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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School

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Ranking

List of the most influential people in Communications,

#4101

Jimmie Rodgers

#70911

Overall Influence

1933 - 2021 (88 years)

James Frederick Rodgers was an American pop singer. Rodgers had a run of hits and mainstream popularity in the 1950s and 1960s. His string of crossover singles ranked highly on the Billboard Pop Singles, Hot Country and Western Sides, and Hot Rhythm and Blues Sides charts; in the 1960s, Rodgers had more modest successes with adult contemporary music.

#4102

John Kirkpatrick

John Kirkpatrick

#80433

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

John Michael Kirkpatrick is an English musician, playing free reed instruments such as the accordion and concertina and performing English folk songs and tunes. In London John Kirkpatrick was born in Chiswick, London, England. As a child he sang in the choir and played piano. In 1959, he joined the Hammersmith Morris Men, in the second week of their existence, beginning a career-long love of folk music. In 1970, he became a regular at a folk club in the Roebuck pub in Tottenham Court Road and led the resident group, Dingle's Chillybom Band. The club hosted a film show of Morris dancing and Ashley Hutchings turned up.

#4103

James Luna

#35777

Overall Influence

1950 - 2018 (68 years)

James Luna was a Puyukitchum, Ipai, and Mexican-American performance artist, photographer and multimedia installation artist. His work is best known for challenging the ways in which conventional museum exhibitions depict Native Americans. With recurring themes of multiculturalism, alcoholism, and colonialism, his work was often comedic and theatrical in nature. In 2017 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

#4104

Elliot Goldenthal

#65692

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Elliot Goldenthal is an American composer of contemporary classical music and film and theatrical scores. A student of Aaron Copland and John Corigliano, he is best known for his distinctive style and ability to blend various musical styles and techniques in original and inventive ways. He won the Academy Award for Best Original Score in 2002 for his score to the motion picture Frida, directed by his longtime partner Julie Taymor.

#4105

Scott Patterson

#12752

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Scott Patterson is an American financial journalist and bestselling author. He is a staff reporter at The Wall Street Journal and author of Dark Pools: High-Speed Traders, A.I. Bandits, and the Threat to the Global Financial System and The New York Times bestselling book The Quants.

#4106

Zhengdao Ye

#91581

Overall Influence

Zhengdao Ye is an Australia-based Chinese linguist who specializes in semantics, pragmatics, translation studies and intercultural communication. She is a lecturer at the Australian National University. She has contributed to the development of NSM semantics in Mandarin and Shanghainese, to the study of the semantics of nouns, and the semantics of emotion.

#4107

John J. Pauly

#93258

Overall Influence

Dr. John J. Pauly became provost of Marquette University in 2008. He had served as dean of the J. William and Mary Diederich College of Communication at Marquette for two years before becoming provost, and had been chair for nine years of the communications department at Saint Louis University, where he was honored twice for excellence in teaching. Pauly's areas of academic interest include the history and sociology of the mass media, the theory and practice of literary journalism, and cultural approaches to communication research.

#4108

Douglas Paton

#110758

Overall Influence

1955 - 2023 (68 years)

#4109

John Schlimm

#73021

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

John Schlimm is an American author, activist, artist, and educator. His books include Five Years in Heaven: The Unlikely Friendship That Answered Life's Greatest Questions, The Ultimate Beer Lover's Happy Hour: Over 325 Recipes for Your Favorite Bar Snacks & Beer Cocktails, The Cheesy Vegan, Stand Up!: 75 Young Activists Who Rock the World, And How You Can, Too!, Grilling Vegan Style, and The Tipsy Vegan.

#4110

Amit Trivedi

#53669

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (47 years)

Amit Trivedi is an Indian music director, singer, film scorer, composer, music producer and lyricist who works primarily in Hindi films. He has received several awards including a National Film Award and four Filmfare Awards.

#4111

Donna Polseno

#94157

Overall Influence

Donna Polseno is a contemporary American visual artist known for pottery, ceramics, and sculpture. Background Donna Polseno earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Kansas City Art Institute and her Master of Arts in Teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design. She lives and works in Floyd, Virginia and teaches ceramics at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. Polseno is a founding member of the 16 Hands Studio Tour and director of the Women Working with Clay Symposium.

#4112

John Read

#49655

Overall Influence

1923 - 2011 (88 years)

John Read was a documentary film maker for the BBC from 1951 to 1983. Biography John Read was born in Purley in Surrey, England in 1923, to art critic Herbert Read and his wife, Evelyn Read. The family moved to Scotland in 1931 when Herbert took up the position of Watson Gordon Professor of Fine Art at the University of Edinburgh. The marriage of Read's parents had been on shaky ground for several years, and they finally split in acrimonious and somewhat scandalous circumstances in 1933. Herbert Read moved to London while Evelyn and John remained in Edinburgh. As his mother became increasing...

#4113

Budd Boetticher

#56369

Overall Influence

1916 - 2001 (85 years)

Oscar Boetticher Jr. , known as Budd Boetticher, was an American film director. He is best remembered for a series of low-budget Westerns he made in the late 1950s starring Randolph Scott. Early life Boetticher was born in Chicago. His mother died in childbirth and his father was killed in an accident shortly afterward. He was adopted by a wealthy couple, Oscar Boetticher Sr. and Georgia Boetticher , and raised in Evansville, Indiana, along with his younger brother, Henry Edward Boetticher . He attended Culver Military Academy, where he became friends with Hal Roach Jr.

#4114

Tony James

#63132

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Anthony Eric James is an English pop musician and record producer, who was the bassist for the 1970s–1980s bands Generation X, Sigue Sigue Sputnik and the Sisters of Mercy. Early life Tony James was born in Shepherd's Bush in West London on 12 April 1953, and spent his childhood years in Twickenham. After formal education at Hampton Grammar School he attended Brunel University, from which he graduated with first-class honours in mathematics and computer science. Before becoming a professional musician he was briefly employed as a computer programmer in the accounting department of a company.

#4115

John V. Pavlik

#80791

Overall Influence

John Vernon Pavlik is an American academic and author who publishes on the impact of technology on journalism, media, and society. Biography He is a professor in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers, the state university of New Jersey. He is former chair of the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at the School of Communication, Information and Library Studies at Rutgers University. While on leave from Rutgers in 2013 he served as the associate dean for research at Northwestern University in Qatar. He is also former cha...

#4116

Akira Ifukube

#64101

Overall Influence

1914 - 2006 (92 years)

Akira Ifukube was a Japanese composer. He is best known for composing several entries in the Godzilla franchise as well as developing the titular monster's roar. Biography Early years in Hokkaido Akira Ifukube was born on 31 May 1914, in Kushiro, Japan as the third son of a police officer Toshimitsu Ifukube. The origins of this family can be traced back to at least the 7th century with the birth of Ifukibe-no-Tokotarihime. He was strongly influenced by the Ainu music as he spent his childhood in Otofuke near Obihiro, where was with a mixed population of Ainu and Japanese. His first encounter with classical music occurred when attending secondary school in Sapporo city.

#4117

Siobhán McHugh

#102695

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Siobhán McHugh is an Irish-Australian author, podcast producer and critic, oral historian, audio documentary-maker and journalism academic. In 2013 she founded RadioDoc Review, the first journal of critical analysis of crafted audio storytelling podcasts and features, for which she received an academic research award. She is Associate Professor of Journalism at the University of Wollongong . and Associate Professor of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney. Her latest book, The Power of Podcasting: telling stories through sound, was published by NewSouth Books in February 2022.

#4118

Giovanni Maria Vian

#47097

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Giovanni Maria Vian is an Italian professor of patristic philology and a journalist. Vian was born in Rome. He was the editor-in-chief of L'Osservatore Romano from 2007 to 2018. Editorial positions As director of L'Osservatore, he had to face controversy over whether the paper was giving unwarranted support to the Barack Obama administration.

#4119

Michael Brook

#66092

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Michael Brook is a Canadian guitarist, inventor, music producer, and film music composer. He plays in many genres, including rock, electronica, world music, minimalism and film scores. His collaborations with musicians around the world have made him "one of the most sought-after producers in the music industry." Born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Brook lives in Los Angeles. He is the creator of the Infinite Guitar.

#4120

Walter R. Fehr

#110859

Overall Influence

#4121

Mercedes Bengoechea

Mercedes Bengoechea

#71167

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Mercedes Bengoechea Bartolomé is a Spanish feminist sociolinguist, professor of English philology and a proponent for the defense of the use of gender-neutral language from an academic foundation. She has had a long career as an advisor to various entities, including the Institute of Women and the Instituto RTVE . Since 1994, Bengoechea has been a member of the Comisión Asesora sobre Lenguaje del Instituto de la Mujer . She has been vocal at the Commission for the Modernization of Legal Language of the Ministry of Justice, as well as coordinator of the first Annual Report of the National Observatory on Gender Violence.

#4122

Julius Drake

#90112

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Julius Drake is an English pianist who works as a song recital accompanist and chamber musician. Biography Drake was educated at the Purcell School and the Royal College of Music; he made his professional debut at the Purcell Room in 1981 and developed a special affinity for the music of Robert Schumann. Drake is now a professor at the Royal Academy of Music and a visiting professor at the Royal Northern College of Music; he lives in London with his wife and two children and, between performing, recording and teaching, is actively involved in the Jean Meikle Music Trust, a charity set up in commemoration of his mother.

#4123

James C. Thomson Jr.

#76644

Overall Influence

1931 - 2002 (71 years)

James Claude "Jim" Thomson Jr. was an American historian and journalist who served in the government, taught at Harvard and Boston Universities, served as curator of the Neiman Foundation for Journalism.

#4124

Fred Silverman

#31425

Overall Influence

1937 - 2020 (83 years)

Fred Silverman was an American television executive and producer. He worked as an executive at all of the Big Three television networks, and was responsible for bringing to television such programs as Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! , All in the Family , The Waltons , and Charlie's Angels , as well as the miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man , Roots , and Shōgun . For his success in programming such successful shows, Time magazine declared him "The Man with the Golden Gut" in 1977.

#4125

Donka Farkas

#96072

Overall Influence

Donka Farkas is a Rumanian-American linguist, Professor Emerita of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Academic career Donka Farkas received her PhD in Linguistics from the University of Chicago in 1981. Her dissertation, titled Intensional Descriptions and the Romance Subjunctive Mood, was supervised by James D. McCawley.

#4126

Philomen Probert

#75446

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Philomen Probert is a British classicist and academic, specialising in linguistics. She is Professor of Classical Philology and Linguistics at the University of Oxford. Early life and education From 1991 to 1995, Probert studied classics at Exeter College, Oxford, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree. Remaining at Exeter College, she undertook postgraduate studies in general linguistics and comparative philology, completing her Master of Philosophy degree in 1997. She then moved to St John's College, Oxford, where she undertook research towards her Doctor of Philosophy degree under the supervision of Anna Morpurgo Davies.

#4127

James Kibbie

#70657

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

James Kibbie is an American concert organist, recording artist and pedagogue. Biography Kibbie was born in 1949 in Vinton, Iowa, USA. He graduated from Davenport West High School in 1967. He holds the Bachelor of Music in Organ Performance from North Texas State University , the Master of Music in Organ Performance from North Texas State University , and the Doctor of Musical Arts in Organ Performance from the University of Michigan . He won the International Organ Competition of the Prague Spring Festival in the former Czechoslovakia in 1979 and the Grand Prix d'Intérpretation at the International Organ Competition "Grand Prix de Chartres" in France in 1980.

#4128

Gerry Conway

#73112

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Gerald Conway is an English folk and rock drummer/percussionist, best known for having performed with the backing band for Cat Stevens in the 1970s, Jethro Tull during the 1980s, and a member of Fairport Convention from 1998 to 2022, alongside various side projects. Conway has done a considerable amount of work as a session musician. Conway is married to vocalist Jacqui McShee, who is the singer of Pentangle, a band Conway is also a member of.

#4129

S. R. Shyam Sundar

#111028

Overall Influence

#4130

Liz Fraser

#81678

Overall Influence

1930 - 2018 (88 years)

Elizabeth Joan Winch , known professionally as Liz Fraser, was a British film actress, best known for being cast in provocative comedy roles. Early life Fraser was born in Southwark, London. Her year of birth was usually cited as 1933, which she gave when auditioning for her role in I'm All Right Jack, because the Boulting Brothers wanted someone younger for the part. In fact she was three years older, as she confirmed in her 2012 autobiography Liz Fraser ... and Other Characters,. Her father was a travelling salesman for a brewery and her mother owned a corner shop just off the New Kent Road....

#4131

Perry Farrell

#29523

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Perry Farrell is an American singer, songwriter and musician, best known as the frontman of the alternative rock band Jane's Addiction. Farrell created the touring festival Lollapalooza as part of a farewell tour for Jane's Addiction in 1991; it has since evolved into an annual destination festival. Farrell continues to produce Lollapalooza with partners William Morris Agency and C3 Presents. He has also led the alternative rock groups Porno for Pyros and Satellite Party.

#4132

Doug Bradley

#66976

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Douglas William Bradley is an English actor and author, best known for his role as the lead Cenobite "Pinhead" in the Hellraiser film series and for narration on various Cradle of Filth albums. He is also starring in the upcoming animated film Dagon: Troll World Chronicles as the forest monster Goeyre Heddagh.

#4133

Albert Alcalay

#69138

Overall Influence

1917 - 2008 (91 years)

Albert Alcalay was an American abstract artist, also known as an abstract expressionism artist. Life Albert Alcalay was born in Paris in 1917, a son of Samuel and Lepa Alcalay, both of whom were born in Serbia. On the eve of the outbreak of World War I, his banker father had been moved from Belgrade to Paris, and when the war ended, the family returned to Belgrade. There, whilst attending secondary school, young Albert was apprenticed to an artist. At that time, he began studying architecture. When World War II started, he joined the Yugoslavian army.

#4134

Robert Hunter

#37728

Overall Influence

1941 - 2019 (78 years)

Robert C. Christie Hunter was an American lyricist, singer-songwriter, translator and poet, best known for his work with the Grateful Dead. Born near San Luis Obispo, California, Hunter spent some time during his childhood in foster homes as a result of his father's abandoning his family, and took refuge in reading and writing. He attended the University of Connecticut for a year before returning to Palo Alto, where he became friends with Jerry Garcia. Garcia and Hunter began a collaboration that lasted through the remainder of Garcia's life.

#4135

Paola Antonelli

Paola Antonelli

#16123

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Paola Antonelli is an Italian architect, curator, author, editor, and educator. Antonelli is the Senior Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art , New York, where she also serves as the founding Director of Research and Development. She has been described as "one of the 25 most incisive design visionaries in the world" by TIME magazine.

#4136

Sophia Ananiadou

Sophia Ananiadou

#67724

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Sophia Ananiadou is a Greek-British computer scientist and computational linguist. She led the development of and directs the National Centre for Text Mining in the United Kingdom. She is also Professor in Computer Science in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Manchester.

#4137

Pip Williams

#82446

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Philip "Pip" Williams , sometimes spelt Phillip, is an English record producer, arranger, and guitarist. He is best known for producing albums for Status Quo and The Moody Blues, but has also worked with a large number of well-known musicians. He has also supervised the orchestra parts and orchestra arrangements for the Finnish metal band Nightwish.

#4138

Conlon Nancarrow

#70961

Overall Influence

1912 - 1997 (85 years)

Samuel Conlon Nancarrow was an American-Mexican composer who lived and worked in Mexico for most of his life. Nancarrow is best remembered for his Studies for Player Piano, being one of the first composers to use auto-playing musical instruments, realizing their potential to play far beyond human performance ability. He lived most of his life in relative isolation and did not become widely known until the 1980s.

#4139

Neeme Järvi

#64615

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Neeme Järvi is an Estonian American conductor. Early life Järvi was born in Tallinn. He initially studied music there, and later in Leningrad at the Leningrad Conservatory under Yevgeny Mravinsky, and Nikolai Rabinovich, among others. Early in his career, he held posts with the Estonian Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra, the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra and the Estonian National Opera in Tallinn. In 1971 he won first prize in the International Conductors Competition at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. Järvi emigrated to the United States in 1980 with his family.

#4140

William Shi-Yuan Wang

#74765

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

William Shi-Yuan Wang is a linguist, with expertise in phonology, the history of Chinese language and culture, historical linguistics, and the evolution of language in humans. He is Chair Professor at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Emeritus Professor of the University of California, Berkeley, and Academician of Academia Sinica .

#4141

Oliver Knussen

#80759

Overall Influence

1952 - 2018 (66 years)

Stuart Oliver Knussen was a British composer and conductor. Early life Oliver Knussen was born in Glasgow, Scotland. His father, Stuart Knussen, was principal double bass of the London Symphony Orchestra, and also participated in a number of premieres of Benjamin Britten's music. Oliver Knussen studied composition with John Lambert between 1963 and 1969, and also received encouragement from Britten. He spent several summers studying with Gunther Schuller at Tanglewood in Massachusetts and in Boston.

#4142

Nils Mönkemeyer

#75902

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Nils Mönkemeyer is a German violist and academic teacher. He has recorded several CDs, of viola literature and arrangements for the viola, making it a respected solo instrument. He has been awarded several international prizes.

#4143

Wendy Sandler

#78976

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Wendy Sandler is an American-Israeli linguist who is known for her research on the phonology of Sign Languages. Career and research Sandler earned her PhD in linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1987, with a dissertation entitled "Sequentiality and simultaneity in American Sign Language." A revised version of her dissertation was published in 1989 under the title, "Phonological Representation of the Sign: Linearity and Nonlinearity in Sign Language Phonology."

#4144

Jordan Randall Smith

#109937

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (44 years)

Jordan Randall Smith is an American conductor, arts entrepreneur, and percussionist. He is the music director of Symphony Number One and conductor of the Hopkins Concert Orchestra at Johns Hopkins University. He was also a Visiting assistant professor of Music and Director of Orchestra at Susquehanna University.

#4145

Richard Stilgoe

#68708

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Sir Richard Henry Simpson Stilgoe is a British songwriter, lyricist and musician, and broadcaster who is best known for his humorous songs and frequent television appearances. His output includes collaborations with Andrew Lloyd Webber and Peter Skellern. He is also a keen puzzler who has hosted several quiz shows and written several books on the subject.

#4146

Jerzy Treder

#52018

Overall Influence

1942 - 2015 (73 years)

Jerzy Treder was a Polish philologist and linguist, focusing on Kashubian studies, among other interests. He was born in Biała Rzeka, Rumia, in the Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia of German-occupied Poland. In 1987-1990 he was deputy director of the Institute of Polish Philology in Gdańsk University.

#4147

Manna Dey

#48726

Overall Influence

1919 - 2013 (94 years)

Prabodh Chandra Dey , known by his stage name Manna Dey , was a renowned Indian playback singer, music director, and musician. He had a classical music background, being part of the Bhendibazaar Gharana and receiving training under Ustad Aman Ali Khan. Manna Dey is widely recognized as one of the most versatile and celebrated vocalists in the Hindi film industry, and is often acknowledged for his significant contributions to integrating Indian classical music into Hindi commercial cinema. As a musician, Dey is particularly acclaimed for incorporating Indian classical music elements into a pop...

#4148

Marilyn Bergman

#73132

Overall Influence

1929 - 2022 (93 years)

#4149

Gottfried Michael Koenig

#56492

Overall Influence

1926 - 2021 (95 years)

Gottfried Michael Koenig was a German-Dutch composer. Biography Born in Magdeburg, Koenig studied church music in Braunschweig at the , composition, piano, analysis and acoustics at the Hochschule für Musik Detmold, music representation techniques at the Hochschule für Musik Köln and computer technique at the University of Bonn. He attended and later lectured at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse . From 1954 to 1964 Koenig worked in the electronic studio of West German Radio producing his electronic compositions Klangfiguren, Essay and Terminus 1 and wrote orchestral and chamber music. Furthermore,...

#4150

Hannah Storm

#59300

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Hannah Lynn Storen Hicks , known professionally as Hannah Storm, is an American television sports journalist, serving as the anchor of ESPN's SportsCenter. She was also host of the NBA Countdown pregame show on ABC as part of the network's National Basketball Association Sunday game coverage.

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