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.
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List of the most influential people in Communications,
#13401
Hobart Bosworth
1867 - 1943 (76 years)
Hobart Van Zandt Bosworth was an American film actor, director, writer, and producer. Bosworth began his career in theater, eventually transitioning to the emerging film industry. Despite a battle with tuberculosis, he found success in silent films, establishing himself as a lead actor and pioneering the industry in California. Bosworth started his own production company, Hobart Bosworth Productions, in 1913, focusing on Jack London melodramas. After the company closed, Bosworth continued to act in supporting roles, surviving the transition to sound films. He is known as the "Dean of Hollywood" for his role in shaping the California film industry.
Go to Profile#13402
Jimmy Reed
1925 - 1976 (51 years)
Mathis James Reed was an American blues musician and songwriter. His particular style of electric blues was popular with blues as well as non-blues audiences. Reed's songs such as "Honest I Do" , "Baby What You Want Me to Do" , "Big Boss Man" , and "Bright Lights, Big City" appeared on both Billboard magazine's rhythm and blues and Hot 100 singles charts.
Go to Profile#13403
Louis Calhern
1895 - 1956 (61 years)
Carl Henry Vogt , known professionally as Louis Calhern, was an American stage and screen actor. Well known to fans of film noir for his role as Alonzo Emmerich, the pivotal villain in 1950's The Asphalt Jungle, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for portraying Oliver Wendell Holmes in the film The Magnificent Yankee later that year.
Go to Profile#13404
Albert Bassermann
1867 - 1952 (85 years)
Albert Bassermann was a German stage and screen actor. He was considered to be one of the greatest German-speaking actors of his generation and received the famous Iffland-Ring. He was married to Elsa Schiff with whom he frequently performed.
Go to Profile#13405
David Rizzio
1533 - 1566 (33 years)
David Rizzio or Riccio was an Italian courtier, born in Pancalieri close to Turin, a descendant of an ancient and noble family still living in Piedmont, the Riccio Counts di San Paolo e Solbrito, who rose to become the private secretary of Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary's husband, Lord Darnley, is said to have been jealous of their friendship because of rumours that Rizzio had impregnated Mary, and he joined in a conspiracy of Protestant nobles to murder him, led by Patrick Ruthven, 3rd Lord Ruthven. Mary was having dinner with Rizzio and a few ladies-in-waiting when Darnley joined them, accused his wife of adultery and then had a group murder Rizzio, who was hiding behind Mary.
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Tito Schipa
1888 - 1965 (77 years)
Tito Schipa was an Italian lyric tenor, considered the greatest tenore di grazia and one of the most popular tenors of the century. Biography Schipa was born as Raffaele Attilio Amedeo Schipa on 27 December 1888 in Lecce in Apulia into an Arbëreshë family; his birthday was recorded as January 2, 1889 for military conscription purposes. He studied in Milan and made his operatic debut at age 21 in 1910 at Vercelli. He subsequently appeared throughout Italy and in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 1917, he created the role of Ruggiero in Puccini's La rondine.
Go to Profile#13407
Jacqueline du Pré
1945 - 1987 (42 years)
Jacqueline Mary du Pré was a British cellist. At a young age, she achieved enduring mainstream popularity. Despite her short career, she is regarded as one of the greatest cellists of all time. Her career was cut short by multiple sclerosis, which forced her to stop performing at the age of 28; she died 14 years later at the age of 42.
Go to Profile#13408
Anton Bezenšek
1854 - 1915 (61 years)
Anton Bezenšek was a Slovene linguist, journalist, shorthand expert, and lecturer, who spent most of his life in Bulgaria. He is known as the scholar who adapted the Gabelsberger shorthand system to the South Slavic languages.
Go to Profile#13409
Morihei Ueshiba
1883 - 1969 (86 years)
Morihei Ueshiba was a Japanese martial artist and founder of the martial art of aikido. He is often referred to as "the founder" or , "Great Teacher". The son of a landowner from Tanabe, Ueshiba studied a number of martial arts in his youth, and served in the Japanese Army during the Russo-Japanese War. After being discharged in 1907, he moved to Hokkaidō as the head of a pioneer settlement; here he met and studied with Takeda Sōkaku, the founder of Daitō-ryū Aiki-jūjutsu. On leaving Hokkaido in 1919, Ueshiba joined the Ōmoto-kyō movement, a Shinto sect, in Ayabe, where he served as a martial arts instructor and opened his first dojo.
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George Rapall Noyes
1873 - 1952 (79 years)
George Rapall Noyes was Professor of Slavic Languages at University of California, Berkeley. Noyes was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1873, and attended Harvard University, graduating at the top of his class in 1894. After receiving his M.A. he completed his PhD dissertation, Dryden as Critic in 1898. He then engaged in the study of Russian under Professor Leo Wiener and obtained a John Harvard Fellowship to spend two years studying of Slavic philology at St. Petersburg University.
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Jacob Baden
1735 - 1804 (69 years)
Jacob Baden was a Danish philologist, pedagogue, and critic. He was a professor of rhetoric and Latin at the University of Copenhagen in 1779. He was the first person to lecture on Danish grammar at the university between 1782 and 1783. He was the editor of the "University Journal" from 1793 to 1801.
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Heinrich Morf
1854 - 1921 (67 years)
Heinrich Morf was a Swiss linguist and literary historian. He studied Indo-Germanic and classical philology at the University of Zürich and Romance philology at the University of Strasbourg , receiving his doctorate in 1877 with the dissertation Die Wortstellung im altfranzösischen Rolandslied. Following graduation, he continued his education in Spain and Paris , where he was a student of Gaston Paris. In 1879 he was named an associate professor of Romance philology at the University of Bern. Later on, he served as a professor at the University of Zürich , the Akademie für Sozial- und Hande...
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Paul Wegener
1874 - 1948 (74 years)
Paul Wegener was a German actor, writer, and film director known for his pioneering role in German expressionist cinema. Acting career At the age of 20, Wegener decided to end his law studies and concentrate on acting, touring the provinces before joining Max Reinhardt's acting troupe in 1906. In 1912, he turned to the new medium of motion pictures and appeared in the 1913 version of The Student of Prague. It was while making this film that he first heard the old Jewish legend of the Golem and proceeded to adapt the story to film, co-directing and co-writing the script with Henrik Galeen. His first version of the tale The Golem was a success and firmly established Wegener's reputation.
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Luigi Dallapiccola
1904 - 1975 (71 years)
Luigi Dallapiccola was an Italian composer known for his lyrical twelve-tone compositions. Biography Dallapiccola was born in Pisino d'Istria , to Italian parents. Unlike many composers born into highly musical environments, his early musical career was irregular at best. Political disputes over his birthplace of Istria, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, led to instability and frequent moves. His father was headmaster of an Italian-language school – the only one in the city – which was shut down at the start of World War I. The family, considered politically subversive, was placed in ...
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Eubie Blake
1887 - 1983 (96 years)
James Hubert "Eubie" Blake was an American pianist and composer of ragtime, jazz, and popular music. In 1921, he and his long-time collaborator Noble Sissle wrote Shuffle Along, one of the first Broadway musicals written and directed by African Americans. Blake's compositions included such hits as "Bandana Days", "Charleston Rag", "Love Will Find a Way", "Memories of You" and "I'm Just Wild About Harry". The 1978 Broadway musical Eubie! showcased his works; in 1981, President Ronald Reagan awarded Blake the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
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John Dolan
1955 - 1981 (26 years)
John Carroll Dolan is an American poet, author and essayist. He has been identified as the once-secret identity behind the pseudonym Gary Brecher, fictional author of the War Nerd column for the newspaper the eXile which has ceased publication. John Dolan writes as the War Nerd, but no longer "in full character" as Brecher, the two identities having merged.
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John Loder
1898 - 1988 (90 years)
John Loder was established as a British film actor in Germany and Britain before migrating to the United States in 1928 for work in the new talkies. He worked in Hollywood for two periods, becoming an American citizen in 1947. After living also in Argentina, he became a naturalized British citizen in 1959.
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George Butterworth
1885 - 1916 (31 years)
George Sainton Kaye Butterworth, MC was an English composer who was best known for the orchestral idyll The Banks of Green Willow and his song settings of A. E. Housman's poems from A Shropshire Lad.
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Ignatz Wiemeler
1895 - 1952 (57 years)
Ignatz Wiemeler was a German bookbinder and educator, internationally known and exhibited. He was part of the Offenbach School movement, alongside Rudolf Koch and the painter Karl Friedrich Lippmann.
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Henryk Wieniawski
1835 - 1880 (45 years)
Henryk Wieniawski was a Polish virtuoso violinist, composer and pedagogue, who is regarded amongst the most distinguished violinists in history. His younger brother Józef Wieniawski and nephew Adam Tadeusz Wieniawski were also accomplished musicians, as was his daughter Régine, who became a naturalised British subject upon marrying into the peerage and wrote music under the name Poldowski.
Go to Profile#13421
Malvina Reynolds
1900 - 1978 (78 years)
Malvina Reynolds was an American folk/blues singer-songwriter and political activist, best known for her songwriting, particularly the songs "Little Boxes", "What Have They Done to the Rain" and "Morningtown Ride".
Go to Profile#13422
Otto Nicolai
1810 - 1849 (39 years)
Carl Otto Ehrenfried Nicolai was a German composer, conductor, and one of the founders of the Vienna Philharmonic. Nicolai is best known for his operatic version of Shakespeare's comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor as . In addition to five operas, Nicolai composed lieder, works for orchestra, chorus, ensemble, and solo instruments.
Go to Profile#13423
Mississippi John Hurt
1893 - 1966 (73 years)
John Smith Hurt , better known as Mississippi John Hurt, was an American country blues singer and guitarist. Raised in Avalon, Mississippi, Hurt taught himself to play the guitar around the age of nine. He worked as a sharecropper and began playing at dances and parties, singing to a melodious fingerpicked accompaniment. His first recordings, made for Okeh Records in 1928, were commercial failures, and he continued to work as a farmer.
Go to Profile#13424
Anatoliy Brandukov
1859 - 1930 (71 years)
Anatoly Andreyevich Brandukov was a Russian cellist who premiered many cello pieces of prominent composers including Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Sergei Rachmaninoff. Born as Russian classical music was flourishing in the middle of the 19th century, he worked with many of the important composers and musicians of the day, including performances with Anton Rubinstein and Alexander Siloti. As a soloist, he excelled in performance and was especially noted for stylish interpretations, his refined temperament, and beautiful, expressive tone. In his later years, he became a professor at Moscow Conservatory, and continued to perform well into his later life.
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John Anderson
1921 - 1974 (53 years)
John Anderson was an American jazz trumpeter. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, he studied at the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music and the Westlake College of Music. He did a good deal of work in West Coast jazz with Stan Kenton and others. Anderson died in Birmingham in 1974.
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Alberto Franchetti
1860 - 1942 (82 years)
Alberto Franchetti was an Italian composer and racing driver, best known for the 1902 opera Germania. Biography Alberto Franchetti was born in Turin, a Jewish nobleman of independent means. He studied first in Venice, then at the Munich Conservatory under Josef Rheinberger, and finally in Dresden under Felix Draeseke. His first major success occurred in 1888 with his opera Asrael. His operatic style combined Wagnerianism and the traits of Meyerbeer with Italian verismo. During his life, critics sometimes referred to him as the "Meyerbeer of modern Italy."
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Ole Bull
1810 - 1880 (70 years)
Ole Bornemann Bull was a Norwegian virtuoso violinist and composer. According to Robert Schumann, he was on a level with Niccolò Paganini for the speed and clarity of his playing. Biography Background Bull was born in Bergen, Norway. He was the eldest of ten children of Johan Storm Bull and Anna Dorothea Borse Geelmuyden . His brother, Georg Andreas Bull became a noted Norwegian architect. He was also the uncle of Edvard Hagerup Bull, Norwegian judge and politician.
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Rowland V. Lee
1891 - 1975 (84 years)
Rowland Vance Lee was an American film director, actor, writer, and producer. Biography Early life Born in Findlay, Ohio, Lee was the son of a suffragette who founded a newspaper. He studied at Columbia University and served in the infantry during World War I.
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Nikolai Myaskovsky
1881 - 1950 (69 years)
Nikolai Yakovlevich Myaskovsky , was a Russian and Soviet composer. He is sometimes referred to as the "Father of the Soviet Symphony". Myaskovsky was awarded the Stalin Prize five times. Early years Myaskovsky was born in Nowogieorgiewsk, near Warsaw, Congress Poland, Russian Empire, the son of an engineer officer in the Russian army. After the death of his mother the family was brought up by his father's sister, Yelikonida Konstantinovna Myaskovskaya, who had been a singer at the Saint Petersburg Opera. The family moved to Saint Petersburg in his teens.
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Augusto Genina
1892 - 1957 (65 years)
Augusto Genina was an Italian film pioneer. He was a movie producer and director. Biography Born in Rome, Genina was a drama critic and wrote comedies for the Il Mondo Magazine, under advise of Aldo de Benedetti switches to movies for the "Film d'Arte Italiana", that produces his first film "La moglie di sua eccellenza". In 1929 Genina moved to France to direct Louise Brooks in sonorized film Miss Europe. He studied sound techniques and worked in France and Germany in same but alternate languages film versions which were filmed simultaneously, before his return to Italy.
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Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari
1876 - 1948 (72 years)
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari was an Italian composer and teacher. He is best known for his comic operas such as Il segreto di Susanna . A number of his works were based on plays by Carlo Goldoni, including Le donne curiose , I quatro rusteghi and Il campiello .
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Lightnin' Hopkins
1912 - 1982 (70 years)
Samuel John "Lightnin" Hopkins was an American country blues singer, songwriter, guitarist and occasional pianist from Centerville, Texas. In 2010, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him No. 71 on its list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time.
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Oscar Pettiford
1922 - 1960 (38 years)
Oscar Pettiford was an American jazz double bassist, cellist and composer. He was one of the earliest musicians to work in the bebop idiom. Biography Pettiford was born in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, United States. His mother identified as being of Choctaw descent, and his father Harry "Doc" Pettiford identified as half Cherokee and half African American.
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August Conrady
1864 - 1925 (61 years)
August Conrady was a German sinologist and linguist. From 1897 he was professor at the University of Leipzig. Conrady first studied classical philology, comparative linguistics and Sanskrit; he continued with Tibetan and Chinese language. He put forward his research findings in 1896 on the relationship between the prefix and tones in the Sino-Tibetan languages, in the work Eine Indo-Chinesische causative-Denominativ-Bildung und ihr Zusammenhang mit den Tonaccenten .
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William Haines
1900 - 1973 (73 years)
Charles William Haines was an American actor and interior designer. Haines was discovered by a talent scout and signed with Goldwyn Pictures in 1922. His career gained momentum when he received favorable reviews for his role in The Midnight Express. He was cast in the 1926 film Brown of Harvard and his performance solidified his screen persona as a wisecracking, arrogant leading man. By the end of the 1920s, Haines had appeared in a string of successful films and was a popular box-office draw.
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George Fitzmaurice
1885 - 1940 (55 years)
George Fitzmaurice was a French-born film director and producer. Career Fitzmaurice's career first started as a set designer on stage. Beginning in 1914, and continuing until his death in 1940, he directed a total of over 80 films; several of these were successful, including The Son of the Sheik, Raffles, Mata Hari, and Suzy.
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John Layfield
1562 - 1617 (55 years)
John Layfield was an English scholar and Bible translator. Life Layfield was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood before proceeding to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was a Fellow from 1585 to 1603. He was chaplain to George Clifford, the 3rd Earl of Cumberland on his 1592 voyage to Puerto Rico. Rector of St Clement Danes in London from 1602 until his death in 1617, he was appointed a founding fellow of Chelsea College by King James I of England in 1610. He was also a member of the "First Westminster Company" charged by James with the translation of the first 12 books of the King James Version of the Bible.
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Ivor Gurney
1890 - 1937 (47 years)
Ivor Bertie Gurney was an English poet and composer, particularly of songs. He was born and raised in Gloucester. He suffered from bipolar disorder through much of his life and spent his last 15 years in psychiatric hospitals. Critical evaluation of Gurney has been complicated by this, and also by the need to assess both his poetry and his music. Gurney himself thought of music as his true vocation: "The brighter visions brought music; the fainter verse".
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Luisa de Medrano
1484 - 1527 (43 years)
Luisa de Medrano , was a Navarrese-Castilian poet, philosopher, scholar and professor. Luisa de Medrano was the first female Professor in Spain , at the University of Salamanca. Luisa de Medrano Bravo de Lagunas Cienfuegos belonged to the group of Renaissance women called by their contemporaries "puellae doctae" .
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Elis Regina
1945 - 1982 (37 years)
Elis Regina Carvalho Costa , known professionally as Elis Regina , was a Brazilian singer of MPB and jazz music. She is also the mother of the singers Maria Rita and Pedro Mariano. She became nationally renowned in 1965 after singing "Arrastão" in the first edition of TV Excelsior festival song contest and soon joined O Fino da Bossa, a television program on TV Record. She was noted for her vocalization as well as for her interpretation and performances in shows. Her recordings include "Como Nossos Pais" , "Upa Neguinho" , "Madalena" , "Casa no Campo" , "Águas de março" , "Atrás da Porta" , "...
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Erroll Garner
1921 - 1977 (56 years)
Erroll Louis Garner was an American jazz pianist and composer known for his swing playing and ballads. His instrumental ballad "Misty", his best-known composition, has become a jazz standard. It was first recorded in 1956 with Mitch Miller and his orchestra, and played a prominent part in the 1971 motion picture Play Misty for Me.
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Morris Levy
1927 - 1990 (63 years)
Morris Levy was an American entrepreneur in the fields of jazz clubs, music publishing, and the independent record industry. Levy was cofounder and owner of Roulette Records, founding partner of the Birdland jazz club and the Roulette Room. He was a prominent subject of investigations into organized crime and the music industry, and was convicted of extortion shortly before his death.
Go to Profile#13443
Maurice Greene
1696 - 1755 (59 years)
Maurice Greene was an English composer and organist. Biography Born in London, the son of a clergyman, Greene became a choirboy at St Paul's Cathedral under Jeremiah Clarke and Charles King. He studied the organ under Richard Brind, and after Brind died, Greene became organist at St Paul's.
Go to Profile#13444
Josephine Baker
1906 - 1975 (69 years)
Freda Josephine Baker , naturalised as Joséphine Baker, was an American-born French dancer, singer and actress. Her career was centered primarily in Europe, mostly in France. She was the first black woman to star in a major motion picture, the 1927 silent film Siren of the Tropics, directed by and .
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Alexander Mackenzie
1847 - 1935 (88 years)
Sir Alexander Campbell Mackenzie KCVO was a Scottish composer, conductor and teacher best known for his oratorios, violin and piano pieces, Scottish folk music and works for the stage. Mackenzie was a member of a musical family and was sent for his musical education to Germany. He had many successes as a composer, producing over 90 compositions, but from 1888 to 1924, he devoted a great part of his energies to running the Royal Academy of Music. Together with Hubert Parry and Charles Villiers Stanford, he was regarded as one of the fathers of the British musical renaissance in the late nine...
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Alan Crosland
1894 - 1936 (42 years)
Frederick Alan Crosland was an American stage actor and film director. He is noted for having directed the first feature film using spoken dialogue, The Jazz Singer . Early life and career Born in New York City, New York to a well-to-do Jewish family, Crosland attended Dartmouth College. After graduation, he took a job as a writer with the New York Globe magazine. Interested in the theatre, he began acting on stage, appearing in several productions with Shakespearian actress Annie Russell.
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Edward Alleyn
1566 - 1626 (60 years)
Edward "Ned" Alleyn was an English actor who was a major figure of the Elizabethan theatre and founder of the College of God's Gift in Dulwich. Early life Alleyn was born on 1 September 1566 in Bishopsgate, London; or so it was recorded in the Biographia Britannica as a product of Alleyn's own writing. Alleyn does record his birth date in a diary several times but does not distinctly identify his birthplace as Bishopsgate. In the St. Botolph parish registers it is recorded that he was baptized on the day after his birth. He was born a younger son of Edward Alleyn with three brothers named John, William, and Edward.
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Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov
1859 - 1935 (76 years)
Mikhail Mikhailovich Ippolitov-Ivanov was a Russian and Soviet composer, conductor and teacher. His music ranged from the late-Romantic era into the 20th century era. Biography He was born in 1859 at Gatchina, near St. Petersburg, where his father was a mechanic employed at the palace. His birth name was Mikhail Mikhailovich Ivanov; later he added Ippolitov, his mother's maiden name, to distinguish himself from a composer and music critic with an identical name . He studied music at home and was a choirboy at the cathedral of St. Isaac, where he also had musical instruction, before entering the St.
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Alfred Rosenberg
1893 - 1946 (53 years)
Alfred Ernst Rosenberg was a Baltic German Nazi theorist and ideologue. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart and he held several important posts in the Nazi government. He was the head of the NSDAP Office of Foreign Affairs during the entire rule of Nazi Germany , and led Amt Rosenberg , an official Nazi body for cultural policy and surveillance, between 1934 and 1945. During World War II, Rosenberg was the head of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories . After the war, he was convicted of crimes against peace; planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression; war crimes; and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials in 1946.
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Friedrich Silcher
1789 - 1860 (71 years)
Philipp Friedrich Silcher , was a German composer, mainly known for his lieder , and an important Volkslied collector. Life Silcher was meant to be a school teacher, but dedicated himself entirely to music in the seminary in Ludwigsburg after he met Carl Maria von Weber. He was taught composition and piano by Conradin Kreutzer and Johann Nepomuk Hummel. In 1817 he was named musical director at the University of Tübingen. He is regarded as one of the most important protagonists of choir singing. He arranged many German Volkslieder and international folk songs that have remained standard repertoire of many choirs in Germany and became an integral part of German daily life.
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