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.

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).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Communications,

#16701

Viktor Ullmann

1898 - 1944 (46 years)

Viktor Ullmann was a Silesia-born Austrian composer, conductor and pianist. Biography Viktor Ullmann was born on 1 January 1898 in Cieszyn , which belonged then to Austrian Silesia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Both his parents were from families of Jewish descent, but had converted to Catholicism before Viktor's birth. As an assimilated Jew, his father, Maximilian, was able to pursue a career as a professional officer in the army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In World War I he was promoted to colonel and ennobled.

#16702

Roy Eldridge

1911 - 1989 (78 years)

David Roy Eldridge , nicknamed "Little Jazz", was an American jazz trumpeter. His sophisticated use of harmony, including the use of tritone substitutions, his virtuosic solos exhibiting a departure from the dominant style of jazz trumpet innovator Louis Armstrong, and his strong impact on Dizzy Gillespie mark him as one of the most influential musicians of the swing era and a precursor of bebop.

#16703

Hieronymus Megiser

Hieronymus Megiser

1553 - 1618 (65 years)

Hieronymus Megiser was a German polymath, linguist and historian. Career From 1571 he studied at the University of Tübingen, and was a favourite student of the humanist and philologist Nicodemus Frischlin. In 1577 he graduated there with a master's degree. In 1581 he moved as a private tutor to Ljubljana . From 1582 he studied jurisprudence in Padua and was then active as a private tutor of young noblemen from Croatia and Styria. In 1588/89 he travelled to Italy and Malta, and in 1591 to North Germany, the Netherlands and England.

#16704

Josef Lhévinne

1874 - 1944 (70 years)

Josef Lhévinne was a Russian pianist and piano teacher. Lhévinne wrote a short book in 1924 that is considered a classic: Basic Principles in Pianoforte Playing. Asked how to say his name, he told The Literary Digest it was lay-VEEN.

#16705

Niels Gade

1817 - 1890 (73 years)

Niels Wilhelm Gade was a Danish composer, conductor, violinist, organist and teacher. Together with Johan Peter Emilius Hartmann, he was the leading Danish musician of his day, in the period known as the Danish Golden Age.

#16706

James Wong Howe

James Wong Howe

1899 - 1976 (77 years)

Wong Tung Jim, A.S.C. , known professionally as James Wong Howe , was a Chinese-born American cinematographer who worked on over 130 films. During the 1930s and 1940s, he was one of the most sought after cinematographers in Hollywood due to his innovative filming techniques. Howe was known as a master of the use of shadow and one of the first to use deep-focus cinematography, in which both foreground and distant planes remain in focus.

#16707

Eric Coates

1886 - 1957 (71 years)

Eric Francis Harrison Coates was an English composer of light music and, early in his career, a leading violist. Coates was born into a musical family, but, despite his wishes and obvious talent, his parents only reluctantly allowed him to pursue a musical career. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music under Frederick Corder and Lionel Tertis , and played in string quartets and theatre pit bands, before joining symphony orchestras conducted by Thomas Beecham and Henry Wood. Coates's experience as a player added to the rigorous training he had received at the academy and contributed to his ...

#16708

Elmore James

1918 - 1963 (45 years)

Elmore James was an American blues guitarist, singer, songwriter, and bandleader. Noted for his use of loud amplification and his stirring voice, James was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. His slide guitar technique earned him the nickname "King of the Slide Guitar".

#16709

Chick Webb

1905 - 1939 (34 years)

William Henry "Chick" Webb was an American jazz and swing music drummer and band leader. Early life Webb was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to William H. and Marie Webb. The year of his birth is disputed. The Encyclopædia Britannica and Allmusic indicate 1905, and this seems to be supported by census information. Other publications claim other years. During Webb's lifetime, a December 1937 DownBeat magazine article, "The Rise of a Crippled Genius", stated he was born in 1909, which is the year that appears on his grave marker. In 1939, The New York Times stated that Webb was born in 1907, the...

#16710

Jacob Obrecht

1457 - 1505 (48 years)

Jacob Obrecht was a Flemish composer of masses, motets and songs. He was the most famous composer of masses in Europe of the late 15th century and was only eclipsed after his death by Josquin des Prez.

#16711

Sonny Stitt

1924 - 1982 (58 years)

Sonny Stitt was an American jazz saxophonist of the bebop/hard bop idiom. Known for his warm tone, he was one of the best-documented saxophonists of his generation, recording more than 100 albums. He was nicknamed the "Lone Wolf" by jazz critic Dan Morgenstern because of his tendency to rarely work with the same musicians for long despite his relentless touring and devotion to jazz. Stitt was sometimes viewed as a Charlie Parker mimic, especially earlier in his career, but gradually came to develop his own sound and style, particularly when performing on tenor saxophone and even occasionally ...

