Search People Result | Academic Influence

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.

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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).

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List of the most influential people in Medical,

#151

Alessio Fasano

#24151

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (69 years)

Alessio Fasano is an Italian-born medical doctor, pediatric gastroenterologist and researcher. He currently holds many roles, including professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and professor of nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, both in Boston. He serves as director of the Center for Celiac Research and Treatment at MassGeneral Hospital for Children and co-director of the Harvard Medical School Celiac Research Program. In addition, he is director of the Mucosal Immunology and Biology Research Center at MGHfC, where he oversees a research program with approximatel...

#152

John Wennberg

#23876

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (91 years)

John E. "Jack" Wennberg is the pioneer and leading researcher of unwarranted variation in the healthcare industry. In four decades of work, Wennberg has documented the geographic variation in the healthcare that patients receive in the United States. In 1988, he founded the Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences at Dartmouth Medical School to address that unwarranted variation in healthcare.

#153

David Hemenway

#7890

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (80 years)

David Hemenway is a Professor of Health Policy at the Harvard School of Public Health. He has a B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University in economics. He is the director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center and the Harvard Youth Violence Prevention Center. He is also currently a James Marsh Visiting Professor-at-Large at the University of Vermont. Hemenway has written over 130 articles and five books in the fields of economics and public health.

#154

Kenneth Heilman

#21872

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (87 years)

Kenneth M. Heilman is an American behavioral neurologist He is considered one of the fathers of modern-day behavioral neurology. Early life and career Heilman was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He attended college at the University of Virginia was accepted into medical school after three years of college and graduated from the University of Virginia School of Medicine in 1963.

#155

Richard Ferber

#19103

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (81 years)

Richard Ferber is a physician and the director of The Center for Pediatric Sleep Disorders, at Children's Hospital Boston. He has been researching sleep and sleep disorders in children for over 30 years. He is best known for his methods—popularly called Ferberization—that purports to teach infants to learn how to fall asleep on their own, which are described in his book Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems .

#156

Samira Islam

#15958

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (124 years)

Samira Ibrahim Islam is a Saudi Arabian pharmacologist and scholar. She heads King Fahd Medical Research Center's Drug Monitoring Unit at King Abdulaziz University. She was instrumental in securing formal university education for women in Saudi Arabia.

#157

William Langston

#14977

Overall Influence

J. William Langston is the founder and chief scientific officer, movement disorder specialist, and chief executive officer of the Parkinson's Institute and Clinical Center in Sunnyvale, California, the founding member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Michael J. Fox Foundation and the Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Parkinson's Disease. He is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Medicine. Langston was formerly a faculty member at Stanford University and Chairman of Neurology at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose, California. Langston has authored or co-au...

#158

Steven Laureys

#18760

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (57 years)

Steven Laureys is a Belgian neurologist. He is principally known as a clinician and researcher in the field of neurology of consciousness. Career Prof. Laureys graduated as a Medical Doctor from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, in 1993. While specializing in neurology he entered a research career and obtained his MSc in Pharmaceutical Medicine working on pain and stroke using in vivo microdialysis and diffusion MRI in the rat . Drawn by functional neuroimaging, he moved to the Cyclotron Research Center at the University of Liège, Belgium, where he obtained his PhD studying residual brain function in the vegetative state in 2000.

#159

Gabriel Leung

#23037

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (53 years)

Gabriel Matthew Leung is a Hong Kong physician and epidemiologist, currently serving as the executive director of the Hong Kong Jockey Club. From 2013 to 2022, he was the longest-serving Dean of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong, where he was also the inaugural Helen and Francis Zimmern Professor in Population Health. Formerly, he was Hong Kong's first Under Secretary for Food and Health and fifth Director of the Office of the Chief Executive at the Government of Hong Kong.

#160

Eric Rimm

#34738

Overall Influence

Eric Bruce Rimm is an American nutrition scientist and epidemiologist. He is Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and director of the Harvard School of Public Health's Program in Cardiovascular Epidemiology. He has researched the relationship between diet and the risk of chronic diseases such as obesity.

#161

Megan Ranney

#21314

Overall Influence

Megan L. Ranney is a practicing American emergency physician currently serving as the Dean of the Yale School of Public Health. Previously, Ranney served as the Deputy Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, was Warren Alpert Endowed Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Rhode Island Hospital and the Alpert Medical School of Brown University. Ranney was the founding Director of the Brown-Lifespan Center for Digital Health.

#162

Albert Hofman

#34783

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (74 years)

Albert Hofman is a Dutch clinical epidemiologist. He is currently the Stephen B. Kay Family Professor of Public Health and the chair of the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

#163

Forest Dewey Dodrill

#28814

Overall Influence

1902 - 1997 (95 years)

Forest Dewey Dodrill was a medical doctor at Harper University Hospital at Wayne State University in Michigan who performed the first successful open heart surgery using a mechanical pump. Biography Dodrill was born in Webster Springs, West Virginia and attended West Virginia University, where he earned his bachelor's degree in 1925, he attended Harvard Medical School, graduating in 1930. Dodrill was an intern and resident at Harper Hospital in Detroit where he became a staff surgeon. He did a thoracic surgical residency at the University of Michigan in the early 1940s, receiving a M.Ch. degr...

#164

Steven T. DeKosky

#23806

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (78 years)

Steven T. DeKosky is the Aerts-Cosper Professor of Alzheimer's Research at the University of Florida College of Medicine, deputy director of UF’s Evelyn F. and William L. McKnight Brain Institute and associate director of the 1Florida Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.

#165

Harvey Karp

#24194

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (74 years)

Harvey Neil Karp, FAAP is an American pediatrician, author, and child development specialist. He is best known for his book "The Happiest Baby on the Block" and its accompanying DVD, that use his "5 S's" approach to infant care. He is also the creator of the Snoo, a smart bassinet.

#166

Myron L. Weisfeldt

#21186

Overall Influence

Myron L. Weisfeldt is an American cardiologist and physician-scientist. He was the William Osler Professor of Medicine and chair of the department of medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He was the Physician-in-chief of Johns Hopkins Hospital.

#167

James A. McNamara

#24364

Overall Influence

James A. McNamara Jr. is an American-trained, board certified, orthodontist. He is known for his development of McNamara analysis, one of the more popular methods of cephalometric analysis in cephalometry.

#168

Fredrick J. Stare

Fredrick J. Stare

#28675

Overall Influence

1911 - 2002 (91 years)

Fredrick John Stare was an American nutritionist regarded as one of the country's most influential teachers of nutrition. Life and career Stare was born in Columbus, Wisconsin, and educated in chemistry and medicine at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Chicago. In the aftermath of the Second World War he worked in the Netherlands, devising a dietary regime to cope with the malnutrition facing the Dutch population.

#169

Dennis Choi

#19535

Overall Influence

Dennis W. Choi is an American neurologist who was on the faculty of Stanford University in the 1980s, and served as the Jones Professor and Head of Neurology at Washington University in St. Louis during the 1990s, leaving in January 2001 to work in industry . While a faculty member at Washington University School of Medicine, Choi was a key contributor to research on glutamate-mediated toxicity as a mechanism of neural injury in stroke and traumatic brain injury.

#170

George W. Comstock

George W. Comstock

#26240

Overall Influence

1915 - 2007 (92 years)

George Wills Comstock was a public health physician, epidemiologist, and educator. He was known for significant contributions to public health, specifically in the fields of micronutrient deficiencies, tuberculosis, and cardiovascular disease. He served as the editor-in-chief for the American Journal of Epidemiology.

#171

Fred Hollows

#16110

Overall Influence

1929 - 1993 (64 years)

Frederick Cossom Hollows was a New Zealand–Australian ophthalmologist who became known for his work in restoring eyesight for people in Australia and many other countries through initiatives such as The Fred Hollows Foundation.

#172

Christoph Broelsch

#28363

Overall Influence

1944 - 2019 (75 years)

Christoph Broelsch was a German surgeon and former high school teacher. Broelsch pioneered the liver transplant surgery, when he performed the first successful liver transplant on a child in 1989. Life Broelsch grew up with his five siblings in Bremen. His father, Werner Broelsch was a state youth pastor. By the end of the 1950s, the family moved to Berlin. After graduating from high school in 1963, Broelsch went on to study medicine in Cologne, Erlangen, and Düsseldorf. Afterwards he started working under Prof. Dr. Rudolf Pichlmayr at the Hannover Medical School, where he worked for 10 years before moving to Chicago.

#173

Maria Van Kerkhove

Maria Van Kerkhove

#24212

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (48 years)

Maria DeJoseph Van Kerkhove is an American infectious disease epidemiologist. With a background in high-threat pathogens, Van Kerkhove specializes in emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases and is based in the Health Emergencies Program at the World Health Organization . She is the technical lead of COVID-19 response and the head of emerging diseases and zoonosis unit at WHO.

#174

Zulfiqar Bhutta

#20042

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (70 years)

Zulfiqar A. Bhutta trained as a physician in Pakistan in the early stages of his career. He holds titles across various organizations in diverse geographies. Professor Bhutta is the Founding Director of the Center of Excellence in Women and Child Health & Institute for Global Child Health & Development, at the Aga Khan University South-Central Asia, East Africa & United Kingdom.

#175

Leslie Iversen

#32192

Overall Influence

1937 - 2020 (83 years)

Leslie Lars Iversen , was a British pharmacologist, known for his work on the neurochemistry of neurotransmission. Career and research From 1971 to 1982, Iversen was Director of the MRC Neurochemical Pharmacology Unit in Cambridge. Between 1982 and 1995 he worked as Director of the Merck, Sharp & Dohme Neuroscience Research Centre. In 1995 he became Visiting Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Oxford.

#176

Franciszek Kokot

#20869

Overall Influence

1929 - 2021 (92 years)

Franciszek Kokot was a Polish nephrologist and endocrinologist. He was known as a pioneer of nephrology in Eastern Europe. Kokot was a full member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, having previously served as its rector.

#177

Sheila West

#22271

Overall Influence

Sheila Kay West is an American ophthalmologist who is the El-Maghraby Professor of Preventive Ophthalmology at the Wilmer Eye Institute. She is also the vice-chair for Research. Early life and education West was born in Salt Lake City. She started her academic career at the University of California, Santa Barbara, then moved to the California State University, East Bay for graduate studies, before joining the UCSF Medical Center. She worked toward her first doctorate in pharmacy at the University of California, San Francisco, then moved to the Johns Hopkins University for her second doctorate...

#178

André van der Merwe

#32517

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (58 years)

André van der Merwe is a South African urologist. He is currently head of urology at the University of Stellenbosch and an associate professor at Tygerberg Hospital. He is best known for conducting the world's first successful penis transplant in 2014. He also performed the first laparoscopic kidney removal in South Africa.

#179

Tom Frieden

#17060

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (65 years)

Thomas R. Frieden is an American infectious disease and public health physician. He serves as president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, a $225million, five-year initiative to prevent epidemics and cardiovascular disease.

#180

Kate Pickett

#8722

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (60 years)

Kate Elizabeth Pickett is a British epidemiologist and political activist who is Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Health Sciences at the University of York, and was a National Institute for Health and Care Research Career Scientist from 2007 to 2012. She co-authored The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better and is a co-founder of The Equality Trust. Pickett was awarded a 2013 Silver Rose Award from Solidar for championing equality and the 2014 Charles Cully Memorial Medal by the Irish Cancer Society.

#181

Alan Lopez

#33857

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (74 years)

Alan Donald Lopez is an Australian global and public health scholar and epidemiologist who focuses on the measurement of population health and the global descriptive epidemiologist of tobacco. He was a Melbourne Laureate Professor and the Rowden-White Chair of Global Health and Burden of Disease Measurement at The University of Melbourne. He is also the Director of the Global Burden of Disease Group in the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health and a member of the Disease Control Priorities Project.

#182

Samuel Waxman

#31320

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (89 years)

Samuel Waxman is the Zena and Michael A. Wiener Professor of Medicine , Distinguished Service Professor of Medicine, Hematology, and Medical Oncology, and the Distinguished Service Professor of Oncological Sciences at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, where he has been a member of the faculty for over 30 years.

#183

D. Mark Hegsted

D. Mark Hegsted

#23614

Overall Influence

1914 - 2009 (95 years)

David Mark Hegsted was an American nutritionist who studied the connections between food consumption and heart disease. His work included studies that showed that consumption of saturated fats led to increases in cholesterol, leading to the development of dietary guidelines intended to help Americans achieve better health through improved food choices.

#184

Neil Ferguson

#12655

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (57 years)

Neil Morris Ferguson is a British epidemiologist and professor of mathematical biology, who specialises in the patterns of spread of infectious disease in humans and animals. He is the director of the Jameel Institute, and of the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, and head of the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology in the School of Public Health and Vice-Dean for Academic Development in the Faculty of Medicine, all at Imperial College London.

#185

Rohit Varma

#27672

Overall Influence

Rohit Varma is an Indian-American ophthalmologist and professor of ophthalmology and preventive medicine. In 2014, he was named director of the USC Eye Institute and chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology for Keck School of Medicine of USC. In March 2016, Varma was named the interim dean of the Keck School of Medicine, and in November was named dean. In October 2017, USC announced that he stepped down as dean. In October 2018, Varma became the founding director of the Southern California Eyecare and Vision Research Institute.

#186

Mark G. Lebwohl

#30426

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (25 years)

Mark G. Lebwohl is an American dermatologist and author who is Professor and Chairman Emeritus of the Kimberly and Eric J. Waldman Department of Dermatology and the Dean for Clinical Therapeutics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.

#187

Ley Sander

#30339

Overall Influence

Josemir W. Sander, also known as Ley Sander, is the ES Professor of Neurology and Clinical Epilepsy at the Department of Clinical and Experimental Epilepsy, Institute of Neurology of University College London. He is Honorary Consultant Neurologist and Clinical Lead for Epilepsy at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square, London and at the Epilepsy Society's Sir William Gowers Assessment Centre in Buckinghamshire. Sander is Head of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Research and Training in Neurosciences, London and Medical Director of the Epilepsy Society, based at the Chalfont Centre for Epilepsy.

#188

Jørgen Slots

#16322

Overall Influence

Jørgen Slots is a Danish-born periodontist notable for his contributions to the field of periodontology. He is currently professor of periodontology and microbiology at the Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC, and served as chairman of periodontology from 1991 to 2001.

#189

Jorge Alcocer Varela

#17470

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (79 years)

Jorge Alcocer Varela is a Mexican immunologist, researcher, teacher and healthcare professional. Since 1 December 2018 he has served as the head of Secretariat of Health of Mexico, appointed by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. As a physician and emeritus researcher at the Salvador Zubirán National Institute of Health Sciences and Nutrition, Alcocer Varela has served Mexican public health in various capacities for more than 30 years.

#190

Tomoaki Kato

#20457

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (62 years)

is a pioneer in multiple-organ transplantation, pediatric and adult liver transplantation. Kato is Surgical Director of Adult and Pediatric Liver and Intestinal Transplantation at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center and is a professor of surgery at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Kato is also known for unique and innovative surgeries for adults and children, including a six-organ transplant; a procedure called APOLT that resuscitates a failing liver by attaching a partial donor liver, making immunosuppressant drugs unnecessary; and the firs...

#191

Donald Acheson

#23434

Overall Influence

1926 - 2010 (84 years)

Sir Ernest Donald Acheson was a British physician and epidemiologist who served as Chief Medical Officer of the United Kingdom from 1983 to 1991. He was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Early life Acheson was born in Belfast on 17 September 1926. His father, Captain Malcolm King Acheson, MC, MD, was a doctor who specialised in public health, and his mother, Dorothy Josephine , was the daughter of a Tyneside ship builder. He was educated at Merchiston Castle School, Brasenose College, Oxford . His elder brother, Roy Acheson , is Emeritus Professor of Community Medicine in the University of ...

#192

David J. Skorton

David J. Skorton

#10467

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (76 years)

David Jan Skorton is an American physician and academic. He has been president and chief executive officer of the Association of American Medical Colleges since July 15, 2019. Prior to the AAMC, he led the Smithsonian Institution, the national research museums of the United States, as its 13th Secretary from July 2015 to June 2019. A cardiologist, he was president of Cornell University from 2006 to 2015. Before arriving at Cornell, he served as president of the University of Iowa, where he had been a longtime professor and then vice president. He began his career as a professor of medicine and engineering.

#193

Kevin Fenton

#24617

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (59 years)

Professor Kevin Andrew Fenton, is a Public Health Physician and Infectious Disease Epidemiologist. He is the London Regional Director at Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, Regional Public Health Director at NHS London and the Statutory Health Advisor to the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. He is the current President of the United Kingdom Faculty of Public Health and holds Honourable Professorships with the University College London and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

#194

Robert M. Chanock

#26562

Overall Influence

1924 - 2010 (86 years)

Robert Merritt Chanock was an American pediatrician and virologist who made major contributions to the prevention and treatment of childhood respiratory infections in more than 50 years spent at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

#195

Roxana Mehran

#20906

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (25 years)

Roxana Mehran is an Iranian-American cardiologist and Mount Sinai Endowed Professor of Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She is known for her work in interventional cardiology.

#196

Detlev Ganten

#19900

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (84 years)

Detlev Ganten is a specialist in pharmacology and molecular medicine and is one of the leading scientists in the field of hypertension. He founded the World Health Summit in 2009. He was Chairman of the Foundation Board of the Charité Foundation , editor of the Journal of Molecular Medicine , Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces and Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology as well as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Ethnological Museum Dahlem of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.

#197

Raymond Delacy Adams

#26423

Overall Influence

1911 - 2008 (97 years)

Raymond Delacy Adams was an American neurologist and neuropathologist. He was Bullard Professor of Neuropathology at Harvard Medical School and chief of neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital. Along with Maurice Victor, Adams was the author of Adams and Victor's Principles of Neurology.

#198

Murray Brennan

#28253

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (85 years)

Sir Murray Frederick Brennan is a New Zealand surgeon, oncologist, cancer researcher, and academic. From 1985 to 2006, he was chairman of the surgery department of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, United States.

#199

Charlotte Sumner

Charlotte Sumner

#21957

Overall Influence

Charlotte Jane Sumner is an American neurologist. She is a professor in the Departments of Neurology and Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Dr. Sumner cares for patients with genetically mediated neuromuscular diseases and directs a laboratory focused on developing treatments for these diseases. She co-directs the Johns Hopkins Muscular Dystrophy Association Care Center, the Spinal Muscular Atrophy , and the Charcot-Marie-Tooth clinics, which deliver multidisciplinary clinical care, engage in international natural history studies, and provide cutting edge therapeutics.

#200

William A. Catterall

#33287

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (79 years)

William Albert Catterall is an American pharmacologist and neurobiologist, who researches ion channels. He currently serves as a professor of pharmacology at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, Washington and is known for the discovery of the sodium and calcium voltage-gated ion channels. Catterall received his B.A. in chemistry from Brown University in 1968 and his Ph.D. in physiological chemistry from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1972. He did his postdoctoral training in neurobiology and molecular pharmacology as a Muscular Dystrophy Association Fellow with Marshall Nirenberg at the NIH from 1972 to 1974.

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