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,
#3751
Gregory Mccarthy
#105917
Overall Influence
#3752
Malcolm Williamson
#73123
Overall Influence
1931 - 2003 (72 years)
Malcolm Benjamin Graham Christopher Williamson, was an Australian composer. He was the Master of the Queen's Music from 1975 until his death. According to Grove Music Online, although Williamson's earlier compositions aligned with Serialist techniques, "he later modified his approach to composition in the search of a more inclusive musical language that was fundamentally tonal and, above all, lyrical. In the 1960s he was commonly referred to as the most often commissioned composer in Britain, and over his lifetime he produced more than 250 works in a wide variety of genres."
Go to Profile#3753
Robert Thompson
#38794
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Robert James Thompson is an American educator and media scholar. He is the Trustee Professor of Television and Popular Culture at the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture. He is widely quoted in media.
Go to Profile#3754
Dafydd Gibbon
#98618
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Dafydd Gibbon is a British emeritus professor of English and General Linguistics at Bielefeld University in Germany, specialising in computational linguistics, the lexicography of spoken languages, applied phonetics and phonology. He is particularly concerned with endangered languages and has received awards from the Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Poland.
Go to Profile#3755
Otar Iosseliani
#73390
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Otar Iosseliani is a Georgian-born film director. He was born in the Georgian capital city of Tbilisi, where he studied at the Tbilisi State Conservatoire and graduated in 1952 with a diploma in composition, conducting and piano.
Go to Profile#3756
Jon Carin
#40812
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Jon Carin is an American musician, singer, songwriter and producer. He has collaborated with acts including Pink Floyd, the Who, Eddie Vedder, Kate Bush and Richard Butler. Biography As a teenager, Jon Carin started his professional musical career with the band Industry as their lead singer, keyboardist and songwriter. During his time with the band, they had a hit single with "State of the Nation" in 1984, being followed by the album Stranger to Stranger.
Go to Profile#3757
Johnny Griffin
#66198
Overall Influence
1928 - 2008 (80 years)
John Arnold Griffin III was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Nicknamed "the Little Giant" for his short stature and forceful playing, Griffin's career began in the mid-1940s and continued until the month of his death. A pioneering figure in hard bop, Griffin recorded prolifically as a bandleader in addition to stints with pianist Thelonious Monk, drummer Art Blakey, in partnership with fellow tenor Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and as a member of the Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band after he moved to Europe in the 1960s. In 1995, Griffin was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee C...
Go to Profile#3758
Rufus Thomas
#46709
Overall Influence
1917 - 2001 (84 years)
Rufus C. Thomas, Jr. was an American rhythm-and-blues, funk, soul and blues singer, songwriter, dancer, DJ and comic entertainer from Memphis, Tennessee. He recorded for several labels, including Chess Records and Sun Records in the 1950s, before becoming established in the 1960s and 1970s at Stax Records. He is best known for his novelty dance records, including "Walking the Dog" , "Do the Funky Chicken" , and " Push and Pull" . According to the Mississippi Blues Commission, "Rufus Thomas embodied the spirit of Memphis music perhaps more than any other artist, and from the early 1940s until his death . . .
Go to Profile#3759
Roscoe Mitchell
#76497
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Roscoe Mitchell is an American composer, jazz instrumentalist, and educator, known for being "a technically superb – if idiosyncratic – saxophonist". The Penguin Guide to Jazz described him as "one of the key figures" in avant-garde jazz; All About Jazz stated in 2004 that he had been "at the forefront of modern music" for more than 35 years. Critic Jon Pareles in The New York Times has mentioned that Mitchell "qualifies as an iconoclast". In addition to his own work as a bandleader, Mitchell is known for cofounding the Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Association for the Advancement of Creati...
Go to Profile#3760
Mahbub Jamal Zahedi
#62409
Overall Influence
1929 - 2008 (79 years)
Mahbub Jamal Zahedi also known as M J Zahedi was a veteran journalist and philatelist from Pakistan. During a career of nearly fifty years he served as editor of the Khaleej Times, Dubai, UAE as well the news editor and senior assistant editor of Dawn, Karachi, Pakistan.
Go to Profile#3761
Amir Hassanpour
#56016
Overall Influence
1943 - 2017 (74 years)
Amir Hassanpour was an Iranian scholar and researcher. He was a supporter of Kurdish studies and the rights of national minorities to self-determination. Biography He was born in Mahabad, in north-western Iran. He received his B.A. degree in English language in 1964 from the University of Tehran. He taught in the secondary schools of Mahabad in the short period of 1965–1966.
Go to Profile#3762
Shane Meadows
#74073
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Shane Meadows is an English director, screenwriter and actor, known for his work in independent film, most notably the cult film This Is England and its three sequels . Meadows' other films include Small Time , Twenty Four Seven , A Room for Romeo Brass , Once Upon a Time in the Midlands , Dead Man's Shoes , Somers Town , Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee , and The Stone Roses: Made of Stone .
Go to Profile#3763
Guy Garvey
#65176
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Guy Edward John Garvey is an English musician, singer, songwriter and BBC Radio 6 Music presenter. He is the lead singer and lyricist of the rock band Elbow. Early life Garvey grew up in Bury, Lancashire. His father was a grammar school boy who could not afford to go to university; he spent most of his working life as a newspaper proofreader and a chemist at ICI. His mother was a police officer who went back to university and became a psychologist. One of seven siblings, Garvey has five older sisters: Gina, Louise, Sam, Karen, and Becky. His younger brother is actor Marcus Garvey.
Go to Profile#3764
Tamara Brooks
#85205
Overall Influence
1941 - 2012 (71 years)
Tamara Brooks was an American choral conductor. Biography Brooks studied at the Juilliard School of Music, where she received degrees in piano and in conducting. She went on to have an extremely varied career, of which choral conducting was merely a part.
Go to Profile#3765
Ian Carr
#70550
Overall Influence
1933 - 2009 (76 years)
Ian Carr was a Scottish jazz musician, composer, writer, and educator. Carr performed and recorded with the Rendell-Carr quintet and jazz-fusion band Nucleus, and was an associate professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. He also wrote biographies of musicians Keith Jarrett and Miles Davis.
Go to Profile#3766
Ron Geesin
#49795
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Ronald Frederick Geesin is a Scottish musician, composer and writer known for his unusual creations and novel applications of sound, as well as for his collaborations with Pink Floyd and Roger Waters.
Go to Profile#3767
Bobby Goldsboro
#55615
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Robert Charles Goldsboro is an American pop and country singer and songwriter. He had a string of pop and country hits in the 1960s and 1970s, including his signature No. 1 hit "Honey", which sold over 1 million copies in the United States, and the UK top-10 single "Summer ".
Go to Profile#3768
Kathleen Sullivan
#29752
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Kathleen Sullivan is an American television journalist. She was hired as a news anchor for the newly founded news channel CNN in 1980, when she was 27 years old, and she has also worked for ABC News, CBS News, and The Huffington Post.
Go to Profile#3769
Joe Sample
#46727
Overall Influence
1939 - 2014 (75 years)
Joseph Leslie Sample was an American jazz keyboardist and composer. He was one of the founding members of The Jazz Crusaders in 1960, the band which shortened its name to "The Crusaders" in 1971. He remained a part of the group until its final album in 1991 and also the 2003 reunion album Rural Renewal.
Go to Profile#3770
Cassandra Wilson
#56831
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Cassandra Wilson is an American jazz singer, songwriter, and producer from Jackson, Mississippi. She is one of the most successful female Jazz singers and has been described by critic Gary Giddins as "a singer blessed with an unmistakable timbre and attack [who has] expanded the playing field" by incorporating blues, country, and folk music into her work. She has won numerous awards, including two Grammys, and was named "America's Best Singer" by Time magazine in 2001.
Go to Profile#3771
Artemy Troitsky
#54270
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Artemy Kivovich Troitsky is a Russian journalist, music critic, concert promoter, radio host, and academic who has lectured on music journalism at Moscow State University. "He is an anarchist, pacifist and one of the most prominent Russian Kremlin critics in the Baltic States. Journalist and music critic Artemy Troitsky is known for his impudence and sharpness," is how journalist Tigran Petrosyan describes him.
Go to Profile#3772
Julien Hébert
#46947
Overall Influence
1917 - 1994 (77 years)
Julien Hébert was a Québécois industrial designer, perhaps most famous for creating the logo of the Montreal World Exposition, Expo 67. Formerly a student of philosophy, Hébert began his design education as a student of sculpture at the École des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, continuing in 1947 in Paris under Ossip Zadkine. Hébert later became a teacher himself, teaching art history and sculpture at his alma mater, the École des beaux-arts, and instructing in planning and design at the École du meuble. He went on to assist in the establishment of the École du design industriel at the University of Montreal.
Go to Profile#3773
Neal Hefti
#72717
Overall Influence
1922 - 2008 (86 years)
Neal Paul Hefti was an American jazz trumpeter, composer, and arranger. He wrote music for The Odd Couple movie and TV series and for the Batman TV series. He began arranging professionally in his teens, when he wrote charts for Nat Towles. He composed and arranged while working as a trumpeter for Woody Herman providing the bandleader with versions of "Woodchopper's Ball" and "Blowin' Up a Storm" and composing "The Good Earth" and "Wild Root". He left Herman's band in 1946. Now concentrating on writing music only, he began an association with Count Basie in 1950. Hefti occasionally led his ow...
Go to Profile#3774
Manfred Pinkal
#24171
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Manfred Pinkal is a German computational linguist. He is a senior professor at the Saarland University. Education and career Manfred Pinkal studied Linguistics, Philosophy, German Language and Literature, and Computer Science at the University of Bochum and University of Stuttgart. He received his Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Stuttgart.
Go to Profile#3775
Joe Henderson
#57295
Overall Influence
1937 - 2001 (64 years)
Joe Henderson was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. In a career spanning more than four decades, Henderson played with many of the leading American players of his day and recorded for several prominent labels, including Blue Note, Milestone, and Verve.
Go to Profile#3776
John Harvey
#57132
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
John Harvey is a British author of crime fiction most famous for his series of jazz-influenced Charlie Resnick novels, based in the City of Nottingham. He is also a screenwriter and poet. Writing career Harvey has published over 100 books under various names, and has worked on scripts for TV and radio. He started writing in the 1970s when he produced a variety of pulp fiction including westerns. He also ran Slow Dancer Press from 1977 to 1999 publishing poetry. His own poetry has been published in a number of chapbooks and two collections, "Ghosts of a Chance" and "Bluer Than This", published by Smith/Doorstop.
Go to Profile#3777
Sonny James
#51388
Overall Influence
1929 - 2016 (87 years)
Jimmie Hugh Loden , known professionally as Sonny James, was an American country music singer and songwriter best known for his 1957 hit, "Young Love", topping both the Billboard Hot Country and Billboard's Disk Jockey singles charts. Dubbed the "Southern Gentleman" for his congenial manner, his greatest success came from ballads about the trials of love. James had 72 country and pop charted releases from 1953 to 1983, including an unprecedented five-year streak of 16 straight Billboard Hot Country No. 1 singles among his 26 Billboard Hot Country No. 1 hits. From 1964 to 1976, James placed 21 of his albums in the Top 10 of Billboard Top Country Albums.
Go to Profile#3778
Jennifer Hay
#103596
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Jennifer Bohun Hay is a New Zealand linguist who specialises in sociolinguistics, laboratory phonology, and the history of New Zealand English. As of 2020 she is a full professor at the University of Canterbury.
Go to Profile#3779
Penn Kimball
#77096
Overall Influence
1915 - 2013 (98 years)
Penn Townsend Kimball II was an American journalist and college professor at Columbia University, most notable for suing the American government in the mid 1980s after his discovery that the FBI and CIA considered him and his wife a security risk.
Go to Profile#3780
Richard Keith Sprigg
#89320
Overall Influence
1922 - 2011 (89 years)
Richard Keith Sprigg was a British linguist who specialised in the phonology of Asian languages. Sprigg was educated under J. R. Firth and was a member of the first generation of professional British linguists. Also as a consequence Sprigg was an advocate of the prosodic phonological method of Firth. Sprigg worked on several Tibeto-Burman languages including Lepcha, and various Tibetan dialects. He taught for many years at the School of Oriental and African Studies, and retired to Kalimpong, West Bengal, India with his wife Ray, granddaughter of David Macdonald the author of The Land of the L...
Go to Profile#3781
Leonard Feather
#57623
Overall Influence
1914 - 1994 (80 years)
Leonard Geoffrey Feather was a British-born jazz pianist, composer, and producer, who was best known for his music journalism and other writing. Biography Feather was born in London, England, into an upper middle-class Jewish family. He learned to play the piano and clarinet without formal training and started writing about jazz and film by his late teens. At the age of twenty-one, Feather made his first visit to the United States, and after working in the UK and the US as a record producer finally settled in New York City in 1939, where he lived until moving to Los Angeles in 1960. Feather w...
Go to Profile#3782
Nicolás Pasquet
#60702
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Nicolás Pasquet is a conductor from Uruguay and professor of conducting. Biography Born in 1958 in Montevideo, Uruguay, Pasquet studied violin and conducting at the National Music College. He later studied in Germany, violin at the Stuttgart College of Music and conducting in Nürnberg. Nicolas Pasquet's conducting career started after winning in two occasion the National Competition for Young Conductors and the first prize of the International Besançon Competition for Young Conductors in 1987.
Go to Profile#3783
Joe Johnston
#48215
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Joe Johnston is an American film director, producer, writer, and visual effects artist. He is best known for directing effects-driven films, including Honey, I Shrunk the Kids ; The Rocketeer ; Jumanji ; Jurassic Park III ; The Wolfman ; and Captain America: The First Avenger .
Go to Profile#3784
Theo van Gogh
#57047
Overall Influence
1957 - 2004 (47 years)
Theodoor van Gogh was a Dutch film director. He directed Submission: Part 1, a short film written by Somali writer and politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, which criticised the treatment of women in Islam in strong terms. On 2 November 2004, he was murdered by Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch-Moroccan Islamist who objected to the film's message. The last film Van Gogh had completed before his murder, 06/05, was a fictional exploration of the assassination of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn. It was released posthumously in December 2004, a month after Van Gogh's death, and two years after Fortuyn's death.
Go to Profile#3785
Larry Fast
#51596
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Lawrence Roger Fast is an American synthesizer player and composer. He is best known for his 1975–1987 series of synthesizer music albums and for his contributions to a number of popular music acts, including Peter Gabriel, Foreigner, Nektar, Bonnie Tyler, and Hall & Oates.
Go to Profile#3786
Park Jin-young
#45976
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Park Jin-young , also known by his stage names J. Y. Park and The Asiansoul or the initials JYP, is a South Korean singer-songwriter, record producer, record executive, and reality television show judge. Park rose to stardom as a singer following the release of his 1994 debut album, Blue City. In 1997, he became the founder of JYP Entertainment, one of the most profitable entertainment agencies in South Korea. As the former head of JYP Entertainment , Park has developed and managed highly successful K-pop artists including Rain, Wonder Girls, 2PM, Miss A, Got7, Day6, Twice, Stray Kids, Itzy, X...
Go to Profile#3787
Michael Meier-Brügger
#88775
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Michael Meier-Brügger is a Swiss linguist and Indo-Europeanist. He was professor of comparative and Indo-European linguistics at the Free University of Berlin in 1996–2013. After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Zurich in 1973, he became Ernst Risch's assistant there before going on to postdoctoral research in Erlangen, Paris, and Harvard. Afterward, he spent three years as a lecturer at Zürich and Fribourg. In 1984, he joined the editorial team of the Lexikon des frühgriechischen Epos, becoming verantwortlicher Redaktor in 1987 .
Go to Profile#3788
Frieder Bernius
#84487
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Frieder Bernius is a German conductor, the founder and director of the chamber choir Kammerchor Stuttgart, founded in 1968. They became leaders for historically informed performances. He founded the Stuttgart festival of Baroque music, "Internationale Festtage Alter Musik", in 1987, and is a recipient of the Edison Award , Diapason d'Or and the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany .
Go to Profile#3789
Ramblin' Jack Elliott
#43858
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Ramblin' Jack Elliott is an American folk singer and songwriter and musician. Life and career Elliott was born in 1931 in Brooklyn, New York, United States, the son of Florence and Abraham Adnopoz, an eminent doctor. His family was Jewish. He attended Midwood High School in Brooklyn and graduated in 1949. Elliott grew up inspired by the rodeos at Madison Square Garden, and wanted to be a cowboy. Encouraged instead to follow his father's example and become a surgeon, Elliott rebelled, running away from home at the age of 15 to join Col. Jim Eskew's Rodeo, the only rodeo east of the Mississippi.
Go to Profile#3790
Marshall Scott Poole
#21735
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Marshall Scott Poole is an American communication researcher and professor of communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Biography Poole received his BA in Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1973, his MA in Communication at the Michigan State University in 1976, and back at the University of Wisconsin-Madison his PhD in Communication Arts in 1980 with a minor in Management.
Go to Profile#3791
Buck Clayton
#71045
Overall Influence
1911 - 1991 (80 years)
Wilbur Dorsey "Buck" Clayton was an American jazz trumpeter who was a member of Count Basie's orchestra. His principal influence was Louis Armstrong, first hearing the record "Confessin' That I Love You" as he passed by a shop window.
Go to Profile#3792
Jon Hassell
#54632
Overall Influence
1937 - 2021 (84 years)
Jon Hassell was an American trumpet player and composer. He was best known for developing the concept of "Fourth World" music, which describes a "unified primitive/futurist sound" combining elements of various world ethnic traditions with modern electronic techniques. The concept was first articulated on Fourth World, Vol. 1: Possible Musics, his 1980 collaboration with Brian Eno.
Go to Profile#3793
Lester Bowie
#79365
Overall Influence
1941 - 1999 (58 years)
Lester Bowie was an American jazz trumpet player and composer. He was a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and co-founded the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Biography Born in the historic village of Bartonsville in Frederick County, Maryland, United States, Bowie grew up in St Louis, Missouri. At the age of five, he started studying the trumpet with his father, a professional musician. He played with blues musicians such as Little Milton and Albert King, and rhythm and blues stars such as Solomon Burke, Joe Tex, and Rufus Thomas. In 1965, he became Fontella Bass's musical director and husband.
Go to Profile#3794
Harry Belafonte
#53658
Overall Influence
1927 - 2023 (96 years)
Harry Belafonte was an American singer, actor, and civil rights activist, who popularized calypso music with international audiences in the 1950s and 1960s. Belafonte's career breakthrough album Calypso was the first million-selling LP by a single artist.
Go to Profile#3795
Ruth Brown
#46215
Overall Influence
1928 - 2006 (78 years)
Ruth Alston Brown was an American singer-songwriter and actress, sometimes referred to as the "Queen of R&B". She was noted for bringing a pop music style to R&B music in a series of hit songs for Atlantic Records in the 1950s, such as "So Long", "Teardrops from My Eyes" and " He Treats Your Daughter Mean". For these contributions, Atlantic became known as "the house that Ruth built" . Brown was a 1993 inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Go to Profile#3796
Patrice Buzzanell
#17890
Overall Influence
Patrice Buzzanell is a distinguished professor and former department chair for the Department of Communication at the University of South Florida and at the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University. Buzzanell focuses on organizational communication from a feminist viewpoint. A majority of the research Dr. Buzzanell has completed is geared towards how everyday interactions, identities, and social structures can be affected by the intersections of gender. She researches how these dynamics can impact overall practices, decisions, and results in the workplace, and more specificall...
Go to Profile#3797
Rick Allen
#76163
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Richard John Cyril Allen is an English drummer who has played for the hard rock band Def Leppard since 1978. He overcame the amputation of his left arm in January 1985 and continued to play with the band, which went on to its most commercially successful phase. He is known as "The Thunder God" by fans. He is ranked No. 7 on the UK website Gigwise in The Greatest Drummers of All Time list.
Go to Profile#3798
Clint Mansell
#42366
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Clinton Darryl Mansell is an English musician, singer, and composer. He served as the lead vocalist of alt-rock band Pop Will Eat Itself. After the band's dissolution, Mansell moved to the United States and embarked on a career as a film score composer.
Go to Profile#3799
Tony Martin
#64831
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Anthony Philip Harford , better known by his stage name Tony Martin, is an English heavy metal vocalist, best known for his time fronting Black Sabbath, initially from 1987 to 1991 and again from 1993 to 1997. Martin was the band's second-longest-serving vocalist after Ozzy Osbourne. He has since been involved in many other projects .
Go to Profile#3800
Paul Connolly
#85046
Overall Influence
Paul Dermot Connolly is an Irish investigative journalist, radio personality and documentary maker, who worked for the Irish commercial television station TV3. He worked as a host for various famous Irish sports show and also is host to a series of investigative documentaries self-titled as Paul Connolly Investigates.
Go to Profile