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.
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.
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List of the most influential people in Communications,
#14151
Carl T. Fischer
1912 - 1954 (42 years)
Carl T. Fischer was a Native American jazz pianist and composer. He worked with Frankie Laine, and composed Laine's 1945 hit song We'll Be Together Again, and You've Changed with lyrics by Bill Carey.
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Maceo Pinkard
1897 - 1962 (65 years)
Maceo Pinkard was an American composer, lyricist, and music publisher. Among his compositions is "Sweet Georgia Brown", a popular standard for decades after its composition and famous as the theme of the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team.
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Fernand Gillet
1882 - 1980 (98 years)
Fernand Gillet was a French and naturalized American oboist who is chiefly remembered for serving as the principal oboist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1925 to 1946. He is also known for his work as a teacher of woodwinds at several prominent institutions in the United States and Canada. His Exercices sur les Gammes, les Intervalles et le Staccato is still a widely used instructional book for woodwind players at universities and conservatories. The International Double Reed Society holds an annual music competition named for him and a well known bassoonist: the Fernand Gillet-Hugo Fox...
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Josef Dachs
1825 - 1896 (71 years)
Josef Dachs was an Austrian pianist and music teacher born in Regensburg. He received his music education from Simon Sechter and Carl Czerny, worked as a concert pianist and premiered many of his own works. He became professor at the Vienna Conservatory in 1850. Among others, he taught Vladimir de Pachmann, Isabelle Vengerova, Hugo Wolf, Ferdinand Löwe and Russian pianist and composer Josef Rubinstein . Hans Rott composed a work for string orchestra, Dachs-Studien, the main melodic theme of which is based on the letters D A C H S. Dachs died in Vienna.
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William Hurlstone
1876 - 1906 (30 years)
William Yeates Hurlstone was an English composer. Showing brilliant musical talent from an early age, he died young, before his full potential could be realized. Nevertheless, he left behind an exquisite, albeit small, body of work. His teacher Sir Charles Villiers Stanford considered him the most talented of his pupils, above Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst.
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Marjorie Hayward
1885 - 1953 (68 years)
Marjorie Olive Hayward was an English violinist and violin teacher, prominent during the first few decades of the 20th century. Biography Marjorie Hayward was born in Greenwich in 1885. An "infant prodigy", her violin studies were with Émile Sauret at the Royal Academy of Music in London , and Otakar Ševčík in Prague .
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Natalie Hinderas
1927 - 1987 (60 years)
Natalie Leota Henderson Hinderas was an American pianist, composer and professor at Pennsylvania's Temple University. Hinderas was born in Oberlin, Ohio to a musical family. Her father was a jazz pianist and her mother, Leota Palmer, was a classical pianist who taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music. She began playing at the age of three, with formal lessons beginning at six years of age. A child prodigy, she gave her first full-length recital at eight years old.
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Rosario Scalero
1870 - 1954 (84 years)
Natale Rosario Scalero was an Italian violinist, music teacher and composer. Life and career By the age of six, Scalero was under the tutelage of Pietro Bertazzi, a violinist, musical instrument maker and instructor at the Conservatorio St. Cecilia in Rome. In 1881, Scalero entered the Liceo Musicale di Torino under Luigi Avalle. At the age of 15, Scalero came under the tutelage of César Thomson. Scalero appears to have returned to his home at Moncalieri for a time for health reasons, before returning to Torino to study with Camillo Sivori through 1889, appearing during this time with the Si...
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Oscar Levant
1906 - 1972 (66 years)
Oscar Levant was an American concert pianist, composer, conductor, author, radio game show panelist, television talk show host, comedian, and actor. He was known for his performances in the films Rhapsody in Blue , The Barkleys of Broadway , An American in Paris , and The Band Wagon . He was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960 for recordings featuring his piano performances. He was as equally famous for his mordant character and witticisms, on radio and later in movies and television, as for his music. He was portrayed by Sean Hayes in the Broadway play Good Night, Oscar, written by Doug Wright.
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Hubert von Meyerinck
1896 - 1971 (75 years)
Hubert "Hubsi" von Meyerinck was a German film actor. He appeared in more than 280 films between 1921 and 1970. Biography Meyerinck was born in Potsdam, Brandenburg, the son of Friedrich von Meyerinck , Hauptmann in the Prussian Army. He grew up at his family's estates in the Province of Posen and attended the gymnasium secondary school in Godeberg. Having passed his Abitur exams, he was called up for military service as a cadet in World War I, but soon was dismissed due to a pulmonary disease.
