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,

#1101

Adam Drewnowski

#79375
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
Adam Drewnowski is a professor of epidemiology at the University of Washington and the director of the Center for Public Health Nutrition at the University's School of Public Health. Son of economics professor Jan Drewnowski.
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#1102

Sanjay Saini

#71825
Overall Influence
Sanjay Saini is a radiologist at Harvard Medical School. He was in the news in New York Times in 2003 in relation to collaboration with offshore radiologists to provide health care in America. Saini earned his MD from Tufts Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts. he is professor of radiology, at Harvard Medical School and Vice Chairman for Finance, Department of Radiology, at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
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#1103

Jason Walter Brown

#51225
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (87 years)
Jason W. Brown is an American neurologist and writer of works in neuropsychology and philosophy of mind. He has been a reviewer and recipient of grants and fellowships from the National Institutes of Health and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and is or has been on the editorial boards of leading journals in his field. He has written 14 books, edited 4 others, and more than 200 articles.
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#1104

Alastair Hay

Alastair Hay
#61531
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
Alastair Watt Macintyre Hay is a British toxicologist, and a Professor of Environmental Toxicology; he works primarily in the fields of chemical warfare and biological warfare . Education Hay gained a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry in 1969, in London, though had started with Maths and Chemistry, and a PhD in Biochemistry in 1973 for research on the metabolism of fructose in the liver.
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#1105

Fatmir Dalladaku

#73751
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Fatmir Dalladaku is a German cardiac surgeon of Albanian origin. He is best known for performing the first open-heart surgery in Kosovo, and for his pro bono work for patients from Kosovo, Albania and North Macedonia. He spent the biggest part of his professional career in Germany, beginning in 1989.
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#1106

Elizabeth M. McNally

#63529
Overall Influence
Elizabeth M. McNally is an American human geneticist and cardiologist. She is the Elizabeth J. Ward Chair and director of the Center for Genetic Medicine at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine.
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#1107

Robert B. Wallace

#98387
Overall Influence
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#1108

Antonella Tosti

#98402
Overall Influence
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#1109

Walter A. Wohlgemuth

#77250
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
Walter A. Wohlgemuth is a German radiologist and neuroradiologist and Director of the University Clinic and Policlinic of Radiology at the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg. Biography Wohlgemuth studied medicine at the University of Regensburg, at the Technische Universität München and at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich as well as health economics at the University of Bayreuth. After finishing his dissertation he began his career at the Clinic of Radiology and Neuroradiology and at the Clinic of Neurology and Clinical Neurophysiology at the hospital of Augsburg. 2001 he w...
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#1110

Lateef Akinola Salako

#65265
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (90 years)
Lateef Akinola Salako NNOM, CON was a Nigerian academic who was professor emeritus of pharmacology and therapeutics at the University of Ibadan. Early life Lateef Akinola Salako was born on 5 July 1935 in Lagos State, south-western Nigeria. He attended Methodist Boys High School, Victoria Island, Lagos where he obtained the West African Senior School Certificate in 1953. He trained at the University College Hospital, Ibadan before he proceeded to University of Sheffield where he received a doctorate degree in 1969.
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#1111

Claire Brindis

#89205
Overall Influence
Claire Brindis , DrPH, is a Distinguished Emerita Professor of Pediatrics and Health Policy , Department of Pediatrics and Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Health Sciences and Emerita Director of the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco . Her research considers women's, adolescent and child health, as well as adolescent pregnancy prevention strategies. She was elected a member of the Institute of Medicine in 2010.
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#1112

Deepti Gurdasani

#55851
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (43 years)
Deepti Gurdasani is a British-Indian clinical epidemiologist and statistical geneticist who is a senior lecturer in machine learning at the Queen Mary University of London. Her research considers the genetic diversity of African Populations. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Gurdasani has provided the public with her analysis of the evolving situation mainly on the Twitter platform.
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#1113

Hassan Youssef Aboul-enein

#98854
Overall Influence
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#1114

Sarah Tabrizi

Sarah Tabrizi
#43054
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (60 years)
Sarah Joanna Tabrizi FMedSci is a British neurologist and neuroscientist in the field of neurodegeneration, particularly Huntington's disease. She is a Professor and Joint Head of the Department of Neurodegenerative Diseases at the UCL Institute of Neurology; the founder and Director of the UCL Huntington's Disease Centre; a Principal Investigator at the UK Dementia Research Institute at UCL; and an Honorary Consultant Neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square, London, where she established the Multidisciplinary Huntington's Disease Clinic. The UCL Hunti...
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#1115

John Anderson Strong

#59827
Overall Influence
1915 - 2012 (97 years)
John Anderson Strong was a Scottish physician/internist and academic, who served as Professor of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh and the President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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#1116

Michael Dunn

#84307
Overall Influence
Michael Dunn is, , the director of Brigham Young University's Department of Nutrition, Dietetics and Food Science. Dunn was the leader a team also including BYU students Kathryn Burton and Adam Richins that developed a way to make corn tortillas which were fortified with iron and other essential vitamins to aid the health of people who live primarily on corn tortillas, such as most children in Mexico.
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#1117

Scott. H. Sicherer

#99110
Overall Influence
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#1118

John Forrest Goodwin

#99162
Overall Influence
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#1119

Emily S. Gurley

#70373
Overall Influence
Emily S. Gurley is an American epidemiologist. She is a professor of the practice in the department of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Education Gurley completed a BA at Oglethorpe University in 1996 and a MPH from Emory University in 2002. She earned a PhD from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2012.
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#1120

Denis Lamoureux

#26245
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Denis O. Lamoureux holds a professorial chair of science and religion at St. Joseph's College at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He has doctoral degrees in dentistry, theology, and biology. The author of Evolutionary Creation and of I Love Jesus and I Accept Evolution, he has also written Darwinism Defeated? The Johnson-Lamoureux Debate on Biological Origins, on the creation–evolution controversy .
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#1121

Henry W. Hofstetter

#91877
Overall Influence
1914 - 2002 (88 years)
Henry W. Hofstetter was an American optometrist and the author of two books and 500 research papers. He is a past president of the American Optometric Association and a member of the National Optometry Hall of Fame.
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#1122

Jean-Claude Tardif

#96414
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (61 years)
Jean-Claude Tardif is the Director of the Research Center at the Montreal Heart Institute and Professor of Medicine at the University of Montreal. He received his medical degree in 1987 from the University of Montreal and specialized in cardiology and research in Montreal and Boston until 1994. Dr. Tardif holds the Canada Research Chair in personalized medicine and the University of Montreal endowed research chair in atherosclerosis. He is also the Scientific Director of the Montreal Health Innovations Coordinating Center .
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#1123

J. David Hawkins

#70143
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (80 years)
J. David Hawkins is an American sociologist, academic, and author. He is Emeritus Endowed Professor of Prevention and founding director of the Social Development Research Group in the School of Social Work at the University of Washington. His research focuses on the prevention of behavior problems in children and adolescents. He developed the Communities That Care prevention system with Richard F. Catalano.
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#1124

Gavin Phd Giovannoni

#99361
Overall Influence
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#1125

Phillip Anson Low

#99389
Overall Influence
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#1126

Cynthia Pine

Cynthia Pine
#74402
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Professor Cynthia Pine CBE is a British Dentistry educator at the London School of Dentistry. In 2003, she became the first woman appointed to head a dentistry school in the UK. She is one of a group of highly successful Guyanese people in Britain , which includes Waheed Alli, Raj Persaud, Herman Ouseley and David Dabydeen, Keith Waithe and Rudolph Dunbar.
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#1127

M. L. Maarten L. Simoons

#99498
Overall Influence
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#1128

Anand Veeravagu

#75586
Overall Influence
Anand Veeravagu is an American neurosurgeon at Stanford University Hospital and Clinics. In 2012, he was selected to serve as a White House Fellow and is focused on innovation in healthcare delivery, traumatic brain injury, mental health and suicide prevention initiatives.
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#1129

Richard Pestell

Richard Pestell
#58966
Overall Influence
Richard G. Pestell is an Australian American oncologist and endocrinologist who is Distinguished Professor, Translational Medical Research, and the President of the Pennsylvania Cancer and Regenerative Medicine Research Center at the Baruch S. Blumberg Institute. He was previously Executive Vice President of Thomas Jefferson University and Director of the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center of Thomas Jefferson University. Pestell was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in the 2019 Queen's Birthday Honours for distinguished service to medicine and medical education.
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#1130

Paul Bottomley

#89761
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Paul Bottomley pioneered the development of magnetic resonance imaging leading to modern commercial clinical 1.5 Tesla MRI scanners and techniques for localized magnetic resonance spectroscopy . Currently, he is Russel H. Morgan Professor of Radiology and Director of the Division of MR Research at Johns Hopkins University, with about 200 peer-reviewed journal articles, over 50 U.S patents and is a Founder and past member of the Board of Directors of ClearPoint Neuro Inc, formerly known as MRI Interventions Inc and SurgiVision Inc, a Johns Hopkins start-up.
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#1131

Maurits Allessie

#32931
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (80 years)
Maurits Allessie is an emeritus professor of physiology at Maastricht University. As an electrophysiologist he developed better insights in atrial fibrillation. Career Allessie was born in 1945 in Gemert, the Netherlands, and was raised in Amsterdam. He obtained his MD from the University of Amsterdam in 1974, and his PhD from Maastricht University in 1977. At age 38 he became a professor of physiology at the latter university, and seven years later he became head of the department. During his career Allessie studied heart problems.
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#1132

Mark J. Nieuwenhuijsen

#99653
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (60 years)
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#1133

Nita Forouhi

#75834
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
Nita Gandhi Forouhi is a British physician and academic, specialising in nutrition and epidemiology. She is Professor of Population Health and Nutrition at the University of Cambridge, the programme leader of the nutritional epidemiology programme of its MRC Epidemiology Unit, and an honorary consultant public health physician with Public Health England.
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#1134

Nancy E. Lane

#81366
Overall Influence
Nancy E. Lane is an American rheumatologist. She is an Endowed Professor of Medicine, Rheumatology, and Aging Research at the University of California, Davis and director of the UC Davis Musculoskeletal Diseases of Aging Research Group. She has also sat on the editorial boards of Nature Reviews Rheumatology, Rheumatology, Seminars in Arthritis and Rheumatism, Arthritis & Rheumatology, and The Journal of Rheumatology.
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#1135

Teresa A. Dolan

#82077
Overall Influence
Teresa A. Dolan is a native of Jersey City, New Jersey. Dolan retired from the University of Florida College of Dentistry after serving 10 years as dean and 24 years as faculty at the college. In May 2003 she was promoted from interim dean to the new dean of the college.
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#1136

Andrew Haines

#66218
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
Sir Andrew Paul Haines, FMedSci is a British epidemiologist and academic. He was the Director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine from 2001 to 2010. Early life and education Haines was educated at Latymer Upper School on a state funded scholarship, and at King's College London where he qualified in Medicine in 1969 with honours in pathology, surgery and pharmacology and therapeutics. He gained an MD in Epidemiology in the University of London in 1985.
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#1137

A. Mark Richards

#99008
Overall Influence
Arthur Mark Richards is a New Zealand physician, academic and medical researcher. He is a professor of cardiology and director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at the National University of Singapore, and a professor of medicine and founder of the Christchurch Heart Institute at the University of Otago, Christchurch, New Zealand, where he holds the National Heart Foundation Chair of Cardiovascular Studies.
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#1138

Hal Morgenstern

#78621
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
Harold "Hal" Morgenstern is an American epidemiologist and professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Education Morgenstern received his Bachelor of Architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1969. He then attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he received his Master of Regional Planning in 1974 and his Ph.D. in epidemiology in 1978.
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#1139

Daniel Kopans

#99997
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Daniel B. Kopans, MD, FACR is a radiologist specializing in mammography and other forms of breast imaging. Dr. Daniel Kopans is a leading expert in breast cancer detection and diagnosis. He is the founder of the Breast Imaging Division in the Department of Radiology at the Massachusetts General Hospital. In 1984 he was the lead author on a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine describing the developing subspecialty of "Breast Imaging". One of the founders of this new field, Dr. Kopans has been at the forefront of combining mammography, ultrasound, and other imaging tests to aid in the detection and diagnosis of breast cancer.
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#1140

Nadine Caron

#75801
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (55 years)
Nadine Rena Caron FACS, FRCSC, , is a Canadian surgeon. She is the first Canadian female general surgeon of First Nations descent , as well as the first female First Nations student to graduate from University of British Columbia's medical school.
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#1141

William Pao

#75080
Overall Influence
William Pao is an oncologist and Executive Vice President and Chief Development Officer of Pfizer. He was previously the head of Pharma Research and Early Development at Roche and a professor of medicine at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He is best known for his work in molecular oncology and cancer genomics.
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#1142

Mark A. Lemmon

Mark A. Lemmon
#59323
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
Mark Andrew Lemmon an English-born biochemist, is the Alfred Gilman Professor and Department Chair of Pharmacology at Yale University where he also directs the Cancer Biology Institute. Education Lemmon was born in Norfolk, England in 1964 and grew up in Taverham and Poringland. He was educated at Norwich School , and then at Hertford College, Oxford, from which he graduated with a first class Bachelor of Arts degree in biochemistry in 1988. He completed his PhD at Yale University as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Predoctoral Fellow supervised by Donald Engelman for research on the oligo...
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#1143

Dinara Uzbekova

#100141
Overall Influence
1933 - 2020 (87 years)
Dinara Galievna Uzbekova was a Russian pharmacologist, Doctor of Medical Sciences, professor at the Ryazan State Medical University, Chairman of the Ryazan Branch of the All-Russian Society of Pharmacologists, Honored Worker of Higher School of the Russian Federation .
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#1144

Benedict Robert Lucchesi

#100162
Overall Influence
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#1145

Dale Sandler

#73131
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
Dale Pearlman Sandler is an American epidemiologist specialized in prospective cohort studies designed to study the impact of environmental exposures on population health. She is chief of the Epidemiology Branch at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Sandler is a past president of the American College of Epidemiology and received a Dr. Nathan Davis Award in 2015.
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#1146

S Katharine Hammond

#25170
Overall Influence
Sally Katharine Hammond is a Professor of Environmental Health Sciences and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. Her research considers the impact of pollution and passive smoking on public health. It resulted in the Federal Aviation Administration issuing a ban on smoking on aeroplanes. Hammond serves on the World Health Organization study group on Tobacco Product Regulation.
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#1147

Gianni Bonadonna

#100437
Overall Influence
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#1148

Ulrich von Andrian

#92859
Overall Influence
Ulrich von Andrian is a German Immunologist and professor of Microbiology and Immunobiology at Harvard University. He is best known for his work in the areas of leukocyte trafficking and the regulation of immune responses in lymph nodes, with a focus on how T-cell and B-cell-specific responses to antigen are initiated and how antigen is transported to the lymph nodes and presented by APCs.
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#1149

Avroy A. Fanaroff

#100518
Overall Influence
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#1150

Angela Hartley Brodie

Angela Hartley Brodie
#76045
Overall Influence
1934 - 2017 (83 years)
Angela Hartley Brodie was a British biochemist who pioneered development of steroidal aromatase inhibitors in cancer research. Born in Lancashire , Brodie studied chemical pathology to a doctoral level in Sheffield and was awarded a fellowship sponsored by National Institutes of Health. After 17 years of working in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts on oral contraceptives with Harry Brodie, whom she married, she switched focus to the effects of the oestrogen-producing enzyme, aromatase, on breast cancer.
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