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,
#3701
James Hong
#41502
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
James Hong is an American actor, producer and director. He has worked in numerous productions in U.S. media since the 1950s, portraying a variety of roles. He is known as one of the most prolific character actors of all time. In 2022, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the American film and television industries.
Go to Profile#3702
Jay M. Bernhardt
#43139
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Jay M. Bernhardt is a health communication scholar, public health leader, professor and college administrator. Bernhardt has served as the president of Emerson College since June, 2023. Before that, he served as the dean of the Moody College of Communication at The University of Texas at Austin from 2016 to 2023. At UT Austin, he was the founding director of the Center for Health Communication in 2015. He serves on multiple boards of directors and is the founder of national nonprofit organizations including the Alliance of Schools and Colleges of Communication and Journalism and the Society f...
Go to Profile#3703
Steve Erickson
#65200
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Stephen Michael Erickson is an American novelist. The author of influential works such as Days Between Stations, Tours of the Black Clock and Zeroville, he is the recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters award, the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award and a Guggenheim fellowship.
Go to Profile#3704
Itamar Even-Zohar
#42043
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Itamar Even-Zohar is an Israeli culture researcher and professor at Tel Aviv University. Even-Zohar is a pioneer of polysystem theory and the theory of cultural repertoires. Biography Itamar Even-Zohar was born in Tel Aviv. He earned his degrees from the University of Tel Aviv and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem . He also studied in Oslo, Copenhagen and Stockholm. He has been a guest scholar at universities and research centers in Amsterdam, Paris, Philadelphia, Reykjavík, Quebec City, Louvain, Santiago de Compostela, Santander, St. John's , Barcelona and Santa Cruz, California. He has ...
Go to Profile#3705
David Lamb
#45443
Overall Influence
1940 - 2016 (76 years)
David Sherman Lamb was a freelance writer who traveled the world for twenty-five years as a Los Angeles Times correspondent. He left the paper in 2004 after 34 years and then freelanced. Biography David Lamb was born in Boston, Massachusetts. For most of his high school education, he attended Phillips Exeter Academy, where he ran a gambling ring, and was nicknamed “The Joker.” At Exeter, Lamb was friends with Benno Schmidt, who later became president of Yale University; Lamb was expelled after the school's administration searched his dorm room over winter break, and even hired a locksmith to ...
Go to Profile#3706
Marty Friedman
#32853
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Martin Adam Friedman is an American guitarist, best known for his tenure as the lead guitarist of thrash metal band Megadeth from 1990 to 2000. He is also known for playing alongside Jason Becker in Cacophony from 1986 until 1989, as well as his 13 solo albums and tours. Friedman has resided in Tokyo since 2003, where he has appeared on over 700 Japanese television programs such as Rock Fujiyama, Hebimeta-san, Kōhaku Uta Gassen and Jukebox English. He has released albums with several record labels, including Avex Trax, Universal, EMI, Prosthetic, and Shrapnel Records.
Go to Profile#3707
Bill Schneider
#38923
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
William Schneider is an American journalist. From 1990 to 2009, he served as CNN's senior political analyst. He is a Distinguished Senior Fellow & Resident Scholar at Third Way, a Washington think tank. Schneider is also serving as the Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor at George Mason University's School of Public Policy, and teaching at George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government. He has also been a contributing editor to the Opinion section of the Los Angeles Times.
Go to Profile#3708
Carlos Villa
#68679
Overall Influence
1938 - 2014 (76 years)
Carlos Villa was a Filipino-American visual artist, curator and faculty member in the Painting Department at the San Francisco Art Institute. His work often explored the meaning of cultural diversity and sought to expand awareness of multicultural issues in the arts.
Go to Profile#3709
Arsenio Hall
#31958
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Arsenio Hall is an American comedian, actor and talk show host. He hosted the late-night talk show, The Arsenio Hall Show, from 1989 until 1994, and again from 2013 to 2014. He has appeared in Martial Law, Coming to America , Coming 2 America , and Harlem Nights . He was also the host of Star Search and appeared as Alan Thicke's sidekick on the talk show Thicke of the Night.
Go to Profile#3710
Andrew Gold
#42608
Overall Influence
1951 - 2011 (60 years)
Andrew Maurice Gold was an American multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, and record producer who influenced much of the Los Angeles-dominated pop/soft rock sound in the 1970s. Gold performed on scores of records by other artists, especially Linda Ronstadt, and had his own success with the U.S. top 40 hits "Lonely Boy" and "Thank You for Being a Friend" , as well as the UK top five hit "Never Let Her Slip Away" . In the 1980s, he had further international chart success as one half of Wax, a collaboration with 10cc's Graham Gouldman.
Go to Profile#3711
Garth Fagan
#31141
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Gawain Garth Fagan, CD is a Jamaican modern dance choreographer. He is the founder and artistic director of Garth Fagan Dance, a modern dance company based in Rochester, New York. Biography Early years Fagan was born in Kingston, Jamaica to Oxford educated S.W. Fagan, former Chief Education Officer of Jamaica, and Louise I. Walker. It was a gymnastics class that initially drew his attention to dance early on. While attending Excelsior High school, he studied with Ivy Baxter at the Jamaica National Dance Company and performed at the inauguration of Cuban President Fidel Castro in 1959. Fagan ...
Go to Profile#3712
Simon Greenhill
#65532
Overall Influence
Simon James Greenhill is a New Zealand scientist who works on the application of quantitative methods to the study of cultural evolution and human prehistory. He is well known for creating and building various linguistics databases, including the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database, TransNewGuinea.org, Pulotu, and many others. In addition to Austronesian, he has contributed to the study of the phylogeny of many language families, including Dravidian and Sino-Tibetan.
Go to Profile#3713
Patricia Roc
#82081
Overall Influence
1915 - 2003 (88 years)
Patricia Roc was an English film actress, popular in the Gainsborough melodramas such as Madonna of the Seven Moons and The Wicked Lady , though she only made one film in Hollywood, Canyon Passage . She also appeared in Millions Like Us , Jassy , The Brothers and When the Bough Breaks .
Go to Profile#3714
Vladimir Uspensky
#42893
Overall Influence
1930 - 2018 (88 years)
Vladimir Andreyevich Uspensky was a Russian mathematician, linguist, writer, doctor of physics and mathematics . He was the author of numerous papers on mathematical logic and linguistics. In addition, he also penned a number of memoir essays. Uspensky initiated a reform of linguistic education in Russia.
Go to Profile#3715
Jean Dubois
#64370
Overall Influence
1920 - 2015 (95 years)
Jean Dubois was a French linguist, grammarian and lexicographer. Publications 1960: Dictionnaire de la langue française classique, in collaboration with René Lagane, preface by P. Clarac, with grammatical index, Librairie classique Belin, reprinted under the title Dictionnaire du français classique, in collaboration with Alain Lerond, Larousse, 1971.1962: Le vocabulaire politique et social en France de 1869 à 1872 à travers les œuvres des écrivains, les revues et les journaux, thesis for the doctorat ès lettres, Éditions Larousse.1962: Étude sur la dérivation suffixale en français moderne et contemporain.
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Martin Harris
#21191
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Sir Martin Best Harris, is a British academic and former University Vice-Chancellor. Life and career He was born at Ruabon, Wales, the son of William Best Harris, afterwards City Librarian of Plymouth, and educated at Devonport High School for Boys in Plymouth, at Queens' College, Cambridge and at the School of Oriental and African Studies. He began his academic career at the University of Leicester in 1967, where he lectured in French Linguistics.
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Joseph Kahn
#43790
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Joseph F. Kahn is an American journalist who currently serves as executive editor of The New York Times. Education Kahn graduated from Harvard University in 1987, where he earned a bachelor's degree in American history and served as president of The Harvard Crimson. In 1990, he received a master's degree in East Asian studies from the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
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Radley Metzger
#55657
Overall Influence
1929 - 2017 (88 years)
Radley Metzger was an American pioneering filmmaker and film distributor, most noted for popular artistic, adult-oriented films, including Thérèse and Isabelle , Camille 2000 , The Lickerish Quartet , Score , The Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann , The Image , The Opening of Misty Beethoven and Barbara Broadcast . According to one film reviewer, Metzger's films, including those made during the Golden Age of Porn , are noted for their "lavish design, witty screenplays, and a penchant for the unusual camera angle". Another reviewer noted that his films were "highly artistic — and often cerebral ...
Go to Profile#3719
Magnus Uggla
#85868
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Per Allan Magnus Claësson Uggla is a Swedish artist, composer, actor, and occasional radio host. He is known for his satirical lyrics. Uggla was born in Stockholm. He was the lead singer of the hard rock band JUSO before going solo in the early 1970s. Their influences were Black Sabbath, The Groundhogs and Alice Cooper, among others. Uggla's first two glam- and art rock-inspired albums Om Bobbo Viking and Livets teaterˈ did not sell well, the first only about 500 copies in Sweden and Livets teater even less. But his departure from glam rock with the punk and hard rock inspired Va ska man ta ...
Go to Profile#3720
Birgit Anette Olsen
#91350
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Birgit Anette Olsen is a Danish linguist, professor at the University of Copenhagen and leader of the Roots of Europe research center. She is an expert on Proto-Indo-European and Indo-European languages in general, especially derivational morphology and the history of Armenian. She has also published important articles on linguistic reconstruction and the history of Latin, Greek, Anatolian and Germanic languages. She was married to Jens Elmegård Rasmussen, and her official surname is Rasmussen, but as a linguist she uses her maiden name Olsen to avoid confusion in references.
Go to Profile#3721
Gonzalo Frasca
#45654
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Gonzalo Frasca is a game designer and academic researcher focusing on serious and political videogames. His blog, Ludology.org, was cited by NBC News as a popular designation for academic researchers studying video games. For many years, Frasca also co-published Watercoolergames with Ian Bogost, a blog about serious games.
Go to Profile#3722
Anna Mitgutsch
#51903
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Anna Mitgutsch is an Austrian writer and educator. Her name also appears as Waltraud Anna Mitgutsch. Biography She was born in Linz and studied German and English literature at the University of Salzburg. Originally a Roman Catholic, Mitgutsch converted to Judaism and worked on a kibbutz in Israel. She taught at the Institute for American Studies at the University of Innsbruck and, after going to England, at the University of Hull and University of East Anglia. Next, She taught for a year in Seoul, South Korea and then at colleges and universities in the United States from 1979 until 1985, when Mitgutsch returned to Austria.
Go to Profile#3723
Gérard Grisey
#70908
Overall Influence
1946 - 1998 (52 years)
Gérard Henri Grisey was a twentieth-century French composer of contemporary classical music. His work is often associated with the Spectralist Movement in music, of which he was a major pioneer. Biography Grisey was born in Belfort, on 17 June 1946. From a very young age, Grisey demonstrated enormous interest and talent in music composition and study, writing his first essay on music when he was 9 years old. He studied at the in Trossingen in Germany from 1963 to 1965 before entering the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique where he studied with Olivier Messiaen from 1965 to 1967 and ...
Go to Profile#3724
Aribert Reimann
#76192
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Aribert Reimann is a German composer, pianist and accompanist, known especially for his literary operas. His version of Shakespeare's King Lear, the opera Lear, was written at the suggestion of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who sang the title role. His opera Medea after Grillparzer's play premiered in 2010 at the Vienna State Opera. He was a professor of contemporary Lied in Hamburg and Berlin. In 2011, he was awarded the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize for his life's work.
Go to Profile#3725
Wilfried Decoo
#74403
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Wilfried Decoo is a Flemish academic. He is a professor with the department of French and Italian at Brigham Young University and also a professor at the University of Antwerp. Decoo is also a contributor to the Mormon blog Times and Seasons.
Go to Profile#3726
Randy Crawford
#61792
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Veronica "Randy" Crawford is an American jazz and R&B singer. She has been more successful in Europe than in the United States, where she has not entered the Billboard Hot 100 as a solo artist. However, she has appeared on the Hot 100 singles chart twice. The first time was in 1979 as a guest vocalist on The Crusaders' top-40 hit "Street Life". She also dueted with Rick Springfield on the song "Taxi Dancing", which hit number 59 as the B-side of Springfield's hit "Bop Til You Drop". She has had five top-20 hits in the UK, including her 1980 number-two hit, "One Day I'll Fly Away", as well as six UK top-10 albums.
Go to Profile#3727
Bunny Wailer
#44529
Overall Influence
1947 - 2021 (74 years)
Neville O'Riley Livingston , known professionally as Bunny Wailer, was a Jamaican singer-songwriter and percussionist. He was an original member of reggae group The Wailers along with Bob Marley and Peter Tosh. A three-time Grammy Award winner, he is considered one of the longtime standard-bearers of reggae music. He was also known as Jah B, Bunny O'Riley, and Bunny Livingston.
Go to Profile#3728
Magda Olivero
#86730
Overall Influence
1910 - 2014 (104 years)
Magda Olivero , was an Italian operatic soprano. Her career started in 1932 when she was 22, and spanned five decades, establishing her "as an important link between the era of the verismo composers and the modern opera stage". She has been regarded as "one of the greatest singers of the twentieth century".
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Helle Metslang
#95245
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Helle Metslang is an Estonian linguist. Biography Metslang studied Estonian philology at the University of Tartu, graduating in 1974. She subsequently worked at the Institute of the Estonian Language in Tallinn. In 1978 she defended her candidate thesis on syntactic aspects of Estonian folk poetry. She received her doctoral degree at the University of Oulu in 1994 for a comparative study of Estonian and Finnish.
Go to Profile#3730
Richard Riddell
#84998
Overall Influence
Richard V. Riddell is an American lighting designer. He graduated from Knox College with a B.A. with honors in 1972. In 1978, he received his doctorate from Stanford University. He has had extensive teaching experience, working at such schools as the University of California, San Diego, Harvard University. He finally moved to Duke University, where he became vice president as well as university secretary and assistant to the president, Richard H. Brodhead.
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Albert Razin
#36183
Overall Influence
1940 - 2019 (79 years)
Albert Alexeyevich Razin was an Udmurt language rights activist and Neopaganist who committed traditional self-immolation in the centre of Izhevsk as an act of protest against the language policy of the Russian federal government and the Russification of the Udmurt people.
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A.B. Quintanilla
#63192
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Abraham Isaac Quintanilla III , known professionally as A.B. Quintanilla III or A.B. Quintanilla, is an American record producer, songwriter and musician. Called the "King of Kumbia", he is the older brother of singer Selena, known as the "Queen of Tejano Music", having produced and written many of her hit songs throughout her career, is the creator and founder of the bands Kumbia Kings and Kumbia All Starz, also having produced and written their hit songs as well as performing as a member of both, and has contributed, produced and written many songs for other artists.
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Steve Clark
#78060
Overall Influence
1960 - 1991 (31 years)
Stephen Maynard Clark was an English musician. He was a guitarist and songwriter for the hard rock band Def Leppard until his death in 1991. In 2007, Clark was ranked No. 11 on Classic Rock Magazine's "100 Wildest Guitar Heroes". In 2019, Clark was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Def Leppard.
Go to Profile#3734
Denis Podalydès
#89864
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Denis Podalydès is a French actor and scriptwriter of Greek descent. Podalydès has appeared in more than 140 films and television shows since 1989. He starred in The Officers' Ward, which was entered into the 2001 Cannes Film Festival.
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Laurent Laplante
#88073
Overall Influence
1934 - 2017 (83 years)
Joseph Lucien Laurent Laplante was a Canadian journalist, essayist and detective writer. He is the author of 20 books. Early life Laurent Laplante was born in 1934 in Verdun, Quebec, Canada. He studied literature, history, philosophy and government.
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Carl Cox
#42912
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Carl Cox is an English house and techno club DJ, as well as radio DJ and record producer. He is based in Hove, Sussex, England. Cox has won and been nominated for numerous awards. He has performed at numerous clubs and electronic music or dance events worldwide. He has hosted a residency known as "Music is Revolution" every summer season at the Space Ibiza nightclub, from 2001 to 2016. He has featured his own "Carl Cox & Friends" stage at many festivals, such as Ultra Music Festival, The BPM Festival and Tomorrowland. Cox has also served as a monthly DJ for BBC Radio 1's Essential Mix.
Go to Profile#3737
Chester Bennington
#20544
Overall Influence
1976 - 2017 (41 years)
Chester Charles Bennington was an American singer and songwriter who served as the lead vocalist of rock band Linkin Park. He was also a lead vocalist of Grey Daze, Dead by Sunrise and Stone Temple Pilots at various points.
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Monica C. Lozano
#20602
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Monica Cecilia Lozano is the president of the College Futures Foundation, based in San Francisco. Previously she was an American newspaper editor, the publisher and CEO of La Opinión and CEO of its parent company, ImpreMedia, LLC. Based in Los Angeles, La Opinión is the largest Spanish publication in the United States. She was a member of President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. She was appointed by the California State Legislature to join Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Commission on the 21st Century Economy.
Go to Profile#3739
Dean Jones
#55245
Overall Influence
1931 - 2015 (84 years)
Dean Carroll Jones was an American actor. He was best known for his roles as Agent Zeke Kelso in That Darn Cat! , Jim Douglas in The Love Bug and Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo , and Dr. Herman Varnick in Beethoven . He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for his performance as Albert Dooley in The Million Dollar Duck . In 1995, he was inducted as a Disney Legend for his film work.
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Ronald Carter
#93621
Overall Influence
1947 - 2018 (71 years)
Ronald Allan Carter was a British linguist. A native of Leeds, Carter studied English, Russian, and German, as well as comparative literature, at University of Birmingham. He began teaching at the University of Nottingham after completing a doctorate in 1979. Carter was a founding member of the Poetics and Linguistics Association, and later led the group as chairman. He was elected fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1995, and granted an equivalent honor by the Academy of Social Sciences in 2002. In 2009, Carter was named a Member of the Order of the British Empire.
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Philip Catherine
#85557
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Philip Catherine is a Belgian jazz guitarist. Biography Philip Catherine was born in London, England, to an English mother and Belgian father, and was raised in Brussels, Belgium. His grandfather was a violinist in the London Symphony Orchestra. Catherine started on guitar in his teens, and by seventeen he was performing professionally at local venues.
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E. R. Shipp
#64373
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Etheleen Renee Shipp is an American journalist and columnist. As a columnist for the New York Daily News, she was awarded the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for "her penetrating columns on race, welfare and other social issues."
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Paul Morrissey
#50488
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Paul Morrissey is an American film director, best known for his association with Andy Warhol. He was also director of the first film in which a transgender actress, Holly Woodlawn, starred as a girlfriend of the main character played by Joe Dallesandro in Trash .
Go to Profile#3744
William Keegan
#42931
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
William James Gregory Keegan, CBE is a British journalist and a fiction and non-fiction author. He was economics editor of The Observer from 1977 to 2003, and continues to contribute to the paper as a columnist.
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Walter Daelemans
#67727
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Walter Daelemans is professor in computational linguistics at the University of Antwerp. He is also a research director of the Computational Linguistics and Psycholinguistics Research Center . Education and career Daelemans holds a Ph.D. from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.
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Kenneth L. Kraemer
#105906
Overall Influence
#3747
Caroline Aherne
#69496
Overall Influence
1963 - 2016 (53 years)
Caroline Mary Aherne was an English actress, comedian, writer, producer and director. She was best known for performing as the acerbic chat show host Mrs Merton, in various roles in The Fast Show, and as Denise in The Royle Family , a series which she co-wrote. She won BAFTA awards for her work on The Mrs Merton Show and The Royle Family.
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Diana Ross
#38870
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Diana Ross is an American singer and actress. She rose to fame as the lead singer of the vocal group The Supremes, who became Motown's most successful act during the 1960s and one of the world's best-selling girl groups of all time. They remain the best-charting woman group in history, with a total of twelve number-one hit singles on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, including "Where Did Our Love Go", "Baby Love", "Come See About Me", "Stop! In the Name of Love", and "Love Child".
Go to Profile#3749
Darcy Frey
#36494
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (125 years)
Darcy Frey is an American writer and educator from New York. His 1994 book The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams won awards and inspired a movie. Frey has published articles in New England Monthly, Rolling Stone, Harper's, and The New York Times Magazine.
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Balthasar Bickel
#67565
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Balthasar Bickel is a Swiss linguist. Bickel is a specialist in linguistic typology and on Tibeto-Burman languages, especially languages of the Kiranti group. He is currently a professor at the Department of Comparative Language Science at the University of Zurich. Between 2002 and 2011, he taught at the Leipzig University in Germany. He received his graduate training at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen and earned his doctoral degree from the University of Zurich. As a postdoctoral researcher, he spent several years at the University of California, Berkeley, where he...
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