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,
#4851
Philippe Claudel
#100535
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Philippe Claudel is a French writer and film director. Claudel was born in Dombasle-sur-Meurthe, Meurthe-et-Moselle. In addition to his writing, Claudel is a Professor of Literature at the University of Nancy.
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Helge Julius Jakhelln Dyvik
#120878
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Helge Julius Jakhelln Dyvik is a Norwegian linguistics professor. Dyvik was born in Bodø. After receiving a master's degree from the University of Bergen in 1972, he studied Old English and Middle English at Durham University in 1973, and then in 1976 received a master's degree in Nordic languages from the University of Bergen, where he also received his doctorate in 1983 with a dissertation in theoretical linguistics titled Grammatikk og empiri: en syntaktisk modell og dens forutsetninger . In 1987 he received the Fridtjof Nansen Award for Excellence. He has worked at the University of Berge...
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Lucille Watahomigie
#108575
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Lucille Watahomigie is a Hualapai educator and linguist and native speaker of the Hualapai language. Biography After receiving her bachelor's degree in elementary education from Northern Arizona University, she returned to the Hualapai community of Peach Springs and became a teacher at the Peach Springs School. She went on to receive her master's degree at the University of Arizona, where she then worked as a professor for three years before returning to the Hualapai Nation in 1975 to found the Hualapai bilingual and bicultural education program in response to community demand. In 1982, she c...
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Dave Liebman
#74093
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
David Liebman is an American saxophonist, flautist and jazz educator. He is known for his innovative lines and use of atonality. He was a frequent collaborator with pianist Richie Beirach. In June 2010, he received a NEA Jazz Masters lifetime achievement award from the National Endowment for the Arts .
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Chris Connor
#80008
Overall Influence
1927 - 2009 (82 years)
Mary Jean Loutsenhizer, known professionally as Chris Connor was an American jazz singer. Biography Chris Connor was born Mary Loutsenhizer in Kansas City, Missouri, to Clyde Loutsenhizer and Mabel Shirley. She became proficient on the clarinet, having studied for eight years during middle school and high school. She sang with the college band at the University of Missouri, playing at functions in Columbia, Missouri.
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Ferenc Farkas
#98723
Overall Influence
1905 - 2000 (95 years)
Ferenc Farkas was a Hungarian composer. Biography Born into a musical family in Nagykanizsa; he began his musical studies in Budapest, at the Protestant Gymnasium and later attended the Music Academy, where he studied composition with Leó Weiner and Albert Siklós.
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Darlene Love
#38261
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Darlene Wright , known professionally as Darlene Love, is an American singer and actress. She was the lead singer of the girl group the Blossoms and she also recorded as a solo artist. She began singing as a child with her local church choir. In 1962, she began recording with producer Phil Spector who renamed her Darlene Love. She sang lead on "He's a Rebel" and "He's Sure the Boy I Love," which were credited to the Crystals. She was soon a highly sought-after vocalist and worked with many rock and soul legends of 1960s, including Sam Cooke, Dionne Warwick, Bill Medley, the Beach Boys, Elvis Presley, Tom Jones and Sonny and Cher.
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Bettelou Los
#111279
Overall Influence
Bettelou Los is a linguist and philologist specializing in the history of the English language. Since 2013 she has held the Forbes Chair of English Language at the University of Edinburgh. Academic career Los received her MA from the University of Amsterdam in 1986. After spending some time working as a translator, she obtained her PhD in 2000 from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; her dissertation focused on infinitives in Old and Middle English. From 2004 she held positions as lecturer first at the Vrije Universiteit and then at Radboud University Nijmegen, where she was promoted to senior l...
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Stephanie W. Jamison
#58591
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Stephanie Wroth Jamison is an American linguist, currently at University of California, Los Angeles and an Elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She did her doctoral work at Yale University as a student of Stanley Insler, and is trained as a historical linguist and Indo-Europeanist. Much of her work focusses on Sanskrit and other Indo-Iranian languages.
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Simon Rogers
#86071
Overall Influence
Simon Rogers is an English musician, record producer and composer who has been a member of The Fall, and The Lightning Seeds. Biography In 1976, Rogers entered the Royal College of Music, London, later becoming an associate and winning their guitar prize in 1980. Upon leaving he joined Ballet Rambert's Mercury Ensemble as their guitarist. During this period he composed several ballet scores, including Entre Dos Aguas and Fabrications for London Contemporary Dance Theatre. He also made his first commercial hit, joining the South American folk music group Incantation who enjoyed some UK and in...
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Élise Paré-Tousignant
#116185
Overall Influence
1937 - 2018 (81 years)
Élise Paré-Tousignant was a Canadian music administrator and music pedagogue. She was employed as a music theory teacher and auditory trainor at Université Laval and then was appointed the Faculty of Arts at Université Laval's first dean in 1985. Paré-Tousignant was the university's vice-rector of human resources and held the role of artistic director of the Domaine Forget that he held from 1993 to 2001. She oversaw the construction of the Domaine's Françoys-Bernier Hall and was the supervisor of the renovation of the . Paré-Tousignant served on the board of directors of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and was president of the between 2001 and 2005.
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George Hamilton IV
#75231
Overall Influence
1937 - 2014 (77 years)
George Hege Hamilton IV was an American country musician. He began performing in the late 1950s as a teen idol, switching to country music in the early 1960s. Biography Hamilton was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, United States, on July 19, 1937, the son of Moravian parents George Hege Hamilton III and Mary Lilian . He was introduced to country music by his paternal grandfather, a railroad worker. His great-grandfather, the first George Hege Hamilton, was a farmer, of a family that came from Scotland to America in 1685.
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Gustavo Dudamel
#55251
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Gustavo Adolfo Dudamel Ramírez is a Venezuelan conductor and violinist. He is currently music director of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Paris Opera. He is scheduled to become music director of the New York Philharmonic in 2026.
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William Benoit
#51578
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
William Lyon Benoit is an American scholar in the field of political communication. He graduated from Ball State University in 1975 and obtained his Master of Arts degree from Central Michigan University in 1976. He also holds a PhD from Wayne State University.
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Curtis Fuller
#77272
Overall Influence
1934 - 2021 (87 years)
Curtis DuBois Fuller was an American jazz trombonist. He was a member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and contributed to many classic jazz recordings. Early life Fuller was born in Detroit on December 15, 1932. His father had emigrated from Jamaica and worked in a Ford automobile factory, but he died from tuberculosis before his son was born. His mother, who had moved north from Atlanta, died when he was 9. He spent several years in an orphanage run by Jesuits. He developed a passion for jazz after one of the nuns there brought him to see Illinois Jacquet and his band perform, with J. J. Joh...
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Paul Jackson Jr.
#39471
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Paul Milton Jackson Jr. is an American fusion/urban jazz composer, arranger, producer and guitarist. In addition to being a recording artist in his own right, Jackson is also a session player, with a career spanning multiple decades. He has supported artists ranging from Michael Jackson to the Temptations, Whitney Houston, Alexander O'Neal, Five Star , Howard Hewett, Thomas Anders, Patti LaBelle and Luis Miguel, to rockers such as Chicago and Elton John, to jazz-oriented players such as George Duke, George Benson, Dave Koz, Al Jarreau, David Benoit, Marcus Miller and Kirk Whalum, and to Ch...
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Wadada Leo Smith
#81756
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith is an American trumpeter and composer, working primarily in the field of creative music. He was one of three finalists for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Music for Ten Freedom Summers, released on May 22, 2012.
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P. J. Honey
#84504
Overall Influence
1922 - 2005 (83 years)
Patrick James Honey was an Irish-born Vietnamese language scholar and historian. Biography Early life and education Honey was born in Navan, County Meath, Ireland. He went to Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School in London before entering Birkbeck, University of London in 1940 to read Classics. In 1941 he enlisted in the Royal Navy, seeing active service on the Atlantic convoys, on the Russian convoys, in the Italian campaign, and finally the Far East. In 1945, when the Japanese surrendered in Saigon, the young lieutenant was sent with a small British force under General Douglas Gracey to maintain civil order in Saigon.
