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).
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List of the most influential people in Medical,
#251
Brian MacMahon
#30479
Overall Influence
1923 - 2007 (84 years)
Brian MacMahon was a British-born American epidemiologist who chaired the Department of Epidemiology of the Harvard School of Public Health from 1958 until 1988. Best known for his work on the epidemiology of breast cancer, he also pioneered research on associations between passive smoking and lung cancer, and between diet and risk of cancer.
Go to Profile#252
Richard Schatzki
#45915
Overall Influence
1902 - 1992 (90 years)
Richard Schatzki was a German-American radiologist. He was born in Klafeld, Germany on February 22, 1901. In 1933, Nazi leadership declared that no one of Jewish background could hold a position in German governmental facilities. As a result, Schatzki was forced to leave his University Hospital position. Four months later, Schatzki moved to America with his wife Greta and young son Stefan. They were the first Schatzkis to leave Germany, although other family members would join them in America in the years leading up to the war as conditions in Germany deteriorated further. Upon leaving his home nation, Germany, his wife was pregnant with their second son.
Go to Profile#253
Hermann F. Sailer
#42589
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (82 years)
Hermann F. Sailer is a German maxillofacial surgeon. He leads the Klinik Professor Sailer in Zurich and is the founder of the Cleft-Children International Foundation. Life and scientific career Sailer studied medicine from 1962 to 1968, dentistry from 1968 to 1971 at the University of Erlangen... and received the degree of Doctor of Medicine and then Doctor of Dentistry . He completed further studies in the fields of internal medicine, gynaecology, surgery and maxillofacial surgery and then in surgery and emergency surgery . He thereafter went to Zurich to work at the university hospital there .
Go to Profile#254
Milton Terris
#41577
Overall Influence
1915 - 2002 (87 years)
Milton Terris was an American public health physician and epidemiologist. He graduated from Columbia University in 1935 and completed his MD at the New York University School of Medicine in 1939 and his MPH from Johns Hopkins University in 1944. He was associate professor of preventive medicine at the State University of New York at Buffalo from 1951 through 1957, and was professor of epidemiology at Tulane University from 1958 through 1960. He was head of the Chronic Disease Unit of the New York City Public Health Research Institute from 1960 through 1963. In 1964 he became professor and cha...
Go to Profile#255
Kenneth Rothman
#43075
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (80 years)
Kenneth J. Rothman is an American epidemiologist. He is a professor of epidemiology at the Boston University School of Public Health, as well as a Distinguished Fellow at RTI International, where he is Vice President for Epidemiologic Research at RTI Health Solutions.
Go to Profile#256
Quazi Deen Mohammad
#15122
Overall Influence
Quazi madam r ch od Mohammad is a Bangladeshi physician, academic and neurologist. He is the founding director of National Institute of Neuroscience, Dhaka. He was the 37th principal of Dhaka Medical College and 19th President of Bangladesh College of Physicians and Surgeons .
Go to Profile#257
Rebecca L. Siegel
#46505
Overall Influence
#258
Alice H. Lichtenstein
#30186
Overall Influence
Alice Hinda Lichtenstein is an American professor and researcher in nutrition and heart disease. In 2006, Shape magazine named Lichtenstein one of ten "Women Who Shaped the World". In 2019, Tamar Haspel called her a "grande dame of nutrition."
Go to Profile#259
Jeffrey Koplan
#33015
Overall Influence
Jeffrey P. Koplan is an American physician and epidemiologist who is the Vice President for Global Health at Emory University. He established and became the first Director of the Emory Global Health Institute from 2006 to 2013. Koplan was the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 1998 to 2002; he had previously worked at the CDC for more than twenty years, looking into HIV-contaminated blood, as well as the Bhopal disaster. During his tenure as Director, he fought syphilis, and supervised the investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks; before leaving the agency in M...
