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).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people in Communications,
#4601
Les Brown
#59655
Overall Influence
1912 - 2001 (89 years)
Lester Raymond Brown was an American jazz musician who led the big band Les Brown and His Band of Renown for over six decades from 1938 to 2000. Biography Brown was born in Reinerton, Pennsylvania. He enrolled in the Conway Military Band School in 1926, studying with famous bandleader Patrick Conway for three years before receiving a music scholarship to the New York Military Academy, where he graduated in 1932. Brown attended college at Duke University from 1932 to 1936. There he led the group Les Brown and His Blue Devils, who performed regularly on Duke's campus and up and down the east coast.
Go to Profile#4602
Raimo Aulis Anttila
#85741
Overall Influence
1935 - 2023 (88 years)
Raimo Aulis Anttila was a Finnish linguist and professor of Indo-European Linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles. Biography Raimo Aulis Anttila was born in Finland in 1935. He was Professor of Comparative Linguistics at the University of Helsinki from 1971 to 1976. He was appointed Professor of Indo-European Linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1976. Anttila is also an authority on Finno-Ugric languages. Along with Marija Gimbutas and Edgar C. Polomé and Roger Pearson, Anttila was a co-founder of the Journal of Indo-European Studies, and was a member of its Editorial Committee in the 1970s.
Go to Profile#4603
Tracy Fullerton
#37032
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Tracy Fullerton is an American game designer, educator and writer, best known for Walden, a game . She is a Professor in the USC Interactive Media & Games Division of the USC School of Cinematic Arts and Director of the Game Innovation Lab at USC.
Go to Profile#4604
Pascal Laugier
#103407
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Pascal Laugier is a French screenwriter and film director. Career Pascal Laugier made his first major mark in the film industry with Christophe Gans' film Brotherhood of the Wolf . Laugier was a gofer on the set and can briefly be seen playing the assistant to Francois Hadji-Lazaro's character. Gans had Laugier direct the "making-of" documentaries of the film.
Go to Profile#4605
Foxes
#77682
Overall Influence
1989 - Present (37 years)
Louisa Rose Allen , known professionally as Foxes, is an English singer, songwriter, and model. Foxes' debut album, Glorious, was released in 2014, and features the UK top 20 singles "Youth", "Let Go for Tonight" and "Holding onto Heaven". Her vocals were featured on Zedd's 2012 single "Clarity", which peaked at number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 and won a Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording.
Go to Profile#4606
Billy Higgins
#62631
Overall Influence
1936 - 2001 (65 years)
Billy Higgins was an American jazz drummer. He played mainly free jazz and hard bop. Biography Higgins was born in Los Angeles, California, United States. Higgins played on Ornette Coleman's first records, beginning in 1958. He then freelanced extensively with hard bop and other post-bop players, including Donald Byrd, Dexter Gordon, Grant Green, Herbie Hancock, Joe Henderson, Don Cherry, Paul Horn, Milt Jackson, Jackie McLean, Pat Metheny, Hank Mobley, Thelonious Monk, Lee Morgan, David Murray, Art Pepper, Sonny Rollins, Mal Waldron, and Cedar Walton. He was one of the house drummers for Blue Note Records and played on dozens of Blue Note albums of the 1960s.
Go to Profile#4607
Jack Angel
#61213
Overall Influence
1930 - 2021 (91 years)
Jack Angel was an American voice actor and radio personality. He provided voice-overs for animation and video games. Angel had voiced characters in shows by Hasbro and Hanna-Barbera such as Super Friends, The Transformers and G.I. Joe and was involved in numerous productions by Disney and Pixar. Before becoming involved with voiceover work, Angel was initially a disc jockey for radio stations, namely KMPC and KFI. The day of his death, October 18, a piece of lost 1980s paraphernalia that contained his voice as the lead role, being the U.S. dub of TUGS, was discovered.
Go to Profile#4608
Stephen Hough
#83878
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Sir Stephen Andrew Gill Hough is a British-born classical pianist, composer and writer. He became an Australian citizen in 2005 and thus has dual nationality . Biography Hough was born in Heswall on the Wirral Peninsula, and grew up in Thelwall, where he began piano lessons at the age of five. His father, who was born in Australia, worked as a technical representative for British Steel before his death at the age of 54.
