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,

#3451

Michael Zimmer

#22433

Overall Influence

Michael Zimmer is a privacy and data ethics scholar. He currently is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at Marquette University and Director of the Center for Data, Ethics, and Society. Previously, he was on the faculty at the School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and director of the Center for Information Policy Research. Zimmer is on the advisory board of the Future of Privacy Forum, and was on the executive committee of the Association of Internet Researchers from 2009-2016. He was the Microsoft Resident Fellow at the Information Society Pro...

#3452

Christa Dürscheid

Christa Dürscheid

#86795

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Christa Dürscheid , is a German linguist and professor at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Her main research interests include grammar, variational linguistics, didactics of language, writing systems, and media linguistics. In the English-speaking research community, she is best known for her publications about language use in the New Media.

#3453

Lindsay Cooper

#75591

Overall Influence

1951 - 2013 (62 years)

Lindsay Cooper was an English bassoon and oboe player and composer. Best known for her work with the band Henry Cow, she was also a member of Comus, National Health, News from Babel and David Thomas and the Pedestrians. She collaborated with a number of musicians, including Chris Cutler and Sally Potter, and co-founded the Feminist Improvising Group. She wrote scores for film and TV and a song cycle Oh Moscow which was performed live around the world in 1987. She also recorded a number of solo albums, including Rags , The Gold Diggers , and Music For Other Occasions .

#3454

Mark Tatge

#41086

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Mark W. Tatge is an American journalist, author, and college professor. He was a senior editor at Forbes magazine's Midwest Bureau, a staff reporter at The Wall Street Journal, an investigative reporter in the Statehouse Bureau of Cleveland's The Plain Dealer, and is the 2014 recipient of the Baldwin Fellowship at University of South Carolina.

#3455

Chico Hamilton

#68840

Overall Influence

1921 - 2013 (92 years)

Foreststorn "Chico" Hamilton was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. He came to prominence as sideman for Lester Young, Gerry Mulligan, Count Basie, and Lena Horne. Hamilton became a bandleader, first with a quintet featuring the cello as a lead instrument, an unusual choice for a jazz band in the 1950s, and subsequently leading bands that performed cool jazz, post bop, and jazz fusion.

#3456

Antoine Fuqua

#34584

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Antoine Fuqua is an American film director known for his work in the action and thriller genres. He was originally known as a director of music videos, and made his film debut in 1998 with The Replacement Killers. His critical breakthrough was the 2001 crime thriller Training Day.

#3457

Béla Tarr

#51141

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Béla Tarr is a Hungarian filmmaker. Debuting with the film Family Nest , Tarr began his directorial career with a brief period of what he refers to as "social cinema", aimed at telling everyday stories about ordinary people, often in the style of cinema vérité. Over the next decade, he changed the cinematic style and thematic elements of his films. Tarr has been interpreted as having a pessimistic view of humanity; the characters in his works are often cynical, and have tumultuous relationships with one another in ways critics have found to be darkly comic. Almanac of Fall follows the inhabitants of a run-down apartment as they struggle to live together while sharing their hostilities.

#3458

Sam Roberts

#52148

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

#3459

Harvey Aronson

#57816

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (97 years)

Harvey Aronson is an American journalist and journalism teacher, and a former Newsday editor who also wrote or co-wrote several books. He was part of a group of Newsday reporters involved in writing the bestselling hoax novel Naked Came the Stranger, initially credited to fictional author Penelope Ashe, and published as a parody of commercialized book publishing in general and of novels in the genre of Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls in particular. Aronson co-edited the project with his colleague, Mike McGrady, who had conceived the idea, and Aronson also wrote a chapter of the book...

#3460

Kitty Wells

#45008

Overall Influence

1919 - 2012 (93 years)

Ellen Muriel Deason , known professionally as Kitty Wells, was an American pioneering female country music singer. She broke down a barrier for women in country music with her 1952 hit recording "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels", which also made her the first female country singer to top the U.S. country charts and turned her into the first female country superstar. “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” would also be her first of several pop crossover hits. Wells is the only artist to be awarded top female vocalist awards for 14 consecutive years. Her chart-topping hits continued...

