonard Shure at the Aspen Music Festival, Josef Dichler in Vienna, and Carlo Zecchi in Salzburg.

#11650

Vasily Lobanov

#188803

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Vasily Pavlovich Lobanov is a Russian composer and pianist. He has been a Duo-Partner of Sviatoslav Richter Biography Vasily Pavlovich Lobanov was born in Moscow. He studied piano with Heinrich Neuhaus and Lev Naumov and composition with Sergey Balasanian and Alfred Schnittke.

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