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

William Henry Monk

William Henry Monk

1823 - 1899 (76 years)

William Henry Monk was an English organist, church musician and music editor who composed popular hymn tunes, including "Eventide", used for the hymn "Abide with Me", and "All Things Bright and Beautiful". He also wrote music for church services and anthems.

#14452

Mordechai Finzi

1440 - 1475 (35 years)

Mordechai ben Abraham Finzi was a Jewish mathematician, astronomer, grammarian and physician in Mantua. Work Finzi's astronomical tables were published under the title Luḥot, probably before 1480. He wrote glosses to Efodi's Hebrew grammar, Ḥesheb ha-Efod.

#14453

Johnny Dodds

1892 - 1940 (48 years)

Johnny Dodds was an American jazz clarinetist and alto saxophonist based in New Orleans, best known for his recordings under his own name and with bands such as those of Joe "King" Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Lovie Austin and Louis Armstrong. Dodds was the older brother of drummer Warren "Baby" Dodds, one of the first important jazz drummers. They worked together in the New Orleans Bootblacks in 1926. Dodds is an important figure in jazz history. He was the premier clarinetist of his era and, in recognition of his artistic contributions, he was posthumously inducted into the Jazz Hall of Fame....

#14454

Lee Hays

1914 - 1981 (67 years)

Lee Elhardt Hays was an American folk singer and songwriter, best known for singing bass with the Weavers. Throughout his life, he was concerned with overcoming racism, inequality, and violence in society. He wrote or cowrote "Wasn't That a Time?", "If I Had a Hammer", and "Kisses Sweeter than Wine", which became Weavers' staples. He also familiarized audiences with songs of the 1930s labor movement, such as "We Shall Not Be Moved".

#14455

Gower Champion

1919 - 1980 (61 years)

Gower Carlyle Champion was an American actor, theatre director, choreographer, and dancer. Early years Champion was born on June 22, 1919, in Geneva, Illinois, as the son of John W. Champion and Beatrice Carlisle. He was raised in Los Angeles, California, where he graduated from Fairfax High School. He studied dance from an early age and, at the age of fifteen, toured nightclubs with friend Jeanne Tyler billed as "Gower and Jeanne, America's Youngest Dance Team". In 1939, "Gower and Jeanne" danced to the music of Larry Clinton and his Orchestra in a Warner Brothers & Vitaphone film short-subj...

#14456

William Farnum

1876 - 1953 (77 years)

William Farnum was an American actor. He was a star of American silent cinema, and he became one of the highest-paid actors during this time. Biography Farnum was born on July 4, 1876, in Boston, Massachusetts, but he grew up in Bucksport, Maine.

#14457

James Reese Europe

1880 - 1919 (39 years)

James Reese Europe was an American ragtime and early jazz bandleader, arranger, and composer. He was the leading figure on the African American music scene of New York City in the 1910s. Eubie Blake called him the "Martin Luther King of music".

#14458

Ed Begley

1901 - 1970 (69 years)

Edward James Begley was an American actor of theatre, radio, film, and television. He won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the film Sweet Bird of Youth and appeared in such classics as 12 Angry Men , Odds Against Tomorrow and The Unsinkable Molly Brown . He was nominated for an Emmy Award for his portrayal of Matthew Harrison Brady in a television adaptation of Inherit the Wind. He is the father of actor and environmental activist Ed Begley Jr.

#14459

Jack Teagarden

1905 - 1964 (59 years)

Weldon Leo "Jack" Teagarden was an American jazz trombonist and singer. According to critic Scott Yannow of Allmusic, Teagarden was the preeminent American jazz trombone player before the bebop era of the 1940s and "one of the best jazz singers too". Teagarden's early career was as a sideman with the likes of Paul Whiteman and lifelong friend Louis Armstrong.

#14460

Jim Backus

1913 - 1989 (76 years)

James Gilmore Backus was an American actor. Among his most famous roles were Thurston Howell III on the 1960s sitcom Gilligan's Island, the father of James Dean's character in Rebel Without a Cause, the voice of the near-sighted cartoon character Mr. Magoo, the rich Hubert Updike III on the radio version of The Alan Young Show, and Joan Davis' character's husband on TV's I Married Joan. He also starred in his own show of one season, The Jim Backus Show, also known as Hot Off the Wire.

#14461

George Duvivier

George Duvivier

1920 - 1985 (65 years)

George Duvivier was an American jazz double-bassist. Biography Duvivier was born in New York City, the son of Leon V. Duvivier and Ismay Blakely Duvivier. He attended the Conservatory of Music and Art, where he studied violin. At age sixteen, he worked as assistant concertmaster for the Central Manhattan Symphony Orchestra. He began playing double bass and concentrated on composition at New York University. In the early 1940s, he accompanied Coleman Hawkins, Lucky Millinder, and Eddie Barefield. After serving in the U.S. Army, he worked as an arranger for Jimmie Lunceford, then as arranger an...

#14462

Carl C. Mose

1903 - 1973 (70 years)

Carl Christian Mose was an American sculptor and art teacher. Life Mose was born in Copenhagen, Denmark circa 1903. He emigrated to the United States with his family as a child and he grew up in Chicago, Illinois. He was trained by sculptor Lorado Taft.

#14463

Roy Del Ruth

1893 - 1961 (68 years)

Roy Del Ruth was an American filmmaker. Early career Beginning his Hollywood career as a writer for Mack Sennett in 1915, Del Ruth later directed his first short film Hungry Lions for the producer. By the early 1920s, he had moved over to features including Asleep at the Switch , The Hollywood Kid , Eve's Lover and The Little Irish Girl .

#14464

William Primrose

1904 - 1982 (78 years)

William Primrose CBE was a Scottish violist and teacher. He performed with the London String Quartet from 1930 to 1935. He then joined the NBC Symphony Orchestra where he formed the Primrose Quartet. He performed in various countries around the world as a soloist throughout his career. He also taught at several universities and institutions. He authored several books on viola technique.

#14465

Alexander Dovzhenko

Alexander Dovzhenko

1894 - 1956 (62 years)

Alexander Petrovich Dovzhenko, also transliterated Oleksandr Petrovych Dovzhenko , was a Ukrainian Soviet screenwriter, film producer and director. He is often cited as one of the most important early Soviet filmmakers, alongside Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, and Vsevolod Pudovkin, as well as being a pioneer of Soviet montage theory.

#14466

Antonio Sacchini

Antonio Sacchini

1730 - 1786 (56 years)

Antonio Maria Gasparo Gioacchino Sacchini was an Italian composer, best known for his operas. Sacchini was born in Florence, but raised in Naples, where he received his musical education. He made a name for himself as a composer of serious and comic opera in Italy before moving to London, where he produced works for the King's Theatre. He spent his final years in Paris, becoming embroiled in the musical dispute between the followers of the composers Gluck and Niccolò Piccinni. His early death in 1786 was blamed on his disappointment over the apparent failure of his opera Œdipe à Colone. Howev...

#14467

Sister Rosetta Tharpe

1915 - 1973 (58 years)

Sister Rosetta Tharpe was an American singer, songwriter and guitarist. She gained popularity in the 1930s and 1940s with her gospel recordings, characterized by a unique mixture of spiritual lyrics and electric guitar. She was the first great recording star of gospel music, and was among the first gospel musicians to appeal to rhythm and blues and rock and roll audiences, later being referred to as "the original soul sister" and "the Godmother of rock and roll". She influenced early rock-and-roll musicians including Little Richard, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Jerry...

#14468

John Ogdon

1937 - 1989 (52 years)

John Andrew Howard Ogdon was an English pianist and composer. Biography Career Ogdon was born in Mansfield Woodhouse, Nottinghamshire, and attended the Manchester Grammar School, before studying at the Royal Northern College of Music between 1953 and 1957, where his fellow students under Richard Hall included Harrison Birtwistle, Alexander Goehr, Elgar Howarth and Peter Maxwell Davies. Together they formed New Music Manchester, a group dedicated to the performances of serial and other modern works. His tutor there was Claud Biggs. As a boy he had studied with Iso Elinson and after leaving c...

#14469

Alois Hába

1893 - 1973 (80 years)

Alois Hába was a Czech composer, music theorist and teacher. He belongs to the important discoverers in modern classical music, and major composers of microtonal music, especially using the quarter-tone scale, though he used others such as sixth-tones , fifth-tones , and twelfth-tones. From the other microtonal conceptions, he discussed a "three-quarter tone" system in his theoretical works but he used scales in this tuning in sections of some of his compositions. In his prolific career, Hába composed three operas, an enormous collection of chamber music including 16 string quartets, piano, organ and choral pieces, some orchestral works and songs.

#14470

Václav Machek

1894 - 1965 (71 years)

Václav Machek was a Czech linguist. Life In years 1914–1921 Machek studied Czech and Latin language at Charles University in Prague . In years 1921-1924 he studied linguistics in Paris. Several years he taught at high schools in Czechoslovakia. From 1936 he was a professor of Slavic studies and comparative linguistics at then Jan Evangelista Purkyně University .

#14471

Leonardo Leo

1694 - 1744 (50 years)

Leonardo Leo , more correctly Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore de Leo, was a Baroque composer. Biography Leo was born in San Vito degli Schiavoni in the Apulia region, then part of the Kingdom of Naples.

#14472

Ernst Chladni

1756 - 1827 (71 years)

Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni was a German physicist and musician. His most important work, for which he is sometimes labeled as the father of acoustics, included research on vibrating plates and the calculation of the speed of sound for different gases. He also undertook pioneering work in the study of meteorites and is regarded by some as the father of meteoritics.

#14473

Stefan Wolpe

1902 - 1972 (70 years)

Stefan Wolpe was a German-Jewish-American composer. He was associated with interdisciplinary modernism, with affiliations ranging from the Bauhaus, Berlin agitprop theater and the kibbutz movement to the Eighth Street Artists' Club, Black Mountain College, and the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music. He lived and worked in Berlin until the Nazi seizure of power forced him to move first to Vienna and Jerusalem before settling in New York City . In works such as Battle Piece and "In a State of Flight" in Enactments for Three Pianos , he responded self-consciously to the circumstances of ...

#14474

Noble Sissle

1889 - 1975 (86 years)

Noble Lee Sissle was an American jazz composer, lyricist, bandleader, singer, and playwright, best known for the Broadway musical Shuffle Along , and its hit song "I'm Just Wild About Harry". Early life Sissle was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States, around the time his father Rev. George A. Sissle was pastor of the city's Simpson M. E. Chapel. His mother, Martha Angeline Sissle, was a school teacher and juvenile probation officer.

#14475

J. Lloyd Williams

1854 - 1945 (91 years)

John Lloyd Williams was a Welsh botanist, author, and musician. He was one of the founders of the Welsh Folk-Song Society , established in 1906 to promote the collection and study of traditional Welsh folk songs, and became the first editor of the society's journal.

#14476

John Burke

1786 - 1848 (62 years)

John Burke was an Irish genealogist, and the original publisher of Burke's Peerage. He was the father of Sir Bernard Burke, a British officer of arms and genealogist. Origins He was the elder son of Peter Burke of Elm Hall, Tipperary, by his first wife, Anne, daughter and coheiress of Matthew Dowdall, M.D., of Mullingar. In accordance with a family arrangement, his younger brother Joseph succeeded to the estate at the father's death on 13 January 1836. The Burke family were descendants of the Earl of Clanricarde via Dominick Burke , of Clondagoff Castle, County Galway. Later generations have ...

#14477

Walter Parratt

1841 - 1924 (83 years)

Sir Walter Parratt was an English organist and composer. Biography Born in Huddersfield, son of a parish organist, Parratt began to play the pipe organ from an early age, and held posts as an organist while still a child. He was a child prodigy: on one occasion he played Bach's complete The Well-Tempered Clavier by heart, without notice, at age ten.

#14478

Ernest Farrar

1885 - 1918 (33 years)

Ernest Bristow Farrar was an English composer, pianist and organist. Life Ernest Farrar was born in Lewisham, London, but moved in 1887 to Micklefield in Yorkshire, where his father was a clergyman. The rest of his life was very much centred in the north of England. He was educated at Leeds Grammar School, where he began organ studies. His studies at Durham University did not progress beyond his matriculation.

#14479

Papanasam Sivan

1890 - 1973 (83 years)

Paapanaasam Raamayya Sivan was an Indian composer of Carnatic music and a singer. He was awarded the Madras Music Academy's Sangeetha Kalanidhi in 1971. He was also a film score composer in Kannada cinema as well as Tamil cinema in the 1930s and 1940s.

#14480

Prabodh Pandit

1923 - 1975 (52 years)

Prabodh Bechardas Pandit was an Indian linguist from Gujarat, India. He published a total of ten books in the Gujarati language, along with many research papers published in various journals. In 1967, he received the Sahitya Akademi Award, and in 1973, the Ranjitram Suvarna Chandrak, for his contribution to the study of Gujarati language and linguistics.

#14481

Santa Rita Durão

Santa Rita Durão

1722 - 1784 (62 years)

José de Santa Rita Durão , known simply as Santa Rita Durão, was a Colonial Brazilian Neoclassic poet, orator and Augustinian friar. He is considered a forerunner of "Indianism" in Brazilian literature, with his epic poem Caramuru.

#14482

Jens Andreas Friis

Jens Andreas Friis

1821 - 1896 (75 years)

Jens Andreas Friis was a Norwegian philologist, lexicographer and author. He was a university professor and a prominent linguist in the languages spoken by the Sami people. He is widely recognized as the founder of the studies of the Sami languages. Today he is also commonly associated with his novel Lajla: A New Tale of Finmark, which became the basis for Laila, a 1929 silent film.

#14483

Lewis Ossie Swingler

1906 - 1962 (56 years)

Lewis Ossie Swingler was a pioneering African-American journalist, editor, and newspaper publisher from Crittenden County, Arkansas. He was editor of the Memphis World and editor in chief and copublisher of the Tri-State Defender.

#14484

Franz Schmidt

1874 - 1939 (65 years)

Franz Schmidt, also Ferenc Schmidt was an Austro-Hungarian composer, cellist and pianist. Life Schmidt was born in Pozsony/Pressburg, in the Hungarian part of Austria-Hungary to a half-Hungarian father – with the same name, born in the same city – and to a Hungarian mother, Mária Ravasz. He was a Roman Catholic.

#14485

Lennie Tristano

1919 - 1978 (59 years)

Leonard Joseph Tristano was an American jazz pianist, composer, arranger, and teacher of jazz improvisation. Tristano studied for bachelor's and master's degrees in music in Chicago before moving to New York City in 1946. He played with leading bebop musicians and formed his own small bands, which soon displayed some of his early interests – contrapuntal interaction of instruments, harmonic flexibility, and rhythmic complexity. His quintet in 1949 recorded the first free group improvisations. Tristano's innovations continued in 1951, with the first overdubbed, improvised jazz recordings, and ...

#14486

Carl Radle

1942 - 1980 (38 years)

Carl Dean Radle was an American bassist who toured and recorded with many of the most influential recording artists of the late 1960s and 1970s. He was posthumously inducted to the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame in 2006.

#14487

Erle Elsworth Clippinger

1875 - 1939 (64 years)

Erle Elsworth Clippinger was a professor of English and a scholar of children's literature in early 20th-century Indiana. He was one of the founding faculty members at Ball State University, where he chaired the English department for many years.

#14488

Alfredo Catalani

Alfredo Catalani

1854 - 1893 (39 years)

Alfredo Catalani was an Italian operatic composer. He is best remembered for his operas Loreley and La Wally . La Wally was composed to a libretto by Luigi Illica, and features Catalani's most famous aria "Ebben? Ne andrò lontana." This aria, sung by American soprano Wilhelmenia Fernandez, was at the heart of Jean-Jacques Beineix's 1981 film Diva. Catalani's other operas were much less successful.

#14489

York Bowen

1884 - 1961 (77 years)

Edwin York Bowen was an English composer and pianist. Bowen's musical career spanned more than fifty years during which time he wrote over 160 works. As well as being a pianist and composer, Bowen was a talented conductor, organist, violist and horn player. Despite achieving considerable success during his lifetime, many of the composer's works remained unpublished and unperformed until after his death in 1961. Bowen's compositional style is widely considered as ‘Romantic’ and his works are often characterized by their rich harmonic language.

#14490

Alexander Vasilyevich Alexandrov

1883 - 1946 (63 years)

Alexander Vasilyevich Alexandrov was a Soviet and Russian composer and founder of the Alexandrov Ensemble, who wrote the music for the State Anthem of the Soviet Union, which in 2000 became the national anthem of Russia . During his career, he also worked as a professor of the Moscow Conservatory, and became a Doctor of Arts. His work was recognized by the awards of the title of People's Artist of the USSR and two Stalin Prizes.

#14491

Pernel Strachey

Pernel Strachey

1876 - 1951 (75 years)

Pernel Strachey or Joan Pernel Strachey was an English scholar of French and Principal of Newnham College. Life Strachey was born in Clapham Common in London in 1876. She came from a large family led by Lieutenant General Sir Richard Strachey and the suffragist Jane Maria Strachey. Her mother was a friend of Millicent Garrett Fawcett who had co-founded Newnham College in Cambridge. Her brothers included Lytton Strachey and Oliver Strachey, husband of Ray Costelloe.

#14492

Roy Brown

1925 - 1981 (56 years)

Roy James Brown was an American blues singer who had a significant influence on the early development of rock and roll and the direction of R&B. His original song and hit recording "Good Rockin' Tonight" has been covered by many artists including Wynonie Harris, Elvis Presley, Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, Joe Ely, Ricky Nelson, Jerry Lee Lewis, Pat Boone, James Brown, the Doors, and the rock group Montrose. Brown was one of the first popular R&B singers to perform songs with a gospel-steeped delivery, which was then considered taboo by many churches. In addition, his melismatic, pleading vocal style influenced notable artists such as B.B.

#14493

Leif Erickson

1911 - 1986 (75 years)

Leif Erickson was an American stage, film, and television actor. Early life Erickson was born in Alameda, California, near San Francisco. He worked as a soloist in a band as vocalist and trombone player, performed in Max Reinhardt's productions, and then gained a small amount of stage experience in a comedy vaudeville act. Initially billed by Paramount Pictures as Glenn Erickson, he began his screen career as a leading man in Westerns.

#14494

Edwin Maxwell

1886 - 1948 (62 years)

Edwin Maxwell was an Irish character actor in Hollywood movies of the 1930s and 1940s, frequently cast as businessmen and shysters, though often ones with a pompous or dignified bearing. Prior to that, he was an actor on the Broadway stage and a director of plays.

#14495

Billy West

1892 - 1975 (83 years)

Billy West was a silent film actor, producer, and director. Active during the silent film era, he is best known as a semi-successful Charlie Chaplin impersonator. Beyond acting, he also directed shorts in the 1910s and 20s, as well as produced films. West ultimately retired in 1935.

#14496

Allen Collins

1952 - 1990 (38 years)

Larkin Allen Collins Jr. was an American guitarist, and one of the founding members of the Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd. He co-wrote many of the band's songs with frontman and original lead singer Ronnie Van Zant.

#14497

Ebenezer Prout

1835 - 1909 (74 years)

Ebenezer Prout was an English musical theorist, writer, music teacher and composer, whose instruction, afterwards embodied in a series of standard works still used today, underpinned the work of many British classical musicians of succeeding generations.

#14498

George Henschel

George Henschel

1850 - 1934 (84 years)

Sir Isidor George Henschel was a German-born British baritone, pianist, conductor, composer and academic teacher. First trained as a pianist, he was a concert singer who sometimes sang to his own accompaniment. He was a close friend of Johannes Brahms. His first wife Lillian was also a singer. He was the first conductor of both the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. He taught at the Institute of Musical Art in New York City.

#14499

Harold Bauer

1873 - 1951 (78 years)

Harold Victor Bauer was an English-born pianist of Jewish heritage who began his musical career as a violinist. Biography Harold Bauer was born in Kingston upon Thames; his father was a German violinist and his mother was English. He took up the study of the violin under the direction of his father and Adolf Pollitzer. He made his debut as a violinist in London in 1883, and for nine years toured England. In 1892, however, he went to Paris and studied the piano under Ignacy Jan Paderewski for a year, though still maintaining his interest in the violin. An anecdote reports that Paderewski jokingly told Bauer to concentrate on the piano because "You have such beautiful hair".

#14500

Woody Shaw

1944 - 1989 (45 years)

Woody Herman Shaw Jr. was an American jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist, cornetist, composer, arranger, band leader, and educator. Shaw is widely known as one of the most important and influential jazz trumpeters and composers of the twentieth century. He is often credited with revolutionizing the technical and harmonic language of modern jazz trumpet playing, and to this day is regarded by many as one of the major innovators of the instrument. He was an acclaimed virtuoso, mentor, and spokesperson for jazz and worked and recorded alongside many of the leading musicians of his time.

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