The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
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List of the most influential people in Communications,
#15251
Jimmy B. Bedford
1927 - 1990 (63 years)
Jimmy B. Bedford was the former head of the University of Alaska Fairbanks journalism department. He is also the author of Around the World on a Nickel . There is a Jimmy B. Bedford Memorial Scholarship set up in his honor. He was presented with the Howard Rock Award in 1977. He also contributed to the Concise English Afghan Dari Dictionary, revised and enlarged, with Sardar M. Ah. Sakaria of Kabul University, published in January 1973.
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Gertrude Lawrence
1898 - 1952 (54 years)
Gertrude Lawrence was an English actress, singer, dancer and musical comedy performer known for her stage appearances in the West End of London and on Broadway in New York. Early life Lawrence was born Gertrude Alice Dagmar Klasen, Alexandra Dagmar Lawrence-Klasen, Gertrude Alexandra Dagmar Klasen or some variant , of English and Danish extraction, in Newington, London. Her father was a basso profondo who performed under the name Arthur Lawrence. His heavy drinking led her mother Alice to leave him soon after Gertrude's birth.
Go to Profile#15253
Desi Arnaz
1917 - 1986 (69 years)
Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III was a Cuban-American actor, musician and bandleader. He played Ricky Ricardo on the American television sitcom I Love Lucy, in which he co-starred with his wife Lucille Ball. Arnaz and Ball are credited as the innovators of the syndicated rerun, which they pioneered with the I Love Lucy series.
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Kate Bruce
1860 - 1946 (86 years)
Kate Bruce was an American actress of the silent era. She appeared in more than 280 films between 1908 and 1931. She was born in Columbus, Indiana, and died in New York, New York. In 1885, Bruce left Boone, Iowa, in a wagon with a group of traveling actors at a time when stages were illuminated by oil lights. On Broadway, Bruce performed in The Starbucks .
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Samuel Scheidt
1587 - 1654 (67 years)
Samuel Scheidt was a German composer, organist and teacher of the early Baroque era. Life and career Scheidt was born in Halle, and after early studies there, he went to Amsterdam to study with Sweelinck, the distinguished Dutch composer, whose work had a clear influence on Scheidt's style. On his return to Halle, Scheidt became court organist, and later Kapellmeister, to the Margrave of Brandenburg. Unlike many German musicians, for example Heinrich Schütz, he remained in Germany during the Thirty Years' War, managing to survive by teaching and by taking a succession of smaller jobs until the restoration of stability allowed him to resume his post as Kapellmeister.
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Aureliano Pertile
1885 - 1952 (67 years)
Aureliano Pertile was an Italian lyric tenor. Many critics consider him one of the most exciting operatic artists of the inter-war period, and one of the most important tenors of the 20th century. Life and career Pertile was born in Montagnana, Northern Italy, 18 days after the birth of another celebrated tenor, Giovanni Martinelli, in the same town. He studied with Vittorio Orefice in Padua, and Gaetano Bavagnoli in Milan, before making his operatic debut as Lyonel in Martha, in 1911, in Vicenza.
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Henry Holmes
1839 - 1905 (66 years)
Henry Holmes was a British violinist, composer, and music educator. His compositional output includes a violin concerto, several works for solo violin, five symphonies, a concert overture, two sacred cantatas for solo voices, chorus, and orchestra, and other chamber and choral works.
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Hamish MacCunn
1868 - 1916 (48 years)
Hamish MacCunn, né James MacCunn was a Scottish composer, conductor and teacher. He was one of the first students of the newly founded Royal College of Music in London, and quickly made a mark. As a composer he achieved early success with his orchestral piece The Land of the Mountain and the Flood , and, later, his first opera, Jeanie Deans . His subsequent compositions did not match those two successes, and although he continued to compose throughout his life, he became best known as a conductor and teacher. He held teaching appointments at the Royal Academy of Music and the Guildhall School...
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Hans Redlich
1903 - 1968 (65 years)
Hans Ferdinand Redlich was an Austrian musicologist, writer, conductor and composer who, due to political disruption by the Nazi Party, lived and worked in Britain from 1939 until his death nearly thirty years later.
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Bo Carter
1892 - 1964 (72 years)
Armenter Chatmon , known as Bo Carter, was an early American blues musician. He was a member of the Mississippi Sheiks in concerts and on a few of their recordings. He also managed that group, which included his brothers Lonnie Chatmon on fiddle and, occasionally, Sam Chatmon on bass, and their friend Walter Vinson on guitar and lead vocalss.
