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).
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List of the most influential people in Communications,
#4201
Sidney Gilliat
#69321
Overall Influence
1908 - 1994 (86 years)
Sidney Gilliat was an English film director, producer and writer. He was the son of George Gilliat, editor of the Evening Standard from 1928 to 1933. Sidney was born in the district of Edgeley in Stockport, Cheshire. In the 1930s he worked as a scriptwriter, most notably with Frank Launder on The Lady Vanishes for Alfred Hitchcock, and Night Train to Munich , directed by Carol Reed. He and Launder made their directorial debut co-directing the home front drama Millions Like Us . From 1945 he also worked as a producer, starting with The Rake's Progress, which he also wrote and directed. He and Launder made over 40 films together, founding their own production company Individual Pictures.
Go to Profile#4202
Steve Taylor
#63141
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Roland Stephen Taylor is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, music executive, film maker, assistant professor, and actor. A figure in what has come to be known as Christian alternative rock, Taylor enjoyed a successful solo career during the 1980s, and also served in the short-lived group Chagall Guevara. In contrast to many Christian musical artists, his songs have often taken aim at other Christians with the use of satirical, sardonic lyrics. In 1997, he founded the record label Squint Entertainment, which fueled the careers of artists such as Sixpence None the Richer, Chevelle, and Burlap to Cashmere.
Go to Profile#4203
Juliet Prowse
#74211
Overall Influence
1936 - 1996 (60 years)
Juliet Anne Prowse was a British-American dancer and actress whose four-decade career included stage, television and film. She was raised in South Africa, where her family emigrated after World War II. Known for her attractive legs, she was described after her death as having "arguably the best legs since Betty Grable."
Go to Profile#4204
Suzanne Flynn
#99033
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Suzanne Flynn is an American linguist and Professor of Linguistics at MIT who has contributed to the fields of second and third language acquisition. She has also investigated language disorders. Research Suzanne Flynn received her PhD from Cornell University in 1983. Her work has spanned from syntax and second-language acquisition of syntax to language processing in people with neurocognitive disorders, such as changes in language during the prodromal course in the development of Alzheimer’s disease.
Go to Profile#4205
K. S. Bhagawan
#65388
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Kallahalli Sannegowda Bhagawan , known as Prof. K. S. Bhagawan, is an Indian Kannada writer, rationalist, translator, critic, scholar and retired professor. In addition to his works on Hinduism, Indian culture and history, he has translated the works of William Shakespeare including Julius Caesar and Hamlet. He is a recipient of many awards including the Rajyotsava Award, Kuvempu Award and the Lokayata Award.
Go to Profile#4206
Scott Adams
#14963
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Scott Adams is an American entrepreneur, computer programmer, and video game designer. He co-founded, with then-wife Alexis, Adventure International in 1979. The company developed and published video games for home computers. The cornerstone products of Adventure International in its early years were the Adventure series of text adventures written by Adams.
Go to Profile#4207
Snooky Young
#92663
Overall Influence
1919 - 2011 (92 years)
Eugene Edward "Snooky" Young was an American jazz trumpeter. He was known for his mastery of the plunger mute, with which he was able to create a wide range of sounds. Biography Young was lead trumpeter of the Jimmie Lunceford band from 1939 to 1942. He played with Count Basie , Gerald Wilson and Lionel Hampton, among others, and was an original member of the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Big Band.
Go to Profile#4208
John Harbison
#68359
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
John Harris Harbison is an American composer, known for his symphonies, operas, and large choral works. Life John Harris Harbison was born on December 20, 1938, in Orange, New Jersey, to the historian Elmore Harris Harbison and Janet German Harbison. The Harbisons were a musical family; Elmore had studied composition in his youth and Janet wrote songs. Harbison's sisters Helen and Margaret were musicians as well. He won the prestigious BMI Foundation's Student Composer Awards for composition at the age of 16 in 1954. He studied music at Harvard University , where he sang with the Harvard Glee Club, and later at the Berlin Musikhochschule and at Princeton .
Go to Profile#4209
Victor Hanzeli
#77230
Overall Influence
1925 - 1991 (66 years)
Victor Egon Hanzeli, Sr. was an American linguist and professor of Romance Languages and Literature at the University of Washington. His pioneering 1969 book, Missionary Linguistics in New France, is considered the best in its field. He spoke five languages.
Go to Profile#4210
Csaba Földes
#102754
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Csaba Földes is a linguist. His research is focused on contemporary German language and German as a foreign language. He is currently full professor and holds the chair of German Linguistics at the University of Erfurt in Germany. Földes is a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Past President of the Central European Association for German Studies .
Go to Profile#4211
Oscar Brashear
#89632
Overall Influence
1944 - 2023 (79 years)
Oscar Brashear was an American jazz trumpeter and session musician from Chicago, Illinois. After studying at DuSable High School and Wright Jr. College under John DeRoule he worked briefly with Woody Herman before going on to join Count Basie in 1968–69, returning to freelance in Chicago with Sonny Stitt, Gene Ammons, Dexter Gordon and James Moody. Moving to Los Angeles in 1971, he worked with Gerald Wilson, Harold Land, Oliver Nelson, Shelly Manne, Quincy Jones , Horace Silver and Duke Pearson.
Go to Profile#4212
Roger Chase
#81148
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Roger Chase is a British violist who currently teaches at the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. Life Roger Chase was born in London and studied under Bernard Shore during his studies at the Royal College of Music from 1964 to 1974. He received his ARCM degree [associate honors diploma] in 1974, one year prior to Tertis's death. He is the current owner of the 1717 Montagnana viola, which is the instrument that Tertis used during the height of his performing career, originally acquired in Paris when it was in pieces. This 17 1/8" instrument was the inspiration for his developing, after his retirement, the Tertis model viola.
Go to Profile#4213
Lisa Gotto
#107233
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Lisa Gotto is a professor of film theory at the University of Vienna. She was previously a professor of film studies at the Internationale Filmschule Köln and a professor of media and game studies at the Cologne Game Lab at the Technical University of Cologne. Gotto specializes in film studies, game studies and media studies.
Go to Profile#4214
Georgiy Daneliya
#72636
Overall Influence
1930 - 2019 (89 years)
Georgiy Nikolayevich Daneliya , also known as Giya Daneliya , was a Soviet and Russian film director and screenwriter of Georgian origin. He was named a People's Artist of the USSR in 1989 and a laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation in 1997.
Go to Profile#4215
Golnaz Modarresi Ghavami
#112296
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Golnaz Modarresi Ghavami is an Iranian linguist and associate professor of linguistics at Allameh Tabataba'i University. She is known for her research on Persian phonology and phonetics. Her textbook on phonetics is widely taught in Iranian universities. Modarresi Ghavami received a BA in English translation from Allameh Tabataba'i University in 1989, an MA in linguistics from Ferdowsi University in 1992 and a PhD in linguistics from University of Texas at Austin in 2002.
Go to Profile#4216
Claire Kramsch
#112305
Overall Influence
#4217
Carolee Schneemann
#40540
Overall Influence
1939 - 2019 (80 years)
Carolee Schneemann was an American visual experimental artist, known for her multi-media works on the body, narrative, sexuality and gender. She received a B.A. in poetry and philosophy from Bard College and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Illinois. Originally a painter in the Abstract Expressionist tradition, Schneeman was uninterested in the masculine heroism of New York painters of the time and turned to performance-based work, primarily characterized by research into visual traditions, taboos, and the body of the individual in relation to social bodies. Although renowned for ...
Go to Profile#4218
Patricia Aufderheide
#68255
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Patricia Ann Aufderheide is a scholar and public intellectual on media and social change, and an expert on fair use in media creation and scholarship. She is a University Professor at American University in Washington, D.C., where she has worked since 1989 and directed the Center for Social Media, later the Center for Media & Social Impact, beginning in 2000. She has received multiple awards and honors for her journalism and scholarship, including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 1994, and a Fulbright Research Fellowship in 1995, and a Distinguished Career Award in 2008 from th...
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Judith Weir
#68554
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Judith Weir is a British composer serving as Master of the King's Music. Appointed in 2014 by Queen Elizabeth II, Weir is the first woman to hold this office. Life and career Weir was born in Cambridge, England, to Scottish parents. She studied with John Tavener while at the North London Collegiate School and subsequently with Robin Holloway at King's College, Cambridge, graduating in 1976. Her music often draws on sources from medieval history, as well as the traditional stories and music of her parents' homeland, Scotland. Although she has achieved international recognition for her orchestral and chamber works, Weir is best known for her operas and theatrical works.
Go to Profile#4220
Tony Kovaleski
#73655
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Anthony Carl Kovaleski is an American investigative journalist for Denver television station KMGH. Previously, Kovaleski worked at KNTV in San Jose, California from 2012 to 2015. From 2001 to 2011, he was the investigative reporter at KMGH and rejoined the station in 2015.
Go to Profile#4221
Sidney J. Furie
#63772
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Sidney Joseph Furie is a Canadian film director, screenwriter, and producer best known for his extensive work in both British and American cinema between the 1960s and early 1980s. Like his contemporaries Norman Jewison and Ted Kotcheff, he was one of the earliest Canadian directors to achieve mainstream critical and financial success outside their native country at a time when its film industry was virtually nonexistent. He won a BAFTA Film Award and was nominated for a Palme d'Or for his work on the acclaimed spy thriller The Ipcress File starring Michael Caine.
Go to Profile#4222
Jake Weber
#71472
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Jake T. Weber is an English actor, known in film for his role as Michael in Dawn of the Dead and for his role as Drew in Meet Joe Black. On television, he is best-known for playing Joe DuBois, the sleep-deprived husband of psychic Allison DuBois, in the popular drama series Medium.
Go to Profile#4223
William O. Bright
#80674
Overall Influence
1928 - 2006 (78 years)
William Oliver Bright was an American linguist and toponymist who specialized in Native American and South Asian languages and descriptive linguistics. Biography Bright earned a bachelor's degree in linguistics in 1949 and a doctorate in the same field in 1955, both from the University of California, Berkeley. He was a professor of linguistics and anthropology at UCLA from 1959 to 1988. He then moved to the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he remained on the faculty until his death.
Go to Profile#4224
John Local
#95098
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
John Local, BA, Ph.D. , is a British phonetician and Emeritus Professor of Phonetics at the University of York. He was one of the creators of the experimental Yorktalk non-segmental speech synthesis system which employed techniques of Firthian Prosodic Analysis , an approach to phonology developed by J.R. Firth and members of the London School of linguistics. His book Doing Phonology written with John Kelly provides a radical contemporary take on FPA. Arising out of work which combined detailed phonetic analysis and Conversation Analysis his recent research has explored the interactional functioning of phonetic detail and phonetic variation in talk-in-interaction .
Go to Profile#4225
James White
#61004
Overall Influence
1928 - 1999 (71 years)
James White was a Northern Irish author of science fiction novellas, short stories and novels. He was born in Belfast and returned there after spending some early years in Canada. After a few years working in the clothing industry, he worked at Short Brothers Ltd., an aircraft company based in Belfast, from 1965 until taking early retirement in 1984 as a result of diabetes. White married Margaret Sarah Martin, another science fiction fan, in 1955 and the couple had three children. He died of a stroke.
Go to Profile#4226
James Chapman
#72203
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
James Chapman is an American novelist and publisher. He was raised in Bakersfield, California, has lived in New York City since 1978, and is the author of ten novels to date. His work combines experimental technique with a direct emotionality, often dealing with the anguish inherent in human communication.
Go to Profile#4227
Nobuhiro Suwa
#100108
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Nobuhiro Suwa is a Japanese film director working in Japan and France. His directorial works and screenplays often make use of improvisation techniques. Currently, Suwa is the President of Tokyo Zokei University.
Go to Profile#4228
Wilfrid Mellers
#71181
Overall Influence
1914 - 2008 (94 years)
Wilfrid Howard Mellers was an English music critic, musicologist and composer. Early life Born in Leamington, Warwickshire, Mellers was educated at the local Leamington College and later won a scholarship to Downing College, Cambridge, where he read English under F. R. Leavis. He later lodged with the Leavises for three years while pursuing a Music degree. Mellers also took private composition lessons in Oxford from Egon Wellesz and Edmund Rubbra. From 1938 he taught at Dartington Hall, and in September 1940 he married Vera Muriel Hobbs. He spent the Second World War working on the land as a...
Go to Profile#4229
Lindsay Grace
#67115
Overall Influence
Lindsay Grace is an American academic, artist, and video game designer. He currently serves as the Knight Chair of Interactive Media and is also an Associate Professor at the School of Communication, University of Miami.
Go to Profile#4230
Luz Mely Reyes
#92855
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Luz Mely Reyes is a Venezuelan journalist, writer, and analyst. She is known as the director and co-founder of the digital media franchise Efecto Cocuyo. She has received multiple honors for her work.
Go to Profile#4231
Alan Parker
#88419
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Alan Frederick Parker is an English guitarist and composer. Parker was born in Matlock, Derbyshire, and was trained by Julian Bream at London’s Royal Academy of Music. He had a successful career as session guitarist starting in the late 1960s, and played with Blue Mink, The Congregation, CCS and Serge Gainsbourg, together with his own studio session bands Hungry Wolf and Ugly Custard.
Go to Profile#4232
Velta Ruke-Dravina
#27826
Overall Influence
1917 - 2003 (86 years)
Velta Ruke-Dravina was a Latvian-born Swedish linguist and folklorist, as well as a professor in Baltic languages at Stockholm University. Ruke-Dravina's research interests included children's language, language contact, and dialectology. Her doctoral thesis was about diminutives in Latvian. She held the only professorship in Baltic languages outside the Baltics and had a leading role in developing the teaching program on the subject at Stockholm University. In 1980, she was elected as a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities.
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Vincent Sherman
#62695
Overall Influence
1906 - 2006 (100 years)
Vincent Sherman was an American director and actor who worked in Hollywood. His movies include Mr. Skeffington , Nora Prentiss , and The Young Philadelphians . He began his career as an actor on Broadway and later in film. He directed B-movies for Warner Bros. and then moved to directing to A-pictures. He was a good friend of actor Errol Flynn, whom he directed in Adventures of Don Juan . He directed three Joan Crawford movies: The Damned Don't Cry , Harriet Craig , and Goodbye, My Fancy .
Go to Profile#4234
Miguel Terekhov
#44345
Overall Influence
1928 - 2012 (84 years)
Miguel Terekhov was a Uruguayan-born American ballet dancer and ballet instructor. Terekhov and his wife, Yvonne Chouteau, one of the Five Moons, a group of Native American ballet dancers, founded the School of Dance at the University of Oklahoma in 1961.
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Dianne Reeves
#62547
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Dianne Elizabeth Reeves is an American jazz singer. Biography Dianne Reeves was born in Detroit, Michigan, into a musical family. Her father sang, her mother played trumpet, her uncle is bassist Charles Burrell, and her cousin is George Duke. Her father died when she was two years old, and she was raised in Denver, Colorado, by her mother, Vada Swanson, and maternal family. Reeves was raised Catholic and attended Cure D'Ars Catholic School in Denver for much of her early schooling.
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Dennis Holt
#83686
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Dennis Graham Holt is an American poet, linguist and translator. Born in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, Holt graduated from Van Nuys High School in Los Angeles in 1960. Holt subsequently attended the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, Berkeley, and UCLA , receiving from the last of these four degrees in Linguistics . From September 1966 until November 1969, he served in the Peace Corps in Bolivia, working with cooperative coffee-processing plants in the province of Nor Yungas, and later teaching English as a second language at the Instituto Anglo-Americano...
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Tim Hodgkinson
#82739
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Timothy "Tim" George Hodgkinson is an English experimental music composer and performer, principally on reeds, lap steel guitar, and keyboards. He first became known as one of the core members of the British avant-rock group Henry Cow, which he formed with Fred Frith in 1968. After the demise of Henry Cow, he participated in numerous bands and projects, eventually concentrating on composing contemporary music and performing as an improviser.
Go to Profile#4238
Robert Tear
#100748
Overall Influence
1939 - 2011 (72 years)
Robert Tear , CBE was a Welsh tenor singer, teacher and conductor. He first became known singing in the operas of Benjamin Britten in the mid-1960s. From the 1970s until his retirement in 1999 his main operatic base was the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; he appeared with other opera companies in the UK, mainland Europe, the US and Australia. Generally avoiding the Italian repertoire, which did not suit his voice, Tear became known in leading and character roles in German, British and Russian operas.
Go to Profile#4239
Steve Williams
#46656
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Steven "Spaz" Williams is a Canadian special effects artist, animator, and film and commercials director. Biography Williams studied animation at Sheridan College, graduating in 1984. During the summers he would work at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education Computer Laboratory, learning more about computer animation. After graduation, he went on to work at Alias Research in Toronto. He acted as the company's spokesperson, leading to a job at Industrial Light & Magic in 1988. ILM had purchased Silicon Graphics computers to create the computer-generated effects in The Abyss, and said workstations used Alias modeling software.
Go to Profile#4240
Raymond Scott
#49222
Overall Influence
1908 - 1994 (86 years)
Raymond Scott was an American composer, band leader, pianist, record producer, and inventor of electronic instruments. Though Scott never scored cartoon soundtracks, his music is familiar to millions because Carl Stalling adapted it in over 120 Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, and other Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons. His compositions may also be heard in The Ren and Stimpy Show , The Simpsons, Duckman, Animaniacs, The Oblongs, Batfink, and Bluey. The only time he composed to accompany animation was three 20-second commercial jingles for County Fair Bread in 1962.
Go to Profile#4241
Tiny Tim
#64284
Overall Influence
1932 - 1996 (64 years)
Herbert Butros Khaury , also known as Herbert Buckingham Khaury, and known professionally as Tiny Tim, was an American singer, ukulele player, and musical archivist. He is best remembered for his 1968 hit "Tiptoe Through the Tulips", which he sang in a falsetto voice.
Go to Profile#4242
Buddy Collette
#83985
Overall Influence
1921 - 2010 (89 years)
William Marcel "Buddy" Collette was an American jazz flutist, saxophonist, and clarinetist. He was a founding member of the Chico Hamilton Quintet. Early life William Marcel Collette was born in Los Angeles on August 6, 1921. He was raised in Watts, surrounded by people of all different ethnicities. He lived in a house built by his father in an area with cheap, plentiful land. The neighborhood in which he grew up was called Central Gardens area. For elementary school, he attended Ninety-sixth Street School because it allowed black students.
Go to Profile#4243
Anna Deavere Smith
#42911
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Anna Deavere Smith is an African-American actress, playwright, and professor. She is known for her roles as National Security Advisor Dr. Nancy McNally in The West Wing , hospital administrator Gloria Akalitus in the Showtime series Nurse Jackie , and as U.S. District Court Clerk Tina Krissman on the ABC show For the People .
Go to Profile#4244
Mick Jones
#60455
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Michael Leslie Jones is an English musician, songwriter and record producer, best known as the last remaining original member of the British-American rock band Foreigner. Prior to Foreigner, he was in the band Spooky Tooth.
Go to Profile#4245
Saul Chaplin
#68691
Overall Influence
1912 - 1997 (85 years)
Saul Chaplin was an American composer and musical director. He was born Saul Kaplan in Brooklyn, New York. He had worked on stage, screen and television since the days of Tin Pan Alley. In film, he won three Oscars for collaborating on the scores and orchestrations of An American in Paris , Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and West Side Story .
Go to Profile#4246
Tomoyasu Hotei
#60447
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Tomoyasu Hotei, also known simply as Hotei , is a Japanese musician, singer-songwriter, composer, record producer and actor. With a career spanning more than 40 years, Hotei claims record sales of over 40 million copies and has collaborated with acclaimed artists from around the world. Hotei first rose to prominence in the 1980s as the guitarist for Boøwy, one of Japan's most popular rock bands, before starting a solo career.
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Patsy Swayze
#57769
Overall Influence
1927 - 2013 (86 years)
Yvonne Helen "Patsy" Swayze was an American film choreographer, dancer, and dance instructor, and the mother of actors Patrick Swayze and Don Swayze. Her credits include choreography for Urban Cowboy, Liar's Moon and Hope Floats.
Go to Profile#4248
Giuliano Montaldo
#68563
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Giuliano Montaldo was an Italian film director, screenwriter and actor. Biography While he was still a young student, Montaldo was recruited by the director Carlo Lizzani for the role of leading actor in Attention! Bandits! . Following this experience he began an apprenticeship as an assistant director of Lizzani and Gillo Pontecorvo, as well as appearing in Abandoned .
Go to Profile#4249
Konrad Junghänel
#91524
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Konrad Junghänel is a German lutenist and conductor in the field of historically informed performance, the founder and director of the vocal ensemble Cantus Cölln. Career Junghänel studied at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln. He has given solo concerts internationally and has worked with ensembles such as Les Arts Florissants, La Petite Bande, Musica Antiqua Köln and Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra. As a lutenist, he recorded works by Jacques Bittner in 1984. He is particularly known for his lute recitals of Johann Sebastian Bach and Sylvius Leopold Weiss, and received the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik for his solo recording of a piece by Weiss in 1985.
Go to Profile#4250
Carla Bazzanella
#72424
Overall Influence
1947 - 2022 (75 years)
Carla Bazzanella was an Italian linguist. Bazzanella was born in Turin. After graduating in classics from the University of Turin in 1971, Carla Bazzanella became a lecturer and researcher at the University of Pavia. She held this post from 1976 to 1983. After that she moved back to Turin, and taught glottology and philosophy of language until 1998. Since 2001 she had been an associate professor of linguistics at the University of Turin, where she taught both general linguistics and cognitive linguistics. She retired in 2012, but was active in the academic debate.
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