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.

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To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

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List of the most influential people in Communications,

#14451

Petar Skok

1881 - 1956 (75 years)

Petar Skok was a Croatian linguist and onomastics expert. History Skok was born to a Croatian family in the village of Jurkovo Selo, Žumberak. From 1892 to 1900 he attended the Higher Real Gymnasium in Rakovac near Karlovac. At the University of Vienna he studied Romance and Germanic philology and Indo-European studies, passing his professorship exam in 1906. He received Ph.D. with a thesis on South French toponomastics.

#14452

Herbert Howells

1892 - 1983 (91 years)

Herbert Norman Howells was an English composer, organist, and teacher, most famous for his large output of Anglican church music. Life Background and early education Howells was born in Lydney, Gloucestershire, the youngest of six children of Oliver Howells, a plumber, painter, decorator and builder, and his wife Elizabeth. His father played the organ at the local Baptist church, and Herbert showed early musical promise, first deputising for his father, and then moving at the age of eleven to the local Church of England parish church as choirboy and unofficial deputy organist.

#14453

Roscoe Drummond

1902 - 1983 (81 years)

Roscoe Drummond was a 20th-century American political journalist, editor, and syndicated Washington columnist, known for his long association with The Christian Science Monitor and 50-year syndicated column "State of the Nation", serving as director of information for the Marshall Plan, and co-founding Freedom House.

#14454

Scott Joplin

1868 - 1917 (49 years)

Scott Joplin was an American composer and pianist. Dubbed the "King of Ragtime", he composed more than 40 ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas. One of his first and most popular pieces, the "Maple Leaf Rag", became the genre's first and most influential hit, later being recognized as the quintessential rag. Joplin considered ragtime to be a form of classical music meant to be played in concert halls and largely disdained the performance of ragtime as honky tonk music most common in saloons.

#14455

Dieterich Buxtehude

Dieterich Buxtehude

1637 - 1707 (70 years)

Dieterich Buxtehude was a Danish organist and composer of the Baroque period, whose works are typical of the North German organ school. As a composer who worked in various vocal and instrumental idioms, Buxtehude's style greatly influenced other composers, such as Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel. Buxtehude is considered one of the most important composers of the 17th century.

#14456

Charles Munch

1891 - 1968 (77 years)

Charles Munch was an Alsatian French symphonic conductor and violinist. Noted for his mastery of the French orchestral repertoire, he was best known as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

#14457

Bessie Smith

1894 - 1937 (43 years)

Bessie Smith was an African-American blues singer widely renowned during the Jazz Age. Nicknamed the "Empress of the Blues", she was the most popular female blues singer of the 1930s. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, she is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era and was a major influence on fellow blues singers, as well as jazz vocalists.

#14458

Friedrich von Flotow

1812 - 1883 (71 years)

Friedrich Adolf Ferdinand, Freiherr von Flotow /flo:to/ was a German composer. He is chiefly remembered for his opera Martha, which was popular in the 19th century and the early part of the 20th. Life Born in Teutendorf, in Mecklenburg, into an aristocratic family, Flotow was French-trained. Although he was intended for a diplomatic career, his father acceded to his wishes and he studied at the Conservatoire de Paris under Anton Reicha. During this time came under the influence of Auber, Rossini, Meyerbeer, Donizetti, Halévy, and later Gounod and Offenbach. These influences are reflected in h...

#14459

Xavier Cugat

1900 - 1990 (90 years)

Xavier Cugat was a Spanish musician and bandleader who spent his formative years in Havana, Cuba. A trained violinist and arranger, he was a leading figure in the spread of Latin music. In New York City, he was the leader of the resident orchestra at the Waldorf–Astoria before and after World War II. He was also a cartoonist and a restaurateur. The personal papers of Xavier Cugat are preserved in the Biblioteca de Catalunya.

#14460

Busby Berkeley

1895 - 1976 (81 years)

Berkeley William Enos, known professionally as Busby Berkeley, was an American film director and musical choreographer. Berkeley devised elaborate musical production numbers that often involved complex geometric patterns. Berkeley's works used large numbers of showgirls and props as fantasy elements in kaleidoscopic on-screen performances.

#14461

George Arliss

1868 - 1946 (78 years)

George Arliss was an English actor, author, playwright, and filmmaker who found success in the United States. He was the first British actor to win an Academy Award – which he won for his performance as Victorian-era British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli in Disraeli – as well as the earliest-born actor to win the honour. He specialized in successful biopics, such as Disraeli, Voltaire , and Cardinal Richelieu , as well as light comedies, which included The Millionaire and A Successful Calamity .

#14462

Mantovani

1905 - 1980 (75 years)

Annunzio Paolo Mantovani was an Anglo-Italian conductor, composer and light orchestra-styled entertainer with a cascading strings musical signature. The book British Hit Singles & Albums stated that he was "Britain's most successful album act before the Beatles ... the first act to sell over one million stereo albums and [have] six albums simultaneously in the US Top 30 in 1959".

#14463

Alexandre Guilmant

Alexandre Guilmant

1837 - 1911 (74 years)

Félix-Alexandre Guilmant was a French organist and composer. He was the organist of La Trinité from 1871 until 1901. A noted pedagogue, performer, and improviser, Guilmant helped found the Schola Cantorum de Paris. He was appointed as Professor of Organ at the Paris Conservatoire in 1896.

#14464

Ian Curtis

1956 - 1980 (24 years)

Ian Kevin Curtis was an English singer, songwriter and musician. He was best known as the lead singer, lyricist and occasional guitarist of the post-punk band Joy Division, with whom he released the albums Unknown Pleasures and Closer . He was noted for his dark baritone voice, unique dancing style, and unique songwriting that was typically filled with vivid imagery.

#14465

Henry King

1886 - 1982 (96 years)

Henry King was an American actor and film director. Widely considered one of the finest and most successful filmmakers of his era, King was nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Director and directed seven films nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

#14466

Wes Montgomery

1923 - 1968 (45 years)

John Leslie "Wes" Montgomery was an American jazz guitarist. Montgomery was known for his unusual technique of plucking the strings with the side of his thumb, and for his extensive use of octaves, which gave him a distinctive sound.

#14467

Hephaestion

101 - 200 (99 years)

Hephaestion was a grammarian of Alexandria who flourished in the age of the Antonines. He was the author of a manual of Greek metres, which is most valuable as the only complete treatise on the subject that has been preserved. The concluding chapter discusses the various kinds of poetical composition. It is written in a clear and simple style, and was much used as a school-book.

#14468

Bernard Herrmann

1911 - 1975 (64 years)

Bernard Herrmann was an American composer and conductor best known for his work in composing for films. As a conductor, he championed the music of lesser-known composers. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest film composers. Alex Ross writes that "Over four decades, he revolutionized movie scoring by abandoning the illustrative musical techniques that dominated Hollywood in the 1930s and imposing his own peculiar harmonic and rhythmic vocabulary."

#14469

Arthur Bliss

1891 - 1975 (84 years)

Sir Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss was an English composer and conductor. Bliss's musical training was cut short by the First World War, in which he served with distinction in the army. In the post-war years he quickly became known as an unconventional and modernist composer, but within the decade he began to display a more traditional and romantic side in his music. In the 1920s and 1930s he composed extensively not only for the concert hall, but also for films and ballet.

#14470

John Ireland

1879 - 1962 (83 years)

John Nicholson Ireland was an English composer and teacher of music. The majority of his output consists of piano miniatures and of songs with piano. His best-known works include the short instrumental or orchestral work "The Holy Boy", a setting of the poem "Sea-Fever" by John Masefield, a formerly much-played Piano Concerto, the hymn tune Love Unknown and the choral motet "Greater Love Hath No Man".

#14471

Robert Donat

1905 - 1958 (53 years)

Friedrich Robert Donat was an English actor. He is best remembered for his roles in Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps and Goodbye, Mr. Chips , winning for the latter the Academy Award for Best Actor.

#14472

Saverio Mercadante

Saverio Mercadante

1795 - 1870 (75 years)

Giuseppe Saverio Raffaele Mercadante was an Italian composer, particularly of operas. While Mercadante may not have retained the international celebrity of Gaetano Donizetti or Gioachino Rossini beyond his own lifetime, he composed as prolifically as either and his development of operatic structures, melodic styles and orchestration contributed significantly to the foundations upon which Giuseppe Verdi built his dramatic technique.

#14473

Ma Xulun

1885 - 1970 (85 years)

Ma Xulun , courtesy name Yichu , was a Chinese politician, activist, and linguist. He was one of the co-founders of the China Association for Promoting Democracy. Early life Ma Xulun was an early member of the Tongmenghui. He also joined the South Society founded by Liu Yazi. In 1913, Ma founded Great Republican Daily together with Zhang Taiyan, and became the newspaper's editor-in-chief. In 1913, Ma became a professor at Peking University. During the May Fourth Movement, he was elected to be the president of the Union of Peking High School and College Faculty. In 1921, Ma was appointed as director of education of Zhejiang Province.

#14474

Percy Faith

1908 - 1976 (68 years)

Percy Faith was a Canadian-American bandleader, orchestrator, composer and conductor, known for his lush arrangements of instrumental ballads and Christmas standards. He is often credited with popularizing the "easy listening" or "mood music" format. He became a staple of American popular music in the 1950s and continued well into the 1960s. Though his professional orchestra-leading career began at the height of the Swing Era, he refined and rethought orchestration techniques, including use of large string sections, to soften and fill out the brass-dominated popular music of the 1940s.

#14475

Andrew Jackson Downing

Andrew Jackson Downing

1815 - 1852 (37 years)

Andrew Jackson Downing was an American landscape designer, horticulturist, writer, prominent advocate of the Gothic Revival in the United States, and editor of The Horticulturist magazine . Downing is considered to be a founder of American landscape architecture.

#14476

H. Beam Piper

1904 - 1964 (60 years)

Henry Beam Piper was an American science fiction writer. He wrote many short stories and several novels. He is best known for his extensive Terro-Human Future History series of stories and a shorter series of "Paratime" alternate history tales.

#14477

John Sampson

1862 - 1931 (69 years)

John Sampson was an Irish linguist, literary scholar and librarian. As a scholar he is best known for The Dialect of the Gypsies of Wales , an authoritative grammar of the Welsh Romani language. Early life He was born in Schull, County Cork, Ireland, the son of James Sampson , a chemist and engineer, and his wife Sarah Anne Macdermott; he was brother to Ralph Allen Sampson . James Sampson left Ireland after losing all his money in a bank failure. The family with four sons moved to Liverpool in 1871. John Sampson, the eldest, left school at the age of 14, after his father's death, and was apprenticed to the engraver and lithographer Alexander MacGregor.

#14478

Selman Riza

1909 - 1988 (79 years)

Selman Riza was an Albanian linguist and Albanologist. Riza was one of the founding members of the Albanological Institute of Pristina in 1953. Early life Selman Riza was born in Yakova , Ottoman Empire on 21 December 1909. In 1922 he migrated to Albania, where he first studied in the "Naim Frashëri" school. At the time of his graduation in 1925 he was honored as the best student of the school and gained a scholarship in the National Lyceum of Korçë in 1925. As Riza graduated three years earlier than the regular duration of the studies the lyceum's director Leon Perre suggested him for the annual scholarship of the ministry of education.

#14479

Raymond Rouleau

1904 - 1981 (77 years)

Raymond Rouleau was a Belgian actor and film director. He appeared in more than 40 films between 1928 and 1979. He also directed 22 films between 1932 and 1981. Rouleau studied at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, where he met Tania Balachova. They emigrated to Paris together and collaborated with a variety of directors at the cutting edge of French theatre, including Charles Dullin and Gaston Baty. They married in France and separated in 1940. He subsequently married the actress Françoise Lugagne.

#14480

Wilhelm Furtwängler

1886 - 1954 (68 years)

Gustav Heinrich Ernst Martin Wilhelm Furtwängler was a German conductor and composer. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century. He was a major influence for many later conductors, and his name is often mentioned when discussing their interpretative styles.

#14481

Johann Pachelbel

1653 - 1706 (53 years)

Johann Pachelbel was a German composer, organist, and teacher who brought the south German organ schools to their peak. He composed a large body of sacred and secular music, and his contributions to the development of the chorale prelude and fugue have earned him a place among the most important composers of the middle Baroque era.

#14482

John Hughes

1677 - 1720 (43 years)

John Hughes was an English poet, essayist and translator. Various of his works remained in print for a century after his death, but if he is remembered at all today it is for the use others made of his work. Texts of his were set by the foremost composers of the day and his translation of the Letters of Abelard and Heloise was a major source for Alexander Pope's Eloisa to Abelard.

#14483

Lynn Fontanne

1887 - 1983 (96 years)

Lynn Fontanne was an English actress. After early success in supporting roles in the West End, she met the American actor Alfred Lunt, whom she married in 1922 and with whom she co-starred in Broadway and West End productions over the next four decades. They became known as "The Lunts", and were celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic.

#14484

Christopher Morley

Christopher Morley

1890 - 1957 (67 years)

Christopher Darlington Morley was an American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet. He also produced stage productions for a few years and gave college lectures. Biography Morley was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. His father, Frank Morley, was a mathematics professor at Haverford College; his mother, Lilian Janet Bird, was a violinist who provided Christopher with much of his later love for literature and poetry.

#14485

Niccolò Piccinni

1728 - 1800 (72 years)

Niccolò Piccinni was an Italian composer of symphonies, sacred music, chamber music, and opera. Although he is somewhat obscure today, Piccinni was one of the most popular composers of opera—particularly the Neapolitan opera buffa—of the Classical period.

#14486

Maurice Duruflé

1902 - 1986 (84 years)

Maurice Gustave Duruflé was a French composer, organist, musicologist, and teacher. Life and career Duruflé was born in Louviers, Eure in 1902. He became a chorister at the Rouen Cathedral Choir School from 1912 to 1918, where he studied piano and organ with Jules Haelling, a pupil of Alexandre Guilmant. The choral plainsong tradition at Rouen became a strong and lasting influence. At age 17, upon moving to Paris, he took private organ lessons with Charles Tournemire, whom he assisted at Basilique Ste-Clotilde, Paris until 1927. In 1920 Duruflé entered the Conservatoire de Paris, eventually g...

#14487

Akaki Shanidze

1887 - 1987 (100 years)

Akaki Shanidze was a Georgian linguist and philologist. He was one of the founders of the Tbilisi State University and Academician of the Georgian Academy of Sciences ; Doctor of Philological Sciences , Professor . He became a doctor in Tbilisi State University. His most important Georgian works were in linguistic sciences.

#14488

Alla Nazimova

1879 - 1945 (66 years)

Alla Nazimova was a Russian-American actress, director, producer and screenwriter. On Broadway, she was noted for her work in the classic plays of Ibsen, Chekhov and Turgenev. She later moved on to film, where she served many production roles, both writing and directing films under pseudonyms. Her film Salome is regarded as a cultural landmark.

#14489

Henry Stuart Jones

1867 - 1939 (72 years)

Sir Henry Stuart Jones, FBA was a British academic. He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford; he obtained a First in Classical Moderations in 1888 and a First in Literae Humaniores in 1890. He was appointed to a Fellowship at Trinity College, Oxford, in 1897.

#14490

Jacques Thibaud

1880 - 1953 (73 years)

Jacques Thibaud was a French violinist. Biography Thibaud was born in Bordeaux and studied the violin with his father before entering the Paris Conservatoire at the age of thirteen. In 1896 he jointly won the conservatory's violin prize with Pierre Monteux . He had to rebuild his technique after being injured in World War I. In 1943 he and Marguerite Long established the Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud International Competition for violinists and pianists, which takes place each year in Paris. From 2011, it has included singers and is now known as the Long-Thibaud-Crespin Competition, in hon...

#14491

Leon Kellner

1859 - 1928 (69 years)

Leon Kellner was an English lexicographer, grammarian, and Shakespearian scholar. He was also a political activist and a promoter of Zionism. Early life and education Leon was born in Tarnów, Austrian Empire, the son of Jewish grocers Rafael and Lea Kellner. He began to learn the Hebrew alphabet at the age of three, and by five he entered a cheder to study the Torah and the Mishnah.

#14492

Sigmund Romberg

Sigmund Romberg

1887 - 1951 (64 years)

Sigmund Romberg was a Hungarian-born American composer. He is best known for his musicalss and operettas, particularly The Student Prince , The Desert Song and The New Moon . Early in his career, Romberg was employed by the Shubert brothers to write music for their musicals and revues, including several vehicles for Al Jolson. For the Shuberts, he also adapted several European operettas for American audiences, including the successful Maytime and Blossom Time . His three hit operettas of the mid-1920s, named above, are in the style of Viennese operetta, but his other works from that time mostly employ the style of American musicals of their eras.

#14493

Fernando Sor

1778 - 1839 (61 years)

Fernando Sor was a Spanish classical guitarist and composer of the early Romantic era. Best known for writing solo classical guitar music, he also composed an opera , three symphonies, guitar duos, piano music, songs, a Mass, and at least two successful ballets: Cinderella, which received over one hundred performances, and Hercule et Omphale.

#14494

Muzio Clementi

1752 - 1832 (80 years)

Muzio Filippo Vincenzo Francesco Saverio Clementi was an Italian-British composer, virtuoso pianist, pedagogue, conductor, music publisher, editor, and piano manufacturer, who was mostly active in England.

#14495

Christian Griepenkerl

Christian Griepenkerl

1839 - 1916 (77 years)

Christian Griepenkerl was a German painter and professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Biography Griepenkerl was born to one of Oldenburg's leading families. As a young man, he heeded the advice of his fellow countryman, the landscapist Ernst Willers, and went to Vienna in late 1855 in order to enroll at the private art school for the monumental paintings founded four years earlier by Carl Rahl. Rahl allowed several of his students to participate in drafting and carrying out his paintings and thereby shaped their individual artistic development. Griepenkerl's first painting – Œdipus, L...

#14496

Louis Jordan

1908 - 1975 (67 years)

Louis Thomas Jordan was an American saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and bandleader who was popular from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. Known as "the King of the Jukebox", he earned his highest profile towards the end of the swing era. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an "early influence" in 1987.

#14497

Jimmy Van Heusen

Jimmy Van Heusen

1913 - 1990 (77 years)

James Van Heusen was an American composer. He wrote songs for films, television and theater, and won an Emmy and four Academy Awards for Best Original Song. Life and career Born in Syracuse, New York, Van Heusen began writing music while at high school. He renamed himself at age 16, after the shirt makers Phillips-Van Heusen, to use as his on-air name during local shows. His close friends called him "Chet". Jimmy was raised Methodist.

#14498

Jascha Heifetz

1901 - 1987 (86 years)

Jascha Heifetz was a Russian-American violinist. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest violinists of all time. Born in Vilnius, he moved to the United States as a teenager, where his Carnegie Hall debut was rapturously received. He was a virtuoso from childhood. Fritz Kreisler, another leading violinist of the twentieth century, said after hearing Heifetz's debut, "We might as well take our fiddles and break them across our knees." He had a long and successful performing career; then, after an injury to his right arm, he switched his focus to teaching.

#14499

Charlie Ross

1885 - 1950 (65 years)

Charles Griffith Ross was White House Press Secretary between 1945 and 1950 for President Harry S. Truman. Early life Ross graduated with Truman and Truman's eventual wife Bess Truman in Independence, Missouri from Independence High School , Class of 1901. He was initiated into the Sigma Chi fraternity and graduated from the University of Missouri in 1905. In 1908, he became the first professor of the newly formed Missouri School of Journalism.

#14500

Roscoe Arbuckle

Roscoe Arbuckle

1887 - 1933 (46 years)

Roscoe Conkling "Fatty" Arbuckle was an American silent film actor, director, and screenwriter. He started at the Selig Polyscope Company and eventually moved to Keystone Studios, where he worked with Mabel Normand and Harold Lloyd as well as with his nephew, Al St. John. He also mentored Charlie Chaplin, Monty Banks and Bob Hope, and brought vaudeville star Buster Keaton into the movie business. Arbuckle was one of the most popular silent stars of the 1910s and one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood, signing a contract in 1920 with Paramount Pictures for $1,000,000 a year .

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