#3461

Heike Hennig

#42116

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Heike Hennig is a German dancer, choreographer and director of the opera and dance ensemble "Heike Hennig & Co". Life Heike Hennig had her first dance lessons at the age of 5 years in Leipzig of East Germany, studied modern dance, choreography and Body-Mind Centering in Cologne and at Moving on Center – School for Participatory Arts and Research in Oakland in US with teachers such as Steve Paxton, worked in Brazil and Portugal.

#3462

James Wyatt

#33056

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

James Wyatt is a game designer and a former United Methodist minister. He works for Wizards of the Coast, where he has designed supplements and adventures for the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game. He is the author of sci-fi and fantasy novels, including Forgotten Realms books, and the 4th edition Dungeon Master's Guide.

#3463

Big Daddy Kane

#24706

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Antonio Hardy , better known by his stage name Big Daddy Kane, is an American rapper, producer and actor who began his career in 1986 as a member of the Juice Crew. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential and skilled MCs in hip hop. Rolling Stone ranked his song "Ain't No Half-Steppin'" number 25 on its list of The 50 Greatest Hip-Hop Songs of All Time, calling him "a master wordsmith of rap's late-golden age and a huge influence on a generation of MCs".

#3464

Rex E. Wallace

#68404

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

His works include:

#3465

Barbara Romaine

#71802

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Barbara Romaine is an academic and translator of Arabic literature. From 2008 to 2021 she taught in the Department of Global Interdisciplinary Studies at Villanova University, where she also edited a periodical, Writing in Tongues: A Global Interdisciplinary Journal. Romaine has translated a number of literary works from Arabic to English. These include:Aunt Safiyya and the Monastery by Bahaa Taher Siraaj by Radwa Ashour Spectres by Radwa Ashour Blue Lorries by Radwa Ashour A Cloudy Day on the Western Shore by Mohamed Mansi Qandil Waiting for the Past by Hadiya Hussein

#3466

Judith Curry

#19797

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Judith A. Curry is an American climatologist and former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research interests include hurricanes, remote sensing, atmospheric modeling, polar climates, air-sea interactions, climate models, and the use of unmanned aerial vehicles for atmospheric research. She was a member of the National Research Council's Climate Research Committee, published over a hundred scientific papers, and co-edited several major works. Curry retired from academia in 2017 at age 63, coinciding with her public climate change ...

#3467

Nils Holmer

#92680

Overall Influence

1904 - 1994 (90 years)

Nils Magnus Holmer was a Swedish linguist. Education and research Holmer initially studied Russian at Lund University, where he focused on Indo-European linguistics. In the 1920s, Holmer was a guest student at a university in Prague, where he switched to studying Celtic languages.

#3468

Sally Caves

#64160

Overall Influence

Sally Caves is the pen name of Sarah Higley, a science fiction writer and professor of English at the University of Rochester. She is best known for creating the Star Trek character Reginald Barclay.

#3469

Siegfried Köhler

Siegfried Köhler

#49781

Overall Influence

1923 - 2017 (94 years)

Siegfried Köhler was a German conductor and composer of classical music. He worked as general music director of opera houses such as Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden and the Royal Swedish Opera. Köhler conducted premieres of works by Hans Werner Henze and Volker David Kirchner, among others, and revived rarely performed operas. He also composed music for the stage and taught at universities of music in Cologne and Saarbrücken.

#3470

Vladimir Napolskikh

#49678

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Vladimir Vladimirovich Napolskikh is a Russian ethnographer, ethnologist, ethnohistorian, Finno-Ugrist and linguist. Doctor of Historical Sciences , Professor at Udmurt State University. Member of the «Societas Uralo-Altaica» since 2000. Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 2011.

#3471

Jacques Israelievitch

#78084

Overall Influence

1948 - 2015 (67 years)

Jacques Israelievitch, CM was a French violinist, and one of Canada's foremost chamber musicians. Born in Cannes, France, at 11 years old he was the youngest graduate in the history of the Le Mans Conservatory. He went on to study at the Conservatoire de Paris with Henryk Szeryng and René Benedetti, receiving three first prizes at age 16. He also studied at Indiana University with Josef Gingold, János Starker, William Primrose and Menahem Pressler.

#3472

Jeff Sharlet

#29947

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Jeff Sharlet is an American academic, journalist, and author. Throughout his career, Sharlet's work has focused on religion. Career He is a contributing editor for Harper's, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Rolling Stone. His work has also appeared in Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Esquire, Lapham's Quarterly, Oxford American, Bookforum, The Washington Post, Mother Jones, New York, Advocate, Guernica, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Columbia Journalism Review, New Statesman, The Nation, The New Republic, Forward, and The Baffler. He has taught at New York University and is the Frederick Sessions Beebe '35 Professor in the Art of Writing at Dartmouth College.

#3473

Jordan Peele

#35857

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (47 years)

Jordan Haworth Peele is an American actor, comedian, and filmmaker. He is known for his film and television work in the comedy and horror genres. Peele started his career in sketch comedy before transitioning his career as a writer and director of psychological horror and satirical films. In 2017, Peele was included on the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world.

#3474

Annemarie von Gabain

#25233

Overall Influence

1901 - 1993 (92 years)

Annemarie von Gabain was a German scholar who dealt with Turkic studies, both as a linguist and as an art historian. Early life and education Gabain was born in Morhange on 7 April 1901. Her father, Arthur von Gabain, was a general and from Protestant family, Hugenotte. However, her mother raised her as a Catholic. Gabain received primary and secondary education in Mainz and Brandenburg. She went to Berlin for university education. She took courses on mathematics, sciences, Sinology and Turcology. She completed a dissertation in Sinology. Von Gabain then studied Turcology with Johann Wilhelm Bang Kaup who was the founder of the Berlin school of Turkic studies.

#3475

Luigi Zampa

#61978

Overall Influence

1905 - 1991 (86 years)

Luigi Zampa was an Italian film director. Biography Son of a worker, Zampa studied filmmaking from 1932 to 1937 at the Italian film school in Rome. He directed several Italian neorealism films in the 1940s. In 1949 he filmed Alarm Bells on Ischia, and also shot a separate British version under the title Children of Chance.

#3476

Jeffrey Robinson

Jeffrey Robinson

#32271

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Jeffrey Robinson is an American author of 30 books. Early life Born in Long Beach, New York, Robinson is a graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia . While still at school, he wrote for television and radio, including a weekly children's show, and was on the writing staff of The Mike Douglas Show, a nationally televised daily talk show. He continued working in the media during his four-year stint as an officer in the United States Air Force. Charged with running a press and public relations office for five generals at the height of the Vietnam War, he hosted a weekly talk show, scripted ...

#3477

Laurel J. Brinton

#78511

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Laurel J. Brinton is an American-born Canadian linguist. Her research explores areas of Modern English grammar, historical change in English discourse markers, grammaticalization and lexification in English, corpus linguistics, and the pragmatics of English.

#3478

Frank Wildhorn

#56771

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Frank Wildhorn is an American composer of both musicals and popular songs. His musical Jekyll & Hyde ran for four years on Broadway. He also wrote the #1 International hit song "Where Do Broken Hearts Go" for Whitney Houston.

#3479

Kjell Magne Yri

#74386

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Kjell Magne Yri is a Norwegian priest, linguist and translator. He hails from Hareid. He was interested in linguistics at an early age; during Norwegian classes in secondary school he read books in Greek and Esperanto. During his spare time he read Swahili. He combined the language interest with religious studies after a friend encouraged him to become a bible translator, eventually graduating from the MF Norwegian School of Theology with the cand.theol. degree in 1970. He also minored in Greek at the University of Oslo, as well as studying Latin and Hebrew. He was eventually given an assignm...

#3480

Lang Lang

#51875

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (44 years)

Lang Lang is a Chinese pianist who has performed with major orchestras around the world and appeared at many leading concert halls. Active since the 1990s, he was the first Chinese pianist to be engaged by the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic and many of the top American orchestras. A Chicago Tribune music critic called him "the biggest, most exciting young keyboard talent I have encountered in many a year of attending piano recitals." Lang is considered by many as one of the most accomplished classical musicians of modern times.

#3481

James Galway

#56045

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Sir James Galway is an Irish virtuoso flute player from Belfast, nicknamed "The Man with the Golden Flute". He established an international career as a solo flute player. In 2005, he received the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music at the Classic Brit Awards.

#3482

Gershom Gorenberg

Gershom Gorenberg

#9663

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Gershom Gorenberg is an American-born Israeli journalist, and blogger, specializing in Middle Eastern politics and the interaction of religion and politics. He is currently a senior correspondent for The American Prospect, a monthly American political magazine. Gorenberg self-identifies as "a left-wing, skeptical Orthodox Zionist Jew".

#3483

Charlotte Smith

#71499

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Charlotte Victoria Smith is one of two main presenters of BBC Radio 4's Farming Today. Early life Smith grew up in Quorn, Leicestershire, the ancestral home of British fox hunting. She attended Loughborough High School]], where she was head girl. She studied English and Drama at the University of Kent from 1983–86.

#3484

Alexander Argüelles

Alexander Argüelles

#62234

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Alexander Sabino Argüelles is an American linguist notable for his work on Korean. He is interested in the learning of foreign languages, and was profiled in Michael Erard's Babel No More. He is one of the polyglots listed in Kenneth Hyltenstam's Advanced Proficiency and Exceptional Ability in Second Languages, and has been described by The New Yorker as "a legendary figure in the [polyglot] community".

#3485

Grady Tate

#67231

Overall Influence

1932 - 2017 (85 years)

Grady Tate was an American jazz and soul-jazz drummer and baritone vocalist. In addition to his work as sideman, Tate released many albums as leader and lent his voice to songs in the animated Schoolhouse Rock! series.

#3486

Monte Hellman

#52365

Overall Influence

1932 - 2021 (89 years)

Monte Hellman was an American film director, producer, writer, and editor. Hellman began his career as an editor's apprentice at ABC TV, and made his directorial debut with the horror film Beast from Haunted Cave , produced by Gene Corman, Roger Corman's brother.

#3487

David Tomlinson

David Tomlinson

#72036

Overall Influence

1917 - 2000 (83 years)

David Cecil MacAlister Tomlinson was an English stage, film, and television actor and comedian. Having been described as both a leading man and a character actor, he is primarily remembered for his roles as authority figure George Banks in Mary Poppins, fraudulent magician Professor Emelius Browne in Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and as hapless antagonist Peter Thorndyke in The Love Bug. Tomlinson was posthumously inducted as a Disney Legend in 2002.

#3488

Lee Ritenour

#42244

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Lee Mack Ritenour is an American jazz guitarist who has been active since the late 1960s. Biography Ritenour was born on January 11, 1952, in Los Angeles, California, United States. At the age of eight he started playing guitar and four years later decided on a career in music. When he was 16 he played on his first recording session with the Mamas & the Papas. He developed a love for jazz and was influenced by guitarist Wes Montgomery. At the age of 17 he worked with Lena Horne and Tony Bennett. He studied classical guitar at the University of Southern California.

#3489

Dubravko Škiljan

#79800

Overall Influence

1949 - 2007 (58 years)

Dubravko Škiljan , was a Croatian linguist known for his work on Classical philology and semiotics. Life After finishing primary school and classical gymnasium in Zagreb, he enrolled the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Zagreb where he graduated in 1972 in theoretical linguistics, Latin, Ancient Greek and their literatures. He received his MA in archeology in 1974 with the thesis Greek language of the monuments of Late Antique Salona, and in 1976 his PhD with the theoretical-linguistics thesis titled Linguistics and dialectics.

#3490

Jerold Ottley

#81028

Overall Influence

1934 - 2021 (87 years)

Jerold Don Ottley was an American music director and choral conductor. He served as the director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir from 1974 to 1999. During his tenure, he established the Choir's annual Christmas concert and appointed its first female organist. Prior to that, he was assistant chair of the University of Utah's Music Department.

#3491

MF Doom

#34348

Overall Influence

1971 - 2020 (49 years)

Daniel Dumile , best known by his stage name MF Doom or simply Doom , was a British-American rapper and record producer. Noted for his intricate wordplay, signature metal mask, and "supervillain" stage persona, Dumile became a major figure of underground hip hop and alternative hip hop in the 2000s. After his death, Variety described him as one of the scene's "most celebrated, unpredictable and enigmatic figures".

#3492

Mehdi Hasan

#61100

Overall Influence

1937 - 2022 (85 years)

Mehdi Hasan SI was a Pakistani left-wing journalist, media historian, and academician. He was one of Pakistan's most prominent communication experts, with a specialization in political analysis. Early life and education Hasan was born on 27 June 1937 in Panipat, British India. His family migrated to Pakistan in 1947 and settled in Sahiwal. Hasan did Master in Journalism and PhD in mass communication from the University of the Punjab on Role of Press in Formation of Public Opinion 1857–1947. He won a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he conducted research on "Cove...

#3493

Peter Austin

#84034

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Peter Kenneth Austin, often cited as Peter K. Austin, is an Australian linguist, widely published in the fields of language documentation, syntax, linguistic typology and in particular, endangered languages and language revitalisation. After a long academic career in Australia, Hong Kong, the US, Japan, Germany and the UK, Austin is emeritus professor at SOAS University of London since retiring in December 2018.

#3494

A. Charles Muller

#32483

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

A. Charles Muller is a Japan-based academic specializing in Korean Buddhism and East Asian Yogacara, having published numerous books and articles on these topics. He was one of the earliest developers of online research resources for the field of Buddhist Studies and the founder and managing editor of the Digital Dictionary of Buddhism, the CJKV-English Dictionary, and the H-Buddhism Scholars Information Network, along with having digitized and published numerous reference works.

#3495

Daniel Zwerdling

Daniel Zwerdling

#37573

Overall Influence

Daniel Zwerdling is an American investigative journalist who has written for major magazines and newspapers. From 1980 to 2018 he served as an investigative reporter for NPR News, with stints as foreign correspondent and host of Weekend All Things Considered from 1993 to 1999. Zwerdling retired from NPR in 2018.

#3496

Robert Towne

#44220

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Robert Towne is an American screenwriter and director. He started with writing films for Roger Corman including The Tomb of Ligeia . Later, he was a part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmaking. He wrote the Academy Award-winning original screenplay for Roman Polanski's Chinatown , which is widely considered one of the greatest screenplays. Towne also wrote the sequel, The Two Jakes , and the Hal Ashby comedy-dramas The Last Detail and Shampoo . He has collaborated with Tom Cruise on the films Days of Thunder , The Firm and the first two installments of Mission: Impossible franchise .

#3497

Paweł Pawlikowski

Paweł Pawlikowski

#54557

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Paweł Aleksander Pawlikowski is a Polish filmmaker. He garnered early praise for a string of documentaries in the 1990s and for his award-winning feature films of the 2000s, Last Resort and My Summer of Love . His success continued into the 2010s with Ida , which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and Cold War , for which Pawlikowski won the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director, while the film received a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.

#3498

Glenn Branca

#44806

Overall Influence

1948 - 2018 (70 years)

Glenn Branca was an American avant-garde composer, guitarist, and luthier. Known for his use of volume, alternative guitar tunings, repetition, droning, and the harmonic series, he was a driving force behind the genres of no wave, totalism and noise rock. Branca received a 2009 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award.

#3499

John Wilson

#61752

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

John Wilson is a British conductor, arranger and musicologist, who conducts orchestras and operas, as well as big band jazz. He is the artistic director of Sinfonia of London. Education Wilson was born in Gateshead, Tyne & Wear. He attended Breckenbeds Junior High School in Low Fell, then Heathfield Senior High School in Gateshead . In the late 1980s he studied music at A-level at Newcastle College, where he conducted a variety of ensembles including a 96-piece orchestra and choir for a concert version of West Side Story. He wrote and directed his own pantomime during this period and he also conducted for many local amateur dramatic societies.

#3500

Judy Rebick

#18407

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Judy Rebick is a Canadian writer, journalist, political activist, and feminist. Early life Born in Reno, Nevada, Rebick and her family moved to Toronto when she was 9. She became a socialist activist in the 1970s, joining the Revolutionary Marxist Group. She was a member of its successor, the Revolutionary Workers League, and wrote articles for the RWL's newspaper, Socialist Voice, until she left the organization in the early 1980s.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions