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).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people in Communications,
#3051
Al Hirt
#57495
Overall Influence
1922 - 1999 (77 years)
Alois Maxwell "Al" Hirt was an American trumpeter and bandleader. He is best remembered for his million-selling recordings of "Java" and the accompanying album Honey in the Horn , and for the theme music to The Green Hornet. His nicknames included "Jumbo" and "The Round Mound of Sound". Colin Escott, an author of musician biographies, wrote that RCA Victor, for which Hirt had recorded most of his best-selling recordings and for which he had spent most of his professional recording career, had dubbed him with another moniker: "The King." Hirt was inducted into The Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in November 2009.
Go to Profile#3052
Anna Morpurgo Davies
#58453
Overall Influence
1937 - 2014 (77 years)
Anna Elbina Morpurgo Davies, was an Italian philologist who specialised in comparative Indo-European linguistics. She spent her career at Oxford University, where she was the Professor of Comparative Philology and Fellow of Somerville College.
Go to Profile#3053
Jonathan Glazer
#51255
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Jonathan Glazer is an English film director and screenwriter. Born in London, Glazer began his career in theatre before transitioning into film. He has directed four feature films: Sexy Beast , Birth , Under the Skin , and The Zone of Interest .
Go to Profile#3054
Gabriele Ferzetti
#79742
Overall Influence
1925 - 2015 (90 years)
Gabriele Ferzetti was an Italian actor with more than 160 credits across film, television, and stage. His career was at its peak in the 1950s and 1960s. Ferzetti's first leading role was in the film Lo Zappatore . He portrayed Puccini twice in the films Puccini and Casa Ricordi . He made his international breakthrough in Michelangelo Antonioni's controversial L'Avventura as a restless playboy. After a series of romantic performances, he acquired a reputation in Italy as an elegant, debonair, and somewhat aristocratic looking leading man.
Go to Profile#3055
David Gates
#28812
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
David Gates is an American journalist and novelist. His works have been shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Education Gates obtained his B.A. from the University of Connecticut in 1972.
Go to Profile#3056
Kees de Bot
#70497
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Cornelis Kees de Bot is a Dutch linguist. He is currently the chair of applied linguistics at the University of Groningen, Netherlands, and at the University of Pannonia. He is known for his work on second language development and the use of dynamical systems theory to study second language development.
Go to Profile#3057
Don Daglow
#7978
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Don Daglow is an American video game designer, programmer, and producer. He is best known for being the creator of early games from several different genres, including pioneering simulation game Utopia for Intellivision in 1981, role-playing game Dungeon in 1975, sports games including the first interactive computer baseball game Baseball in 1971, and the first graphical MMORPG, Neverwinter Nights in 1991. He founded long-standing game developer Stormfront Studios in 1988.
Go to Profile#3058
Louis Andriessen
#52714
Overall Influence
1939 - 2021 (82 years)
Louis Joseph Andriessen was a Dutch composer, pianist and academic teacher. Considered the most influential Dutch composer of his generation, he was a central proponent of The Hague school of composition. Although his music was initially dominated by neoclassicism and serialism, his style gradually shifted to a synthesis of American minimalism, jazz and the manner of Stravinsky.
Go to Profile#3059
Ed Koren
#49347
Overall Influence
1935 - 2023 (88 years)
Edward Benjamin Koren was an American writer, illustrator, and political cartoonist, most notably featured in The New Yorker. Early life and education Edward Benjamin Koren was born in a Jewish family in New York City on December 13, 1935, and attended Horace Mann School and Columbia University, graduating in 1957. He did graduate work in etching and engraving with S. W. Hayter at Atelier 17 in Paris, France, and received an M.F.A. degree from Pratt Institute in 1964.
Go to Profile#3060
Linda Perry
#23957
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Linda Perry is an American singer-songwriter, musician, and record producer. She was the lead singer and primary songwriter of 4 Non Blondes, and has since founded two record labels and composed and produced songs for other artists, which include: "Beautiful" by Christina Aguilera; "What You Waiting For?" by Gwen Stefani; and "Get the Party Started" by Pink. Perry has also contributed to albums by Adele, Alicia Keys, and Courtney Love, as well as signing and distributing James Blunt in the United States. Perry was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2015.
Go to Profile#3061
Bruce Cockburn
#37970
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Bruce Douglas Cockburn is a Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist. His song styles range from folk to folk- and jazz-influenced rock to soundscapes accompanying spoken stories. His lyrics reflect interests in spirituality, human rights, environmental issues, and relationships, and describe his experiences in Central America and Africa.
Go to Profile#3062
Carlo Lizzani
#53615
Overall Influence
1922 - 2013 (91 years)
Carlo Lizzani was an Italian film director, screenwriter and critic. Biography Born in Rome, before World War II Lizzani worked as a scenarist on such films as Roberto Rossellini's Germany Year Zero, Alberto Lattuada's The Mill on the Po , and Giuseppe De Santis' Bitter Rice , for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Story.
Go to Profile#3063
Marcus Miller
#25023
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
William Henry Marcus Miller Jr. is an American musician, songwriter, and record producer. He is best known for his work as a bassist. He has worked with trumpeter Miles Davis, pianist Herbie Hancock, singer Luther Vandross, and saxophonist David Sanborn, among others. He was the main songwriter and producer on three of Davis' albums: Tutu , Music from Siesta , and Amandla . His collaboration with Vandross was especially close; he co-produced and served as the arranger for most of Vandross' albums, and he and Vandross co-wrote many of Vandross' songs, including the hits "I Really Didn't Mean It", "Any Love", "Power of Love/Love Power" and "Don't Want to Be a Fool".
Go to Profile#3064
Everette Dennis
#80426
Overall Influence
Everette E. Dennis is an American scholar, formerly the Dean of Northwestern University in Qatar from 2011 to 2019, and an Elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Go to Profile#3065
Valerie Miles
#53567
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Valerie Miles is a publisher, writer, translator and the co–founder of Granta en español. She is known for promoting Spanish and Latin American literature and their translation in the English speaking world, at the same time as bringing American and British authors to Spain and Latin America for the first time, working with main publishing houses on the sector. She is currently the co-director of Granta en español and The New York Review of Books in its Spanish translation. On 2012 she co-curated a Roberto Bolaño exhibit at the Center for Contemporary Culture in Barcelona. In addition, she is...
Go to Profile#3066
Lesley Garrett
#73031
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Lesley Garrett, CBE is an English soprano singer, musician, broadcaster and media personality. She is noted for being at home in opera and "crossover music". Early life Garrett was born in the town of Thorne, near Doncaster , into a musical family. She attended Thorne Fieldside Infant and Junior Schools and Thorne Grammar School. As she grew up she inherited her family's love of music. Her grandfather Colin Wall was a classical pianist; her father Derek worked as a railway signalman and then as a schoolteacher at Hatfield Woodhouse Primary School, eventually going on to become a headmaster. ...
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Françoise Massardier-Kenney
#63535
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Françoise Massardier-Kenney is a translator and translation scholar. She is the Director of the Institute for Applied Linguistics and Professor of Modern and Classical Language Studies at Kent State University. Her scholarly work includes serving as the general editor of the American Translators Association Scholarly Monograph Series and co-editor in chief of George Sand Studies.
Go to Profile#3068
Earl Scruggs
#37541
Overall Influence
1924 - 2012 (88 years)
Earl Eugene Scruggs was an American musician noted for popularizing a three-finger banjo picking style, now called "Scruggs style", which is a defining characteristic of bluegrass music. His three-finger style of playing was radically different from the traditional way the five-string banjo had previously been played. This new style of playing became popular and elevated the banjo from its previous role as a background rhythm instrument to featured solo status. He popularized the instrument across several genres of music.
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Martin Popoff
#30576
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Martin Popoff is a Canadian music journalist, critic and author. He is mainly known for writing about the genre of heavy metal music. The senior editor and co-founder of Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles, he has additionally written over twenty books that both critically evaluate heavy metal and document its history. He has been called "heavy metal's most widely recognized journalist" by his publisher. Popoff lives in Toronto, Ontario.
Go to Profile#3070
Barbara Kruger
#38622
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist and collagist associated with the Pictures Generation. She is most known for her collage style that consists of black-and-white photographs, overlaid with declarative captions, stated in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed text. The phrases in her works often include pronouns such as "you", "your", "I", "we", and "they", addressing cultural constructions of power, identity, consumerism, and sexuality. Kruger's artistic mediums include photography, sculpture, graphic design, architecture, as well as video and audio insta...
Go to Profile#3071
Art Farmer
#52508
Overall Influence
1928 - 1999 (71 years)
Arthur Stewart Farmer was an American jazz trumpeter and flugelhorn player. He also played flumpet, a trumpet–flugelhorn combination especially designed for him. He and his identical twin brother, double bassist Addison Farmer, started playing professionally while at high school in Los Angeles. Art gained greater attention after the release of a recording of his composition "Farmer's Market" in 1952. He subsequently moved from Los Angeles to New York, where he performed and recorded with musicians such as Horace Silver, Sonny Rollins, and Gigi Gryce and became known principally as a bebop pla...
Go to Profile#3072
Thomas Adès
#59511
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Thomas Joseph Edmund Adès is a British composer, pianist and conductor. Five compositions by Adès received votes in the 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000: The Tempest , Violin Concerto , Tevot , In Seven Days , and Polaris .
Go to Profile#3073
Theo Angelopoulos
#49118
Overall Influence
1935 - 2012 (77 years)
Theodoros "Theo" Angelopoulos was a Greek filmmaker, screenwriter and film producer. He dominated the Greek art film industry from 1975 on, and Angelopoulos was one of the most influential and widely respected filmmakers in the world. He started making films in 1967. In the 1970s he made a series of political films about modern Greece.
Go to Profile#3074
Asmah Haji Omar
#82644
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Asmah Haji Omar is a Malaysian linguist. She is an emeritus professor at the Academy of Malay Studies, University of Malaya . She was formerly Dean of the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics of the university. She was invited by Sultan Idris Education University to occupy the Za'ba Chair of Malay Civilization, and established the Institute of Malay Civilization after retiring.
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Mike Read
#52927
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Michael David Kenneth Read is an English radio disc jockey, writer, journalist and television presenter. Read has been a broadcaster since 1976, best known for having been a DJ with BBC Radio 1, and television host for music chart series Top of the Pops, children's programme Saturday Superstore and music panel game Pop Quiz. He is also a prolific author, having written over 50 books, including his autobiography, Seize the Day. Read currently hosts The Heritage Chart Show on various radio stations and Talking Pictures TV. He also co-hosts The Footage Detectives with Talking Pictures TV founder...
Go to Profile#3076
Debby Applegate
#27483
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Debby Applegate is an American historian and biographer. She is the author of Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age and The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, for which she won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.
Go to Profile#3077
Hank Jones
#50921
Overall Influence
1918 - 2010 (92 years)
Henry Jones Jr. was an American jazz pianist, bandleader, arranger, and composer. Critics and musicians described Jones as eloquent, lyrical, and impeccable. In 1989, The National Endowment for the Arts honored him with the NEA Jazz Masters Award. He was also honored in 2003 with the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers Jazz Living Legend Award. In 2008, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. On April 13, 2009, the University of Hartford presented Jones with an honorary Doctorate of Music for his musical accomplishments.
Go to Profile#3078
Wolfgang Meyer
#70942
Overall Influence
1954 - 2019 (65 years)
Wolfgang Meyer was a German clarinetist and professor of clarinet at the Musikhochschule Karlsruhe. He worked internationally as a soloist, in chamber music ensembles, and in jazz, with a repertoire from early music played on historical instruments to world premieres.
Go to Profile#3079
René Jacobs
#67025
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
René Jacobs is a Belgian musician. He came to fame as a countertenor, but later in his career he became known as a conductor of baroque and classical opera. Biography Countertenor Born in Ghent, Jacobs began his musical career as a boy chorister at the Cathedral. Later he studied classical philology at the University of Ghent while continuing to sing in Brussels and in The Hague.
Go to Profile#3080
Andrew Carnie
#72780
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Andrew Carnie is a Canadian professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona. He is the author or coauthor of nine books and has papers published on formal syntactic theory and on linguistic aspects of Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic. He was born in Calgary, Alberta. He is also a teacher of Balkan and international folk dance. In 2009, he was named as one of the Linguist List's Linguist of the Day. From 2010-2012, he has worked as the faculty director of the University of Arizona's Graduate Interdisciplinary Programs. In August 2012, he was appointed interim Dean of the graduate college.
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Michel Lejeune
#81499
Overall Influence
1907 - 2000 (93 years)
Michel Lejeune was a French linguist, a specialist in the sound changes of Ancient Greek. He was a member of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres.
Go to Profile#3082
Michael Krasny
#33884
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Michael Jay Krasny is a professor and retired American radio host of Forum, a news and public affairs program on San Francisco public radio station KQED-FM, covering current events, politics, and culture from 1993 to 2021. Additionally, Krasny is currently a professor of English literature at San Francisco State University.
Go to Profile#3083
Magali Cornier Michael
#65924
Overall Influence
Magali Cornier Michael is a literary scholar, Professor of English, former Chair of the English Department, and current Associate Dean of the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts at Duquesne University. She is also a co-founder and former co-director of the Women's and Gender Studies program at Duquesne.
Go to Profile#3084
Luis García Berlanga
#59498
Overall Influence
1921 - 2010 (89 years)
Luis García-Berlanga Martí was a Spanish film director and screenwriter. Acclaimed as a pioneer of modern Spanish cinema, his films are marked by social satire and acerbic critiques of Spanish culture under the Francoist dictatorship.
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Pedro León Zapata
#24971
Overall Influence
1929 - 2015 (86 years)
Pedro León Zapata was a prominent Venezuelan artist, humorist and cartoonist. Biography In 1945 he entered the "Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Caracas" but in 1947 he abandoned the school to join the foundation of the "Taller La Barraca de Maripérez" where he exhibited his first works. In the same year, he traveled to Mexico to learn the techniques of the great muralist Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco and studied at the Instituto Politécnico Nacional, at La Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes La Esmeralda and the workshop of Siqueiros.
Go to Profile#3086
Bill Frisell
#36942
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
William Richard Frisell is an American jazz guitarist, composer and arranger. Frisell first came to prominence at ECM Records in the 1980s, as both a session player and a leader. He went on to work in a variety of contexts, notably as a participant in the Downtown Scene in New York City, where he formed a long working relationship with composer and saxophonist John Zorn. He was also a longtime member of veteran drummer Paul Motian's groups from the early 1980s until Motian's death in 2011. Since the late 1990s, Frisell's output as a bandleader has also integrated prominent elements of folk, country, rock ‘n’ roll and Americana.
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Céline Frisch
#85975
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Céline Frisch is a French harpsichordist. Life Born in Marseille, Frisch began studying the harpsichord at the age of six. In 1992 she received her first prizes in harpsichord and chamber music at the Conservatory of Aix-en-Provence. She moved to Basel to continue her studies at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, in Andreas Staier's and Jesper Bøje Christensen's classes, where she obtained the soloist diploma cum laude. She also studied the pipe organ with Louis Thiry at the .
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Bill Nelson
#61554
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
William Nelson is an English singer, guitarist, songwriter, producer, painter, video artist, writer and experimental musician. He rose to prominence as the chief songwriter, vocalist and guitarist of the rock group Be-Bop Deluxe, which he formed in 1972. Nelson has been described as "one of the most underrated guitarists of the seventies art rock movement". In 2015, he was recognised with the Visionary award at the Progressive Music Awards.
Go to Profile#3089
Bobby Caldwell
#30805
Overall Influence
Bobby Caldwell is an American drummer, songwriter, producer and arranger who co-founded the rock bands Captain Beyond and Armageddon during the early 1970s. Prior to these projects he played on seminal Johnny Winter albums such as Live Johnny Winter And and Saints and Sinners. Caldwell was also the drummer on Rick Derringer's All American Boy, which produced the classic-rock radio staple "Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo", a song originally written by Derringer and recorded by the band, Johnny Winter And, with Derringer's brother, Randy Z on drums. He also played with John Lennon, Ringo Starr, The Allman Brothers Band, and Eric Clapton.
Go to Profile#3090
Bonnie Webber
#43109
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Bonnie Lynn Nash-Webber is a computational linguist. She is an honorary professor of intelligent systems in the Institute for Language, Cognition and Computation at the University of Edinburgh. Education and career Webber completed her PhD at Harvard University in 1978, advised by Bill Woods, while at the same time working with Woods at Bolt Beranek and Newman.
Go to Profile#3091
Carl Hausman
#39653
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Carl Hausman is Professor of Journalism at Rowan University and the author of several books about media ethics, journalism, and media technology. Early life and education Hausman received his B.A. in political science from the University of the State of New York in 1985, an M.A. in media and communications from Antioch University in 1987, and a Ph.D. in Journalism from the Union Institute and University in 1990; he was awarded a Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities that funded post-doctoral research about privacy and ethics at New York University. Hausman’s doctoral dissertation was publishe...
Go to Profile#3092
John Rennie
#14485
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
John Rennie is an American science writer who was the seventh editor in chief of Scientific American magazine. After leaving Scientific American in 2009, he began writing for Public Library of Science Blogs. Rennie has also been involved with several television programs and podcasts as well as multiple writing projects, including his latest position as a deputy editor on the staff of Quanta Magazine.
Go to Profile#3093
Paco de Lucía
#54233
Overall Influence
1947 - 2014 (67 years)
Francisco Sánchez Gómez , known as Paco de Lucía , was a Spanish virtuoso flamenco guitarist, composer, and record producer. A leading proponent of the new flamenco style, he was one of the first flamenco guitarists to branch into classical and jazz. Richard Chapman and Eric Clapton, authors of Guitar: Music, History, Players, describe de Lucía as a "titanic figure in the world of flamenco guitar", and Dennis Koster, author of Guitar Atlas, Flamenco, has referred to de Lucía as "one of history's greatest guitarists".
Go to Profile#3094
Herbert E. Brekle
#68048
Overall Influence
1935 - 2018 (83 years)
Herbert Ernst Brekle was a German typographer and linguist. Brekle's main research interests were semantics, word formation theory, history of linguistics, history of Western alphabets and typography.
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Thomas Leabhart
#81231
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Thomas Leabhart is an American corporeal mime and corporeal mime teacher. Leabhart studied at the Ecole de Mime Etienne Decroux, Paris under the instruction of master mime and teacher Etienne Decroux from 1968 to 1972. He currently performs and teaches regularly in France and has performed and taught workshops at the Museum of Design in Zürich, The Austrian Theatre Museum in Vienna, the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka, the American Center in Montevideo, Movement Theatre International in Philadelphia, and many other venues. He is editor of Mime Journal and has authored over 35 articles. ...
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Peter Christopherson
#47746
Overall Influence
1955 - 2010 (55 years)
Peter Martin Christopherson was an English musician, video director, commercial artist, designer and photographer, and former member of British design agency Hipgnosis. He also co-founded the Industrial Records band Throbbing Gristle . After the disbandment of Throbbing Gristle, he participated in the formation of Psychic TV along with Genesis P-Orridge and Geoff Rushton—Rushton later changed his name to John Balance.
Go to Profile#3097
Bruce McLean
#50769
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Bruce McLean is a Scottish sculptor, performance artist and painter. McLean was born in Glasgow and studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1961 to 1963, and at Saint Martin's School of Art, London, from 1963 to 1966. At Saint Martin's, McLean studied with Anthony Caro and Phillip King. In reaction to what he regarded as the academicism of his teachers he began making sculpture from rubbish.
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Mirella Freni
#66308
Overall Influence
1935 - 2020 (85 years)
Mirella Freni, OMRI was an Italian operatic soprano who had a career of 50 years and appeared at major international opera houses. She received international attention at the Glyndebourne Festival, where she appeared as Zerlina in Mozart's Don Giovanni and as Adina in Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore.
Go to Profile#3099
David Shaw
#45466
Overall Influence
1943 - 2005 (62 years)
David Shaw was an American journalist. He was best known for his reporting for the Los Angeles Times, where he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1991. He wrote criticism of food, wine, and film, but is perhaps best known for taking a critical eye on the media itself.
Go to Profile#3100
Alex Cox
#41687
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Alexander B. H. Cox is an English film director, screenwriter, actor, non-fiction author and broadcaster. Cox experienced success early in his career with Repo Man and Sid and Nancy, but since the release and commercial failure of Walker, his career has moved towards independent films. Cox received a co-writer credit for the screenplay of Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for previous work on the script before it was rewritten by Gilliam.
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