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,
#751
Gavin Yamey
#62621
Overall Influence
Gavin Mark Yamey is a British-American physician and global health researcher. He is the director of the Center for Policy Impact in Global Health at Duke University and a professor of the practice of global health and public policy.
Go to Profile#752
Leighton Chan
#49854
Overall Influence
Leighton Chan is an American medical researcher and rehabilitation physician. He is Chief of the Rehabilitation Medicine Department and Acting Chief Scientific Officer/Scientific Director at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center.
Go to Profile#753
L. Dade Lunsford
#69757
Overall Influence
L. Dade Lunsford is an American neurosurgeon, focusing in brain tumor management, Gamma Knife® stereotactic radiosurgery, movement disorders and trigeminal neuralgia and vascular malformations, currently the Lars Leksell Distinguished Professor at University of Pittsburgh. He is the 2017 recipient of the Herbert Olivecrona Award.
Go to Profile#754
Helen O'Connell
#40159
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
Helen E. O'Connell is an Australian professor of urology and a pioneer in the anatomical study of the clitoris. She is a leading researcher in the area of female pelvic anatomy and was the first woman to complete training as a urologist in Australia.
Go to Profile#755
Cato T. Laurencin
#38090
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
Cato T. Laurencin FREng SLMH is an American engineer, physician, scientist, innovator and a University Professor of the University of Connecticut . He is currently the chief executive officer of The Cato T. Laurencin Institute for Regenerative Engineering.
Go to Profile#756
David Vlahov
#79465
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
David Vlahov is an American epidemiologist and professor emeritus at the UCSF School of Nursing, of which he previously served as dean from April 2011 to August 2016. He is also the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Urban Health, and has been a member of the National Academy of Medicine since 2011. He is known for researching issues related to social determinants of health, such as the effectiveness of needle exchange programs. With Sandro Galea, he has also researched psychological responses to the September 11 attacks among residents of New York City.
Go to Profile#757
Norbert Gleicher
#67288
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
Norbert Gleicher is an American obstetrician-gynecologist active in obstetrical practice, in vitro fertilization, reproductive endocrinology, and reproductive immunology. He is a fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American College of Surgeons and currently serves as president, medical director and chief scientist of the Center for Human Reproduction in New York City, a clinical fertility center that he founded in 1981. Simultaneously, he is President of the Foundation for Reproductive Medicine, a not-for-profit research foundation. Gleicher maintains ...
Go to Profile#758
Gail Rosseau
#77229
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Gail Linskey Rosseau is Clinical Professor of Neurosurgery at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Washington, D.C. Prior to this position, she was Associate Chairman of Inova Fairfax Hospital Department of Neurosciences. She previously served as director of skull base surgery of NorthShore University HealthSystem. She is board-certified and has been an examiner for the American Board of Neurological Surgery. She has been elected to the leadership of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies, and the Société ...
Go to Profile#759
Tsung O. Cheng
#81870
Overall Influence
#760
Hagai Levine
#65106
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (47 years)
Hagai Levine is an Israeli public health physician and epidemiologist. Until 2021, Levine was the chairman of Israel’s association of Public Health Physicians. He left to help Moshe Ya'alon and Telem “bring ‘security and hope to Israel’ again.” The Association announced Nadav Davidovitch would serve as interim chairman.
Go to Profile#761
Albert Galaburda
#45553
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
Albert Mark Galaburda is a cognitive and behavioral neurologist with a special focus on the biologic bases of developmental cognitive disorders. He is the Emily Fisher Landau Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience at Harvard Medical School, the Director of the Office for Diversity, Inclusion, and Career Advancement at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, and co-director of the Harvard University Interfaculty Initiative on Mind Brain and Behavior, together with psychologist Alfonso Caramazza. He is best known for his development of the Geschwind–Galaburda hypothesis, which helps expl...
Go to Profile#762
Nariman Mehta
#19493
Overall Influence
1920 - 2014 (94 years)
Nariman Bomanshaw Mehta was an Indian-born American organic chemist and pharmacologist who designed, synthesized, and patented the organic compound bupropion, marketed under the name Wellbutrin as an antidepressant and smoking cessation aid.
Go to Profile#763
Namandjé Bumpus
#57989
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (44 years)
Namandjé N. Bumpus is an American pharmacologist and the Chief Scientist of the Food and Drug Administration. She was previously director of the department of pharmacology and molecular sciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where she holds the E.K. Marshall and Thomas H. Maren professorship in pharmacology. Bumpus is known for her research on the metabolism of antiviral drugs used to treat HIV-1 and how genetic variations in drug-processing enzymes may impact these drugs' efficacy. Bumpus received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2016.
Go to Profile#764
Giuseppe Di Benedetto
#77259
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
Giuseppe Di Benedetto is an Italian cardiac surgeon born in Eboli on 8 January 1946, He holds the Italian national record for the use of carbon dioxide laser to perform revascularization trans-myocardial otherwise inoperable; specialized in congenital diseases of cardiovascular system, is one of the few surgeons in the world that practice successfully the surgery of aortic arch.
Go to Profile#765
Lisa Bero
#59251
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (67 years)
Lisa Anne Bero, born 1958, is an academic who originally trained in pharmacology and went on to a career studying research integrity and how clinical and basic sciences are translated into clinical practice and health policy. Bero is a Professor of Medicine and Public Health and the Chief Scientist of the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado. Previously, she had been Chair of Medicines Use and Health Outcomes at the University of Sydney. From 1991 until 2014, she was Professor in the Department of Clinical Pharmacy and in the Institute of Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco , and is currently an adjunct professor there.
Go to Profile#766
Pamela Shaw
#56172
Overall Influence
Dame Pamela Jean Shaw is a British consultant neurologist and professor of neurology at the University of Sheffield. She is the founder and director of the Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience , and in 2019 was appointed to lead the National Institute for Health Research Sheffield Biomedical Research Centre.
Go to Profile#767
Susan Fisher-Hoch
#73740
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (85 years)
Susan P. Fisher-Hoch is a British-born infectious-disease specialist who has made major contributions to the understanding of Legionnaires' disease and Lassa fever. She is the co-author, along with her husband Joseph B. McCormick, of the memoir Level 4: Virus Hunters of the CDC. Fisher-Hoch is professor of epidemiology at The University of Texas Health Science Center School of Public Health. She was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame in 2008.
Go to Profile#768
Hermes Grillo
#78097
Overall Influence
1923 - 2006 (83 years)
Hermes C. Grillo was a world-famous thoracic surgeon and professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School. He was born in Boston in 1923 and died at age 83 in a car accident in Italy on October 14, 2006. He is considered the father of tracheal surgery and wrote what is considered the definitive text on the subject, "Surgery of the Trachea and Bronchi", published in 2004.
Go to Profile#769
Martin A. Samuels
#66047
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (80 years)
Martin A. Samuels, MD, DSc , FAAN, MACP, FRCP, FANA, was an American physician, neurologist and medical educator. He wrote on the relationships between neurology and the rest of medicine, and has linked the nervous system with cardiac function, highlighting the mechanisms and prevention of neurogenic cardiac disease.
Go to Profile#770
Mark Woolhouse
#66712
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
Mark Edward John Woolhouse OBE FRSE FMedSci is professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the Usher Institute in the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
Go to Profile#771
Elizabeth Jaffee
#68153
Overall Influence
Elizabeth M. Jaffee is an American oncologist specializing in pancreatic cancer and immunotherapy. Education Jaffee completed her undergraduate degree at Brandeis University in 1981 and earned her MD from New York Medical College in 1985. Following medical school, she did her residency at Presbyterian-University Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. After residency she received a position as a research fellow at the University of Pittsburgh.
Go to Profile#772
Sayed Amjad Hussain
#67430
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (88 years)
Sayed Amjad Hussain is a Pakistani-American cardiothoracic surgeon and writer from Maumee, Ohio. He invented two surgical devices – the pleuroperitoneal shunt and a special endotracheal tube. He was a member of Team Indus which covered the entire 2,000 miles of the river Indus in Pakistan from its source in Western Tibet. This trip was claimed to have been the third expedition in history to reach that site. The achievements of Team Indus were entered into Congressional Records of the U.S. Congress in June 1997. While on a humanitarian mission, he donated tons of supplies and equipment to the Dominican Republic, China and Pakistan.
Go to Profile#773
Edith A. Perez
#71859
Overall Influence
Edith A. Pérez is a Puerto Rican hematologist-oncologist. She is the Serene M. and Frances C. Durling Professor of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine. Early life and education Perez was born and raised in Humacao, Puerto Rico. Her mother was a teacher and librarian and her father owned a grocery store. During her freshman year at University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, Perez's grandmother died. Her death motivated her to become a physician. In 1975, she graduated magna cum laude with a B.S. in Biology.
Go to Profile#774
Alonzo Smythe Yerby
#54174
Overall Influence
1921 - 1994 (73 years)
Alonzo Yerby was an American physician and academic who served as the Associate Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston. He previously served as New York City Hospitals Commissioner, as a department head and professor at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Go to Profile#775
George L. Blackburn
#64492
Overall Influence
1936 - 2017 (81 years)
George L. Blackburn was the S. Daniel Abraham Professor of Nutrition and associate director of the division of nutrition at Harvard Medical School. He was also director of the Center for the Study of Nutrition Medicine in the Roberta and Stephen R. Weiner Department of Surgery, and director of the new Feihe Nutrition Laboratory at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center , Boston, Massachusetts.
Go to Profile#776
René Bernards
#49014
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
René Bernards is a Dutch cancer researcher. He is professor of molecular carcinogenesis at Utrecht University and head of the section of molecular carcinogenesis at the Netherlands Cancer Institute-Antoni van Leeuwenhoekziekenhuis. Bernards is a winner of the 2005 Spinoza Prize.
Go to Profile#777
David A. Hafler
#73278
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
David A. Hafler is an American neurologist. He is the Edgerly Professor and chairman of the department of Neurology at the Yale School of Medicine. He is known for his work in immunity, genetics, and multiple sclerosis. In 2018 he was elected to the National Academy of Medicine.
Go to Profile#778
Japhet Killewo
#71381
Overall Influence
Japhet Killewo is a Tanzanian doctor and epidemiologist in Kagera, Tanzania. He was the former Chair of Tanzanian Public Health Association and currently an epidemiology professor at Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences . His research area focuses on HIV/AIDS epidemiology research in Kagera region in Tanzania. As a clinician, he also focuses on AIDS control and mother-to-child intervention in Tanzania. As a scholar, he publishes actively in international journals and participated in many projects across the globe, which are organised and supported by the European Union, as well a...
Go to Profile#779
Hugo Lagercrantz
#64259
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (80 years)
Carl Hugo Lagercrantz is a Swedish pediatrician. He is Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics at the Karolinska Institute and is a former member of both the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute, which awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and the assembly's five-member working body, the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine. He has also formerly been President of the Swedish Pediatric Society and the European Society for Pediatric Research. Since 2005 he has been editor-in-chief of Acta Paediatrica. Lagercrantz was appointed professor of pediatrics at Karolinska Institute in ...
Go to Profile#780
Richard P. Wenzel
#82852
Overall Influence
#781
Urs A. Meyer
#50929
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (87 years)
Urs Albert Meyer is a Swiss physician-scientist and clinical pharmacologist. Life Meyer is professor emeritus of pharmacology at the Biozentrum University of Basel. After clinical and research training at the University of California, San Francisco, USA, he worked as assistant professor in clinical pharmacology at the same institution. In 1974, he became Head of Clinical Pharmacology at the University Hospital of Zurich. From 1983 to 2008, Meyer carried out research and taught as professor of pharmacology at the Biozentrum University of Basel, where he also acted as Chairman. He has served in ...
Go to Profile#782
Andrew Nicolaides
#69676
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (87 years)
Andrew Nicolaides is a British-Greek Cypriot surgeon, and an expert in cardiovascular disease and stroke prevention. Early life Nicolaides was born in 1938 in Nicosia, Cyprus. He studied medicine at Guy's Hospital Medical School in London. His postgraduate training was at Guy's, the University of Oxford and King's College School of Medicine.
Go to Profile#783
Martin Rossor
#72116
Overall Influence
Martin Neil Rossor , is a British clinical neurologist with a specialty interest in degenerative dementias and familial disease. Career He is professor emeritus and principal research associate at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, honorary consultant neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, and was the national director for Dementia Research for the National Institute for Health Research in the UK.
Go to Profile#784
Lüder Deecke
#22878
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (87 years)
Lüder Deecke in Lohe-Rickelshof, Germany is a German Austrian neurologist, neuroscientist, teacher and physician whose scientific discoveries have influenced brain research and the treatment and rehabilitation of neurological disorders.
Go to Profile#785
David Ludwig
#73521
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (68 years)
David S. Ludwig is an American endocrinologist and low-carbohydrate diet advocate in Boston, Massachusetts. Education Ludwig received a PhD and an MD from Stanford University School of Medicine. He completed an internship and residency in pediatrics and a fellowship in pediatric endocrinology at Boston Children's Hospital.
Go to Profile#786
Alexander Leaf
#83422
Overall Influence
#787
Sigvald Bernhard Refsum
#83175
Overall Influence
1907 - 1991 (84 years)
Sigvald Bernhard Refsum was a Norwegian neurologist and university teacher. Biography Sigvald Refsum studied medicine at University of Oslo and obtained his doctorate in 1946. He taught in University of Bergen from 1951, then from 1954 until his retirement in 1978 in University of Oslo. Refsum disease is named after him.
Go to Profile#788
Timothy J. Ley
#63041
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Timothy J. Ley is an American hematologist and cancer biologist. He is the Lewis T. and Rosalind B. Apple Professor of Oncology in the department of medicine, and is chief of the section of stem cell biology in the division of oncology at Washington University in St. Louis. He is a member of the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center.
Go to Profile#789
J. Donald M. Gass
#83477
Overall Influence
#790
Karen Glanz
#80561
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Karen Glanz is an American behavioral epidemiologist. She is the George A. Weiss University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Glanz is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and has been recognized as one of the world's most influential scientific minds.
Go to Profile#791
Bertha Madras
#53457
Overall Influence
Bertha Kalifon Madras is a professor of psychobiology in the Department of Psychiatry and the chair of the Division of Neurochemistry at Harvard Medical School, Harvard University. She served as associate director for public education in the division on Addictions at Harvard Medical School. Madras has published research in the areas of drug addiction , ADHD, and Parkinson's disease.
Go to Profile#792
Allan S. Jaffe,
#83615
Overall Influence
#793
Thomas A. LaVeist
#45611
Overall Influence
Thomas A. LaVeist is dean and Weatherhead Presidential Chair at the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was previously chairman of the Department of Health Policy and Management at the George Washington University, Milken Institute School of Public Health. He focuses mainly on the development of policy and interventions to address race disparities in the health field.
Go to Profile#794
Angus Dalgleish
#66215
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Angus George Dalgleish FRCP FRCPath FMedSci is a professor of oncology at St George's, University of London, best known for his contributions to HIV/AIDS research. Dalgleish stood in 2015 for Parliament as a UKIP candidate.
Go to Profile#795
Filippo Crea
#83799
Overall Influence
#796
Barry Dorn
#58299
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (84 years)
Barry C. Dorn is an American phsyician who is Associate Director of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative , a joint program of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and Associate Director of the Program for Health Care Negotiation and Conflict Resolution at HSPH. He is also an Instructor in Public Health Practice at HSPH and Clinical Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at the Tufts University School of Medicine. Additionally, he served on the Faculty of Health Services at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel from 2010-2013.
Go to Profile#797
Ivan R. Schwab
#29432
Overall Influence
Ivan Roy Schwab is a professor of ophthalmology at the University of California Davis School of Medicine. Dr. Schwab completed his undergraduate degree at West Virginia University and received his M.D. from the West Virginia University School of Medicine. Dr. Schwab then completed a residency in ophthalmology at California Pacific Medical Center and a fellowship in corneal surgery at University of California San Francisco in 1982. He is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons.
Go to Profile#798
George A. Ricaurte
#74337
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
George A. Ricaurte is a neurologist and researcher who works at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in the Department of Neurology. Biography Ricaurte received his MD from Northwestern University Medical School and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
Go to Profile#799
Myron R. Melamed
#83947
Overall Influence
#800
Kenneth Offit
#73173
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Kenneth Offit is an American cancer geneticist and oncologist. He is currently Chief of the Clinical Genetics Service and the Robert and Kate Niehaus Chair in Inherited Cancer Genomics at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Offit is also a member of the Program in Cancer Biology and Genetics at the Sloan-Kettering Institute, Professor of Medicine and Healthcare Policy and Research at Weill Cornell Medical College, and a member of both the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Cancer Institute and the Evaluation of Genomic Applications in Practice and Prevention working group of the U.S.
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