Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

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List of the most influential people in Communications,

#4751

Mark Slobin

#41455

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Mark Slobin is an American scholar and ethnomusicologist who has written extensively on the subject of East European Jewish music and klezmer music, as well as the music of Afghanistan, where he conducted research beginning in 1967. He is Winslow-Kaplan Professor of Music Emeritus at Wesleyan University, where he taught both music and American Studies from 1971 to 2016.

#4752

Astrid Varnay

#88655

Overall Influence

1918 - 2006 (88 years)

Ibolyka Astrid Maria Varnay was a Swedish-born American dramatic soprano of Hungarian descent. She spent most of her career in the United States and Germany. She was one of the leading Wagnerian heroic sopranos of her generation.

#4753

David Diamond

#79885

Overall Influence

1915 - 2005 (90 years)

David Leo Diamond was an American composer of classical music. He is considered one of the preeminent American composers of his generation. Many of his works are tonal or modestly modal. His early compositions are typically triadic, often with widely spaced harmonies, giving them a distinctly American tone, but some of his works are consciously French in style. His later style became more chromatic.

#4754

Larry Klein

#51359

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Larry Klein is an American musician, songwriter, and record producer. He is based in Los Angeles. He began his career as a bassist, playing with jazz artists Willie Bobo, Freddie Hubbard, Carmen McRae, Joe Henderson, Bobby Hutcherson, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Bobby McFerrin, and Dianne Reeves. As a bass player he has also worked with artists such as Bob Dylan, Robbie Robertson, Peter Gabriel, Don Henley, Lindsey Buckingham, and Randy Newman.

#4755

Margaret Pardee

#75281

Overall Influence

1920 - 2016 (96 years)

Margaret Pardee Butterly was an American violinist and violin teacher. Life and career Pardee was born in 1920 and grew up in Valdosta, Georgia. She graduated from the Juilliard School where she studied with Ivan Galamian, Sascha Jacobsen, Albert Spalding and Louis Persinger.

#4756

Jason Manford

#78934

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

Jason John Manford is an English comedian, presenter, actor and singer. Manford was a team captain on the Channel 4 panel show 8 Out of 10 Cats from 2007 until 2010 and has presented numerous television shows for the BBC and ITV including Comedy Rocks , The One Show , Show Me the Funny , A Question of Sport: Super Saturday , Bigheads and Children In Need , and is one of four judges on ITV's Starstruck .

#4757

Julia Duin

#67670

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Julia Duin is an American journalist and author who is Newsweek's religion correspondent. She has written seven books and was the religion editor for The Washington Times for 14 years. She has received three Wilbur Awards, most recently for a 2017 article in the Washington Post Magazine about Paula White, spiritual adviser to then-president Donald Trump.

#4758

Fernando Trueba

Fernando Trueba

#78277

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Fernando Rodríguez Trueba , known as Fernando Trueba, is a Spanish filmmaker, writer, producer and book editor. Between 1974 and 1979, he worked as a film critic for Spain's leading daily newspaper El País. In 1980, he founded the monthly film magazine Casablanca, which he edited and directed during its first two years. He is the author of Diccionario and the editor of Diccionario del Jazz Latino .

#4759

Rob Roy Kelly

#113957

Overall Influence

1925 - 2004 (79 years)

Robert Roy Kelly was a design educator who established multiple design programs in the formative years of graphic design education at art schools and universities. Known as a collector and scholar of wood type, Mr. Kelly authored American Wood Type, 1828–1900 . His comprehensive wood type collection now resides at the University of Texas.

#4760

Elvia Ardalani

#66557

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Elvia Ardalani or Elvia García Ardalani , is a Mexican writer, poet, and storyteller. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Modern languages and Literatures at the University of Texas–Pan American, where she teaches creative writing and Spanish literature.

#4761

Mandy Moore

#61815

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Samantha Jo "Mandy" Moore is an American choreographer, dancer, producer, and dance instructor. She is known for her work on the United States reality television series So You Think You Can Dance, having appeared on the show every year since the third season, and Dancing with the Stars. She choreographed the 2016 film La La Land and has also worked on stage musicals and commercials. She has created dance numbers for the Academy Awards, Golden Globe Awards, Emmy Awards, and Grammy Awards ceremonies. She has been nominated seven times for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Choreography, win...

#4762

Álex de la Iglesia

Álex de la Iglesia

#69802

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Alejandro "Álex" de la Iglesia Mendoza is a Spanish film director, screenwriter, producer and former comic book artist. De la Iglesia's films combine grotesque and very dark elements such as death and murder: most of his works are considered dark comedies, but are also often considered to have horror and/or drama elements. All his films, with the notable exceptions of The Last Circus and As Luck Would Have It , were written together with Jorge Guerricaechevarría.

#4763

Rosalyn Tureck

#93082

Overall Influence

1914 - 2003 (89 years)

Rosalyn Tureck was an American pianist and harpsichordist who was particularly associated with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. However, she had a wide-ranging repertoire that included works by composers Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms and Frédéric Chopin, as well as more modern composers such as David Diamond, Luigi Dallapiccola and William Schuman. Diamond's Piano Sonata No. 1 was inspired by Tureck's playing.

#4764

Gui Bonsiepe

#17480

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Gui Bonsiepe [ˈgɪː ˈbo˘nsɪːpe˘] is a German designer, teacher and writer. Especially in South America and Germany, his publications are considered standards of design theory. Life Gui Bonsiepe was born in Glücksburg, and studied Graphics and Architecture until 1955 at Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste, Munich and at TU München. Until 1959, he studied at Ulm School of Design in the Information Department. Between 1960 and 1968, he worked as an assistant professor at Ulm School of Design. After closure of the Ulm School of Design in 1968, Bonsiepe relocated to South America, working as a design consultant.

#4765

T. E. Baldwin

#120122

Overall Influence

#4766

Junior Wells

#72872

Overall Influence

1934 - 1998 (64 years)

Junior Wells was an American singer, harmonica player, and recording artist. He is best known for his signature song "Messin' with the Kid" and his 1965 album Hoodoo Man Blues, described by the critic Bill Dahl as "one of the truly classic blues albums of the 1960s". Wells himself categorized his music as rhythm and blues.

#4767

Jerry Allison

#72896

Overall Influence

1939 - 2022 (83 years)

Jerry Ivan Allison was an American musician. He was best known as the drummer for the Crickets and co-writer of their hits "That'll Be the Day" and "Peggy Sue", recorded with Buddy Holly. His only solo chart entry on the Billboard Hot 100 was "Real Wild Child", issued in 1958 under the name Ivan. Allison was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012.

#4768

Alexandra Berzon

#56273

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Alexandra Berzon is an American investigative reporter for The New York Times. She previously wrote for ProPublica and The Wall Street Journal. Her 2008 series of investigative stories about the deaths of construction workers on the Las Vegas Strip for the Las Vegas Sun won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service and The Hillman Prize.

#4769

Craig Leon

#70801

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Craig Leon is an American-born record producer, composer and arranger currently living in England. Leon was instrumental in launching the careers of many recording artists including the Ramones, Suicide, Talking Heads and Blondie.

#4770

Tom Fletcher

#70736

Overall Influence

1985 - Present (41 years)

Thomas Michael Fletcher is an English musician, composer, author and vlogger. He is one of the lead vocalists and rhythm guitarist of English pop rock band McFly, in addition to being the group's founder.

#4771

Wayne Jackson

#63279

Overall Influence

1941 - 2016 (75 years)

Wayne Lamar Jackson was an American soul and R&B musician, playing the trumpet in the Mar-Keys, in the house band at Stax Records and later as one of The Memphis Horns, described as "arguably the greatest soul horn section ever".

#4772

Michael Rosemann

#120224

Overall Influence

#4773

Emma Kirkby

#98126

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Dame Carolyn Emma Kirkby, is an English soprano and early music specialist. She has sung on over 100 recordings. Education and early career Kirkby was educated at Hanford School, Sherborne School for Girls in Dorset, and Somerville College, Oxford University. Her father was Geoffrey John Kirkby, a Royal Navy Officer.

#4774

Arturo Sandoval

#55689

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Arturo Sandoval is a Cuban-American jazz trumpeter, pianist, timbalero, and composer. While living in his native Cuba, Sandoval was influenced by jazz musicians Charlie Parker, Clifford Brown, and Dizzy Gillespie. In 1977 he met Gillespie, who became his friend and mentor and helped him defect from Cuba while on tour with the United Nations Orchestra. Sandoval became an American naturalized citizen in 1998. His life was the subject of the film For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story starring Andy García.

#4775

Tom Malone

#83913

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Thomas "Bones" Malone is an American jazz musician, arranger, and producer. As his nickname implies, he specializes on the trombone but he also plays saxophone, trumpet, tuba, flute, and bass guitar. He has been a member of The Blues Brothers, Saturday Night Live Band, Blood, Sweat & Tears, and the CBS Orchestra, the house band for the Late Show with David Letterman.

#4776

Jeff Green

#49431

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Jeffrey Green is an American writer and video game journalist, and the last editor-in-chief of Games for Windows: The Official Magazine. In November 2013, Jeff left PopCap Games, where he served as a director of editorial and social media. He was employed by the Sims division of developer Electronic Arts, where he served as a designer, producer, and writer. Green kept his job at Ziff Davis after the closing of GFW for several months before announcing his departure from the company. While an employee at Ziff Davis, Green hosted the weekly CGW Radio podcast and hosted The Official EA Podcast.

#4777

Manuel Alfonseca

Manuel Alfonseca

#92161

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Manuel Alfonseca is a Spanish writer and university professor. He is the son of the painter and sculptor Manuel Alfonseca Santana. Career He is a doctor of communications engineering and graduated in Computer Science. He worked for 22 years at IBM , where he was Senior Technical Staff Member. He has been a professor at several universities: Complutense de Madrid, Politécnica de Madrid and Autónoma de Madrid, where he was a full professor and director of the Escuela Politécnica Superior .

#4778

Fatma Ceren Necipoğlu

#44978

Overall Influence

1972 - 2009 (37 years)

Fatma Ceren Necipoğlu was a Turkish harpist and university lecturer for piano and harp. She was aboard Air France Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to Paris, France, which crashed in the Atlantic Ocean on 1 June 2009.

#4779

Maureen Forrester

#92345

Overall Influence

1930 - 2010 (80 years)

Maureen Kathleen Stewart Forrester, was a Canadian operatic contralto. Life and career Maureen Forrester was born and grew up in Montreal, Quebec, one of four children of Thomas Forrester, a Scottish cabinetmaker, and his Irish-born wife, the former May Arnold. She sang in church and radio choirs. At age 13, she dropped out of school to help support the family, working as a secretary at Bell Telephone.

#4780

Asif Kapadia

#59357

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Asif Kapadia is a British filmmaker. Academy Award, BAFTA and Grammy winning director Asif Kapadia has made his name directing visually striking films exploring ‘outsiders’, characters living in extreme circumstances, fighting against a corrupt or broken system. He has worked in drama and documentaries, Kapadia is best known for his trilogy of narratively driven, archive constructed documentaries Senna, Amy and Diego Maradona.

#4781

Theodore L. Glasser

#96436

Overall Influence

Theodore L. Glasser is an American academic. He is professor emeritus of communication at Stanford University, and the author of several books about American journalism. His scholarship focuses on questions of press responsibility and accountability. Glasser believes journalists must put social justice advocacy above objective reporting because objectivity is a myth. Instead of ever achieving objectivity, Glasser and co-author James Ettema were the first to demonstrate that norms of professional journalism amount to an attempt to "objectify morality" According to Glasser, Journalists need to b...

#4782

Don Murray

#68240

Overall Influence

1945 - 1996 (51 years)

Donald Ray Murray was an American drummer and Hanna-Barbera animator, best known for his work with the Turtles. After leaving the group, Murray played with Paul Williams's psychedelic folk group the Holy Mackerel. In the 1980s he went on to perform with the newly formed Surfaris.

#4783

Don Gibson

#69996

Overall Influence

1928 - 2003 (75 years)

Donald Eugene Gibson was an American songwriter and country musician. A Country Music Hall of Fame inductee, Gibson wrote such country standards as "Sweet Dreams" and "I Can't Stop Loving You", and enjoyed a string of country hits from 1957 into the mid-1970s.

#4784

Eddie Harris

#75813

Overall Influence

1934 - 1996 (62 years)

Eddie Harris was an American jazz musician, best known for playing tenor saxophone and for introducing the electrically amplified saxophone. He was also fluent on the electric piano and organ. His best-known compositions are "Freedom Jazz Dance", popularized by Miles Davis in 1966, and "Listen Here".

#4785

Lee Smith

#74443

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Lee Harold Smith is an American journalist and author. He is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and was a senior editor at The Weekly Standard. Smith was formerly editor-in-chief of The Village Voice Literary Supplement, a national monthly literary review. He has written for publications including The New York Times, The Hudson Review, Ecco Press, Atheneum, Grand Street, GQ, and Talk.

#4786

James Wilson Hurrell

#120326

Overall Influence

#4787

Vladimir Anić

#59363

Overall Influence

1930 - 2000 (70 years)

Vladimir Anić was a Croatian linguist and lexicographer. He is the author of Rječnik hrvatskoga jezika , the first modern single-volume dictionary of Croatian. Anić was born in Užice, Serbia. He received a B.A. degree in Yugoslav languages and literature and Russian language and literature at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb in 1956. In 1963 he obtained a Ph.D. with the thesis Language of Ante Kovačić. He taught at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zadar from 1960 to 1974, when he moved to the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb, becoming a full professor and head of the Department of Croatian lite...

#4788

Alice Harris

#106788

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Alice Carmichael Harris is an American linguist. She is Professor emerita of Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Research Citing an early interest in the “systematic, almost mathematical aspects of languages," Harris began investigating ergativity in graduate school, and in doing so began to study the Georgian language. She was one of the first Americans allowed to do research in the Republic of Georgia when it was still part of the Soviet Union. She has continued to work in this region, looking at different characteristics of Georgian, Laz, Svan, Mingrelian, Udi, and Bats...

#4789

Ann Copestake

#49843

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Ann Alicia Copestake is professor of computational linguistics and head of the Department of Computer Science and Technology at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge.

#4790

Mary Wells

#65712

Overall Influence

1943 - 1992 (49 years)

Mary Esther Wells was an American singer, who helped to define the emerging sound of Motown in the early 1960s. Along with the Supremes, the Miracles, the Temptations, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, and the Four Tops, Wells was said to have been part of the charge in black music onto radio stations and record shelves of mainstream America, "bridging the color lines in music at the time."

#4791

Sylvia Li-chun Lin

#77855

Overall Influence

Sylvia Li-chun Lin is a Taiwanese-born Chinese–English translator and a former associate professor of Chinese Literature at the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Notre Dame. She has translated over a dozen novels with her husband Howard Goldblatt.

#4792

Mikhail Pletnev

#79673

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Mikhail Vasilievich Pletnev is a Russian pianist, conductor and composer. Life and career Pletnev was born into a musical family in Arkhangelsk, then part of the Soviet Union. His father played and taught the bayan, and his mother was a pianist. He studied with Kira Shashkina for six years at the Special Music School of the Kazan Conservatory, before entering the Moscow Central Music School at the age of 13, where he studied under Evgeny Timakin. In 1974, he entered the Moscow Conservatory, studying under Yakov Flier and Lev Vlassenko. At age 21, he won the Gold Medal at the VI Internationa...

#4793

Melinda O'Neal

#69123

Overall Influence

Melinda O'Neal is a conductor of choral and choral-orchestral music, professor emerita of music, and author. O'Neal was music director and conductor of the Handel Society of Dartmouth College 1979–2004, and founder and conductor of Dartmouth College Chamber Singers 1979-1996. She was professor of music at Dartmouth College 1979–2018, leading ensembles and teaching courses in conducting, vocal literature, Berlioz and Brahms, and music theory.

#4794

Mako

#86056

Overall Influence

1933 - 2006 (73 years)

was a Japanese-American actor, credited mononymously in almost all of his acting roles as simply Mako. His role as Po-Han in The Sand Pebbles saw him nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Other various roles included Oomiak "The Fearless One" in The Island at the Top of the World , Akiro the Wizard in Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer , and Kungo Tsarong in Seven Years in Tibet . He was part of the original cast of Stephen Sondheim's 1976 Broadway musical Pacific Overtures, which earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical. He was also one o...

#4795

Malcolm MacDonald

#87093

Overall Influence

1948 - 2014 (66 years)

Malcolm MacDonald was a British author, mainly about music. Biography MacDonald was born in Nairn, Scotland and educated at the Royal High School, Edinburgh and Downing College, Cambridge. He lived in England from 1971 until his death, first in London and from 1992 in Gloucestershire. He died at Leckhampton Hospice.

#4796

Bill Leeb

#57425

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Wilhelm Anton "Bill" Leeb is an Austrian-Canadian electronic musician and record producer. He is best known for being a founding member of the industrial music group Front Line Assembly and Delerium. Additionally, Leeb is known for his work with groups such as Noise Unit, Intermix, and Skinny Puppy, among others.

#4797

Laura Marling

#65597

Overall Influence

1990 - Present (36 years)

Laura Beatrice Marling is a British folk singer-songwriter. She won the Brit Award for Best British Female Solo Artist at the 2011 Brit Awards and was nominated for the same award at the 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2018 Brit Awards.

#4798

Bryce Dessner

#65422

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Bryce David Dessner is an American composer and guitarist based in Paris, as well as a member of the rock band the National. Dessner's twin brother, Aaron is also a member of the group. Together, they write the music in collaboration with lead singer and lyricist Matt Berninger.

#4799

Jackie Spinner

#72963

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Jackie Spinner is an American journalist who worked for The Washington Post from 1995 to 2009. Biography Spinner grew up in Decatur, Illinois, the daughter of a pipe fitter and a schoolteacher. She has a bachelor of science degree in journalism from Southern Illinois University Carbondale and a master's degree at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley.

#4800

Michael C. Janeway

#85255

Overall Influence

1940 - 2014 (74 years)

Michael Charles Janeway was an American journalist. He was editor-in-chief of The Boston Globe, dean of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, and a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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