Go to Profile#4609
Colin McEnroe
#68898
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Colin McEnroe is an American columnist and radio personality. He hosts The Colin McEnroe Show on Connecticut Public Radio, writes a weekly column that runs in eight Hearst Communications, and writes a newsletter also for Hearst.
Go to Profile#4610
John Trim
#94918
Overall Influence
1924 - 2013 (89 years)
John Leslie Melville Trim , Director of the Council of Europe's Modern Languages projects from 1971 to 1997, was a key promoter of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. After graduating from University College, London in 1949, he remained there lecturing before moving to Selwyn College, Cambridge as University Lecturer in Phonetics in 1958. As well as setting up the Department of Linguistics at Cambridge in 1966, Trim was also president of the British Association for Applied Linguistics and vice-president of the International Association of Applied Linguistics .
Go to Profile#4611
David Strange
#109946
Overall Influence
David Tinsley Strange is a British cellist formerly head of strings at the Royal Academy of Music and a University of London Professor. He studied cello at the Royal Academy of Music. In 1973 he was appointed Principal Cellist of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1985 he was invited to become the Principal Cellist of the Royal Opera House Orchestra.
Go to Profile#4612
Alexander Peloplaton
#85961
Overall Influence
Alexander , nicknamed Pēloplátōn , also known as Alexander of Seleucia and Alexander the Platonic, was a Greek rhetorician and Platonist philosopher of the age of the Antonines and the Second Sophistic.
Go to Profile#4613
Slim Gaillard
#76430
Overall Influence
1916 - 1991 (75 years)
Bulee "Slim" Gaillard , also known as McVouty, was an American jazz singer and songwriter who played piano, guitar, vibraphone, and tenor saxophone. Gaillard was noted for his comedic vocalese singing and word play in his own constructed language called "Vout-o-Reenee", for which he wrote a dictionary. In addition to English, he spoke five languages with varying degrees of fluency.
Go to Profile#4614
Michel Duc-Goninaz
#60172
Overall Influence
1933 - 2016 (83 years)
Michel Duc Goninaz was a French Esperantist known worldwide for his 2002 revision of La Plena Ilustrita Vortaro de Esperanto . A member of the World Esperanto Youth Organization during the 1950s, he served as co-editor of La Folieto, distributed mainly among young Esperantists of Île-de-France. In 1956 he married Arlette Lecourtois. He played a role in the 1964 Esperanto-language feature film Angoroj.
Go to Profile#4615
Billy Strange
#69264
Overall Influence
1930 - 2012 (82 years)
William Everett Strange was an American singer, songwriter, guitarist, and an actor. He was a session musician with the famed Wrecking Crew, and was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum as a member of The Wrecking Crew in 2007.
Go to Profile#4616
David A. Nadler
#10826
Overall Influence
1948 - 2015 (67 years)
David A. Nadler was an American organizational theorist, consultant and business executive, known for his work with Michael L. Tushman on organizational design and organizational architecture. Biography Nadler obtained his BA in International Affairs at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, his MBA from Harvard Business School and his MA and his PhD in Psychology at the University of Michigan.
Go to Profile#4617
Jill Green
#40098
Overall Influence
Jill Green is an American dance educator and scholar who originated the Social Somatic Theory. Green served on the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and was co-editor of Dance Research.
Go to Profile#4618
Paul Weston
#61683
Overall Influence
1912 - 1996 (84 years)
Paul Weston was an American pianist, arranger, composer, and conductor who worked in music and television from the 1930s to the 1970s, pioneering mood music and becoming known as "the Father of Mood Music". His compositions include popular music songs such as "I Should Care", "Day by Day", and "Shrimp Boats". He also wrote classical pieces, including "Crescent City Suite" and religious music, authoring several hymns and masses.
Go to Profile#4619
Alka Yagnik
#63102
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Alka Yagnik is an Indian playback singer who works predominantly in Hindi cinema. One of the most prominent singers of 90s era of Bollywood, she has received several accolades including two National Film Awards, two Bengal Film Journalists' Association Awards and a record seven Filmfare Awards for Best Female Playback Singer from a record of thirty-six nominations.
Go to Profile#4620
Bob Leach
#59524
Overall Influence
1914 - 2008 (94 years)
Robert Warnes Leach was an American journalist and Hollywood screenwriter who became a leading figure in California's victims' rights movement after the death of his stepdaughter, Marsalee Nicholas in 1983.
Go to Profile#4621
Louise Jameson
#74741
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Louise Marion Jameson is an English actress with a variety of television and theatre credits. Her roles on television have included playing Leela in Doctor Who , Anne Reynolds in The Omega Factor , Blanche Simmons in Tenko , Susan Young in Bergerac , Rosa di Marco in EastEnders and Mary Goskirk in Emmerdale .
Go to Profile#4622
Frans Brüggen
#89773
Overall Influence
1934 - 2014 (80 years)
Franciscus Jozef Brüggen was a Dutch conductor, recorder player and baroque flautist. Biography Born in Amsterdam, Brüggen was the last of the nine children of August Brüggen, a textile factory owner, and his wife Johanna , an amateur singer. He studied recorder and flute at the Amsterdam Muzieklyceum. He also studied musicology at the University of Amsterdam. In 1955, at the age of 21, he was appointed professor at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. His reputation was initially as a recorder and Baroque flute virtuoso, and he commissioned several works for recorder including Luciano Berio's Gesti .
Go to Profile#4623
Mark Featherstone-Witty
#61041
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Mark Featherstone-Witty OBE is an educator and entrepreneur. He is the Founding Principal and Chief Executive of the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts which he founded, with Paul McCartney, in the mid-1990s, after establishing the British Record Industry Trust BRIT School in Croydon with Richard Branson.
Go to Profile#4624
Don Williams
#40908
Overall Influence
1939 - 2017 (78 years)
Donald Ray Williams was an American country music singer, songwriter, and 2010 inductee into the Country Music Hall of Fame. He began his solo career in 1971, singing popular ballads and amassing seventeen number one country hits. His straightforward yet smooth bass-baritone voice, soft tones, and imposing build earned him the nickname "The Gentle Giant". In 1975, Williams starred in a movie with Burt Reynolds and Jerry Reed called W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings.
Go to Profile#4625
Majid Majidi
#72054
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Majid Majidi is an Iranian filmmaker and producer. In his films, Majidi has touched on many themes and genres and has won numerous international awards. Biography Born in an Iranian middle-class family, he grew up in Tehran and at the age of 14 he started acting in amateur theater groups. He then studied at the Institute of Dramatic Arts in Tehran.
Go to Profile#4626
Mike Inez
#44932
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Michael Allen Inez is an American rock musician who has been the bassist of Alice in Chains since 1993. He is also recognized for his work with Ozzy Osbourne from 1989 to 1993. Inez has also been associated with Slash's Snakepit, Black Label Society, Spys4Darwin, and Heart. He is of Filipino descent. Inez has earned seven Grammy Award nominations as a member of Alice in Chains.
Go to Profile#4627
Jean Mulder
#110316
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Jean Mulder is a linguist. Mulder's research interests include Australian English and Tsimshian, a North American Indian language. Mulder is currently an Honorary Senior Fellow in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Melbourne, having been a Professor there until 2017. She is currently the editor of the Australian Journal of Linguistics.
Go to Profile#4628
Sanford Biggers
#45598
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Sanford Biggers is a Harlem-based interdisciplinary artist who works in film/video, installation, sculpture, music, and performance. An L.A. native, he has lived and worked in New York City since 1999.
Go to Profile#4629
Dieter Klöcker
#96035
Overall Influence
1936 - 2011 (75 years)
Dieter Klöcker was a German clarinetist known for rediscovering many forgotten composers of the 18th century. Specifically forgotten music of the clarinet. From 1975 to 2002, Klöcker taught clarinet and chamber wind music at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg. He was the leader of Consortium Classicum with which he also rediscovered the repertoire for Harmonie, a form of historical small wind ensemble. With them in particular he has also amassed an impressive discography.
Go to Profile#4630
John Edwards
#87799
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
John Victor "Rhino" Edwards is an English bass guitarist, playing in the rock group Status Quo. Career Born in Chiswick, London, Edwards learnt classical violin as a child and won a scholarship to the London College of Music at the age of eleven. He was educated at Chiswick Grammar School and Stinsford School, Dorchester.
Go to Profile#4631
Alex S. Jones
#85749
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Alex S. Jones is an American journalist who was director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government from July 1, 2000 until June 2015. He won a Pulitzer Prize for journalism in 1987.
Go to Profile#4632
Steve White
#42915
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
#4633
Shel Silverstein
#58724
Overall Influence
1930 - 1999 (69 years)
Sheldon Allan Silverstein was an American writer, poet, cartoonist, singer-songwriter, musician, and playwright. Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, Silverstein briefly attended university before being drafted into the United States Army. During his rise to prominence in the 1950s, his illustrations were published in various newspapers and magazines, including the adult-oriented Playboy. He also wrote a satirical, adult-oriented alphabet book, Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book, under the stylized name "Uncle Shelby", which he used as an occasional pen name.
Go to Profile#4634
Robert Cray
#54526
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Robert William Cray is an American blues guitarist and singer. He has led his own band and won five Grammy Awards. Early life Robert Cray was born on August 1, 1953, in Columbus, Georgia, while his father was stationed at Fort Benning. Cray's musical beginnings go back to when he was a student at Denbigh High School in Newport News, Virginia. While there, he played in his first band, The One-Way Street. His family eventually settled in the Tacoma, Washington, area. There, he attended Lakes High School in Lakewood, Washington.
Go to Profile#4635
Lino Pertile
#96934
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Lino Pertile is an Italian linguist, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. He served as House Master of Eliot House for 10 years, stepping down in 2010. Born in Italy near Padua, he taught at the universities of Reading, Sussex and Edinburgh, prior to moving on to Harvard.
Go to Profile#4636
Jeff Corey
#71412
Overall Influence
1914 - 2002 (88 years)
Jeff Corey was an American stage and screen actor who became a well-respected acting teacher after being blacklisted in the 1950s. Life and career Corey attended New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn and was active in the school's Dramatic Society. In the mid-1930s, he acted with the Clare Tree Major Children's Theater of New York. When Corey began making films, his agent suggested that he change his name from Arthur Zwerling, and he did so.
Go to Profile#4637
Abdul Wahab
#90561
Overall Influence
1916 - 1994 (78 years)
Abdul Wahab was a Bangladeshi journalist. He was awarded Ekushey Padak in 1979 by the Government of Bangladesh. Career After the Liberation of Bangladesh, Wahab edited The Liberation of Bangladesh, The Dhaka Daily and Morning News. He also served as a faculty in journalism at the University of Dhaka.
Go to Profile#4638
Albert Pratz
#67793
Overall Influence
1914 - 1995 (81 years)
Albert Pratz was a Canadian violinist, conductor, composer, and music educator. He was awarded the Canadian Centennial Medal in 1967. His compositional output was modest and consists of only instrumental works. Some of his compositions, such as Melanie Waltz and A Tango , were recorded by the CBC Symphony Orchestra; of which he was concertmaster from 1953 to 1961. He worked in the same capacity for the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra from 1966 to 1969, and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra from 1970 to 1979. He was also active as a teacher, both privately and at a number of universities, and mad...
Go to Profile#4639
Joachim Kaiser
#45140
Overall Influence
1928 - 2017 (89 years)
Joachim Kaiser was a German music, literature and theatre critic and senior editor in the feuilleton of the Süddeutsche Zeitung . Starting 1977 to 1996 he held a seat as a professor of history of music at the State University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart.
Go to Profile#4640
Pritam
#57290
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Pritam Chakraborty , also known mononymously as Pritam, is an Indian composer, instrumentalist, guitarist, and singer. After working as an ad jingles composer, he debuted as a co-composer in the 2001 Hindi film Tere Liye. As a solo composer, his composition of the title track of Dhoom helped him win the Zee Cine Award for Best Track of the Year. In a career spanning over two decades, he has composed music for more than 125 Bollywood Movies, and he has been the recipient of numerous awards, including 5 Filmfare Awards for Best Music Director from 21 nominations and 4 Mirchi Music Award for Music Composer of The Year from 14 nominations.
Go to Profile#4641
Ben Johnston
#76201
Overall Influence
1926 - 2019 (93 years)
Benjamin Burwell Johnston Jr. was an American contemporary music composer, known for his use of just intonation. He was called "one of the foremost composers of microtonal music" by Philip Bush and "one of the best non-famous composers this country has to offer" by John Rockwell.
Go to Profile#4642
James William Guercio
#42690
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
James William Guercio is an American music producer, musician, songwriter, and director. He is best known for his work as the producer of Chicago's first eleven studio albums during the Terry Kath years. Guercio also produced the early recordings of The Buckinghams and Blood, Sweat & Tears. He has worked briefly in the motion picture industry as a producer and director. In the mid-1970s, Guercio managed the Beach Boys and was a member of their backing band.
Go to Profile#4643
Barbara Bonney
#97341
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Barbara Bonney is an American soprano. She is associated with lyric soprano roles in operas by Mozart and Richard Strauss as well as lieder performances. Early life Bonney was born in Montclair, New Jersey. As a child she practised piano and cello. When Bonney was 13 her family moved to Maine, where she became part of the Portland Symphony Youth Orchestra as a cellist. She spent two years at the University of New Hampshire studying German and music including voice with Patricia Stedry, and spent her junior year at the University of Salzburg, where she switched from cello to voice. While there, she studied at Mozarteum University Salzburg.
Go to Profile#4644
T. V. Venkatachala Sastry
#66008
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Togere Venkatasubbasastry Venkatachala Sastry, commonly known as T. V. Venkatachala Shastry, is a Kannada-language writer, grammarian, critic, editor and lexicographer. He has authored in excess of 100 books, translations and has edited collections of essays, biographical sketches and felicitation volumes. Recipient of the Kannada Sahitya Akademi Award , Sastry is an authority on Kannada language grammar and its various facets ranging from the metre scale on which he has written extensively to the history of Kannada literature spanning two millennia.
Go to Profile#4645
Allan Bell
#102392
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Allan Bell , is a New Zealand academic and sociolinguistic researcher. He has written extensively on New Zealand English, language style, and media language. He is a founding co-editor of the international quarterly Journal of Sociolinguistics and is known for his theory of audience design. Currently, he is working as the Director of the Institute of Culture, Discourse & Communication and is a Professor of Language & Communication at Auckland University of Technology.
Go to Profile#4646
Galt MacDermot
#71131
Overall Influence
1928 - 2018 (90 years)
Arthur Terence Galt MacDermot was a Canadian-American composer, pianist and writer of musical theater. He won a Grammy Award for the song "African Waltz" in 1960. His most-successful musicals were Hair and Two Gentlemen of Verona . MacDermot also composed music for film soundtracks, jazz and funk albums, and classical music, and his music has been sampled in hit hip-hop songs and albums. He is best known for his work on Hair, which produced three number-one singles in 1969: "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In", "Good Morning Starshine", and the title song "Hair".
Go to Profile#4647
Adam Garfinkle
#44735
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Adam M. Garfinkle is an American historian and political scientist and the founding editor of The American Interest, a bimonthly public policy magazine. He was previously editor of The National Interest. He has been a university teacher and a staff member at high levels of the U.S. government. He was a speechwriter to more than one U.S. Secretary of State. Garfinkle was a speechwriter for both of President George W. Bush's Secretaries of State, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. He was editor of The National Interest and left to edit The American Interest in 2005. Francis Fukuyama, Eliot C...
Go to Profile#4648
Erica Klarreich
#58462
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Erica Gail Klarreich is an American mathematician, journalist and science popularizer. Early life and education Klarreich's father was a professor of mathematics, and her mother was a mathematics teacher.
Go to Profile#4649
Sharon Inkelas
#101054
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Sharon Inkelas is a Professor and former Chair of the Linguistics Department at the University of California, Berkeley. Education and career Inkelas completed her Bachelor of Arts in mathematics at Pomona College in 1984 and received her PhD in linguistics at Stanford University in 1989 with a dissertation, "Prosodic Constituency in the Lexicon," supervised by Paul Kiparsky. In 1990, she arrived at UC Berkeley as a Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science research fellow and became a faculty member at Berkeley in 1992. She was a Hellman Fellow in 1995. She was named the special faculty a...
Go to Profile#4650
Camille A. Brown
#73239
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Camille A. Brown is a dancer, choreographer, director and dance educator. She is the Founder & Artistic Director of Camille A. Brown & Dancers, and has congruently choreographed commissioned pieces for dance companies, Broadway shows, and universities. Brown started her career as a dancer in Ronald K. Brown’s Evidence, A Dance Company, and was a guest artist with Rennie Harris Puremovement, and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater . Brown has choreographed major Broadway shows such as Choir Boy, Once on This Island and Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert! that aired on NBC. Brown also teaches...
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