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,
#4651
Daniel Ford
#51051
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Daniel Ford is an American journalist, novelist, and historian. The son of Patrick and Anne Ford, he attended public schools in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, graduating in 1950 from Brewster Academy in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. He was educated at the University of New Hampshire , the University of Manchester , and King's College London .
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Franz Ackermann
#81518
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Franz Ackermann is a German painter and installation artist based in Berlin. He makes cartoonish abstraction. Life He attended the Akademie der Bildenden Kunste in Munich from 1984 to 1988 and the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg from 1989 to 1991.
Go to Profile#4653
Dennis Arnold. Gioia
#118523
Overall Influence
#4654
Rebecca Warren
#59713
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Rebecca Jane Warren is a British visual artist and sculptor, born in Pinhoe, Exeter. She is particularly well known for her works in clay and bronze and for her arranged vitrines. The artist currently lives and works in London.
Go to Profile#4655
Leonard Cohen
#66862
Overall Influence
1934 - 2016 (82 years)
Leonard Norman Cohen was a Canadian singer-songwriter, poet, and novelist. Themes commonly explored throughout his work include faith and mortality, isolation and depression, betrayal and redemption, social and political conflict, and sexual and romantic love, desire, regret, and loss. He was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was invested as a Companion of the Order of Canada, the nation's highest civilian honour. In 2011 he received one of the Prince of Asturias Awards for literature and the ninth Gle...
Go to Profile#4656
Steve Coleman
#73118
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Steve Coleman is an American saxophonist, composer, bandleader and music theorist. In 2014, he was named a MacArthur Fellow. Early life Steve Coleman was born and grew up in South Side, Chicago. He started playing alto saxophone at the age of 14. Coleman attended Illinois Wesleyan University for two years,. followed by a transfer to Roosevelt University .
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Example
#67894
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Elliot John Gleave , known professionally as Example, is an English musician, singer, songwriter, rapper and record producer. He released his debut studio album, What We Made, in 2007, followed by the mixtape, What We Almost Made, in 2008. Example first found success in 2010 with the release of his second studio album, Won't Go Quietly, which peaked at number four on the UK Albums Chart and number one on the UK Dance Chart. The album had two top 10 singles, "Won't Go Quietly" and "Kickstarts".
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Jimmie Haskell
#65522
Overall Influence
1936 - 2016 (80 years)
Jimmie Haskell was an American composer and arranger for motion pictures and a wide variety of popular artists, including Elvis Presley, Neil Diamond, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Steely Dan, Billy Joel, and the Everly Brothers. His career spanned over six decades.
Go to Profile#4659
Steve Curwood
#76254
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Stephen Thomas Curwood is a journalist, author, public radio personality and actor. While working for The Boston Globe as an investigative reporter and columnist he shared the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service as part of The Boston Globes education team.
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Roy Haynes
#49270
Overall Influence
1925 - Present (101 years)
Roy Owen Haynes is an American jazz drummer. He is among the most recorded drummers in jazz. In a career lasting over 80 years, he has played swing, bebop, jazz fusion, avant-garde jazz and is considered a pioneer of jazz drumming. "Snap Crackle" was a nickname given to him in the 1950s.
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K. G. Subramanyan
#26325
Overall Influence
1924 - 2016 (92 years)
Kalpathi Ganpathi "K.G." Subramanyan was an Indian artist. He was awarded the Padma Vibhushan in 2012. Life Subramanyan was born in Tamil Brahmin family on 1924 in Kuthuparamba in Kerala, India, and initially studied economics at Presidency College, Madras. During the freedom struggle he was actively involved and was known for his Gandhian ideology. He was even imprisoned and later banned from joining government colleges during the British Rule. The turning point of his life, as an artist, came when he visited Santiniketan to study in Kala Bhavan, the art faculty of Visva Bharati University, in the year 1944.
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Porter Wagoner
#36978
Overall Influence
1927 - 2007 (80 years)
Porter Wayne Wagoner was an American country music singer known for his flashy Nudie and Manuel suits and blond pompadour. In 1967, he introduced singer Dolly Parton on his television show, The Porter Wagoner Show. She became part of a well-known vocal duo with him from the late 1960s to the early 1970s.
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Wilfrid Hyde-White
#77731
Overall Influence
1903 - 1991 (88 years)
Wilfrid Hyde-White was a British character actor of stage, film and television. He achieved international recognition for his role as Colonel Pickering in the film version of the musical My Fair Lady .
Go to Profile#4664
Richard L. L. Baskerville
#118703
Overall Influence
#4665
Linda Gary
#90999
Overall Influence
1944 - 1995 (51 years)
Linda Gary was an American actress. Career Live-action appearances Gary worked as a voice-over artist in animation and also appeared in two live-action films, 1977's Joyride To Nowhere with husband Charles Howerton and 1980's Cruising with Al Pacino. She lent her voice in such movies as Wolfen and Switch.
Go to Profile#4666
Trilok Gurtu
#73777
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Trilok Gurtu is an Indian percussionist and composer whose work has blended the music of India with jazz fusion and world music. He has worked with Terje Rypdal, Gary Moore, John McLaughlin, Jan Garbarek, Joe Zawinul, Michel Bisceglia, Bill Laswell, Maria João & Mário Laginha, Stefano Bollani and Robert Miles.
Go to Profile#4667
Oscar Castro-Neves
#90861
Overall Influence
1940 - 2013 (73 years)
Oscar Castro-Neves , was a Brazilian guitarist, arranger, and composer who is considered a founding figure in bossa nova. Biography He was born in Rio de Janeiro as one of triplets and formed a band with his brothers in his youth. At 16 he had a national hit with Chora Tua Tristeza. In 1962 he was in a bossa nova concert at Carnegie Hall, and later he toured with Stan Getz and Sérgio Mendes. He went on to work with musicians from different genres, including Billy Eckstine, Yo Yo Ma, Michael Jackson, Barbra Streisand, Stevie Wonder, João Gilberto, Eliane Elias, Lee Ritenour, Airto Moreira, Toots Thielemans, John Klemmer, Carol Welsman, Stephen Bishop, and Diane Schuur.
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Frederic Rzewski
#58727
Overall Influence
1938 - 2021 (83 years)
Frederic Anthony Rzewski was an American composer and pianist, considered to be one of the most important American composer-pianists of his time. His major compositions, which often incorporate social and political themes, include the minimalist Coming Together and the variation set The People United Will Never Be Defeated!, which has been called "a modern classic".
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Roberto Faenza
#72149
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Roberto Faenza is an Italian film director. He received a degree in Political Science and a diploma at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. Career Faenza made his directing debut in 1968 with the international success, Escalation, a film that describes the different sides of power through the relationship between a middle-class father and his hippie son. Immediately after that he directed H2S, an angry apology of the 1968 movement, seized two days after its release and not distributed since. Upon this sequestration he travelled to the United States to teach at the Federal City College ...
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Alan Robert Dennis
#118804
Overall Influence
#4671
Dick Hyde
#74501
Overall Influence
1936 - 2019 (83 years)
Richard John Hyde , sometimes credited as Slyde Hyde, was an American trombonist who played several brass and woodwind instruments. He was a member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame. He worked as a session musician and sideman for Count Basie, Herbie Hancock, Frank Sinatra, Jaco Pastorius, Steely Dan, Earth, Wind & Fire, The Beach Boys, Tom Waits, Supertramp, Temptations, Boz Scaggs, Ringo Starr, Carole King, Madonna, and Donna Summer.
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Hans Ras
#65072
Overall Influence
1926 - 2003 (77 years)
Johannes Jacobus Ras was emeritus professor of Javanese language and literature at Leiden University, the Netherlands. In 1961 he was lecturer at the University of Malaya, and in 1969 first representative in Jakarta of the KITLV . Until his retirement he was several times a member of the board of the KITLV. From 1985 to 1992, he was professor of Javanese language and literature at the University of Leiden.
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Cory Rooney
#48856
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Mark Cory Rooney is an American record producer. He has written, produced, and developed various successful records for artists including Mariah Carey, Mary J. Blige, Jessica Simpson, Jennifer Lopez, Marc Anthony, Thalia, Michael Jackson, and Destiny's Child.
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Paul D'Ambrosio
#95619
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Paul D'Ambrosio is an American journalist and novelist. He is the former executive editor of the Asbury Park Press, and creator of DataUniverse.com, a public records site used by multiple Gannett newspapers. He is currently a senior editor at The Marshall Project.
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Irit Meir
#60423
Overall Influence
1957 - 2018 (61 years)
Irit Meir was an Israeli linguist, who specialized in the linguistics of sign languages. She was an associate professor in the Department of Hebrew Language and the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Haifa, and the associate director of the Sign Language Research Lab.
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John Chowning
#39416
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
John M. Chowning is an American composer, musician, discoverer, and professor best known for his work at Stanford University, the founding of CCRMA - Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics in 1975 and his development of the digital implementation of FM synthesis and the digital sound spatialization while there.
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Giuliano Gemma
#95371
Overall Influence
1938 - 2013 (75 years)
Giuliano Gemma was an Italian actor. He is best known internationally for his work in Spaghetti Westerns, particularly for his performances as the title character in Duccio Tessari's A Pistol for Ringo , Captain Montgomery Brown/'Ringo' in Tessari's The Return of Ringo , the title character in Michele Lupo's Arizona Colt , Scott Mary in Tonino Valerii's Day of Anger and Michael "California" Random in Lupo's California .
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Tibor Kneif
#63159
Overall Influence
1932 - 2016 (84 years)
Tiburtius Tibor Kneif was a German-Hungarian lawyer and musicologist. Life Born in Bratislava, Kneif, who after studying law received his doctorate from the Faculty of Law in Budapest in 1955, continued his studies at the Faculty of Law in Göttingen after emigrating to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1956, but from 1959 he turned his attention to musicology, philosophy and Romance studies and received his doctorate again in 1963, this time with the musicological topic Zur Entstehung der musikalischen Mediävistik with Heinrich Husmann. With a scholarship from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft he worked at the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research with Theodor W.
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Cliff Williams
#66751
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Clifford Williams is an English musician, best known as the bassist and backing vocalist of the Australian hard rock band AC/DC. He started his professional music career in 1967 and had previously been in the English groups Home and Bandit. His first studio album with AC/DC was Powerage in 1978. Williams was inducted into the American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of AC/DC in 2003. Williams announced his retirement from AC/DC in 2016, but returned for their 2020 comeback album Power Up along with band mates Brian Johnson and Phil Rudd. His side projects include benefit concerts.
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Roberta Peters
#86018
Overall Influence
1930 - 2017 (87 years)
Roberta Peters was an American coloratura soprano. One of the most prominent American singers to achieve lasting fame and success in opera, Peters is noted for her 35-year association with the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York, among the longest such associations between a singer and a company in opera. She was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1998.
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Joshard Daus
#53173
Overall Influence
1947 - 2021 (74 years)
Joshard Daus was a German choral conductor. He was noted for revival in performance and recording of the lost passion oratorios of CPE Bach.
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Carlo Vanzina
#86423
Overall Influence
1951 - 2018 (67 years)
Carlo Vanzina was an Italian film director, producer and screenwriter. Vanzina was born in Rome, the son of Maria Teresa Nati and film director Stefano Vanzina and brother of Enrico Vanzina. In English-speaking countries, he is likely best known for his 1985 giallo Nothing Underneath, starring Donald Pleasence and Renée Simonsen, which received a substantial home video release and aired on cable frequently. He would effectively remake his own film in 2011 as The Last Fashion Show with Richard E. Grant.
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Jeff Bradetich
#64260
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Jeffrey David Bradetich is an American professor and performer of double bass. He currently teaches at the University of North Texas College of Music. Bradetich made his New York City debut at the Carnegie Recital Hall on November 22, 1982. Since then, Bradetich has performed over 800 concerts and given more than 1300 master classes throughout the world, including the continents of South America, Europe, Africa and Asia.
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John Wilson
#64533
Overall Influence
1943 - 2018 (75 years)
John Dennis Wilson was a British angler who had been involved with angling television production for over twenty years featuring on Channel 4 Television and more recently on the digital TV channel, Discovery Real Time. Wilson was voted 'The Greatest Angler of all Time' in a 2004 poll by readers of the Angling Times Newspaper.
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Jackson Mac Low
#58732
Overall Influence
1922 - 2004 (82 years)
Jackson Mac Low was an American poet, performance artist, composer and playwright, known to most readers of poetry as a practioneer of systematic chance operations and other non-intentional compositional methods in his work, which Mac Low first experienced in the musical work of John Cage, Earle Brown, and Christian Wolff. He was married to the artist Iris Lezak from 1962 to 1978, and to the poet Anne Tardos from 1990 until his death.
Go to Profile#4686
Bobby Hillson
#76797
Overall Influence
Bobby Hillson is a London-based fashion illustrator, former designer of children's clothing, and founder of the Saint Martin's School of Art MA Fashion course. Early life Hillson, who had studied at Saint Martin's School of Art, started out as an illustrator for publications such as Vogue UK, The Sunday Times, and The Observer in the early 1950s. In 1954 she attended Coco Chanel's relaunch show. She is particularly renowned for her 1960s illustration work. In 1969, she launched her childrenswear brand, and in 1972, a little girl's dress and pinafore was chosen as the Dress of the Year by Moira Keenan alongside a Biba outfit and a young boy's outfit by Burton.
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Omara Portuondo
#68971
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Omara Portuondo Peláez is a Cuban singer and dancer. A founding member of the popular vocal group Cuarteto d'Aida, Portuondo has collaborated with many important Cuban musicians during her long career, including Julio Gutiérrez, Juanito Márquez and Chucho Valdés. Although primarily known for her rendition of boleros, she has recorded in a wide range of styles from jazz to son cubano. Since 1996, she has been part of the Buena Vista Social Club project, touring extensively and recording several albums with the ensemble. She won a Latin Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Tropical Album in 2009,...
Go to Profile#4688
Evelyn Glennie
#67712
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Dame Evelyn Elizabeth Annie Glennie, is a Scottish percussionist. She was selected as one of the two laureates for the Polar Music Prize of 2015. Early life Glennie was born in Methlick, Aberdeenshire in Scotland. The indigenous musical traditions of north-east Scotland were important in her development as a musician. Her first instruments were the piano and the clarinet. Other influences were Glenn Gould, Jacqueline du Pré and Trilok Gurtu. She studied at Ellon Academy, Aberdeenshire and the Royal Academy of Music, London. She was a member of the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland and th...
Go to Profile#4689
Mezri Haddad
#63249
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Mezri Haddad is a Tunisian journalist, writer, philosopher and diplomat. Haddad was a doctor of moral and political philosophy at the Paris-Sorbonne University, and the first Muslim candidate to be qualified by the National Council of French universities as a lecturer in Catholic theology. He is the author of several essays that focus on politics and religion .
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James Cox
#89342
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (125 years)
James Cox is a British journalist and broadcaster who had a wide-ranging career in newspapers and in broadcasting in Scotland. After a spell with the Daily Record newspaper in Glasgow he worked on Public Account from 1975 with Donald MacCormick and Andrew Neil and presented Good Morning Scotland on BBC Radio Scotland for many years.
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Brian James
#86680
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Brian James is an English punk rock guitarist, who is best known for being a founding member of The Damned as well as of The Lords of the New Church. Biography He began his musical career playing in several proto-punk bands including London SS and The Subterraneans, in addition to glam rock band Bastard. James moved on to The Damned, writing almost all the material on their first two albums before leaving at the end of 1977.
Go to Profile#4692
Robin Wilson
#51320
Overall Influence
1928 - 2013 (85 years)
Robin Scott Wilson was an American science fiction author and editor, and President of California State University, Chico from 1980 to 1993. Life and career Wilson was born in Columbus, Ohio and earned a BA degree from Ohio State University in 1949, before spending a year in the Merchant Marine. He then went back to school, obtaining an MA at the University of Illinois. He served in military intelligence in the United States Navy for several years, before finishing his PhD work at the University of Illinois in 1959.
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Peter Jones
#87231
Overall Influence
1920 - 2000 (80 years)
Peter Geoffrey Francis Jones was an English actor, screenwriter and broadcaster. Early life and early career Peter Jones, born in Wem, Shropshire, was educated at Wem Grammar School and Ellesmere College, making his first appearance as an actor in Wolverhampton at the age of 16 and then appeared in repertory theatre in East Anglia. In 1942 he acted on the West End stage in The Doctor's Dilemma and in 1942 he made an uncredited film appearance in Fanny by Gaslight. An early film credit was as a Xenobian trade delegate in Chance of a Lifetime .
Go to Profile#4694
Marion Zimmer Bradley
#60670
Overall Influence
1930 - 1999 (69 years)
Marion Eleanor Zimmer Bradley was an American author of fantasy, historical fantasy, science fiction, and science fantasy novels, and is best known for the Arthurian fiction novel The Mists of Avalon and the Darkover series. Noted for the feminist perspective in her writing, her reputation has been posthumously marred by her daughter Moira Greyland's accusations of child sexual abuse, and for allegedly assisting her second husband, convicted child abuser Walter Breen, in sexually abusing multiple unrelated children.
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Catherine Hardwicke
#43967
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Helen Catherine Hardwicke is an American film director, production designer, and screenwriter. Her directorial work includes Thirteen , which she co-wrote with Nikki Reed, the film's co-star, Lords of Dogtown , The Nativity Story , Twilight , Red Riding Hood , Plush , Miss You Already , Miss Bala , and Prisoner's Daughter .
Go to Profile#4696
Pierre-Laurent Aimard
#91193
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Pierre-Laurent Aimard is a French pianist. Biography Aimard was born in Lyon, where he entered the conservatory. Later he studied with Yvonne Loriod and with Maria Curcio. In 1973, he was awarded the chamber music prize of the Paris Conservatoire. In the same year, he won the first prize at the international Olivier Messiaen Competition. In 1977, at the invitation of Pierre Boulez, he became a founding member of the Ensemble InterContemporain. He made his American debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the age of twenty, performing the piano solo part in Olivier Messiaen's Turangalîla-S...
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Betty Carter
#68378
Overall Influence
1929 - 1998 (69 years)
Betty Carter was an American jazz singer known for her improvisational technique, scatting and other complex musical abilities that demonstrated her vocal talent and imaginative interpretation of lyrics and melodies. Vocalist Carmen McRae once remarked: "There's really only one jazz singer—only one: Betty Carter."
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Sonia Seymour Mikich
#61365
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Sonia Seymour Mikich is a German TV journalist. Education After studying political sciences, sociology, and philosophy from 1972–1979 at the RWTH Aachen University. She worked as research associate with the institute's Arnold-Gehlen Research Group. In 1985 she received a scholarship from the German Marshall Fund.
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Bob Young
#89300
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Robert Keith Young is an English musician and author, who became famous for being the unofficial fifth member of the rock band Status Quo. Collaborations with Status Quo From the mid-1960s onwards, Young has been working in the music business, starting as a crew member for Amen Corner, The Nice and also for The Herd. Based on this experience he was hired by the management of Status Quo, after they had their first hit with "Pictures of Matchstick Men" in 1968.
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Bob Crosby
#58041
Overall Influence
1913 - 1993 (80 years)
George Robert Crosby was an American jazz singer and bandleader, best known for his group the Bob-Cats, which formed around 1935. The Bob-Cats were a New Orleans Dixieland-style jazz octet. He was the younger brother of famed singer and actor Bing Crosby. On TV, Bob Crosby guest-starred in The Gisele MacKenzie Show. He was also a regular cast member of The Jack Benny Program, on both radio and television, taking over the role of bandleader after Phil Harris' departure. Crosby hosted his own afternoon TV variety show on CBS, The Bob Crosby Show . Crosby received two stars on the Hollywood Walk...
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