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 …
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List of the most influential people in Communications,
#3551
Jim Shooter
#22309
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
James Shooter is an American writer, editor and publisher for various comic books. He started professionally in the medium at the age of 14, and is known for his successful and controversial run as Marvel Comics' seventh editor-in-chief, and his work as editor in chief of Valiant Comics.
Go to Profile#3552
Edwin Charles Tubb
#32121
Overall Influence
1919 - 2010 (91 years)
Edwin Charles Tubb was a British writer of science fiction, fantasy and western novels. The author of over 140 novels and 230 short stories and novellas, Tubb is best known for The Dumarest Saga , an epic science-fiction saga set in the far future. Michael Moorcock wrote, "His reputation for fast-moving and colourful SF writing is unmatched by anyone in Britain."
Go to Profile#3553
Hal Hartley
#56571
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Hal Hartley is an American film director, screenwriter, producer and composer who became a key figure in the American independent film movement of the 1980s and '90s. He is best known for his films The Unbelievable Truth, Trust, Simple Men, Amateur and Henry Fool, which are notable for deadpan humour and offbeat characters quoting philosophical dialogue.
Go to Profile#3554
Alvin Lucier
#50159
Overall Influence
1931 - 2021 (90 years)
Alvin Augustus Lucier Jr. was an American composer of experimental music and sound installations that explore acoustic phenomena and auditory perception. A long-time music professor at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, Lucier was a member of the influential Sonic Arts Union, which included Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and Gordon Mumma. Much of his work is influenced by science and explores the physical properties of sound itself: resonance of spaces, phase interference between closely tuned pitches, and the transmission of sound through physical media.
Go to Profile#3555
Shreya Ghoshal
#51393
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Shreya Ghoshal is an Indian singer. Noted for her wide vocal range and versatility, she is one of the most prolific and popular singers of India. She has recorded songs for films and albums in various Indian and foreign languages and received numerous accolades, including five National Film Awards, four Kerala State Film Awards, two Tamil Nadu State Film Awards, two BFJA Awards, seven Filmfare Awards and ten Filmfare Awards South.
Go to Profile#3556
Michael Tanenhaus
#74259
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Michael Tanenhaus is an American psycholinguist, author, and lecturer. He is the Beverly Petterson Bishop and Charles W. Bishop Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Linguistics at the University of Rochester. From 1996 to 2000 and 2003–2009 he served as Director of the Center for Language Sciences at the University of Rochester.
Go to Profile#3557
Vicente Aranda
#62122
Overall Influence
1926 - 2015 (89 years)
Vicente Aranda Ezquerra was a Spanish film director, screenwriter and producer. Due to his refined and personal style, he was one of the most renowned Spanish filmmakers. He started as a founding member of the Barcelona School of Film and became known for bringing contemporary Spanish novels to life on the big screen. Aranda was also noted for exploring difficult social issues and variations on the theme of desire while using the codes of melodrama.
Go to Profile#3558
Bernhard Gröschel
#70026
Overall Influence
1939 - 2009 (70 years)
Bernhard Gröschel was a German linguist and slavist. Biography Bernhard Gröschel studied Slavic Studies, General Linguistics, Phonetics and Communication Studies at the University of Bonn. In 1967 he received his Ph.D. in Bonn and continued to work there as a researcher and lecturer. From 1977 to 2004 he worked at the Department of General Linguistics at the University of Münster.
Go to Profile#3559
John Hillcoat
#52817
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
John Hillcoat is an Australian-Canadian film director, screenwriter, and music video director. Early life Hillcoat was born in Queensland, Australia, and was raised in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. As a child, his paintings were featured in the Art Gallery of Hamilton. He attended Sir John A. Macdonald Secondary School in Hamilton, Ontario, and was enrolled in the Special Art Program. He was active with the McMaster University Film Board most notably producing an animated short titled "The Finger".
Go to Profile#3560
Vincent DeRosa
#88169
Overall Influence
1920 - 2022 (102 years)
Vincent Ned DeRosa was an American hornist who served as a studio musician for Hollywood soundtracks and other recordings from 1935 until his retirement in 2008. Because his career spanned over 70 years, during which he played on many film and television soundtracks and as a sideman on studio albums, he is considered to be one of the most recorded brass players of all time. He set "impeccably high standards" for the horn, and became the first horn for Henry Mancini, Lalo Schifrin, Alfred Newman, and John Williams, among others, with Williams calling him "one of the greatest instrumentalists o...
Go to Profile#3561
Fiorenzo Toso
#75331
Overall Influence
1962 - 2022 (60 years)
Fiorenzo Toso was an Italian academic, linguist, and dialectologist. Life and career Toso graduated from the University of Genoa with a degree in foreign language and literature in 1988, then earned a degree in Italian philology from Saarland University in 2000. In 2007, she earned a doctorate in Romance studies and general linguistics from the University of Perugia. From 2007 to 2022, she taught at the University of Sassari, first as an associate professor and subsequently as a full professor.
Go to Profile#3562
Roger Dean
#99595
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Roger Thornton Dean is a British-Australian musician, academic, biochemist and cognitive scientist. He is married to poet, writer, musician and academic Hazel Anne Smith, and was educated in the UK at the Crypt School, Gloucester, and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Formerly, he was the foundation Director of the Heart Research Institute, Sydney , and then the Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Canberra . From 2007 onwards he is a research professor of sonic communication at the MARCS Institute, Western Sydney University.
Go to Profile#3563
Anna Szabolcsi
#82208
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Anna Szabolcsi is a linguist whose research has focused on semantics, syntax, and the syntax–semantics interface. She was born and educated in Hungary, and received her Ph.D. from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest.
Go to Profile#3564
David Threlfall
#68352
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
David John Threlfall is an English stage, film and television actor and director. He is best known for playing Frank Gallagher in Channel 4's series Shameless. He has also directed several episodes of the show. In April 2014, he portrayed comedian Tommy Cooper in a television film entitled Tommy Cooper: Not Like That, Like This. In 2014, he starred alongside Jude Law in the thriller Black Sea. In 2022, he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Play for his performance in the Martin McDonagh play Hangmen.
Go to Profile#3565
Eliane Elias
#78062
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Eliane Elias is a Brazilian jazz pianist, singer, composer and arranger. Biography Elias was born in São Paulo, Brazil on 19 March 1960. She started studying piano when she was seven, and at age twelve she was transcribing solos from jazz musicians. She began teaching piano when she was fifteen, and began performing at seventeen with Brazilian singer-songwriter Toquinho and touring with the poet Vinicius de Moraes.
Go to Profile#3566
Fridrik Thordarson
#74873
Overall Influence
1928 - 2005 (77 years)
Fridrik Thordarson was an Icelandic linguist. Thordarson was born in Iceland, and studied Classical philology in Oslo. In 1963 he took exams with Latin as his major and Greek and Indian philology as his minors. From 1965 onwards he taught classical philology as a lecturer. He became professor in 1994. Thordarson worked for most of his life in Norway.
Go to Profile#3567
Andy Stirling
#44624
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Andy Stirling is Professor of science and technology policy at Sussex University. He has a background in the natural sciences, a master's degree in archaeology and social anthropology and a D.Phil. in science and technology policy .
Go to Profile#3568
Terje Rypdal
#75835
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Terje Rypdal is a Norwegian guitarist and composer. He has been an important member in the Norwegian jazz community, and has also given show concerts with guitarists Ronni Le Tekrø and Mads Eriksen as "N3".
Go to Profile#3569
Johnny Mandel
#49897
Overall Influence
1925 - 2020 (95 years)
John Alfred Mandel was an American composer and arranger of popular songs, film music and jazz. The musicians he worked with include Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Anita O'Day, Barbra Streisand, Tony Bennett, Diane Schuur and Shirley Horn. He won five Grammy Awards, from 17 nominations; his first nomination was for his debut film score for the multi-nominated 1958 film I Want to Live!
Go to Profile#3570
Wojciech Smoczyński
#95059
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Wojciech Sławomir Smoczyński is a Polish linguist. He is a tenured professor at the Department of General and Indo-European linguistics at Jagiellonian University, and since 1996 also the head of the Department of Indo-European Studies.
Go to Profile#3571
John Singleton
#30153
Overall Influence
1968 - 2019 (51 years)
John Daniel Singleton was an American director, screenwriter, and producer. He made his feature film debut writing and directing Boyz n the Hood , for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director, becoming, at age 24, the first African American and youngest person to have ever been nominated for that award.
Go to Profile#3572
Yadollah Samareh
#84410
Overall Influence
1932 - 2019 (87 years)
Yadollah Samareh was an Iranian linguist and emeritus professor of linguistics at the University of Tehran. He was known for his expertise on Persian phonetics. Samareh was a permanent member of the Academy of Persian Language and Literature. He was the first Iranian PhD graduate of University College London. A festschrift in his honor, edited by Omid Tabibzadeh, was published in 2004.
Go to Profile#3573
John de Lancie
#65574
Overall Influence
1921 - 2002 (81 years)
John Sherwood de Lancie was an American oboist and arts administrator. He was principal oboist of the Philadelphia Orchestra for 23 years and also director of the Curtis Institute of Music. Biography De Lancie was born in Berkeley, California. Starting in 1940, he was principal oboist of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra under Fritz Reiner. In 1942, he enlisted and served in the US military during World War II, performing with the US Army Band. He met Richard Strauss during his tour of duty as a soldier in Europe at the end of World War II. De Lancie knew Strauss's orchestral writing for oboe thoroughly and asked the composer if he had ever considered writing an oboe concerto.
Go to Profile#3574
Amanda Eubanks Winkler
#89605
Overall Influence
Amanda Eubanks Winkler is a British-American scholar of English music and theater. She is Director of the Department of Music at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. Formerly she was Chair and Professor of Music History and Cultures in the Department of Art and Music Histories at Syracuse University College of Arts and Sciences. Between 2017–2020, she collaborated with the theater historian Richard Schoch on the AHRC Research Project Performing Restoration Shakespeare.
Go to Profile#3575
Julianne Malveaux
#8526
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Julianne Marie Malveaux is an American economist, author, social and political commentator, and businesswoman. After five years as the 15th president of Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina, she resigned on May 6, 2012.
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Bob Gibson
#48769
Overall Influence
1938 - 2010 (72 years)
Robert Michael Gibson was a British caricaturist, artist and illustrator who is best known for creating the illustrations & album art that appears in The Beatles' 1967 LP, "The Magical Mystery Tour" released on Parlophone Records. Inside the sleeve he also created a text comic based on the film Magical Mystery Tour. He also made graphic contributions to the Beatles monthly magazine The Beatles Book.
Go to Profile#3577
John Phillips
#47769
Overall Influence
1935 - 2001 (66 years)
John Edmund Andrew Phillips was an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He was the leader of the vocal group the Mamas & the Papas and remains frequently referred to as Papa John Phillips. In addition to writing the majority of the group's compositions, he also wrote "San Francisco " in 1967 for former Journeymen bandmate Scott McKenzie, as well as the oft-covered "Me and My Uncle", which was a favorite in the repertoire of the Grateful Dead. Phillips was one of the chief organizers of the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival.
Go to Profile#3578
Gato Barbieri
#62801
Overall Influence
1934 - 2016 (82 years)
Leandro "Gato" Barbieri was an Argentine jazz tenor saxophonist who rose to fame during the free jazz movement in the 1960s and is known for his Latin jazz recordings of the 1970s. His nickname, Gato, is Spanish for "cat".
Go to Profile#3579
Pinchas Zukerman
#47754
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Pinchas Zukerman is an Israeli-American violinist, violist and conductor. Life and career Zukerman was born in Tel Aviv, to Jewish parents and Holocaust survivors Yehuda and Miriam Lieberman Zukerman. He began his musical studies at age four, on the recorder. His father then taught him to play the clarinet and then the violin at age eight. Early studies were at the Samuel Rubin Academy of Music . Isaac Stern and Pablo Casals learned of Zukerman's violin talent during a 1962 visit to Israel. Zukerman subsequently moved to the United States that year to study at the Juilliard School under Stern and Ivan Galamian.
Go to Profile#3580
Maria Polinsky
#83567
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Maria “Masha” Polinsky is an American linguist specializing in theoretical syntax and study of heritage languages. Career Polinsky was born in Moscow, Russia. She received a B.A. in philology from Moscow University in 1979, and an M.A. in 1983 and a Ph.D. in 1986 in linguistics from the Institute for Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Her dissertation examined the structure of antipassives in several ergative languages.
Go to Profile#3581
Michael Jones
#89731
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Michael Jones is a Welsh singer, guitarist, and songwriter who lives in France. He has made several hit albums and toured as trio Fredericks Goldman Jones and collaborated on a number of songs with Goldman.
Go to Profile#3582
Claes de Vreese
#78233
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Claes Holger de Vreese is a Danish Professor of Political Communication at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research at the department of Communication Science at the University of Amsterdam . In addition, he is Affiliated Professor of Political Science and Journalism at the University of Southern Denmark . De Vreese is the founding Director of the Center for Politics and Communication. He is member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and the chair of its Social Science Council. Between 2005 and 2013, he was the Director of ASCoR and the Director of the Netherlands Sc...
Go to Profile#3583
Tony Hicks
#76024
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Anthony Christopher Hicks is an English guitarist and singer who has been a member of the British rock/pop band the Hollies since 1963, and as such was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010. His main roles within the band are lead guitarist and backing singer.
Go to Profile#3584
Mirfatyh Zakiev
#51060
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (98 years)
Mirfatyh Zakievich Zakiev was a Soviet and Russian controversial academic in the domain of Turkology scholar. Education and career Mirfatyh held a doctorate, and served in a number of higher schools and institutes as a rector, director and department head .
Go to Profile#3585
John H.A.L. de Jong
#69251
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Dr. John H.A.L. de Jong graduated in General Linguistics, French and English languages from Leiden University and obtained a Ph.D. in Educational Measurement from Twente University. He has published numerous articles and books on language acquisition and assessment and on educational measurement. He is specialized in the empirical scaling of language proficiency and promotes the development of internationally standardized reporting scales of language proficiency. He was involved from the start in developing the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.
Go to Profile#3586
J. J. Johnson
#59085
Overall Influence
1924 - 2001 (77 years)
J. J. Johnson , born James Louis Johnson and also known as Jay Jay Johnson, was an American jazz trombonist, composer and arranger. Johnson was one of the earliest trombonists to embrace bebop. Biography
Go to Profile#3587
George Yule
#92623
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
George Yule is a Scottish-American linguist. He is known for his works on pragmatics and discourse analysis. Life George Yule was born in Stirling, Scotland in 1947, and became an American citizen in 2000. He now lives in Hawai‘i. He studied at Edinburgh University, completing an M.A. in English Language and Literature , M.Sc. in Applied Linguistics , and a PhD in Linguistics . In his early career, he taught English in Canada, Jamaica, Saudi Arabia and Scotland. After completing his doctorate, he taught linguistics and applied linguistics at the University of Edinburgh, University of Minnesota, Louisiana State University and the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
Go to Profile#3588
Whitney Houston
#35082
Overall Influence
1963 - 2012 (49 years)
Whitney Elizabeth Houston was an American singer and actress. Nicknamed "the Voice", she is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with over 220 million records sold worldwide. In 2023, Rolling Stone named her the second-greatest singer of all time. Houston influenced many singers in popular music, and was known for her powerful, soulful vocals, vocal improvisation skills, and use of gospel singing techniques in pop music. She had 11 number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100 and is the only artist to have seven consecutive number-one singles on the chart. Her accolades include eight Grammy Awards, 16 Billboard Music Awards, two Emmy Awards, and 30 Guinness World Records.
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Philip Cashian
#40467
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Philip Cashian is an English composer. He is the head of composition at the Royal Academy of Music. Biography Philip Cashian was born in Manchester in 1963 and studied at Cardiff University and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Oliver Knussen and Simon Bainbridge. In 1990 he was the Benjamin Britten fellow at Tanglewood where he studied with Lukas Foss. He was awarded the Britten Prize in 1991, the Mendelssohn Scholarship in 1992 and the PRS Composition Prize in 1994. His fast-paced style of music has been described as "an uncompromising reflection of the modern world".
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Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli
#70824
Overall Influence
1920 - 1995 (75 years)
Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli was an Italian classical pianist. He is considered one of the greatest pianists of the twentieth century. According to The New York Times, he was perhaps the most reclusive, enigmatic and obsessive among the handful of the world's legendary pianists.
Go to Profile#3591
Mario Soldati
#64018
Overall Influence
1906 - 1999 (93 years)
Mario Soldati was an Italian writer and film director. In 1954, he won the Strega Prize for Lettere da Capri. He directed several works adapted from novels, and worked with leading Italian actresses, such as Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida.
Go to Profile#3592
Stompin' Tom Connors
#57785
Overall Influence
1936 - 2013 (77 years)
Charles Thomas "Stompin' Tom" Connors, OC was a Canadian country and folk singer-songwriter. Focusing his career exclusively on his native Canada, he is credited with writing more than 300 songs and has released four dozen albums, with total sales of nearly four million copies.
Go to Profile#3593
Henry Gidel
#69200
Overall Influence
1925 - Present (101 years)
Henry Gidel is a French biographer. He won the Prix Goncourt for biography for his life of Sacha Guitry. Other subjects have included Charles de Gaulle and his wife, Georges Pompidou and his wife, Georges Feydeau, Jackie Kennedy, Picasso, Sarah Bernhardt, Coco Chanel and Marie Curie.
Go to Profile#3594
Philip Lutgendorf
#22364
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Philip Lutgendorf is an American Indologist. He is Professor of Hindi and Modern Indian Studies at the University of Iowa. His areas of work and interest include the epic poem Ramcharitmanas, the life and works of Hindu poet Tulsidas, the worship of Hanuman, Indian popular cinema, and the Indian tea culture. He is currently translating the Ramcharitmanas into English: this translation will be published by the Murty Classical Library of India in seven volumes. He serves as the President of American Institute of Indian Studies.
Go to Profile#3595
Chen Danqing
#45516
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Chen Danqing is a Chinese-American artist, writer, and art critic. He is well known for his realist paintings of Tibetans. Chen graduated from China Central Academy of Fine Arts. Life Chen Danqing's family home is Taishan, Guangdong province. He started learning oil painting in secondary school, and acquainted himself with young artists like Chen Yifei and Xia Baoyuan. Because his grandfather moved to Taiwan with the Nationalist government, he also had citizenship in the Republic of China. He moved to the United States in the 1982 and became a citizen there.
Go to Profile#3596
Cherian George
#23150
Overall Influence
Cherian George is a Singaporean academic, currently a professor of Media Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. Early life and education Cherian George studied at Hwa Chong Junior College for his pre-university education. He then graduated from the University of Cambridge with a bachelor's degree in social and political sciences. Thereafter, he attained his master's degree from Columbia University's School of Journalism.
Go to Profile#3597
Charles Wuorinen
#62573
Overall Influence
1938 - 2020 (82 years)
Charles Peter Wuorinen was an American composer of contemporary classical music based in New York City. He also performed as a pianist and conductor. Wuorinen composed more than 270 works: orchestral music, chamber music, solo instrumental and vocal works, and operas, such as Brokeback Mountain. His work was termed serialist but he came to disparage that idea as meaningless. Time's Encomium, his only purely electronic piece, received the Pulitzer Prize. Wuorinen taught at several institutions, including Columbia University and the Manhattan School of Music.
Go to Profile#3598
Teresa Berganza
#70505
Overall Influence
1933 - 2022 (89 years)
Teresa Berganza Vargas OAXS was a Spanish mezzo-soprano. She is most closely associated with roles such as Rossini's Rosina and La Cenerentola, and later Bizet's Carmen, admired for her technical virtuosity, musical intelligence, and beguiling stage presence. Berganza was a key singer in a Rossini renaissance which explored less performed operas and restored the leading roles to mezzo register. She appeared as Zerlina in Joseph Losey's Don Giovanni film in 1979. She participated in the opening ceremonies of the Expo '92 in Seville and of the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.
Go to Profile#3599
Dick Dale
#33162
Overall Influence
1937 - 2019 (82 years)
Richard Anthony Monsour , known professionally as Dick Dale, was an American rock guitarist. He was a pioneer of surf music, drawing on Middle Eastern music scales and experimenting with reverb. Dale was known as "The King of the Surf Guitar", which was also the title of his second studio album.
Go to Profile#3600
Kim S. Cameron
#11680
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Kim Sterling Cameron is the William Russell Kelly Professor of Management and Organizations at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. He was formerly the dean of the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. He has also served as associate dean at both the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University and in the Ross School of Business.
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