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,

#1201

David A. Drachman

#102342
Overall Influence
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#1202

Charles Miller Fisher

#102360
Overall Influence
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#1203

Masatsugu Hori

#102372
Overall Influence
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#1204

Frederick Albert Jakobiec

#102378
Overall Influence
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#1205

Ronald Summers

#92166
Overall Influence
Ronald Marc Summers is an American radiologist and senior investigator at the Diagnostic Radiology Department at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. He is chief of the Clinical Image Processing Service and directs the Imaging Biomarkers and Computer-Aided Diagnosis Laboratory. A researcher in the field of radiology and computer-aided diagnosis, he has co-authored over 500 journal articles and conference proceedings papers and is a coinventor on 12 patents. His lab has conducted research applying artificial intelligence and deep learning to radiology.
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#1206

Bertha Bouroncle

#94639
Overall Influence
1919 - 2013 (94 years)
Bertha A. Bouroncle Pereny was a Peruvian-American hematologist. After completing medical school in Peru, Bouroncle came to the United States for her postgraduate medical training. A longtime member of the faculty at the Ohio State University College of Medicine, she was the first investigator to identify hairy cell leukemia and the first female full professor in the state of Ohio.
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#1207

Alfred I. Neugut

#102535
Overall Influence
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#1208

Alain F. Carpentier

#102537
Overall Influence
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#1209

Dale Elton Bauman

#102552
Overall Influence
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#1210

Eric Borgstein

#91344
Overall Influence
Eric S. Borgstein is a Dutch pediatric surgeon and professor of surgery at the University of Malawi College of Medicine. Early life Borgstein was born in Malawi to two Dutch physicians. He attended medical school and trained as a surgeon in Scotland and underwent specialized pediatric surgery training in the Netherlands. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.
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#1211

T. K. Lahiri

#94748
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (84 years)
Tapan Kumar Lahiri is an Indian cardiothoracic surgeon, medical academic and writer from the state of Uttar Pradesh, India. He is a former professor at the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery of the Institute of Medical Sciences, Banaras Hindu University. The Government of India awarded him the fourth highest civilian honour of the Padma Shri, in 2016, for his contributions to medicine.
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#1212

Dan Krewski

#98299
Overall Influence
Daniel Krewski is an Academic who is Professor of Medicine and Professor of Epidemiology and Community Medicine at the University of Ottawa, where his focus is health risk assessment in the Institute of Population Health.
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#1213

Maryellen L. Giger

#89553
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Maryellen L. Giger, is an American physicist and radiologist who has made significant contributions to the field of medical imaging. Giger co-founded Quantitative Insights, Inc., whose product QuantX is the first FDA-cleared, machine-learning driven system to aid in cancer diagnosis. This makes her the first inventor to successfully develop a system that automatically detects patterns from past cases and outputs a diagnosis on cancer that is equal if not more credible than a doctor's. The technology is currently evolving to detect other medical conditions beside the definitive breast cancer. ...
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#1214

Edward Shanbrom

#82443
Overall Influence
1924 - 2012 (88 years)
Edward Shanbrom was an American medical researcher and hematologist, best known for the development of the process allowing the clotting protein Factor VIII to be made to treat hemophilia. Early life and education Edward Shanbrom was born in West Haven, Connecticut, United States, and served in the United States Navy from 1943 to 1946. He then received a Bachelor of Science from Allegheny College, and a medical degree from the University of Buffalo School of Medicine. Following an internship for the Buffalo University Hospital, Shanbrom received a fellowship to Yale University, where he studied hematology.
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#1215

Lone Simonsen

#82716
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
Lone Simonsen is a Danish epidemiologist and professor of population health sciences. Since the beginning of 2020, she has been the director of PandemiX, an interdisciplinary pandemic research center at Roskilde University. In 2023 PandemiX was established as a Center of Excellence funded by the Danish National Research Foundation.
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#1216

Donato LaRossa

#94060
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (84 years)
Donato D. LaRossa was a medical doctor and Professor Emeritus of Surgery at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Career LaRossa was born in New Jersey in 1941. He received his A.B. from Seton Hall University in 1963 and his M.D. from Georgetown University School of Medicine in 1967. LaRossa served in the United States Army for two years as the Assistant Chief of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Denver, Colorado where he was promoted to the rank of Major. He was also an instructor at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
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#1217

Arthur Christopoulos

#81868
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Arthur Christopoulos is an Australian Professor of Analytical Pharmacology at Monash University. He is the recipient of numerous national and international awards, including the 2013 John J. Abel Award from the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics and the Rand Medal from the Australasian Society of Clinical and Experimental Pharmacologists and Toxicologists, the 2014 IUPHAR Analytical Pharmacology Lecturer, a 2015 Doctor of Laws from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, the 2016 recipient of the Gaddum Memorial Award from the British Pharmacological Society and the 2016 GSK Award for Research Excellence.
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#1218

June E. Osborn

#74605
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (88 years)
Dr. June E. Osborn has served as an expert advisor on numerous urgent medical and health issues that include infectious diseases and their vaccines, virology, and public health policy as well as publishing research on these subjects. Osborn currently works on public health policy with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, The World Health Organization, The National Institutes of Health, and The Food and Drug Administration.
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#1219

Roberto Miguel Lang

#102796
Overall Influence
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#1220

Judy E. Garber

#97275
Overall Influence
Judy Ellen Garber is the director of the Center for Cancer Genetics and Prevention at the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Garber previously served as president of the American Association for Cancer Research.
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#1221

Stephan A. Mayer

#99913
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
Stephan A. Mayer is an American neurologist and critical care physician who currently serves as Director of Neurocritical Care and Emergency Neurology Services for the Westchester Medical Center Health System. Mayer is most noted for his research in subarachnoid and intracerebral hemorrhage, acute ischemic stroke, cardiac arrest, coma, status epilepticus, brain multimodality monitoring, therapeutic temperature modulation, and outcomes after severe brain injury. He has gained media attention for popularizing the concept that physicians have historically underestimated the brain’s resilience and capacity for recovery.
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#1222

Kristina Sundquist

#102844
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (61 years)
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#1223

Bernard r. Chaitman

#102950
Overall Influence
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#1224

David Jack

#51311
Overall Influence
1924 - 2011 (87 years)
Sir David Jack was a Scottish pharmacologist and medicinal chemist who specialised in the development of drugs for treating asthma. He was head of research and development at Glaxo from 1978 until 1987.
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#1225

Jay Neitz

#54762
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Jay Neitz is an American professor of ophthalmology and a color vision researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. Education and career Neitz grew up in Montana. He attended San Jose State University for his undergraduate, finishing with a BA in psychology and physics in 1979. He went on to receive his PhD at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1986 under the direction of Gerald Jacobs. His thesis title was Variations in Color Matching Among Humans with Normal Color Vision. After his PhD, he stayed at the same institution as a postdoctoral researcher for several years before starting a permanent position at the Medical College of Wisconsin.
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#1226

Reza Dana

Reza Dana
#70642
Overall Influence
Reza Dana is the Claes H. Dohlman Professor of Ophthalmology, senior scientist and W. Clement Stone Clinical Research Scholar at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, Harvard Medical School, and director of the Harvard-Vision Clinical Scientist Development Program.
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#1227

Sirry Alang

#34686
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Sirry Alang is a Cameroonian-American Health Services Researcher. She is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Health, Medicine and Society at Lehigh University. Alang is also a Medical Sociologist. Her research examines the structural causes of health inequity and the social determinants of health.
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#1228

Sarah Darby

#58619
Overall Influence
Sarah C. Darby is Professor of Medical Statistics at the University of Oxford. Her research has focused the beneficial effects of smoking cessation, the risk of lung cancer from residential radon, and treatments for early breast cancer. She is also a Principal Scientist with the Cancer Research UK in the Clinical Trial Service Unit and Epidemiological Studies Unit at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine, at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford.
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#1229

Gabriel L. Plaa

#94689
Overall Influence
1930 - 2009 (79 years)
Gabriel Leon "Gabbie" Plaa was an American-Canadian toxicologist. A specialist of hepatotoxicity, he held various administrative position at Université de Montréal from 1968 to 1989, receiving the grade of professor emeritus upon his retirement in 1996. Over the course of his career he was president of several scientific society and served in editorial capacity for numerous scientific journals. Amongst many awards, he was the first recipient of the Society of Toxicology's Achievement Award, an award granted to a "promising young scientist".
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#1230

Philip John Barter

#103128
Overall Influence
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#1231

Walter Douglas Boyd

#65313
Overall Influence
Walter Douglas Boyd, M.D. is a notable Canadian cardiothoracic surgeon. born in Ottawa, he is a graduate of Carleton University, and the University of Ottawa for his medical degree. In 1999, he Boyd completed the world's first closed-chest, beating-heart coronary artery bypass surgery with the use of the ZEUS Robotic Surgical System, and has conducted pioneering work in cardiothoracic surgery and the use of robotic surgical systems. Dr. Boyd is also recognized for performing the first human extracellular matrix xenograft implant for cardiovascular repair in March 2006.
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#1232

David Nicholl

#36955
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
David Nicholl is a neurologist, human rights activist, fundraiser for Amnesty International, and online columnist from Belfast, Northern Ireland. In March 2006 he initiated a letter in the medical journal The Lancet, signed by more than 250 medical experts, urging the United States to stop force-feeding at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and close down the prison camp. He is also a principal author of a reference work on neurological conditions
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#1233

Arthur Schatzkin

#101645
Overall Influence
1948 - 2011 (63 years)
Arthur Gould Schatzkin was an American nutritional epidemiologist who spent much of his career at the National Cancer Institute. Education Schatzkin earned a bachelor's degree from Yale University in 1969. As an undergraduate, Schatzkin was active in Students for a Democratic Society, and after graduation from Yale he went to work for the university as a grounds maintenance worker. He remained an active leftist, including taking part in an occupation on behalf on another worker and speaking at a rally of striking Winchester workers, and in 1969 he was fired, arrested, and tried for his activ...
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#1234

David K. Stevenson

#103233
Overall Influence
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#1235

Xifeng Wu

#98508
Overall Influence
Xifeng Wu is a Chinese-American cancer epidemiologist known for her cohort studies designed to discover the causes of cancer. She has been Dean of the School of Public Health of Zhejiang University since March 2019. She previously served as Director of the Center for Public Health and Translational Genomics and the Betty B. Marcus Chair in Cancer Prevention at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center until she was forced to resign in January 2019, as part of the Trump administration's push to counter Chinese influence in American research according to Bloomberg Businessweek.
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#1236

Philip Jay Kadowitz

#103261
Overall Influence
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#1237

Luciana Borio

Luciana Borio
#44800
Overall Influence
Luciana Borio is a Brazilian-American infectious disease physician and public health administrator. She is a vice president at In-Q-Tel. She previously served as director for Medical and Biodefense Preparedness at the National Security Council, acting chief scientist of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration , assistant commissioner for counterterrorism policy of the FDA, and director of FDA's Office of Counterterrorism and Emerging Threats. She is known for her work advancing clinical trials, the development of medical countermeasures for health emergencies, and the public health responses to ...
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#1238

Sonia Anand

#92743
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (57 years)
Sonia Savitri Anand is a Canadian vascular medicine specialist. She previously held the Eli Lilly Canada - May Cohen Chair in Women's Health and currently holds the Michael DeGroote Heart and Stroke Chair in Population Health and Epidemiology at McMaster University.
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#1239

Nishi Chaturvedi

#96969
Overall Influence
Nishi Chaturvedi is a Professor of Clinical Epidemiology at University College London. Her research considers how ethnicity and lifestyle impact people's risk factors for disease. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Chaturvedi explained that the increased mortality rate for people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds was due to societal inequality and how this intersects with healthcare.
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#1240

Takehiko Ogawa

#32254
Overall Influence
is a Japanese urologist and developmental biologist, known for his pioneer research on in vitro spermatogenesis. He is Professor of Proteomics at Graduate School of Medical Life Science, Yokohama City University.
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#1241

Nadav Davidovitch

#87466
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (56 years)
Nadav Davidovitch is a public health physician, epidemiologist and the chair of Israel's association of Public Health Physicians. He replaced Hagai Levine, in 2021, as interim director. Davidovitch has also served as chair of the Center for Health Policy Research in the Negev. Considered an infectious disease expert, he is also a member of Israel's “corona czar’s” advisory committee.
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#1242

Andrew Marks

Andrew Marks
#72035
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Andrew Robert Marks , is an American cardiologist and molecular biologist. He is Professor and Chair of the Department of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, Founding Director of the Clyde and Helen Wu Center for Molecular Cardiology, and a Wu Professor of Medicine.
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#1243

Nathan D Wong

#103421
Overall Influence
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#1244

Deborah Azrael

#101208
Overall Influence
Deborah Azrael is an American public health researcher. She is a research associate in the Harvard School of Public Health's Department of Health Policy and Management, and the associate director of the Harvard Youth Violence Prevention Center. She is also the research director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, and a major figure involved in the firearm-related research conducted there.
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#1245

William W. O’neill

#103481
Overall Influence
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#1246

Won-Sik Yang

#41736
Overall Influence
1936 - 2014 (78 years)
Won-Sik Yang is a South Korean orthodontist who is known for his contributions in establishing the Korean Association of Orthodontists . He served as the first editor-in-chief for the Korean Journal of Orthodontics in 1970.
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#1247

Ralph Mobbs

#90637
Overall Influence
Ralph Mobbs is an Australian neurosurgeon who specialises in spinal surgery. He operates at Prince of Wales Private and Public Hospital. He sees patients at his clinic and at an additional clinic in Bowral.
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#1248

Christopher K. Zarins

#103516
Overall Influence
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#1249

Leslie Harcold Blumgart

#103517
Overall Influence
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#1250

Richard Edelson

#98273
Overall Influence
Richard Edelson is the Anthony Brady Professor of Dermatology at the Yale School of Medicine. He is a past director of the Yale Cancer Center, and an elected fellow of both the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. He is known for his research discoveries in non-Hodgkins lymphoma, particularly his early career introduction of the disease category concept of Cutaneous T Cell Lymphoma , and his discovery of extracorporeal photochemotherapy as an immunotherapy for cancer, transplant reactions and autoimmunity.
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