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.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
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List of the most influential people in Communications,
#15801
Paul Elmer More
1864 - 1937 (73 years)
Paul Elmer More was an American journalist, critic, essayist and Christian apologist. Biography Paul Elmer More, the son of Enoch Anson and Katherine Hay Elmer, was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He was educated at Washington University in St. Louis and Harvard University. More taught Sanskrit at Harvard and Bryn Mawr .
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A. S. Hornby
1898 - 1978 (80 years)
Albert Sidney Hornby, usually just A. S. Hornby , was an English grammarian, lexicographer, and pioneer in the field of English language learning and teaching . Hornby was born in Chester and educated at University College London. In April 1924 he went to Japan to teach English at Oita University . He joined Harold E. Palmer in his programme of vocabulary research at the Institute for Research in English Teaching . Palmer invited him to Tokyo in April 1933 as an assistant; in 1936, Hornby became the technical adviser and editor of IRET's Bulletin.
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Alexandru Graur
1900 - 1988 (88 years)
Alexandru Graur was a Romanian linguist. Born into a Jewish family in Botoșani, Graur graduated from the Faculty of Letters of the University of Bucharest and the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris . He obtained a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the Sorbonne. After returning to Bucharest, he became involved in academic life and published studies in different periodicals.
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Howard Hawks
1896 - 1977 (81 years)
Howard Winchester Hawks was an American film director, producer, and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era. Critic Leonard Maltin called him "the greatest American director who is not a household name." Roger Ebert called Hawks "one of the greatest American directors of pure movies, and a hero of auteur critics because he found his own laconic values in so many different kinds of genre material." He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for Sergeant York and earned the Honorary Academy Award in 1974.
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Moses ibn Ezra
1060 - 1138 (78 years)
Rabbi Moses ben Jacob ibn Ezra, known as Ha-Sallaḥ was an Andalusi Jewish philosopher, linguist, and poet. He was born in Granada about 1055 – 1060, and died after 1138. Ibn Ezra is considered to have had great influence in the Arabic literary world. He is considered one of Spain's greatest poets and was thought to be ahead of his time in terms of his theories on the nature of poetry. One of the more revolutionary aspects of Ibn Ezra's poetry that has been debated is his definition of poetry as metaphor and how his poetry illuminates Aristotle's early ideas. The impact of Ibn Ezra's philosop...
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Joseph Breen
1890 - 1965 (75 years)
Joseph Ignatius Breen was an American film censor with the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America who applied the Hays Code to film production. Early life and career Breen was the youngest of three sons born to Mary and Hugh A. Breen in Philadelphia. His father had emigrated from Ireland and met his mother Mary in New Jersey. Breen was raised in a strict Roman Catholic home and attended Gesu Parish School until the eighth grade. He then attended Boys Catholic High School. He attended Saint Joseph's College but dropped out after two years, after which he worked as a newspaper reporter for fourteen years in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Chicago.
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Abel Gance
1889 - 1981 (92 years)
Abel Gance was a French film director and producer, writer and actor. A pioneer in the theory and practice of montage, he is best known for three major silent films: J'accuse , La Roue , and Napoléon .
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Kenneth Slessor
1901 - 1971 (70 years)
Kenneth Adolphe Slessor was an Australian poet, journalist and official war correspondent in World War II. He was one of Australia's leading poets, notable particularly for the absorption of modernist influences into Australian poetry. The Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry is named after him.
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Django Reinhardt
1910 - 1953 (43 years)
Jean Reinhardt , known by his Romani nickname Django , was a Romani-French jazz guitarist and composer. He was one of the first major jazz talents to emerge in Europe and has been hailed as one of its most significant exponents.
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Samuel Wells Williams
1812 - 1884 (72 years)
Samuel Wells Williams was a linguist, official, missionary and Sinologist from the United States in the early 19th century. Early life Williams was born in Utica, New York, son of William Williams and the former Sophia Wells, an elder of the First Presbyterian Church. Among his siblings were brothers William Frederick Williams and Henry Dwight Williams. His father's Williams family moved from Massachusetts to Utica in 1800 where his father joined his uncle, William McLean, and assisted in publishing the Whitestown Gazette and Cato's Patrol . His became a partner in 1807, and later a master...