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Hans Deinzer
#107455
Overall Influence
1934 - 2020 (86 years)
Hans Deinzer was a clarinetist and clarinet teacher who taught at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Hannover for thirty years, and retired in 1996. Biography Born in , Deinzer received his first clarinet lessons at the Städtisches Konservatoriun in Nuremberg between 1949 and 1955. He was until 1962 a student of Rudolf Gall in Munich.
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Robert M. Shuter
#77649
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Dr. Robert Martin Shuter was an American author, academic, and consultant specializing in intercultural communication. He was Research Professor at the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University and Professor Emeritus at the Diederich College of Communication at Marquette University, where he taught for 41 years and chaired the Department of Communication Studies for 29 years.
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Robert Ward
#91634
Overall Influence
1917 - 2013 (96 years)
Robert Eugene Ward was an American composer who is best remembered for his opera The Crucible after the 1953 play of the same name by Arthur Miller. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music for that opera in 1962.
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John Benitez
#58218
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
John Benitez , also known as Jellybean, is an American musician, songwriter, DJ, remixer, and music producer. He has produced and remixed artists such as Madonna, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, and the Pointer Sisters. He was later the executive producer of Studio 54 Radio. In December 2016, Billboard magazine ranked him as the 99th most successful dance artist of all-time.
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Dick Hyman
#77237
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (99 years)
Richard Hyman is an American jazz pianist and composer. Over a 70-year career, he has worked as a pianist, organist, arranger, music director, electronic musician, and composer. He was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters fellow in 2017.
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Semyon Bychkov
#96132
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Semyon Mayevich Bychkov is a Soviet-born conductor. He currently holds the position of chief conductor and artistic director of the Czech Philharmonic. Biography Childhood and studies in Russia Bychkov was born in Leningrad to Jewish parents. His younger brother was Yakov Kreizberg, also a conductor. Bychkov studied at the Glinka Choir School for ten years before moving to the Leningrad Conservatory where he was a student of Ilya Musin. While at the Conservatory, Bychkov played volleyball for the Leningrad Dynamos. In 1973 he won the Rachmaninov Conducting Competition, but was denied the ...
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Danger Mouse
#35804
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Brian Joseph Burton , known professionally as Danger Mouse, is an American musician and record producer. He came to prominence in 2004 when he released The Grey Album, which combined vocal performances from Jay-Z's The Black Album with instrumentals from the Beatles' The Beatles, also known as The White Album. In 2008, Esquire named him one of the "75 most influential people of the 21st century".
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Ryan Cayabyab
#57781
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Raymundo Cipriano Pujante Cayabyab , known professionally as Ryan Cayabyab , is a Filipino musician, composer and conductor regarded as one of the pillars and icons of Original Pilipino Music . He was the Executive and Artistic Director for several years for the defunct San Miguel Foundation for the Performing Arts. He was named National Artist of the Philippines for Music in 2018.
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Kalevi Aho
#85115
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Kalevi Ensio Aho is a Finnish composer. Early years Aho began his interest in music at the age of ten, when he discovered a mandolin in his home and began to teach himself how to play it. He soon was taken under the tutelage of Martti Loikkanen, the boy's 4th grade teacher and founder of a local youth mandolin ensemble in Forssa. After learning how to read sheet music, Aho immediately started composing. Aho progressed so fast on the instrument that Loikkanen suggested he study the violin as well, with Loikkanen giving him private lessons. Aho also began to learn violin at an incredible speed,...
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Urbie Green
#96280
Overall Influence
1926 - 2018 (92 years)
Urban Clifford "Urbie" Green was an American jazz trombonist who toured with Woody Herman, Gene Krupa, Jan Savitt, and Frankie Carle. He played on over 250 recordings and released more than two dozen albums as a soloist. He was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 1995.
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Morton Gould
#60252
Overall Influence
1913 - 1996 (83 years)
Morton Gould was an American composer, conductor, arranger, and pianist. Biography Morton Gould was born in Richmond Hill, New York, United States. He was recognized early as a child prodigy with abilities in improvisation and composition. His first composition was published at age six. Gould studied at the Institute of Musical Art in New York. His most important teachers were Abby Whiteside and Vincent Jones.
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Lou Donaldson
#70972
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (100 years)
Lou Donaldson is an American retired jazz alto saxophonist. He is best known for his soulful, bluesy approach to playing the alto saxophone, although in his formative years he was, as many were of the bebop era, heavily influenced by Charlie Parker.
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Edgar Tang
#57491
Overall Influence
1902 - Present (124 years)
Edgar Chi-ho Tang , , was an influential Chinese writer, journalist and educator. Early life and education Tang was born in 1902 and his ancestral hometown was Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province. From 1913 to 1918 Tang studied at Saint John's School in Jiujiang. From 1918 to 1923 Tang studied at Boone University in Wuchang , Hubei Province, and graduated with BA.
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Václav Luks
#92033
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Václav Luks is a Czech harpsichordist, horn player, conductor, musicologist and pedagogue, founder and artistic director of the Prague baroque orchestra Collegium 1704 and of the vocal ensemble Collegium Vocale 1704. He specialises in Baroque music, especially in the works of Jan Dismas Zelenka, Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, and others. His activities have played an important role in reviving interest in the works of Czech composers including Zelenka and Josef Mysliveček. In 2022, Luks was awarded the title of Knight of the French Ministry of Culture, Arts and Letters.
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Nick Broomfield
#37564
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Nicholas Broomfield is an English documentary film director. His self-reflective style has been regarded as influential to many later filmmakers. In the early 21st century, he began to use non-actors in scripted works, which he calls "Direct Cinema". His output ranges from studies of entertainers to political works such as examinations of South Africa before and after the end of apartheid and the rise of the black-majority government of Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress party.
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Emanuel Ax
#82916
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Emanuel "Manny" Ax is a Grammy-winning American classical pianist. He is a teacher at the Juilliard School. Early life Ax was born to a Polish-Jewish family in Lviv, Ukraine, to Joachim and Hellen Ax. Both parents were Nazi concentration camp survivors. Ax began to study piano at the age of six; his father was his first piano teacher. When he was seven the family moved to Warsaw, Poland , and then two years later to Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, where he continued to study music, including as a member of The Junior Musical Club of Winnipeg. In 1961, the family moved to New York City and Ax continued his studies at the Juilliard School under Mieczysław Munz.
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Delia Derbyshire
#64588
Overall Influence
1937 - 2001 (64 years)
Delia Ann Derbyshire was an English musician and composer of electronic music. She carried out notable work with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop during the 1960s, including her electronic arrangement of the theme music to the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who. She has been referred to as "the unsung heroine of British electronic music", having influenced musicians including Aphex Twin, the Chemical Brothers and Paul Hartnoll of Orbital.
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Alan Bergman
#76908
Overall Influence
1925 - Present (101 years)
#4887
Maria Muldaur
#56367
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Maria Muldaur is an American folk and blues singer who was part of the American folk music revival in the early 1960s. She recorded the 1973 hit song "Midnight at the Oasis" and has recorded albums in the folk, blues, early jazz, gospel, country, and R&B traditions.
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Alexander Sokurov
#62068
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Alexander Nikolayevich Sokurov, PAR is a Russian filmmaker. His most significant works include a feature film, Russian Ark , filmed in a single unedited shot, and Faust , which was honoured with the Golden Lion, the highest prize for the best film at the Venice Film Festival.
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Constance Steinkuehler
#53584
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Constance Steinkuehler is an American professor of Informatics at the University of California–Irvine. She previously taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before taking public service leave, from 2011-2012, to work as a Senior Policy Analyst in the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House Executive Office, where she advised on policy matters about video games and learning. She currently researches cognitive and social aspects of video games and gaming at the University of California, Irvine. Her current projects include mixed methods research on the North America ...
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Penny Sparke
#47512
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Penelope Anne "Penny" Sparke is a British writer and academic specialising in the history of design. She has been Professor of Design History at Kingston University, London, since 1999, where she is also Director of the Modern Interiors Research Centre.
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Rich Eisen
#61817
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Richard Eisen is an American television sportscaster and radio host. Since 2003, he has worked for NFL Network as a host of various pregame, halftime, and postgame shows. He also hosts a daily sports radio show, The Rich Eisen Show. From 1996 to 2003, he worked at ESPN, most prominently as an anchor of SportsCenter.
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Eric Whitacre
#71528
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Eric Edward Whitacre is an American composer, conductor, and speaker best known for his choral music. In March2016, he was appointed as Los Angeles Master Chorale's first artist-in-residence at the Walt Disney Concert Hall.
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Annie Zaleski
#42287
Overall Influence
Annie Zaleski is an American music journalist and writer. Career Zaleski is a regular writer for mainstream media outlets such as The A.V. Club and NPR Music, and a columnist at Salon. She is based in Cleveland, Ohio where she has won first place awards from the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists, including Best Arts Review and Best Feature Writing .
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Vilem Sokol
#64933
Overall Influence
1915 - 2011 (96 years)
Vilem Sokol was a Czech-American conductor and professor of music at the University of Washington from 1948 to 1985, where he taught violin, viola, conducting, as well as music appreciation classes directed primarily toward non-music majors. He was conductor of the Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestras from 1960 to 1988, and principal violist of the Seattle Symphony from 1959 to 1963. He was the featured soloist with the Seattle Symphony for subscription concerts held March 7 and 8, 1960, performing Harold in Italy by Hector Berlioz.
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Lucy Dalglish
#98852
Overall Influence
Lucy Ann Dalglish is an American journalist, attorney, and professor and former dean at the University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism. Early life, education, and early career Dalglish was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota to parents James and Joanne Speikers Dalglish. She graduated from Grand Forks Central High School in 1977 and enrolled at the University of North Dakota for her Bachelor of Arts degree. Upon graduating in 1980, she worked as a reporter and editor at the St. Paul Pioneer Press for 13 years during which she completed her master of studies in law at Yale University.
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Brian Thomas Pentland
#122127
Overall Influence
#4897
Christian McBride
#54040
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Christian McBride is an American jazz bassist, composer and arranger. He has appeared on more than 300 recordings as a sideman, and is an eight-time Grammy Award winner. McBride has performed and recorded with a number of jazz musicians and ensembles, including Freddie Hubbard, McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny, Joe Henderson, Diana Krall, Roy Haynes, Chick Corea, Wynton Marsalis, Eddie Palmieri, Joshua Redman, and Ray Brown's "SuperBass" with John Clayton, as well as with pop, hip-hop, soul and classical musicians like Sting, Paul McCartney, Celine Dion, Isaac Hayes, The Roots, Queen ...
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Chris Turney
#47717
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Christian S. M. Turney is the Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research at the University of Technology Sydney. He was previously the Professor of Climate Change and Earth Science and Director of the Earth and Sustainability Science Research Centre and the Chronos Facility at the University of New South Wales.
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Seana Coulson
#86262
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Seana Coulson is a cognitive scientist known for her research on the neurobiology of language and studies of how meaning is constructed in human language, including experimental pragmatics, concepts, semantics, and metaphors. She is a professor in the Cognitive Science department at University of California, San Diego, where her Brain and Cognition Laboratory focuses on the cognitive neuroscience of language and reasoning.
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Ernst Håkon Jahr
#45088
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Ernst Håkon Jahr is a Norwegian linguist with about 230 publications, including about 50 books. He is currently dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education at the University of Agder. He was born in Oslo, and took his cand.philol. degree at the University of Oslo in 1976, and his dr.philos. degree at the University of Tromsø in 1984. He worked as an associate professor at the University of Tromsø from 1976, as professor of Scandinavian linguistics from 1986. In 1999 he moved to Agder University College, where he served as rector from 2000 to 2007. He was succeeded in August 2007, only one month before the University College became the University of Agder.
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