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,

#12501

Herta Glaz

#184988

Overall Influence

1908 - 2006 (98 years)

Herta Glaz was an Austrian-born American operatic mezzo-soprano, voice teacher, and opera director of Austrian birth. She became a United States citizen in 1943. From 1942 to 1956, she was a fixture at the Metropolitan Opera, where she sang in more than 300 performances. She was also highly active with the San Francisco Opera between 1944 and 1951. Some of the roles she portrayed on stage were Marcellina in Le Nozze di Figaro, Annina, Siegrune in Die Walküre, Flosshilde in Götterdämmerung and Magdalene in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.

#12502

Loni Ding

#182496

Overall Influence

1931 - 2010 (79 years)

Isadora Quanehia Ding Welsh , known professionally as Loni Ding, was an documentary film maker, director, television series producer, activist, and university educator. She is known for her work exploring the experiences of Asian Americans. Notably, two of her films played a critical role in the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 which granted reparations to Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during World War II.

#12503

Jack Swanstrom

#189949

Overall Influence

1961 - 2015 (54 years)

John "Jack" Swanstrom was an American educator and film director. He has a Master of Fine Arts in directing from the AFI Conservatory and a Master of Arts in Theatre from Humboldt State University. During the Gulf War, he served with Team 45, Detachment 1 of the 354th Civil Affairs Brigade. He was awarded the Army Commendation Medal for service during Operation Desert Shield and the Bronze Star Medal for Operation Desert Storm.

#12504

Toshimitsu Tanaka

#191025

Overall Influence

1930 - 2020 (90 years)

was a Japanese composer from Aomori, Aomori. He graduated from Kunitachi College of Music with a major in composition. His "Two Movements for Marimba", composed in 1965, was awarded the Encouraging Prize of the National Arts Festival for the Centennial Anniversary of the Meiji Period , and the Supreme Prize of the National Arts Festival in 1969. The piece was recorded by Evelyn Glennie in April 1990 for her 1991 album release Light in Darkness.

#12505

Jack Petersen

#114269

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

Jack Leroy Petersen is an American jazz guitarist and educator. He was a pedagogical architect for jazz guitar and jazz improvisation at Berklee College of Music, University of North Texas College of Music, and University of North Florida.

#12506

Alexej Gerassimez

#186139

Overall Influence

1987 - Present (39 years)

Alexej Gerassimez is a German solo percussion player and composer. Gerassimez was born in Essen, Germany. His brothers are also musicians: Nicolai Gerassimez is a pianist and Wassily Gerassimez is a cellist. He studied at the Cologne Conservatory of Music, the Berlin Conservatory and the Munich Conservatory of Music.

#12507

Kim Ki-duk

#179834

Overall Influence

1934 - 2017 (83 years)

Kim Ki-duk was a South Korean film director and professor. Best known outside of Korea for his 1967 giant monster film Yongary, Kim Ki-duk directed 66 movies in total from his directorial debut in 1961 until his retirement from the film industry in 1977. Along with Kim Soo-yong and Lee Man-hee, Kim was one of the leading young directors of the Korean cinematic wave of the 1960s. The most distinctive and successful genre of this period was the melodrama . He is not related to Kim Ki-duk, the South Korean director of 3-Iron.

#12508

Sonya Monosoff

#190252

Overall Influence

1927 - Present (99 years)

Sonya Monosoff is a violinist, a pioneer of the Baroque violin and one of the first American performers to use the Baroque violin in performance. Biography Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Sonya Monosoff studied the violin with Louis Persinger. She also studied chamber music with Felix Salmond and . A graduate of the Juilliard School of Music, she joined the Quartet Galimir, refounded by Felix Galimir during his exile in America. In 1963 she founded and directed her own ensemble, first called the Baroque Players of New York , performing a range of works from Henry Purcell to Bülent Arel.

#12509

Zosha Di Castri

#190989

Overall Influence

1985 - Present (41 years)

Zosha Di Castri is a Canadian composer and pianist living and working in New York. She is the Francis Goelet Assistant Professor of Music at Columbia University. Her work came to international attention when a specially commissioned piece about the lunar landings opened the BBC Proms 2019.

#12510

Beverly Hoch

#187477

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Beverly Hoch is an American coloratura soprano and music educator who has had an active performance career in operas, concerts, and on recordings since the late 1970s. She has been teaching at Texas Woman's University since 2007.

#12511

Eugen Dombois

#189053

Overall Influence

1931 - 2014 (83 years)

Eugen Müller-Dombois was a German lutenist and music teacher. He was a pioneer in the revival of the lute and early music revival. Biography He was born in Bethel, Germany, on 15 November 1931 to Georg Müller, a well-known educator and Johanna Dombois. He was the second of four brothers and two sisters . After training as a secondary school teacher , he studied lute and guitar with Walter Gerwig at Musichochschule in Cologne from 1955 to 1958. Subsequently, he became a lecturer at the Northwest German Music Academy Detmold Hochschule für Musik Detmold and began at the same time a successful international career as a concert artist.

#12512

Vasili Byros

#186595

Overall Influence

Vasili Byros is a Greek-American music theorist, musicologist and pianist. He is best known for his contributions to the field of music schemata theory and partimento. Education Byros is an alumnus of the Aaron Copland School of Music, receiving his B.A. in music composition in 2001 and M.A. in music history and music theory in 2003. Byros received his PhD in Music Theory from Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences' Department of Music in 2009. He is currently a tenured associate professor of Music Theory and Cognition at Northwestern University since 2010, after spending a year at the Jacobs School of Music of Indiana University as a Post-Doctoral Resident Scholar.

#12513

George Brunner

#187354

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

George Brunner is an American composer and performer born in Philadelphia. He has founded the International Electroacoustic Music Festival at Brooklyn College in 1995 where he has produced renowned composers such as Pauline Oliveros and Noah Creshevsky. He is also the founder of the Brooklyn College Electroacoustic Music Ensemble. Currently, he is the Director of the Music Technology Program for the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College and on the faculty of the Brooklyn College Center for Computer Music .

#12514

Igor Luchenok

#156670

Overall Influence

1938 - 2018 (80 years)

Igor Mikhailovich Luchenok was a Belarusian composer, People's Artist of the Byelorussian SSR , and chairman of the Belarusian Union of Composers. Biography Luchenok worked in various genres — vocal-symphonic, chamber-instrumental, chamber-vocal, but most fruitfully — in song. From his works formed the repertoire of Pesniary, Syabry, Verasy, Joseph Kobzon, Sofia Rotaru, Valentina Tolkunova, Maria Pakhomenko, Lev Leshchenko, Victor Vuyachich, Eduard Khil and many others.

#12515

Marga Schiml

#180401

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Marga Schiml is a German opera singer who sings mezzo-soprano and alto. She has appeared at major European opera houses and festivals, such as the Vienna State Opera, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Hamburg State Opera and La Scala, at the Salzburg Festival and the Bayreuth Festival. She is also an academic voice teacher.

#12516

Lawrence Casserley

#179181

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Lawrence Casserley is a composer, conductor and performer, to real time electro-acoustic music. Lawrence Casserley was professor of electro-acoustic music at the Royal College of Music in London Early life Casserley graduated from Kent School in Kent, Connecticut in 1959.

#12517

Andrew Schloss

#186087

Overall Influence

Andrew Schloss is an American musician and computer engineer. Career Schloss is perhaps best known for his work with the radiodrum, a three-dimensional midi-controller. Schloss is a pioneer in computer-music technology, and worked at IRCAM and the CCRMA in the 1980s. He has performed with Léon Theremin, Laurie Anderson, Tito Puente, Chucho Valdés, David A. Jaffe and Peter Brook. He has collaborated extensively with David A. Jaffe, who has composed a variety of works for him, including "The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World," for radiodrum-performed Disklavier and ensemble. Schloss teaches at...

#12518

Marilyn J. Ziffrin

#190990

Overall Influence

1926 - 2018 (92 years)

Marilyn Jane Ziffrin was an American composer and music educator. Biography Marilyn Ziffrin was born in Moline, Illinois, to parents Betty S. and Harry B. Ziffrin, Ziffrin graduated from the University of Wisconsin in Madison in 1948, and received a Master of Arts degree from Columbia University in 1949. From 1967 to 1982 she worked as an associate professor at New England College, and she taught private composition lessons at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire.

#12519

David Garner

#191358

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

David Ross Garner is an American composer of opera and vocal, instrumental, and chamber music. He is also an educator, on faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Early life and education David Garner was born in South Side, Chicago. He spent most of his childhood in Lincoln, Nebraska and Lake Oswego, Oregon upon his parents’ relocations for academic positions. He was given piano and cello lessons throughout his childhood and performed in recitals and with youth orchestras.

#12520

Danna Nolan Fewell

#102261

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Danna Nolan Fewell is an Old Testament scholar. She is John Fletcher Hurst Professor of Hebrew Bible at Drew University Theological School. Fewell studied at Candler School of Theology, Emory University and previously taught at the Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University. Fewell has enjoyed a successful association with David M. Gunn, with whom she has co-authored several articles and three books: Compromising Redemption: Relating Characters in the Book of Ruth; Gender, Power, and Promise: The Subject of the Bible's First Story; and Narrative in the Hebrew Bible. Fewell and Gunn represent a postmodern literary approach to biblical literature.

#12521

Virko Baley

#177971

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Virko Baley is a Ukrainian-American composer, conductor, and pianist. He was born in Radekhiv in Poland , the only child of Petro and Lydia Baley. Petro Baley was interred at Auschwitz concentration camp following the German invasion of Poland in 1939, and he and extended family were relocated to Slovakia. The family was reunited on a farm in Germany towards the end of the war to work as farm laborers, after which they relocated to Munich. From 1947 to 1949, the family lived in a displaced person's camp in Regensburg, Germany.

#12522

Bob Sweeney

#174530

Overall Influence

1918 - 1992 (74 years)

Bob Sweeney was an American actor, director and producer of radio, television and film. Early years Bob Sweeney was a graduate of Balboa High School in San Francisco and San Francisco State College. In the early part of World War II, he and college classmate George Fenneman formed a stand-up comedy team and entertained troops at military bases.

#12523

John Boda

#181530

Overall Influence

1922 - 2002 (80 years)

John Boda was a composer and music professor who taught music theory, composition and piano at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida between 1947 and 2001. His papers and collection are at the Warren D. Allen Music Library.

#12524

Robert L. Annis

#184598

Overall Influence

Robert L. Annis is an American musician and Dean and Director of Westminster College of the Arts of Rider University, which includes the Westminster Choir College. Annis, a Grammy-nominated clarinetist, has performed with various orchestras throughout the country. He serves as a member of Collage New Music, a chamber music organization based in Boston, and is a member of the Board of Trustees for the Princeton Symphony Orchestra in Princeton, New Jersey. He has served as Dean of Enrollment at the New England Conservatory. A conservatory building was named in his honor at the USC Thornton Sc...

#12525

Péter Kőszeghy

#189188

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Péter Kőszeghy is a Hungarian composer and music eductor. Life Kőszeghy was born in 1971 in Balassagyarmat, Hungary. From 1985 to 1989 he attended the Béla-Bartók High School of Music in Miskolc, where he received flute lessons. From 1989 to 1992 he studied flute and music pedagogy at the Pedagogical Faculty of the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Győr. He also took private composition lessons with Attila Reményi and Endre Olsvay. From 1992 to 1993 he was a member of the "Group of Young Composers" in Budapest.

#12526

Reinhard Wolschina

#190479

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Reinhard Wolschina is a German composer. Life Born in Leipzig, Wolschina attended the from 1967. Afterwards he studied composition with and piano with Volkmar Lehmann at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt, Weimar. From 1982 to 1984, he was a master student with Günter Kochan at the Academy of Arts, Berlin.

#12527

Clare Shore

#186359

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Clare Shore is an American composer, music educator mezzo-soprano, and conductor. Biography Clare Shore studied composition with Annette LeSiege, voice with Donald Hoirup, and oboe and saxophone with Davidson Burgess, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Wake Forest University in 1976. She continued her studies in composition with Charles Eakin and Cecil Effinger, and voice with Louis Cunningham, graduating with a Master of Music degree in 1977 from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She studied with David Diamond, Vincent Persichetti, Roger Sessions, and later with Gunther Schu...

#12528

Charles Shere

#183527

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Charles Shere was an American composer. He studied composition briefly with Robert Erickson and Luciano Berio but was largely self-taught. His music was primarily in unconventional notations and open form through the 1970s and early 1980s, but turned to more conventional forms thereafter. He was Music Director of radio KPFA in Berkeley in the late 1960s, a producer at KQED-TV in San Francisco from 1967 to 1971, and music critic of the Oakland Tribune from 1971 to his retirement in 1988, and taught music history at Mills College from 1971 to 1986.

#12529

Joseph Lulloff

#189172

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Joseph Lulloff is an American saxophonist and educator. Lulloff began playing saxophone at age 7, after switching from clarinet, which a doctor had suggested he play to help with his asthma. In later years, influenced by Eugene Rousseau clinics, Lulloff was inspired to study saxophone in college, attending Michigan State University and the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. After graduating, he performed with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, and The Cleveland Orchestra. He has toured with The Cleveland Orchestra performing Ingolf Dahls's Saxophone Concerto. He serves as ...

#12530

Gary E. McPherson

Gary E. McPherson

#182104

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Gary Edward McPherson is an Australian music educator, academic and musician, who has researched various topics within the areas of musical development, music performance science and music psychology. He has served as the Ormond Chair of Music at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music since 2009 and between July 2009 and July 2019, served as director of the MCM at the University of Melbourne. McPherson's research primarily focuses on exploring the factors that influence the development of musical proficiency during childhood, later performance excellence, and the motivators of music participation in individuals of all ages and musical skill levels.

#12531

Charan Raj

#175664

Overall Influence

1985 - Present (41 years)

Charan Raj is an Indian composer and singer known for his work in Kannada cinema. For his work in Jeerjimbe , he was awarded the Karnataka State Film Award for Best Music Director. Early life Charan Raj attended Sri Ramakrishna Vidya Shala, a residential school in Mysore. He was part of the music group there. Raj is trained in classical Carnatic music with Perumbavoor G. Raveendranath and in WesternClassical music with Neecia Majolly. He also holds a grade eight certificate in piano from the London School of Music.

#12532

Jasper Wood

#180020

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Jasper Wood is a Canadian concert violinist. Jasper Wood was born into a musical family of six brothers and sisters: his brothers are Craig and Derek, his sisters, Anya, Heather and Lisette. He gave his first public performance at the age of five. He holds a master of music degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music where he studied with David and Linda Cerone. An acclaimed competition winner, Jasper Wood has won numerous prizes and awards in the United States, Canada, and Europe. In 1996 Jasper Wood embarked on his international solo career. Since then he has played with numerous orchest...

#12533

Joshua Hecht

#188316

Overall Influence

2000 - 2019 (19 years)

Joshua Hecht was an American operatic bass. Biography Born in New York City, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, he received a Bachelor of Arts from New York University, in 1951. Hecht was a student of Rosa Ponselle, and made his formal debut with her company, the Baltimore Civic Opera, in 1953, as the Comte des Grieux in Manon. Two years later, he first appeared with the New York City Opera, as Monterone in Rigoletto, with Cornell MacNeil in the name part. From 1955 to 1960, the bass sang with that ensemble, as Colline in La bohème, Cesare Angelotti in Tosca, Sparafucile in Rigoletto , Fer...

#12534

Colin Wilson

#170632

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Colin Wilson is an American film producer, executive producer, and unit production manager. He is best known for producing the films Casper , The Lost World: Jurassic Park , Amistad , Lara Croft: Tomb Raider , Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines , Troy , War of the Worlds , Munich , John Carter , and The Meg .

#12535

Kurt Stallmann

#186803

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Kurt Stallmann is an American composer who lives and works in Houston, Texas. Education Kurt Stallmann was born in Rockford, Illinois. In 1987, he received a bachelor's degree in music from Northern Illinois University. That same year, he relocated to Boston, Massachusetts where he composed, improvised, and collaborated with modern dance choreographers. In 1990, he was invited by Yasuko Tokunaga to join the Dance Division faculty at The Boston Conservatory to design a course for dancers that developed listening and analysis skills for the purpose of creating new choreography. In 1992, aft...

#12536

Chris Jones

#189097

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Christopher Jones is a video game designer and producer, CEO, finance professional, and actor. He is best known for a series of interactive movies in which he stars as Tex Murphy, a private investigator who lives in San Francisco in the middle of the 21st century.

#12537

Mary Hopper

#184953

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Mary Hopper is an American choral conductor and music minister. She is on the faculty of the Wheaton College Conservatory of Music and served as president of the American Choral Directors Association from 2015 to 2017.

#12538

James Tracy

#123789

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

James Frederick Tracy is an American conspiracy theorist and former professor who has espoused the view that some American mass shootings did not occur and are hoaxes. Tracy holds a PhD degree, awarded by the University of Iowa in 2002. He was previously a tenured professor of communication at Florida Atlantic University at Boca Raton. He maintains that the Boston Marathon bombing was a false flag operation perpetrated by the United States government, and that the Sandy Hook massacre did not occur but was a hoax also perpetrated by the United States government. There is a "Sandy Hook truther"...

#12539

Ricardo Odnoposoff

#182577

Overall Influence

1914 - 2004 (90 years)

Ricardo Odnoposoff was a Jewish Argentine-Austrian-American violinist of the 20th century. He was a former concertmaster of the Vienna State Opera and Vienna Philharmonic. He was dismissed on September 1, 1938, because he was unable to produce an Ariernachweis . He eventually became a citizen of the United States.

#12540

Matthew Fries

#189962

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Matthew Fries is an American jazz pianist, composer, educator and winner of the 1997 Great American Jazz Piano Competition. Early life and education Born into a musical family in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, Matthew Fries began studying piano and music theory under the tutelage of his father John Fries at an early age. John was a piano professor at Susquehanna University from 1966-1996. His mother Harriet was a classical vocalist, choir director and an original member of the Susquehanna Valley Chorale.

#12541

Sándor Balassa

#190992

Overall Influence

1935 - 2021 (86 years)

Sándor Balassa was a Hungarian composer and music educator. Life Born in Budapest, Balassa attended a musical school and then studied music with Endre Szervánszky. In 1964 he started working at the Hungarian Radio where he created music programs. Since 1981 he also taught at the Academy of Music. He retired from this position in 1996.

#12542

John Sampen

#183663

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

John Sampen is an American classical saxophonist. Sampen's degrees are from Northwestern University . His teachers included Frederick Hemke, Larry Teal, and Donald Sinta. He has served as professor of saxophone at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio since 1977. His wife is the composer and pianist Marilyn Shrude.

#12543

Forrest McClendon

#187220

Overall Influence

Forrest McClendon is an American stage actor, singer and professor. McClendon received a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Musical nomination in 2011 for his portrayal of Mr. Tambo in the Broadway musical, The Scottsboro Boys. The Scottsboro Boys had marked McClendon's Broadway debut.

#12544

Michael Frischenschlager

Michael Frischenschlager

#184984

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Michael Frischenschlager is an Austrian violinist. Life Born in Salzburg, Frischenschlager studied violin with Theodor Müller, André Gertler, Franz Samohyl and Yehudi Menuhin as well as conducting and musicology in Salzburg, Cologne, Vienna and Rome.

#12545

Beatrice Krebs

#189398

Overall Influence

1924 - 2011 (87 years)

Beatrice Krebs was an American operatic mezzo-soprano. Life and career Born in Cleveland, Krebs made her professional opera debut in 1952 at the New York City Opera as Miss Todd in Gian Carlo Menotti's The Old Maid and the Thief. In 1956 she portrayed Mama McCourt in the world premiere of Douglas Moore's The Ballad of Baby Doe at the Central City Opera. She repeated that role for the opera's NYCO premiere in 1958 and on the 1959 NYCO recording of the opera. She can also be heard on the 1959 recording of Igor Stravinsky's Threni with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. From 1961 to 1963 she perf...

#12546

Alois Ickstadt

#180071

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (96 years)

Alois Ickstadt is a German pianist, choral conductor, university professor and composer. He was professor at the Musikhochschule Frankfurt. He promoted choral singing from children's choir to adult groups for the state broadcaster Hessischer Rundfunk, namely the Figuralchor Frankfurt which he founded in 1966 and conducted until 2011.

#12547

Andrew Wilson-Dickson

Andrew Wilson-Dickson

#190541

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Andrew Wilson-Dickson is a British composer, pianist and an authority on early music practice. Biography Wilson-Dickson was born in London on 20 January 1946. He attended Marlborough College where in a school music competition he was spotted by Sidney Watson who offered him a scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford, in spite of unfavourable A-level results. He turned this down in favour of an exhibition to Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he received piano lessons from Lamar Crowson and John Lill. Later he held the post of organ scholar at York Minster where he studied the organ with Nicholas...

#12548

Peter Herresthal

#190351

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Peter Herresthal is a Norwegian violinist and Professor at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo and Visiting Professor at Royal College of Music in London. He won the Spellemannprisen in 2002.

#12549

Yasuhiro Takeda

#188940

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

The Gainax employee Yasuhiro Takeda should not be confused with the professor of the same name at National Defense Academy of Japan.Yasuhiro Takeda is a Japanese anime director and founding member of Gainax; for most of his career, he was General Manager. He is also a two-time chair of the Nihon SF Taikai .

#12550

Eveline Gottzein

#87305

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (95 years)

Eveline Gottzein is a German engineer and honorary professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Stuttgart. Early life and education After graduating from high school , Gottzein trained as an electrical engineer, then later enrolled at the Technical University of Dresden , before finally enrolling at Technical University of Darmstadt .

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