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).

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Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Communications,

#3151

Brian Cathcart

#55263

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Brian Cathcart is an Irish-born journalist, academic and media campaigner based in the United Kingdom. He is professor of journalism at Kingston University London and in 2011 was a founder of Hacked Off, which campaigns for a free and accountable press. His books include Were You Still Up for Portillo? , The Case of Stephen Lawrence , The Fly in the Cathedral and The News From Waterloo .

#3152

Rodion Shchedrin

#49188

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

Rodion Konstantinovich Shchedrin is a Soviet and Russian composer and pianist, winner of USSR State Prize , the Lenin Prize , and the State Prize of the Russian Federation , and is a former member of the Inter-regional Deputies Group . He is also a citizen of Lithuania and Spain.

#3153

Brad Mehldau

#62098

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Bradford Alexander Mehldau is an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. Mehldau studied music at The New School, touring and recording while still a student. He was a member of saxophonist Joshua Redman's quartet in the mid-1990s, and has led his own trio since the early 1990s. His first long-term trio featured bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jorge Rossy; in 2005 Jeff Ballard replaced Rossy. These bands have released more than a dozen albums under the pianist's name.

#3154

Alan J. Pakula

#47905

Overall Influence

1928 - 1998 (70 years)

Alan Jay Pakula was an American film director, writer and producer. He was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Picture for To Kill a Mockingbird , Best Director for All the President's Men and Best Adapted Screenplay for Sophie's Choice .

#3155

Marvin Hamlisch

#33307

Overall Influence

1944 - 2012 (68 years)

Marvin Frederick Hamlisch was an American composer and conductor. Hamlisch was one of only 18 people to win Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards, a feat dubbed the "EGOT". He and composer Richard Rodgers are the only people to have won those prizes and a Pulitzer Prize .

#3156

István Szabó

#51401

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

István Szabó is a Hungarian film director, screenwriter, and opera director. Szabó is one of the most notable Hungarian filmmakers and one who has been best known outside the Hungarian-speaking world since the late 1960s. István Szabó's films are based on the tradition of the European auteurism that represent many aspects of the political and psychological conflicts of Central Europe's recent history often inspired by his own personal biography. He made his debut as a student in 1959, creating a short film at the Academy of Drama and Film in Budapest, and his first feature film was released ...

#3157

Miklós Jancsó

#60183

Overall Influence

1921 - 2014 (93 years)

Miklós Jancsó was a Hungarian film director and screenwriter. Jancsó achieved international prominence starting in the mid-1960s with works including The Round-Up , The Red and the White , and Red Psalm .

#3158

Mary Dalrymple

#84937

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Mary Dalrymple, FBA is a professor of syntax at Oxford University. At Oxford, she is a fellow of Linacre College. Prior to that she was a lecturer in linguistics at King's College London, a senior member of the research staff at the Palo Alto Research Center in the Natural Language Theory and Technology group and a computer scientist at SRI International.

#3159

Karl Heinrich Menges

#55192

Overall Influence

1908 - 1999 (91 years)

Karl Heinrich Menges was a German linguist known for his advocacy of the Altaic hypothesis. He was a faculty member at Columbia University in New York and subsequently at the University of Vienna. Menges was born in Frankfurt, where he was educated at the Lessing Gymnasium. He studied in Frankfurt and Munich and earned his doctorate at the University of Berlin in 1932. Politically identifying as a Catholic centrist, he resisted the Nazi regime, distributing leaflets. In 1936 he was arrested by the Gestapo and interrogated for five hours; on a tip-off from a classmate, after being released pen...

#3160

Anupama Chopra

#29840

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Anupama Chopra is an Indian author, journalist, film critic and director of the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival. She is also the founder and editor of the digital platform Film Companion, which offers a curated look at cinema. She has written several books on Indian cinema and has been a film critic for NDTV, India Today, as well as the Hindustan Times. She also hosted a weekly film review show The Front Row With Anupama Chopra, on Star World. She won the 2000 National Film Award for Best Book on Cinema for her first book Sholay: The Making of a Classic. She presently critiques movies and interv...

#3161

Sabine Iatridou

#48682

Overall Influence

Sabine Iatridou is a linguist whose research investigates the syntax‐semantics interface. Her research has helped to delineate theories of tense and modality. Academic career Iatridou was born in Thessaloniki. She spent her childhood in the Netherlands, and then returned to Greece to finish high school and attend college. She earned a DDS in 1982, an MA in Anthropology in 1986 from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and a PhD in Linguistics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1991. Under the supervision of Noam Chomsky, she explored the topic of conditionals in her dissertation.

#3162

Boris Goldovsky

#50186

Overall Influence

1908 - 2001 (93 years)

Boris Goldovsky was a Russian Empire-born conductor and broadcast commentator, active in the United States. He has been called an important "popularizer" of opera in America. As an opera producer, conductor, impresario, and broadcaster he was prominent within the American operatic community between 1946 and 1985.

#3163

Bille August

#53831

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Bille August is a Danish director, screenwriter, and cinematographer of film and television. In a career spanning over four decades, he has been the recipient of numerous accolades, making him one of the most acclaimed contemporary Danish filmmakers.

#3164

Dominick Argento

#66043

Overall Influence

1927 - 2019 (92 years)

Dominick Argento was an American composer known for his lyric operatic and choral music. Among his best known pieces are the operas Postcard from Morocco, Miss Havisham's Fire, The Masque of Angels, and The Aspern Papers. He also is known for the song cycles Six Elizabethan Songs and From the Diary of Virginia Woolf; the latter earned him the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1975. In a predominantly tonal context, his music freely combines tonality, atonality and a lyrical use of twelve-tone writing. None of Argento's music approaches the experimental, stringent avant-garde fashions of the post-Wo...

#3165

Klaus Hesse

#78026

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Klaus Hesse is a German graphic designer. Life Klaus Hesse studied photography and typography at the University of Wupperthal. In 1988, together with Christine Hesse he founded the agency Hesse Design in Düsseldorf; the duo also ran an office in Berlin between 2001 and 2004. In 2016, he founded another studio in Shanghai, China. The agency is behind corporate designs for Audi, Bewag, Dekra, State Capital Düsseldorf, the Robert Bosch Foundation, Stuttgart Trade Fair, Swarovski and the Upper Middle Rhine World Heritage Site, to name a few. They have been nominated for the Design Award of the Fe...

#3166

Ad Neeleman

#87748

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Adriaan Dirk Neeleman is a Dutch linguist based in the UK. He is Professor of Linguistics at University College London. He completed his PhD at the University of Utrecht in 1994. His research focusses on syntax, semantics and phonology, and particularly on the interfaces between them. His work is part of the tradition of generative grammar.

#3167

Linda Lewis

#67001

Overall Influence

1950 - 2023 (73 years)

Linda Ann Fredericks , better known as Linda Lewis, was an English singer, songwriter and musician. She is best known for the singles "Rock-a-Doodle-Doo" and her version of Betty Everett's "The Shoop Shoop Song" . Her discography includes solo albums, Lark , Not a Little Girl Anymore , Woman Overboard , and the later Second Nature , which became successful in countries such as Japan. Lewis also provided backing vocals for other artists, including David Bowie, Al Kooper, Cat Stevens, Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel, Rick Wakeman, Rod Stewart, Peter Bardens, Hummingbird, Joan Armatrading and Jam...

#3168

Judah Segal

#43950

Overall Influence

1912 - 2003 (91 years)

Judah Benzion "Ben" Segal, FBA was Professor of Semitic Languages at the School of Oriental and African Studies. His father was Professor Moshe Zvi Segal and his brother was the doctor and Labour Party politician Samuel Segal. He had two daughters; one is Prof. Naomi Segal.

#3169

Monica Heller

#50776

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Monica Heller is a Canadian linguistic anthropologist and Professor at the University of Toronto. She was the president of the American Anthropological Association from 2013 to 2015. Biography Heller was born in 1955, in Montreal, Quebec. Her father was a neurologist and her mother a medical sociologist. The political meanings of the uses of French and English in Quebec in the 1960s led to her interest in language and its influence on society. She attended Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Anthropology with honors in 1976. She earned her Ph.D.

#3170

Johnny Depp

#42633

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

John Christopher Depp II is an American actor and musician. He is the recipient of multiple accolades, including a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award, and has been nominated for three Academy Awards and two BAFTA awards. His films have grossed over $8 billion worldwide, making him one of Hollywood's most bankable stars.

#3171

Mal Waldron

#58178

Overall Influence

1925 - 2002 (77 years)

Malcolm Earl "Mal" Waldron was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. He started playing professionally in New York in 1950, after graduating from college. In the following dozen years or so Waldron led his own bands and played for those led by Charles Mingus, Jackie McLean, John Coltrane, and Eric Dolphy, among others. During Waldron's period as house pianist for Prestige Records in the late 1950s, he appeared on dozens of albums and composed for many of them, including writing his most famous song, "Soul Eyes", for Coltrane. Waldron was often an accompanist for vocalists, and was...

#3172

Mavis Staples

#34231

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Mavis Staples is an American rhythm and blues and gospel singer and civil rights activist. She rose to fame as a member of her family's band The Staple Singers, of which she is the last surviving member. During her time in the group, she recorded the hit singles "I'll Take You There" and "Let's Do It Again". In 1969, Staples released her self-titled debut solo album.

#3173

Sara Bareilles

#23823

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (47 years)

Sara Beth Bareilles is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. She has sold over three million albums and over 15 million singles in the United States. Bareilles has earned various accolades, including two Grammy Awards, as well as nominations for three Primetime Emmy Awards, and three Tony Awards. In 2012, VH1 named her one of the Top 100 Greatest Women in Music.

#3174

Frances Corner

#41424

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Frances Marie Corner, is a British art and design historian and academic, specialising in fashion. Since 2019, she has been Warden of Goldsmiths, University of London. On 23 November 2020, staff announced a vote of no confidence in Prof. Corner, the no-confidence motion being backed by 87% of those who voted. In June 2022, her use of expenses at the school was brought into question when it was revealed that she had spent nearly £20k of College money on taxis over 2 years.

#3175

Liya Shakirova

#30328

Overall Influence

1921 - 2015 (94 years)

Liya Zakirovna Shakirova was a Soviet and Russian linguist, professor of pedagogical science and teacher-methodologist. She worked at Kazan State Pedagogical Institute from 1948 until her retirement in 2003 and authored approximately 420 scientific articles that included textbooks on Russian language teaching methology, teaching methods and manuals for students and teachers at universities. Shakirova received the Order of Lenin, the Medal "Veteran of Labour" and the Medal "For Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945" in her lifetime.

#3176

Snowy White

#47921

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Terence Charles "Snowy" White is an English guitarist, known for having played with Thin Lizzy and with Pink Floyd , and more recently, for Roger Waters' band. He is also known for his 1983 solo offering "Bird of Paradise", which became a UK Singles Chart Top 10 hit single.

#3177

Carol Chapelle

#87480

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Carol Ann Chapelle is an American linguist and Angela B. Pavitt Professor in English at Iowa State University. Chapelle earned a doctorate in linguistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and began teaching at Iowa State University in 1985. She was editor of the TESOL Quarterly from 1999 to 2004. In 2010, Chappelle was named a distinguished professor. She was appointed Angela B. Pavitt Professor in English in March 2015.

#3178

Nat Hentoff

#34334

Overall Influence

1925 - 2017 (92 years)

Nathan Irving Hentoff was an American historian, novelist, jazz and country music critic, and syndicated columnist for United Media. Hentoff was a columnist for The Village Voice from 1958 to 2009. Following his departure from The Village Voice, Hentoff became a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and continued writing his music column for The Wall Street Journal, which published his works until his death. He often wrote on First Amendment issues, vigorously defending the freedom of the press.

#3179

Fred Ebb

#55177

Overall Influence

1928 - 2004 (76 years)

Fred Ebb was an American musical theatre lyricist who had many successful collaborations with composer John Kander. The Kander and Ebb team frequently wrote for such performers as Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera.

#3180

Felicity Meakins

#94166

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Felicity Meakins is a linguist specialising in Australian Indigenous languages, morphology and language contact, who was one of the first academics to describe Gurindji Kriol. As of 2022, she is a professor at the University of Queensland and Deputy Director of the University of Queensland node of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language. She holds an ARC Future Fellowship focusing on language evolution and contact processes across northern Australia.

#3181

Colin Walsh

#96282

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Colin Walsh is an English organist, who has played many recitals in various religious venues in England as well as two at the Royal Festival Hall. He has also played in many European countries and New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the USA. Some of his work has been released on the Priory label. He has worked as an organist or assistant organist at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle; Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford; Salisbury Cathedral ; St Albans Cathedral ; and Lincoln Cathedral. In July 2002 there were plans to sack Walsh, whom The Telegraph described as "one of Europe's finest church organ...

#3182

April McMahon

#46259

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

April Mary Scott McMahon is a British academic administrator and linguist, who is Vice President for Teaching, Learning and Students at the University of Manchester. Having taught at the University of Cambridge and the University of Sheffield, she moved into academic administration while teaching at the University of Edinburgh. She was vice-chancellor of the Aberystwyth University , then a member of the senior leadership team at the University of Kent before joining the University of Manchester.

#3183

Marc Ribot

#49177

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Marc Ribot is an American guitarist and composer. His work has touched on many styles, including no wave, free jazz, rock, and Cuban music. Ribot is also known for collaborating with other musicians, most notably Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Vinicio Capossela and John Zorn.

#3184

Al Di Meola

#51546

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Albert Laurence Di Meola is an Italian-American guitarist. Known for his works in jazz fusion and world music, he began his career as guitarist with the group Return to Forever in 1974. From 1976 to 1978 he played with Stomu Yamashta in the supergroup Go on three records. The 1970s and 1980s saw albums such as Land of the Midnight Sun, Elegant Gypsy, Casino and Friday Night in San Francisco earn him both critical and commercial success.

#3185

Leslie Willcocks

#96837

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Leslie P. Willcocks is a Professor of Technology Work and Globalization and governor of the Information Systems and Innovation Group at the London School of Economics. He is considered an authority in the field of Outsourcing and recipient of the PricewaterhouseCoopers/Michael Corbett Associates World Outsourcing Achievement Award for his contribution to the field.

#3186

Ahmad Jamal

#42668

Overall Influence

1930 - 2023 (93 years)

Ahmad Jamal was an American jazz pianist, composer, bandleader, and educator. For six decades, he was one of the most successful small-group leaders in jazz. He was a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master and won a Lifetime Achievement Grammy for his contributions to music history.

#3187

Robert J. Lang

#4886

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Robert James Lang is an American physicist who is also one of the foremost origami artists and theorists in the world. He is known for his complex and elegant designs, most notably of insects and animals. He has studied the mathematics of origami and used computers to study the theories behind origami. He has made great advances in making real-world applications of origami to engineering problems.

#3188

Sergio Martino

#64458

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Sergio Martino is an Italian film director and producer, notable for his contributions to the giallo genre. Martino is the brother of the late producer Luciano Martino . They collaborated frequently in their respective professions. Their grandfather was director Gennaro Righelli.

#3189

A. Thomas Mclellan

#97735

Overall Influence

#3190

Simon McBurney

#50828

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Simon Montagu McBurney is an English actor, playwright, and theatre and opera director. He is the founder and artistic director of the Théâtre de Complicité, London. He has had roles in the films The Manchurian Candidate, Friends with Money, The Last King of Scotland, The Golden Compass, The Duchess, Robin Hood, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Magic in the Moonlight, The Theory of Everything, and Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. He played Cecil the choirmaster in BBC's The Vicar of Dibley.

#3191

Slim Whitman

#48377

Overall Influence

1924 - 2013 (89 years)

Ottis Dewey "Slim" Whitman Jr. was an American country music singer-songwriter and guitarist known for his yodeling abilities and his use of falsetto. He claimed he had sold in excess of 120 million records, although the recorded sales figures give 70 million, during a career that spanned over seven decades, and consisted of a prolific output of over 100 albums and around 500 recorded songs, that not only consisted of country music, but also of contemporary gospel, Broadway show tunes, love songs and standards. In the 1950s, Whitman toured with Elvis Presley as the opening act.

#3192

Ishirō Honda

#45213

Overall Influence

1911 - 1993 (82 years)

Ishirō Honda was a Japanese filmmaker who directed 46 feature films in a career spanning five decades. He is acknowledged as the most internationally successful Japanese filmmaker prior to Hayao Miyazaki and one of the founders of modern disaster film, with his films having a significant influence on the film industry. Despite directing many drama, war, documentary, and comedy films, Honda is best remembered for directing and co-creating the kaiju genre with special effects director Eiji Tsuburaya.

#3193

Donald Swann

#61987

Overall Influence

1923 - 1994 (71 years)

Donald Ibrahim Swann was a British composer, musician, singer and entertainer. He was one half of Flanders and Swann, writing and performing comic songs with Michael Flanders. Life Donald Swann was born in Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, Wales. His father, Herbert Alfredovich Swann, was a Russian doctor of English descent, from the expatriate community that started out as the Muscovy Company. His mother, Naguimé Sultán Swann , was a Turkmen-Russian nurse from Ashgabat, now part of Turkmenistan. They were refugees from the Russian Revolution. Swann's great-grandfather, Alfred Trout Swan, a draper...

#3194

Ilona Koutny

#52258

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Ilona Koutny is a Hungarian linguist and Esperantist. She works as a professor in Poznań, Poland. In 2008, she was honoured as "Esperantist of the Year" by the magazine La Ondo de Esperanto. Life Koutny studied linguistics at Budapest's Eötvös Loránd University, where she also received her doctorate. There she gave language lessons and developed the "ESPAROL" system for the Esperanto language. After the death of Professor István Szerdahelyi, she took over his chair of Esperanto and Linguistics at Eötvös University in 1987. Koutny also taught computational linguistics.

#3195

Tony Thorne

#83782

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Tony Thorne is a British author, linguist and lexicographer specialising in slang, jargon and cultural history. He is a leading authority on language change and language usage in the UK and across the English-speaking world.

#3196

Rosa von Praunheim

Rosa von Praunheim

#35550

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Holger Bernhard Bruno Mischwitzky , known professionally as Rosa von Praunheim, is a German film director, author, painter and one of the most famous gay rights activists in the German-speaking world. In over 50 years, von Praunheim has made more than 150 films . His works influenced the development of LGBTQ+ rights movements worldwide.

#3197

Siedah Garrett

#31249

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Deborah Christine "Siedah" Garrett is an American singer and songwriter who has written songs and performed backing vocals for many recording artists in the music industry, such as Michael Jackson, the Pointer Sisters, Brand New Heavies, Quincy Jones, Tevin Campbell, Donna Summer, Madonna, Jennifer Hudson among others. Garrett has been nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Original Song, and won the Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards for co-writing "Love You I Do" for the 2006 musical film, Dreamgirls.

#3198

Ken Caldeira

#18144

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Kenneth Caldeira is an American atmospheric scientist. His areas of research include ocean acidification, climate effects of trees, intentional climate modification, interactions in the global carbon cycle/climate system, and sustainable energy.

#3199

Cecilia Bartoli

#66135

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Cecilia Bartoli OMRI is an Italian coloratura mezzo-soprano opera singer and recitalist. She is best known for her interpretations of the music of Bellini, Handel, Mozart, Rossini and Vivaldi, as well as for her performances of lesser-known music from the Baroque and Classical period. She is known for singing both soprano and mezzo roles.

#3200

Nicholas Bodman

#72246

Overall Influence

1913 - 1997 (84 years)

Nicholas Cleaveland Bodman was an American linguist who made fundamental contributions to the study of historical Chinese phonology and Sino-Tibetan languages. Bodman was born in Chicago in 1913. He entered Harvard in 1935, but left after one year and spent several years doing office work and traveling in Europe. He joined the United States Navy in 1941, and was assigned to Station HYPO at Pearl Harbor in early 1942 to join the team working to decipher Japanese naval codes. He retired from the navy in 1945 with the rank of Lieutenant commander.

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