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).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Communications,

#4301

Dmitri Hvorostovsky

#85609

Overall Influence

1962 - 2017 (55 years)

Dmitri Aleksandrovich Hvorostovsky was a Russian operatic baritone. Early life and education Hvorostovsky was born in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia during a time when the city was mostly closed to foreigners. An only child, he was raised mostly by his grandmother and a grandfather who, according to Dmitri, was a war veteran suffering from alcoholism. His father, an engineer, and his mother, a gynecologist, both had extremely time-consuming careers and were often only around on the weekends and holidays.

#4302

Marian Seldes

#73044

Overall Influence

1928 - 2014 (86 years)

Marian Hall Seldes was an American actress. A five-time Tony Award nominee, she won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for A Delicate Balance in 1967, and received subsequent nominations for Father's Day , Deathtrap , Ring Round the Moon , and Dinner at Eight . She also won a Drama Desk Award for Father's Day.

#4303

Ralph Stanley

#65479

Overall Influence

1927 - 2016 (89 years)

Ralph Edmund Stanley was an American bluegrass artist, known for his distinctive singing and banjo playing. Stanley began playing music in 1946, originally with his older brother Carter Stanley as part of The Stanley Brothers, and most often as the leader of his band, The Clinch Mountain Boys. He was also known as Dr. Ralph Stanley.

#4304

Dave Grossman

#34194

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Dave Grossman is an American game programmer and game designer, most known for his work at Telltale Games and early work at LucasArts. He has also written several children's books, and a book of "guy poetry" called Ode to the Stuff in the Sink.

#4305

Susan George

#76520

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Susan Melody George is an English film and television actress. She is best known for appearing in films such as Straw Dogs with Dustin Hoffman, Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry with Peter Fonda, and Mandingo with Ken Norton.

#4306

W. S. Di Piero

#63748

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

William Simone Di Piero is an American poet, translator, essayist, and educator. He has published ten collections of poetry and five collections of essays in addition to his translations. In 2012 Di Piero received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for his lifetime achievement; in making the award, Christian Wiman noted, "He’s a great poet whose work is just beginning to get the wide audience it deserves."

#4307

Eleanor Antin

#30900

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Eleanor Antin is an American performance artist, film-maker, installation artist, conceptual artist, feminist artist, and university professor. Early life and education Eleanor Fineman was born in the Bronx on February 27, 1935. Her parents, Sol Fineman and Jeanette Efron, were Polish Jews who had recently immigrated to the United States. She had one sister, Marcia, born 1940.

#4308

Milena Žic-Fuchs

#42716

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Milena Žic Fuchs is a Croatian linguist and full member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts. She formerly served as the Croatian Minister of Science and Technology in the cabinet of Zlatko Mateša from February 1999 to January 2000.

#4309

Barry Smith

#56960

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Barry Smith is a South African organist, choral and orchestral conductor, author, and musicologist. Early life, education, and career Born in Port Elizabeth in South Africa, Smith was a chorister at St Mary's Collegiate Church, Port Elizabeth. Educated at the Grey School in Port Elizabeth , in 1956 Smith was awarded a scholarship to Rhodes University, where he completed his PhD degree. In 1960, Smith went to the United Kingdom on scholarship to the Royal School of Church Music. Smith then returned to South Africa to serve as Director of Music for two years at the Michaelhouse senior school for boys in KwaZulu-Natal province from 1962 to 1964.

#4310

Henry Threadgill

#74471

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Henry Threadgill is an American composer, saxophonist and flautist. He came to prominence in the 1970s leading ensembles rooted in jazz but with unusual instrumentation and often incorporating other genres of music. He has performed and recorded with several ensembles: Air, Aggregation Orb, Make a Move, the seven-piece Henry Threadgill Sextett, the twenty-piece Society Situation Dance Band, Very Very Circus, X-75, and Zooid.

#4311

Artem Harutyunyan

Artem Harutyunyan

#62533

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Artem Harutyunyan is an Armenian writer, translator, critic, Doctor of Philology, Professor, member of Writers Union of Armenia, Biography Artem Harutyunyan was born in Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, in 1945. After graduating from Yerevan State University, he earned his PhD in American and English Literature from Moscow's Maxsim Gorky Institute of World Literature, Professor .

#4312

Michael Snow

#59135

Overall Influence

1928 - 2023 (95 years)

Michael James Aleck Snow was a Canadian artist who worked in a range of media including film, installation, sculpture, photography, and music. His best-known films are Wavelength and La Région Centrale , with the former regarded as a milestone in avant-garde cinema.

#4313

Chang Cheh

#68301

Overall Influence

1923 - 2002 (79 years)

Chang Cheh was a Chinese filmmaker, screenwriter, lyricist and producer active in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Chang Cheh directed more than 90 films in Greater China, the majority of them with the Shaw Brothers Studio in Hong Kong. Most of his films are action films, especially wuxia and kung fu films filled with violence.

#4314

Oscar Brand

#68984

Overall Influence

1920 - 2016 (96 years)

Oscar Brand was a Canadian-born American folk singer-songwriter, radio host, and author. In his career, spanning 70 years, he composed at least 300 songs and released nearly 100 albums, among them Canadian and American patriotic songs. Brand's music ran the gamut from novelty songs to serious social commentary and spanned a number of genres.

#4315

Jack Stauffacher

#53872

Overall Influence

1920 - 2017 (97 years)

Jack Werner Stauffacher was an American printer, typographer, educator, and fine book publisher. He owned and operated Greenwood Press, a small book printing press based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

#4316

Huno Rätsep

#113548

Overall Influence

1927 - Present (99 years)

Huno Rätsep is an Estonian linguist. In 1951 he graduated from Tartu State University. Since 1953 he has taught at the University of Tartu, since 1977, a professor. His main fields of research have been structural linguistics and generative grammar, grammar of Estonian language.

#4317

Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos

#86806

Overall Influence

1933 - 2014 (81 years)

Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos was a Spanish conductor and composer. Frühbeck was born in Burgos, Spain to a family of German ancestry. He first took up conducting while on military service in the Spanish Army before graduating from the Hochschule für Musik in Munich. Frühbeck was principal conductor of various orchestras around the world, starting with the Bilbao Symphony Orchestra from 1958 to 1962, then moving on to the Spanish National Orchestra, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra of Tokyo and many others. Throughout his career Frühbeck de Burgos recorded on a number of labels. He was a member of the Academy of Fine Arts and History Institución Fernán González.

#4318

Francis Lawrence

Francis Lawrence

#43608

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Francis Lawrence is an American filmmaker and producer. After establishing himself as a director of music videos and commercials, Lawrence made his feature-length directorial debut with the superhero thriller Constantine and has since directed the post-apocalyptic horror film I Am Legend , the romantic drama Water for Elephants , four of the five films in The Hunger Games film series, and the spy thriller Red Sparrow .

#4319

Arturo Lindsay

#87233

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Arturo Lindsay is a Panamanian-born artist and professor of art and art history at Spelman College. His scholarship specializes in ethnographic research on African spiritual and aesthetic retentions in contemporary American cultures. His Panamanian/American identity is reflected in his art, which focuses on African culture in America.

#4320

Maceo Parker

#41580

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Maceo Parker is an American funk and soul jazz saxophonist, best known for his work with James Brown in the 1960s, Parliament-Funkadelic in the 1970s and Prince in the 2000s. Parker was a prominent soloist on many of Brown's hit recordings, and a key part of his band, playing alto, tenor and baritone saxophones. Since the early 1990s, he has toured under his own name.

#4321

Julie Verhoeven

#88802

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Julie Verhoeven is a British illustrator and designer who has collaborated with brands such as Louis Vuitton, Versace and Peter Jensen. While she is recognised primarily for her work in fashion, she has also contributed illustrations to books, magazines and album covers. Her work has been widely exhibited, including at London's Hayward Gallery. She is a design academic at both Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art.

#4322

Nat Adderley

#75927

Overall Influence

1931 - 2000 (69 years)

Nathaniel Carlyle Adderley was an American jazz trumpeter. He was the younger brother of saxophonist Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, whom he supported and played with for many years. Adderley's composition "Work Song" is a jazz standard, and also became a success on the pop charts after singer Oscar Brown Jr. wrote lyrics for it.

#4323

Ruth Finnegan

#51959

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

Ruth Hilary Finnegan is a Northern Irish linguistic anthropologist and Emeritus Professor of the Open University. Biography Finnegan was born in 1933 in Derry. She attended Londonderry High School

#4324

Bennett Reimer

#30922

Overall Influence

1932 - 2013 (81 years)

Bennett Reimer was an American music educator. He held the John W. Beattie Endowed Chair in Music at Northwestern University from 1978 until retirement in 1997, where he was chair of the Music Education Department, director of the Ph.D. program in Music Education, and founder and director of the Center for the Study of Education and the Musical Experience, a research group of Ph.D. students and faculty. A native of New York City, where he was born in 1932, he was on the faculties of Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio where he held the Kulas Endowed Chair in Music and was chair ...

#4325

Paul J. H. Schoemaker

#31403

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Paul J. H. Schoemaker is an academic, author, and an expert in the fields of strategic management and decision making. He is listed among the most highly cited scholars globally as measured by academic publications in leading journals of business and economics.

#4326

Helen Baxendale

Helen Baxendale

#68463

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Helen Victoria Baxendale is an English actress of stage and television, known for her roles as Rachel Bradley in the British comedy drama Cold Feet and Emily Waltham in the American sitcom Friends .

#4327

Zoya Akhtar

#45228

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Zoya Akhtar is an Indian film director and screenwriter who works in Hindi cinema. Born to the Akthar family of Javed Akhtar and Honey Irani, she completed a diploma in filmmaking from NYU and assisted directors Mira Nair, Tony Gerber and Dev Benegal, before becoming an independent writer and director. Akhtar is the recipient of several accolades, including four Filmfare Awards. Zoya, along with Reema Kagti, founded Tiger Baby Films, a film and web studio in October 2015.

#4328

Martin Arnold

#74601

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Martin Arnold is an experimental filmmaker known for his obsessive deconstruction of found footage. Career Arnold's films are intensely cut sequences in which several seconds of old movie clips are taken and stretched out into much longer works. The figures on the screen flip back and forth between frames, as the motion is repeated and reversed, and numerous single frame cuts are made. His intent is to create, or possibly unearth, narratives concealed within the mundane films from which he samples. In films such as Pièce Touchée and Passage à l'acte for example he uses several seconds of th...

#4329

Charles Spencer

#82844

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Charles Spencer is an English classical pianist and music educator. Life Born in Thorne, South Yorkshire, Spencer studied with Max Pirani at the Royal Academy of Music in London and at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. He was awarded the Promotion Prize for Artistic Achievements of the Austrian Federal Government. He is mainly known as Lied accompanist. He was the permanent pianist of Christa Ludwig, Bernarda Fink, Gundula Janowitz, Vesselina Kasarova, Marjana Lipovšek, Jessye Norman, Deborah Polaski, Thomas Quasthoff, Ildikó Raimondi, Peter Schreier, John Shirley-Quirk and Deon van der Walt.

#4330

Jerzy Kawalerowicz

Jerzy Kawalerowicz

#74908

Overall Influence

1922 - 2007 (85 years)

Jerzy Franciszek Kawalerowicz was a Polish film director and politician, having been a member of Polish United Workers' Party from 1954 until its dissolution in 1990 and a deputy in Polish parliament since 1985 until 1989.

#4331

Bernard Lefkowitz

#56547

Overall Influence

1937 - 2004 (67 years)

Bernard Lefkowitz was an American author, sociologist, journalist and investigative reporter. A reporter and assistant editor at the New York Post, Lefkowitz worked for the Peace Corps before becoming an author. He wrote many books, including The Victims, Break-time: Living Without Work in a Nine-to-Five World, and Tough Change: Growing Up on Your Own in America, and Our Guys: The Glen Ridge Rape and the Secret Life of the Perfect Suburb.

#4332

Tommy Makem

#73536

Overall Influence

1932 - 2007 (75 years)

Thomas Makem was an Irish folk musician, artist, poet and storyteller. He was best known as a member of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. He played the long-necked 5-string banjo, tin whistle, low whistle, guitar, bodhrán and bagpipes, and sang in a distinctive baritone. He was sometimes known as "The Bard of Armagh" and "The Godfather of Irish Music".

#4333

Tom T. Hall

#61226

Overall Influence

1936 - 2021 (85 years)

Thomas Hall , known professionally as Tom T. Hall and informally nicknamed "the Storyteller", was an American country music singer-songwriter and short-story author. He wrote 12 No. 1 hit songs, with 26 more that reached the Top 10, including the No. 1 international pop crossover hit "Harper Valley PTA" and "I Love", which reached No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100. He is included in Rolling Stones list of 100 Greatest Songwriters.

#4334

Gudrun Schröfel

#67792

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Gudrun Schröfel is a German choral conductor, conductor and academic teacher. She led choirs, namely the Mädchenchor Hannover, to competition successes and awards for recordings. Life Schröfel studied music pedagogy, conducting, voice and voice pedagogy at the Musikhochschule Hannover. She studied further with Eric Ericson and Arleen Augér. She first focused on concert singing in oratorios and lieder, and conducted choir and orchestra at a .

#4335

Viveca Lindfors

Viveca Lindfors

#82902

Overall Influence

1920 - 1995 (75 years)

Elsa Viveca Torstensdotter Lindfors was a Swedish American stage, film, and television actress. She won an Emmy Award and a Silver Bear for Best Actress. Biography Lindfors was born in Uppsala, Sweden, the daughter of Karin Emilia Therese and Axel Torsten Lindfors.

#4336

Jake Wood

#74975

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Jake Dylan Wood is an English actor and podcaster, known for his role as Max Branning in the BBC soap opera EastEnders. He has also made guest appearances in series including Only Fools and Horses and Red Dwarf. In 2014, Wood competed on BBC's Strictly Come Dancing alongside professional dancer Janette Manrara. In the United States, he is known as the voice of the GEICO gecko. In 2018, he began co-hosting Pound for Pound, a boxing podcast with Spencer Oliver.

#4337

Jørgen Leth

#60180

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Jørgen Leth is a Danish poet and film director who is considered a leading figure in experimental documentary film making. Most notable are his documentary A Sunday in Hell and his surrealistic short film The Perfect Human . He is also a sports commentator for Danish television and is represented by the film production company Sunset Productions.

#4338

Sarah Stillman

#34976

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (42 years)

Sarah Stillman is an American professor and journalist focusing on immigration policy and the criminal justice system. She won a 2012 George Polk Award, and 2012 Hillman Prize. In 2016, she was named a MacArthur Fellow.

#4339

Alison Wray

#113996

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Alison Wray FAcSS FLSW is a Research Professor in Language and Communication at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom. She is known for her work on formulaic language. Career Wray has been teaching at Cardiff University since 1999. She has also taught at Swansea University, York St John University, University College of Ripon and York St John. Her BA and D.Phil. degrees are from the University of York.

#4340

Ian Mitchell

#96658

Overall Influence

1958 - 2020 (62 years)

#4341

Buddy Miles

#45951

Overall Influence

1947 - 2008 (61 years)

George Allen "Buddy" Miles Jr. was an American composer, drummer, guitarist, vocalist and producer. He was a founding member of the Electric Flag , a member of Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsys , founder and leader of the Buddy Miles Express and later, the Buddy Miles Band. Miles also played and recorded with Carlos Santana and others. Additionally, he sang lead vocals on the critically and commercially acclaimed California Raisins claymation TV commercials and recorded two California Raisins R&B albums.

#4342

Ronald Sanders

#76339

Overall Influence

1932 - 1991 (59 years)

Ronald Sanders was an American journalist and writer. Sanders was born in Union City, New Jersey. His father was English-born musician George Harold Sanders, and mother Rose Rachlin was daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants. He had sister Marilyn. The family did not practice any religious traditions, but when in the U.S. Army Sanders filled a form which required to indicate religious affiliation, Sanders chose Judaism.

#4343

Rudolf Serkin

#64317

Overall Influence

1903 - 1991 (88 years)

Rudolf Serkin was a Bohemian-born Austrian-American pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest Beethoven interpreters of the 20th century. Early life, childhood debut, and education Serkin was born in then Eger, Kingdom of Bohemia, Austro-Hungarian Empire , to a Russian Jewish family. His father, Mordko Serkin, "had been a Russian basso, and taught him to read music before he could read words."

#4344

Shane Black

#50626

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Shane Black is an American filmmaker and actor who has written such films as Lethal Weapon, The Monster Squad, The Last Boy Scout, Last Action Hero, and The Long Kiss Goodnight. He is also known as the original creator of the Lethal Weapon franchise. As an actor, Black is best known for his role as Rick Hawkins in Predator .

#4345

Madlib

#39422

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Otis Jackson Jr. , known professionally as Madlib, is an American DJ, music producer, multi-instrumentalist, and rapper. He is widely known for his collaborations with MF Doom , J Dilla , and Freddie Gibbs . Madlib has described himself as a "DJ first, producer second, and MC last." His stage name is an acronym for "Mind Altering Demented Lessons In Beats".

#4346

Michael White

#58148

Overall Influence

1930 - 2016 (86 years)

Michael Walter White was an American jazz violinist. White was born in Houston, Texas, and grew up in Oakland, California, taking up the violin when he was six years old. His initial career break occurred in 1965, when he played with the John Handy Quintet at the Monterey Jazz Festival, and subsequently recorded three albums with Handy. White was among the first to play the violin in avant-garde jazz, and in the late 1960s became one of the first jazz violinists to play jazz rock fusion . During his career, he played with musicians such as Sun Ra, Prince Lasha, McCoy Tyner, Eric Dolphy, Wes Montgomery, Pharoah Sanders, Kenny Dorham, Joe Henderson, John Lee Hooker, and Richard Davis.

#4347

Sam Weller

#59485

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Sam Weller is an American journalist and author, best known as writer Ray Bradbury's authorized biographer. Early life and education Weller was born in Lake Forest, Illinois. He was raised in Malibu, California and in Long Lake Minnesota.

#4348

John Cayley

#48141

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

John Howland Cayley is a Canadian pioneer of writing in digital media as well as a theorist of the practice, a poet, and a Professor of Literary Arts at Brown University . Education After moving to the United Kingdom in the late 1960s, Cayley went to secondary school in the south of England. He read for a degree in Chinese Studies at Durham University, leaving with a 2:1 in 1978.

#4349

Michele Placido

Michele Placido

#63301

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Michele Placido is an Italian actor, film director, and screenwriter. He began his career on stage, and first gained mainstream attention through a series of roles in films directed by the likes of Mario Monicelli and Marco Bellocchio, winning the Berlinale's Silver Bear for Best Actor for his performance in the 1979 film Ernesto. He is known internationally for portraying police inspector Corrado Cattani on the crime drama television series La piovra . Placido's directorial debut, Pummarò, was screened Un Certain Regard at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival. Three of his films have competed for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

#4350

Ryan Lizza

#72428

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Ryan Christopher Lizza is an American journalist. His 2017 interview with White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci allegedly resulted in Scaramucci's dismissal. Later that year, Lizza was accused of sexual misconduct in the context of the Me Too movement. After a decade-long run as The New Yorkers Washington correspondent, the magazine's internal review of the allegation against Lizza led to his dismissal. Several other media organizations declined to terminate or bar Lizza from employment in light of their own investigations. He is currently the chief Washington correspondent f...

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions