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,
#1351
James J. Leyden
#106637
Overall Influence
#1352
Jonathan Lee Halperin
#106659
Overall Influence
#1353
Laurence F. Prescott
#106699
Overall Influence
#1354
Barbara Burlingame
#53862
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Barbara A. Burlingame is a nutrition scientist specializing in food composition, biodiversity for food and nutrition, sustainable diets and sustainable food systems, and traditional food systems of indigenous peoples. She is involved in nutrition policy development at the global level, and is currently a professor at Massey University.
Go to Profile#1355
Susumu Kagawa
#73691
Overall Influence
1944 - 2021 (77 years)
was a Japanese urologist and a co-author of 41 peer-reviewed articles all of which can be found on Web of Science and PubMed. He was also a President of the University of Tokushima.
Go to Profile#1356
Christopher J. Packard
#106782
Overall Influence
#1357
Roya Kelishadi
#106810
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
#1358
Philippe Amouyel
#106818
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
#1359
Robert Samuel Decosta Higgins
#84975
Overall Influence
Robert Samuel Decosta Higgins MD, MSHA is an American surgeon working with heart–lung transplants. He is president, Brigham and Women's Hospital; Executive Vice President, Mass General Brigham. Education Higgins earned his bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College and medical degree from Yale School of Medicine. He completed his residency in general surgery and served as chief resident at the University Hospitals of Pittsburgh. He was a Winchester Scholar and fellow in cardiothoracic surgery at the Yale School of Medicine. He earned a master's degree in health services administration at Virgin...
Go to Profile#1360
Garth Powis
#106944
Overall Influence
#1361
Jürgen Floege
#107026
Overall Influence
#1362
Andreas G. Tzakis
#107035
Overall Influence
#1363
Charles G. Drake
#107048
Overall Influence
#1364
William Oh
#107109
Overall Influence
#1365
Ting‐chao Chou
#107120
Overall Influence
#1366
William Beverly White
#107133
Overall Influence
#1367
Robert Franz Schmidt
#107212
Overall Influence
#1368
Russ Hauser
#102486
Overall Influence
Russ Hauser is an American physiologist currently the Frederick Lee Hisaw Professor of Reproductive Physiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He holds Sc.D. and M.P.H. degrees from the Harvard School of Public Health. He graduated with a M.D. from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1985.
Go to Profile#1369
Gerardo Chowell
#99378
Overall Influence
Gerardo Chowell is professor of mathematical epidemiology and chair of the Department of Population Health Sciences in the School of Public Health at Georgia State University. He grew up in Colima, Mexico, where he became interested in mathematics as a child. He graduated from the University of Colima in 2001 before beginning the summer program at Cornell University's Mathematical and Theoretical Biology Institute. He later decided to enroll in the Ph.D. program at Cornell, which he completed in 2005 under the supervision of Carlos Castillo-Chavez.
Go to Profile#1370
Robert B. Tesh
#107266
Overall Influence
#1371
Burkert Mathias Pieske
#107270
Overall Influence
#1372
Richard L. Popp
#107285
Overall Influence
#1373
Nir Giladi
#107320
Overall Influence
#1374
Fred T. Sai
#66098
Overall Influence
1924 - 2019 (95 years)
Frederick Torgbor Sai, was a Ghanaian academic and family health physician who co-founded the Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana in 1967. A gender and reproductive health advocate, he was known for his campaigns and education drawing attention to the food and nutrition problems of Africa, particularly of women and children. He served as the Chief Physician for Nutrition and the Director of Medical Services at the Ghana Health Service and Professor of Community Health at the University of Ghana, Legon. He was also a nutrition advisor to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, Africa Regio...
Go to Profile#1375
Ragavendra R. Baliga
#30423
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Ragavendra R. Baliga, FACC, FACP, FRCP is a Professor of Medicine at The Ohio State University School of Medicine in Columbus, Ohio. He is a consulting editor of Heart Failure Clinics of North America, an indexed medical journal along with James B. Young, MD, Executive Dean, Lerner College of Medicine, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio. This is journal is known for editorials championing novel and esoteric mechanisms pertaining to cardiac function including ‘The Heart as the Concertina Pump’ and suggesting that stiffness of the great arteries contribute to cardiorenal syndrome. The most provo...
Go to Profile#1376
Sampath Parthasarathy
#107433
Overall Influence
Sampath Parthasarathy is a former Associate Dean of Research and current Professor and Florida Hospital Chair in Cardiovascular Science in the College of Medicine at the University of Central Florida. He is the editor-in-chief of Healthcare and co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medicinal Food.
Go to Profile#1377
Reshma Jagsi
#91754
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
Reshma Jagsi is an American Radiation oncologist. She is the Lawrence W. Davis Professor and Chair in the Department of Radiation Oncology and Senior Faculty Fellow in the Center for Ethics at Emory University. Overall, she is the author of over 450 published articles in peer-reviewed medical journals and continues scholarly research in three primary areas of interest: breast cancer, bioethics, and gender equity, with the support of grants from the National Institutes of Health , the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and the Susan G. Komen Foundation, for which she serves as a Senior Scholar...
Go to Profile#1378
Manolis Kogevinas
#107559
Overall Influence
#1379
Cindy Lee Grines
#107569
Overall Influence
#1380
Gilles Montalescot
#107679
Overall Influence
#1381
Gerald T. Keusch
#104773
Overall Influence
Gerald T. Keusch is an American physician-scientist and academic administrator. Keusch is the associate provost for global health at Boston University Medical Campus and a professor of international health and medicine at Boston University School of Public Health. He was the director of John E. Fogarty International Center and the associate director of international research at the National Institutes of Health from 1998 to 2003.
Go to Profile#1382
Ann Partridge
#105409
Overall Influence
Ann Hart Partridge is an American medical oncologist. She is the founder and director of the Young and Strong Program for Young Women with Breast Cancer at the Susan F. Smith Center for Women's Cancers at the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute.
Go to Profile#1383
Derek Parry Gastroenter Jewell
#107716
Overall Influence
#1384
Karim S. Fizazi
#107757
Overall Influence
#1385
Timothy Cloughesy
#105451
Overall Influence
Timothy Frances Cloughesy is a professor of Clinical Neurology and director of the Neuro-Oncology Program at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is an expert on the treatment of brain cancer.
Go to Profile#1386
Jayaram K. Udupa
#103971
Overall Influence
Jayaram K Udupa is an Indian-American imaging scientist and academic. He serves as a professor in the Department of Radiology at Perlman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Udupa has worked in the fields of medical image science, image processing, and physics analysis of medical imaging and medical diagnostic procedures since the 1980s. He is known for his contributions in image processing and its applications in various fields of science, medicine, and engineering.
Go to Profile#1387
Fitzhugh Mullan
#91209
Overall Influence
1942 - 2019 (77 years)
Fitzhugh Mullan was an American physician, writer, educator, and social activist. He participated in the founding of the Student Health Organization, the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship, Seed Global Health, and the Beyond Flexner Alliance. Mullan was a professor of Health Policy and Management and of Pediatrics at the George Washington University and the George Washington University Health Workforce Institute, now renamed the Fitzhugh Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity. He was an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine.
Go to Profile#1388
Thomas G. Brott
#107897
Overall Influence
#1389
William Landau
#73695
Overall Influence
1924 - 2017 (93 years)
William Milton Landau was an American neurologist who was a professor of neurology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. It was within his specialty of stroke and movement disorders that he gained eponymous recognition for the Landau–Kleffner syndrome.
Go to Profile#1390
Alexander Cools
#102450
Overall Influence
1941 - 2013 (72 years)
Alexander Rudolf Cools was a Dutch behavioral pharmacologist. He obtained his Ph.D. under the supervision of Jacques van Rossum and Jo Vossen in 1973 at the Radboud University Nijmegen, where he was a professor from 1985 until his retirement in 2006. In 2014, a special issue of the scientific journal Behavioural Pharmacology was dedicated to his memory. Cools was one of the founders of the European Behavioural Pharmacology Society and its second president. In 2003 he received that society's Distinguished Achievement Award.
Go to Profile#1391
Eric W. Fonkalsrud
#107986
Overall Influence
#1392
Nancy Lee Harris
#107995
Overall Influence
#1393
Thomas Spray
#96274
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
Thomas L. Spray was Chief of the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery and the Mortimer J. Buckley Jr. MD Endowed Chair in Cardiac Surgery at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and Professor of Surgery at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He retired in 2018.
Go to Profile#1394
Gregory D. Zimet
#108048
Overall Influence
#1395
Dara Kass
#102493
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (50 years)
Dara Kass is an emergency medicine physician and Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center. She is also an advocate for advancing the careers of women in medicine. While treating patients during the Coronavirus disease pandemic, Kass became infected. Since then, she has become a prominent voice advocating for access to personal protective equipment and more effective measures to combat the spread of the disease.
Go to Profile#1396
William E. Klunk
#102763
Overall Influence
William E. Klunk is an American psychiatrist and neurologist currently the Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology and Levidow-Pittsburgh Foundation Chair in Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia Disorders at University of Pittsburgh.
Go to Profile#1397
Loyce Pace
#80144
Overall Influence
Loyce Pace is an American public health official expert serving as the Assistant Secretary in the Office of Global Affairs for the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. She was executive director of the Global Health Council and member of President-elect Joe Biden's COVID-19 Advisory Board. Pace specializes in public health policy and global health equity, working to promote equitable access to health care around the world.
Go to Profile#1398
Don Nutbeam
#108181
Overall Influence
#1399
Dawn L. Hershman
#100849
Overall Influence
Dawn Luryn Hershman is an American oncologist. Since 2020, she has served as the American Cancer Society Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Columbia University. Early life and education Hershman was born to artists Lynn Hershman Leeson and George Leeson. She completed her undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles and earned her medical degree in 1994 from Albert Einstein College of Medicine. While completing her residency and fellowship at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, she was appointed chief resident from 1997 to 1998.
Go to Profile#1400
Borys Surawicz
#108291
Overall Influence