#16712

Hermann Carl George Brandt

1850 - 1920 (70 years)

Hermann Carl George Brandt was a German-American scholar who published German grammars and German-English dictionaries among other works. Biography Brandt was born at Vilsen, Germany. He graduated in 1872 from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, and was an instructor there from 1874 to 1876. From 1876 to 1882, he was associate professor of German at the Johns Hopkins University. In 1883, he was appointed professor of German language and literature at Hamilton, and remained in that position for the rest of his life. His publications include a German-English and English-German dictionary, an...

#16713

Kenny Dorham

1924 - 1972 (48 years)

McKinley Howard "Kenny" Dorham was an American jazz trumpeter, singer, and composer. Dorham's talent is frequently lauded by critics and other musicians, but he never received the kind of attention or public recognition from the jazz establishment that many of his peers did. For this reason, writer Gary Giddins said that Dorham's name has become "virtually synonymous with underrated." Dorham composed the jazz standard "Blue Bossa", which first appeared on Joe Henderson's album Page One.

#16714

Carlo Battisti

1882 - 1977 (95 years)

Carlo Battisti was an Italian linguist and actor, famed for his starring role in Vittorio De Sica's Umberto D.. Biography Battisti was born in Trento, Austria-Hungary in 1882 . He studied linguistics at the University of Vienna and founded, along with Ettore Tolomei, the nationalist journal Archivio per l'Alto Adige in 1906. In the early 1920s he became professor of glottology of the University of Florence. Throughout his life he published numerous books and articles on a wide gamut of linguistic topics, ranging from phonetics to Italian dialectology to toponomastics and Vulgar Latin. In reco...

#16715

Edwin Forrest

1806 - 1872 (66 years)

Edwin Forrest was a prominent nineteenth-century American Shakespearean actor. His feud with the British actor William Macready was the cause of the deadly Astor Place Riot of 1849. Early life Forrest was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Rebecca and William Forrest. His father, a Scottish merchandise peddler, moved from Dumfriesshire to Trenton, New Jersey in 1791. His mother was a member of an affluent German-American family. A business setback led William to relocate to Philadelphia, where he married Rebecca and was able to secure a position with a local branch of the United States Bank.

#16716

Achille Rivarde

Achille Rivarde

1865 - 1940 (75 years)

Achille Rivarde was an American-born British violinist and teacher, who worked mainly in Europe and London. Biography Serge Achille Rivarde was born in New York City to a Spanish father and an American mother. He studied under Felix Simon, Henryk Wieniawski and José White Lafitte. At the age of eleven, he became a pupil of Charles Dancla at the Paris Conservatoire, sharing the first prize with František Ondříček in 1879.

#16717

William Henry Monk

William Henry Monk

1823 - 1899 (76 years)

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

#16718

Mordechai Finzi

1440 - 1475 (35 years)

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

#16719

Johnny Dodds

1892 - 1940 (48 years)

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

#16720

Lee Hays

1914 - 1981 (67 years)

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

#16721

Gower Champion

1919 - 1980 (61 years)

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

#16722

William Farnum

1876 - 1953 (77 years)

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

#16723

James Reese Europe

1880 - 1919 (39 years)

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

#16724

Ed Begley

1901 - 1970 (69 years)

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

#16725

Jack Teagarden

1905 - 1964 (59 years)

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

#16726

Jim Backus

1913 - 1989 (76 years)

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

#16727

George Duvivier

George Duvivier

1920 - 1985 (65 years)

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

#16728

Carl C. Mose

1903 - 1973 (70 years)

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

#16729

Roy Del Ruth

1893 - 1961 (68 years)

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

#16730

William Primrose

1904 - 1982 (78 years)

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

#16731

Alexander Dovzhenko

Alexander Dovzhenko

1894 - 1956 (62 years)

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

#16732

Antonio Sacchini

Antonio Sacchini

1730 - 1786 (56 years)

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

#16733

Sister Rosetta Tharpe

1915 - 1973 (58 years)

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

#16734

John Ogdon

1937 - 1989 (52 years)

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

#16735

Alois Hába

1893 - 1973 (80 years)

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

#16736

Václav Machek

1894 - 1965 (71 years)

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

#16737

Leonardo Leo

1694 - 1744 (50 years)

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

#16738

Ernst Chladni

1756 - 1827 (71 years)

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

#16739

Stefan Wolpe

1902 - 1972 (70 years)

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

#16740

Noble Sissle

1889 - 1975 (86 years)

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

#16741

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.

#16742

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.

#16743

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.

#16744

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.

#16745

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.

#16746

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.

#16747

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 ...

#16748

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...

#16749

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.

#16750

Alan R. Hevner

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions