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.

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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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School

Gender

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Communications,

#3301

Jean Boyer

#88361

Overall Influence

1948 - 2004 (56 years)

Jean Henri Marcel Boyer was a French organist and a professor of organ at several institutions including the Conservatoire national supérieur musique et danse de Lyon. Career Jean Boyer's father, Noël Boyer, a former student of André Marchal and Jean Langlais, was the organist of the Cathedral Saint Vincent and taught piano and violin at the Conservatory of Sidi Bel Abbès. Jean Boyer began his musical studies in Toulouse, where he trained with Xavier Darasse. He obtained a first organ prize in 1969 and recorded his first record in 1971 at the organ of Gimont in the Gers department.

#3302

Jeffrey Skidmore

Jeffrey Skidmore

#71894

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Jeffrey Skidmore OBE is the conductor and artistic director of Ex Cathedra, a choir and early music ensemble based in Birmingham in the West Midlands, England. An active participant in musical education and a pioneer in researching and performing neglected choral works of the 16th to 18th centuries, he has worked with leading musicologists to prepare new performing editions of French and Italian music. In particular, his recordings of French and Latin American Baroque music with Ex Cathedra have won wide acclaim.

#3303

Macklemore

#31363

Overall Influence

1983 - Present (43 years)

Benjamin Hammond Haggerty , better known by his stage name Macklemore , is an American rapper, singer, and songwriter. A native of Seattle, Washington, he started his career in 2000 as an independent artist and released three works: Open Your Eyes , The Language of My World and The Unplanned Mixtape . He rose to international success when he collaborated with producer Ryan Lewis as the duo Macklemore & Ryan Lewis .

#3304

John Shrader

#96231

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

John W. Shrader is an American college professor and sports broadcaster, currently working in Nebraska. He is Assistant Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He does LA Galaxy soccer play-by-play for Time Warner Cable SportsNet. He did play-by-play of the San Jose Earthquakes for Comcast SportsNet Bay Area and Comcast SportsNet California.

#3305

Gregory Stump

#97540

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Gregory T. Stump is an American linguist and Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at the University of Kentucky. He is a Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America and is known for his works on linguistic morphology. Stump was one of the founding Editors of the linguistic morphology journal, Word Structure.

#3306

Andrea Seabrook

#55056

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Andrea Seabrook is an American journalist reporting in various formats: radio, print, podcast & digital. She is known for her coverage of politics, Congress and the White House, and for her work hosting NPR's signature news programs, All Things Considered, Weekend Edition, Talk of the Nation, and others.

#3307

Philippe Herreweghe

#72649

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Philippe Maria François Herreweghe, Knight Herreweghe is a Belgian conductor and choirmaster. Herreweghe founded La Chapelle Royale and Collegium Vocale Gent and is renowned as a conductor, with a repertoire ranging from Renaissance to early Romantic classical music. He specialises in Baroque music, with a particular focus on the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.

#3308

Creed Taylor

#55549

Overall Influence

1929 - 2022 (93 years)

Creed Bane Taylor V was an American record producer, best known for his work with CTI Records, which he founded in 1967. His career also included periods at Bethlehem Records, ABC-Paramount Records , Verve, and A&M Records. In the 1960s, he signed bossa nova artists from Brazil to record in the US including Antonio Carlos Jobim, Eumir Deodato, João Gilberto, Astrud Gilberto, and Airto Moreira.

#3309

Rosa Manchón

#66439

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Rosa María Manchón Ruiz is a Spanish linguist. She is currently a professor of applied linguistics at the University of Murcia, Spain. Her research focuses on second language acquisition and second language writing. She was the editor of the Journal of Second Language Writing between 2008 and 2014.

#3310

Bob Rafelson

#45761

Overall Influence

1933 - 2022 (89 years)

Robert Jay Rafelson was an American film director, writer and producer. He is regarded as one of the key figures in the founding of the New Hollywood movement of the 1970s. Among his best-known films as a director include those made as part of the company he co-founded, Raybert/BBS Productions, Five Easy Pieces and The King of Marvin Gardens as well as acclaimed later films, The Postman Always Rings Twice and Mountains of the Moon . Other films he produced as part of BBS include two of the most significant films of the era, Easy Rider and The Last Picture Show . Easy Rider, Five Easy Piec...

#3311

Peaches

#45385

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Merrill Nisker , better known by her stage name Peaches, is a Canadian electroclash musician and producer. Born in Ontario, Peaches began her musical career in the 1990s as part of a folk trio, Mermaid Cafe. In 1995, she established a rock band, the Shit. That year she also released her first solo album, Fancypants Hoodlum. After moving to Berlin, Germany, she was signed to the Kitty-Yo label and released her second album, The Teaches of Peaches . Touring as the opening act for bands like Marilyn Manson and Queens of the Stone Age, she subsequently released her third album, Fatherfucker .

#3312

Anna Netrebko

#54332

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Anna Yuryevna Netrebko is a Russian and Austrian operatic coloratura soprano who has performed at the Salzburg Festival, Metropolitan Opera, Vienna State Opera, and the Royal Opera. Discovered and promoted by Valery Gergiev, she began her career at the Mariinsky Theatre, collaborating with the conductor in the theater and performances elsewhere. She was noticed globally after playing Donna Anna in Mozart's Don Giovanni at the 2002 Salzburg Festival. She had been known for her rendition of lyric and coloratura soprano roles yet later proceeded into heavier 19th-century romantic roles, such as Leonora in Il trovatore and the role of Lady Macbeth in Macbeth.

#3313

Brooke Kroeger

#76769

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Brooke Kroeger is a journalist, writer, and professor emerita at New York University. She has written books on Nellie Bly, Fannie Hurst, and most recently a 2023 book on women in journalism. Education and career Kroeger as a B.S. in journalism and political science from Boston University , and an M.S. in journalism from Columbia University .

#3314

Rithy Panh

#69959

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Rithy Panh is a Cambodian documentary film director and screenwriter. The French-schooled director's films focus on the aftermath of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. Rithy Panh's works are from an authoritative viewpoint, because his family were expelled from Phnom Penh in 1975 by the Khmer Rouge. One after another, his father, mother, sisters and nephews died of starvation or exhaustion, as they were held in a remote labor camp in rural Cambodia.

#3315

Donald F. Roberts

Donald F. Roberts

#61551

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Donald F. Roberts is the Thomas More Storke Professor Emeritus in Communication at Stanford University. Roberts studied at Columbia University, where he received his B.A. in 1961, at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned an M.A. in 1963, and at Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford in 1968 and joined the Stanford faculty at that time. At Stanford, he was Director of the Institute for Communication Research , and chair of the Department of Communication . He retired in 2006.

#3316

M.I.A.

#35480

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam , known by her stage name M.I.A. , is a British rapper, record producer, and singer. Her music combines elements of alternative, dance, electronic, hip hop and world music with electronic instruments and samples.

#3317

Rüdiger Schmitt

#71560

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Rüdiger Schmitt is a German linguist, Iranologist, and educator. He was a professor of Comparative Indo-European Philology and Indo-Iranian Studies at Saarland University in Saarbrücken, Saarland, Germany, from 1979 until 2004.

#3318

Mumia Abu-Jamal

Mumia Abu-Jamal

#26160

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Mumia Abu-Jamal is an American political activist and journalist who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1982 for the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. While on death row, he has written and commented on the criminal justice system in the United States. After numerous appeals, his death penalty sentence was overturned by a federal court. In 2011, the prosecution agreed to a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. He entered the general prison population early the following year.

#3319

Ronan Farrow

#44284

Overall Influence

1987 - Present (39 years)

Satchel Ronan O'Sullivan Farrow is an American journalist. The son of actress Mia Farrow and filmmaker Woody Allen, he is known for his investigative reporting on allegations of sexual abuse against film producer Harvey Weinstein, which was published in The New Yorker magazine. The magazine won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for this reporting, sharing the award with The New York Times. Farrow has worked for UNICEF and as a government advisor.

#3320

Maurice Peress

#24618

Overall Influence

1930 - 2017 (87 years)

Maurice Peress was an American orchestra conductor, educator and author. After serving as assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein beginning in 1961, Peress went on to stand as leader of the orchestra in Corpus Christi, Texas in 1962. In 1970, he also became leader for two years of the Austin Symphony Orchestra. In 1974, he left Texas to take over the Kansas City Philharmonic, where he remained until 1980. He conducted Leonard Bernstein's musical theatre work MASS in 1971, 1973 and 2014.

#3321

Questlove

#22431

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Ahmir K. Thompson , known professionally as Questlove , is an American musician, record producer, disc jockey, filmmaker, music journalist, and actor. He is the drummer and joint frontman for the hip hop band the Roots. The Roots have been serving as the in-house band for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon since 2014, after having fulfilled the same role on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Questlove is also one of the producers of the cast album of the Broadway musical Hamilton. He is the co-founder of the websites Okayplayer and OkayAfrica. He is also known for the podcast Questlove Supreme.

#3322

Dick Higgins

#44096

Overall Influence

1938 - 1998 (60 years)

Dick Higgins was an American artist, composer, art theorist, poet, publisher, printmaker, and a co-founder of the Fluxus international artistic movement . Inspired by John Cage, Higgins was an early pioneer of electronic correspondence. Higgins coined the word intermedia to describe his artistic activities, defining it in a 1965 essay by the same name, published in the first number of the Something Else Newsletter. His most notable audio contributions include Danger Music scores and the Intermedia concept to describe the ineffable inter-disciplinary activities that became prevalent in the 196...

#3323

Aurelio Macedonio Espinosa Jr.

#90430

Overall Influence

1907 - 2004 (97 years)

Aurelio Macedonio Espinosa Jr. was a professor at Stanford University and an expert on Spanish linguistics, focusing on Spanish American folklore. He was the son of Aurelio Macedonio Espinosa Sr. Personal life Espinosa was born in 1907 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His parents were Aurelio Macedonio Espinosa Sr. and Maria Margarita Garcia Espinosa , and he had four siblings.

#3324

Adelaide Hall

#45574

Overall Influence

1901 - 1993 (92 years)

Adelaide Louise Hall was an American-born UK-based jazz singer and entertainer. Her career spanned more than 70 years from 1921 until her death. Early in her career, she was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance; she became based in the UK after 1938. Hall entered the Guinness Book of World Records in 2003 as the world's most enduring recording artist, having released material over eight consecutive decades. She performed with major artists such as Art Tatum, Ethel Waters, Josephine Baker, Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Cab Calloway, Fela Sowande, Rudy Vallee, and Jools Holland, and recorded...

#3325

Anna Stroka

#90599

Overall Influence

1923 - 2020 (97 years)

#3326

Jason Reitman

#37231

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Jason R. Reitman is a Canadian-American filmmaker. He is best known for directing the films Thank You for Smoking , Juno , Up in the Air , Young Adult and Ghostbusters: Afterlife . He has received one Grammy Award, one Golden Globe and four Academy Award nominations, two of which are for Best Director. Reitman is a dual citizen of Canada and the United States. He is the son of director Ivan Reitman, and known for frequently collaborating with screenwriter Diablo Cody.

#3327

Timothy Brown

#56168

Overall Influence

Timothy B. Brown is an American game designer, primarily of role-playing games. He has been a designer at Game Designers' Workshop, an editor at Challenge magazine, and the director of product development at TSR.

#3328

Nick Young

#58087

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Nick Young is an American broadcast journalist now retired from CBS News. Young is former anchor of the morning CBS World News Roundup on the CBS Radio Network. He was born Nicholas Yeazel. Early career Young's broadcast career began in 1968 in his hometown. After his 1971 graduation from the University of Missouri's School of Journalism, Young joined the staff of WLW Radio in Cincinnati, Ohio, hosting an overnight telephone talk show.

#3329

Carl Davis

#68012

Overall Influence

1936 - 2023 (87 years)

Carl Davis was an American-born British conductor and composer. He wrote music for more than 100 television programmes Early life and career Carl Davis was born in Brooklyn, New York, on October 28, 1936, to Jewish parents, Sara and Isadore Davis. He studied composition with Paul Nordoff and Hugo Kauder, and subsequently with Per Nørgard in Copenhagen. He attended Bard College, in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. His early work in the US provided valuable conducting experience with organisations such as the New York City Opera and the Robert Shaw Chorale. In 1959, the revue Diversions, of wh...

#3330

Eugênio Bucci

#39145

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Eugênio Bucci is a Brazilian journalist, known for his works at many Brazilian publications and also for his time as president of Radiobras . Biography Bucci graduated in Social Communication at Communication and Arts School of the University of São Paulo in 1982 and in Law at the same university.

#3331

Liz Walker

#34110

Overall Influence

Liz Walker is an American pastor and retired journalist. She was the first black woman to co-anchor a newscast in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. She became the Pastor of the Roxbury Presbyterian Church in 2014.

#3332

David Axelrod

#29776

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

David M. Axelrod is an American political consultant, analyst, and former White House official. He is best known for being the chief strategist for Barack Obama's presidential campaigns. After Obama's election, Axelrod was appointed as Senior Advisor to the President. He left the position in early 2011 and became the Senior Strategist for Obama's successful re-election campaign in 2012. Axelrod wrote for the Chicago Tribune, and joined CNN as Senior Political Commentator in 2015. Until recently, Axelrod served as the director of the non-partisan University of Chicago Institute of Politics. H...

#3333

Thomas Oden Lambdin

#46410

Overall Influence

1927 - 2020 (93 years)

Thomas Oden Lambdin was a leading scholar of the Semitic and Egyptian languages. He received his Ph.D. in 1952 from the Johns Hopkins University Department of Near Eastern Studies, where his advisor was William Foxwell Albright; his dissertation was on "Egyptian Loanwords and Transcriptions in the Ancient Semitic Languages." He was appointed as an associate professor of Semitic Languages at Harvard University in 1964. He retired from Harvard in 1983 and served as Professor Emeritus until his death. He was admired not only for his research and his "tireless teaching", but for the quality of his introductory textbooks on Biblical Hebrew, Coptic, Ge'ez and Gothic language.

#3334

Susan Alexander-Max

#77904

Overall Influence

Susan Alexander-Max was an American-born British fortepianist best known for her period performances of baroque and classical music. A graduate of the Juilliard School of Music, she later studied with Ilona Kabos in London. She was a member of the period-instrument chamber group The Music Collection, with Simon Standage and Jennifer Ward Clarke . She was also a professor of piano at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama.

#3335

Andy Taylor

#50838

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Andrew James Taylor is an English guitarist, best known as a member of Duran Duran across three stints and a former member of the Power Station. He has also recorded and performed as a solo artist, and served as a guitarist, songwriter, and record producer for the likes of Robert Palmer, Rod Stewart, the Almighty, Thunder, Love and Money, Mark Shaw, Then Jerico, C. C. Catch, Paul Rodgers , Belinda Carlisle, and Gun.

#3336

Roger Greenaway

Roger Greenaway

#58127

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Roger John Reginald Greenaway, is an English singer, songwriter and record producer, best known for his collaborations with Roger Cook and Tony Burrows. His compositions have included "You've Got Your Troubles" and the transatlantic million selling songs "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing " and "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress". They were the first UK songwriting partnership to be granted an Ivor Novello Award as 'Songwriters of the Year' in two successive years.

#3337

Sergei Tretyakov

#27641

Overall Influence

1956 - 2010 (54 years)

Colonel Sergei Olegovich Tretyakov was a Russian SVR officer, who defected to the United States in October 2000. Intelligence career Born 5 October 1956 in Moscow, Tretyakov was a career KGB/SVR officer. Before being posted in New York, he worked in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

#3338

Ruby Dee

#30844

Overall Influence

1922 - 2014 (92 years)

Ruby Dee was an American actress, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist, and civil rights activist. She originated the role of "Ruth Younger" in the stage and film versions of A Raisin in the Sun . Her other notable film roles include The Jackie Robinson Story and Do the Right Thing .

#3339

Peter Demetz

#44007

Overall Influence

1922 - Present (104 years)

Peter Demetz is an American literature scholar of Germany and a Sterling Professor emeritus at Yale University, and also a published author. He was formerly the Craig Distinguished Visiting Professor at Rutgers University.

#3340

Lita Ford

#37419

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Lita Rossana Ford is an American guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter. She was the lead guitarist for the all-female rock band the Runaways in the late 1970s, and then embarked on a successful glam metal solo career that hit its peak in the late 1980s. The 1989 single "Close My Eyes Forever", a duet with Ozzy Osbourne, remains Ford's most successful song, reaching No. 8 on the US Billboard Hot 100.

#3341

Deborah Nelson

#71612

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Deborah Nelson is a Pulitzer prize-winning freelance journalist at Reuters and the Associate Professor of Investigative Reporting at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland.

#3342

Terence Davies

#56141

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Terence Davies was a British screenwriter, film director, and novelist. He is best known as the writer and director of autobiographical films, including Distant Voices, Still Lives , The Long Day Closes and the collage film Of Time and the City , as well as the literary adaptations The Neon Bible , The House of Mirth , The Deep Blue Sea , and Sunset Song . His final two feature films were centered around influential literary figures, Emily Dickinson in A Quiet Passion and Siegfried Sassoon in Benediction . Davies was widely hailed by critics as one of the greatest British directors of his c...

#3343

Tommy Aldridge

#35860

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Tommy Aldridge is an American heavy metal and hard rock drummer. He is noted for his work with numerous bands and artists since the 1970s, such as Black Oak Arkansas, Pat Travers Band, Ozzy Osbourne, Gary Moore, Whitesnake, Ted Nugent, Thin Lizzy, Vinnie Moore and Yngwie Malmsteen.

#3344

Marit Westergaard

#84594

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Marit Kristine Richardsen Westergaard is a Norwegian linguist, known for her work on child language acquisition and multilingualism. She defended her PhD thesis The Development of Word Order in Norwegian Child Language: The Interaction of Input and Economy Principles in the Acquisition of V2 at the University of Tromsø in 2005. She was hired as a professor at the University of Tromsø in 2009, and also has held an adjunct professor position at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology since 2015. She has been a fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters since 2016.

#3345

Delbert Mann

#42356

Overall Influence

1920 - 2007 (87 years)

Delbert Martin Mann Jr. was an American television and film director. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for the film Marty , adapted from a 1953 teleplay of the same name which he had also directed. From 1967 to 1971, he was president of the Directors Guild of America. In 2002, he received the DGA's honorary life member award. Mann was credited to have "helped bring TV techniques to the film world."

#3346

Ermanno Olmi

#58835

Overall Influence

1931 - 2018 (87 years)

Ermanno Olmi was an Italian film director and screenwriter best known for directing Il Posto and The Tree of Wooden Clogs , which won the Palme d'Or. Throughout his career Olmi blended Italian neorealism with Christian humanism, with many of his films following humble characters through the spiritual trials of harsh conditions.

#3347

Perri Klass

#43935

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Perri Klass is an American pediatrician and writer who has published extensively about her medical training and pediatric practice. Among her subjects have been the issues of women in medicine, relationships between doctors and patients, and children and literacy. She is the author of both fiction and nonfiction novels, stories, essays, and journalism. Klass is Professor of Journalism and Pediatrics at New York University, and Medical Director of Reach Out and Read, a national childhood literacy program that works through doctors and nurses to encourage parents to read aloud to young children, and to give them the books they need to do it.

#3348

Carlos Alberto Scolari

Carlos Alberto Scolari

#105925

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Carlos Alberto Scolari is a researcher and expert in communication and digital media, interfaces and communication ecology. Building on the tradition of the theories of mass media, since 1990, he has been dedicated to studying new forms of communication arising from the spread of the World Wide Web.

#3349

Raymond Leppard

#81826

Overall Influence

1927 - 2019 (92 years)

Raymond John Leppard was a British-American conductor, harpsichordist, composer and editor. In the 1960s, he played a prime role in the rebirth of interest in Baroque music; in particular, he was one of the first major conductors to perform Baroque opera, reviving works by Claudio Monteverdi and Francesco Cavalli. He conducted operas at major international opera houses and festivals, including the Glyndebourne Festival where he led the world premiere of Nicholas Maw's The Rising of the Moon, the Metropolitan Opera and the Royal Opera House. He composed film scores such as Lord of the Flies a...

#3350

Beverly Derewianka

#69237

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Beverly Derewianka is Emeritus Professor of linguistics at the University of Wollongong, Australia. She is a leading figure in educational linguistics and Sydney School genre pedagogy. Her major research contributions have been in the field of literacy education. Her research projects tracing students’ literacy development have had a direct and substantial impact on curriculum and syllabus development in Australia and internationally. She has authored 11 books and numerous book chapters and journal articles in the field of literacy education.

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