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).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Communications,

#14201

Heikki Paasonen

1865 - 1919 (54 years)

Heikki Antinpoika Paasonen was a Finnish linguist and ethnographer best known for his research in the linguistics and folklore of the Mokshas and the Erzyas during his two research trips to Russia. His studies include works on Chuvash, Mishar Tatar, Meadow Mari and Khanty languages, which led to further discoveries in Finno-Ugric and Turkic studies.

#14202

Rosina Lhévinne

1880 - 1976 (96 years)

Rosina Lhévinne was a Russian and American pianist and famed pedagogue. Early life, education and family Rosina Bessie was the younger of two daughters of Maria and Jacques Bessie, a prosperous jeweller from a Dutch Jewish family who emigrated to the Russian Empire to ply his trade as a diamond merchant. There were violent anti-Semitic riots in Kiev during her first year, and the Bessies moved to Moscow in 1881 or 1882. The young Rosina began studying piano at the age of six with a teacher in Moscow, where the family had moved shortly after her birth. When her teacher became ill, a family fr...

#14203

Mikhail Andreyev

Mikhail Andreyev

1873 - 1948 (75 years)

Mikhail Stepanovich Andreyev was a Russian-Uzbek and Soviet orientalist, cultural researcher of Central Asia, ethnographer, linguist, and archaeologist. He was initially supervised by Vladimir Nalivkin, and was the teacher of Olga Alexandrovna Sukhareva. He was a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

#14204

D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

1829 - 1902 (73 years)

D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson was an English scholar, from 1863 Professor of Greek at Queen's College, Galway. Life D'Arcy was the elder son of John Skelton Thompson, shipmaster, and his wife Mary Mitchell, both of Maryport, Cumberland; it was a seafaring family, and he was born at sea on board his father's barque Georgiana, off Van Diemen's Land, on 18 April 1829. After twelve years at Christ's Hospital, London, he matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, Michaelmas 1848, later migrating to Pembroke College. At Cambridge his main tutors were Augustus Arthur Vansittart and with Joseph Barber Lightfoot, both of Trinity; his closest friends were James Lempriere Hammond and Peter Guthrie Tait.

#14205

Claude Gillingwater

Claude Gillingwater

1870 - 1939 (69 years)

Claude Benton Gillingwater was an American stage and screen actor. He first appeared on the stage then in more than 90 films between 1918 and 1939, including the Academy Award-nominated A Tale of Two Cities and Conquest . He appeared in several films starring Shirley Temple, beginning with Poor Little Rich Girl .

#14206

Willi Domgraf-Fassbaender

Willi Domgraf-Fassbaender

1897 - 1978 (81 years)

Willi Domgraf-Fassbaender was a German operatic baritone, particularly associated with Mozart and Verdi roles. He is considered to have been one of the best lyric baritones of the inter-war period. Life and career Domgraf-Fassbaender studied first in Berlin with Jacques Stuckgold and Paul Bruns, and later in Milan with the prominent Italian dramatic tenor Giuseppe Borgatti . His stage debut occurred in 1922 in his native Aachen, as Almaviva in Nozze di Figaro.

#14207

Joseph W. Girard

Joseph W. Girard

1871 - 1949 (78 years)

Joseph W. Girard was an American film actor. He appeared in more than 280 films between 1911 and 1944. He was born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and died in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles. Before he became an actor, Girard was a printer who worked for newspapers until he and a partner set up their own printing business in Philadelphia. Girard had an interest in the theater, however, and eventually sold his part of the printing company and focused on acting.

#14208

Louis Gruenberg

1884 - 1964 (80 years)

Louis Gruenberg was a Russian-born American pianist and prolific composer, especially of operas. An early champion of Schoenberg and other contemporary composers, he was also a highly respected Oscar-nominated film composer in Hollywood in the 1940s.

#14209

Ted Fio Rito

1900 - 1971 (71 years)

Theodore Salvatore Fiorito , known professionally as Ted Fio Rito, was an American composer, orchestra leader, and keyboardist, on both the piano and the Hammond organ, who was popular on national radio broadcasts in the 1920s and 1930s. His name is sometimes given as Ted Fiorito or Ted FioRito.

#14210

Mortimer Wilson

1876 - 1932 (56 years)

Mortimer Wilson was an American composer of classical music. He also scored several musical and dramatic films in the 1920s. Wilson was born in Chariton, Iowa in Lucas County, a rural area in the south-central portion of the state. He studied organ, violin and composition with Frederick Grant Gleason at the Chicago Music College. He then studied in Leipzig, Germany with Max Reger. Upon return to the USA in 1911 he taught composition at the Atlanta Conservatory and conducted the Atlanta Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1916, he moved to Brenau College in Gainesville, Georgia. In 1918, Wilson took a ...

#14211

Joanna Baker

1862 - 1935 (73 years)

Joanna Baker was an American linguist and child prodigy, holding her first college teaching job at the age of 16 and publishing her first book of translations from the Greek at the age of 18. For more than a quarter of a century, she was professor of ancient languages at Simpson College in Iowa, and she also taught at Lake Erie College in Ohio.

#14212

Hermann Reutter

1900 - 1985 (85 years)

Hermann Reutter was a German composer and pianist who worked as an academic teacher, university administrator, recitalist, and accompanist. He composed several operas, orchestral works, and chamber music, and especially many lieder, setting poems by authors writing in German, Russian, Spanish, Icelandic, English, and ancient Egyptian and Greek, among others.

#14213

Jack Buchanan

1891 - 1957 (66 years)

Walter John Buchanan was a Scottish theatre and film actor, singer, dancer, producer and director. He was known for three decades as the embodiment of the debonair man-about-town in the tradition of George Grossmith Jr., and was described by The Times as "the last of the knuts." He is best known in America for his role in the classic Hollywood musical The Band Wagon in 1953.

#14214

Jussi Jalas

1908 - 1985 (77 years)

Jussi Jalas was a Finnish conductor and composer. Biography Jalas was born as Armas Jussi Veikko Blomstedt in Jyväskylä in 1908. His father was Yrjö Blomstedt. He studied at the Helsingfors Conservatory 1923–30 , and then in Paris 1933–34, under Wladimir Pohl, Pierre Monteux and Rhené-Baton. He had further study in Germany, Austria and Italy before returning to Finland.

#14215

Ugo Tognazzi

1922 - 1990 (68 years)

Ugo Tognazzi was an Italian actor, director, and screenwriter. Early life Tognazzi was born in Cremona, in northern Italy but spent his youth in various localities as his father was a travelling clerk for an insurance company.

#14216

William Henry Squire

William Henry Squire

1871 - 1963 (92 years)

William Henry Squire, ARCM was a British cellist, composer and music professor of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He studied cello at the Royal College of Music, and became professor of cello at the Royal College and Guildhall schools of music.

#14217

Jimmy Mundy

1907 - 1983 (76 years)

James Mundy was an American jazz tenor saxophonist, arranger, and composer, best known for his arrangements for Benny Goodman, Count Basie, and Earl Hines. Mundy died of cancer in New York City at the age of 75.

#14218

Kanaka Dasa

1509 - 1609 (100 years)

Kanaka Dasa was a Haridasa saint and philosopher of Dvaita Vedanta, popularly called Daasashreshta Kanakadasa from present-day Karnataka, India. He was a follower of Madhvacharya's Dvaita philosophy and a disciple of Vyasatirtha. He was a renowned composer of Carnatic music, poet, reformer and musician. He is known for his keertanas and ugabhoga, and his compositions in the Kannada language for Carnatic music. Like other Haridasas, he used simple Kannada and native metrical forms for his compositions.

#14219

Frederick Keel

1871 - 1954 (83 years)

James Frederick Keel was an English composer of art songs, baritone singer and academic. Keel was a successful recitalist and a professor of singing at the Royal Academy of Music. He combined scholarly and artistic interest in English songs and their history. His free settings of Elizabethan and Jacobean lyrics helped pioneer the revival of interest in the genre. He was also an active member of the English folksong movement. During World War I, Keel was held in the civilian internment camp at Ruhleben in Germany, where he played an active role in the camp's musical life, giving many recitals to help boost the morale of his fellow detainees.

#14220

Tommy Cogbill

1932 - 1982 (50 years)

Thomas Clark Cogbill was an American bassist, guitarist and record producer known for his work in R&B, soul and country music. Life and career Cogbill was born in Johnson Grove, Tennessee. He was a highly sought-after session and studio musician who appeared on many now-classic recordings of the 1960s and 1970s, especially those recorded in Nashville, Memphis and Muscle Shoals. He has been credited as an influence by many bass guitarists, including Jerry Jemmott & Jaco Pastorius. In the late 1960s and early 1970s Cogbill worked as a record producer at American Sound Studio in Memphis and was ...

#14221

Giorgio Federico Ghedini

1892 - 1965 (73 years)

Giorgio Federico Ghedini was an Italian composer. In addition to orchestral works, in 1949 he premiered a one-act opera based on Billy Budd by Herman Melville. Life Ghedini was born in Cuneo in 1892. He studied organ, piano and composition in Turin, then graduated in composition from the Bologna Conservatory under Marco Enrico Bossi in 1911. He worked as a conductor for a certain time, then he gave up to devote himself to teaching.

#14222

Freddie Slack

1910 - 1965 (55 years)

Frederick Charles Slack was an American swing and boogie-woogie pianist and bandleader. Life and career Slack was born in Westby, Wisconsin, United States. He learned to play drums as a boy. Later he took up the xylophone, and at the age of 13 he changed to the piano. He studied with a local teacher throughout high school. At the age of 17, he moved with his parents to Chicago, where he continued his musical training. He met Rosy McHargue, a well-known clarinetist, who took him to hear many leading musicians, including Bix Beiderbecke and Earl Hines. His first job was with Johnny Tobin at the Beach View Gardens.

#14223

Camille Everardi

1825 - 1899 (74 years)

Camille Everardi was a Belgian operatic baritone who had an active international career during the 1850s through the 1870s. He particularly excelled in the works of Vincenzo Bellini and Gioachino Rossini. Several music critics of his day likened his voice to that of Antonio Tamburini. He later had a highly successful second career as a voice teacher in the Russian Empire.

#14224

Doris P. Buck

1898 - 1980 (82 years)

Doris Pitkin Buck was an American science fiction author. Born in New York City, she graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1920 and Columbia University with a master's degree in 1925. She was a stage actress before marrying Richard Buck. She taught English at Ohio State University and was a founding member of the Science Fiction Writers of America.

#14225

Eduard Hermann

1869 - 1950 (81 years)

Eduard Hermann was a German linguist known for his comparative studies of Indo-European languages. Hermann studied in Leipzig, Freiburg and Jena and defended his PhD in 1893 under Berthold Delbrück. After that he worked at various schools in Coburg and Bergedorf; in 1913 he became an associate professor at the University of Kiel, and in 1914 a full professor in Frankfurt. In 1917 he succeeded Jacob Wackernagel at the University of Göttingen. His work mainly focused on Baltic and Greek languages, and on Homer in particular. He also published some works on language acquisition by children.

#14226

Alberto Mazzucato

Alberto Mazzucato

1813 - 1877 (64 years)

Alberto Mazzucato was an Italian composer, music teacher, and writer. Mazzucato was born in Udine. Trained at the Padua Conservatory, he composed eight operas between 1834 and 1843, of which his most successful was Esmeralda . He also contributed music to the pastiche La vergine di Kermo which also contained music by Carlo Pedrotti, Antonio Cagnoni, Federico Ricci, Amilcare Ponchielli, and Giovanni Pacini. Along with Luigi Felice Rossi and Guglielmo Quarenghi, he formed the Società di S Cecilia in 1860.

#14227

John Woods Duke

1899 - 1984 (85 years)

John Woods Duke was an American composer and pianist born in Cumberland, Maryland. He is best known for his large output of art songs. Biography John Woods Duke was the oldest child in a large musical family. After teaching him to read music at an early age and starting him on piano lessons at age 11, Duke's mother enrolled him in the Cumberland, MD Allegheny Academy. By age 16 he had won a three-year scholarship to the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore.

#14228

John Wilson

1595 - 1674 (79 years)

John Wilson was an English composer, lutenist and teacher. Born in Faversham, Kent, he moved to London by 1614, where he succeeded Robert Johnson as principal composer for the King's Men, and entered the King's Musick in 1635 as a lutenist. He received the degree of D.Mus from Oxford in 1644, and he was Heather Professor of Music there from 1656 to 1661. Following the Restoration, he joined the Chapel Royal in 1662. He died at Westminster.

#14229

Kerry Mills

1869 - 1948 (79 years)

Kerry Mills , publishing also as F.A. Mills, was an American ragtime composer and music publishing executive of popular music during the Tin Pan Alley era. His stylistically diverse music ranged from ragtime through cakewalk to marches. He was most prolific between 1895 and 1918.

#14230

William Allen Montgomery

William Allen Montgomery

1829 - 1905 (76 years)

William Allen Montgomery was an American lawyer, planter and Baptist minister. Trained as a lawyer in Tennessee, he was a cotton planter in Texas in the 1850s and served as a Confederate chaplain in the American Civil War. He served as the President of Carson–Newman University from 1888 to 1892.

#14231

Elsa Enäjärvi-Haavio

1901 - 1951 (50 years)

Elsa Elina Enäjärvi-Haavio, also Elsa Eklund, was a Finnish folklorist who carried out extensive research into folk poetry in the 1930s. As a result, in 1947 she was appointed docent of Finnish and folk poetics at the University of Helsinki. She was an influential member of many organizations, including the Finnish Federation of University Women, for which she represented Finland at the 30th anniversary of the International Federation of University Women in Switzerland.

#14232

Wilford Leach

1929 - 1988 (59 years)

Carson Wilford Leach was an American theatre director, set designer, film director, screenwriter, and professor. Biography Leach was born in Petersburg, Virginia, on August 26, 1929. A performance of Pygmalion he saw as a teenager inspired him to work in theatre. After graduating from the College of William & Mary in 1953, Leach went on to earn both a master's degree and a doctorate from the University of Illinois. Leach began teaching at Sarah Lawrence College in 1958. He also taught at the Yale School of Drama during the years 1978 and 1979.

#14233

Alfred Karindi

1901 - 1969 (68 years)

Alfred Karindi was an Estonian organist and composer. Life and work Alfred Karindi was born on 30 May 1901 in the village of Kõnnu, Illuka Parish. In 1920 he entered the Tartu Higher School of Music where he studied organ under Johannes Kärt and composition under Heino Eller. He graduated in 1927, and then studied under August Topman and Artur Kapp as an external student of organ and composition at Tallinn Conservatory, graduating in 1931. He belonged to the "Tartu school" of musicians who studied under Heino Eller, others being Eduard Tubin, Eduard Oja, Olav Roots and Karl Leichter.

#14234

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...

#14235

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.

#14236

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.

#14237

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.

#14238

Tsuneko Gauntlett

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.

#14239

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...

#14240

Sergei Lemeshev

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.

#14241

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.

#14242

Charles Stanton Ogle

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.

#14243

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.

#14244

Ludvig Cæsar Martin Aubert

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 .

#14245

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.

#14246

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.

#14247

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.

#14248

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.

#14249

Giuseppe Campanari

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.

#14250

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.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions