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,
#2351
Luc Djoussé
#135743
Overall Influence
#2352
Viking Björk
#71280
Overall Influence
1918 - 2009 (91 years)
Viking Olov Björk was a Swedish cardiac surgeon. Early life and education Björk wrote his dissertation in 1948, titled "Brain perfusion in dogs with artificially oxygenated blood". Björk–Shiley valve In 1968, he collaborated with American engineer Donald Shiley to develop the Björk–Shiley valve, a mechanical prosthetic heart valve. It was the first "tilting disc valve", used to replace the aortic or mitral valve. Many modifications followed, including the convexo-concave valve. The convexo-concave valve had defects in form of strut fractures. Therefore, the monostrut valve was introduced to ...
Go to Profile#2353
Noopur S. Raje
#135844
Overall Influence
#2354
Craig a. Elmets
#135893
Overall Influence
#2355
Toshio Takeuchi
#135915
Overall Influence
#2356
Michael Dourson
#91435
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Michael L. Dourson is an American toxicologist and Director of Science at the nonprofit organization, Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment. He was formerly a senior advisor to the Administrator of EPA, and prior to that, a professor at the Risk Science Center at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. Prior to joining the University of Cincinnati, he was founder and president of the nonprofit Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment. Earlier in his career, he was employed by the Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Criteria and Assessment Office, among other assignmen...
Go to Profile#2357
Raymond R. Tubbs
#135936
Overall Influence
#2358
Donald S. Gann
#106561
Overall Influence
1932 - 2020 (88 years)
Donald Stuart Gann was an American trauma surgeon. He chaired surgical departments at Case Western Reserve University, Brown University, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He was a past president of the Biomedical Engineering Society and the .
Go to Profile#2359
Hubert E. Schroeder
#135961
Overall Influence
#2360
Thomas Farley
#76352
Overall Influence
Thomas A. "Tom" Farley is an American pediatrician who served as Commissioner of Health of the City of New York and Commissioner of the Philadelphia Department of Health. Early life and education The sixth of eight children of a patent lawyer father and full-time parent mother, Farley grew up in Westfield, New Jersey. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Haverford College in 1977, and later received his MD and MPH degrees from Tulane University.
Go to Profile#2361
Masahiro Hiraoka
#136014
Overall Influence
#2362
Arthur L. Klatsky
#136023
Overall Influence
#2363
Andrew Watt Kay
#69685
Overall Influence
1914 - 2011 (97 years)
Sir Andrew Watt Kay FRSE, FRCPSG, FRCSEd was a Scottish academic surgeon who was Regius Professor of Surgery at the University of Glasgow from 1964 to 1981. He developed the augmented histamine test, which bore his name, and was widely used in the investigation and treatment of peptic ulcer disease. He was knighted for services to surgery. From 1972 to 1974 he served as president of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow.
Go to Profile#2364
Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller
#120311
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller is an American epidemiologist and Distinguished University Professor Emerita in the Department of Epidemiology & Population Health at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where she first joined the faculty in 1969. She also serves as Dorothy and William Manealoff Foundation and Molly Rosen Chair in Social Medicine Emerita at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, as a principal investigator of their Women's Health Initiative, and as co-principal investigator for their site in the Hispanic Community Health Study. She is a fellow of the American College of Epidemiol...
Go to Profile#2365
Stephanie J. Schrag
#136135
Overall Influence
#2366
Peter L. Lantos
#136158
Overall Influence
#2367
Akiko Tamakoshi
#136178
Overall Influence
#2368
Eleanor Murray
#124288
Overall Influence
Eleanor Jane Murray is a lohan British-Canadian epidemiologist, science communicator, and assistant professor at the Boston University School of Public Health. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Murray created a series of multi-lingual, accessible infographics to communicate information about COVID-19.
Go to Profile#2369
Nigel David Heaton
#136252
Overall Influence
#2370
Priscilla Kolibea Mante
#71824
Overall Influence
Priscilla Kolibea Mante is a Ghanaian neuropharmacologist, a researcher and lecturer from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, currently based at the Kumasi campus. Her research work focuses on alternatives of plant-based therapeutic options to manage drug-resistant epilepsy and the neglected tropical disease neurocysticercosis. In her work, she mostly explores the anticonvulsant activity of the plant alkaloid cryptolepine and its solid-lipid nanoparticles in the management of neurocysticercosis-induced epilepsy. Her goal is to identify a way to help cryptolepine permeate more e...
Go to Profile#2371
Chuichi Kawai
#136366
Overall Influence
#2372
Nicholas J. Timpson
#136373
Overall Influence
#2373
James Corson Niederman
#115418
Overall Influence
1924 - Present (102 years)
James Corson Niederman is an American epidemiologist whose research identified the Epstein–Barr virus as the cause of infectious mononucleosis in a study published in 1968. Early life and education James Corson Niederman was born on November 27, 1924, in Hamilton, Ohio. He graduated from Kenyon College in 1946, and received his medical degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1949. Currently, he is a residential college associate at the Yale School of Public Health.
Go to Profile#2374
Charlotte Clarke
#66470
Overall Influence
Charlotte Laura Clarke is the Professor of Health in Social Science at the University of Edinburgh. Her research centres on the experiences of living with dementia. Early life and education Clarke qualified as a nurse in 1986 from what was then called Glasgow College of Technology and worked clinically for a number of years in the National Health Service before moving into roles that were more focused on education and research. She received a part-time PhD studentship from the Regional Health Authority and focused on the experiences of carers of people with dementia. Her doctoral thesis, award...
Go to Profile#2375
Jacques Clémenty
#136471
Overall Influence
#2376
Rebecca Ivers
#110759
Overall Influence
Rebecca Q. Ivers is an Australian academic known for her work in injury prevention and trauma care research. Career and research Ivers is Professor of Public Health, and Head of the School of Population Health at the University of New South Wales, an honorary Professorial Fellow at the George Institute for Global Health and National Health and Medical Research Council Senior Research Fellow. She was awarded the 2018 Elizabeth Blackburn Fellowship and named on the Australian Financial Review and Westpac 100 Women of Influence Awards in 2014.
Go to Profile#2377
John W. Holaday
#136525
Overall Influence
#2378
Wolfram Samlowski
#79530
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Wolfram Samlowski is an American medical oncologist with Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada and a member of the Research Developmental Therapeutics and Genitourinary Committees for US Oncology. His research interests include translational research and development of novel cancer immunotherapy agents, translational drug development as well as gene therapy. His clinical interests are in developing more effective treatments for advanced stages of melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancers , and renal cancer.
Go to Profile#2379
Yu-Chuan Jack Li
#81451
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Yu-Chuan Jack Li is the founder of Biomedical Informatics education and research institute. Li was the founding dean of the College of Medical Science and Technology at Taipei Medical University in 2011, composed of the original Department of Biomedical Informatics, the Department of Medical Laboratory Science and Biotechnology, the Department of Cancer Biology and Drug Discovery, the Department of Medical Neuroscience and the Department of Translational Science. Li also founded the International Center for Health Information Technology at TMU in 2015 to foster global awareness and international collaboration in healthcare.
Go to Profile#2380
Eugene Howard Courtiss
#136659
Overall Influence
#2381
Jeffrey L. Ponsky
#136677
Overall Influence
#2382
Yu-liang Zhao
#136693
Overall Influence
#2383
Jo Ivey Boufford
#95015
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Jo Ivey Boufford is an American physician and Dean of the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University, as well as a Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the NYU Medical School.
Go to Profile#2384
Nicholas J. Petrelli
#136719
Overall Influence
#2385
Anna N. A. Tosteson
#136793
Overall Influence
#2386
Giles R. Scuderi**
#136853
Overall Influence
#2387
Ted Abel
#74324
Overall Influence
Edwin "Ted" G. Abel is an American neuroscientist, and the founding Director of the Iowa Neuroscience Institute at University of Iowa and previously the Brush Family Professor of Biology at University of Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#2388
Denis Castaing
#136887
Overall Influence
#2389
Ryuzou Ueda
#136891
Overall Influence
#2390
Raymund A. C. Roos
#136908
Overall Influence
#2391
Jan E. Lovie-Kitchin
#122221
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Jan E. Lovie-Kitchin is an Australian optometrist, former professor at Queensland University of Technology and founder of the university's Vision Rehabilitation Centre. She was the co-developer of the Bailey-Lovie visual acuity chart.
Go to Profile#2392
Alfred S. Evans
#124344
Overall Influence
1917 - 1996 (79 years)
Alfred Spring Evans was an American viral epidemiologist and professor of epidemiology at the Yale University School of Medicine and the Yale School of Public Health. Early life and education Evans was born on August 21, 1917, in Buffalo, New York, to John H. Evans, an anesthesiologist, and his wife, Ellen Spring. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan in 1939 and his medical degree from the University of Buffalo in 1943.
Go to Profile#2393
Heinz W. Wahner
#136962
Overall Influence
#2394
Joseph. B. Mccormick
#136985
Overall Influence
#2395
Norberto Perico
#137020
Overall Influence
#2396
Michael Mina
#104861
Overall Influence
Michael Joseph Mina is an American epidemiologist, immunologist and physician. He was formerly an assistant professor of Epidemiology & Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, assistant Professor of Pathology at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and currently Chief Medical Officer at eMed.
Go to Profile#2397
Rashmi Sinha
#90095
Overall Influence
Rashmi Sinha is a nutritional and cancer epidemiologist who researches diets, cancer risk, and the microbiome. She is a senior investigator in the metabolic epidemiology branch of the National Cancer Institute.
Go to Profile#2398
John Fred Annegers
#137031
Overall Influence
#2399
Bruno Mégarbane
#137067
Overall Influence
#2400
Stephen Benjamin Hulley
#137084
Overall Influence
