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 Medical,
#501
Ron Waksman
#54481
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Ron Waksman is a cardiologist. He is the Associate Director, Division of Cardiology, Washington Hospital Center and professor of medicine at Georgetown University. Areas of interest His current research interests include brachytherapy for restenosis prevention bioabsorbable/ biodegradable stents, HDL therapy, intracoronary imaging, valvular heart disease and catheter-based treatment of renal denervation. He is also the author/co-author of more than 20 book chapters and the editor/co-editor of six books in the field of cardiology. He serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Cardiovascular...
Go to Profile#502
Crispian Scully
#66118
Overall Influence
1945 - 2017 (72 years)
Crispian Scully CBE was emeritus professor of oral medicine at University College London, and author of Scully's Oral Medicine. External links Profile on Research Gate
Go to Profile#503
Steffie Woolhandler
#55681
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Stephanie Joan "Steffie" Woolhandler is an American primary care physician and medical researcher. An advocate for single-payer health insurance in the United States, she is a co-founder and board member of Physicians for a National Health Program. She is Distinguished Professor of Public Health and Health Policy at the CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College and an adjunct clinical professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She is also a lecturer in medicine at Harvard Medical School, where she formerly co-directed the general internal medicine internship program.
Go to Profile#504
Joanna Wardlaw
#60428
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (67 years)
Joanna Marguerite Wardlaw is a Scottish physician, radiologist, and academic specialising in neuroradiology and pathophysiology. Wardlaw worked as a junior doctor before specialising as a radiologist. She continues to practice medicine as an Honorary Consultant Neuroradiologist with NHS Lothian. She has spent her entire academic career at the University of Edinburgh.
Go to Profile#505
Gary H. Gibbons
#42565
Overall Influence
Gary H. Gibbons is an American cardiologist and the current director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Early life and education Gibbons was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the youngest of three children born to schoolteacher parents. He grew up in the Philadelphia neighborhood of Germantown. He has credited his mother for inspiring him to be committed to public health. He received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University in 1978 and later graduated from Harvard Medical School. He then completed his residency and cardiology fellowship at Brigham and Women's Hospita...
Go to Profile#506
Josephine Nambooze
#52477
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (95 years)
Josephine Nambooze is a Ugandan physician, public health specialist, academic, and medical researcher. She is an emeritus professor of public health at Makerere University School of Public Health. Nambooze was the first female East African to qualify as a physician circa 1959.
Go to Profile#507
David Serwadda
#43960
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
David M. Serwadda is a Ugandan physician, medical researcher, academic, public health specialist and medical administrator. Currently he is a Professor of Public Health at Makerere University School of Public Health, one of the schools of Makerere University College of Health Sciences, a semi-autonomous constituent college of Makerere University, the oldest university in Uganda. Serwadda is also a founding member of Accordia Global Health Foundation's Academic Alliance.
Go to Profile#508
Nicholas Wareham
#61667
Overall Influence
Nicholas J. Wareham is a British epidemiologist who researches obesity, diabetes, and other metabolic disorders. He is director of the MRC Epidemiology Unit and co-director of the Institute of Metabolic Science at the University of Cambridge. He is also a Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow in Clinical Science at the University of Cambridge, the director of the University's Centre for Diet and Activity Research , and the co-leader of the University's Aetiology of Diabetes and Related Metabolic Disorders Programme. He was educated at St Thomas's Hospital Medical School and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Go to Profile#509
David R. Williams
#67855
Overall Influence
#510
Radu Lucian Sulica
#44161
Overall Influence
Radu Lucian Sulica is a Romanian-born American laryngologist and author. He currently serves as Professor and Chief, Laryngology and Voice Disorders at the Sean Parker Institute for the Voice at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City. Sulica has published several books in the field, including Vocal Fold Paralysis, the compendium on this dominant topic in laryngology. He has written a review of a sub-category of vocal fold paralysis, the idiopathic cases.
Go to Profile#511
Ahmad-Reza Dehpour
#39041
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
Ahmad-Reza Dehpour is an Iranian pharmacologist and biomedical scientist, among the top 1% in the world, and the world's highly cited researchers announced by Thomson Reuters ISI. He is currently a distinguished professor of pharmacology at the School of Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences . He is also the director of the Experimental Medicine Research Center and the director of drug discovery and evaluation committee in the National Institute for Medical Research Development.
Go to Profile#512
Emma Frans
#42817
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (44 years)
Emma Maria Frans is a postdoctoral researcher in medical epidemiology at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm and well-known science communicator in Sweden. She is also known for writing the column "Vetenskapskollen" in the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, where she examines the correctness and scientific accuracy of sensational news and popular science articles.
Go to Profile#513
Holly Broadbent Jr.
#56989
Overall Influence
1918 - 2009 (91 years)
Birdsall Holly Broadbent Jr. was an American orthodontist known for this contributions to the field of orthodontics. He co-developed the Bolton Standards along with his grandfather Birdsall Holly II. The work is based on the Broadbent-Bolton Growth study, which the American Association of Orthodontists Foundation has called "the most complete human craniofacial growth study in the world".
Go to Profile#514
Douglass Turnbull
#52909
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
Sir Douglass Matthew Turnbull is Professor of Neurology at Newcastle University, an Honorary Consultant Neurologist at Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and a director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Mitochondrial Research.
Go to Profile#515
Wendy Max
#37585
Overall Influence
Wendy B. Max is a professor of Health Economics and the director of the Institute for Health & Aging in the School of Nursing at the University of California, San Francisco. Her focus is on the cost of illness and she has done important work on the cost of smoking-related illness.
Go to Profile#516
Charles Flexner
#33036
Overall Influence
Charles Williams Flexner is an American physician, clinical pharmaceutical scientist, academic, author and researcher. He is a Professor of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Go to Profile#517
Marc Allan Pfeffer
#68526
Overall Influence
#518
Frederica Perera
#47817
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (84 years)
Frederica Perera is an American environmental health scientist and the founder of the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Her research career has focused on identifying and preventing harm to children from prenatal and early childhood exposure to environmental chemicals and pollutants. She is internationally recognized for pioneering the field of molecular epidemiology, incorporating molecular techniques into epidemiological studies to measure biologic doses, preclinical responses and susceptibility to toxic exposure.
Go to Profile#519
Shahrokh Shariat
#61653
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (51 years)
Shahrokh François Shariat is currently professor and chairman of the Department of Urology, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna General Hospital, Vienna, Austria. He is also adjunct professor of urology at Weill Cornell Medical Center, New York, NY; adjunct professor of urology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA; adjunct professor of urology at the Faculty of Medicine, Charles University, Prague, CZ; adjunct professor of urology at I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University, Moscow, RU; honorary professor of urology, University of Jordan, Amman, ...
Go to Profile#520
Dianne Neumark-Sztainer
#24496
Overall Influence
Dianne Neumark-Sztainer is a University of Minnesota Regents Professor in the Division of Epidemiology and Community Health at the School of Public Health. She is a scholar on adolescent and young adult eating and weight-related health.
Go to Profile#521
Viken Babikian
#34636
Overall Influence
Viken L. Babikian is an American doctor of Armenian origin and professor of neurology at Boston University School of Medicine. Babikian received his undergraduate degree from the American University of Beirut, and his M.D. from Northwestern University School of Medicine. He completed a neurology residency at the University of Chicago Hospitals and a stroke fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He joined the Boston University Department of Neurology in 1986. He studies cerebrovascular disorders such as stroke.
Go to Profile#522
Caroline Moore
#43475
Overall Influence
Caroline M. Moore is the first woman to be made a professor of urology in the United Kingdom. She works in the diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer at University College London. Her research on evaluating photodynamic therapy for prostate cancer, became the subject of her MD, which was completed in 2007, and led to the first completed randomised trial comparing focal treatment for prostate cancer with active surveillance.
Go to Profile#523
Susan Perlman
#52218
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (76 years)
Susan Perlman is a Professor in the Department of Neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. She is also Director of Ataxia and Neurogenetics Program and Post-polio Program at that school. She has long been the primary investigator for Friedreich's ataxia trials and sits on the Medical Advisory Board of the National Ataxia Foundation.
Go to Profile#524
Carl E. Taylor
#38202
Overall Influence
1916 - 2010 (94 years)
Carl Ernest Taylor, MD, DrPH founder of the academic discipline of international health who dedicated his life to the well-being of the world's marginalized people. He was the founding chair of the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He was a key contributor to the Alma Ata Declaration. At the age of 88, this energetic man assumed the challenging position as Country Director for the nonprofit organization Future Generations Afghanistan where he led innovative field-based activities until age 90. He has worked in over 70 countries and have students from more than 100 countries.
Go to Profile#525
Frederick R. Appelbaum
#69116
Overall Influence
#526
Douglas Dockery
#52525
Overall Influence
Douglas William Dockery is an American epidemiologist and the John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Environmental Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health . Education Dockery received his B.S. in physics from the University of Maryland and his M.S. in meteorology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1972, where he submitted a thesis titled "An Analytic Study of the Predictability of the Flow in a Dish-Pan Model of the Atmosphere". Later, he gained an M.S. and DSc in environmental health from the Harvard School of Public Health.
Go to Profile#527
Alastair Buchan
#56889
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Alastair Buchan is a British neurologist and researcher in stroke medicine. His main research interest is how to make neuroprotection a reality in the clinic. From October 2008 until January 2017, he served as the Dean of Medicine and the Head of the Medical Sciences Division, University of Oxford. He currently holds the Chair of Stroke Research and is the Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Head of Brexit Strategy at the University of Oxford.
Go to Profile#528
Adi Utarini
#16599
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (60 years)
Adi Utarini is an Indonesian public health researcher who works on disease control of dengue fever. She serves as Professor of Public Health in the Department of Health and Policy Management at Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta. In 2020, she was selected as one of Nature 10 for pioneering the randomized controlled trial of a dengue prevention technique using mosquitoes carrying the Wolbachia bacteria. In 2021, she was selected as one of TIME's 100 most Influential People of 2021
Go to Profile#529
Ralph S. Baric
#47157
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Ralph Steven Baric is William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor in the Department of Epidemiology, and professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Go to Profile#530
Philip Needleman
#47423
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (86 years)
Philip Needleman is an American pharmacologist and academic. Needleman was a professor and associate dean at the Washington University School of Medicine and he served as an executive at Monsanto/Searle. He is credited with discovering the first thromboxane synthase inhibitor, the inflammatory substance known as COX-2 and the cardiac hormone known as atriopeptin. Needleman is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Go to Profile#531
Peter Morris
#53316
Overall Influence
1934 - 2022 (88 years)
Sir Peter John Morris, AC, FRS, FMedSci, FRCP, FRCS was an Australian surgeon and Nuffield professor of surgery at the University of Oxford. Morris was President of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, founder of the Oxford Transplant Centre and director of the Centre for Evidence in Transplantation at the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
Go to Profile#532
Jonna Mazet
#36214
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (58 years)
Jonna Ann Keener Mazet is an American epidemiologist and Executive Director of the University of California, Davis One Health Institute. Recognized for her innovative and holistic approach to emerging environmental and global health threats, she is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Mazet is a professor of Epidemiology and Disease Ecology at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, where she focuses on global health problem solving, especially for emerging infectious disease and conservation challen...
Go to Profile#533
Stuart W. Jamieson
#57283
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
Stuart William Jamieson is a British cardiothoracic surgeon, specialising in pulmonary thromboendarterectomy , a surgical procedure performed to remove organized clotted blood from pulmonary arteries in people with chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension .
Go to Profile#534
Daniel Mojon
#59090
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (62 years)
Daniel Mojon is a Swiss ophthalmologist and ophthalmic surgeon who is considered to be the inventor of minimally invasive strabismus surgery , a method of surgically correcting squinting that uses only very small incisions of two to three millimeters and is supposed to lead to quicker rehabilitation and wound healing. Daniel Mojon is president of the program committee of the Swiss Academy of Ophthalmology .
Go to Profile#535
Eva Feldman
#27263
Overall Influence
Eva Lucille Feldman is an American physician-scientist who is a leading authority on neurodegenerative disease. She serves as the Russell N. DeJong Professor of Neurology at the University of Michigan, as well as Director of the NeuroNetwork for Emerging Therapies and ALS Center of Excellence at Michigan Medicine. She was also named the James W. Albers Distinguished University Professor of Neurology.
Go to Profile#536
Joseph R. Bertino
#69046
Overall Influence
1930 - 2021 (91 years)
Joseph Rocco Bertino was an American researcher in the cancer pharmacology program at Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey and professor of medicine and pharmacology at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey. His research focused on the treatment of lymphoma.
Go to Profile#537
Richard Feachem
#36500
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
Sir Richard George Andrew Feachem, KBE, FREng is professor of global health at both the University of California, San Francisco, and the University of California, Berkeley, and director of the Global Health Group at UCSF Global Health Sciences. He is also a visiting professor at the University of London and an honorary professor at the University of Queensland.
Go to Profile#538
Amy Berrington de González
#38959
Overall Influence
Amy Berrington de González is a scientist. She is a senior investigator and radiation epidemiology branch chief at the National Cancer Institute. Education Berrington de González received a D.Phil. in Cancer Epidemiology from the University of Oxford. Her 2001 dissertation was titled Epidemiological evidence for the risk of cancer from diagnostic X-rays. Her university supervisors were Sarah Darby and David Cox.
Go to Profile#539
Muhammad Imran Qadir
#34981
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (47 years)
Muhammad Imran Qadir , also known as M. I. Qadir, is a Pakistani pharmaceutical scientist. Life and education Qadir received his early education from Shujabad, Multan. He received his B.Pharm degree from Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, Pakistan. Later he attended Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad and received his Ph.D degree in subject of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
Go to Profile#540
Walter Jackson Freeman
#70009
Overall Influence
#541
James E. Bowman
#19127
Overall Influence
1923 - 2011 (88 years)
James Edward Bowman Jr. was an American physician and specialist in pathology, hematology, and genetics. He was a professor of pathology and genetics at the Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago. He published more than ninety works across the fields of human genetics; population genetics; and ethical, legal and public policy issues in human genetics. He received many awards, including the Chicago African American History Makers Award and recognition from the Hastings Center and Stanford’s Kaiser Family Foundation, and Howard University.
Go to Profile#542
Massimo Filippi
#70291
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (64 years)
#543
Robert J. Gorlin
#38397
Overall Influence
1923 - 2006 (83 years)
Robert James Gorlin was an American oral pathologist, human geneticist and academic at the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry. Biography Robert Gorlin was born on January 11, 1923 in Hudson, New York. Raised in Newark, New Jersey, Gorlin graduated from Weequahic High School in 1940. After receiving an A.B. degree in 1943 from Columbia University, Gorlin volunteered for the Army, where he was instructed to apply to dental school. He graduated in 1947 from Washington University School of Dental Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, and then completed a master's degree in oral pathology fro...
Go to Profile#544
Theodore H. Schwartz
#57559
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (60 years)
Theodore H. Schwartz is an American medical scientist, academic physician and neurosurgeon. Schwartz specializes in surgery for brain tumors, pituitary tumors and epilepsy. He is particularly known for developing and expanding the field of minimally-invasive endonasal endoscopic skull base and pituitary surgery and for his research on neurovascular coupling and propagation of epilepsy.
Go to Profile#545
Tara O'Toole
#37861
Overall Influence
Tara O'Toole served as the Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Science and Technology from 2009 to 2013. She is currently a senior fellow and executive vice president at In-Q-Tel. Background Prior to her confirmation as Under Secretary , O'Toole founded, and served as chief executive officer and director of, the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Concurrently, she was a Professor of Medicine and of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh. She stepped down from her position as Under Secretary on September 23, 2013
Go to Profile#546
Arline Geronimus
#41592
Overall Influence
Arline T. Geronimus is an American public health researcher and a professor of Health Behavior & Health Education at the University of Michigan, as well as a research professor at the University of Michigan's Population Studies Center. Geronimus is known for proposing the weathering hypothesis in 1992, which posits that cumulative racism experienced by black women cause them to experience inferior birth outcomes as their maternal age increases. She has also studied other issues regarding pregnancy, including the effect of teenage childbearing on the mother's economic status and the effect of immigration enforcement raids on low birth weight.
Go to Profile#547
James W. Lance
#55298
Overall Influence
1926 - 2019 (93 years)
James Waldo Lance AO, CBE , often referred to as James Lance and James W. Lance, was an Australian neurologist. He was the founder of the School of Neurology at the University of New South Wales and president of the International Headache Society in 1987–89, and a "world authority on the diagnosis and treatment" of headache and migraine.
Go to Profile#548
Elizabeth A. Stuart
#60274
Overall Influence
Elizabeth A. Stuart is a professor of mental health, biostatistics, and health policy and management in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research involves causal inference and missing data in the statistics of mental health. She was a co-author on a study showing that post-suicide-attempt counseling can significantly reduce the risk of future suicide.
Go to Profile#549
Jeffrey Aronson
#70352
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
Jeffrey Kenneth Aronson is a British clinical pharmacologist. Education Aronson studied at the University of Glasgow from 1964 to 1970, qualifying with the degree of MBChB, and after primary medical training in Glasgow hospitals joined the Medical Research Council's Unit and University Department of Clinical Pharmacology in Oxford, qualifying DPhil Oxon in 1977.
Go to Profile#550
Robert F. Spetzler
#70610
Overall Influence
