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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Communications,
#351
John Chadwick
#5192
Overall Influence
1920 - 1998 (78 years)
John Chadwick, was an English linguist and classical scholar who was most notable for the decipherment, with Michael Ventris, of Linear B. Early life, education and wartime service John Chadwick was born at 18 Christ Church Road, Mortlake, Surrey, on 21 May 1920, the younger son of Margaret Pamela and Fred Chadwick, civil servant. He was educated at St Paul's School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
Go to Profile#352
Peter Bergen
#2239
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Peter Lampert Bergen is a British and American-based United States journalist, author, and producer who is CNN's national security analyst, a vice president at New America, a professor at Arizona State University, and the host of the Audible podcast In the Room with Peter Bergen.
Go to Profile#353
Claude Chabrol
#11776
Overall Influence
1930 - 2010 (80 years)
Claude Henri Jean Chabrol was a French film director and a member of the French New Wave group of filmmakers who first came to prominence at the end of the 1950s. Like his colleagues and contemporaries Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Éric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette, Chabrol was a critic for the influential film magazine Cahiers du cinéma before beginning his career as a film maker.
Go to Profile#354
Philip Meyer
#13101
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (94 years)
Philip Meyer was an American journalist and scholar who was a professor and holder of the Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He researched in the areas of journalism quality, precision journalism, civic journalism, polling, the newspaper industry, and communications technology. Meyer received his undergraduate degree in technical journalism from Kansas State University , a master's degree in political science from Chapel Hill and was a non-degree Nieman Fellow at Harvard University .
Go to Profile#355
Jon Snow
#2578
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Jonathan George Snow HonFRIBA is an English journalist and television presenter. He is best known as the longest-running presenter of Channel 4 News, which he presented from 1989 to 2021. On 29 April 2021, Snow announced his retirement from the role; his final programme aired on 23 December 2021. Although Channel 4's news programming is produced by ITN, Snow was employed directly by the broadcaster.
Go to Profile#356
Clive Upton
#11496
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Clive Upton is an English linguist specializing in dialectology and sociolinguistics. He is also an authority on the pronunciation of English. He has been Emeritus Professor of Modern English Language at the University of Leeds since 2012.
Go to Profile#357
Damon Knight
#1878
Overall Influence
1922 - 2002 (80 years)
Damon Francis Knight was an American science fiction author, editor, and critic. He is the author of "To Serve Man", a 1950 short story adapted for The Twilight Zone. He was married to fellow writer Kate Wilhelm.
Go to Profile#358
Peter Beinart
#3112
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Peter Alexander Beinart is an American liberal columnist, journalist, and political commentator. A former editor of The New Republic, he has also written for Time, The New York Times, and The New York Review of Books among other periodicals. He is also the author of three books.
Go to Profile#359
Nate Silver
#1524
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (46 years)
Nathaniel Read Silver is an American statistician, writer, and poker player who analyzes baseball , basketball, and elections . He is the founder of FiveThirtyEight, and held the position of editor-in-chief there, along with being a special correspondent for ABC News, until May 2023.
Go to Profile#360
Christophe Rousset
#14619
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Christophe Rousset is a French harpsichordist and conductor, who specializes in the performance of Baroque music on period instruments. He is also a musicologist, particularly of opera and European music of the 17th and 18th centuries and is the founder of the French music ensemble Les Talens Lyriques.
Go to Profile#361
Rian Johnson
#3435
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Rian Craig Johnson is an American filmmaker. He made his directorial debut with the neo-noir mystery film Brick , which received positive reviews and grossed nearly $4 million on a $450,000 budget. Transitioning to higher-profile films, Johnson achieved mainstream recognition for writing and directing the science-fiction thriller Looper to critical and commercial success. Johnson landed his largest project when he wrote and directed the space opera Star Wars: The Last Jedi , which grossed over $1 billion. He returned to the mystery genre with Knives Out and its sequel Glass Onion , both of ...
Go to Profile#362
Bernard Shaw
#7313
Overall Influence
1940 - 2022 (82 years)
Bernard Shaw was an American journalist and lead news anchor for CNN from 1980 until his retirement on March 2, 2001. Prior to his time at CNN, he was a reporter and anchor for WNUS, Westinghouse Broadcasting, CBS News, and ABC News.
