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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.

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List of the most influential people in Communications,

#16251

Dorothy Swaine Thomas

1899 - 1977 (78 years)

Dorothy Swaine Thomas was an American sociologist and economist. She was the 42nd President of the American Sociological Association, the first woman in that role. Life and career Thomas was born on October 24, 1899, in Baltimore, Maryland to John Knight and Sarah Swaine Thomas.

#16252

Karl Aben

1896 - 1976 (80 years)

Karl Aben was an Estonian and Latvian linguist and translator. In Estonia, he became known as the country's foremost translator from Latvian at the time , but he also translated from Estonian into Latvian . Aben was born into an Estonian family in Northern Latvia, he studied at the University of Tartu, graduating with a degree in philology in 1940.

#16253

Edmund Rubbra

1901 - 1986 (85 years)

Edmund Rubbra was a British composer. He composed both instrumental and vocal works for soloists, chamber groups and full choruses and orchestras. He was greatly esteemed by fellow musicians and was at the peak of his fame in the mid-20th century. The best known of his pieces are his eleven symphonies. Although he was active at a time when many people wrote twelve-tone music, he decided not to write in this idiom; instead, he devised his own distinctive style. His later works were not as popular with the concert-going public as his previous ones had been, although he never lost the respect of his colleagues.

#16254

Vincent Youmans

Vincent Youmans

1898 - 1946 (48 years)

Vincent Millie Youmans was an American Broadway composer and producer. A leading Broadway composer of his day, Youmans collaborated with virtually all the greatest lyricists on Broadway: Ira Gershwin, Otto Harbach, Oscar Hammerstein II, Irving Caesar, Anne Caldwell, Leo Robin, Howard Dietz, Clifford Grey, Billy Rose, Edward Eliscu, Edward Heyman, Harold Adamson, Buddy DeSylva and Gus Kahn. Youmans' early songs are remarkable for their economy of melodic material: two-, three- or four-note phrases are constantly repeated and varied by subtle harmonic or rhythmic changes. In later years, however, he turned to longer musical sentences and more rhapsodic melodic lines.

#16255

Fernão de Oliveira

Fernão de Oliveira

1507 - 1581 (74 years)

Fernão de Oliveira , sometimes named Fernando de Oliveira or Fernando Oliveira, was a Portuguese grammarian, Dominican friar, historian, cartographer, naval pilot and theorist on naval warfare and shipbuilding. An adventurous humanist and renaissance man, he studied and published the first grammar of the Portuguese language, the Grammatica da lingoagem portuguesa, in 1536. He was an early critic of slavery and the slave trade.

#16256

Thomas Campion

1567 - 1620 (53 years)

Thomas Campion was an English composer, poet, and physician. He was born in London, educated at Cambridge, studied law in Gray's inn. He wrote over a hundred lute songs, masques for dancing, and an authoritative technical treatise on music.

#16257

Norman Petty

1927 - 1984 (57 years)

Norman Petty was an American musician, record producer, publisher, and radio station owner. He is considered to be one of the founding fathers of early rock & roll. With Vi Ann Petty—his wife and vocalist—he founded the Norman Petty Trio.

#16258

Humphrey Searle

1915 - 1982 (67 years)

Humphrey Searle was an English composer and writer on music. His music combines aspects of late Romanticism and modernist serialism, particularly reminiscent of his primary influences, Franz Liszt, Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, who was briefly his teacher. As a writer on music, Searle published texts on numerous topics; he was an authority on the music of Franz Liszt, and created the initial cataloguing system for his works.

#16259

Joseph Devlin

1871 - 1934 (63 years)

Joseph Devlin was an Irish journalist and influential nationalist politician. He was a Member of Parliament for the Irish Parliamentary Party in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom . Later Devlin was an MP and leader of the Nationalist Party in the Parliament of Northern Ireland. He was referred to as "the duodecimo Demosthenes" by the Irish politician Tim Healy which Devlin took as a compliment.

#16260

Meredith Willson

Meredith Willson

1902 - 1984 (82 years)

Robert Reiniger Meredith Willson was an American flutist, composer, conductor, musical arranger, bandleader, playwright, and writer. He is perhaps best known for writing the book, music, and lyrics for the 1957 hit Broadway musical The Music Man and "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" . Willson wrote three other Broadway musicals and composed symphonies and popular songs. He was twice nominated for Academy Awards for film scores.

#16261

Luigi Nono

1924 - 1990 (66 years)

Luigi Nono was an Italian avant-garde composer of classical music. Biography Early years Nono, born in Venice, was a member of a wealthy artistic family; his grandfather was a notable painter. Nono began music lessons with Gian Francesco Malipiero at the Venice Conservatory in 1941, where he acquired knowledge of the Renaissance madrigal tradition, amongst other styles. After graduating with a degree in law from the University of Padua, he was given encouragement in composition by Bruno Maderna. Through Maderna, he became acquainted with Hermann Scherchen—then Maderna's conducting teacher—wh...

#16262

Bud Powell

1924 - 1966 (42 years)

Earl Rudolph "Bud" Powell was an American jazz pianist and composer. A pioneer in the development of bebop, jazz critics have commented that his compositions and playing style "greatly extended the range of jazz harmony," and his application of complex bebop phrasing to the piano influenced both his contemporaries and later pianists including Walter Davis, Jr., Toshiko Akiyoshi, and Barry Harris. Although a severe beating by police in 1945, followed by years of electroconvulsive therapy treatments and hospitalization, impacted his health during the latter half of his career, he continued to compose, record, and perform until shortly before his death in 1966.

#16263

Kai Winding

1922 - 1983 (61 years)

Kai Chresten Winding was a Danish-born American trombonist and jazz composer. He is known for his collaborations with fellow trombonist J. J. Johnson. His version of "More", the theme from the movie Mondo Cane, reached in 1963 number 8 in the Billboard Hot 100 and remained his only entry here.

#16264

Don Ellis

1934 - 1978 (44 years)

Donald Johnson Ellis was an American jazz trumpeter, drummer, composer, and bandleader. He is best known for his extensive musical experimentation, particularly in the area of time signatures. Later in his life he worked as a film composer, contributing a score to 1971's The French Connection and 1973's The Seven-Ups.

#16265

Patsy Cline

1932 - 1963 (31 years)

Patsy Cline was an American singer. She is considered one of the most influential vocalists of the 20th century and was one of the first country music artists to cross over into pop music. Cline had several major hits during her eight-year recording career, including two number-one hits on the Billboard Hot Country and Western Sides chart.

#16266

Lionel Tertis

1876 - 1975 (99 years)

Lionel Tertis, CBE was an English violist. He was one of the first viola players to achieve international fame and a noted teacher. Career Tertis was born in West Hartlepool, the son of Polish-Jewish immigrants. He first studied violin in Leipzig, Germany and at the Royal Academy of Music in London. There he was encouraged by the principal, Alexander Mackenzie, to take up the viola instead. Under the additional influence of Oskar Nedbal, he did so and rapidly became one of the best known violists of his time, touring Europe and the US as a soloist.

#16267

Richard Fariña

1937 - 1966 (29 years)

Richard George Fariña was an American folksinger, songwriter, poet and novelist. Early years and education Fariña was born in Brooklyn, New York, United States, the son of an Irish mother, Theresa Crozier, and a Cuban father of Galician origin, also named Richard Fariña. He grew up in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn and attended Brooklyn Technical High School. He earned an academic scholarship to Cornell University, starting as an engineering major, but later switching to English. While at Cornell he published short stories for local literary magazines and for national periodicals, including Transatlantic Review and Mademoiselle.

#16268

Erich Kleiber

1890 - 1956 (66 years)

Erich Kleiber was an Austrian, later Argentine, conductor, known for his interpretations of the classics and as an advocate of new music. Kleiber was born in Vienna, and after studying at the Prague Conservatory, he followed the traditional route for an aspiring conductor in German-speaking countries of the time, starting as a répétiteur in an opera house and moving into conducting in increasingly senior positions. After holding posts in Darmstadt , Barmen-Elberfeld , Düsseldorf and Mannheim he was appointed in 1923 to the important post of musical director of the Berlin State Opera.

#16269

Eddie Condon

1905 - 1973 (68 years)

Albert Edwin Condon was an American jazz banjoist, guitarist, and bandleader. A leading figure in Chicago jazz, he also played piano and sang. He also owned a self-named night club in New York City.

#16270

Dolores Costello

Dolores Costello

1903 - 1979 (76 years)

Dolores Costello was an American film actress who achieved her greatest success during the era of silent movies. She was nicknamed "The Goddess of the Silent Screen" by her first husband, the actor John Barrymore. She was the mother of John Drew Barrymore and grandmother of actress and talk show host Drew Barrymore.

#16271

Hugo Alfvén

1872 - 1960 (88 years)

Hugo Emil Alfvén was a Swedish composer, conductor, violinist, and painter. Career Violinist Alfvén was born in Stockholm, Sweden, and studied at the Royal College of Music from 1887 to 1891 with the violin as his main instrument while receiving lessons from Lars Zetterquist. He also took private composition lessons from Johan Lindegren, a leading counterpoint expert. At the same time he played the violin at the Royal Opera in Stockholm 1890-1892.

#16272

Elio Petri

1929 - 1982 (53 years)

Eraclio Petri , commonly known as Elio Petri, was an Italian film director, screenwriter, theatre director, and critic associated with the political cinema in the 1960s and '70s. His film Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion won the 1971 Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film, and his film The Working Class Goes to Heaven won the Palme d'Or at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival.

#16273

Uzeyir Hajibeyov

1885 - 1948 (63 years)

Uzeyir bey Abdulhuseyn bey oghlu Hajibeyov , known as Uzeyir Hajibeyov , was an Azerbaijani composer, conductor, publicist, playwright, and social figure. He is recognized as the father of Azerbaijani composed classical music and opera. Uzeyir Hajibeyov composed the music of the national anthem of Azerbaijan Democratic Republic . He also composed the anthem used by Azerbaijan during the Soviet period. He was the first composer of an opera in the Islamic world. He composed the first oriental opera Leyli and Majnun in 1908 and since then he is revered for adapting the written masterpiece to the ...

#16274

Blanche Sweet

1896 - 1986 (90 years)

Sarah Blanche Sweet was an American silent film actress who began her career in the early days of the motion picture film industry. Early life Born Sarah Blanche Sweet in Chicago, Illinois in 1896, she was the daughter of Pearl Alexander, a dancer, and Gilbert Joel Sweet, a wine merchant. The actors Antrim and Gertrude Short were cousins of Blanche. Her mother died when Blanche was an infant, and she was raised by her maternal grandmother, Cora Blanche Alexander. Cora Alexander found her many parts as a young child. At age 4, she toured in the play The Battle of the Strong with Marie Burroug...

#16275

Mario Mattoli

1898 - 1980 (82 years)

Mario Mattoli was an Italian film director and screenwriter. He directed 86 films between 1934 and 1966. His 1939 film Defendant, Stand Up! was shown as part of a retrospective on Italian comedy at the 67th Venice International Film Festival.

#16276

Alan R. Hevner

#16277

G. David Houston

1880 - 1940 (60 years)

Gordon David Houston was Professor of English at Howard University, one of the first African-American educators to teach Old English literature and the first African-American from Cambridge to graduate from Harvard University.

#16278

Mary Lou Williams

1910 - 1981 (71 years)

Mary Lou Williams was an American jazz pianist, arranger, and composer. She wrote hundreds of compositions and arrangements and recorded more than one hundred records . Williams wrote and arranged for Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, and she was friend, mentor, and teacher to Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Tadd Dameron, Bud Powell, and Dizzy Gillespie.

#16279

Erna Berger

1900 - 1990 (90 years)

Erna Berger was a German lyric coloratura soprano. She was best known for roles such as Queen of the Night and Konstanze. Career Born in Dresden, Germany, Berger spent some years as a child in India and South America. She lived there later on as well, working as a clerk and a piano teacher, before borrowing enough money for the trip back to Germany. At age 26, she secured a position as a soubrette soprano at the Semperoper in Dresden and had her first success as Hannele in Paul Graener's opera Hanneles Himmelfahrt, based on Gerhart Hauptmann's play The Assumption of Hannele. She later held leading positions at the Vienna State Opera, the Berlin State Opera, and the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

#16280

Agostino Steffani

Agostino Steffani

1654 - 1728 (74 years)

Agostino Steffani was an Italian bishop, polymath, diplomat and composer. Education Steffani was born at Castelfranco Veneto on 25 July 1654. As a boy he was admitted as a chorister at San Marco, Venice.

#16281

Bernd Alois Zimmermann

1918 - 1970 (52 years)

Bernd Alois Zimmermann was a German composer. He is perhaps best known for his opera Die Soldaten, which is regarded as one of the most important German operas of the 20th century, after those of Berg. His eclectic music, which employs a wide range of techniques including dodecaphony and musical quotation, encompasses the styles of the avant-garde, serial, and postmodern.

#16282

Arthur Adams

1885 - 1969 (84 years)

Arthur Aleksandrovich Adams , was a Soviet spy, and Hero of the Russian Federation, who passed critical information to the Soviet Union about the American Manhattan Project. Early life Adams was born in the city of Eskilstuna, Sweden in 1885 to a Swedish father and a Russian Jewish mother. Following the death of his father, Adams's mother with her children returned to Russia, where she died in 1895. Adams entered a military navy school in 1896. In 1903 he graduated from a school of mining technology in Kronshtadt. His wife, Dorothy, was an aunt of American book editor Robert Gottlieb.

#16283

Sarah Robertson

Sarah Robertson

1891 - 1948 (57 years)

Sarah Margaret Armour Robertson was a Canadian painter of landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and murals for private homes. Early life Robertson was born in Montreal on June 16, 1891, the daughter of John Armour Robertson and Jessie Anne Christie, and the oldest of four siblings. Her parents were originally from Scotland. She was educated in Montreal. During her childhood, the family lived comfortably, but later faced financial struggles. She began art studies at the age of nineteen with a Wood Scholarship to the Art Association of Montreal under William Brymner and Maurice Cullen. World War ...

#16284

Eben Gowrie Waterhouse

1881 - 1977 (96 years)

Eben Gowrie Waterhouse was an Australian who had three distinguished careers. Starting out as an innovative teacher of languages, he became one of Australia's most prominent Germanists when classical German culture still commanded worldwide respect. Between the Wars in Sydney he was a leading arbiter of taste in house-and-garden living, fostering a conception of garden design which still dominates much of the Sydney North Shore and parts of Melbourne. Finally, in his long retirement he brought about, as scholar and plant-breeder, an international revival of interest in the genus Camellia.

#16285

Adrian Willaert

1480 - 1562 (82 years)

Adrian Willaert was a Flemish composer of High Renaissance music. Mainly active in Italy, he was the founder of the Venetian School. He was one of the most representative members of the generation of northern composers who moved to Italy and transplanted the polyphonic Franco-Flemish style there.

#16286

Hoimar von Ditfurth

1921 - 1989 (68 years)

Hoimar von Ditfurth was a German physician and scientific journalist. He was the father of Christian von Ditfurth, a historian, and Jutta Ditfurth, a writer and journalist. Ditfurth won many awards during his long career, including the Adolf Grimme Awards in 1968, the Bambi Prize in 1972, and the Kalinga Prize in 1978.

#16287

Louis Hasselmans

1878 - 1957 (79 years)

Louis Hasselmans was a French cellist and conductor. Biography The son of harpist Alphonse Hasselmans, Louis Hasselmans studied the cello with Jules Desart at the Conservatoire de Paris. He obtained a First prize in 1893. He worked with Albert Lavignac, Benjamin Godard and Jules Massenet.

#16288

Silvestre Revueltas

1899 - 1940 (41 years)

Silvestre Revueltas Sánchez was a Mexican composer of classical music, a violinist and a conductor. Life Revueltas was born in Santiago Papasquiaro in Durango, and studied at the National Conservatory in Mexico City, St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas, and the Chicago College of Music. He gave violin recitals and in 1929 was invited by Carlos Chávez to become assistant conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico, a post he held until 1935. He and Chávez did much to promote contemporary Mexican music. It was around this time that Revueltas began to compose in earnest. He bega...

#16289

Wilhelm Backhaus

Wilhelm Backhaus

1884 - 1969 (85 years)

Wilhelm Backhaus was a German pianist and pedagogue. He was particularly well known for his interpretations of Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin and Brahms. He was also much admired as a chamber musician.

#16290

Marjorie Lawrence

1907 - 1979 (72 years)

Marjorie Florence Lawrence CBE was an Australian dramatic soprano, particularly noted as an interpreter of Richard Wagner's operas. She was the first Metropolitan Opera soprano to perform the immolation scene in Götterdämmerung by riding her horse into the flames as Wagner had intended. She was afflicted by polio from 1941. Lawrence later served on the faculty of the School of Music at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

#16291

Herbert Rawlinson

Herbert Rawlinson

1885 - 1953 (68 years)

Herbert Banemann Rawlinson was an English-born stage, film, radio, and television actor. A leading man during Hollywood's silent film era, Rawlinson transitioned to character roles after the advent of sound films.

#16292

Kirill Kondrashin

Kirill Kondrashin

1914 - 1981 (67 years)

Kirill Petrovich Kondrashin was a Soviet and Russian conductor. People's Artist of the USSR . Early life Kondrashin was born in Moscow to a family of orchestral musicians. Having spent many hours at rehearsals, he made a firm decision at the age of 14 to become a conductor. He studied at the Moscow Conservatory from 1931 to 1936 under the conductor Boris Khaikin. Kondrashin began conducting in the Young People's Theatre in Moscow in 1931, continuing in the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Academic Music Theatre three years later. He conducted at the Maly Opera Theatre in Leningrad from 1938 to 1942 and the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow from 1943.

#16293

Bobby Timmons

1935 - 1974 (39 years)

Robert Henry Timmons was an American jazz pianist and composer. He was a sideman in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers for two periods , between which he was part of Cannonball Adderley's band. Several of Timmons' compositions written when part of these bands – including "Moanin'", "Dat Dere", and "This Here" – enjoyed commercial success and brought him more attention. In the early and mid-1960s he led a series of piano trios that toured and recorded extensively.

#16294

Daniel Bonade

1896 - 1976 (80 years)

Daniel Bonade was a French classical clarinetist and professor of clarinet. He was the most influential teacher of the first generation of American-born professional clarinetists. Biography Daniel Bonade was born in Geneva, Switzerland on April 4, 1896. His father, Louis Bonade, was a clarinetist and received the Premier Prix from the Paris Conservatory in 1870. His mother, Esther Poissenot, was a pianist and a vocalist.

#16295

Howard Lindsay

1889 - 1968 (79 years)

Howard Lindsay, born Herman Nelke, was an American playwright, librettist, director, actor and theatrical producer. He is best known for his writing work as part of the collaboration of Lindsay and Crouse, and for his performance, with his wife Dorothy Stickney, in the long-running play Life with Father.

#16296

Dinu Lipatti

1917 - 1950 (33 years)

Constantin "Dinu" Lipatti was a Romanian classical pianist and composer whose career was cut short by his death from effects related to Hodgkin's disease at age 33. He was elected posthumously to the Romanian Academy. He composed few works, all of which demonstrated a strong influence from Bartok.

#16297

Juliette Alvin

1897 - 1982 (85 years)

Juliette Louise Alvin was a French-British cellist, viola da gamba player, and pioneering music therapist. Biograph She was born in Limoges, France, and studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, where she was awarded the Premier Prix d'Excellence and the Mèdaille d'Or. She studied under a master class arrangement with Pablo Casals. Her debut recital took place in 1927 at London's Wigmore Hall.

#16298

Usmar Ismail

1921 - 1971 (50 years)

Usmar Ismail was an Indonesian film director, author, journalist and revolutionary of Minangkabau descent. He is widely regarded as the native Indonesian pioneer of the cinema of Indonesia. Biography Ismail was born in 1921 in Bukittinggi, West Sumatra. His father, Datuk Tumenggung Ismail, taught at the medical school in Padang. His brother Abu Hanifah was also a well-known revolutionary and writer. Ismail attended ASM-A Yogyakarta and later obtained a B.A. in cinematography from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1952.

#16299

Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis

Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis

1875 - 1911 (36 years)

Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis was a Lithuanian composer, painter, choirmaster, cultural figure, and writer in Polish. Čiurlionis contributed to symbolism and art nouveau, and was representative of the fin de siècle epoch. He has been considered one of the pioneers of abstract art in Europe. During his short life, he composed about 400 pieces of music and created about 300 paintings, as well as many literary works and poems. The majority of his paintings are housed in the M. K. Čiurlionis National Art Museum in Kaunas, Lithuania. His works have had a profound influence on modern Lithuanian...

#16300

James Booker

1939 - 1983 (44 years)

James Carroll Booker III was a New Orleans rhythm and blues keyboardist. His 1960 recording "Gonzo" reached No. 43 on the Billboard magazine record chart and No. 3 in R&B, and he toured internationally in the 1970s. After being mainly a rhythm and blues player, Booker later fused this genre with jazz and with popular music such as The Beatles, playing these in his signature backbeat. His influence is profound in the New Orleans music scene, where his renditions and originals are most often performed. Flamboyant, and having an extraordinary technical facility, he was known as "the Black Libera...

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