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,
#13701
Ray Nance
1913 - 1976 (63 years)
Ray Willis Nance was an American jazz trumpeter, violinist and singer. He is best remembered for his long association with Duke Ellington and his orchestra. Early years Nance was born in Chicago on December 10, 1913. He studied piano and violin as a child. In high school, he taught himself trumpet because “I wanted to hear myself on a louder instrument in way I couldn't do with a violin in an orchestra.” He was the leader of his own band in Chicago from 1932 to 1937. An ad in a June 1933 prom book at the Edgewater Beach Hotel for the Staples Cafe, 6344 N. Broadway, Chicago shows "Ray Nance an...
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Con Conrad
1891 - 1938 (47 years)
Con Conrad was an American songwriter and producer. Biography Conrad was born in Manhattan, New York, and published his first song, "Down in Dear Old New Orleans", in 1912. Conrad produced the Broadway show The Honeymoon Express, starring Al Jolson, in 1913. By 1918, Conrad was writing and publishing with Henry Waterson . He co-composed "Margie" in 1920 with J. Russel Robinson and lyricist Benny Davis, which became his first major hit. He went on to compose hits that became standards, including:"Palesteena" with co-composer and co-lyricist J. Russel Robinson "Singin' the Blues" with co-composer J.
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Jimmy Forrest
1920 - 1980 (60 years)
James Robert Forrest Jr. was an American jazz musician, who played tenor saxophone throughout his career. Forrest is known for his first solo recording of "Night Train". It reached No. 1 on the Billboard R&B chart in March 1952, and stayed at the top for seven weeks. "Hey Mrs. Jones" and "Bolo Blues" were his other hits. All were made for United Records, for which he recorded between 1951 and 1953; he recorded frequently as both a sideman and a bandleader.
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Arpad Darazs
1922 - 1986 (64 years)
Arpad Darazs was a Hungarian-American music educator who was widely known as one of the few in the Western hemisphere as an authority on the Kodály method of choral instruction. Before he gained wide acclaim for his work at the University of South Carolina, he garnered acclaim with the success of the St. Kilian Boychoir of Farmingdale, New York. The boys' choir not only sang on the Sonny Fox show, but also on a Christmas album with Andre Kostelanetz, as well as with the Leonard Bernstein at the 20th Anniversary Celebration of the United Nations.
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Tsuneko Gauntlett
1873 - 1953 (80 years)
Tsuneko Yamada Gauntlett , born Yamada Tsune, was a Japanese temperance, suffrage, and peace activist. In 1937 she was international president of the Pan-Pacific Women's Association. Early life Yamada Tsune was born in what is now part of the city of Anjō, Aichi, the daughter of a samurai, Yamada Kenzō. Her younger brother was composer Kosaku Yamada. She was educated at the Sakurai Girls' School, where one of her teachers was Yajima Kajiko.
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Allie Wrubel
1905 - 1973 (68 years)
Elias Paul "Allie" Wrubel was an American composer and songwriter. Biography Wrubel was born to a Jewish family in Middletown, Connecticut, United States, the son of Regina and Isaac Wrubel. His family founded the Wrubels department store in Middletown, Connecticut. He attended Wesleyan University and Columbia University before working in dance bands. "After earning his bachelor’s degree in 1926, Allie enrolled in graduate music studies at Columbia University. He roomed with his close friend, film actor James Cagney [a former Columbia undergrad], and began playing with bands in Greenwich Vil...
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Sergei Lemeshev
1902 - 1977 (75 years)
Sergei Yakovlevich Lemeshev was a Soviet and Russian opera singer and director. People's Artist of the USSR . Biography Early life and career Lemeshev was born into a peasant family, and his father wanted him to become a cobbler. In 1914, he left a parish school and was sent to be trained to make shoes in Saint Petersburg. In 1917, he graduated from school in Tver, where he received vocal training. He began first at a local workers' club and later moved to Moscow.
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George Formby
1904 - 1961 (57 years)
George Formby was an English actor, singer-songwriter and comedian who became known to a worldwide audience through his films of the 1930s and 1940s. On stage, screen and record he sang light, comic songs, usually playing the ukulele or banjolele, and became the UK's highest-paid entertainer.
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Charles Stanton Ogle
1865 - 1940 (75 years)
Charles Stanton Ogle was an American stage and silent-film actor. He was the first actor to portray Frankenstein's monster in a motion picture in 1910 and played Long John Silver in Treasure Island in 1920.
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Mikhail Goldstein
1917 - 1989 (72 years)
Mikhail Emmanuilovich Goldstein , was a German composer, violinist and violin teacher of German-Jewish origin, brother of prominent violinist Boris Goldstein. His great uncle was the physicist Eugen Goldstein.
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Ludvig Cæsar Martin Aubert
1807 - 1887 (80 years)
Ludvig Cæsar Martin Aubert was a Norwegian philologist. Biography Aubert was born in Christianssand , Norway. He was the son of Benoni Aubert and Jakobine Henriette Thaulow . His brother jurist Michael Conrad Sophus Emil Aubert was County Governor of Nordre Bergenhus Amt .
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Carlos Gardel
1890 - 1935 (45 years)
Carlos Gardel was a French-born Argentine singer, songwriter, composer and actor, and the most prominent figure in the history of tango. He was one of the most influential interpreters of world popular music in the first half of the 20th century. Gardel is the most famous popular tango singer of all time and is recognized throughout the world. He was notable for his baritone voice and the dramatic phrasing of his lyrics. Together with lyricist and long-time collaborator Alfredo Le Pera, Gardel wrote several classic tangos.
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John Rotheram
1725 - 1789 (64 years)
John Rotheram was an English cleric, known as a theological writer. Life The second of the three sons of the Rev. William Rotherham , who master of the free grammar school of Haydon Bridge, Northumberland, was born there on 22 June 1725, and was educated at his father's school. He entered The Queen's College, Oxford, as batler, on 21 February 1745, partly maintained by his elder brother, the Rev. Thomas Rotheram, professor in Codrington College in Barbados. He graduated B.A. in 1748–9, and then went to Barbados as tutor to the two sons of the Frere family, arriving in the island on 20 Jan. 1749–50.
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Bunny Berigan
1908 - 1942 (34 years)
Roland Bernard "Bunny" Berigan was an American jazz trumpeter and bandleader who rose to fame during the swing era. His career and influence were shortened by alcoholism, and ended with his early demise at the age of 33 from cirrhosis. Although he composed some jazz instrumentals such as "Chicken and Waffles" and "Blues", Berigan was best known for his virtuoso jazz trumpeting. His 1937 classic recording "I Can't Get Started" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1975.
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Valentin Härtl
1894 - 1966 (72 years)
Valentin Georg Härtl was a German violist and violinist. Life Born in Aschaffenburg, Härtl was the son of a train driver, August Härtl and Elisabeth Härtl, geb. After his Abitur at the humanistic grammar school in Aschaffenburg, Härtl studied at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt from 1910 to 1912 with Adolf Rebner, together with Paul Hindemith, with whom he had a lifelong friendship. 1913/1914 he was a pupil of the master class by professor Felix Berber at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München in Munich.
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Giuseppe Campanari
1855 - 1927 (72 years)
Giuseppe Campanari was an Italian-born operatic baritone and cellist. He later became an American citizen. Campanari performed initially as a cellist at Milan's La Scala and on tour in other parts of Europe, but he later emigrated to the United States, where he played first solo cello for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and was subsequently appointed professor of cello at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. He resigned from both positions to devote himself to singing, which he had studied as a second 'instrument' for years, becoming a major opera star with the Metropolitan Opera.
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Tom Wilson
1880 - 1965 (85 years)
Tom Wilson was an American film actor. Biography Wilson was born in Helena, Montana, in 1880. Appearing in more than 300 films between 1915 and 1963, Wilson had notable supporting roles in the silent film era, like "The Kindly Officer" in D. W. Griffith's epic Intolerance , the angry policeman in Charlie Chaplin's The Kid , and a boxing coach in Buster Keaton's comedy Battling Butler . After the rise of sound film, he was reduced to small roles for the rest of his long film career. Wilson died in 1965 in Los Angeles, California.
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Alan Richardson
1904 - 1978 (74 years)
Alan Richardson was a Scottish pianist and composer. Biography Richardson was born in Edinburgh, where he worked for some time as a pianist for the BBC before going to London to study piano and composition, from 1929 to 1930, with Harold Craxton at the Royal Academy of Music. In 1931 he undertook a concert tour of Australia and New Zealand. He was accompanist for violinist Carl Flesch from 1936 to 1939. Richardson married renowned oboist Janet Craxton, the daughter of his teacher Harold Craxton, in 1961. He was appointed Professor of Piano at the Royal Academy of Music in 1960, a position he ...
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Peter Warlock
1894 - 1930 (36 years)
Philip Arnold Heseltine , known by the pseudonym Peter Warlock, was a British composer and music critic. The Warlock name, which reflects Heseltine's interest in occult practices, was used for all his published musical works. He is best known as a composer of songs and other vocal music; he also achieved notoriety in his lifetime through his unconventional and often scandalous lifestyle.
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François Richardot
1507 - 1574 (67 years)
François Richardot , was a celebrated Burgundian-French Catholic preacher, and confessor to Margaret of Parma. He was Bishop of Arras from 1561 to 1574. He was an Augustinian Hermit, and became titular bishop of Nicopolis in 1554.
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Yakov Zak
1913 - 1976 (63 years)
Yakov Izrailevich Zak was a Soviet and Russian pianist and pedagogue. People's Artist of the USSR . Born in Odessa, Zak studied piano at the Odessa Conservatory with Maria Starkhova, took classes on special harmony with Mykola Vilinsky, and later studied with Heinrich Neuhaus in Moscow, graduating in 1935. Having made his debut in 1935, he rose to prominence when he won First Prize and the Mazurka Prize at the III International Chopin Piano Competition in 1937. From 1935 Zak taught at the Moscow Conservatory, becoming a professor in 1947 and being granted a chair in 1965. His pupils include E...
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Erika Köth
1925 - 1989 (64 years)
Erika Köth was a German operatic coloratura soprano, particularly associated with the roles of Zerbinetta and Zerlina. Köth began a musical studies in Darmstadt with Elsa Blank in 1942, and after an interruption resumed them in 1945. She made her stage debut in Kaiserslautern as Philine in Mignon, in 1948, and then sang in Karlsruhe . She made her debut at the Munich State Opera and the Vienna State Opera in 1953, and at the Berlin State Opera in 1961. She appeared regularly at the Salzburg Festival , as the Queen of the Night and Konstanze and Sophie, and in Bayreuth , as the Woodbird. She a...
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Jimmie Rodgers
1897 - 1933 (36 years)
James Charles Rodgers was an American singer-songwriter and musician who rose to popularity in the late 1920s. Widely regarded as the "Father of Country Music", he is best known for his distinctive yodeling. Rodgers was known as "The Singing Brakeman" and "America's Blue Yodeler". He has been cited as an inspiration by many artists, and he has been inducted into multiple halls of fame.
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Henry Blue Kline
1905 - 1951 (46 years)
Henry Blue Kline was an American writer. He is perhaps best known for his contribution to the volume I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition, as a member of the Southern Agrarians. Kline received an M.A. from Vanderbilt University in 1929. From 1930 to 1933, he taught at the University of Tennessee. He then worked for the Civil Works Administration and the Tennessee Valley Authority. From 1944 to 1949, he worked as a journalist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He worked for the Atomic Energy Commission from 1949 until his death.
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Thomas Attwood Walmisley
1814 - 1856 (42 years)
Thomas Attwood Walmisley was an English composer and organist. Life and career He was born in London, the son of Thomas Forbes Gerrard Walmisley , a well-known organist and composer of church music and glees. Thomas Attwood was his godfather, and the boy was educated in music under their tuition.
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Cyril Smith
1909 - 1974 (65 years)
Cyril James Smith OBE was a virtuoso concert pianist of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, and a piano teacher. Personal life Smith was born at Costa Street, Middlesbrough, England, the son of Charles Smith, a foundry bricklayer, and Eva Harrison, and had an older brother and sister. He married Andrée Antoinette Marie Paty in 1931, but the couple divorced.
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Edgar Sampson
1907 - 1973 (66 years)
Edgar Melvin Sampson , nicknamed "The Lamb", was an American jazz composer, arranger, saxophonist, and violinist. Born in New York City, he began playing violin aged six and picked up the saxophone in high school. He worked as an arranger and composer for many jazz bands in the 1930s and 1940s. He composed two well-known jazz standards: "Stompin' at the Savoy", and "Don't Be That Way".
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Alexander Goldenweiser
1875 - 1961 (86 years)
Alexander Borisovich Goldenweiser was a Russian and Soviet pianist, teacher and composer. Goldenweiser was born in Kishinev, Bessarabia, Russia. In 1889, he was admitted to the Moscow Conservatory in the class of Alexander Siloti . He graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1895 in the piano class of Pavel Pabst , winning the Gold Medal for Piano, in 1897 – in the composition class of Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov. He also studied composition with Anton Arensky and counterpoint with Sergei Taneyev .
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Eddie Durham
1906 - 1987 (81 years)
Edward Durham was an American jazz guitarist, trombonist, composer, and arranger. He was one of the pioneers of the electric guitar in jazz. The orchestras of Bennie Moten, Jimmie Lunceford, Count Basie, and Glenn Miller took great benefit from his composing and arranging skill.
