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,
#4901
Esperanza Spalding
#54847
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Esperanza Emily Spalding is an American bassist, singer, songwriter, and composer. Her accolades include five Grammy Awards, a Boston Music Award, a Soul Train Music Award, and two honorary doctorates: in 2018 from her alma mater Berklee College of Music and in 2022 from CalArts.
Go to Profile#4902
Michael Breheny
#66938
Overall Influence
1948 - 2003 (55 years)
Michael Breheny was professor of planning at Reading University. He specialised in the planning and management of new economic growth sectors during the post-industrial growth phase in Europe in the 1980s and 1990s.
Go to Profile#4903
Franz Erhard Walther
#31943
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Franz Erhard Walther is an interdisciplinary installation and conceptual artist known for his fabric objects and activations. Early life and education Born in 1939 in Fulda, Walther studied successively at the Werkkunstschule Offenbach and the Städelschule from 1957.
Go to Profile#4904
Craig Armstrong
#69961
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Craig Armstrong, is a Scottish composer of modern orchestral music, electronica and film scores. He graduated from the Royal Academy of Music in 1981, and has since written music for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the London Sinfonietta.
Go to Profile#4905
Clark Johnson
#70136
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Clark Johnson is an American-Canadian actor and director who has worked in both television and film. He is best known for his roles as David Jefferson in Night Heat , Clark Roberts in E.N.G. , Meldrick Lewis in Homicide: Life on the Street and Augustus Haynes in The Wire .
Go to Profile#4906
Luciano Onder
#45381
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Luciano Onder is an Italian journalist and science broadcaster, best known for presenting the shows Medicina 33 and TG5 Salute. Biography Born in 1943, he graduated with a degree in Modern History in 1965 with Renzo De Felice. He taught at Sapienza University and began working in RAI in 1966 to create the series Birth of a dictatorship with Sergio Zavoli.
Go to Profile#4907
Cedar Walton
#76881
Overall Influence
1934 - 2013 (79 years)
Cedar Anthony Walton Jr. was an American hard bop jazz pianist. He came to prominence as a member of drummer Art Blakey's band, The Jazz Messengers, before establishing a long career as a bandleader and composer. Several of his compositions have become jazz standards, including "Mosaic", "Bolivia", "Holy Land", "Mode for Joe" and "Ugetsu/Fantasy in D".
Go to Profile#4908
William Ugeux
#99384
Overall Influence
1909 - 1997 (88 years)
William Ugeux was a member of the Belgian Resistance during the Second World War. Biography Ugeux was born on 22 February, 1909 in Brussels, Belgium. He registered at the Brussels bar in 1932. He started working as a journalist. At the age of 24, Cardinal Joseph Van Roey brought Ugeux at the helm of the catholic newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle. By the outbreak of the Second World War, he entered the Belgian Resistance through the intelligence network Service de renseignement Zéro. Towards the end of 1941, he became the head of the network. He left Belgium for London in March 1943, where he becam...
Go to Profile#4909
Anthony Valentine
#100389
Overall Influence
1939 - 2015 (76 years)
Anthony Valentine was an English actor best known for his television roles: the ruthless Toby Meres in Callan , the sadistic Major Horst Mohn in Colditz , Bob in Tales of the Unexpected, the suave titular gentleman thief in Raffles , and the murderous Baron Gruner in the Sherlock Holmes episode "The Illustrious Client" .
Go to Profile#4910
Albhy Galuten
#52078
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Albhy Galuten is an American technology executive and futurist, Grammy Award-winning record producer, composer, musician, orchestrator and conductor. He has numerous inventions and has produced 18 number 1 singles with songs and albums selling over 100,000,000 copies. He has won two Grammy Awards, a Dramalogue award, and a BMI Citation of Achievement.
Go to Profile#4911
Jack Sheldon
#74304
Overall Influence
1931 - 2019 (88 years)
Beryl Cyril Sheldon Jr. , known professionally as Jack Sheldon, was an American musician, singer, and actor. He was a member of the band on The Merv Griffin Show and participated in episodes of the educational music television series Schoolhouse Rock!, where he became known for his distinctive voice.
Go to Profile#4912
Alan M. Kriegsman
#62998
Overall Influence
1928 - 2012 (84 years)
Alan M. Kriegsman was an American dance critic. He won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for his work at The Washington Post, the first to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for reporting as a dance critic.
Go to Profile#4913
Joshua Prager
#39912
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Joshua Harris Prager is an American journalist and author. Early life Joshua Harris Prager was born in a Jewish family in Eagle Butte, South Dakota. Prager is the son of Columbia University physician and medical ethics expert Kenneth Prager, and the nephew of commentator Dennis Prager. He attended the Moriah School in Englewood, New Jersey, the Ramaz High School in Manhattan, and Columbia College, where he studied music theory, graduating in 1994.
Go to Profile#4914
Joseph Sargent
#83791
Overall Influence
1925 - 2014 (89 years)
Joseph Sargent was an American film director. Though he directed many television movies, his best known feature-length works were arguably the action movie White Lightning starring Burt Reynolds, the biopic MacArthur starring Gregory Peck, and the horror anthology Nightmares. His most popular feature film was the subway thriller The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. Sargent won four Emmy Awards over his career.
Go to Profile#4915
Annie Brisset
#54908
Overall Influence
Annie Brisset, a member of the Royal Society of Canada, is a Professor of Translation Studies and Discourse Theory at the School of Translation and Interpretation of the University of Ottawa, Canada.
Go to Profile#4916
Mike D
#53008
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Michael Louis Diamond , better known as Mike D, is an American rapper, musician, and music producer. He is a founding member of the hip hop group Beastie Boys. Early life Diamond was born in New York City to Harold Diamond, an art dealer, and Hester Diamond, an interior designer and art collector. He grew up on the Upper West Side surrounded by artwork, including pieces by Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, and Barnett Newman. He attended the arts-oriented Saint Ann's School and Walden School.
Go to Profile#4917
R. D. Burman
#64899
Overall Influence
1939 - 1994 (55 years)
Rahul Dev Burman was an Indian music director and actor, who is considered the greatest and most successful music director of the Hindi Film Music Industry. From the 1960s to the 1990s, Burman composed musical scores for 331 films, bringing a new level of music ensemble with his compositions. Burman did his major work with legendary singers Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, and Kishore Kumar. He also worked extensively with lyricist Gulzar, with whom he has some of the most memorable numbers in his career. Nicknamed Pancham, he was the only son of the composer Sachin Dev Burman. Burman is regarde...
Go to Profile#4918
M. Balamuralikrishna
#74697
Overall Influence
1930 - 2016 (86 years)
Mangalampalli Balamuralikrishna was an Indian Carnatic vocalist, musician, multi-instrumentalist, playback singer, composer, and character actor. He was awarded the Madras Music Academy's Sangeetha Kalanidhi in 1978. He has garnered two National Film Awards , the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1975, the Padma Vibhushan, India's second-highest civilian honor in 1991, for his contribution towards arts, the Mahatma Gandhi Silver Medal from UNESCO in 1995, the Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government in 2005, the Sangeetha Kalanidhi by Madras Music Academy, and the ...
Go to Profile#4919
Frédéric Bonin-Pissarro
#113575
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Frédéric Bonin-Pissarro or Frédéric Pissarro is a French painter. Since 2002, he has been a citizen of the United States. Family Frédéric Bonin-Pissarro is the son of Sylvie and Claude Bonin-Pissarro, also a painter. He is a great-grandson of the "father of Impressionism" Camille Pissarro. His sister is named Lila. Married, he has 3 sons.
Go to Profile#4920
David Richards
#73321
Overall Influence
1956 - 2013 (57 years)
David Richards was an English-born Swiss-based record producer, engineer and musician. In the Mountain Studios in Montreux, owned by the rock band Queen, and in Attalens he engineered and co-produced many albums by Queen, David Bowie and other artists. Richards also played keyboards on some records. He also dealt with live music recording in such events as Montreux Jazz Festival.
Go to Profile#4921
Edwin Barker
#93522
Overall Influence
Edwin Barker is an American double bass player who graduated from the New England Conservatory. He is Principal Double Bass with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Associate Professor of Music at Boston University College of Fine Arts.
Go to Profile#4922
Billy Cox
#51093
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
William Cox is an American bassist, best known for performing with Jimi Hendrix. Cox is the only surviving musician to have regularly played with Hendrix: first with the experimental group that backed Hendrix at Woodstock , followed by the trio with drummer Buddy Miles that recorded the live Band of Gypsys album, and, lastly, The Cry of Love Tour trio with Mitch Mitchell back on drums. Cox continues to perform dates with the Band of Gypsys Experience and the Experience Hendrix Tour.