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Gerald Marks
1900 - 1997 (97 years)
Gerald Marks was an American composer from Saginaw, Michigan. He was best known for the song "All of Me" which he co-wrote with Seymour Simons and has been recorded about 2,000 times. He also wrote the songs "That's What I Want for Christmas" for the film Stowaway starring Shirley Temple, and "Is It True What They Say About Dixie" recorded by Al Jolson and Rudy Vallee.
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Asan Sabri Ayvazov
1878 - 1938 (60 years)
Asan Sabri Ayvazov was a Crimean Tatar politician, journalist, writer, educator, and pedagogue in the Russian Empire. Active from the early 1890s until the late 1920s, Ayvazov was a preeminent figure among the Crimean Tatar intelligentsia, and one of the leaders of the Crimean Tatar nationalist movement.
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Paul Tsuchihashi
1866 - 1965 (99 years)
Paul Yachita Tsuchihashi was a Japanese Roman Catholic priest, mathematician, astronomer, Sinologist, lexicographer, academic and administrator. Father Paul is known for having developed extensive tables for converting traditional Japanese era dates into Gregorian calendar equivalents — compare, e.g., Calendrical Time Conversion Table which is derived from a formula for determining the numbered date in the Japanese month.
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Feodor Chaliapin
1873 - 1938 (65 years)
Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapin was a Russian opera singer. Possessing a deep and expressive bass voice, he enjoyed an important international career at major opera houses and is often credited with establishing the tradition of naturalistic acting in his chosen art form.
Go to Profile#15265
Richard P. Condie
1898 - 1985 (87 years)
Richard P. Condie was the conductor of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in Salt Lake City, Utah from 1957 to 1974. Condie was a graduate of Brigham Young University in 1923 and the New England Conservatory of Music in 1928 and became assistant conductor of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in 1937. Condie taught at the McCune School of Music in Salt Lake City, at BYU in Provo, Utah, Utah State University in Logan Utah and at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. After he became director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir he formed a relationship with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Their...
Go to Profile#15266
Tom Moore
1883 - 1955 (72 years)
Thomas J. Moore was an Irish-American actor and director. He appeared in at least 186 motion pictures from 1908 to 1954. Frequently cast as the romantic lead, he starred in silent movies as well as in some of the first talkies.
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Bennie Green
1923 - 1977 (54 years)
Bennie Green was an American jazz trombonist. Born in Chicago, Illinois, United States, Green worked in the orchestras of Earl Hines and Charlie Ventura, and recorded as bandleader through the 1950s and 1960s. According to critic Scott Yanow of AllMusic, Green's style straddled swing music and soul, making him one of the few trombonists of the 1950s and '60s uninfluenced by the pioneering sound of J.J. Johnson.
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Frederick Jacobi
1891 - 1952 (61 years)
Frederick Jacobi was a Jewish-American composer and teacher. His works include symphonies, concerti, chamber music, works for solo piano and for solo organ, lieder, and one opera. He taught at Juilliard School of Music from 1936 to 1950, where his pupils included Mark Bucci, Alexei Haieff, Julia Frances Smith, Robert Starer, John Verrall, and Robert Ward. He also served as the director of the American section of the International Society for Contemporary Music and was a founding member of the League of Composers. He died on October 24, 1952, in New York City of heart failure.
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Michio Miyagi
1894 - 1956 (62 years)
was a Japanese musician, famous for his koto playing. He was born in Kobe. He lost his sight in 1902, when he was 8 years old, and started his study in koto under the guidance of Nakajima Kengyo II, dedicating the rest of his life to the instrument. In 1907 he moved with his family to Incheon, in southern Korea. When he was 14 years old, in 1909 he finished his first composition, Mizu no Hentai. At 18 he reached the rank of kengyo, the highest rank for a koto performer.
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Swami Satyabhakta
1899 - 1998 (99 years)
Swami Satyabhakta was an Indian scholar, philosopher, reformer and the founder of Satya Samaj. Early life Born Mulchanda at Shahpur, Sagar, he moved to Damoh to his aunt's house after the death of his mother at age 4, where he was renamed Darbarilal. He met Ganeshprasad Varni at Damoh and influenced by him, he joined the pathshala established by Varniji at Sagar. At age 19, he graduated with the title Nyayatirth and became a teacher at Sdyavad Vdyalaya at Varanasi for a year. He then moved to Seoni and then Indore, where he developed his rationalistic principles.
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Arsenio Rodríguez
1911 - 1970 (59 years)
Arsenio Rodríguez was a Cuban musician, composer and bandleader. He played the tres, as well as the tumbadora, and he specialized in son, rumba and other Afro-Cuban music styles. In the 1940s and 1950s Rodríguez established the conjunto format and contributed to the development of the son montuno, the basic template of modern-day salsa. He claimed to be the true creator of the mambo and was an important as well as a prolific composer who wrote nearly two hundred songs.
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Felix Blumenfeld
1863 - 1931 (68 years)
Felix Mikhailovich Blumenfeld was a Russian and Soviet composer, conductor of the Imperial Opera St-Petersburg, pianist, and teacher. He was born in Kirovograd , Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire, the son of Mikhail Frantsevich Blumenfeld, of Austrian Jewish origin, and Maria Szymanowska. Blumenfeld studied with Gustav Neuhaus, married to his older sister. Then he studied composition at the St. Petersburg Conservatory under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and piano under Fedor Stein between 1881 and 1885. He then taught piano there himself from 1885 until 1918, whilst also serving as conductor of t...
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Flor Peeters
1903 - 1986 (83 years)
Franciscus Florentinus Peeters, Baron Peeters was a Belgian composer, organist and academic teacher. He was director of the Conservatorium in Antwerp, Belgium, and organist at Mechelen Cathedral from 1923 to his death in 1986.
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Joseph Kane
1894 - 1975 (81 years)
Jasper Joseph Inman Kane was an American film director, film producer, film editor and screenwriter. He is best known for his extensive directorship and focus on Western films. Biography Kane began his career as a professional cellist. In 1934 he took an interest in film directing and, starting in 1935, he co-directed serials for Mascot Pictures and Republic Pictures. He soon became Republic's top Western film director.
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George B. Seitz
1888 - 1944 (56 years)
George Brackett Seitz was an American playwright, screenwriter, film actor and director. He was known for his screenplays for action serialss, such as The Perils of Pauline and The Exploits of Elaine .
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Robert Teichmüller
1863 - 1939 (76 years)
Robert Teichmüller was a German concert pianist and music educator. He studied piano and music theory with Carl Reinecke at the Leipzig Conservatory where he later became a faculty member in 1897, promoted to professor in 1908. He became one of the most influential piano teachers of his time. His students included notable pianists Günther Ramin, Sigfrid Karg-Elert, Siegfried Rapp, Harry Dean, Kurt Hessenberg, Eileen Joyce, Rudolf Wagner-Régeny, Didia Saint Georges, Herbert Albert, Rudolf Mauersberger, Elinor Kaland , Leonard Shepherd Munn and Ernst Oster, who became a music theory teacher. He also edited piano music of Mozart and Max Reger.
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John Pyke Hullah
1812 - 1884 (72 years)
John Pyke Hullah was an English composer and teacher of music, whose promotion of vocal training is associated with the singing-class movement. He worked with Charles Dickens and Felix Mendelssohn. Life and career Hullah was born at Worcester. He was a pupil of William Horsley from 1829, and entered the Royal Academy of Music in 1833. He wrote an opera to words by Dickens, The Village Coquettes, produced in 1836; The Barbers of Bassora in 1837; and The Outpost in 1838, the last two at Covent Garden. From 1839, when he went to Paris to investigate various systems of teaching music to large ma...
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Abram Yampolsky
1890 - 1956 (66 years)
Abram Ilich Yampolsky was a Soviet violin teacher who nurtured many Soviet virtuosos during his tenure at the Moscow Conservatory. He graduated in Saint Petersburg in 1913 in the class of Sergej Korguyev, a pupil and assistant of Leopold Auer, and was to be one of the founders of the Russian and American 20th century violin schools.
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Jim O'Brien
1939 - 1983 (44 years)
James Franklin Oldham, better known as Jim O'Brien , was an American newscaster. He was a member of the WPVI-TV Channel 6 Action News team, which became the highest-rated television news team in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and the Delaware Valley region during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
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Emil von Reznicek
1860 - 1945 (85 years)
Emil Nikolaus Joseph, Freiherr von Reznicek was an Austrian composer of Romanian-Czech ancestry. Life Reznicek's grandfather, Josef Resnitschek , was a trumpet virtuoso and band leader in the Imperial regiments Nos. 32 , based in Budapest, and 60 , based in Vienna where he played music with Johann Strauss Sr. and Joseph Lanner. Reznicek's father Josef Resnitschek/Reznicek entered the army as a cadet and eventually became Feldmarschall-Lieutenant, the second-highest rank in the Austrian army, gaining an ordinary diploma of nobility in 1851 and the rank as a Baron in 1859. His mother, Clarisse Fürstin Ghika Budești , belonged to the influential Ghika family of Romania.
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Osie Johnson
1923 - 1966 (43 years)
James "Osie" Johnson was a jazz drummer, arranger and singer. Johnson studied at Armstrong Highschool where he was classmates with Leo Parker and Frank Wess. He first worked with Sabby Lewis and then, after service in the United States Navy, freelanced for a time in Chicago. From 1951 to 1953, he was a member of Earl Hines's band.
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Johann Hermann Schein
1586 - 1630 (44 years)
Johann Hermann Schein was a German composer of the early Baroque era. He was Thomaskantor in Leipzig from 1615 to 1630. He was one of the first to import the early Italian stylistic innovations into German music, and was one of the most polished composers of the period.
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Mathilde Verne
1865 - 1936 (71 years)
Mathilde Verne was an English pianist and teacher, of German descent. Along with most of her other sisters, Mathilde changed her surname to Verne in 1893 after the death of their father, John Wurm. Life and career She was born as Mathilde Würm in Southampton, England, the fourth of ten children. After studying for four years under Clara Schumann in Frankfurt, she became established as a concert pianist in 1887, as well as launching a career as music teacher. She taught briefly at the Royal College of Music, and later made regular appearances under Henry Wood at the Queen's Hall Promenade Conc...
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Konráð Gíslason
1808 - 1891 (83 years)
Konráð Gíslason was an Icelandic grammarian and philologist, and one of the Fjölnismenn, a group of Icelandic intellectuals who spearheaded the revival of Icelandic national consciousness in the 19th century. He was by royal appointment member of the 1849 Danish Constituent Assembly.
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Eva Novak
1898 - 1988 (90 years)
Eva Barbara Novak was an American film actress, who was quite popular during the silent film era. Biography On February 14, 1898, Eva Barbara Novak was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to Joseph Jerome Novak, an immigrant from Bohemia, and Barbara Medek. Her older sister, Johana, also became an actress. Joseph Novak died when Eva was still a child and Barbara was left to raise five children.
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Hans Blüher
1888 - 1955 (67 years)
Hans Blüher was a German writer and philosopher. He attained prominence as an early member and "first historian" of the Wandervogel movement. He was aided by his taboo breaking rebellion against schools and the Church. He was received with some genuine interest but sometimes perceived as scandalous.
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Johann Nepomuk David
1895 - 1977 (82 years)
Johann Nepomuk David was an Austrian composer. Life and career David was born in Eferding. He was a choirboy in the monastery of Sankt Florian and studied at an episcopal teacher training college in Linz, 1912–1915, after which he became a school teacher. He studied briefly at both the Musikhochschule and the university of Vienna . He returned to Linz in 1922, where he acted as musical director of the Linz "Kunststelle" until 1924. From January 1925 until the autumn of 1934 he was a teacher at a local catholic school, founded and directed a Bach choir, and was organist at a Protestant church at Wels.
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Matthäus Aurogallus
1490 - 1543 (53 years)
Matthäus Aurogallus, was a Bohemian linguist. Born in Chomutov , Bohemia, as Matthäus Goldhahn, Aurogallus served as professor of Hebrew at the University of Wittenberg and was a colleague of Philip Melanchthon and Martin Luther. He assisted Luther in the revision of the reformer's translation of the Old Testament and made valuable contributions to the academic study of Hebrew.
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Hoagy Carmichael
1899 - 1981 (82 years)
Hoagland Howard Carmichael was an American musician, composer, songwriter, actor and lawyer. Carmichael was one of the most successful Tin Pan Alley songwriters of the 1930s, and was among the first singer-songwriters in the age of mass media to utilize new communication technologies such as television, microphones, and sound recordings.
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William Hayman Cummings
1831 - 1915 (84 years)
William Hayman Cummings was an English musician, tenor and organist at Waltham Abbey. Cummings was born in Sidbury in Devon. He was educated at St Paul's Cathedral Choir School and the City of London School, becoming a pupil of Dr E. J. Hopkins, J. W. Hobbs and Alberto Randegger, and was for many years a chorister in St Paul's Cathedral and the Temple Church.
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Gracie Fields
1898 - 1979 (81 years)
Dame Gracie Fields was an English actress, singer, comedian and star of cinema and music hall who was one of the top ten film stars in Britain during the 1930s and was considered the highest paid film star in the world in 1937. She was known affectionately as Our Gracie and the Lancashire Lass and for never losing her strong, native Lancashire accent. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and an Officer of the Venerable Order of St John in 1938, and a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1979.
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Luigi Pavese
1897 - 1969 (72 years)
Luigi Pavese was an Italian actor and voice actor. Biography Born in Asti, Pavese started his career in 1916 working as a silent film actor at 19 years of age. He then began his theatrical debut in 1921 and eventually worked his way up to becoming a film actor by the 1930s. He appeared in more than 170 films between 1916 and 1969. By the time World War II ended, Pavese's popularity as an actor increased. He often portrayed characters with certain professions such as clerks, lawyers, soldiers, officers and notaries in comedy films and made frequent collaborations with other actors such as Totò...
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John Savage
1828 - 1888 (60 years)
John Savage was a poet, journalist and author. He was a member of both the Young Irelanders and the Fenians. Early life John Savage, who was born in Dublin on 13 December 1828. As a young art student in Dublin he was drawn into the insurrectionary movement in '48. On 11 March 1848 he wrote a letter which appeared in The Nation newspaper stating: "A the period, I trust, is rapidly approaching when the skill and valour of our citizen soldiers will be put to the test, I am induced, on the part of a large number of students of the different professions, to suggest the immediate organisation in D...
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Solomon Adlivankin
1921 - 1985 (64 years)
Solomon Juryevich Adlivankin was a Soviet linguist, the Dean of philological faculty at Perm State University , the author of handbooks on Old Slavonic Phonetics, unique in the 1970s; he was one of the Perm derivatology school founders, also he took part in compiling Akchim dialect dictionary.
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William A. Seiter
1890 - 1964 (74 years)
William Alfred Seiter was an American film director. Life and career Seiter was born in New York City. After attending Hudson River Military Academy, Seiter broke into films in 1915 as a bit player at Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios, doubling as a cowboy. He graduated to director in 1918.
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Oiva Tuulio
1878 - 1941 (63 years)
Oiva Johannes Tuulio was a Finnish linguist specializing in the Romance languages. He bore the surname Tallgren until 1933. Tuulio was son to provost Ivar Markus Tallgren and Jenny Maria Montin. He earned his PhD in 1907, was awarded the title of docent in 1910 and served as extraordinary professor of the Southern Romance languages at the University of Helsinki from 1928 to 1941. Before accepting the professorship, he had refused offers from the universities of Tartu and Riga. He made study trips to Paris 1901–1902 and to Southern Europe 1903–1904, 1907–1908, 1926 and 1931.
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William Jack
1834 - 1924 (90 years)
William Jack FRSE was a Scottish mathematician and journalist. He was Editor of the Glasgow Herald newspaper from 1870 to 1876, and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Glasgow from 1879 until 1909.
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Priaulx Rainier
1903 - 1986 (83 years)
Ivy Priaulx Rainier was a South African-British composer. Although she lived most of her life in England and died in France, her compositional style was strongly influenced by the African music remembered from her childhood. She never adopted 12-tone or serial techniques, but her music shows a profound understanding of that musical language. She can be credited with the first truly athematic works composed in England. Her Cello Concerto was premiered by Jacqueline du Pré in 1964, and her Violin Concerto Due Canti e Finale was premiered by Yehudi Menuhin in 1977.
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Jocelyne Binet
1923 - 1968 (45 years)
Jocelyne Binet was a Canadian composer, pianist, and music educator. She studied in Montreal and Paris, France, and returned to compose and teach music in Canada. Biography Binet was born in East Angus, near Sherbrooke, Quebec, and obtained two music degrees in Montreal before traveling to Paris, France, for studies in piano. She studied under Claude Champagne, Jean Dansereau and Jean-Marie Beaudet at the École Supérieure de Musique d'Outremont . She continued her studies at the Paris Conservatory in 1948 and 1949 on a grant from the French government and again in 1949 and 1951 on another grant from the Quebec government, where her teachers were Tony Aubin, Noël Gallon and Olivier Messiaen.
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May McAvoy
1899 - 1984 (85 years)
May Irene McAvoy was an American actress who worked mainly during the silent-film era. Some of her major roles are Laura Pennington in The Enchanted Cottage, Esther in Ben-Hur, and Mary Dale in The Jazz Singer.
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