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,

#12201

Jonathan Elkus

#189395

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (95 years)

Jonathan Elkus is an American composer, arranger, editor, author, conductor, and teacher. Early life and education Elkus was born in San Francisco, the son of Albert Elkus. He studied composition at University of California, Berkeley with Charles Cushing and William Denny, at Stanford University with Ernst Bacon and Leonard Ratner, and at Mills College with Darius Milhaud.

#12202

Anton Rovner

#188437

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Anton Rovner is a Russian-American composer, music critic and theorist. Life Anton Rovner's grandfather was Jewish, his grandmother was Russian belonged to Russian Orthodox Church. Anton Rovner's father was the Russian philosopher Arkady Rovner. His mother, Victoria Andreeva, was a Russian writer, poet and translator. In 1974 they emigrated to the United States. He studied piano at the Manhattan School of Music, composition with Andrew Thomas and Milton Babbitt at the Juilliard School and with Charles Wuorinen at the Rutgers University. Rovner earned a Ph.D. He also was a student of Eric Ewazen in Estherwood, New York and of Joseph Dubiel at Columbia University.

#12203

Cleveland Johnson

#153261

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Cleveland Thomas Johnson is an American academic, administrator, music historian, and early-music performer. He retired as President/CEO of the Morris Museum in 2022. Previously, he was Director of the National Music Museum , Executive Director of the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship , Dean of the School of Music at DePauw University , Professor of Music at DePauw University , and Music Librarian at Old Dominion University . DePauw University awarded him the title, Professor Emeritus of Music, in 2012.

#12204

Chandidas Mal

#185379

Overall Influence

1929 - 2021 (92 years)

Chandidas Mal was an Indian musician perhaps best known for his rendition of Puratani Bangla Gaan , Tappa, Shyamasangeet and Agamani . Biography Mal was born in Bally, British India. He was the eldest among four children of Narayan Chandra Mal and Ushangini Mal. He started his music lessons at the age of 3 from his father, at the age of 6 his musical talent was recognized when he got 1st Prize in a conference at All Bengal Music Association. He took his music lessons from a number of eminent musicians namely Kishori Mohan Sinha , Ramchandra Guha , Krishna Chandra Dey , Gyan Prakash Ghosh , S...

#12205

David Scott Milton

#188641

Overall Influence

1934 - 2020 (86 years)

David Scott Milton was an American author, playwright, screenwriter, and actor. His plays are known for their theatricality, wild humor, and poetic realism, while his novels and films are darker and more naturalistic. As a novelist, he has been compared to Graham Greene, John Steinbeck, and Nelson Algren. Ben Gazzara’s performance in Milton’s play, Duet, received a Tony nomination. Another play, Skin, won the Neil Simon Playwrights Award. His theater piece, Murderers Are My Life, was nominated as best one-man show by the Valley Theater League of Los Angeles. His second novel, Paradise Road,...

#12206

David Wayne

#159904

Overall Influence

1958 - 2005 (47 years)

David Wayne was an American singer of the heavy metal bands Metal Church, Reverend and Wayne. Biography From 1982 to 1988, Wayne appeared as vocalist on three studio albums and one live album by Metal Church. He was influenced by singers like Rob Halford.

#12207

Cynthia Clarey

#187831

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Cynthia Clarey is an American operatic singer and educator. In opera, she has sung both soprano and mezzo-soprano roles and is often associated with the role of Carmen. Early life Clarey was born in Smithfield, Virginia. At the age of ten she moved with her family to Rocky Mount, North Carolina. As a child, Clarey sang in choirs for her school and the family's church.

#12208

Wolfgang Helbich

#172420

Overall Influence

1943 - 2013 (70 years)

Wolfgang Helbich was a German church musician, a choral conductor and academic. He was the founder of the Alsfelder Vokalensemble and served as their conductor for decades, a group that toured internationally and received awards for their recordings. After retiring as a church musician, he also conducted the Bremer RathsChor.

#12209

Steven Graff

#188995

Overall Influence

Steven Lewis Graff is a pianist and teacher of music in New York City. Early Years and Education Steven Graff was born in Chicago where he studied piano with the late Eloise Niwa and made his debut as a soloist with The Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He went on to study at The Juilliard School as a Petschek Scholarship student, where his teachers included Adele Marcus, Beveridge Webster and Herbert Stessin. He received a Doctorate of Musical Arts from The Graduate School of CUNY, with a doctoral thesis entitled Chopin performance tradition and its relationship to analysis. In 1986 he was a winne...

#12210

Michael Gläser

#189640

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Michael Gläser is a German singer, choral conductor and academic teacher. He was artistic director of broadcasters' choirs including the Rundfunkchor Berlin and the choir of the Bayerischer Rundfunk. He has been professor of choral conducting and Protestant church music at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München from 1994. Two recordings for which he conducted a choir were nominated for the Grammy Awards.

#12211

Toshinao Sasaki

#42501

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Toshinao Sasaki is a Japanese freelance journalist and critic, a regular writer for CNET Japan, and a one-time reporter for Mainichi Shimbun. He was born in Hyōgo Prefecture. Background After graduating from Okazaki high-school in Aichi Prefecture, Sasaki entered the Faculty of Political Science and Economics at Waseda University, but dropped out and in 1988 joined Mainichi Shimbun, where he was in charge of the criminal investigations division and reserve reporters, covering issues such as murder cases, international terror and computer crime.

#12212

Ladislav Kubík

#185996

Overall Influence

1946 - 2017 (71 years)

Ladislav Kubík was a Czech-American composer. His style is associated with other post-war Eastern European composers, such as Krzysztof Penderecki and Witold Lutosławski. He graduated from the Music and Dance Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, receiving his Master's Degree in 1970 and the title "Aspirante", a degree considered equivalent to the Doctor of Musical Arts.

#12213

Judy Klein

#186512

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Judy Klein is an American composer, music educator. She is the founder of the Computer Music Studio at New York University and served as its director in 1980's. Her music is primarily acousmatic, and includes works for the electronic medium, sound installations, music for theatre and collaborations with visual artists.

#12214

Modesta Bor

#157817

Overall Influence

1926 - 1998 (72 years)

Modesta Bor was a Venezuelan composer. Life and career Modesta Bor was born in Juan Griego, Isla de Margarita. She studied in Caracas with Elena Arrarte, Juan Bautista Plaza, Antonio Estévez, Maria de Lourdes Rotundo and Vicente Emilio Sojo, graduating with a degree in composition in 1959. She continued her studies at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory with Aram Khachaturian. In 1960 she won her first National Music Prize with Sonata for viola and piano.

#12215

Alexander Weimann

#188642

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Alexander Weimann is a German conductor and harpsichordist. Weimann studied in Munich and then was a teacher at the Münchner Musikhochschule 1990–1995. He is a regular conductor of Les Voix Baroques and the Arion Ensemble.

#12216

Daniel Sternberg

#127992

Overall Influence

1913 - 2000 (87 years)

Daniel Arie Sternberg was a Polish conductor, pianist, composer, and educator. He lived and worked in Central and Eastern Europe until 1939, when he emigrated to the United States to escape World War II.

#12217

Wolfgang Marschner

#186831

Overall Influence

1926 - 2020 (94 years)

Wolfgang Marschner was a German violinist, teacher of violin, composer and conductor. He was concertmaster of the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, and instrumental in world premieres of contemporary music. He was professor at the Folkwang-Hochschule Essen, the Musikhochschule Köln, the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music and, for more than three decades, at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg. He also taught at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse.

#12218

Seaton Baxter

#145444

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Seaton Hall Baxter, OBE is an emeritus professor at the Robert Gordon University and Honorary Professor at the University of Dundee where he acts as the head of the Centre for the Study of Natural Design and postgraduate supervisor. He has also taught at Schumacher College.

#12219

Dmitri Novgorodsky

#190103

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Dmitri Novgorodsky is a classical pianist. He is the first Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory graduate in piano performance and the first Russian-Soviet musician who has earned the Doctor of Musical Arts in Piano Performance degree from Yale University.

#12220

Jaroslav Tůma

#188878

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Jaroslav Tůma is a Czech organist. This organist, clavichord, harpsichordist and pianoforte player graduated from the Prague Conservatory and from the Faculty of Music of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague . He won first prizes in organ improvisation competitions in Nuremberg in 1980 and in the Dutch city of Haarlem in 1986. He is also the laureate of a number of organ interpretation competitions, 1978 Linz, 1979 the Prague Spring competition and 1980 the Leipzig Bach competition. Through 1990 - 1993, he performed the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach. He records for Czech radio, Czech television, and numerous recording companies.

