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,
#551
King K. Holmes
#70034
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (88 years)
King Kennard Holmes is an American physician, microbiologist, epidemiologist, and medical school professor. He is an internationally recognized expert on sexually transmitted diseases, especially HIV/AIDS.
Go to Profile#552
Mary Amdur
#47665
Overall Influence
1921 - 1998 (77 years)
Mary Ochsenhirt Amdur was an American toxicologist and public health researcher who worked primarily on pollution. She was charged with studying the effects of the 1948 Donora smog, specifically looking into the effects of inhaling sulfuric acid by experimenting on guinea pigs. Her findings on the respiratory effects related to sulfuric acid led to her being threatened, her funding being pulled, and her losing her job at the Harvard School of Public Health in 1953. Undeterred, she carried on her research in a different role at Harvard, and subsequently at MIT and New York University. Despite ...
Go to Profile#553
Ulrich Förstermann
#64767
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Ulrich Förstermann is a German physician and pharmacologist. Life Förstermann was born in Hildesheim, Lower Saxony, Germany. As of April 2013, Ulrich Förstermann holds the position of Chief Scientific Officer of the Johannes Gutenberg University Medical Center, Mainz, Germany, and is Dean of the Faculty of Medicine. From 2009 - 2013 he was Vice President for Research of the Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany. Förstermann is also Professor in the Department of Pharmacology Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. He accepted the Chair of Pharmacology in 1993 after declining an equivalent offer of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany.
Go to Profile#554
Roy Geronemus
#69819
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Roy G. Geronemus is an American dermatologist in the field of laser treatment of skin disorders. Career Geronemus is the director of the Laser & Skin Surgery Center of New York. He is also Clinical Professor of Dermatology at the New York University Medical Center.
Go to Profile#555
Sharon Straus
#63212
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Sharon Elizabeth Straus is a professor of geriatric medicine at the University of Toronto, and geriatrician and Squires-Chalmers Chair and physician-in-chief at Unity Health Toronto. Straus was appointed as a member of the Order of Canada in 2021.
Go to Profile#556
Hideaki Sena
#21440
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (57 years)
Hideaki Sena, Ph.D. is a Japanese pharmacologist and novelist. Sena was a graduate student at Tohoku University when he wrote his prizewinning debut novel, Parasite Eve. Writing career His most famous novel, Parasite Eve, was adapted into a film directed by Masayuki Ochiai in 1997 and a popular horror role-playing video game by Square. When Parasite Eve was adapted as a video game, Hideaki Sena did not learn the title's plot until it was completed, since the game was a collaboration between Square and his publisher. He is also the author of Brain Valley, for which he won the Nihon SF Taisho A...
Go to Profile#557
Lisa Berkman
#61036
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Lisa Berkman is an American epidemiologist currently the Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy, Epidemiology, and Global Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Education Berkman received her B.A. degree in Sociology from Northwestern University in 1972. After that she did M.S in Epidemiology from University of California, Berkeley. In 1977, she completed her Ph.D from the same university.
Go to Profile#558
Vivian Lee
#33059
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
Vivian S. Lee is an American radiologist and health care/health technology executive. An Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School and senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, Lee is the author of the book, The Long Fix: Solving America's Health Care Crisis with Strategies That Work for Everyone . Lee is also a senior fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2019, she was named No. 11 in Modern Healthcare's 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare and is a frequent speaker at national and international meetings...
Go to Profile#559
Abbas Ardehali
#53315
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
Abbas Ardehali is an Iranian-American cardiothoracic surgeon. He is the surgical director of UCLA's Heart, Lung, and Heart-Lung Transplant programs, and was the principal investigator behind technology that allows for the transportation of a breathing human heart or lung for an extended period of time.
Go to Profile#560
Naomi Breslau
#30284
Overall Influence
1932 - 2018 (86 years)
Naomi Breslau was an American sociologist, psychiatric epidemiologist, and professor at Michigan State University. Much of Breslau's work focused on the psychological impact of trauma. Early life Born in Afula in the British Mandate of Palestine, Breslau was the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants Shlomo Zeidel and Shoshana Fleischman Zeidel. She later moved to Hadera with her parents, brother and sister. Breslau graduated from law school at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1954. Two years later, she came to New York University with the intention of studying the administration of justice, but she became more interested in sociology, earning a master's degree in 1963.
Go to Profile#561
Lizymol Philipose Pamadykandathil
#61518
Overall Influence
Lizymol Philipose Pamadykandathil is an Indian dental materials scientist. Her work has been recognised with a Nari Shakti Puraskar - the highest civilian honour exclusively for women in India. Life She holds a doctorate and master's degree from Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam. She was awarded her doctorate degree in 1998.
