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).

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Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Communications,

#4001

Lourdes Ortega

#76912

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Lourdes Ortega is a Spanish-born American linguist. She is currently a professor of applied linguistics at Georgetown University. Her research focuses on second language acquisition and second language writing. She is noted for her work on second language acquisition and for recommending that syntactic complexity needs to be measured multidimensionally.

#4002

John Porter

#76299

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

John Porter is an English musician and record producer. Biography He attended St Michael's School, Allerton Grange School, King's College, London, and Newcastle University. While at Newcastle, Porter met singer Bryan Ferry, and was part of his fledgling band The Gas Board. Ferry's later band Roxy Music had achieved success in the early 1970s, but having had some troubles with bass players, Ferry invited Porter on board to record the 1973 album For Your Pleasure and its subsequent tour. Porter went on to serve as a record producer for many later albums for Roxy Music and Bryan Ferry.

#4003

Miyuki Sawashiro

Miyuki Sawashiro

#75476

Overall Influence

1985 - Present (41 years)

is a Japanese actress, voice actress and narrator. She has played voice roles in a number of Japanese anime/games including Beelzebub, Bishamon in Noragami, Petit Charat/Puchiko in Di Gi Charat, Mint in Galaxy Angel, Sinon in Sword Art Online II, Twilight/Towa Akagi/Cure Scarlet in Go! Princess Precure, Dlanor A. Knox in Umineko: When They Cry, Izuna Hatsuse in No Game, No Life, Amagi in Azur Lane, Celty Sturluson in Durarara!!, Kurapika in Hunter × Hunter, Raiden Mei and Dr.MEI in Honkai Impact 3, Raiden Shogun/Raiden Ei in Genshin Impact and Gun Girl Z, Akane Kurashiki in Zero Escape, Ayane...

#4004

Ben Johnson

#71543

Overall Influence

1918 - 1996 (78 years)

Francis Benjamin Johnson Jr. was an American film and television actor, stuntman, and world-champion rodeo cowboy. Johnson brought authenticity to many roles in Westerns with his droll manner and expert horsemanship.

#4005

Ann Hobson Pilot

#60034

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Ann Hobson Pilot is an American musician and the former principal harpist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops. She has performed with the National Symphony Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony, and as a soloist with many orchestras in the United States. She was one of four African American musicians who were the first to play in United States symphony orchestras during the 1960s.

#4006

Liz Neeley

#50412

Overall Influence

Liz Neeley is a science communicator, researcher, and founder of Liminal Creations. She was formerly the Executive Director of The Story Collider, a nonprofit organization that focuses on true, personal stories inspired by science. She began her career in marine biology and conservation and has since become an expert in the use of narrative storytelling for effective science communication.

#4007

Tarleton Gillespie

Tarleton Gillespie

#48406

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Tarleton Gillespie is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research New England and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Cornell University. He is the author of the book Wired Shut: Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture.

#4008

Reed Farrel Coleman

Reed Farrel Coleman

#37982

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Reed Farrel Coleman is an American writer of crime fiction and a poet. Life and career Reed Farrel Coleman, the youngest of three boys, was born and raised in the Sheepshead Bay, Coney Island, Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn. As a teenager, he heard a shot while walking to work, and saw a man lying in the street with a fatal stomach wound. That is when he realized, "People do get hurt." He started writing in high school. He has worked at an ice cream store, in air freight at Kennedy Airport, as a car leasing agent, in baby food sales, cooking at a restaurant, as a cab driver, and delivering home heating oil.

#4009

Georg-Christof Bertsch

#62430

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Georg-Christof Bertsch is a German corporate identity and organizational behavior consultant . Background Georg-Christof Bertsch is the third son to Robert Bertsch , principal of a special education grammar school, and Anny Bertsch, née Herling . Beginning in the early 70s, Robert and Anny were initiating leaders in the reconciliation between their hometown and France , the UK and Israel, helping to establish a sister city or community relations in these three countries. In 1988, Robert Bertsch published "Juden in Seeheim und Jugenheim", the first historical account of Jewish life in Seeheim-Jugenheim, Germany.

#4010

Fred Sherry

#65449

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Fred Sherry is an American cellist who is particularly admired for his work as a chamber musician and concert soloist. He studied with Leonard Rose at the Juilliard School before winning the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in 1968. In 1971 he co-founded the Speculum Musicae and in 1973 he co-founded the Tashi Quartet. Since the mid-1980s he has been a regular performer with Bargemusic and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the latter of which he served as Artistic Director for between 1989–1993. He has appeared as a soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, New Japan Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande.

#4011

Barney Kessel

#58346

Overall Influence

1923 - 2004 (81 years)

Barney Kessel was an American jazz guitarist. Known in particular for his knowledge of chords and inversions and chord-based melodies, he was a member of many prominent jazz groups as well as a "first call" guitarist for studio, film, and television recording sessions. Kessel was a member of the group of session musicians informally known as the Wrecking Crew.

#4012

Jacques Viret

#55984

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Jacques Viret is a contemporary French musicologist of Swiss origin. Life Born in Lausanne, Viret is a pianist and organist, graduated in classic literature from the University of Lausanne, habilitated for the teaching of music theory , Jacques Viret perfected his studies in musicology at the Paris-Sorbonne University, with Jacques Chailley who conducted his Ph.D. thesis on gregorian chant . Since 1972, Jacques Viret has been teaching musicology at the university of Strasbourg, as an assistant and then lecturer and professor, emeritus since 2009.

#4013

Tim Pigott-Smith

Tim Pigott-Smith

#69140

Overall Influence

1946 - 2017 (71 years)

Timothy Peter Pigott-Smith, was an English film and television actor and author. He was best known for his leading role as Ronald Merrick in the television drama series The Jewel in the Crown, for which he won the British Academy Television Award for Best Actor in 1985. Other noted TV roles included roles in The Chief, Midsomer Murders, The Vice, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, King Charles III and two Doctor Who stories . Pigott-Smith appeared in many notable films, including Clash of the Titans , Gangs of New York , Johnny English , Alexander , V for Vendetta , Quantum of Solace , Red 2 and...

#4014

John T. Allen

#94606

Overall Influence

John Terrence Allen is an Australian atmospheric scientist and leading contributor to research on severe thunderstorm and tornado environments, particularly in the context of climate change, including seasonal prediction of hail and tornadoes. He is currently an assistant professor of meteorology at Central Michigan University. He was formerly a researcher at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at The Earth Institute of Columbia University.

#4015

Thomas Allen

#81699

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Sir Thomas Boaz Allen is an English operatic baritone. He is widely admired in the opera world for his voice, the versatility of his repertoire, and his acting—leading many to regard him as one of the best lyric baritones of the late 20th century. In October 2011, he was appointed Chancellor of Durham University, succeeding Bill Bryson.

#4016

Ann Brill

#97598

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (125 years)

Ann Brill is the Dean of the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas. Career Brill focuses her research work on how journalists are affected by the changes in media technology. Through her research, she has found that the developments in media technology have forced journalists to become adaptive and flexible in the ways that they work in turn causing them to be lifelong learners.

#4017

Michael Shani

#67708

Overall Influence

Michael Shani is a well-known figure in the Israeli musical scene. He was born and raised in Israel, where he began his musical career as a cellist. He played in the Kibbutz Chamber Orchestra and was the conductor of the Kibbutz Symphony Orchestra. He completed his musical training at the Tel-Aviv Music Teacher's College, the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem and at the Brigham Young University in Utah, United States.

#4018

Jeroen van de Weijer

#83875

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Jeroen van de Weijer is a Dutch linguist who teaches phonology, morphology, phonetics, psycholinguistics, historical linguistics and other courses at Shenzhen University, where he is Distinguished Professor of English linguistics at the School of Foreign Languages. Before, he was Full Professor of English Linguistics at Shanghai International Studies University, in the School of English Studies.

#4019

Mitra Jashni

#60806

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Mitra Jashni is an Iranian visual artist and political activist, of Kurdish ethnicity. She works in the mediums of painting, drawing, and sculpture; as well as works as an art teacher, poet, and singer of Iranian contemporary music. She is one of the founders and executive director of Farashgard, an Iranian political party and activist group based in Washington, D.C..

#4020

Keisuke Kinoshita

Keisuke Kinoshita

#49388

Overall Influence

1912 - 1998 (86 years)

Keisuke Kinoshita was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. While lesser-known internationally than contemporaries such as Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujirō Ozu, he was a household figure in his home country, beloved by both critics and audiences from the 1940s to the 1960s. Among his best known films are Carmen Comes Home , Japan's first colour feature, Tragedy of Japan , Twenty-Four Eyes , You Were Like a Wild Chrysanthemum , Times of Joy and Sorrow , The Ballad of Narayama , and The River Fuefuki .

#4021

Carlos Bonell

#79289

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Carlos Antonio Bonell is an English classical guitarist of Spanish origin. He has been described by Classical Guitar magazine as "one of the great communicators of the guitar world". Career Born in London, Bonell started to play at the age of five, learning to play Spanish folk music on the guitar from his father who was a keen amateur guitarist, while also studying the violin more formally at school. He continued his studies at the Royal College of Music with John Williams, where upon completing his studies in 1972, he was appointed professor.

#4022

Judit Kormos

#85738

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Judit Kormos is a Hungarian-born British linguist. She is a professor and the Director of Studies for the MA TESOL Distance programme at the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University, United Kingdom. She is renowned for her work on motivation in second language learning, and self-regulation in second language writing. Her current interest is in dyslexia in second language learning.

#4023

Shorty Rogers

#71797

Overall Influence

1924 - 1994 (70 years)

Milton "Shorty" Rogers was an American jazz musician, one of the principal creators of West Coast jazz. He played trumpet and flugelhorn and was in demand for his skills as an arranger. Biography Rogers was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, United States. He worked first as a professional musician with Will Bradley and Red Norvo. From 1947 to 1949, he worked extensively with Woody Herman and in 1950 and 1951 he played with Stan Kenton.

#4024

Andrzej Poczobut

Andrzej Poczobut

#60095

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Andrzej Poczobut is a Belarusian and Polish journalist and activist of the Polish minority in Belarus. He lives in Hrodna, Belarus. A correspondent for the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, Poczobut has been arrested more than a dozen times by the government of Belarus. In 2011, he was sentenced to a fine and fifteen days in prison for "participation in the unsanctioned protest rally" following the 2010 presidential election. In 2011 and 2012, he was arrested and detained for allegedly libeling President Alexander Lukashenko in his reports. The charges against Poczobut received international ...

#4025

Paul Neubauer

#88648

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Paul Neubauer is an American violist. Neubauer was a student of Paul Doktor, Alan de Veritch and William Primrose. In August 1980, aged 17, he won the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition and Workshop on the Isle of Man, which had commissioned Gordon Jacob's Viola Concerto No 2 as a test piece. He gave the first public performance in 1981 as part of his prize. Neubauer attended the Juilliard School, where he received his B.M. in 1982, and his M.M. in 1983. In 1984, at age 21, Neubauer became the principal violist with the New York Philharmonic the youngest principal string player in the Philharmonic's history, a position he held for six years.

#4026

Ian McFarlane

#41400

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Ian McFarlane is an Australian music journalist, music historian and author, whose best known publication is the Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop , which was updated for a second edition in 2017.

#4027

Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade

#104961

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Ingrid Marijke Tieken-Boon van Ostade is a professor emeritus of English Sociohistorical Linguistics at Leiden University's Centre for Linguistics. She has researched widely in the area of English socio-historical linguistics having looked at such diverse fields as English negations, historical social network analysis, the standardisation process and the language of 18th-century letters. She has recently published a book on Bishop Lowth . Her work on a collaborative project on English usage was featured in the BBC Radio 4's Making History programme.

#4028

Philippe Manoury

#82523

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Philippe Manoury is a French composer. Biography Manoury was born in Tulle and began composition studies at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris with Gérard Condé and Max Deutsch. He continued his studies from 1974 to 1978 at the Conservatoire de Paris with Michel Philippot, Ivo Malec, and Claude Ballif. In 1975, he undertook studies in computer assisted composition with , and joined IRCAM as a composer and electronic music researcher in 1980. From 2004 until 2012, Manoury served on the composition faculty at the University of California, San Diego, where he taught composition, electronic music, and analysis in the graduate program.

#4029

Paul Motian

#51613

Overall Influence

1931 - 2011 (80 years)

Stephen Paul Motian was an American jazz drummer, percussionist, and composer. Motian played an important role in freeing jazz drummers from strict time-keeping duties. He first came to prominence in the late 1950s in the piano trio of Bill Evans, and later was a regular in pianist Keith Jarrett's band for about a decade . Motian began his career as a bandleader in the early 1970s. Perhaps his two most notable groups were a longstanding trio of guitarist Bill Frisell and saxophonist Joe Lovano, and the Electric Bebop Band where he worked mostly with younger musicians on interpretations of beb...

#4030

Ameena Ahmad Ahuja

#58569

Overall Influence

Ameena Ahmad Ahuja is an Indian painter, calligrapher, writer and linguist, known for her Urdu poetry-inspired art works. Biography Ameena Ahmad Ahuja was born to a British mother and Nuruddin Ahmed, a barrister and litterateur. She did her training in art at the Slade School of Art in London. She is a former member of faculty of the Department of Russian at the Jawaharlal Nehru University and, besides Russian, she is proficient in languages such as Persian, German, French, Hindi and English. Her career also covered stints at Columbia University as a lecturer of poetry and as an Artist-in-res...

#4031

George Russell

#65787

Overall Influence

1923 - 2009 (86 years)

George Allen Russell was an American jazz pianist, composer, arranger and theorist. He is considered one of the first jazz musicians to contribute to general music theory with a theory of harmony based on jazz rather than European music, in his book Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization .

#4032

Janice Gould

#74051

Overall Influence

1949 - 2019 (70 years)

Janice Gould was a Koyangk'auwi Maidu writer and scholar. She was the author of Beneath My Heart, Earthquake Weather and co-editor with Dean Rader of Speak to Me Words: Essays on Contemporary American Indian Poetry. Her book Doubters and Dreamers was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award and the Binghamton University Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award.

#4033

Kim Deal

#48757

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Kimberley Ann Deal is an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist rock musician. She was the original bassist and co-vocalist in the alternative rock band Pixies from 1986 to 1993 and 2004 to 2013, and is the frontwoman of the Breeders, which she formed in 1989.

#4034

Mark G. Frank

#71760

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Mark G. Frank is a communication professor and department chair, and an internationally recognized expert on human nonverbal communication, emotion, and deception. Dr. Frank conducts research and does training on micro expressions of emotion and of the face. His research studies include other nonverbal indicators of deception throughout the rest of the body. He is the Director of the Communication Science Center research laboratory that is located on the North Campus of the University at Buffalo. Under his guidance, a team of graduate researchers conduct experiments and studies for private and government entities.

#4035

Michele Zappavigna

#85233

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Michele Zappavigna is an Australian linguist. She is an associate professor at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. Her major contributions are based on the discourse of social media and ambient affiliation . Her work is interdisciplinary and covers studies in systemic functional linguistics , corpus linguistics, multimodality, social media, online discourse and social semiotics. Zappavigna is the author of six books and numerous journal articles covering these disciplines.

#4036

Frank Darabont

#36951

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Frank Árpád Darabont is a French-born American filmmaker. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards and a Golden Globe Award. In his early career, he was primarily a screenwriter for such horror films as A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors , The Blob and The Fly II . As a director, he is known for his film adaptations of Stephen King novellas and novels, such as The Shawshank Redemption , The Green Mile , and The Mist .

#4037

Jennifer S. Cole

#72898

Overall Influence

Jennifer Sandra Cole is a professor of linguistics and Director of the Prosody and Speech Dynamics Lab at Northwestern University. Her research uses experimental and computational methods to study the sound structure of language. She was the founding General Editor of Laboratory Phonology and a founding member of the Association for Laboratory Phonology.

#4038

Roger Cook

#70053

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Roger Frederick Cook is an English singer, songwriter and record producer, who has written many hit records for other recording artists. He has also had a successful recording career in his own right.

#4039

Melle Mel

#42252

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Melvin Glover , better known by his stage name Grandmaster Melle Mel or simply Melle Mel , is an American rapper who was the lead vocalist and songwriter of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. Career Glover began performing in the late 1970s. He may have been the first rapper to call himself MC . Other Furious Five members included his brother The Kidd Creole , Scorpio , Rahiem and Cowboy . While a member of the group, Cowboy created the term hip-hop while teasing a friend who had just joined the US Army, by scat singing the words "hip/hop/hip/hop" in a way that mimicked the rhythmic cade...

#4040

Alexander Mackendrick

Alexander Mackendrick

#60515

Overall Influence

1912 - 1993 (81 years)

Alexander Mackendrick was an American-born director and professor, long based in Scotland. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and later moved to Scotland. He began making television commercials before moving into post-production editing and directing films, most notably for Ealing Studios where his films include Whisky Galore! , The Man in the White Suit , The Maggie , and The Ladykillers .

#4041

Pascal Dusapin

#81768

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Pascal Georges Dusapin is a French composer. His music is marked by its microtonality, tension, and energy. A pupil of Iannis Xenakis and Franco Donatoni and an admirer of Varèse, Dusapin studied at the University of Paris I and Paris VIII during the 1970s. His music is full of "romantic constraint". Despite being a pianist, he refused to compose for the piano until 1997. His melodies have a vocal quality, even in purely instrumental works.

#4042

Wynonna Judd

#37117

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Wynonna Ellen Judd, known simply as Wynonna , is an American country music singer. She is one of the most widely recognized and awarded female country musicians in history. In all, she has had 19 No. 1 singles, including those with The Judds. Her solo albums and singles are all credited to—and performed under—the singular stage name, Wynonna. She first rose to fame in the 1980s alongside her mother, Naomi, in their mother-daughter country music duo, The Judds. They released seven albums on Curb Records, in addition to 26 singles, of which 14 were No. 1 hits. In 2023 Wynonna was named the best ...

#4043

Magdalena Smoczyńska

#100403

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Magdalena Smoczyńska, born 25 April 1947 in Kraków, is a Polish psycholinguist and expert in the development of language in children. She is an emeritus reader in the department of linguistics at Jagiellonian University where she was once head of the Child Language Laboratory and now studies specific language impairment at the Institute for Educational Research.

#4044

Richard Thompson

Richard Thompson

#58416

Overall Influence

1957 - 2016 (59 years)

Richard Church Thompson was an American illustrator and cartoonist best known for his syndicated comic strip Cul de Sac and the illustrated poem "Make the Pie Higher". He was given the Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year for 2010.

#4045

Caroline Haythornthwaite

Caroline Haythornthwaite

#67061

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Caroline Haythornthwaite is a professor emerita at Syracuse University School of Information Studies. She served as the School's director of the Library Science graduate program from July 2017 to June 2019. She previously served as Director and Professor at the Library, Archival and Information Studies, School of SLAIS, at The iSchool at The University of British Columbia . Her research areas explore the way interaction, via computer media, supports and affects work, learning, and social interaction, primarily from a social-network-analysis perspective. Previously, during 1996–2010, at the Uni...

#4046

Angela Gheorghiu

#74439

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Angela Gheorghiu is a Romanian soprano, especially known for her performances in the operas of Puccini and Verdi, widely recognised by critics and opera lovers as one of the greatest sopranos of all time.

#4047

Haluk Şahin

#75772

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Haluk Şahin is a Turkish journalist, academic and television producer. Having received his PhD from Indiana University in 1974, he was a lecturer at Istanbul Bilgi University as of 2013. Shortly after the release of the film Troy in 2004, an article in Radikal written by Şahin and entitled "Were the Trojans Turks?" attracted public interest and generated a debate over the significance of Troy and the Trojan War in modern Turkey. In 2006, he was among five journalists who stood trial on charges of attempting to influence the outcome of a trial through their writing, and of publicly denigrating Turkish identity and the institutions of the Turkish state.

#4048

Felix Galimir

#53243

Overall Influence

1910 - 1999 (89 years)

Felix Galimir was an Austrian-born American violinist and music teacher. Born in a Sephardic Jewish family Vienna; his first language was Ladino. He studied with Adolf Bak and Simon Pullman at the Vienna Conservatory from the age of twelve and graduated in 1928. With his three sisters he founded the Galimir Quartet in 1927 to commemorate the centenary of the death of Ludwig van Beethoven. During the early 1930s Galimir studied with Carl Flesch in Berlin. In 1936, the Galimir Quartet recorded the Lyric Suite of Alban Berg and the String Quartet of Maurice Ravel under the supervision of the co...

#4049

William Richard King

#109975

Overall Influence

#4050

Pierre Friedlingstein

#109990

Overall Influence

Pierre Friedlingstein is Professor and Chair in Mathematical Modelling of the Climate System at the University of Exeter, and Research Director at the Laboratoire de Météorologie dynamique , Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique , France.

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