Go to Profile#4923
Alan Silvestri
#58197
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Alan Anthony Silvestri is an American composer and conductor of film and television scores. He has been associated with director Robert Zemeckis since 1984, composing music for nearly all of his feature films including the Back to the Future film series, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Death Becomes Her, Forrest Gump, Cast Away, and The Polar Express. Silvestri also scored many other popular movies, including Predator, The Abyss, Father of the Bride, The Bodyguard, Eraser, The Parent Trap, Stuart Little, The Mummy Returns, Lilo & Stitch, The Wild, Night at the Museum trilogy, G.I. Joe: The Rise of C...
Go to Profile#4924
Jacques Dutronc
#110544
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Jacques Dutronc is a French singer, songwriter, guitarist, composer, and actor. Some of Dutronc's best-known hits include "Il est cinq heures, Paris s'éveille" , "Le Responsable", and "Les Cactus".
Go to Profile#4925
Jacques Martineau
#116162
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Jacques Martineau is a French film director and screenwriter who works in collaboration with partner Olivier Ducastel. Life and career After spending his adolescence in Nice, Martineau moved to Paris to study at the Ecole Normale Supérieure. After graduating, he took up a teaching post at the facility.
Go to Profile#4926
S. Janaki
#49700
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Sistla Janaki is an Indian playback singer and occasional music composer from Andhra Pradesh. She is referred to respectfully as "Janaki Amma" and Nightingale of South India. She is one of the best-known playback singers in India. She is referred to as 'Gaana Kogile' in Karnataka, and 'Gaana Kokila' in Telugu States and 'Isaikkuyil' in Tamil Nadu She has recorded over 48,000 songs in films, albums, TV and Radio which includes solos, duets, chorus and title tracks in 17 languages including Kannada, Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, Sanskrit, Odia, Tulu, Urdu, Punjabi, Badaga, Bengali, Konkani and also in foreign languages such as English, Japanese, German, and Sinhala.
Go to Profile#4927
Craig McGregor
#84323
Overall Influence
1933 - 2022 (89 years)
Craig Rob Roy McGregor was an Australian journalist, essayist, academic, cultural observer and critic. Life and career McGregor grew up in Jamberoo and then Gundagai in New South Wales, before his family moved to Sydney. There he was awarded a scholarship to attend Cranbrook School, but he left at 16 to work at the Sydney Morning Herald. He completed a degree at the University of Sydney through night classes.
Go to Profile#4928
Federico Corriente
#52382
Overall Influence
1940 - 2020 (80 years)
Federico Corriente Córdoba was a Spanish Arabist, lexicographer, academic and member of the Royal Spanish Academy. Corriente was born in Granada on 14 November 1940. He died in Zaragoza on 16 June 2020 at the age of 79.
Go to Profile#4929
Oliver Jones
#89200
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Oliver Theophilus Jones, is a Canadian jazz pianist, organist, composer and arranger. In 2023, he was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. Musical career Born to Barbadian parents, Oliver Jones began his playing piano at the age of five, studying with Mme Bonner in Little Burgundy's Union United Church, made famous by Trevor W. Payne's Montreal Jubilation Gospel Choir. He continued to develop his talent through his studies with Oscar Peterson's sister, Daisy Peterson Sweeney, starting at eight years old. In addition to performing at Union United Church when he was a child, he also performed a solo novelty act at the Cafe St.
Go to Profile#4930
Jane Simpson
#118394
Overall Influence
Jane Simpson is an Australian linguist and professor emerita at Australian National University. Simpson completed both a B.A. and M.A. at The Australian National University. Her B.A. included majors in Chinese and English literature, with Honours in Middle English. Jane's PhD. was received from MIT in 1983, and her dissertation was a detailed study of Warlpiri in the Lexical-Functional Grammar framework.
Go to Profile#4931
Miranda Cooper
#77433
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Miranda Eleanor De Fonbrune Cooper is an English singer, songwriter, record producer, dancer and television presenter. Miranda Cooper has worked in the music industry since 1996 when she gained her first recording contract. She worked as a professional dancer for artists such as Dannii Minogue before going into television presenting.
Go to Profile#4932
Roumyana Slabakova
#114344
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Roumyana Slabakova is a linguist specializing in the theory of second language acquisition , particularly acquisition of semantics, and its practical implications for teaching and studying languages.
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Michael W. King
#48865
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Michael W. King is an American filmmaker, producer, director, and writer of music videos, documentaries, and films. King is the founder of Michael King Productions, LLC. and lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, with his son, Mathias. He is a former board member of the International Documentary Association and a member of the Directors Guild of America .
Go to Profile#4934
Champion Jack Dupree
#80716
Overall Influence
1910 - 1992 (82 years)
William Thomas "Champion Jack" Dupree was an American blues and boogie-woogie pianist and singer. His nickname was derived from his early career as a boxer. Biography Dupree was a New Orleans blues and boogie-woogie pianist, a barrelhouse "professor". His father was from the Belgian Congo and his mother was part African American and Cherokee. His birth date has been given as July 4, July 10, and July 23, 1908, 1909, or 1910; the researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc give July 4, 1910.
Go to Profile#4935
Alain Bergala
#102328
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Alain Bergala , is a French film critic, essayist, screenwriter and director. Biography Former writer for Cahiers du cinéma, he is best known as a specialist in the works of Jean-Luc Godard. He taught at the University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle and at La Fémis. In 2000, he became the cinema counsellor of Jack Lang with whom he worked regarding the arts in education.
Go to Profile#4936
Armen Dzhigarkhanyan
#75197
Overall Influence
1935 - 2020 (85 years)
Armen Borisovich Dzhigarkhanyan was a Soviet, Armenian, and Russian actor. Born and raised in Yerevan, Dzhigarkhanyan started acting in the academic and Russian theaters of the city, before moving to Moscow to continue stage acting. Since 1960, he appeared in a number of Armenian films. He became popular in the 1970s with the various roles he portrayed in Soviet films like The New Adventures of the Elusive Avengers , its sequel The Crown of the Russian Empire, or Once Again the Elusive Avengers and The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed . After almost 30 years on the stage of the Mayakovsky The...
Go to Profile#4937
Charles Lloyd
#67223
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Charles Lloyd is an American jazz musician. Though he primarily plays tenor saxophone and flute, he has occasionally recorded on other reed instruments, including alto saxophone and the Hungarian tárogató. Lloyd's primary band since 2007 has been a quartet including pianist Jason Moran, acoustic bassist Reuben Rogers, and drummer Eric Harland.
Go to Profile#4938
Carl St.Clair
#70977
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Carl Ray St. Clair is an American conductor. Early life and education Born in Hochheim, Texas, St. Clair went to school in Yoakum, Texas, and graduated from Yoakum High School. He attended the University of Texas and later studied conducting with Gustav Meier at the University of Michigan and Leonard Bernstein at Tanglewood. He was music director of the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra from 1985 to 1992, and of the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra from 1986 to 1991. Beginning in 1986, he was an assistant conductor with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In 1990, he was a recipient of the Seaver/National Endowment for the Arts Conductors Award.
Go to Profile#4939
Kenneth Lonergan
#47154
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Kenneth Lonergan is an American film director, playwright, and screenwriter. He is the co-writer of the film Gangs of New York , and wrote and directed You Can Count on Me , Margaret , and Manchester by the Sea . Lonergan is also known for his work as a playwright. His most noted plays include This Is Our Youth, Lobby Hero and The Waverly Gallery. Each also had a successful revival engagement on Broadway, which resulted in each play receiving a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play.
Go to Profile#4940
Jorma Kaukonen
#43689
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Jorma Ludwik Kaukonen, Jr. is an American blues, folk, and rock guitarist. Kaukonen performed with Jefferson Airplane and still performs regularly on tour with Hot Tuna, which started as a side project with bassist Jack Casady, and as of early 2019 has continued for 50 years. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him No. 54 on its list of 100 Greatest Guitarists. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 as a member of Jefferson Airplane.
Go to Profile#4941
Ocke-Schwen Bohn
#100307
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Ocke-Schwen Bohn is a professor of English Linguistics at Aarhus University in Denmark. He specializes in phonetics and psycholinguistics, especially second language and cross-language speech perception, foreign accented speech, and infant speech perception, and he has also conducted work on the phonetics of an endangered language , on interlanguage intelligibility, and on language in autobiographical memory. Bohn currently serves as member of the editorial board of Journal of Phonetics and Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics. He also organized the 2016 edition of the International Sym...
Go to Profile#4942
Nancy Farmer
#33195
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Nancy Farmer is an American writer of children's and young adult books and science fiction. She has written three Newbery Honor Books and won the U.S. National Book Award for Young People's Literature for The House of the Scorpion, published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers in 2002.
Go to Profile#4943
Dmitri Nabokov
#84350
Overall Influence
1934 - 2012 (78 years)
Dmitri Vladimirovich Nabokov was an American opera singer and translator. Born in Berlin, he was the only child of Russian parents: author Vladimir Nabokov and his wife Vera; they emigrated to the United States from France in 1940. He later was naturalized. In his later years, Nabokov translated many of his father's works into other languages, and served as the executor of his father's literary estate.
Go to Profile#4944
David Sulzer
#106966
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
David Sulzer is an American neuroscientist and musician. He is a professor at Columbia University Medical Center in the departments of psychiatry, neurology, and pharmacology. Sulzer's laboratory investigates the interaction between the synapses of the cerebral cortex and the basal ganglia, including the dopamine system, in habit formation, planning, decision making, and diseases of the system. His lab has developed the first means to optically measure neurotransmission, and has introduced new hypotheses of neurodegeneration in Parkinson's disease, and changes in synapses that produce autism...
Go to Profile#4945
Taylor Hackford
#65197
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Taylor Edwin Hackford is an American film director and former president of the Directors Guild of America. He won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film for Teenage Father . Hackford went on to direct a number of highly regarded feature films, most notably An Officer and a Gentleman and Ray , the latter of which saw him nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Go to Profile#4946
Giuseppe Sinopoli
#76954
Overall Influence
1946 - 2001 (55 years)
Giuseppe Sinopoli was an Italian conductor and composer. Biography Sinopoli was born in Venice, Italy, and later studied at the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory in Venice under Ernesto Rubin de Cervin and at Darmstadt, including being mentored in composition with Karlheinz Stockhausen. He also obtained a doctorate in medicine, with an emphasis on psychiatry, from the University of Padua, and completed a dissertation on criminal anthropology.
Go to Profile#4947
Czesław Niemen
#80846
Overall Influence
1939 - 2004 (65 years)
Czesław Niemen , often credited as just Niemen, was one of the most important and original Polish singer-songwriters and rock balladeers of the 20th century, singing mainly in Polish. Biography Early life Niemen was born in Stare Wasiliszki in the Nowogródek Voivodeship of the Second Polish Republic . Czesław Niemen belonged to a community of Belarusians and Poles, living outside the eastern borders of contemporary Poland, on the eastern lands of the historical Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth . Czesław Niemen studied in Grodno at "State college.
Go to Profile#4948
Judith Aissen
#112943
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Judith Lillian Aissen is an American professor emerita in linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Career Aissen began to study Mayan languages in 1972 as a graduate student at Harvard University, conducting field research in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas. Her 1974 Harvard dissertation on The Syntax of Causative Constructions was published by Garland in 1979. She joined the faculty of the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1983.
Go to Profile#4949
John A. Holm
#112951
Overall Influence
1943 - 2015 (72 years)
John Alexander Holm was an American academic. He was Chair of English Linguistics and History of Civilizations at the University of Coimbra, Portugal. Holm was born in Jackson, Michigan, and graduated from Jackson High School in 1961. He received a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of London in 1978 with his thesis "The creole English of Nicaragua's Miskito Coast : its sociolinguistic history and a comparative study of its lexicon and syntax." He is a specialist on the history and languages of the Caribbean peoples, and the author of many books and articles on those subjects. He is e...
Go to Profile#4950
George Sherman
#84811
Overall Influence
1908 - 1991 (83 years)
George Sherman was an American film director and producer of low-budget Western films. One obituary said his "credits rival in number those of anyone in the entertainment industry." Biography George Sherman was born in New York City on July 14, 1908. At age 14 he sailed aboard the SS Mongolia to Los Angeles, California, where he found work in the mail room at Warner Bros. studios via a film editor friend.
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