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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List of the most influential people in Communications,

#4051

Per Nørgård

#69428

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

Per Nørgård is a Danish composer and music theorist. Though his style has varied considerably throughout his career, his music has often included repeatedly evolving melodies—such as the infinity series—in the vein of Jean Sibelius, and a perspicuous focus on lyricism. Reflecting on this, the composer Julian Anderson described his style as "one of the most personal in contemporary music". Nørgård has received several awards, including the 2016 Ernst von Siemens Music Prize.

#4052

John Lister

#96041

Overall Influence

1901 - 2013 (112 years)

John Lister is a Senior Lecturer in Journalism, and Health Journalism at the Coventry University Department of Media and Communication. Lister is the author of two books on international health reform: Health Policy Reform: Driving the Wrong Way? and Global Health vs. Private Profit. He writes about Private Finance Initiative in the NHS. Dr. Lister has worked in print journalism since 1974, and has also been involved in public relations and investigative research on health policy in the UK and worldwide.

#4053

Jonathan T. Overpeck

#110040

Overall Influence

#4054

Christopher Williams

#49673

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Christopher Williams is an American conceptual artist and fine-art photographer. He lives in Cologne and works in Düsseldorf. Early life and education Williams was born in 1956 in Los Angeles, California. In the 1970s and early 1980s, he studied at the California Institute of the Arts where he received his B.F.A. and M.F.A. under the first generation of West Coast conceptual artists.

#4055

Pete Fountain

#72257

Overall Influence

1930 - 2016 (86 years)

Pierre Dewey LaFontaine Jr. , known professionally as Pete Fountain, was an American jazz clarinetist. Early life and education LaFontaine was born to Pierre, Sr. and Madeline, in a small Creole cottage-style frame house on White Street in New Orleans. Pete was the great-grandson of a French immigrant, François Fontaine, who was born in Toulon, circa 1796, and came to the U.S. in the early 19th century, and died on the Mississippi Gulf Coast circa 1885. Pete's father, a truck driver and part-time musician, changed the family name to Fountain.

#4056

Stephen Doig

#74846

Overall Influence

Stephen K. Doig is an American journalist, professor of journalism at Arizona State University, and a consultant to print and broadcast news media with regard to data analysis investigative work. Doig moved to the university in 1996 after 23 years as a newspaper journalist, 19 of them with The Miami Herald. As of 2010, he taught classes in precision journalism, reporting public affairs, news writing, multimedia journalism, introduction to newsroom statistics, and media research methods.

#4057

Izzy Stradlin

#24130

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Jeffrey Dean Isbell , best known as Izzy Stradlin, is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He was a co-founder, rhythm guitarist, and backing vocalist of the hard rock and heavy metal band Guns N' Roses, which he left at the height of their fame in 1991, and with whom he recorded four studio albums.

#4058

Brigitte Fassbaender

Brigitte Fassbaender

#92601

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Brigitte Fassbaender , is a German mezzo-soprano opera singer and a stage director. From 1999 to 2012 she was intendant of the Tyrolean State Theatre in Innsbruck, Austria. She holds the title Kammersängerin from the Bavarian State Opera in Munich and the Vienna Staatsoper.

#4059

Frank Hole

#52659

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (95 years)

Frank Hole is an American Near Eastern archaeologist known for his work on the prehistory of Iran, the origins of food production, and the archaeology of pastoral nomadism. He is C. J. MacCurdy Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Yale University.

#4060

Heinz-Dieter Pohl

#63252

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Heinz-Dieter Pohl is an Austrian linguist and onomatologist. Life Pohl is the son of gymnasium professor Heinz Pohl and Hermine Pohl. He studied classical philology and history at the University of Vienna, later comparative linguistics with a focus on Slavic studies.

#4061

Stephanie Cole

#61175

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Patricia Stephanie Cole is an English stage, television, radio and film actress, known for high-profile roles in shows such as Tenko , Open All Hours , A Bit of a Do , Waiting for God , Keeping Mum , Doc Martin , Cabin Pressure , Still Open All Hours , Man Down and as Sylvia Goodwin in ITV soap opera Coronation Street .

#4062

Dick Morrissey

#76872

Overall Influence

1940 - 2000 (60 years)

Richard Edwin Morrissey was a British jazz musician and composer. He played the tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone and flute. Biography Background He was born in Horley, Surrey, England. Dick Morrissey emerged in the early 1960s in the wake of Tubby Hayes, Britain’s pre-eminent sax player at the time. Self-taught, he started playing clarinet in his school band, The Delta City Jazzmen, at the age of sixteen with fellow pupils Robin Mayhew , Eric Archer , Steve Pennells , Glyn Greenfield , and young brother Chris on tea-chest bass. He then joined the Original Climax Jazz Band. Going on to joi...

#4063

Sarah Cohen

#70833

Overall Influence

Sarah Cohen is an American journalist, author, and professor. Cohen is a proponent of, and teaches classes on, computational journalism and authored the book "Numbers in the Newsroom: Using math and statistics in the news."

#4064

Ian Underwood

#60032

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Ian Robertson Underwood is a woodwind and keyboards player, known for his work with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. Biography Underwood graduated from The Choate School in 1957 and Yale University with a bachelor's degree in composition in 1961 and a master's degree in composition at UC Berkeley in 1966. He began his career by playing San Francisco Bay Area coffeehouses and bars with his improvisational group, the Jazz Mice, in the mid-1960s before he became a member of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention in 1967 for their third studio album, We're Only in It for the Money. He...

#4065

Stephen Muecke

#62961

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Stephen Muecke BA , Mes.L , PhD FAHA is Emeritus Professor of Ethnography at the University of New South Wales, Australia and Adjunct Professor at the Nulungu Institute, University of Notre Dame, Broome. He studied linguistics and semiotics, completing his PhD on storytelling techniques among Aboriginal people in Broome, Western Australia.

#4066

Bruce Gilley

#30278

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Bruce Gilley is a Canadian–American professor of political science and director of the PhD program in Public Affairs and Policy at the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University. He is the founder and President of the Oregon Association of Scholars, member of the Heterodox Academy and founding signatory of the Oregon Academic Faculty Pledge on Freedom. Gilley gained international acclaim but also a storm of criticism for his highly controversial peer-reviewed article The Case for Colonialism, published in an advance online edition of the scientific journal Third World Quarterly in 2017.

#4067

George Lewis

#47101

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

George Lewis is an American retired television journalist who worked for NBC News for 43 years from 1969 to 2012. His stories have appeared on NBC Nightly News. Lewis joined NBC in December 1969 as a war correspondent covering the Vietnam War. He also covered the Iranian hostage crisis from 1979 to 1981, the 1989 Tiananmen Square revolt in China, and Operation Desert Storm in 1991. Lewis has won three Emmys, the George Foster Peabody Award, and the Edward R. Murrow Award throughout his career covering wars and other events abroad.

#4068

Karlheinz Zöller

#54851

Overall Influence

1928 - 2005 (77 years)

Karlheinz Zöller was a German flutist, and solo fluteplayer in the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra between 1960–1969 and 1976–1993. Early life and education Karlheinz Zöller was born in Höhr-Grenzhausen , Westerwald, Germany.

#4069

Lüqiu Luwei

#77410

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Lüqiu Luwei , also known as Rose Luqiu, is a Chinese television journalist and the executive news editor for Phoenix Television . She was the first female reporter to cover the 2001 Afghan war. Career Lüqiu was born into an ordinary worker's family in Shanghai on September 19, 1969. Her father Lüqiu Zhiyi is a veteran. Her parents divorced when she was four years old. Her mother went to Shenzhen and she lived with her paternal grandparents. Lüqiu entered into No. 2 High School of East China Normal University in 1982, where she worked on the Shanghai Middle school students press corps and later became the head.

#4070

Abdullah Ibrahim

#52298

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Abdullah Ibrahim is a South African pianist and composer. His music reflects many of the musical influences of his childhood in the multicultural port areas of Cape Town, ranging from traditional African songs to the gospel of the AME Church and Ragas, to more modern jazz and other Western styles. Ibrahim is considered the leading figure in the subgenre of Cape jazz. Within jazz, his music particularly reflects the influence of Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington. He is known especially for "Mannenberg", a jazz piece that became a notable anti-apartheid anthem.

#4071

Peter Allen

#64303

Overall Influence

1944 - 1992 (48 years)

Peter Allen was an Australian singer-songwriter, musician, and entertainer, known for his flamboyant stage persona, energetic performances, and lavish costumes. His songs were made popular by many recording artists, including Elkie Brooks, Melissa Manchester and Olivia Newton-John, including Newton-John's first chart-topping hit "I Honestly Love You", and the chart-topping and Academy Award-winning "Arthur's Theme " by Christopher Cross. In addition to recording many albums, he enjoyed a cabaret and concert career, including appearances at the Radio City Music Hall riding a camel. His patriot...

#4072

Sarah Polley

#51809

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (47 years)

Sarah Ellen Polley is a Canadian filmmaker, writer, political activist and retired actress. She first garnered attention as a child actress for her role as Ramona Quimby in the television series Ramona, based on Beverly Cleary's books. This subsequently led to her role as Sara Stanley in the Canadian television series Road to Avonlea . She has starred in many feature films, including The Adventures of Baron Munchausen , Exotica , The Sweet Hereafter , Guinevere , Go , The Weight of Water , No Such Thing , My Life Without Me , Dawn of the Dead , Splice , and Mr. Nobody .

#4073

Zhu Hua

#98656

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Zhù Huá , is Professor of Language Learning and Intercultural Communication at the UCL Institute of Education, University College London, and Chair of the British Association for Applied Linguistics. She was previously Chair of Educational Linguistics in the School of Education at the University of Birmingham, and Professor of Applied Linguistics and Communication at Birkbeck College, University of London. She was a member of the Education subpanel of the 2021 UK Research Excellence Framework , member of the 2020 Hong Kong Research Assessment Exercise, and chairs the grant assessment panel for language and linguistics for the Hong Kong Research Grants Council.

#4074

Susan Jordan

#90814

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Susan Jordan is a New Zealand dancer, choreographer and dance instructor. Biography Jordan began dancing at the age of 7, and danced professionally with the New Zealand Ballet Company from the age of 17. She briefly gave up dancing to study typing and shorthand at a business school, and then theology with the aim of becoming a missionary, however she returned to dancing.

#4075

Hazel Carter

#80715

Overall Influence

1928 - 2016 (88 years)

Joan Hazel Carter was a British-American linguist, known in particular for her work on the Bantu languages, Shona, Kongo and Tonga. Born on 22 February 1928 to Charles and Constance Wilkinson, Carter graduated from the County Grammar School for Girls in Beckenham, Kent, England in 1947 and received a full scholarship to attend Oxford University, Oxford, England where she was a member of St. Hugh's College from 1947 to 1950.

#4076

Bo Ralph

#35956

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Bo Rune Ingemar Ralph is a Swedish linguist, member of the Swedish Academy, and professor of Nordic Languages at the Department of Swedish Language at Gothenburg University. He was elected to the Swedish Academy on 15 April 1999 and admitted on 20 December 1999. Bo Ralph succeeded the philosopher and sociologist Torgny T:son Segerstedt to Seat No.2.

#4077

F. W. Bernstein

F. W. Bernstein

#37986

Overall Influence

1938 - 2018 (80 years)

F. W. Bernstein was a German poet, cartoonist, satirist, and academic. He worked for the satirical biweekly pardon. After teaching at schools, he was professor of caricature and comics at the Berlin Academy of the Arts from 1984 to 1999. He was one of the founding members of the Neue Frankfurter Schule, which published the satirical magazine Titanic.

#4078

Mildred Dunnock

Mildred Dunnock

#73518

Overall Influence

1901 - 1991 (90 years)

Mildred Dorothy Dunnock was an American stage and screen actress. She was twice nominated for an Academy Award: first Death of a Salesman in 1951, then Baby Doll in 1956. Early life Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Dunnock graduated from Western High School. She developed an interest in theater while she was a student at Goucher College where she was a member of Alpha Phi sorority and the Agora dramatic society. After graduating, she taught English at Friends School of Baltimore and helped with productions of plays there.

#4079

Barry Tuckwell

#83578

Overall Influence

1931 - 2020 (89 years)

Barry Emmanuel Tuckwell, was an Australian French horn player who spent most of his professional life in the UK and the United States. He is generally considered to have been one of the world's leading horn players.

#4080

Günther Haensch

#89893

Overall Influence

1923 - 2018 (95 years)

Günther Haensch was a German linguist and lexicographer. A specialist on Catalan and Aragonese dialectology, he has also published more general dictionaries and works on Spanish and French culture.

#4081

Gillian Armstrong

Gillian Armstrong

#54974

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Gillian May Armstrong is an Australian feature film and documentary director, best known for My Brilliant Career, Little Women, The Last Days of Chez Nous, and Mrs. Soffel. She is a Member of the Order of Australia.

#4082

Devendra Banhart

#61571

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

Devendra Obi Banhart is an American-Venezuelan singer-songwriter and visual artist. Banhart was born in Texas, and raised in Venezuela and California. In 2000, he dropped out of the San Francisco Art Institute to pursue a musical career. In 2002, Banhart released his debut album and is best known for his albums in the late 2000s such as Cripple Crow and Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon. He has since expanded his career to incorporate his interest and training in the visual arts.

#4083

Frederick Harris

#60592

Overall Influence

Frederick Harris, Jr. is the conductor of the MIT Wind Ensemble. In 1999, he formed the ensemble at MIT. Harris is also the director of MIT's Festival Jazz Ensemble. He was born in New Hampshire and earned a master's degree from the New England Conservatory of Music. His teachers have included Frank Battisti, Gunther Schuller, and Craig Kirchhoff. He earned his PhD from the University of Minnesota. He has served as guest conductor of the New Hampshire Philharmonic Orchestra, and also conducted during summers at Tanglewood.

#4084

Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Apichatpong Weerasethakul

#60935

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a Thai independent film director, screenwriter, and film producer. Working outside the strict confines of the Thai film studio system, Apichatpong has directed several features and dozens of short films. Friends and fans sometimes refer to him as "Joe" .

#4085

Zbigniew Gołąb

#68057

Overall Influence

1923 - 1994 (71 years)

Zbigniew Gołąb was a Polish-American linguist and Slavist. He was described as "one of the world's greatest experts on the Macedonian language and the leading expert on Macedonian–Arumanian contact."

#4086

Yuzo Koshiro

#46820

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Yuzo Koshiro is a Japanese composer and sound programmer. He is often regarded as one of the most influential innovators in chiptune and video game music, producing music in a number of genres including rock, jazz, symphonic, and various electronic genres such as house, electro, techno, trance, and hip hop.

#4087

Robert C. May

#110388

Overall Influence

Robert C. May is an American philosopher and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of California, Davis. He is known for his works on philosophy of language. Books Logical Form: Its Structure and Derivation. MIT Press, Cambridge, Ma., 1985.The Grammar of Quantification, Garland Publishing, New York, 1991.Indices and Identity, with Robert Fiengo. MIT Press, Cambridge, Ma., 1994.De Lingua Belief, with Robert Fiengo. MIT Press, Cambridge, Ma, 2006.

#4088

John Peters

#88191

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (125 years)

John Peters is a British disc jockey and long established personality in the East Midlands region. Known for his distinctive voice, he has presented shows on many of the region's radio stations, including Radio Trent, GEM-AM, Saga 106.6 FM and 106.6 Smooth Radio, Radio2XS and Gravity FM in Grantham, Lincolnshire.

#4089

Will Gregory

#59897

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

William Owen Gregory is an English musician and record producer. He is best known as the lead keyboardist, producer, and composer of the electronic music duo Goldfrapp. Early life Gregory was born in Bristol, the son of an actress and an opera chorus-line singer.

#4090

Timur Bekmambetov

Timur Bekmambetov

#47779

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Timur Nuruakhitovich Bekmambetov is a Russian-Kazakh film director, producer, screenwriter, and tech entrepreneur. He is best known for the fantasy epic Night Watch and the action thriller Wanted , as well as for the pioneering screenlife films Unfriended , Searching and Profile . He founded Baselevs, a production company that earned a spot among the 2021 World's 10 Most Innovative Companies in Video, according to Fast Company.

#4091

Harold Cohen

#16643

Overall Influence

1928 - 2016 (88 years)

Harold Cohen was a British-born artist who was noted as the creator of AARON, a computer program designed to produce paintings and drawings autonomously. His work in the intersection of computer artificial intelligence and painting lead to exhibitions at many museums, including the Tate Gallery in London.

#4092

Jacqui Banaszynski

Jacqui Banaszynski

#74202

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Jacqui Banaszynski is an American journalist. She was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 1988. Banaszynski went on to become a professor and a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Chair at the school of journalism at University of Missouri.

#4093

Ulrich Pfeil

#50321

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Ulrich Pfeil is a German historian based in France. Life Born in Hamburg Pfeil grew up in Heide and took the Abitur at the in 1985. After his military service he studied Educational Science, French language and history at the University of Hamburg from 1987 to 1993. In 1989/90 he worked as Foreign Language Assistant in Lure in France. Between 1993 and 1995 he completed his legal clerkship at the Elsensee-Gymnasium in Quickborn. After the second Staatsexamen he taught at the grammar school Bernau bei Berlin in 1995/96.

#4094

Darryl Jones

#60046

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Darryl Jones is an American bassist. He has been recording and touring with the Rolling Stones since 1993. He has also played in bands with Miles Davis and Sting, among others. Career Darryl Jones was born on December 11 1961 in Chicago, Illinois, on the city's south side. His father was a drummer and his mother frequently listened to soul music on the radio.

#4095

Marwan Bishara

#52455

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Marwan Bishara is a Palestinian-Israeli Arab, born in Nazareth, Israel. He is currently an author, columnist and the senior political analyst for Al Jazeera English From 2007 to 2014, Bishara was the editor and host of their flagship programme Empire, which examined global powers and their agendas in a fusion of documentary and debate with politicians, generals, philosophers, academics, novelists, movie directors, and activists from the world over. He has been described as "one of the Arab world's leading public intellectuals" and writes extensively on global politics and is widely considered...

#4096

J. R. Martin

#89160

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

James Robert Martin is a Canadian linguist. He is Professor of Linguistics at The University of Sydney. He is the leading figure in the 'Sydney School' of systemic functional linguistics. Martin is well known for his work on discourse analysis, genre, appraisal, multimodality and educational linguistics.

#4097

Pent Nurmekund

#76365

Overall Influence

1906 - 1996 (90 years)

Pent Nurmekund was an Estonian linguist and polyglot. He could read over eighty languages. Life Nurmekund came from a poor peasant family and first attended school at the age of twelve. From 1930 to 1935, he studied Romance and Germanic philology at Tartu University, and graduated with a Magister Philosophiae.

#4098

Wendy James

#95823

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Wendy Patricia James is an English singer-songwriter most notable for her work with the pop band Transvision Vamp. Transvision Vamp Born in London to Norwegian parents, James was adopted soon after birth. She left home at the age of sixteen, moving to the East Sussex seaside resort town of Brighton. There she met Nick Christian Sayer, who became her boyfriend and musical collaborator. Sayer and James moved to London, where they teamed up with friends Dave Parsons, Tex Axile and Pol Burton, with whom they formed the pop-punk band Transvision Vamp. James was the lead singer and focal point of ...

#4099

Dave Moore

#88021

Overall Influence

1924 - 1998 (74 years)

David Dalrymple Moore was a popular Minnesota television personality and beloved figure in the area from the 1950s through the time of his death. Moore hosted the evening news on WCCO channel 4 from 1957 until he retired to a more leisurely schedule in 1991. When recounting Moore's life story, journalists never neglect to include the fact that he was only offered the anchor post after Walter Cronkite turned it down. Like Cronkite, Moore reported the news like an everyday man off the street—which he contended that he was. The string of good fortune that led to Moore becoming influential was sometimes a source of guilt for him.

#4100

James F. Allen

#36114

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

James Frederick Allen is a computational linguist recognized for his contributions to temporal logic, in particular Allen's interval algebra. He is interested in knowledge representation, commonsense reasoning, and natural language understanding, believing that "deep language understanding can only currently be achieved by significant hand-engineering of semantically-rich formalisms coupled with statistical preferences". He is the John H. Dessaurer Professor of Computer Science at the University of Rochester

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