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George Bruns
1914 - 1983 (69 years)
George Edward Bruns was an American composer of music for film and television. His accolades include four Academy Award nominations and three Grammy Award nominations. He is mainly known for his compositions for numerous Disney films from the 1950s to the 1970s, among them Sleeping Beauty , One Hundred and One Dalmatians, The Absent-Minded Professor , The Sword in the Stone , The Jungle Book , The Love Bug , The Aristocats , and Robin Hood .
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Julia Smith
1905 - 1989 (84 years)
Julia Frances Smith was an American composer, pianist, and author on musicology. Life and career She was born in Denton, Texas. She graduated from University of North Texas College of Music and then continued with graduate studies in piano and composition at the Juilliard School with Reuben Goldmark and Frederick Jacobi from 1932 to 1939, earning a diploma. She simultaneously studied at New York University earning a master's degree in 1933 and a PhD in 1952. From 1932 to 1939, she served as pianist for the Orchestrette Classique of New York, a women's orchestra. During this time, she also gave concerts of mostly American music in Latin America, Europe, and throughout the United States.
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Kiyohiko Ushihara
1897 - 1985 (88 years)
Kiyohiko Ushihara was a Japanese film director most famous for his gendaigeki of the silent era. Career Born in Kumamoto Prefecture and graduating from Tokyo University, Ushihara joined the Shochiku studio in 1920 on the invitation of Kaoru Osanai. Starting out by helping on the script to Minoru Murata's Gorky-influenced Souls on the Road, he made his directorial debut in 1921 and later directed adaptations of such works as Victor Hugo's Les Misérables under the title Aa mujō. In the mid-1920s he went to America to study Hollywood filmmaking, working under Charlie Chaplin. He returned to film romantic comedies and action films starring Denmei Suzuki and Kinuyo Tanaka such as Shingun.
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Franz Krenn
1816 - 1897 (81 years)
Franz Krenn was an Austrian composer and composition teacher born in Droß. He studied under Ignaz von Seyfried in Vienna, and served as organist in a number of Viennese churches, becoming Kapellmeister of St. Michael's Church in Vienna in 1862. From 1869 until 1893 Krenn taught harmony, counterpoint and composition at the Vienna Conservatory. During this time, he appears to have acquired the nickname 'Old Krenn', and is today often described as having been a rather pedantic teacher.
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Paul Elgers
1876 - Present (150 years)
Paul Elgers was a German violinist and music educator. Life Born in Berlin, Elgers was born the son of the factory owner Bernhard Schmidt and his wife Marie Zorn. He attended the . From 1895 to 1897 he received violin lessons from Karel Halíř. From 1898 to 1900 he studied violin with Gustav Hollaender and theory with Ludwig Bussler at the Stern Conservatory. In 1900 he changed to Karel Halíř and Joseph Joachim at the Universität der Künste Berlin. From 1901 to 1903 he was taught by Anton Witek in Berlin and from 1903 by Albert Geloso in Paris.
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Alfonso Leng
1894 - 1974 (80 years)
Alfonso Leng Haygus was a post-romantic composer of classical music. He was born in Santiago, Chile. He wrote the first important symphonic work in Chilean tradition, "La Muerte de Alcino", a symphonic poem inspired by the novel of Pedro Prado. He composed many art songs in different languages and important piano pieces, like the five "Doloras" , which he later orchestrated and are normally played in concerts in Chile and Latin America. He won the National Art Prize in 1957.
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Jack Magee
1883 - 1968 (85 years)
John Joseph Magee was an American track and field coach. He was head coach at Bowdoin College from 1913 to 1955 and assistant coach of the United States Olympic track and field team in 1924, 1928 and 1932.
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Giuseppe Lillo
1814 - 1863 (49 years)
Giuseppe Lillo was an Italian composer. He is best known for his operas which followed in the same vein of Gioachino Rossini. He also produced works for solo piano, a small amount of sacred music, and some chamber music.
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Hermann Zilcher
1881 - 1948 (67 years)
Hermann Zilcher was a German composer, pianist, conductor, and music teacher. His compositional oeuvre includes orchestral and choral works, two operas, chamber music and songs, études, piano works, and numerous works for accordion.
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Constantin Silvestri
1913 - 1969 (56 years)
Constantin-Nicolae Silvestri was a Romanian conductor and composer. Early life Silvestri, born of Austro-Italian-Romanian stock, was brought up mostly by his mother, his father dying from alcoholism, and his stepfather dying when the boy was 16. He had learnt how to play the piano and organ before the age of six. He played the piano in public at 10 and was a skilled improviser. He studied at the Târgu Mureş Conservatoire, and later at the Bucharest Conservatoire. His teachers in Bucharest included Mihail Jora and Florica Musicescu . Despite not having taken conducting classes, he was already...
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Elena Beckman-Shcherbina
1881 - 1951 (70 years)
Elena Aleksandrovna Bekman-Shcherbina was a Soviet and Russian pianist, composer and teacher. Origins Born Elena Aleksandrovna Kamentseva, she was adopted by her mother's sister after the death of her mother. In gratitude, she took her adoptive mother's surname, Shcherbina.
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Rudolf Wagner-Régeny
1903 - 1969 (66 years)
Rudolf Wagner-Régeny was a composer, conductor, and pianist. Born in Transylvania, Kingdom of Hungary, since 1920 Romania, he became a German citizen in 1930, and then East German after 1945. From 1919 to 1920 he studied at the Leipzig Conservatory. In 1920 he enrolled at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik as a student of Rudolf Krasselt and Siegfried Ochs for conducting, and for orchestration of Emil von Řezníček, and with Friedrich Koch and Franz Schreker for musical composition, graduating in 1923. He served as choirsmaster at the Volksoper Berlin from 1923–1925. In 1927 joined Laban's dance ...
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Eusebius Mandyczewski
1857 - 1929 (72 years)
Eusebius Mandyczewski was a Romanian musicologist, composer, conductor, and teacher. He was an author of numerous musical works and is highly regarded within Austrian, Romanian and Ukrainian music circles.
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James V. Monaco
1885 - 1945 (60 years)
James Vincent Monaco was an Italian-born American composer of popular music. Life and career Monaco was born in Formia, Italy. His family emigrated to the United States when he was six, and he grew up in Albany, New York, where he started playing piano in bars by the age of 18. He relocated to Chicago, where he became known as "Ragtime Jimmie", before moving to New York City in 1910.
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Gavin Williamson
1897 - 1989 (92 years)
Gavin Williamson was an American pianist, harpsichordist, organist and music educator. With pianist Philip Manuel, he formed a duo in 1922 that helped promote the professional use of harpsichords in the United States.
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Erich Zeisl
1905 - 1959 (54 years)
Erich Zeisl was an Austrian-born American composer. Life and music Born to a middle class Jewish family in Vienna, then capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Zeisl was the son of Kamilla and Siegmund Zeisl. His musical precocity enabled him to gain a place at the Vienna State Academy when he was 14, at which age his first song was published. While there, he studied with Richard Stöhr, Joseph Marx and Hugo Kauder. He won a state prize for a setting of the Requiem mass in 1934, but his Jewish background made it difficult to obtain work and publication. After the Anschluss in 1938, he fled ...
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Anton Hekking
1855 - 1935 (80 years)
Johannes Francis Anton Hekking was a Netherlands-born cellist and teacher. Education Anton Hekking was born in The Hague on 7 September 1856, to a musical family that also produced other notable cellists, including André Hekking and Gérard Hekking , both of whom made their careers chiefly in France. Anton was taught first by his father, Gerard Hekking, who was himself a musician, and then, starting at age 12, by Joseph Giese at the Hague Conservatory. At the age of 16 he became the principal cellist of the Utrecht orchestra. A few years later he moved to Paris to study with cellists Pierre ...
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Clytie Hine
1887 - 1983 (96 years)
Clytie May Hine, was an Australian-born operatic soprano who became a renowned voice teacher in New York. Biography Clytie Hine was an only child, born in Adelaide, South Australia in 1887 to William Henry Hine, a jeweller and Mary McDonald. At age 16, having studied piano privately since age 7, she commenced studies with Bryceson Treharne at the Elder Conservatorium, University of Adelaide. Her voice studies were under Frederick Bevan. She graduated AMUA in 1908 and the following year travelled to London to study under Medora Henson at the Royal College of Music. On the strength of her pe...
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Arthur De Greef
1862 - 1940 (78 years)
Arthur De Greef was a Belgian pianist and composer. Life and career Born in Louvain, he won first prize in a local music competition at the age of 11 and subsequently enrolled at the Brussels Conservatoire. His main teacher there was Louis Brassin, a former pupil of Ignaz Moscheles, although he also took lessons from other staffers at the institution, including Joseph Dupont, François-Auguste Gevaert and Fernand Kufferath.
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Leon Feraru
1887 - 1961 (74 years)
Leon Feraru was a Romanian and American poet, literary historian and translator. Cultivating proletarian literature while frequenting the Symbolist movement, he displayed both his origins in the Romanian Jewish underclass and his appreciation for the wider Romanian culture. He popularized the latter with his work in America, having left in 1913 to escape antisemitic pressures. A translator, publicist, and public lecturer, he was involved with the Romanian press of New York City, and eventually as a Romance studies academic at Columbia and Long Island. Feraru's poetry, collected in two volumes...
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Carleton Smith
1908 - 1984 (76 years)
Robert Carleton Smith was the director of the National Arts Foundation and organized the International Awards Foundation to establish awards in fields not covered by the Nobel Prize. Smith was instrumental in establishing the Pritzker Architecture Prize and the J. Paul Getty Award for Conservation Leadership. Smith taught music appreciation at the University of Illinois from 1926 to 1929, economics and foreign trade at De Paul University from 1928 to 1934, and music history at Oxford University from 1931 to 1939. He was the music editor of Esquire and was European correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune.
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John Ward
1571 - 1638 (67 years)
John Ward was an English composer. He trained as a singer in Canterbury, where he was a chorister at Canterbury Cathedral. He then moved to London where he produced religious and secular works, and he also appears to have maintained a residence in Essex. Ward's compositions, some of which were published in his lifetime, consist of madrigals, works for viol consort and Anglican church music . His madrigals are remarkable for their fine texts, broad melodic lines and originality.
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Borys Lyatoshynsky
1894 - 1968 (74 years)
Borys Mykolaiovych Lyatoshynsky , also known as Boris Nikolayevich Lyatoshinsky , was a Ukrainian composer, conductor, and teacher. A leading member of the new generation of 20th century Ukrainian composers, he was awarded a number of accolades, including the honorary title of People's Artist of the Ukrainian SSR and two Stalin Prizes.
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John St. Polis
1873 - 1946 (73 years)
John M. St. Polis was an American actor. Biography St. Polis was born John Marie Sainpolis in New Orleans, Louisiana, the son of Jean Marie Sainpolis and Marie Catherine Borg. Before starting his film career, he made a name for himself on the Broadway stage, most notably in the role of Frederik in the original production of The Return of Peter Grimm and the play's revival in 1921, both performed at the Belasco Theatre. He also appeared in a different role in the screen version in 1926.
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Joy Boughton
1913 - 1963 (50 years)
Christina Joyance Boughton was an English oboist and the daughter of composer Rutland Boughton and artist Christina Walshe. She died in 1963 in tragic circumstances.. She was taught oboe by Léon Goossens and attended the Royal College of Music from 1929 to 1937 at which, for a short while before her death, she was a professor of Oboe. She helped establish Benjamin Britten's English Opera Group, being a member of its orchestra in the late 1940s and 1950s. In 1951 Britten dedicated his Six Metamorphoses after Ovid to Joy, which she premiered at the Aldeburgh Festival on 14 June that year. Toge...
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Rufus Payne
1900 - 1939 (39 years)
Rufus "Tee Tot" Payne was an early-20th-century African-American blues musician from Greenville, Alabama, who was more widely known by his nickname Tee Tot. Payne's nickname of "Tee Tot" is an ironic pun for "teetotaler". It is said that Payne received his nickname because he usually carried a homemade mixture of alcohol and tea wherever he went.
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Lesley Selander
1900 - 1979 (79 years)
Lesley Selander was an American film director of Westernss and adventure movies. His career as director, spanning 127 feature films and dozens of TV episodes, lasted from 1936 to 1968. Before that, Selander was assistant director on films such as The Cat and the Fiddle , A Night at the Opera , and Fritz Lang's Fury .
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Lawrence Wright
1888 - 1964 (76 years)
Frederick Lawrence Wright was a British songwriter, music publisher, and the founder of the music journal Melody Maker. He used the pseudonyms Horatio Nicholls and Everett Lynton for his songwriting activities.
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Ilona Kabos
1893 - 1973 (80 years)
Ilona Kabos was a Hungarian-British pianist and teacher. Biography Kabos was born in Budapest in 1893 . She studied at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music under Árpád Szendy , Leo Weiner and Zoltán Kodály
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Kathleen Parlow
1890 - 1963 (73 years)
Kathleen Parlow was a violinist known for her outstanding technique, which earned her the nickname "The lady of the golden bow". Although she left Canada at the age of four and did not permanently return until 1940, Parlow was sometimes billed as "The Canadian Violinist".
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Georg Michael Telemann
1748 - 1831 (83 years)
Georg Michael Telemann was a German composer and theologian. Telemann was born in Plön, the son of the local pastor Andreas Telemann and his wife Augusta Clara Catharina Capsius. After the death of his father in 1755, he moved to Hamburg, where he was taken in and raised by his then 74-year-old grandfather Georg Philipp Telemann. In Hamburg, he attended the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums, and from 1770, the Akademisches Gymnasium. On the death of his grandfather in 1767, the 19 year old Georg Michael composed Trauer-Ode auf das betrübte Absterben meines Großvaters Herrn Georg Philipp Telemann, des Hamburgischen Musik-Chor-Direktors.
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Daniel Gottlob Türk
1750 - 1813 (63 years)
Daniel Gottlob Türk was a German composer, organist, and music professor of the Classical period. Biography Born in Claußnitz, Saxony, Türk studied organ under his father and later under Johann Adam Hiller. It was Hiller who recommended Türk for his first professional position at Halle University, in Halle, Germany. On 18 April 1779 Halle University granted Türk's request to begin lecturing on music theory, making him the University's "Director of Music." This appointment made Türk the second university music director in Germany. While at Halle, Türk published his treatise On the Role of th...
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Ferdinand Laub
1832 - 1875 (43 years)
Ferdinand Laub was a Czech violinist and composer. Life and career Laub was born in Prague from a German Bohemian family which had assimilated into the ethnic Czech community. His father Erasmus arranged for Ferdinand's first public appearance at age six. His first solo concert was at age ten in the Stavovské divadlo . From 1843 to 1846, he studied at the Prague Conservatory. He began his adult career as a virtuoso in Vienna, at the imperial court. In 1850, he traveled across Europe with a series of exhibitions. He stayed for a longer time in Weimar and Berlin . From 1866 to 1874 he was pro...
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John Hamilton
1887 - 1958 (71 years)
John Rummel Hamilton was an American actor who appeared in many movies and television programs, including the role as the blustery newspaper editor Perry White in the 1950s television program Adventures of Superman.
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William Cusins
1833 - 1893 (60 years)
Sir William George Cusins was an English pianist, violinist, organist, conductor and composer. Biography Born in London, Cusins entered the Chapel Royal in his tenth year and studied music in Brussels under François-Joseph Fétis and later at the Royal Academy of Music in London, under Cipriani Potter, William Sterndale Bennett, Charles Lucas and Prosper Sainton.
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Ramiro Cortés
1933 - 1984 (51 years)
Ramiro Cortés Jr. was an American composer. Cortés was born in Dallas, Texas, in 1933 to Ramiro Cortés, Sr. and Elvira Cortés . He studied with Henry Cowell, Richard Donovan, Ingolf Dahl, Vittorio Giannini, Roger Sessions, Halsey Stevens, and, in Rome on a Fulbright Fellowship, with Goffredo Petrassi. He worked for a brief period in the 1960s as a computer programmer, and then taught composition at the University of California, Los Angeles , University of Southern California , and the University of Utah . He died of heart failure in Salt Lake city on 2 July 1984.
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Cornelis van Eesteren
1897 - 1988 (91 years)
Cornelis van Eesteren was a prominent Dutch architect and urban planner. He worked for the Town Planning department of Amsterdam and was the chairman of the CIAM . He contributed to the De Stijl movement, with its founder Theo van Doesburg, the artist Piet Mondrian, and others.
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Omkarnath Thakur
1897 - 1967 (70 years)
Pandit Omkarnath Thakur , was an Indian music teacher, musicologist and Hindustani classical singer. A disciple of classical singer Vishnu Digambar Paluskar of Gwalior gharana, he became the principal of Gandharva Mahavidyalaya, Lahore, and later went on become the first dean of the music faculty at Banaras Hindu University.He also wrote book "sangeetanjli" vol 1 to 6
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Walter Gross
1909 - 1967 (58 years)
Walter Gross is best known for having composed the music for the popular 1946 song "Tenderly". In addition to composing dozens of other titles, he was also a pianist, arranger, orchestra leader, and record industry executive.
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Chris Smith
1879 - 1949 (70 years)
Christopher M. Smith was an American composer and popular vaudeville performer. Biography Smith was born in Charleston, South Carolina. He started traveling with medicine shows when he was young and joined Vaudeville, where he performed with Elmer Bowman and Jimmy Durante. He also wrote music for Bert Williams. Smith died in New York City on October 4, 1949.
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