Go to Profile#363
Giorgio Strehler
#6624
Overall Influence
1921 - 1997 (76 years)
Giorgio Strehler was an Italian stage director, theatre practitioner, actor and politician. He was one of the most significant figures in Italian theatre during his lifetime, described by Mel Gussow as "the grand master of Italian theater" and "one of the world's boldest and most innovative directors." He co-founded Italy's first and most significant repertory company, the Piccolo Teatro of Milan, and the Union of the Theatres of Europe.
Go to Profile#364
Pete Brown
#6289
Overall Influence
1940 - 2023 (83 years)
Peter Ronald Brown was an English performance poet, lyricist, and singer best known for his collaborations with Cream and Jack Bruce. Brown formed the bands Pete Brown & His Battered Ornaments and Pete Brown & Piblokto! and worked with Graham Bond and Phil Ryan. Brown also wrote film scripts and formed a film production company.
Go to Profile#365
Alan Lee
#4749
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Alan Lee is an English book illustrator and film conceptual designer. He is best known for his artwork inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy novels, and for his work on the conceptual design of Peter Jackson's film adaptations of Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film series.
Go to Profile#366
Hunter Davies
#4254
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Edward Hunter Davies is a British author, journalist and broadcaster. His books include the only authorised biography of the Beatles. Early life Davies was born in Johnstone, Renfrewshire, to Scottish parents. For four years his family lived in Dumfries until Davies was aged 11. Davies has quoted his boyhood hero as being football centre-forward, Billy Houliston, of Davies' then local team, Queen of the South.
Go to Profile#367
Trevor Johnston
#18455
Overall Influence
Trevor Johnston is an Australian expert on Auslan. Johnston received his PhD from the University of Sydney in 1989 for his work on Auslan. Johnston was responsible for coining the term Auslan, and created the first Auslan dictionary, which was also one of the first sign language dictionaries that sequenced signs throughout according to principles that were language internal - such as handshape.
Go to Profile#368
Ehsan Yarshater
#3316
Overall Influence
1920 - 2018 (98 years)
Ehsan Yarshater was an Iranian historian and linguist who specialized in Iranology. He was the founder and director of The Center for Iranian Studies, and Hagop Kevorkian Professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies at Columbia University.
Go to Profile#369
John Avlon
#3718
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
John Phillips Avlon is an American journalist and political commentator. He is a senior political analyst and anchor at CNN and was the editor-in-chief and managing director of The Daily Beast from 2013 to 2018. Avlon was previously a columnist and associate editor for The New York Sun and chief speechwriter for former Mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani.
Go to Profile#370
Hans Vermeer
#12270
Overall Influence
1930 - 2010 (80 years)
Prof. Dr. h.c. Hans Josef Vermeer , was a German linguist and translation scholar. Vermeer was Professor of Linguistics at the University of Mainz in Germersheim and held a chair in Translation Studies at Heidelberg University. After his retirement, he became a visiting professor at national and international universities. In his final years, he returned to the universities of Mainz and Heidelberg. On 17 January 2010, just before his death, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Mainz.
Go to Profile#371
Leonard Talmy
#8972
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Leonard Talmy is an emeritus professor of linguistics and philosophy at the University at Buffalo in New York. He is known for his pioneering work in cognitive linguistics, more specifically, in the relationship between semantic and formal linguistic structures and the connections between semantic typologies and universals. He is also specialized in the study of Yiddish and Native American linguistics.
Go to Profile#372
Alan Winstanley
#5827
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Alan Kenneth Winstanley is an English record producer and songwriter, active from the mid-1970s onwards. He usually works with Clive Langer. His early career during the mid-1970s was as an audio engineer, working on albums by The Stranglers in addition to releases by Joe Jackson and Generation X. He also worked with songwriter Brian Wade producing teen pop singer Nikki Richards' single "Oh Boy!" in 1978.
Go to Profile#373
Frederik Pohl
#1417
Overall Influence
1919 - 2013 (94 years)
Frederik George Pohl Jr. was an American science-fiction writer, editor, and fan, with a career spanning nearly 75 years—from his first published work, the 1937 poem "Elegy to a Dead Satellite: Luna", to the 2011 novel All the Lives He Led.
Go to Profile#374
Masha Gessen
#1459
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Masha Gessen is a Russian-American journalist, author, translator, and activist who has been an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. Gessen is nonbinary and trans and uses they/them pronouns. Gessen has written extensively on LGBT rights. Described as "Russia's leading LGBT rights activist", they have said that for many years they were "probably the only publicly out gay person in the whole country". They now live in New York with their wife and children.
Go to Profile#375
Tadanori Yokoo
#9749
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Tadanori Yokoo is a Japanese graphic designer, illustrator, printmaker and painter. Yokoo’s signature style of psychedelia and pastiche engages a wide span of modern visual and cultural phenomena from Japan and around the world.
Go to Profile#376
Robert Moog
#897
Overall Influence
1934 - 2005 (71 years)
Robert Arthur Moog was an American engineer and electronic music pioneer. He was the founder of the synthesizer manufacturer Moog Music and the inventor of the first commercial synthesizer, the Moog synthesizer, which debuted in 1964. In 1970, Moog released a more portable model, the Minimoog, described as the most famous and influential synthesizer in history. Among Moog's honors are a Technical Grammy Award, received in 2002, and an induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Go to Profile#377
Sophie Muller
#3967
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Sophie Luise Elisabeth Muller is a British music video director who has directed over 300 music videos. She won a Grammy Award for Annie Lennox's 1992 Diva video album, and an MTV Video Music Award for Lennox's song "Why" from the same album. In 1993, she received a BRIT Award for "Stay" by Shakespears Sister. She won another MTV Award in 1997 for "Don't Speak" by No Doubt. Muller is a longtime collaborator of Sade, Annie Lennox, Gwen Stefani, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Garbage and Shakespears Sister.
Go to Profile#378
John A. Hawkins
#14996
Overall Influence
John A. Hawkins is Professor of English and Applied Linguistics at the Research Centre for English and Applied Linguistics at the University of Cambridge. As of 2007 he is also a professor in the Department of Linguistics at UC Davis.
Go to Profile#379
Savannah Guthrie
#5701
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Savannah Clark Guthrie is an Australian-born American broadcast journalist and attorney. She is a main co-anchor of the NBC News morning show Today, a position she has held since July 2012. Guthrie joined NBC News in September 2007 as a legal analyst and correspondent, regularly reporting on trials throughout the country. After serving as a White House correspondent between 2008 and 2011 and as co-anchor of the MSNBC program The Daily Rundown in 2010 and 2011, Guthrie was announced as the co-host of Todays third hour alongside Natalie Morales and Al Roker. In that role, she substituted as news anchor and main co-host and appeared as the chief legal analyst across all NBC platforms.
Go to Profile#380
Bob Noorda
#12983
Overall Influence
1927 - 2010 (83 years)
Bob Noorda was a Dutch-born Italian graphic designer who lived and worked primarily in Milan from 1954 onwards. His works included design projects for major corporations and large-scale retail chains, publishing houses as well as public works such as the Milan Metro and NYC subway sign and image systems. During his career as a designer, Noorda created more than 170 logos for clients like Feltrinelli, Olivetti, Eni, Zucchi, Touring Club Italiano, Ermenegildo Zegna, and many others.
Go to Profile#381
James E. Grunig
#6342
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
James E. Grunig is a public relations theorist, Professor Emeritus for the Department of Communication at the University of Maryland. Biography Grunig was born on April 18, 1942. He received a B.S. from Iowa State University, 1964 in Agricultural Journalism and a MS from the University of Wisconsin, 1966 in Agricultural Economics. He then received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1968 with a thesis "Information, entrepreneurship, and economic development: A study of the decision making processes of Colombian latifundistas" He is married to Larissa A. Grunig,
Go to Profile#382
Pierre Berton
#4269
Overall Influence
1920 - 2004 (84 years)
Pierre Francis de Marigny Berton, CC, O.Ont. was a Canadian writer, journalist and broadcaster. Berton wrote 50 best-selling books, mainly about Canadiana, Canadian history and popular culture. He also wrote critiques of mainstream religion, anthologies, children's books and historical works for youth. He was a reporter and war correspondent, an editor at Maclean's Magazine and The Toronto Star and, for 39 years, a guest on Front Page Challenge. He was a founder of the Writers' Trust of Canada, and won many honours and awards.
Go to Profile#383
George van Driem
#7814
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
George "Sjors" van Driem is a Dutch linguist associated with the University of Bern, where he was the chair of Historical Linguistics and directed the Linguistics Institute. He became professor emeritus in 2022.
Go to Profile#384
Deirdre Wilson
#5911
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Deirdre Susan Moir Wilson, FBA is a British linguist and cognitive scientist. She is emeritus professor of Linguistics at University College London and research professor at the Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature at the University of Oslo. Her most influential work has been in linguistic pragmatics—specifically in the development of Relevance Theory with French anthropologist Dan Sperber. This work has been especially influential in the Philosophy of Language. Important influences on Wilson are Noam Chomsky, Jerry Fodor, and Paul Grice. Linguists and philosophers of language who have been...
Go to Profile#385
Wolfgang U. Dressler
#17977
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Wolfgang U. Dressler is an Austrian professor of linguistics at the University of Vienna. Dressler is a polyglot and scholar who has contributed to various fields of linguistics, especially phonology, morphology, text linguistics, clinical linguistics and child language development. He is an important representative of the 'naturalness theory'.
Go to Profile#386
Ludovic Kennedy
#4975
Overall Influence
1919 - 2009 (90 years)
Sir Ludovic Henry Coverley Kennedy was a Scottish journalist, broadcaster, humanist and author. As well as his wartime service in the Royal Navy, he is known for presenting many current affairs programmes and for reexamining cases such as the Lindbergh kidnapping and the murder convictions of Timothy Evans and Derek Bentley. He also campaigned for the abolition of the death penalty in the United Kingdom.
Go to Profile#387
John Maddox
#2579
Overall Influence
1925 - 2009 (84 years)
Sir John Royden Maddox, FRS was a Welsh theoretical chemist, physicist, and science writer. He was an editor of Nature for 22 years, from 1966 to 1973 and 1980 to 1995. Education and early life John Royden Maddox was born on 27 November 1925, at Penllergaer near Swansea, Wales. He was the son of Arthur Jack Maddox, a furnaceman at an aluminium plant. He was educated at Gowerton Boys' County School. From there, aged 15, he won a state scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford, where he read chemistry, and King's College London, where he studied physics.
Go to Profile#388
Bernard Levin
#4493
Overall Influence
1928 - 2004 (76 years)
Henry Bernard Levin was an English journalist, author and broadcaster, described by The Times as "the most famous journalist of his day". The son of a poor Jewish family in London, he won a scholarship to the independent school Christ's Hospital and went on to the London School of Economics, graduating in 1952. After a short spell in a lowly job at the BBC selecting press cuttings for use in programmes, he secured a post as a junior member of the editorial staff of a weekly periodical, Truth, in 1953.
Go to Profile#389
Roy Andrew Miller
#7354
Overall Influence
1924 - 2014 (90 years)
Roy Andrew Miller was an American linguist best known as the author of several books on Japanese language and linguistics, and for his advocacy of Korean and Japanese as members of the proposed Altaic language family.
Go to Profile#390
Jody Rosen
#1800
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Jody Rosen is an American journalist and author. He is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine. Career Journalism Rosen served as critic-at-large for T: The New York Times Style Magazine, pop music critic for New York, music critic for Slate, before joining the Times magazine. He has also written for such publications as The New Yorker and Rolling Stone.
Go to Profile#391
Michael Graves
#903
Overall Influence
1934 - 2015 (81 years)
Michael Graves was an American architect, designer, and educator, and principal of Michael Graves and Associates and Michael Graves Design Group. He was a member of The New York Five and the Memphis Group and a professor of architecture at Princeton University for nearly forty years. Following his own partial paralysis in 2003, Graves became an internationally recognized advocate of health care design.
Go to Profile#392
April Greiman
#13792
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
April Greiman is an American designer widely recognized as one of the first designers to embrace computer technology as a design tool. Greiman is also credited, along with early collaborator Jayme Odgers, with helping to import the European New Wave design style to the US during the late 70s and early 80s." According to design historian Steven Heller, “April Greiman was a bridge between the modern and postmodern, the analog and the digital.” “She is a pivotal proponent of the ‘new typography’ and new wave that defined late twentieth-century graphic design.” Her art combines her Swiss design t...
Go to Profile#393
Nancy Dorian
#10045
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Nancy Currier Dorian is an American linguist who has carried out research into the decline of the East Sutherland dialect of Scottish Gaelic for over 40 years, particularly in the villages of Brora, Golspie and Embo. Due to their isolation from other Gaelic-speaking communities, these East Sutherland villages presented a good opportunity to study language death. Dorian's study is possibly the longest such study in the field. She is considered "a prime authority" on language death. Language Death: The Life Cycle of a Scottish Gaelic Dialect, her study into the decline of Gaelic in East Sutherland, is considered "the first major monograph" on language death.
Go to Profile#394
Benjamin Millepied
#7682
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
Benjamin Millepied is a French dancer and choreographer, who has lived and worked in the United States since joining the New York City Ballet in 1995, where he became a soloist in 1998 and a principal in 2002. He has also created choreography for the company, and choreographed pieces for other major companies. He retired from the NYCB in 2011.
Go to Profile#395
A. N. Wilson
#4792
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Andrew Norman Wilson is an English writer and newspaper columnist known for his critical biographies, novels and works of popular history. He is an occasional columnist for the Daily Mail and a former columnist for the London Evening Standard. He has been an occasional contributor to The Times Literary Supplement, New Statesman, The Spectator and The Observer.
Go to Profile#396
Luc Besson
#10373
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Luc Paul Maurice Besson is a French filmmaker. He directed or produced the films Subway , The Big Blue , and La Femme Nikita . Associated with the Cinéma du look film movement, he has been nominated for a César Award for Best Director and Best Picture for his films Léon: The Professional and the English-language The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc . He won Best Director and Best French Director for his sci-fi action film The Fifth Element . He wrote and directed the 2014 sci-fi action film Lucy and the 2017 space opera film Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.
Go to Profile#397
Joan Baez
#4200
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Joan Chandos Baez is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist. Her contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest and social justice. Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing more than 30 albums. Fluent in Spanish and English, she has also recorded songs in at least six other languages.
Go to Profile#398
Charles Kuralt
#7143
Overall Influence
1934 - 1997 (63 years)
Charles Bishop Kuralt was an American television, newspaper and radio journalist and author. He is most widely known for his long career with CBS, first for his "On the Road" segments on The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, and later as the first anchor of CBS News Sunday Morning, a position he held for fifteen years. In 1996, Kuralt was inducted into Television Hall of Fame of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
Go to Profile#399
Jim Bittermann
#14248
Overall Influence
Jim Bittermann is Senior European correspondent for CNN since 1996. Career Bittermann graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from Southern Illinois University in 1970 and began in print journalism from 1965 to 1970 as a reporter for the Waukegan News-Sun in Waukegan, Illinois. His television career began at WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee from 1970 to 1972. From 1972 to 1973 he worked at WQED-TV in Pittsburgh and 1973 to 1975 he was as a reporter for WKYC-TV in Cleveland, Ohio. Bittermann was with CBC News as a Toronto-based correspondent and producer for CBC News Magazine from 1975 to 1978.
Go to Profile#400
Pierre Boulez
#7042
Overall Influence
1925 - 2016 (91 years)
Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war contemporary classical music. Born in Montbrison, in the Loire department of France, the son of an engineer, Boulez studied at the Conservatoire de Paris with Olivier Messiaen, and privately with Andrée Vaurabourg and René Leibowitz. He began his professional career in the late 1940s as music director of the Renaud-Barrault theatre company in Paris. He was a leading figure in avant-garde music, playing an important role in the ...
Go to Profile