Go to Profile#260
Vernon R. Young
#36706
Overall Influence
1937 - 2004 (67 years)
Vernon Robert Young was an expert on protein and amino acid requirements and researched how the human body processes nutrients into protein. Young was a principal organizer of amino acid Workshops sponsored by the International Council of Amino Acid Science and was the Chairman of the Council's Scientific Advisory Board.
Go to Profile#261
Lynda Chin
#28119
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (57 years)
Lynda Chin is a Chinese-American medical doctor. She is a board-certified dermatologist who was the founding department chair and professor of genomic medicine at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, as well as scientific director of the MD Anderson Institute for Applied Cancer Science. In late 2012 she was elected as a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.
Go to Profile#262
Valerie Beral
#36987
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
Dame Valerie Beral AC DBE FRS FRCOG FMedSci was an Australian-born British epidemiologist, academic and a preeminent specialist in breast cancer epidemiology. She was Professor of Epidemiology, a Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford and was the Head of the Cancer Epidemiology Unit at the University of Oxford and Cancer Research UK from 1989.
Go to Profile#263
Sid Gilman
#31465
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (93 years)
Sidney Gilman is a retired physician, neurologist, and educator. He is an expert on Alzheimer's disease and spent the majority of his career at the University of Michigan, its medical school, and its Health System.
Go to Profile#264
Eduardo D. Rodriguez
#40043
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
Eduardo De Jesus Rodriguez MD, DDS is a Cuban American plastic and reconstructive surgeon, and reconstructive transplant surgeon, who is known for his contribution to the field of facial transplantation and vascularized composite allotransplantation. Rodriguez practiced in Baltimore until 2013 when he was appointed the Helen L. Kimmel Professor of Reconstructive Plastic Surgery and Chair of the Hansjörg Wyss Department of Plastic Surgery at NYU Langone Health, where he serves as the director of the Face Transplant Program. Most recently, he led the team that performed the first simultaneous f...
Go to Profile#265
Steven Hassan
#4556
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Steven Alan Hassan is an American author and mental health counselor who specializes in the area of cults and New Religious Movements. He worked as a deprogrammer in the late 1970s, but since then has advocated a non-coercive form of exit counseling.
Go to Profile#266
Helen S. Mayberg
#36231
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Helen S. Mayberg was born in 1956 in California. She is an American neurologist. Mayberg is known in particular for her work delineating abnormal brain function in patients with major depression using functional neuroimaging. This work led to the first pilot study of deep brain stimulation , a reversible method of selective modulation of a specific brain circuit, for patients with treatment-resistant depression. As of August 2019, she has published 211 original peer-reviewed articles, 31 books and book chapters, and acted as principal investigator on 24 research grants. Mayberg is coinventor...
Go to Profile#267
John Howard
#20362
Overall Influence
John Jackson Howard is an American physician, professor, and public health administrator who served a 6-year term as the director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and was appointed to be a special coordinator to respond to the health effects of the September 11 attacks. In this role, Howard advocated for rescue workers, introducing a program to provide screening, medical exams, and treatment for them. In 2009, Howard was again appointed as director of NIOSH and as World Trade Center Programs coordinator for HHS. In 2011, Howard became the Administrator of the World Trade Center Health Program.
Go to Profile#268
Jonathan Van-Tam
#17400
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (61 years)
Professor Sir Jonathan Stafford Nguyen Van-Tam is a British healthcare professional specialising in influenza, including its epidemiology, transmission, vaccinology, antiviral drugs and pandemic preparedness.
Go to Profile#269
Frank E. Speizer
#41760
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (91 years)
Frank Erwin Speizer is an American physician and epidemiologist, currently Professor of Environmental Health and Environmental Science at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Edward H. Kass Distinguished Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School. He is best known for his work on two major epidemiological cohort studies: the Nurses' Health Study, which explored women's illnesses and health risk factors, and the Harvard Six Cities study, which definitively linked air pollution to higher death rates in urban areas.
Go to Profile#270
Richard Knisely Winkelmann
#48200
Overall Influence
#271
Steven A. Schroeder
#27308
Overall Influence
Steven A. Schroeder is Distinguished Professor of Health and Health Care at the University of California, San Francisco , where he also heads the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center. He served as the president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation from 1990 to 2002. Schroeder is known for his work in promoting smoking cessation strategies.
Go to Profile#272
David Lane
#19892
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Sir David Philip Lane is a British immunologist, molecular biologist and cancer researcher. He is currently working in the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology at the Karolinska Institute and is Chairman of Chugai Pharmabody. He is best known for the discovery of p53, one of the most important tumour suppressor genes.
Go to Profile#273
Stephen Leeder
#30012
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (84 years)
Stephen Leeder AO FRACP FFPH FAFPHM FRACGP is an emeritus professor of public health and community medicine at the University of Sydney, where he was dean of medicine from 1997 to 2002. Leeder is an adjunct professor of public health at the Western Sydney University, an adjunct professor of epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York. He held the position as chair of the Western Sydney Local Health District Board from 2011-2016.
Go to Profile#274
Elsie Widdowson
#10036
Overall Influence
1906 - 2000 (94 years)
Elsie Widdowson , was a British dietitian and nutritionist. She and Dr Robert McCance, a pediatrician, physiologist, biochemist, and nutritionist, were responsible for overseeing the government-mandated addition of vitamins to food and wartime rationing in Britain during World War II.
Go to Profile#275
Nevin S. Scrimshaw
#29631
Overall Influence
1918 - 2013 (95 years)
Nevin Stewart Scrimshaw was an American food scientist and Institute Professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Scrimshaw was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. During the course of his long career he developed nutritional supplements for alleviating protein, iodine, and iron deficiencies in the developing world. His pioneering and extensive publication
Go to Profile#276
James F. Sallis
#49161
Overall Influence
#277
Ion N. Petrovici
#28515
Overall Influence
1929 - 2021 (92 years)
Ion N. Petrovici was a German neurologist, professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Cologne. Petrovici completed his secondary education in 1947 at his native city's Saints Peter and Paul High School. After studying at the Bucharest Faculty of Medicine, he received an MD degree from the University of Bucharest. He trained in neurology under Arthur Kreindler and at the Department of Clinical Neurology of the Institute for Neurological Research of the Romanian Academy of Sciences. In 1959, he became a specialist in neurology.
Go to Profile#278
Dariush Mozaffarian
#34225
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (56 years)
Dariush Mozaffarian is a cardiologist, Jean Mayer Professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, Professor of Medicine at Tufts School of Medicine, and an attending physician at Tufts Medical Center. His work aims to create the science and translation for a food system that is nutritious, equitable, and sustainable. Dr. Mozaffarian has authored more than 500 scientific publications on dietary priorities for obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases, and on evidence-based policy approaches and innovations to reduce diet-related diseases and improve health equity in the US and globally.
Go to Profile#279
Carl Lavie
#42319
Overall Influence
Carl J. "Chip" Lavie is an American cardiologist. He is the medical director of cardiac rehabilitation and preventive cardiology at the John Ochsner Heart and Vascular Institute in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is also a professor at the Ochsner Clinical School of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and the editor-in-chief of the medical journal Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases.
Go to Profile#280
Robert Moyers
#38625
Overall Influence
1919 - 1996 (77 years)
Robert Edison Moyers was an American orthodontist who was the founder of the Center of Human Growth and Development at University of Michigan and chair of its orthodontic program for 28 years. He made significant contributions towards orthodontics through the development of CHGD and interdisciplinary research involving craniofacial biology. He is credited for developing the Moyer's Mixed Dentition Analysis.
Go to Profile#281
Marc Lipsitch
#27587
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (56 years)
Marc Lipsitch is an American epidemiologist and Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where he is the Director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics. He has worked on modeling the transmission of Coronavirus disease 2019 .
Go to Profile#282
Michael Woodruff
#22644
Overall Influence
1911 - 2001 (90 years)
Sir Michael Francis Addison Woodruff, was an English surgeon and scientist principally remembered for his research into organ transplantation. Though born in London, Woodruff spent his youth in Australia, where he earned degrees in electrical engineering and medicine. Having completed his studies shortly after the outbreak of World War II, he joined the Australian Army Medical Corps, but was soon captured by Japanese forces and imprisoned in the Changi Prison Camp. While there, he devised an ingenious method of extracting nutrients from agricultural wastes to prevent malnutrition among his f...
Go to Profile#283
Ricardo Ramina
#32202
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Ricardo Ramina is a notable Brazilian neurosurgeon and university Professor. Ramina is well known around the world for his expertise in the treatment of complex neurosurgical problems such as Vestibular schwannomas, skull base tumors, glomus jugulare, Meningiomas and Aneurysms.
Go to Profile#284
Larry Gostin
#32979
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (76 years)
Lawrence Oglethorpe Gostin is an American law professor who specializes in public health law. He was a Fulbright Fellow and is best known as the author of the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act and as a significant contributor to journals on medicine and law.
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Ullrich Georg Trendelenburg
#44453
Overall Influence
1922 - 2006 (84 years)
Ullrich Georg Trendelenburg was a German pharmacologist. Biography He was born in Gehlsdorf near Rostock. His paternal grandfather, Friedrich Trendelenburg was the surgeon after whom Trendelenburg's sign for hip abductor weakness and the Trendelenburg test for varicose veins are named, whereas his father, Paul Trendelenburg , also was a pharmacologist. In the Institute of Pharmacology in Berlin led by his father, Ullrich got to know opponents of National Socialism such as Otto Krayer, Edith Bülbring and Marthe Vogt. In the Second World War, he volunteered for the Air force in order to escape the SS.
Go to Profile#286
Hermann Brenner
#49963
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
#287
Meerjady Sabrina Flora
#38642
Overall Influence
Meerjady Sabrina Flora is a Bangladeshi physician, professor of epidemiology and public health specialist. She is the additional director general of Directorate General of Health Services . Previously, she headed the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research , the apex center for conducting disease surveillance, outbreak investigation, disease control, epidemic prevention and research in Bangladesh.
Go to Profile#288
Karin Muraszko
#43143
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Karin Marie Muraszko is an American pediatric neurosurgeon. As of 2012, she was the Julian T. Hoff Professor and chair of the department of neurosurgery at the University of Michigan. She is the first woman to head a neurosurgery department at any medical school in the US. She specializes in brain and spinal cord abnormalities. She was a 2020 electee to the National Academy of Medicine in pediatric neurosurgery.
Go to Profile#289
Élmer Huerta
#50081
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Élmer Emilio Huerta Ramírez , is a Peruvian medical oncologist and internist, public health specialist in epidemiology, and health communicator based in the United States. He studied Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine San Fernando of the National University of San Marcos in Peru and a Master in Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in the United States. He was president of the American Cancer Society between 2007 and 2008, being the first Latino president of this prestigious organization. He founded the Cancer Preventory, which he runs, at the MedStar Washington Hospital Center Cancer Institute in Washington, DC.
Go to Profile#290
John Robert Evans
#25042
Overall Influence
1929 - 2015 (86 years)
John Robert Evans was a Canadian cardiologist, academic, businessperson, and civic leader. He was the founding dean of the McMaster University Medical School and then vice-president of Health Services at McMaster University from 1965 to 1972. From 1972 to 1978 he was President of the University of Toronto. From 1979 to 1983, he served as founding Director of the Population, Health and Nutrition Department of the World Bank in Washington, DC.
Go to Profile#291
Jeremiah Stamler
#40011
Overall Influence
1919 - 2022 (103 years)
Jeremiah Stamler was an American scientist specializing in preventive cardiology and the study of the influence of various risk factors on coronary heart disease and other cardiovascular diseases, and the role of salt and other nutrients in the etiology of hypertension and coronary heart disease. Stamler is credited with introducing the term "risk factors" into the field of cardiology. In 1988, he was awarded the Donald Reid Medal given by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine for his contributions to epidemiology. He was professor emeritus of preventive medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois.
Go to Profile#292
Rory Collins
#38934
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Sir Rory Edwards Collins FMedSci FRS is a British physician who is Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at the Clinical Trial Service Unit within the University of Oxford, the head of the Nuffield Department of Population Health and a Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford. His work has been in the establishment of large-scale epidemiological studies of the causes, prevention and treatment of heart attacks, other vascular disease, and cancer, while also being closely involved in developing approaches to the combination of results from related studies . Since September 2005, he has been ...
Go to Profile#293
Vinay Prasad
#39716
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (43 years)
Vinayak K. Prasad is an American hematologist-oncologist and health researcher. He is a professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco . He is the author of the books Ending Medical Reversal and Malignant .
Go to Profile#294
Don Poldermans
#37784
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Don Poldermans is a Dutch former cardiovascular medicine researcher who was fired for scientific misconduct and ethics concerns over informed consent. He was employed by Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, Netherlands, where he was the head of the perioperative cardiac care unit. In addition, he was a member of the European Society of Cardiology Committee for Practice Guidelines and he acted as the Chairperson of the Task Force for the European Society of Cardiology.
Go to Profile#295
Marcia Stefanick
#21193
Overall Influence
Marcia L. Stefanick is a Professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Director of the Stanford Women's Health and Sex Differences in Medicine Center. Stefanick’s research investigates the role of lifestyle, particularly exercise, diet, weight control, and menopausal hormone therapy, on chronic disease prevention. Her major focus is heart disease, breast cancer, osteoporosis, and dementia.
Go to Profile#296
Samiran Nundy
#33311
Overall Influence
Samiran Nundy is an Indian gastrointestinal surgeon, medical academic, writer and the President of All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Rishikesh. He is a former member of the faculty at the Cambridge University, London University and Harvard University, and is the founder editor of the National Medical Journal of India and Tropical Gastroenterology. The Government of India awarded him the fourth-highest Indian civilian honour of Padma Shri in 1985.
Go to Profile#297
Joshua Prager
#26255
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (76 years)
Joshua Philip Prager M.D., M.S. is an American physician. Prager specializes in pain medicine and is the executive director of Center for the Rehabilitation Pain Syndromes at UCLA Medical Plaza. Early life and education Joshua P. Prager was born in New York City, the son of Julian Arthur Prager and Eleanor Vernon Goldsmith . Joshua is the son of a New York City police officer, and later, a public school mathematics teacher, and a United Cerebral Palsy shelter workshop supervisor. Prager was educated in the New York City public school system
Go to Profile#298
Olga Jonasson
#40443
Overall Influence
1934 - 2006 (72 years)
Olga Jonasson, MD, FACS was an American transplant surgeon. She performed the first kidney transplant in the state of Illinois. She was also the first woman to be appointed head of an academic department of surgery at a coeducational school of medicine and the first woman to be appointed chief of surgery of a major medical center.
Go to Profile#299
Donald Hopkins
#21927
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (84 years)
Donald R. Hopkins is a Bahamian American physician, a MacArthur Fellow and is the Vice President and Director of Health Programs at The Carter Center. He graduated from Morehouse College with a B.S., from the University of Chicago with a Doctor of Medicine, and from the Harvard School of Public Health with a Master of Public Health. He studied at the Institute of European Studies, University of Vienna.
Go to Profile#300
Li-Meng Yan
#6262
Overall Influence
Li-Meng Yan or Yan Limeng is a Chinese virologist, known for her publications and interviews alleging that SARS-CoV-2 was made in a Chinese government laboratory. Her publications have been widely dismissed as flawed by the scientific community.
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