#12221

C. Kay Weaver

#190842

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Celia Kay Weaver is a New Zealand-based media and communication academic and academic administrator. She is Dean of Te Mata Kairangi, the School of Graduate Research at the University of Waikato. Career Weaver was a police officer in West Midlands / Birmingham in England before embarking on a BA and PhD at the University of Stirling. Her thesis examined the reception of coverage of men's domestic violence against women, using focus groups and UK television news and dramas and Hollywood films.

#12222

Robert Freeman

#169692

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Robert S. Freeman was an American pianist, music educator, and musicologist who is known for leading several music schools in the United States. He was director of the Eastman School of Music from 1973 to 1996. Freeman was senior educational liaison to Music in the Air at UCLA, and he served on the board of the National Center for Human Performance at the Texas Medical Center in Houston, Texas.

#12223

Vojna Nešić

#187435

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Olivera Vojna Nešić is a Serbian composer and professor at the University of Priština Faculty of Arts, in North Kosovo. Education She graduated from the Faculty of Music in Belgrade and completed her postgraduate studies at the University of Sarajevo Music Academy .

#12224

Diane Curry

#186429

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Diane Curry is an American operatic mezzo-soprano who is particularly known for her performances of the works of Richard Strauss, Richard Wagner, and Giuseppe Verdi. She was notably the mezzo-soprano soloist on the 1987 recording of Verdi's Requiem by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus and conductor Robert Shaw which won the 1988 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance.

#12225

Conrad Hansen

#183001

Overall Influence

1906 - 2002 (96 years)

Conrad Hansen was a German pianist and an eminent piano teacher. Life Born in Lippstadt, as an eight-year-old, Hansen had his first piano lessons in his hometown, and only two years later he was giving public concerts. Above all, he made a name for himself worldwide as an interpreter of the works of Ludwig van Beethoven. In 1922, Hansen went to Berlin as a pupil of Edwin Fischer, with whom he studied together with Grete Sultan and Ferry Gebhardt, and five years later he made his debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker under their principal conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler. Further concerts followed under Eugen Jochum, Willem Mengelberg, Herbert von Karajan and even Richard Strauss.

#12226

Monica Lynn

#189758

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Monica Lynn is an American composer who lives and works in the San Francisco Bay area. She graduated with a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Texas at Austin, where she studied with Stefan Kostka, David Neumeyer and Forrest Pierce. She continued her education at the University of Missouri in Kansas City where she studied with James Mobberley, Paul Rudy, Chen Yi, Zhou Long, and at the University of California, Santa Cruz where she graduated with a Doctor of Musical Arts degree, studying with Ben Leeds Carson, David Cope, Karlton Hester, David Evan Jones, Hi Kyung Kim, Paul Nauert ...

#12227

Cassandra Miller

#186877

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Cassandra Miller is a Canadian experimental composer currently based in London, England. Her work is known for frequently utilising the process of transcription of a variety of pre-existing pieces of music.

#12228

Jörg Herchet

#182755

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Jörg Herchet is a German composer. Life Born in Dresden, Herchet grew up as the son of a driver and a worker in modest circumstances. As a pupil he received recorder and cello lessons, later piano and singing lessons. Already at that time he composed his first smaller compositions.

#12229

Carmen Balthrop

#178652

Overall Influence

1948 - 2021 (73 years)

Carmen Arlene Balthrop was an American operatic soprano from Washington, D.C. Career She made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Pamina in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte and performed on Broadway in the title role of Scott Joplin's opera Treemonisha. She served as professor of voice at the University of Maryland.

#12230

Kenneth Jennings

#181120

Overall Influence

1925 - 2015 (90 years)

Kenneth L. Jennings was an American choral conductor and composer. He was the Harry R. and Thora Helseth Tosdal Professor of Music Emeritus and Director Emeritus of the St. Olaf Choir. He was a published arranger, composer, and choral music educator.

#12231

Akram Al-Ashqar

#185954

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (44 years)

Akram Al-Ashqar is a Palestinian film director global, photographer and IT professional. He was born in the city of Tulkarm in the West Bank. He started with the movies Akram graduated from Arab American University in 2006 specializing in Computer Information Technology.

#12232

Verbal

#187557

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Verbal is a Japanese rapper, music video director and record producer who debuted in 1998 as a member of the hip hop group M-Flo. He is a third generation Zainichi Korean and a notable representative of Zainichi Korean music in Japan.

#12233

George A. Speckert

George A. Speckert

#190917

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

George A Speckert is an American composer, music educator, school principal, author, violist and teacher for film music and media. Vita George A. Speckert studied at the University of Evansville of which he spent a time at Harlaxton Campus. He studied viola with Gerald Fischbach and Irene Breslau. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts cum laude in 1973. In addition he studied composition with Brian Blyth Daubney. His minor was piano.

#12234

Raymond Torres-Santos

#187437

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Raymond Torres-Santos is a Classical and film music composer and conductor, pianist, arranger, and producer of both classical, film and popular music. Malena Kuss described him as the most versatile Puerto Rican composer active in the 21st century in her book, Music in Latin America and the Caribbean: an Encyclopedic History.

#12235

Magnus Martensson

#184467

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Magnus Sven Martensson is a Swedish and American comedian, pianist and conductor. He has performed at the United Nations, Carolines on Broadway, Carnegie Hall; on US and Swedish TV, and toured extensively in North America and Scandinavia.

#12236

Victor Dyomin

#187414

Overall Influence

1937 - 1993 (56 years)

Victor Petrovich Dyomin was a Soviet cinema critic, editor, screen writer. Biography Victor Dyomin was born in the city of Taganrog in 1937. Graduated from Chekhov Gymnasium and VGIK . Bachelor of arts . Since 1986 – secretary of the board of the Union of Cinematographers of USSR. In 1987, he was a member of the jury at the 37th Berlin International Film Festival. Chief editor of the magazine Soviet Screen .

#12237

Issi Rozen

#186888

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Issi Rozen is an Israeli-born jazz guitarist currently residing in Brookline, Massachusetts. He has been recognized for mixing traditional middle-eastern and straight jazz elements into his music. In 2002, Rozen began teaching guitar and music theory at Berklee College of Music.

#12238

Glory Van Scott

#165488

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Glory Van Scott is an educator, writer, actress and dancer. She is a former principal dancer with the Katherine Dunham, Agnes de Mille and Talley Beatty dance companies and has performed in the United States and around the world.

#12239

Tatyana Chudova

#190609

Overall Influence

1944 - 2021 (77 years)

Tatyana Alexeyevna Chudova was a Russian composer. She was born in Moscow and studied at the Central Music School in Moscow and then at the Moscow Conservatory. After completing her studies, she took a teaching position at the Conservatory. On 21 June 2007, she was awarded the title of Honored Master of Arts of the Russian Federation.

#12240

Mark Thompson

#188134

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Sir Mark John Thompson is a British media executive who is Chairman of the Board of Directors of Ancestry, the largest for-profit genealogy company in the world, and Chief Executive Officer of the Cable News Network . He is the former president and chief executive officer of The New York Times Company. From 2004 to 2012, he served as Director-General of the BBC, and before that was the Chief Executive of Channel 4. In 2009 Thompson was ranked as the 65th most powerful person in the world by Forbes magazine. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2017.

#12241

Carl Jan Granqvist

Carl Jan Granqvist

#76522

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Carl Jan Erik Granqvist , is a Swedish restaurateur, food and wine connoisseur and television personality, as well as professor in the art of food at the Norsk hotellhøgskole in Stavanger, which is part of the University of Stavanger. He studied art history at Stockholm University between 1967 and 1968. Between 1969 and 1970, he studied at Virginska restaurangskolan, a restaurant school, in Örebro. He has also done an internship at Operakällaren between 1970 and 1972.

#12242

Joel Harrison

#178387

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Joel Harrison is an American jazz guitarist, singer, composer, and arranger. Career Harrison was born in Washington, D.C., and graduated from Bard College, New York, in 1980 with a Bachelor of Arts in composition and performance. His father was Gilbert Harrison, the editor and owner of the magazine The New Republic, and his mother was Anne Harrison

#12243

Ernani Aguiar

#190045

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Ernani Henrique Chaves Aguiar is a Brazilian composer, choral conductor, and musicologist. Life and career A scholarship winner to the Argentine Mozarteum, Aguiar studied under various composers and conductors in South America and later in Europe, including Sergiu Celibidache. As a musicologist, he has specialized in the revising, editing, and revival of works by composers of the 18th century Minas Gerais School. He has written a number of instrumental pieces, but his most famous works are his choral pieces, such as the fiery Salmo 150, composed in 1975 and published in 1993, which features rhythmic backgrounds with very rapid articulations.

#12244

Helmut Kretschmar

#178564

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (98 years)

Helmut Kretschmar is a German classical tenor who spent most of his career performing in concerts and recitals with major orchestras and at important music festivals internationally. Although he focused his career mainly within the concert repertoire, Kretschmar did appear two times on the opera stage, notably singing in the world premiere of Arnold Schoenberg's Moses und Aron in 1954. Possessing a rich and warm lyric tenor voice, Kretschmar excelled in the concert repertoire of Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Joseph Haydn, and Felix Mendelssohn. Also an admired interpreter of ...

#12245

Paul Reller

#187086

Overall Influence

Paul Reller is a composer of contemporary classical music and experimental rock musician. He has been an Associate Professor of Music at the University of South Florida since 1990, where he is the director of SYCOM, the USF School of Music's suite of electronic music studios. Reller earned a BM at the University of Minnesota and Master's degree at Eastman School of Music. He is one of the progenitors of the BONK festival of new music in the Tampa Bay area and has had pieces recorded by Bang on a Can.

#12246

Akin Omotoso

#179292

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Akin Omotoso is a Nigerian film director, writer, and actor. He is best known for directing the 2022 film Rise. Both his father Kole Omotoso and his sister Yewande Omotoso are also writers. Early life and education Omotoso was born in Nigeria, where he grew up in Ile Ife, Osun State. His family emigrated to South Africa in 1992 after his father, Kole Omotoso, took an academic appointment with the University of the Western Cape. Akin Omotoso studied at the University of Cape Town obtaining a diploma in speech and drama. His mother died in 2003.

#12247

Tatjana Masurenko

#168056

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Tatjana Masurenko is a German violist of Russian descent. Early life and education Masurenko was born to a Russian family of scientists and jazz musicians. Born in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, she grew up in Saint Petersburg, where she also started her studies which she then continued in Germany with Kim Kashkashian and Nobuko Imai. Encounters with Boris Pergamenschikow, György Kurtág, Brigitte Fassbaender and Herbert Blomstedt have also formed her artistic identity.

#12248

Liviu Marinescu

#175095

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Liviu Marinescu is a Romanian composer of orchestral and chamber music. He teaches at California State University, Northridge. Early life He studied music composition at the National University of Music Bucharest with Adrian Iorgulescu, and Cleveland State University with Edwin London. In 2000 he completed his Doctor of Musical Arts degree at University of Maryland, where he worked with Lawrence Moss.

#12249

Peter Richter de Rangenier

#188516

Overall Influence

1930 - 2021 (91 years)

Peter Richter de Rangenier, also Peter Richter, was a German composer, conductor and university professor. Life Born in Prague, after attending the Gymnasium in Lübeck, Richter de Rangenier first worked as a freelance composer and founded the Lübecker Kammerorchester. He then studied composition, conducting, piano, horn and organ at the conservatories in Hochschule für Musik Detmold, Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg and the Mozarteum.

#12250

Debu Chaudhuri

#180680

Overall Influence

1935 - 2021 (86 years)

Pandit Devabrata Chaudhuri was an Indian sitarist and teacher. He was conferred the Padmabhushan and Padma Shri awards. He was the writer of six books, composer of eight new ragas and numerous musical compositions. From 1963 he has appeared in numerous radio broadcasts, and he was a disciple of Mushtaq Ali Khan. He is considered a leading sitarist of Post War era. He is regarded as one of the leading proponents of Senia Style . He was the former Dean and Head, Faculty of Music, University of Delhi. His music is noted for its sweet singing ringing tone. He lived with his son, daughter-in law ...

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