Go to Profile#562
Antonio Giordano
#24718
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
Antonio Giordano is an oncologist, pathologist, geneticist, researcher, professor and writer. A naturalized American from Italy, he is the Director of the Sbarro Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine in Philadelphia, and a professor of Anatomy and Pathological Histology at the Department of Medical Biotechnology of the University of Siena. He has discovered some key factors in the regulation of the cell cycle and of mechanisms linked to the onset of tumors. In particular, he distinguished himself for having isolated the tumor suppressor gene, the RB2/p130, subsequently demons...
Go to Profile#563
Philip Seeman
#38514
Overall Influence
1934 - 2021 (87 years)
Philip Seeman, was a Canadian schizophrenia researcher and neuropharmacologist, known for his research on dopamine receptors. Career Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Seeman was raised in Montreal. He received a Bachelor of Science degree, honours physics & physiology , a Master of Science degree, physiology of transport & secretion , and a Doctor of Medicine from McGill University. In 1966, he received a Ph.D. in life sciences from Rockefeller University.
Go to Profile#564
Nelson Sewankambo
#45250
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Nelson Kawulukusi Sewankambo, MBChB, MMed, MSc, FRCP, LLD , sometimes spelled as Nelson Ssewankambo, is a Ugandan physician, academician, medical researcher, and medical administrator. He is a professor of medicine and former principal of the Makerere University College of Health Sciences, a semi-autonomous constituent college of Makerere University.
Go to Profile#565
Peter Jüni
#37024
Overall Influence
Peter Jüni is a Swiss physician, general internist, and epidemiologist based in England. He was previously both a member of, and the scientific director of, the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table, and also a director of a research centre at St Michael's Hospital in Toronto.
Go to Profile#566
Norbert Pallua
#70228
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Norbert Pallua is a surgeon noted for contributions to plastic surgery, including facial reconstruction using flaps, regeneration, and burn rehabilitation. Works He treated Sergei Filin for facial burns after the latter's acid attack. He was head of the Department of Plastic Surgery, Hand and Burns Surgery at the Uniklinikum Aachen until July 2017.
Go to Profile#567
Thoralf Mauritz Sundt
#71829
Overall Influence
#568
Helen Christensen
#65524
Overall Influence
Scientia Professor Helen Christensen is Scientia Professor of Mental Health at UNSW Sydney and Board Director of Black Dog Institute . She is the former Executive Director and Chief Scientist at Black Dog Institute, having led the organisation from 2011 to 2021.
Go to Profile#569
Jeannette Ickovics
#53382
Overall Influence
Jeannette R. Ickovics is an American health and social psychologist. She is the inaugural Samuel and Liselotte Herman Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Yale School of Public Health and Professor of Psychology at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Yale University. She was the Founding Chair of the Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Yale School of Public Health and the Founding Director of Community Alliance for Research and Engagement . She served as the Dean of Faculty at Yale-NUS College in Singapore from 2018 to 2021.
Go to Profile#570
Frances K. Conley
#35746
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (85 years)
Frances "Fran" Krauskopf Conley is a professor of neurosurgery at Stanford University. She is the author of Walking Out on the Boys , the story of her protest of misogyny at the university hospital. She is a crucial figure in the advancement of women in American medicine.
Go to Profile#571
Angela Vincent
#53403
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
Angela Vincent is Emeritus professor at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford. Career and research Angela Vincent was born in 1942, the third child of Carmen and Joseph Molony . After St Mary's Convent, Ascot, she studied medicine at King's College London and Westminster Hospital School of Medicine . After one year as a junior doctor at St Steven's and St Charles' hospitals in London , she obtained an MSc in biochemistry from University College London. In 1967 she married Philip Morse Vincent and they have four children.
Go to Profile#572
Erika von Mutius
#33998
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (68 years)
Erika von Mutius is a German pediatrician and allergologist at the Helmholtz Center Munich and the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich. Her research interests include paediatrics, pediatric pneumology, allergology and epidemiology.
Go to Profile#573
Graham Thornicroft
#69589
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Sir Graham Thornicroft PhD is a British psychiatrist, researcher and Professor of Community Psychiatry at the Centre for Global Mental Health and Centre for Implementation Science at King's College London. He also a Consultant Psychiatrist working at a community mental health team at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. He is best known for his work on community mental health services, stigma and discrimination, and global mental health. He has published over 30 books, and has written over 670 peer-reviewed scientific papers. Graham was made a Knight Bachelor in the 2017 Queen'...
Go to Profile#574
Peter J. Jannetta
#65484
Overall Influence
1932 - 2016 (84 years)
Peter Joseph Jannetta was an American neurosurgeon known for devising microvascular decompression, a surgical procedure to treat trigeminal neuralgia. At the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, he was the first Walter Dandy Professor of Neurological Surgery.
Go to Profile#575
Charles Odamtten Easmon
#43814
Overall Influence
1913 - 1994 (81 years)
Charles Odamtten Easmon or C. O. Easmon, popularly known as Charlie Easmon, was a medical doctor and academic who became the first Ghanaian to formally qualify as a surgeon specialist and the first Dean of the University of Ghana Medical School. Easmon performed the first successful open-heart surgery in Ghana in 1964, and modern scholars credit him as the "Father of Cardiac Surgery in West Africa". Easmon was of Sierra Leone Creole, Ga-Dangme, African-American, Danish, and Irish ancestry and a member of the distinguished Easmon family, a Sierra Leone Creole medical dynasty of African-Americ...
Go to Profile#576
Monica Gandhi
#38325
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (56 years)
Monica Gandhi is an American physician and professor. She teaches medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and is director of the UCSF Gladstone Center for AIDS Research and the medical director of the San Francisco General Hospital HIV Clinic, Ward 86. Her research considers HIV prevalence in women, as well as HIV treatment and prevention. She has been noted as a critic of some aspects of the COVID-19 lockdowns in the US.
Go to Profile#577
R. Tecwyn Williams
#72137
Overall Influence
#578
Dave A. Chokshi
#53192
Overall Influence
Dave Ashok Chokshi is an American physician and former public health official who served as the 43rd health commissioner of New York City. He was the first health commissioner of Asian descent. Chokshi previously served as the inaugural chief population health officer for NYC Health + Hospitals and as a White House fellow in the United States Department of Veterans Affairs. Currently he is a practicing physician at Bellevue Hospital and the inaugural Sternberg Family Professor of Leadership at the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership, part of the City College of New York.
Go to Profile#579
Julio Montaner
#53722
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Julio S. G. Montaner, is an Argentine-Canadian physician, professor and researcher. He is the director of the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, the chair in AIDS Research and head of the Division of AIDS in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia and the past-president of the International AIDS Society. He is also the director of the John Ruedy Immunodeficiency Clinic, and the Physician Program Director for HIV/AIDS PHC. He is known for his work on HAART , a role in the discovery of triple therapy as an effective treatment for HIV in the late 1990s...
Go to Profile#580
P. K. Thomas
#56968
Overall Influence
1926 - 2008 (82 years)
Peter Kynaston "PK" Thomas was a Welsh academic neurologist, author, teacher and administrator. From 1974 to 1991 he was Professor of Neurology at the University of London. He was a fellow of University College London and the Royal Society of Medicine, and was the recipient of the Medal of the Association of British Neurologists. Thomas was, at various times, the president of the Association of British Neurologists, the European Neurological Society, and the Peripheral Nerve Society.
Go to Profile#581
Leonard Apt
#66783
Overall Influence
1922 - 2013 (91 years)
Leonard Apt was an American pediatrician and ophthalmologist. He was one of the first U.S. physicians to complete a fellowship in pediatric ophthalmology. Apt identified that povidone-iodine could be safety used as an antimicrobial for the eyes. In addition to his work in ophthalmology, Apt devised a number of diagnostic tests. The Apt test is performed on blood in a baby's stools to determine whether it is of maternal or fetal origin.
Go to Profile#582
Nathan Efron
#68237
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Nathan Efron is an Australian and British optometrist and an author of numerous research papers and nine books. Biography Efron received undergraduate and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Melbourne in 1981 and the same year became a President of the Contact Lens Society of Australia. He left for postdoctoral studies at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of New South Wales. He returned to Melbourne as a lecturer then senior lecturer before becoming the chair of clinical optometry at the University of Manchester in 1990. He became a founding chairman of the clinical op...
Go to Profile#583
Aaron Carroll
#47246
Overall Influence
Aaron Edward Carroll is an American pediatrician and professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine. At Indiana University, he is also the vice chair for Health Policy and Outcomes Research and the director of the Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research.
Go to Profile#584
Orvar Swenson
#45374
Overall Influence
1909 - 2012 (103 years)
Orvar Swenson was a Swedish-born American pediatric surgeon. He discovered the cause of Hirschsprung's disease and in 1948, with Alexander Bill, performed the first pull-through operation in a child with megacolon, which then became a treatment for the disease.
Go to Profile#585
Daniel Stokols
#16009
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
Daniel Stokols is Research Professor and Chancellor's Professor Emeritus of Social Ecology in the Departments of Psychology and Social Behavior and Planning, Policy, and Design, and founding dean of the School of Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine. He also holds appointments in Public Health, Epidemiology, and Nursing Science at UCI. His recent research has examined factors that influence the success of transdisciplinary research and training programs. Additional areas of Stokols' research include the design and evaluation of community and work site health promotion pro...
Go to Profile#586
Carol Brayne
#63479
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (68 years)
Carol Elspeth Goodeve Brayne CBE is a British academic and the Professor of Public Health Medicine at the University of Cambridge and Chair of Wellcome's Population and Public Health Review Group. She is Director of the Cambridge Institute of Public Health. She is a special advisor for the Royal College of Physicians and a senior investigator at the National Institute for Health Research .
Go to Profile#587
Ian F. Tannock
#73040
Overall Influence
#588
Jan Vandenbroucke
#73154
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Jan Paul Vandenbroucke is a Belgian epidemiologist and physician known for his work in clinical epidemiology. Trained as an internist, he began teaching at Leiden University Medical Center in 1987, and was the head of their Clinical Epidemiology department from then until 1999. He is a member of Academia Europaea and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1996. In 2006, he was named an Academy Professor by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Go to Profile#589
John S. Duncan
#70141
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
John S. Duncan is a British neurologist specialising in epilepsy. He is Professor of Clinical Neurology at University College London Institute of Neurology and Clinical Director of the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery at Queen Square, London.
Go to Profile#590
Elisabete Weiderpass
#57896
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
Elisabete Weiderpass-Vainio is a Brazilian cancer researcher who is Director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a part of the World Health Organization. Her research considers the epidemiology and prevention of cancer.
Go to Profile#591
Alfred E. Harper
#73319
Overall Influence
#592
Sonia Y. Angell
#58359
Overall Influence
Sonia Yris Angell is an American public health figure. She is an assistant clinical professor of medicine in the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. In 2020, after resigning as director of the California Department of Public Health, Angell was elected a Member of the National Academy of Medicine.
Go to Profile#593
Paul Dorian
#56188
Overall Influence
Paul Dorian is a Canadian physician. He is a professor of pharmacology and director of the Division of Cardiology at the University of Toronto. His primary research focus is the clinical pharmacology of antiarrhythmic drugs.
Go to Profile#594
Bruno Reichart
#63856
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (82 years)
Bruno Reichart is a retired German cardiothoracic surgeon who performed Germany's first successful heart transplant in 1981 and its first combined heart–lung transplant in 1983. In 1984, he succeeded Christiaan Barnard at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town and was appointed president of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation from 1988 to 1990. He returned to Munich in 1990 as director of the Cardiac Surgery Clinic at the Klinikum Großhadern of the University of Munich .
Go to Profile#595
Munir Pirmohamed
#71534
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
Professor Sir Munir Pirmohamed is a British clinical pharmacologist and geneticist. Since 2007 he has been the NHS Chair of Pharmacogenetics at the University of Liverpool. Background He attended the former St Paul’s School and Peterborough Technical College.
Go to Profile#596
Adam Drewnowski
#73554
Overall Influence
#597
Joan Dye Gussow
#17502
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (97 years)
Joan Dye Gussow is an American professor, author, food policy expert, environmentalist and gardener. The New York Times has called her the "matriarch of the eat-locally-think-globally food movement."
Go to Profile#598
Munjed Al Muderis
#45560
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (53 years)
Munjed Al Muderis is an Australian adjunct clinical professor in orthopaedic surgery, author and human rights activist. He has done pioneering work on prosthetics, especially on titanium devices. Al Muderis was born in Iraq to a rich family and became a surgeon under the regime of Saddam Hussein. He was a medical student in Basra at the start of the Gulf War in August 1990. As a junior surgeon, he emigrated from Iraq to Australia. He travelled through Indonesia and Malaysia and reached Australia where he was kept in at an immigration detention centre near Derby, Western Australia. He was rele...
Go to Profile#599
Burt Brent
#64852
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
Burt Brent is a retired reconstructive plastic surgeon best known for his work in reconstructing the absent outer ear. He built upon the techniques of his mentor, Dr. Radford Tanzer of the Mary Hitchcock Clinic at Dartmouth Medical School and repaired ear defects in 1,800 patients, most of them children born with ear deformities such as microtia. He also reconstructed ears lost or due to some form of trauma.
Go to Profile#600
Pierre‐alain Clavien
#73974
Overall Influence
