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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List of the most influential people in Communications,

#14651

Josiah Willard Gibbs Sr.

1790 - 1861 (71 years)

Josiah Willard Gibbs Sr. was an American linguist and theologian, who served as professor of sacred literature at Yale University. He is chiefly remembered today for his involvement in the Amistad case and as the father of theoretical physicist Josiah Willard Gibbs.

#14652

Rudolf Friml

1879 - 1972 (93 years)

Charles Rudolf Friml was a Czech-born composer of operettas, musicals, songs and piano pieces, as well as a pianist. After musical training and a brief performing career in his native Prague, Friml moved to the United States, where he became a composer. His best-known works are Rose-Marie and The Vagabond King, each of which enjoyed success on Broadway and in London and were adapted for film.

#14653

Leroy Anderson

1908 - 1975 (67 years)

Leroy Anderson was an American composer of short, light concert pieces, many of which were introduced by the Boston Pops Orchestra under the direction of Arthur Fiedler. John Williams described him as "one of the great American masters of light orchestral music."

#14654

Oscar Straus

1870 - 1954 (84 years)

Oscar Nathan Straus was a Viennese composer of operettas, film scores, and songs. He also wrote about 500 cabaret songs, chamber music, and orchestral and choral works. His original name was actually Strauss, but for professional purposes he deliberately omitted the final 's'. He wished not to be associated with the musical Strauss family of Vienna. However, he did follow the advice of Johann Strauss II in 1898 about abandoning the prospective lure of writing waltzes for the more lucrative business of writing for the theatre.

#14655

Adolphe Cohn

1851 - 1930 (79 years)

Adolphe Cohn was a Franco-American educator, born in Paris. He was graduated "bachelier ès lettres" from the University of Paris in 1868, and studied law, historical criticism, and philology at various institutions of higher learning in Paris, receiving the degrees of LL.B. in 1873. A pupil of the École des Chartes, his thesis was called Vues sur l’histoire de l’organisation judiciaire en France du IXe au XIIIe siècle considérée au point de vue des juridictions extraordinaires and he got the diploma of "archiviste paléographe" in 1874. At the commencement of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, h...

#14656

Mikio Naruse

1905 - 1969 (64 years)

Mikio Naruse was a Japanese filmmaker who directed 89 films spanning the period 1930 to 1967. Naruse is known for imbuing his films with a bleak and pessimistic outlook. He made primarily shōshimin-eiga films with female protagonists, portrayed by actresses such as Hideko Takamine, Kinuyo Tanaka, and Setsuko Hara. Because of his focus on family drama and the intersection of traditional and modern Japanese culture, his films have been compared with the works of Yasujirō Ozu. Many of his films in his later career were adaptations of the works of acknowledged Japanese writers. Titled a "major fi...

#14657

Kid Ory

1886 - 1973 (87 years)

Edward "Kid" Ory was an American jazz composer, trombonist and bandleader. One of the early users of the glissando technique, he helped establish it as a central element of New Orleans jazz. He was born near LaPlace, Louisiana and moved to New Orleans on his 21st birthday, to Los Angeles in 1910 and to Chicago in 1925. The Ory band later was an important force in reviving interest in New Orleans jazz, making radio broadcasts on The Orson Welles Almanac program in 1944, among other shows. In 1944–45, the group made a series of recordings for the Crescent label, which was founded by Nesuhi Erte...

#14658

Pat O'Brien

1899 - 1983 (84 years)

William Joseph Patrick O'Brien was an American film actor with more than 100 screen credits. Of Irish descent, he often played Irish and Irish-American characters and was referred to as "Hollywood's Irishman in Residence" in the press. One of the best-known screen actors of the 1930s and 1940s, he played priests, cops, military figures, pilots, and reporters. He is especially well-remembered for his roles in Knute Rockne, All American , Angels with Dirty Faces , and Some Like It Hot . He was frequently paired onscreen with Hollywood star James Cagney. O'Brien also appeared on stage and televi...

#14659

Nicola Porpora

1686 - 1768 (82 years)

Nicola Antonio Giacinto Porpora was an Italian composer and teacher of singing of the Baroque era, whose most famous singing students were the castrati Farinelli and Caffarelli. Other students included composers Johann Adolph Hasse, Matteo Capranica and Joseph Haydn.

#14660

Robert Wiene

1873 - 1938 (65 years)

Robert Wiene was a German film director, screenwriter and producer, active during the silent era. He is widely-known for directing the landmark 1920 film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and a succession of other expressionist films. Wiene also directed a variety of other films of varying styles and genres. Following the Nazi rise to power in Germany, Wiene, who was of Jewish descent, fled into exile.

#14661

Joseph Fuchs

1899 - 1997 (98 years)

Joseph Philip Fuchs was one of the most important American violinists and teachers of the 20th century, and the brother of Lillian Fuchs. Born in New York, he graduated in 1918 from the Institute of Musical Art in New York where he studied with Franz Kneisel. In 1926 he was appointed concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra, but resigned in 1940 to pursue a solo career. After a successful New York début in 1943, he became co-founder of the Musicians’ Guild, a chamber music organization which he directed there until 1956.

#14662

Basil Dearden

1911 - 1971 (60 years)

Basil Dearden was an English film director. Early life and career Dearden was born at 5, Woodfield Road, Leigh-on-Sea, Essex to Charles James Dear, a steel manufacturer, and his wife, Florence Tripp.

#14663

Fletcher Henderson

1897 - 1952 (55 years)

James Fletcher Hamilton Henderson was an American pianist, bandleader, arranger and composer, important in the development of big band jazz and swing music. He was one of the most prolific black musical arrangers and, along with Duke Ellington, is considered one of the most influential arrangers and bandleaders in jazz history. Henderson's influence was vast. He helped bridge the gap between the Dixieland and the swing eras. He was often known as "Smack" Henderson .

#14664

Dinah Washington

1924 - 1963 (39 years)

Dinah Washington was an American singer and pianist, one of the most popular black female recording artists of the 1950s. Primarily a jazz vocalist, she performed and recorded in a wide variety of styles including blues, R&B, and traditional pop music, and gave herself the title of "Queen of the Blues". She was a 1986 inductee of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.

#14665

Karl Sapper

1866 - 1945 (79 years)

Karl Theodor Sapper was a German traveler, explorer, and antiquarian who is known for his research into the natural history, and cultures of Central America. Education Sapper studied geology in Munich and showed a vivid interest in geography.

#14666

John Randall

1715 - 1799 (84 years)

John Randall was an English organist and academic. Life John Randall was a chorister of the Chapel Royal under Bernard Gates. On 23 February 1732 at Gates's house, Randall acted and sang the part of Esther in a dramatic representation of Handel's oratorio Esther. In 1744 he graduated Mus. Bac. at Cambridge. In the following year he was appointed organist to King's College Chapel.

#14667

Norma Talmadge

1894 - 1957 (63 years)

Norma Marie Talmadge was an American actress and film producer of the silent era. A major box-office draw for more than a decade, her career reached a peak in the early 1920s, when she ranked among the most popular idols of the American screen.

#14668

Alf Torp

1853 - 1916 (63 years)

Alf Torp was a Norwegian philologist and author. He is most known for his work with Indo-European and Nordic language history and meaning of ancient languages. Biography Alf Torp was born in Stryn, Sogn og Fjordane, Norway. He became cand. philol. in 1877 at the Bergen Cathedral School. He was a student of Sophus Bugge, and during a stay in Leipzig in 1878-80 a student of Georg Curtius and Ernst Windisch. In 1881 he got his doctorate at the University of Leipzig with the dissertation Die Flexion des Pali in ihrem Verhältnis zum Sanskrit.

#14669

Harry Partch

1901 - 1974 (73 years)

Harry Partch was an American composer, music theorist, and creator of unique musical instruments. He composed using scales of unequal intervals in just intonation, and was one of the first 20th-century composers in the West to work systematically with microtonal scales, alongside Lou Harrison. He built his own instruments in these tunings on which to play his compositions, and described the method behind his theory and practice in his book Genesis of a Music .

#14670

Cannonball Adderley

Cannonball Adderley

1928 - 1975 (47 years)

Julian Edwin "Cannonball" Adderley was an American jazz alto saxophonist of the hard bop era of the 1950s and 1960s. Adderley is perhaps best remembered for the 1966 soul jazz single "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy", which was written for him by his keyboardist Joe Zawinul and became a major crossover hit on the pop and R&B charts. A cover version by the Buckinghams, who added lyrics, also reached No. 5 on the charts. Adderley worked with Miles Davis, first as a member of the Davis sextet, appearing on the seminal records Milestones and Kind of Blue , and then on his own 1958 album Somethin' Else. He w...

#14671

Lotte Lehmann

1888 - 1976 (88 years)

Charlotte "Lotte" Pauline Sophie Lehmann was a German-American lyric soprano noted for her successful performances with international opera houses, on the recital stage and in teaching.She gave memorable appearances in the operas of Richard Strauss, Richard Wagner, Ludwig van Beethoven, Puccini, Mozart, and Massenet. The Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, Sieglinde in Die Walküre and the title-role in Fidelio are considered her greatest roles. During her long career, Lehmann also made almost five hundred recordings in both opera and art song.

#14672

Asta Nielsen

1881 - 1972 (91 years)

Asta Sofie Amalie Nielsen was a Danish silent film actress who was one of the most popular leading ladies of the 1910s and one of the first international movie stars. Seventy of Nielsen's 74 films were made in Germany where she was known simply as Die Asta .

#14673

Augusta Webster

1837 - 1894 (57 years)

Augusta Webster born in Poole, Dorset as Julia Augusta Davies, was an English poet, dramatist, essayist, and translator. Biography Augusta was the daughter of Vice-admiral George Davies and Julia Hume, she spent her younger years on board the ship he was stationed, the Griper.

#14674

Albert Lortzing

Albert Lortzing

1801 - 1851 (50 years)

Gustav Albert Lortzing was a German composer, librettist, actor and singer. He is considered to be the main representative of the German Spieloper, a form similar to the French opéra comique, which grew out of the Singspiel.

#14675

Robert Planquette

Robert Planquette

1848 - 1903 (55 years)

Jean Robert Planquette was a French composer of songs and operettas. Several of Planquette's operettas were extraordinarily successful in Britain, especially Les cloches de Corneville , the length of whose initial London run broke all records for any piece of musical theatre up to that time. Rip Van Winkle also earned international fame.

#14676

Edith Head

1897 - 1981 (84 years)

Edith Head was an American costume designer who won a record eight Academy Awards for Best Costume Design between 1949 and 1973, making her the most awarded woman in the Academy's history. Head is considered to be one of the greatest and most influential costume designers in film history.

#14677

Hermann Collitz

1855 - 1935 (80 years)

Hermann Collitz was a German historical linguist and Indo-Europeanist, who spent much of his career in the United States. Biography Born in Bleckede near Lüneburg in 1885. Collitz received a doctorate in 1878 at the University of Göttingen with a dissertation on "The Emergence of the Indo-Iranian Palatal Series" , and his 1885 habilitation degree at the University of Halle for "The Inflection of Nouns with Threefold Gradation in Old Indic and in Greek: the Cases of the Singular" .

#14678

Big Joe Turner

1911 - 1985 (74 years)

Joseph Vernon "Big Joe" Turner Jr. was an American blues shouter from Kansas City, Missouri. According to songwriter Doc Pomus, "Rock and roll would have never happened without him". Turner's greatest fame was due to his rock and roll recordings in the 1950s, particularly "Shake, Rattle and Roll", but his career as a performer endured from the 1920s into the 1980s.

#14679

Ezio Pinza

1892 - 1957 (65 years)

Ezio Fortunato Pinza was an Italian opera singer. Pinza possessed a rich, smooth and sonorous voice, with a flexibility unusual for a bass. He spent 22 seasons at New York's Metropolitan Opera, appearing in more than 750 performances of 50 operas. At the San Francisco Opera, Pinza sang 26 roles during 20 seasons from 1927 to 1948. Pinza also sang to great acclaim at La Scala, Milan and at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London.

#14680

Carl Heinrich Graun

Carl Heinrich Graun

1704 - 1759 (55 years)

Carl Heinrich Graun was a German composer and tenor. Along with Johann Adolph Hasse, he is considered to be the most important German composer of Italian opera of his time. Biography Graun was born in Wahrenbrück in the Electorate of Saxony. In 1714, he followed his brother, Johann Gottlieb Graun, to the school of the Kreuzkirche, Dresden, and sang in the Dresdner Kreuzchor and the chorus of the Opernhaus am Zwinger. He studied singing with Christian Petzold and composition with . In 1724, Graun moved to Braunschweig, singing at the opera house and writing six operas for the company. In 1735...

#14681

Frank Bridge

1879 - 1941 (62 years)

Frank Bridge was an English composer, violist and conductor. Life Bridge was born in Brighton, the ninth child of William Henry Bridge , a violin teacher and variety theatre conductor, formerly a master lithographic printer from a family of cordwainers, and his second wife, Elizabeth . His father "ruled the household with a rod of iron", and was insistent that his son spend regular long hours practising the violin; when Frank became sufficiently skilled, he would play with his father's pit bands, conducting in his absence, also arranging music and standing in for other instrumentalists. He s...

#14682

Hans Richter

1843 - 1916 (73 years)

Johann Baptist Isidor Richter, or János Richter was an Austro-Hungarian orchestral and operatic conductor. Biography Richter was born in Raab , Kingdom of Hungary, Austrian Empire. His father was a local composer, conductor and regens chori Anton Richter. His mother was opera-singer Jozefa Csazenszky. He studied at the Vienna Conservatory. He had a particular interest in the horn, and developed his conducting career at several different opera houses in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He became associated with Richard Wagner in the 1860s, and played the solo trumpet part in the 1870 private premiere of the Siegfried Idyll.

#14683

Havergal Brian

1876 - 1972 (96 years)

William Havergal Brian was a prominent 20th-century English composer, librettist, and church organist. He is best known for having composed 32 symphonies, an unusually high number amongst his contemporaries, 25 of them after the age of 70, into late in his life. His best-known work is his Symphony No. 1, The Gothic, which calls for some of the largest orchestral forces demanded by a conventionally structured concert work.

#14684

Billy Strayhorn

Billy Strayhorn

1915 - 1967 (52 years)

William Thomas Strayhorn was an American jazz composer, pianist, lyricist, and arranger who collaborated with bandleader and composer Duke Ellington for nearly three decades. His compositions include "Take the 'A' Train," "Chelsea Bridge," "A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing," and "Lush Life".

#14685

Richard Paul Wülker

Richard Paul Wülker

1845 - 1910 (65 years)

Richard Paul Wülker, until 1884 surname spelled as Wülcker was a German Anglist. He studied German and English philology at the universities of Berlin and Leipzig, and following military service in the Franco-Prussian War, he continued his education at the University of Marburg. In 1873 he obtained his habilitation for English philology at the University of Leipzig, where he later taught classes as an associate professor of English language and literature , then served as a full professor from 1880 to 1910.

#14686

Robert Stolz

1880 - 1975 (95 years)

Robert Elisabeth Stolz was an Austrian songwriter and conductor as well as a composer of operettas and film music. Biography Stolz was born of musical parents in Graz. His father was conductor and composer Jakob Stolz, his mother was concert pianist Ida Bondy, and he was the great-nephew of the soprano Teresa Stolz. At the age of seven, he toured Europe as a pianist, playing Mozart. He studied at the Vienna Conservatory with Robert Fuchs and Engelbert Humperdinck. From 1899 he held successive conducting posts at Maribor , Salzburg and Brno before succeeding Artur Bodanzky at the Theater an der Wien in 1907.

#14687

Ferdinand Hérold

Ferdinand Hérold

1791 - 1833 (42 years)

Louis Joseph Ferdinand Herold , better known as Ferdinand Hérold , was a French composer. He was celebrated in his lifetime for his operas, of which he composed more than twenty, but he also wrote ballet music, works for piano and choral pieces. He is best known today for the ballet La Fille mal gardée and the overture to the opera Zampa.

#14688

Charles Coburn

1877 - 1961 (84 years)

Charles Douville Coburn was an American actor and theatrical producer. He was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award three times – in The Devil and Miss Jones , The More the Merrier , and The Green Years – winning for his performance in The More the Merrier. He was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960 for his contribution to the film industry.

#14689

Amy Beach

1867 - 1944 (77 years)

Amy Marcy Cheney Beach was an American composer and pianist. She was the first successful American female composer of large-scale art music. Her "Gaelic" Symphony, premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1896, was the first symphony composed and published by an American woman. She was one of the first American composers to succeed without the benefit of European training, and one of the most respected and acclaimed American composers of her era. As a pianist, she was acclaimed for concerts she gave featuring her own music in the United States and in Germany.

#14690

Fanny Kemble

1809 - 1893 (84 years)

Frances Anne "Fanny" Kemble was a British actress from a theatre family in the early and mid-19th century. She was a well-known and popular writer and abolitionist whose published works included plays, poetry, eleven volumes of memoirs, travel writing, and works about the theatre.

#14691

Wang Wei

699 - 759 (60 years)

Wang Wei was a Chinese musician, painter, poet, and politician of the middle Tang dynasty. He is regarded as one of the most famous men of arts and letters of his era. Many of his poems survive and 29 of them are included in the 18th-century anthology Three Hundred Tang Poems. Many of his best poems were inspired by the local landscape.

#14692

Ignaz Pleyel

1757 - 1831 (74 years)

Ignace Joseph Pleyel was an Austrian composer, music publisher and piano builder of the Classical period. Life Early years He was born in in Lower Austria, the son of a schoolmaster named Martin Pleyl. Despite the fact that some sources claim that he had 37 siblings, he was the eighth and last child of his father's first marriage to Anna Theresia née Forster and he had eight more half siblings from his father's second marriage to Maria Anna née Placho. While still young, he probably studied with Johann Baptist Wanhal, and from 1772 he became the pupil of Joseph Haydn in Eisenstadt. As with...

#14693

Giovanni Martinelli

1885 - 1969 (84 years)

Giovanni Martinelli was an Italian operatic spinto tenor. He was associated with the Italian lyric-dramatic repertory, although he performed French operatic roles to great acclaim as well. Martinelli was one of the most famous tenors of the 20th century, enjoying a long career at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City and appearing at other major international theatres.

#14694

Jean Gabin

1904 - 1976 (72 years)

Jean Gabin was a French actor and singer. Considered a key figure in French cinema, he starred in several classic films including Pépé le Moko , La grande illusion , Le Quai des brumes , La bête humaine , Le jour se lève , and Le plaisir . During his career he twice won both the Silver Bear for Best Actor from the Berlin International Film Festival and the Volpi Cup for Best Actor from the Venice Film Festival respectively. Gabin was made a member of the Légion d'honneur in recognition of the important role he played in French cinema.

#14695

Werner Krauss

1884 - 1959 (75 years)

Werner Johannes Krauss was a German stage and film actor. Krauss dominated the German stage of the early 20th century. However, his participation in the antisemitic propaganda film Jud Süß and his collaboration with the Nazis made him a controversial figure.

#14696

Lucjan Malinowski

Lucjan Malinowski

1839 - 1898 (59 years)

Lucjan Feliks Malinowski was a Polish linguist, a researcher of regional dialects of Silesia, a traveller, a professor of Jagiellonian University, from the 1887 principal Seminar Slavic languages. Malinowski studied the history of the Polish language and etymology. He was the father of anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski.

#14697

Clarence Williams

1893 - 1965 (72 years)

Clarence Williams was an American jazz pianist, composer, promoter, vocalist, theatrical producer, and publisher. Biography Williams was born in Plaquemine, Louisiana, to Dennis, a bassist, and Sally Williams, and ran away from home at age 12 to join Billy Kersands' Traveling Minstrel Show, then moved to New Orleans. At first, Williams worked shining shoes and doing odd jobs, but soon became known as a singer and master of ceremonies. By the early 1910s, he was a well-regarded local entertainer also playing piano, and was composing new tunes by 1913. Williams was a good businessman and worked...

#14698

Carl Friedrich Zelter

Carl Friedrich Zelter

1758 - 1832 (74 years)

Carl Friedrich Zelter was a German composer, conductor and teacher of music. Working in his father's bricklaying business, Zelter attained mastership in that profession, and was a musical autodidact.

#14699

Ernest Tubb

1914 - 1984 (70 years)

Ernest Dale Tubb , nicknamed the Texas Troubadour, was an American singer and songwriter and one of the pioneers of country music. His biggest career hit song, "Walking the Floor Over You" , marked the rise of the honky tonk style of music.

#14700

Gregor Piatigorsky

1903 - 1976 (73 years)

Gregor Piatigorsky was a Russian Empire-born American cellist. Biography Early life Gregor Piatigorsky was born in Ekaterinoslav into a Jewish family. As a child, he was taught violin and piano by his father. After seeing and hearing the cello, he was determined to become a cellist and was given his first cello when he was seven.

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