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Bill Thompson
1913 - 1971 (58 years)
William H. Thompson was an American radio personality and voice actor, whose career stretched from the 1930s until his death. He was a featured comedian playing multiple roles on the Fibber McGee and Molly radio series, and was the voice of Droopy in most of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio theatrical cartoons from 1943 to 1958.
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Nikolai Golovanov
1891 - 1953 (62 years)
Nikolai Semyonovich Golovanov , PAU, was a Soviet conductor and composer, who was married to the soprano Antonina Nezhdanova. He conducted the premiere performances of a number of works, among them Nikolai Myaskovsky's Sixth Symphony in May 1924.
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Doug Watkins
1934 - 1962 (28 years)
Douglas Watkins was an American jazz double bassist. He was best known for being an accompanist to various hard bop artists in the Detroit area, including Donald Byrd and Jackie McLean. Biography Watkins was born in Detroit, Michigan, United States. An original member of the Jazz Messengers, he later played in Horace Silver's quintet and freelanced with Gene Ammons, Kenny Burrell, Donald Byrd, Art Farmer, Jackie McLean, Hank Mobley, Lee Morgan, Sonny Rollins, and Phil Woods among others.
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Henry Hugh Pierson
1815 - 1873 (58 years)
Henry Hugh Pierson was an English composer resident from 1845 in Germany. He was born Henry Hugh Pearson and his middle name is sometimes given as Hugo. His original name was Henry Hugh Pearson, in Germany he used Heinrich Hugo Pierson. He had success in his adopted country with his operas and songs but little in his own, and his music is now rarely performed.
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David Evans
1874 - 1948 (74 years)
David Evans was a Welsh musician, academic and composer. Evans was born at Resolven, Glamorgan. He worked in the coal industry as a teenager, but music was always his primary interest. He won a music scholarship and became a pupil of Joseph Parry, which led to his qualifying at University College, Cardiff, in 1895. He went on to become organist and choirmaster of Jewin Calvinistic Methodist Church in London. He succeeded Joseph Parry, his former teacher, in the Music department at Cardiff, where he was appointed a professor in 1908. Among his students there were Morfydd Owen, Grace Williams a...
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Edward Ballantine
1886 - 1971 (85 years)
Edward Ballantine , was an American composer and professor of music. Biography Edward Ballantine was born in Oberlin, Ohio, on August 6, 1886, the son of William Gay Ballantine, the fourth president of Oberlin College, and Emma Frances Atwood. One brother Arthur Atwood was the senior member of the New York law firm of Root, Clark, Buckner & Ballantine—later Dewey, Ballantine, Bushby, Palmer & Wood. Another brother Henry Winthrop was Professor of Law, at Boalt Hall School of Law. Through his paternal grandfather, Rev. Elisha Ballantine, he is distantly related to four U.S. Presidents, and desce...
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Peter Agricola
1525 - 1585 (60 years)
Peter Agricola was a German Renaissance humanist, educator, classical scholar and theologian, diplomat and statesman, disciple of Martin Luther, friend and collaborator of Philipp Melanchthon. Successively tutor to several young princes of German sovereign states and rector of schools in Ulm and Lauingen, where he created and developed the Gymnasium Illustre, he became an important councilor and State minister of the Dukes of Zweibrücken and Palatinate-Neuburg, carrying out many missions in the German Holy Roman Empire and supporting the Protestant Reformation.
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Edward Howell
1846 - 1898 (52 years)
Edward Howell, FRAM was a British cellist and music professor of the late 19th century. He studied cello at the Royal Academy of Music in London later becoming professor of cello at the Royal College of Music, the Royal Academy of Music and the Guildhall School of Music in London.
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Lucky Millinder
1910 - 1966 (56 years)
Lucius Venable "Lucky" Millinder was an American swing and rhythm-and-blues bandleader. Although he could not read or write music, did not play an instrument and rarely sang, his showmanship and musical taste made his bands successful. His group was said to have been the greatest big band to play rhythm and blues, and gave work to a number of musicians who later became influential at the dawn of the rock and roll era. He was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 1986.
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Giacomo Orefice
1865 - 1922 (57 years)
Giacomo Orefice was an Italian composer. He was born on 27 August 1865 in Vicenza, which was then part of the Austrian Empire, but was annexed into Italy in the following year. He studied under Alessandro Busi and Luigi Mancinelli at the Liceo Musicale di Bologna, and later became professor of composition at the Milan Conservatory. He died in Milan on 22 December 1922.
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Marcel Grandjany
1891 - 1975 (84 years)
Marcel Georges Lucien Grandjany was a French-American harpist and composer. Biography Early life Marcel Grandjany was born in Paris and began the study of the harp at the age of eight with Henriette Renié. At age eleven, he was admitted to the Conservatoire de Paris, where he studied with Alphonse Hasselmans, winning the coveted Premier Prix at age thirteen.
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Arthur Farwell
1872 - 1952 (80 years)
Arthur Farwell was an American composer, conductor, educationalist, lithographer, esoteric savant, and music publisher. Interested in American Indian music, he became associated with the Indianist movement and founded the Wa-Wan Press to publish music in this genre. He combined teaching, composing and conducting in his career, working on both coasts and in Michigan.
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Justus Christian Henry Helmuth
1745 - 1825 (80 years)
Justus Christian Henry Helmuth was a German-American Lutheran clergyman. Biography His father died when the son was a mere boy, but a nobleman, Gotthilf August Francke, sent him to the orphan house in Halle, and afterward to the University of Halle, where he received a thorough education in the classics and theology. He was ordained to the ministry at Wernigerode in 1769, and in the same year went to the United States in response to an urgent call from Lutheran congregations in Pennsylvania.
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Arnold Rosé
1863 - 1946 (83 years)
Arnold Josef Rosé was a Romanian-born Austrian Jewish violinist. He was leader of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra for over half a century. He worked closely with Brahms. and Gustav Mahler. Gustav Mahler was his brother-in-law. Although not known internationally as a soloist he was a great orchestral leader and player of chamber music. He was leading the famous Rosé Quartet for several decades.
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Charlie Shavers
1920 - 1971 (51 years)
Charles James Shavers was an American jazz trumpeter who played with Dizzy Gillespie, Nat King Cole, Roy Eldridge, Johnny Dodds, Jimmie Noone, Sidney Bechet, Midge Williams, Tommy Dorsey, and Billie Holiday. He was also an arranger and composer, and one of his compositions, "Undecided", is a jazz standard.
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Costache Aristia
1800 - 1880 (80 years)
Costache or Kostake Aristia was a Wallachian-born poet, actor and translator, also noted for his activities as a soldier, schoolteacher, and philanthropist. A member of the Greek colony, his adolescence and early youth coincided with the peak of Hellenization in both Danubian Principalities. He first appeared on stage at Cișmeaua Roșie in Bucharest, and became a protege of Lady Rallou. She is claimed to have sponsored his voyage to France, where Aristia became an imitator of François-Joseph Talma.
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Alfred Wallenstein
1898 - 1983 (85 years)
Alfred Wallenstein was an American cellist and conductor. A successful solo and orchestral cellist in his early life, Wallenstein took up conducting in the 1930s and served as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1943 to 1956.
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Gezina van der Molen
1892 - 1978 (86 years)
Gezina Hermina Johanna van der Molen was a Dutch legal scholar and resistance fighter during the Second World War. From 1924 to 1929, she studied law at the Free University of Amsterdam — the first female student to do so — and was also the first woman to obtain a doctoral degree from there. She dealt with numerous issues: the rights of women, apartheid in South Africa, the United Nations, the South Moluccas and New Guinea.
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Anatoli Papanov
1922 - 1987 (65 years)
Anatoli Dmitrievich Papanov was a Soviet and Russian actor, drama teacher, and theatre director at the Moscow Satire Theatre where he served for almost 40 years. A prominent character actor, Papanov is mostly remembered for his comedy roles in a duo with his friend Andrei Mironov, although he had many dramatic roles as well. As a voice actor he contributed to over hundred cartoons. He was named People's Artist of the USSR in 1973 and awarded the USSR State Prize posthumously.
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Claude Hopkins
1903 - 1984 (81 years)
Claude Driskett Hopkins was an American jazz stride pianist and bandleader. Biography Claude Hopkins was born in Alexandria, Virginia, United States. Historians differ in respect of the actual date of his birth. His parents were on the faculty of Howard University. A talented stride piano player and arranger, he left home at the age of 21 to become a sideman with the Wilbur Sweatman Orchestra, but stayed less than a year. In 1925, he left for Europe as the musical director of The Revue Negre which starred Josephine Baker with Sidney Bechet in the band.
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Elly Ney
1882 - 1968 (86 years)
Elly Ney was a German romantic pianist who specialized in Beethoven, and was especially popular in Germany. Career She was born in Düsseldorf, where her mother was a music instructor and her father was a registrar. Her grandmother introduced her to the works of Beethoven, and supported her piano playing. She studied at Cologne with Isidor Seiss and Karl Bötcher. After winning the Mendelssohn Scholarship in 1901, she studied in Vienna with Theodor Leschetizky, with whom she only had two lessons, and Emil von Sauer. She taught at the Cologne Conservatory for three years, then became a touring virtuoso.
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