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William Edward Parry
1790 - 1855 (65 years)
Sir William Edward Parry was a Royal Navy officer and explorer best known for his 1819–1820 expedition through the Parry Channel, probably the most successful in the long quest for the Northwest Passage, until it was finally negotiated by Roald Amundsen in 1906. In 1827, Parry attempted one of the earliest expeditions to the North Pole. He reached 82° 45' N, setting a record for human exploration Farthest North that stood for nearly five decades before being surpassed at 83° 20' N by Albert Hastings Markham in 1875.
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Richard Dimbleby
1913 - 1965 (52 years)
Frederick Richard Dimbleby was an English journalist and broadcaster, who became the BBC's first war correspondent, and then its leading TV news commentator. As host of the long-running current affairs programme Panorama, he pioneered a popular style of interviewing that was respectful but searching. At formal public events, he could combine gravitas with creative insights based on extensive research. He was also able to maintain interest throughout the all-night election specials.
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Edwin Arnold
1832 - 1904 (72 years)
Sir Edwin Arnold KCIE CSI was an English poet and journalist, who is most known for his work The Light of Asia. Biography Arnold was born at Gravesend, Kent, the second son of a Sussex magistrate, Robert Coles Arnold. He grew up at Southchurch Wick, a farm in Southchurch, Essex, and was educated at King's School, Rochester; King's College London; and University College, Oxford, where he won the Newdigate prize for poetry on the subject of "The Feast of Belshazzar" in 1852. He became a schoolmaster, at King Edward's School, Birmingham, and in 1856 went to India as Principal of the Deccan Coll...
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Frank Norris
1870 - 1902 (32 years)
Benjamin Franklin Norris Jr. was an American journalist and novelist during the Progressive Era, whose fiction was predominantly in the naturalist genre. His notable works include McTeague: A Story of San Francisco , The Octopus: A Story of California and The Pit .
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Joost Schmidt
1893 - 1948 (55 years)
Joost Schmidt was a German typographer, a teacher and master at the Bauhaus, and later a professor at the College of Visual Arts, Berlin. He was a visionary typographer and graphic designer who is best known for designing the famous poster for the 1923 Bauhaus Exhibition in Weimar, Germany.
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Antonin Artaud
1896 - 1948 (52 years)
Antoine Marie Joseph Paul Artaud, better known as Antonin Artaud , was a French writer, poet, dramatist, visual artist, essayist, actor and theatre director. He is widely recognized as a major figure of the European avant-garde. In particular, he had a profound influence on twentieth-century theatre through his conceptualization of the Theatre of Cruelty. Known for his raw, surreal and transgressive work, his texts explored themes from the cosmologies of ancient cultures, philosophy, the occult, mysticism and indigenous Mexican and Balinese practices.
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Vesta Tilley
1864 - 1952 (88 years)
Matilda Alice Powles, Lady de Frece was an English music hall performer. She adopted the stage name Vesta Tilley and became one of the best-known male impersonators of her era. Her career lasted from 1869 until 1920. Starting in provincial theatres with her father as manager, she performed her first season in London in 1874. She typically performed as a dandy or fop, also playing other roles. She found additional success as a principal boy in pantomime.
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Carl Darling Buck
1866 - 1955 (89 years)
Carl Darling Buck was an American philologist. Biography Buck was born on October 2, 1866, in Maine . He graduated from Yale in 1886, was a graduate student there for three years, and studied at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens from 1887 to 1889, and in Leipzig from 1889–1892.
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Rose Wilder Lane
1886 - 1968 (82 years)
Rose Wilder Lane was an American writer and daughter of American writer Laura Ingalls Wilder. Along with two other female writers, Ayn Rand and Isabel Paterson, Lane is one of the most influential advocates of the American libertarian movement.
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Joseph Vendryes
1875 - 1960 (85 years)
Joseph Vendryes or Vendryès was a French Celtic linguist. After studying with Antoine Meillet, he was chairman of Celtic languages and literature at the École Pratique des Hautes Études. He founded the journal Études Celtiques. He was a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres and a consultant with the International Auxiliary Language Association, which standardized and presented Interlingua.
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Kyōsuke Kindaichi
1882 - 1971 (89 years)
Kyōsuke Kindaichi was a Japanese linguist, chiefly known for his dictations of yukar, or sagas of the Ainu people, as well as his study of the Matagi dialect. He is the author of the dictionary Meikai Kokugo Jiten.
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Richard Harding Davis
1864 - 1916 (52 years)
Richard Harding Davis was an American journalist and writer of fiction and drama, known foremost as the first American war correspondent to cover the Spanish–American War, the Second Boer War, and World War I. His writing greatly assisted the political career of Theodore Roosevelt. He also played a major role in the evolution of the American magazine. His influence extended to the world of fashion, and he is credited with making the clean-shaven look popular among men at the turn of the 20th century.
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Carl Maria von Weber
1786 - 1826 (40 years)
Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber was a German composer, conductor, virtuoso pianist, guitarist, and critic of the early Romantic period. Best known for his operas, he was a crucial figure in the development of German Romantische Oper .
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Daniel Auber
1782 - 1871 (89 years)
Daniel-François-Esprit Auber was a French composer and director of the Paris Conservatoire. Born into an artistic family, Auber was at first an amateur composer before he took up writing operas professionally when the family's fortunes failed in 1820. He soon established a professional partnership with the librettist Eugène Scribe that lasted for 41 years and produced 39 operas, most of them commercial and critical successes. He is mostly associated with opéra-comique and composed 35 works in that genre. With Scribe he wrote the first French grand opera, La Muette de Portici in 1828, which p...
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Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti
1774 - 1849 (75 years)
Giuseppe Gasparo Mezzofanti was an Italian cardinal and famed hyperpolyglot. Life Born to humble parents in Bologna, he showed exceptional mnemonic skills as well as a flair for music and foreign language learning from a very young age. He studied with the Piarists where he had the chance to meet several missionaries from various countries. By speaking with them he began learning several new languages including Swedish, German, Spanish and South American native languages as well as studying Latin and ancient Greek in school. He completed his theological studies before he had reached the minimum age for ordination as a priest.
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Marjory Stoneman Douglas
1890 - 1998 (108 years)
Marjory Stoneman Douglas was an American journalist, author, women's suffrage advocate, and conservationist known for her staunch defense of the Everglades against efforts to drain it and reclaim land for development. Moving to Miami as a young woman to work for The Miami Herald, she became a freelance writer, producing over one hundred short stories that were published in popular magazines. Her most influential work was the book The Everglades: River of Grass , which redefined the popular conception of the Everglades as a treasured river instead of a worthless swamp. Its impact has been compared to that of Rachel Carson's influential book Silent Spring .
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Jules Feller
1859 - 1940 (81 years)
Jules Feller was a Belgian academician and Walloon militant. Biography Jules Feller created the of spelling for the Walloon language. This is also used for writing the Picard language since a consensus arose between universities in favour of the written form known as Feller-Carton .
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Charles Laughton
1899 - 1962 (63 years)
Charles Laughton was an English actor. He was trained in London at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and first appeared professionally on the stage in 1926. In 1927, he was cast in a play with his future wife Elsa Lanchester, with whom he lived and worked until his death.
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Claudio Monteverdi
1567 - 1643 (76 years)
Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi was an Italian composer, choirmaster and string player. A composer of both secular and sacred music, and a pioneer in the development of opera, he is considered a crucial transitional figure between the Renaissance and Baroque periods of music history.
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Maximus Planudes
1260 - 1305 (45 years)
Maximus Planudes was a Byzantine Greek monk, scholar, anthologist, translator, mathematician, grammarian and theologian at Constantinople. Through his translations from Latin into Greek and from Greek into Latin, he brought the Greek East and the Latin West into closer contact with one another. He is now best known as a compiler of the Greek Anthology.
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Frederic Goudy
1865 - 1947 (82 years)
Frederic William Goudy was an American printer, artist and type designer whose typefaces include Copperplate Gothic, Goudy Old Style and Kennerley. He was one of the most prolific of American type designers and his self-named type continues to be one of the most popular in America.
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John Martin
1893 - 1985 (92 years)
John Martin became America's first major dance critic in 1927. Focusing his efforts on propelling the modern dance movement, he greatly influenced the careers of dancers such as Martha Graham. Within his life he wrote several books on the modern dance and received numerous awards for his work.
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Alice Neel
1900 - 1984 (84 years)
Alice Neel was an American visual artist, who was known for her portraits depicting friends, family, lovers, poets, artists, and strangers. Her career spanned from the 1920s to 1980s. Her paintings have an expressionistic use of line and color, psychological acumen, and emotional intensity. She pursued a career as a figurative painter during a period when abstraction was favored, and she did not begin to gain critical praise for her work until the 1960s.
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Leo Amery
1873 - 1955 (82 years)
Leopold Charles Maurice Stennett Amery , also known as L. S. Amery, was a British Conservative politician and journalist. During his career, he was known for his interest in military preparedness, British India and the British Empire and for his opposition to appeasement. After his retirement and death, he was perhaps best known for the remarks he made in the House of Commons on 7 May 1940 during the Norway Debate.
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Joyce Kilmer
1886 - 1918 (32 years)
Alfred Joyce Kilmer was an American writer and poet mainly remembered for a short poem titled "Trees" , which was published in the collection Trees and Other Poems in 1914. Though a prolific poet whose works celebrated the common beauty of the natural world as well as his Catholic faith, Kilmer was also a journalist, literary critic, lecturer, and editor. At the time of his deployment to Europe during World War I, Kilmer was considered the leading American Catholic poet and lecturer of his generation, whom critics often compared to British contemporaries G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc .
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Antonino Votto
1896 - 1985 (89 years)
Antonino Votto, sometimes spelt Antonio Votto, was an Italian operatic conductor and vocal coach. Votto developed an extensive discography with the Teatro alla Scala in Milan during the 1950s, when EMI produced the bulk of its studio recordings featuring Maria Callas. Though Votto was a dependable conductor , critics frequently faulted his recordings for their lack of emotional immediacy. This may have been an occupational hazard of working in the studio, as his live sets with Callas, including a Norma and La sonnambula are considered to be great performances. Among his pupils was the sopr...
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Alois Walde
1869 - 1924 (55 years)
Alois Walde was an Austrian linguist. Alois Walde studied classical philology and comparative linguistics at the University of Innsbruck where he was awarded a PhD in 1894. The year after, he became a state employee at the university library. In 1895, he was awarded his habilitation and became a professor in 1904 at the University of Innsbruck. 1909-1912, Walde was Professor of comparative linguistics at the University of Giessen, but returned in 1912 to Innsbruck where he became the dean of faculty in 1914 and rector of the university in 1916. The year after, he became a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
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Mary Wigman
1886 - 1973 (87 years)
Mary Wigman was a German dancer and choreographer, notable as the pioneer of expressionist dance, dance therapy, and movement training without pointe shoes. She is considered one of the most important figures in the history of modern dance. She became one of the most iconic figures of Weimar German culture and her work was hailed for bringing the deepest of existential experiences to the stage.
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James Cagney
1899 - 1986 (87 years)
James Francis Cagney Jr. was an American actor, dancer and film director. On stage and in film, he was known for his consistently energetic performances, distinctive vocal style, and deadpan comic timing. He won acclaim and major awards for a wide variety of performances.
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Adolphe Pictet
1799 - 1875 (76 years)
Adolphe Pictet was a Swiss linguist, philologist and ethnologist. Pictet, the cousin of the biologist Francois Jules Pictet, is well known for his research in the field of comparative linguistics. He played a crucial formative role in the development of Ferdinand de Saussure; "it was Pictet who introduced the thirteen-year-old Saussure to the theoretical foundations of Indo-European linguistics." But he was also "a dedicated champion of German Romanticism and idealist philosophy":Like French, English, and Russian Romantics since the beginning of the century, he made a journey to Germany, where he became acquainted with A.
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Paul Gallico
1897 - 1976 (79 years)
Paul William Gallico was an American novelist and short story and sports writer. Many of his works were adapted for motion pictures. He is perhaps best remembered for The Snow Goose, his most critically successful book, for the novel The Poseidon Adventure, primarily through the 1972 film adaptation, and for four novels about the beloved character of Mrs. Harris.
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Yehoshua Bar-Hillel
1915 - 1975 (60 years)
Yehoshua Bar-Hillel was an Israeli philosopher, mathematician, and linguist. He was a pioneer in the fields of machine translation and formal linguistics. Biography Born Oscar Westreich in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, he was raised in Berlin. In 1933 he emigrated to Palestine with the Bnei Akiva youth movement, and briefly joined the kibbutz Tirat Zvi before settling in Jerusalem and marrying Shulamith.
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Irving Berlin
1888 - 1989 (101 years)
Irving Berlin was an American composer and lyricist. His music forms a large part of the Great American Songbook. Berlin received numerous honors including an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, and a Tony Award. He also received Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Gerald R. Ford in 1977. Journalist Walter Cronkite stated he "helped write the story of this country, capturing the best of who we are and the dreams that shape our lives".
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Vladimir I. Georgiev
1908 - 1986 (78 years)
Vladimir Ivanov Georgiev was a prominent Bulgarian linguist, philologist, and educational administrator. Biography Vladimir Georgiev was born in the Bulgarian village of Gabare, near Byala Slatina and graduated in philology at Sofia University in 1930. He specialized in Indo-European, Slavic and general linguistics at the University of Vienna , and later at the universities of Berlin , Florence and Paris . Assistant Professor at Sofia University , Associated Professor , Professor , head of the department of general and comparative-historical linguistics at the Faculty of History and Philology at Sofia University , Dean of the Faculty of Philology , Vice-Rector , Rector .
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Martin Hattala
1821 - 1903 (82 years)
Martin Hattala was a Slovak pedagogue, Roman Catholic theologian and linguist. He is best known for his reform of the Štúr's Slovak language, so-called Hodža-Hattala reform, in which he introduced the etymological principle to the Slovak language.
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James Blish
1921 - 1975 (54 years)
James Benjamin Blish was an American science fiction and fantasy writer. He is best known for his Cities in Flight novels and his series of Star Trek novelizations written with his wife, J. A. Lawrence. His novel A Case of Conscience won the Hugo Award. He is credited with creating the term "gas giant" to refer to large planetary bodies.
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Mei Lanfang
1894 - 1961 (67 years)
Mei Lan , better known by his stage name Mei Lanfang, was a notable Peking opera artist in modern Chinese theater. Mei was known as "Queen of Peking Opera". Mei was exclusively known for his female lead roles and particularly his "verdant-robed girls" , young or middle-aged women of grace and refinement. He was considered one of the "Four Great Dan", along with Shang Xiaoyun, Cheng Yanqiu, and Xun Huisheng.
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Gerardus Vossius
1577 - 1649 (72 years)
Gerrit Janszoon Vos , often known by his Latin name Gerardus Vossius, was a Dutch classical scholar and theologian. Life He was the son of Johannes Vos, a Protestant from the Netherlands, who fled from persecution into the Electorate of the Palatinate and briefly became pastor in the village near Heidelberg where Gerardus was born, before friction with the strict Lutherans of the Palatinate caused him to settle the following year at the University of Leiden as student of theology, and finally became pastor at Dordrecht, where he died in 1585. Here in Dordrecht the son received his education,...
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Dhondo Keshav Karve
1858 - 1962 (104 years)
Dhondo Keshav Karve , popularly known as Maharshi Karve, was a social reformer in India in the field of women's welfare. He advocated widow remarriage and he himself married a widow. Karve was a pioneer in promoting widows' education. He founded the first women's university in India, the SNDT Women's University in 1916. The Government of India awarded him with the highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna, in 1958, the year of his 100th birthday. He organized a conference against the practice of devdasi. He started 'Anath balikashram' an orphanage for girls. His intention was to give education to all women and make them stand on their own feet.
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Leonard Robert Palmer
1906 - 1984 (78 years)
Leonard Robert Palmer was author and Professor of Comparative Philology at the University of Oxford from 1952 to 1971. He was also a Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford. Palmer made some significant contributions to the study of Classical languages, and in the area of historical linguistics.
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