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,

#3501

Peter Konwitschny

#43052

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Peter Konwitschny is a German opera and theatre director. Biography Peter Konwitschny grew up in Leipzig, where his father Franz Konwitschny was principal conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. After an aborted study of physics, he studied theatre direction from 1965 until 1970 in Berlin.

#3502

Xaverio Ballester

#61937

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Xaverio Ballester is a Spanish linguist, professor at University of Valencia and one of main proponents of Paleolithic continuity theory . Biography He obtained Ph.D. in Classical Philology at University of Barcelona in 1987. Teaching positions include: Professor titular of Latin Philology in the University of Zaragoza ; Professor of Latin Philology in the University of Valencia ; Professor of Latin Philology in the University of La Laguna .

#3503

M J Warsi

#58812

Overall Influence

Mohammad Jahangeer Warsi is an Indian linguist, researcher, and author. He is known for his background and expertise in South Asian Languages and Linguistics. He is a member of the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis, where he serves as a lecturer in the Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. He is a native of Darbhanga district, Bihar, in India.

#3504

Mate Kapović

#81969

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

Mate Kapović is a Croatian linguist specializing in Indo-European, Slavic languages and the Proto-Balto-Slavic language. He studied Croatian language and linguistics at the Faculty of Arts of University of Zagreb. He graduated in 2003 and he has been teaching at the same university since 2004. In 2007, he obtained his doctorate at the Faculty of Philosophy of University of Zadar .

#3505

Deniece Williams

#37102

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

June Deniece Williams is an American singer. She has been described as "one of the great soul voices" by the BBC. She is best known for the songs "Free", "Silly", "It's Gonna Take a Miracle" and two Billboard Hot 100 No.1 singles "Let's Hear It for the Boy" and "Too Much, Too Little, Too Late" . Williams has won four Grammys with twelve nominations altogether. She is also known for recording “Without Us”, the theme song of Family Ties.

#3506

Dave Holland

#63559

Overall Influence

1948 - 2018 (70 years)

David Holland was an English drummer, born in Northampton, England. Holland is best remembered for his time with the bands Trapeze from 1969 to 1979 and Judas Priest from 1979 to 1989. Early life At the age of six Holland began piano lessons, but soon developed a "mania for the drums" in his own words and begged his parents to let him have a set. After his first appearance as a stand-in for a local band, Holland realized he wanted to be a musician. When he was 14 years old, he supplemented his pocket money by playing with another local band called The Drumbeats, and selling furniture and car...

#3507

Gotye

#43314

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Wouter André "Wally" De Backer , known professionally as Gotye , is an Australian singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. The name "Gotye" is a pronunciation respelling of "Gauthier", the French cognate of his Dutch given name "Wouter".

#3508

Maurits Gysseling

#59102

Overall Influence

1919 - 1997 (78 years)

Maurits Gysseling was an influential Belgian researcher into historical linguistics and paleography. He was especially well known for his editions and studies of old texts relevant to the history of the Dutch language, and also for his very detailed analyses of historical place-names and their probable origins.

#3509

David Brown

#38605

Overall Influence

David D. Brown is an American lawyer, radio personality, editor, journalist, author, and co-creator and host of public radio's first statewide daily news-magazine for Texas, the Texas Standard. He has also produced and hosted Business Wars, NPR's Peabody award-winning Marketplace radio program, and KUT's Texas Music Matters, among others. He is also the author of the book The Art of Business Wars.

#3510

Sanford J. Ungar

Sanford J. Ungar

#39641

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Sanford J. "Sandy" Ungar is an American journalist, author, and the inaugural director of the Free Speech Project at Georgetown University. He was the tenth president of Goucher College and the 24th director of Voice of America.

#3511

Irvin Kershner

#50922

Overall Influence

1923 - 2010 (87 years)

Irvin Kershner was an American director for film and television. Early in his career as a filmmaker he directed quirky, independent drama films, while working as a lecturer at the University of Southern California. Later, he transitioned to high-budget blockbusters such as The Empire Strikes Back, the James Bond adaptation Never Say Never Again and RoboCop 2. Through the course of his career, he received numerous accolades, including being nominated for both a Primetime Emmy Award and a Palme d'Or.

#3512

Garson Kanin

#39621

Overall Influence

1912 - 1999 (87 years)

Garson Kanin was an American writer and director of plays and films. Early life Garson Kanin was born in Rochester, New York; his Jewish family later relocated to Detroit then to New York City. He attended James Madison High School in Brooklyn, dropping out to take up a career on the theatre stage. He subsequently became a professional saxophone player and leader of his own band that went by the name Garson Kanin and His Red Hot Peppers. During this period, he attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts pursuing an acting career.

#3513

Erika Timm

#74384

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Erika Timm is a German linguist, the author of works that have made fundamental contributions to Yiddish historical linguistics and philology. Biography In 1985 she wrote her habilitation work in Trier University . Currently she is a Professor Emeritus of Trier University. She was the first German scholar to be appointed to a chair of Yiddish studies. Her husband, Gustav Adolf Beckmann, a German philologist who specialized in Romance languages, was her collaborator on a number of books.

#3514

Ian Hart

#69787

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Ian Davies , better known by his stage name Ian Hart, is an English actor. His most notable roles have been in One Summer , Backbeat , Land and Freedom and Nothing Personal , Michael Collins , Liam , as Professor Quirrell in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone , as Ludwig van Beethoven in Eroica , My Mad Fat Diary , as Father Beocca in The Last Kingdom , and The Responder .

#3515

Hans Heinrich Schmid

#38046

Overall Influence

1937 - 2014 (77 years)

Hans Heinrich Schmid was a Swiss Protestant Reformed theologian, University Professor and University Rector. Life He was the son of the Zurich pastor Gotthard Schmid . He studied theology at the Universities of Zurich and Göttingen and received his doctorate in 1965 in Zurich.

#3516

Alice Coltrane

#56428

Overall Influence

1937 - 2007 (70 years)

Alice Lucille Coltrane , also known as Swamini Turiyasangitananda or simply Turiya, was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader and Hindu spiritual leader. An accomplished pianist and one of the few harpists in the history of jazz, Coltrane recorded many albums as a bandleader, beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s for Impulse! and other record labels. She was married to the jazz saxophonist and composer John Coltrane, with whom she performed in 1966–1967. One of the foremost proponents of spiritual jazz, her eclectic music proved influential both within and outside the world of...

#3517

David King

#60483

Overall Influence

1943 - 2016 (73 years)

David King was a British graphic designer, design historian, and writer, who assembled one of the largest collections of Soviet graphics and photographs. From this collection, he created a series of books covering the history of the Russian Revolution and its associated art and propaganda. In addition to Soviet-era photographs, posters, and other materials, his collection included items related to the Spanish Civil War, Maoist China, the Weimar Republic, and American labour organizations. King, a "leftist with Trotskyist leanings", in particular collected photographs and ephemera related to L...

#3518

Matt Helders

#60292

Overall Influence

1986 - Present (40 years)

Matthew Helders is an English drummer, vocalist and songwriter. He is best known as a founding member and the drummer of indie rock band Arctic Monkeys, with whom he has recorded seven studio albums.

#3519

Paul Kockelman

#47199

Overall Influence

Areas of Specialization: Linguistic Anthropology Paul Kockelman is the editor of the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, co-editor of The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology, and a professor of anthropology at Yale University. He is known as one of the last great system-builders in the field. His work in linguistic anthropology has yielded significant insights into Qʼeqchiʼ, an ancient language of the Maya people of Guatemala, as well as his ethnographic work. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including Agent, Person, Subject, Self: A Theory of Ontology, Interaction...

#3520

Rituparno Ghosh

Rituparno Ghosh

#42515

Overall Influence

1963 - 2013 (50 years)

Rituparno Ghosh was an Indian film director, actor, writer and lyricist. After pursuing a degree in economics, he started his career as a creative artist at an advertising agency. He received recognition for his second feature film Unishe April which won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film. Having won 19 National Awards, along with his contemporaries Aparna Sen and Goutam Ghose, Rituparno heralded contemporary Bengali cinema to greater heights. Ghosh died on 30 May 2013 in Kolkata after a heart attack. Ghosh was also one of the openly homosexual personalities in Indian cinema.

#3521

Tōru Takemitsu

#64288

Overall Influence

1930 - 1996 (66 years)

Tōru Takemitsu was a Japanese composer and writer on aesthetics and music theory. Largely self-taught, Takemitsu was admired for the subtle manipulation of instrumental and orchestral timbre. He is known for combining elements of oriental and occidental philosophy and for fusing sound with silence and tradition with innovation.

#3522

Inez Fung

#30317

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Inez Fung is a professor of atmospheric science at the University of California, Berkeley, jointly appointed in the department of earth and planetary science and the department of environmental science, policy and management. She is also the co-director of the Berkeley Institute of the Environment.

#3523

John A. Bateman

#67049

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

John Arnold Bateman is a British linguist and semiotician known for his research on natural language generation and multimodality. He has worked at Kyoto University, at the USC Information Sciences Institute, at the German National Research Center for Information Technology, at Saarland University, and at the University of Stirling. he is Professor of English Applied Linguistics at the University of Bremen, Germany.

#3524

Avshalom Kor

#71111

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Dr. Avshalom Kor is an Israeli linguist and expert on Modern Hebrew grammar and semantics. He is known to provide upon request, the grammatical root of any given Hebrew word and/or name along with its Biblical origins and contextual references.

#3525

Lukas Foss

#59022

Overall Influence

1922 - 2009 (87 years)

Lukas Foss was a German-American composer, pianist, and conductor. Career Born Lukas Fuchs in Berlin, Germany in 1922, Foss was soon recognized as a child prodigy. He began piano and theory lessons with Julius Goldstein [Herford] in Berlin at the age of six. His parents were Hilde and the philosopher and scholar Martin Foss. He moved with his family to Paris in 1933, where he studied piano with Lazare Lévy, composition with Noël Gallon, orchestration with Felix Wolfes, and flute with Marcel Moyse. In 1937 he moved with his parents and brother to the United States, where his father changed the family name to Foss.

#3526

Sonny Grosso

#76463

Overall Influence

1930 - 2020 (90 years)

Salvatore Anthony Grosso , known as Sonny Grosso, was an American film producer, television producer, and NYPD detective, noted for his role in the case made famous in the book and film versions of the French Connection.

#3527

Rodney Friend

#65408

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Rodney Friend MBE is an English violinist. Born in Bradford, Friend's father was a local tailor. At the age of 12 he won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music after Sir Reginald Thatcher, the then principal of the R.A.M, heard Friend perform for the first time. Friend also studied subsequently at the Royal Manchester College of Music.

#3528

Lisa Strausfeld

#44915

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Lisa Strausfeld is an American design professional and information architect. Education Strausfeld studied art history and computer science and earned a Bachelor of Arts at Brown University. She went on to study at Harvard University, where she earned a Master of Architecture. She later studied media arts and sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology , earning a Master of Science degree.

#3529

Rollo Armstrong

Rollo Armstrong

#54592

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Rowland Constantine O'Malley Armstrong , known professionally as both Rollo and R Plus, is an English music producer. He is one half of the remix/production duo Rollo & Sister Bliss and is a founding member of the electronic music group Faithless. He has produced and remixed many tracks for Dido, Pet Shop Boys, Simply Red, R. Kelly, U2, Moby, Grace, Tricky and Suede. He is best known for producing UEFA Euro 2008 theme, which music is also used as UEFA Super Cup theme since 2017.

#3530

Van Cliburn

#48979

Overall Influence

1934 - 2013 (79 years)

Harvey Lavan "Van" Cliburn Jr. was an American pianist. At the age of 23, Cliburn achieved worldwide recognition when he won the inaugural International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958 during the Cold War.

#3531

Bill Kurtis

#47516

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Bill Kurtis is an American television journalist, television producer, narrator, and news anchor. Kurtis was studying to become a lawyer in the 1960s, when he was asked to fill in on a temporary news assignment at WIBW-TV in Topeka, Kansas. His reporting on a devastating tornado outbreak led to a position as on-air news reporter and, later, a successful career as a news anchor in Chicago. He has been noted for his sonorous voice throughout his career. In the early 1980s, he anchored The CBS Morning News in New York City and became especially interested in investigative in-depth reports and documentaries.

#3532

Moya Brennan

#62740

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Moya Brennan , also known as Máire Brennan, is an Irish folk singer, songwriter, harpist, and philanthropist. She is the sister of the musical artist known as Enya. She began performing professionally in 1970 when her family formed the band Clannad. Brennan released her first solo album in 1992 called Máire, a successful venture. She has received a Grammy Award from five nominations and has won an Emmy Award. She has recorded music for several soundtracks, including Titanic, To End All Wars and King Arthur.

#3533

Miljenko Licul

#62245

Overall Influence

1946 - 2009 (63 years)

Miljenko Licul was a Slovenian graphic designer of Croatian descent. He was one of the most prominent graphic designers in independent Slovenia. Life and work Licul was born in the Istrian town of Vodnjan, which was then part of the Yugoslav occupation zone of the Julian March . His parents were Istrian Croats. He moved to Slovenia in his youth and lived and worked there most of his life.

#3534

Ronnie Scott

#63700

Overall Influence

1927 - 1996 (69 years)

Ronnie Scott OBE was a British jazz tenor saxophonist and jazz club owner. He co-founded Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London's Soho district, one of the world's most popular jazz clubs, in 1959. Life and career

#3535

Celeste Condit

#59509

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Celeste Michelle Condit is an American professor and scholar of rhetorical criticism. Her work focuses on the rhetoric of racism, biology, the human genome, and feminism. In 2018, the Public Address Conference described Condit as "a pioneer in understanding and improving public communication about genetics." She currently holds the role of Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Georgia.

#3536

Fabio Pusterla

#85163

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Fabio Pusterla is a Swiss translator and writer in Italian. Pusterla studied in the University of Pavia and is a teacher in Lugano and at the University of Geneva. He has translated French poetry to Italian, including Philippe Jaccottet, Antoine Emaz and Corinna Bille. Pusterla has won the Swiss Schiller Prize and the Gottfried Keller Preis, 2007. He was editor of the review "Idra" .

#3537

Edison Denisov

#68973

Overall Influence

1929 - 1996 (67 years)

Edison Vasilievich Denisov was a Russian composer in the so-called "Underground", "alternative" or "nonconformist" division of Soviet music. Biography Denisov was born in Tomsk, Siberia. He studied mathematics before deciding to spend his life composing. This decision was enthusiastically supported by Dmitri Shostakovich, who gave him lessons in composition.

#3538

William Schuman

#48218

Overall Influence

1910 - 1992 (82 years)

William Howard Schuman was an American composer and arts administrator. Life Schuman was born into a Jewish family in Manhattan, New York City, son of Samuel and Rachel Schuman. He was named after the 27th U.S. president, William Howard Taft, though his family preferred to call him Bill. Schuman played the violin and banjo as a child, but his overwhelming passion was baseball. He attended Temple Shaaray Tefila as a child. While still in high school, he formed a dance band, "Billy Schuman and his Alamo Society Orchestra", that played local weddings and bar mitzvahs in which Schuman played str...

#3539

Jaime Siles

#38426

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Jaime Siles is a Spanish poet, translator and literary critic. He was born in Valencia in 1951, and studied Philosophy and Literature at Salamanca University. He continued his studies at Tubingen University, aided by a scholarship from the Fundación Juan March. He taught at the University of La Laguna, before moving to Vienna in 1983 where he became the director of the Spanish Cultural Institute.

#3540

Earl Palmer

#51747

Overall Influence

1924 - 2008 (84 years)

Earl Cyril Palmer was an American drummer. Considered one of the inventors of rock and roll, he is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Palmer was one of the most prolific studio musicians of all time and played on thousands of recordings, including nearly all of Little Richard's hits, all of Fats Domino's hits, "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" by the Righteous Brothers, and a long list of classic TV and film soundtracks. According to one obituary, "his list of credits read like a Who's Who of American popular music of the last 60 years".

#3541

Link Wray

#48229

Overall Influence

1929 - 2005 (76 years)

Fred Lincoln "Link" Wray Jr. was an American guitarist, songwriter, and vocalist who became popular in the late 1950s. His 1958 instrumental single "Rumble", reached the top 20 in the United States; and was one of the earliest songs in rock music to utilize distortion and tremolo.

#3542

Frédéric Bastien

#54638

Overall Influence

1969 - 2023 (54 years)

Frédéric Bastien was a Canadian author, historian, and journalist, best known for the book La Bataille de Londres. Dessous, secrets et coulisses du rapatriement constitutionnel, whose allegations surrounding the 1982 patriation of Canada's constitution caused political controversy in Quebec and led the Supreme Court of Canada to launch an internal probe.

#3543

Sherrill Milnes

#67945

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Sherrill Milnes is an American dramatic baritone most famous for his Verdi roles. From 1965 until 1997 he was associated with the Metropolitan Opera. His voice is a high dramatic baritone, combining good legato with an incisive rhythmic style.

#3544

Andrew Scott

#65486

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Andrew Scott is an Irish actor. Known for his roles on stage and screen, he has received numerous accolades, including a BAFTA TV Award and two Laurence Olivier Awards, as well as nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe.

#3545

Black Francis

#35805

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He is best known as the frontman of the alternative rock band Pixies, with whom he performs under the stage name Black Francis. Following the band's breakup in 1993, he embarked on a solo career under the name Frank Black. After releasing two albums with record label 4AD and one with American Recordings, he left the label and formed a new band, Frank Black and the Catholics. He re-adopted the name Black Francis in 2007.

#3546

Conrad Brann

#93681

Overall Influence

1925 - 2014 (89 years)

Conrad Max Benedict Brann was a German-British linguist and professor at University of Maiduguri in Nigeria. Brann opened a personal library in his living area that influenced the lives of language/linguistics students and English students.

#3547

Jeanne Moreau

#80586

Overall Influence

1928 - 2017 (89 years)

Jeanne Moreau was a French actress, singer, screenwriter, director, and socialite. She made her theatrical debut in 1947, and established herself as one of the leading actresses of the Comédie-Française. Moreau began playing small roles in films in 1949, later achieving prominence with starring roles in Louis Malle's Elevator to the Gallows , Michelangelo Antonioni's La Notte , and François Truffaut's Jules et Jim . Most prolific during the 1960s, Moreau continued to appear in films into her 80s. Orson Welles called her "the greatest actress in the world".

#3548

L. Shankar

#43993

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Shankar Lakshminarayana , better known as L. Shankar, is an Indian violinist, singer and composer who also goes by the stage name Shenkar. Early life, family and education Shankar was born in Madras, India, and raised in Ceylon , where his father V. Lakshminarayana, a violinist and singer, worked as a teacher at the Jaffna College of Music. He learned to play the violin and first performed in public in a Ceylonese temple at the age of seven.

#3549

Yoko Shimomura

#47829

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Yoko Shimomura is a Japanese composer and pianist primarily known for her work in video games such as the Kingdom Hearts series. She graduated from the Osaka College of Music in 1988 and began working in the video game industry by joining Capcom the same year. She wrote music for several games there, including Final Fight, Street Fighter II, and The King of Dragons.

#3550

Michael Collins

#38521

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Michael J. Collins is a researcher in the field of computational linguistics. He is the Vikram S. Pandit Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University. His research interests are in natural language processing as well as machine learning and he has made important contributions in statistical parsing and in statistical machine learning. In his studies Collins covers a wide range of topics such as parse re-ranking, tree kernels, semi-supervised learning, machine translation and exponentiated gradient algorithms with a general focus on discriminative models and structured prediction. One notable contribution is a state-of-the-art parser for the Penn Wall Street Journal corpus.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions