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,
#301
John F. Kurtzke
#25710
Overall Influence
1926 - 2015 (89 years)
John Francis Kurtzke was a neuroepidemiologist and Professor of Neurology at Georgetown University who is best known for his creation of the Expanded Disability Status Scale and for his research on multiple sclerosis . After graduating from Cornell University Medical College in 1952, Dr. Kurtzke started his career in the field of Neurology as Chief of the Neurology Service at the Veteran's Affairs Medical Centers in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, from 1956 to 1963, and then in Washington, DC, from 1963 to 1995, where he became Professor of Neurology at Georgetown University. At the time of his ...
Go to Profile#302
David J. Jenkins
#35709
Overall Influence
David J.A. Jenkins is a British-born University Professor in the department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto, Canada. Jenkins is credited with developing the concept of the glycemic index as a way of explaining the way in which dietary carbohydrate impacts blood sugar. His first paper on the subject appeared in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 1981. Jenkins went on to author at least 15 more clinical studies on the effects of the glycemic index.
Go to Profile#303
Deborah Lawlor
#49445
Overall Influence
Deborah A. Lawlor is a British epidemiologist and professor at the University of Bristol, where she is the deputy director of the Medical Research Council Integrative Epidemiology Unit. She is also a fellow of the Faculty of Public Health and of the Academy of Medical Sciences. Her main areas of research are perinatal, reproductive and cardio-metabolic health. Lawlor was awarded a CBE in the 2017 Queen's Birthday Honours for her services to social and community medicine research.
Go to Profile#304
Michael J. Yaremchuk
#38307
Overall Influence
Michael J. Yaremchuk is a Professor of surgery, Part-Time at Harvard Medical School and Chief of Craniofacial Surgery at its affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital. Education Yaremchuk received his B.A. degree from Yale College in 1972, and his M.D. from the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1976. He completed his surgical residency at Harvard Deaconess Hospital , and his plastic surgery residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital .
Go to Profile#305
Camilla Stoltenberg
#22879
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (67 years)
Camilla Stoltenberg is a Norwegian physician and researcher. Since 13 August 2012, she has been Director-General of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. She is the sister of former Prime Minister of Norway and General Secretary of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg.
Go to Profile#306
David Healy
#25964
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
David Healy FRCPsych, a professor of psychiatry at Bangor University in the United Kingdom, is a psychiatrist, psychopharmacologist, scientist and author. His main areas of research are the contribution of antidepressants to suicide, conflict of interest between pharmaceutical companies and academic medicine, and the history of pharmacology. Healy has written more than 150 peer-reviewed articles, 200 other articles, and 20 books, including The Antidepressant Era, The Creation of Psychopharmacology, The Psychopharmacologists Volumes 1–3, Let Them Eat Prozac and Mania: A Short History of Bipolar...
Go to Profile#307
Ronald B. Herberman
#50844
Overall Influence
1940 - 2013 (73 years)
Ronald Bruce Herberman was an American physician, immunologist, oncologist, and professor of medicine and pathology who founded the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute , a National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Care Center in 1984. He helped discover natural killer cells capable of killing cancer. He became well known outside the medical community in 2008 for his public warning about the potential health impacts of mobile telephones and recommending a reduction in their use.
Go to Profile#308
Chris Beyrer
#30850
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
Chris Beyrer is the Director of the Duke Global Health Institute. He was previously a professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, in the United States. He was president of the International AIDS Society from 2014 to 2016.
Go to Profile#309
Nancy Krieger
#31324
Overall Influence
Nancy Krieger is an American epidemiologist who is professor of social epidemiology in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Education and career Raised on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, Krieger studied biochemistry as an undergraduate at Harvard University and earned a master's degree at the University of Washington. Krieger received her PhD in epidemiology from University of California, Berkeley in 1989. She joined the faculty of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in 1995. In 2004, she became an ISI highly cited rese...
Go to Profile#310
Frederic A. Gibbs
#40952
Overall Influence
1903 - 1992 (89 years)
Frederic Andrews Gibbs was an American neurologist who was a pioneer in the use of electroencephalography for the diagnosis and treatment of epilepsy. Gibbs graduated from Yale and Johns Hopkins in 1929. He was offered a fellowship in neuropathology by Stanley Cobb, of Harvard Medical School. He studied epilepsy in the same laboratory as William G. Lennox and Erna Leonhardt.
Go to Profile#311
Julia Haller
#34858
Overall Influence
Julia A. Haller is an American ophthalmologist who is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Ophthalmology at Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University. She also holds the William Tasman, M.D. Endowed Chair at Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia, where she is Ophthalmologist-in-Chief.
Go to Profile#312
Brenda Fitzgerald
#32456
Overall Influence
Brenda Fitzgerald is an American obstetrician-gynecologist who served as Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the Donald Trump administration from July 2017 to January 2018. Her tenure was one of the shortest in the office's history, excluding interim appointments. Previously, she was the Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Health from 2011 to 2017.
Go to Profile#313
Kamyar Kalantar-Zadeh
#36376
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (62 years)
Kamyar Kalantar-Zadeh is an Iranian-American physician doing research in nephrology, kidney dialysis, nutrition, and epidemiology. He is best known as a specialist in kidney disease nutrition and chronic kidney disease and for his hypothesis about the longevity of individuals with chronic disease states, also known as reverse epidemiology including obesity paradox. According to this hypothesis, obesity or hypercholesterolemia may counterintuitively be protective and associated with greater survival in certain groups of people, such as elderly individuals, dialysis patients, or those with chro...
Go to Profile#314
Jacques Marescaux
#15298
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
Jacques Marescaux is a French doctor. He is Chairman of the digestive and endocrine surgery at the University Hospital, Strasbourg. Biography 1948: Born in Clermont1971: Major in the contest for the Internat1977: Doctor in surgery1980: He obtained a chair professor at the Universities digestive surgery. He was only 33 years old.1989 - 1992: Director of special education Visceral surgery at the Medical School of Strasbourg.1989 - 1992: Vice President of the regional council of the Inserm.Since 1989: Head of digestive and endocrine surgery University Hospitals of Strasbourg.Since 1994: Founding...
Go to Profile#315
John G. Kelton
#39360
Overall Influence
John G. Kelton, M.D., FRCPC, C.M. is a Canadian hematologist and the past Dean of the McMaster University Medical School and the Dean and Vice-President of the McMaster Faculty of Health Sciences. He completed his 15-year term in June 2016 and is currently the Executive Director of the Michael G. DeGroote Initiative for Innovation in Healthcare at McMaster University in Hamilton. He is an expert on heparin-induced thrombocytopenia. He is known for developing a diagnostic test for heparin-induced thrombocytopenia in 1986.
Go to Profile#316
Marcel Kinsbourne
#27625
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (94 years)
Marcel Kinsbourne is an Austrian-born pediatric neurologist and cognitive neuroscientist who was an early pioneer in the study of brain lateralization. Kinsbourne obtained his M.D. degree in 1955 and D.M. degree in 1963 at Oxford University, where he served on the Psychology Faculty from 1964, before relocating to the United States in 1967. He has held Professorships in both Neurology and Psychology at Duke University and the University of Toronto, and he has headed the Behavioral Neurology Research Division at the Shriver Center in Boston, Massachusetts. He also served as Presidents of the ...
Go to Profile#317
Stefanie Dimmeler
#24298
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (58 years)
Stefanie Dimmeler is a German biologist specializing in the pathophysiological processes underlying cardiovascular diseases. Her awards and honours include the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation for her work on the programmed cell death of endothelial cells. Since 2008 she has led the Institute for Cardiovascular Regeneration at the University of Frankfurt. Her current work is focusing to develop cellular and pharmacological strategies to improve cardiovascular repair and regeneration. Her work aims to establish non-coding RNAs as novel therapeutic targets.
Go to Profile#318
Baruch Modan
#28178
Overall Influence
1932 - 2001 (69 years)
Prof. Baruch Modan was an Israeli medical scientist. Prof. Modan made significant findings in the field of oncology and was an expert on the effects of radiation. Prof. Modan worked with various types of cancer, and in 1974 demonstrated that the chances of getting breast cancer increase for anyone who has had X-ray dosages as low as 1.6 rem. He was an expert on treating cancer among children.
Go to Profile#319
Jay Norman Cohn
#52450
Overall Influence
#320
Rolf Zetterström
#36725
Overall Influence
1920 - 2011 (91 years)
Rolf Zetterström was a Swedish pediatrician. He was Professor of Pediatrics at the Karolinska Institute fra 1962 until his retirement in 1986. Zetterström also had a central role in the institutions awarding the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Go to Profile#321
Stanley J. Korsmeyer
#25555
Overall Influence
1950 - 2005 (55 years)
Stanley Joel Korsmeyer was an American research scientist known for his work on B cell lymphomas and apoptosis. Born and educated in the US state of Illinois, Korsmeyer spent most of his career as a professor at Washington University School of Medicine and later the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute. He rose to prominence in the early 1980s as a research fellow at the National Cancer Institute. There he co-discovered the genetic cause of most cases of the cancer follicular lymphoma – the misregulation of the gene Bcl-2. Korsmeyer went on to start his own laboratory at Washington University in St. Louis, further studying the role of Bcl-2 in cell biology.
Go to Profile#322
Anna Popova
#27872
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (65 years)
Anna Yuryevna Popova is a Russian physician and public health official. She is serving as head of the Federal Service for Supervision of Consumer Rights Protection and Human Welfare, practically the Chief State Sanitary Doctor of the Russian Federation since October 23, 2013. Acting State Advisor to the Russian Federation, Class 1 . Epidemiologist, hygienist, MD, professor.
Go to Profile#323
Elliot K. Fishman
#51784
Overall Influence
Elliot K. Fishman is an American diagnostic radiologist, currently the director of diagnostic imaging and body CT and professor of radiology and radiological science at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Go to Profile#324
Sarah Cleaveland
#17363
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
Sarah Cleaveland is a veterinary surgeon and Professor of Comparative Epidemiology at the University of Glasgow. Education Cleaveland obtained a Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine degree from the University of Cambridge in 1988 followed by a PhD from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in 1996 for research on canine distemper and rabies in the Serengeti of Tanzania. During this time she was a postgraduate student at the Institute of Zoology in Regent's Park supervised by Chris Dye, Steve Albon and James Kirkwood.
Go to Profile#325
Fyodor Uglov
#45041
Overall Influence
1904 - 2008 (104 years)
Fyodor Grigorievich Uglov was a Soviet and Russian surgeon. In 1994 he was listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest practicing surgeon in the world. He retired from practice at the age of 102.
Go to Profile#326
Mervyn Susser
#30291
Overall Influence
1921 - 2014 (93 years)
Mervyn Wilfred Susser was a South African activist, doctor and epidemiologist. His career was closely interwoven with that of his wife, Zena Stein. He is considered as one of the pioneers of epidemiology in the twentieth century.
Go to Profile#327
Craven Kurz
#44987
Overall Influence
Craven Kurz was an American orthodontist who is known to be the inventor of the lingual braces in 1975. He was also the founding president of the American Lingual Orthodontic Association. Life Kurz was born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada. He attended University of Saskatchewan for college and obtained his dental degree from McGill University in Montreal . He then attended the orthodontic program at Columbia University College of Dental Medicine in New York. After that, he established his private practice in Westwood, Los Angeles, California, and practiced there for five years while teaching orthodontics at UCLA School of Dentistry.
Go to Profile#328
Robert E. Michler
#37817
Overall Influence
Robert E. Michler is an American heart surgeon specializing in heart surgery, aortic and mitral valve repair, coronary artery bypass surgery, aneurysm surgery, and management of the failing heart. In 2017, Michler received the Vladimir Borakovsky Prize in Moscow from the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation for “his personal contributions to the development of cardiovascular surgery”.
Go to Profile#329
Charles Scriver
#42145
Overall Influence
1930 - 2023 (93 years)
Charles Robert Scriver was a Canadian pediatrician and biochemical geneticist. His work focused on inborn errors of metabolism and led in establishing a Canada-wide newborn metabolic screening program.
Go to Profile#330
Akinyinka Omigbodun
#13123
Overall Influence
Akinyinka Omigbodun is a Nigerian professor of Gynecology, Obstetrics and former provost of the College of Medicine, University of Ibadan. He once served as president of the West African College of Surgeons and chair of the management board of the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa .
Go to Profile#331
Shuji Ogino
#36824
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (57 years)
Shuji Ogino is a molecular pathological epidemiologist, pathologist, and epidemiologist. He is currently Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is also Chief of Program in MPE Molecular Pathological Epidemiology at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and an associate member of Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He has been known for his work on establishing a new discipline, molecular pathological epidemiology , which represents an interdisciplinary science o...
Go to Profile#332
Keith Black
#26720
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (68 years)
Keith L. Black is an American neurosurgeon specializing in the treatment of brain tumors and a prolific campaigner for funding of cancer treatment. He is chairman of the neurosurgery department and director of the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California.
Go to Profile#333
Ola Didrik Saugstad
#34359
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
Ola Didrik Saugstad is a Norwegian pediatrician, neonatologist and neuroscientist noted for his research on resuscitation of newborn children and his contribution to reduce child mortality. He is a Research Professor at Oslo University Hospital and Professor of Neonatology at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. He is Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics at the University of Oslo and was Director of the Department of Pediatric Research at Oslo University Hospital from 1991 to 2017.
Go to Profile#334
Mahmoud Torabinejad
#29264
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Mahmoud Torabinejad is an Iranian Professor of endodontics and the Director of the Advanced Specialty Education Program in Endodontics at Loma Linda University School of Dentistry in Loma Linda, California.
Go to Profile#335
John Brownstein
#26222
Overall Influence
John Brownstein is a Canadian epidemiologist and Professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School as well as the Chief Innovation Officer at Boston Children’s Hospital. His research focuses on development of computational methods in epidemiology for applications to public health also known as computational epidemiology or e-epidemiology He is also the founder of several global public health surveillance systems including HealthMap. He is most known for his work on global tracking of disease outbreaks.
Go to Profile#336
Dennis McKenna
#9936
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Dennis Jon McKenna is an American ethnopharmacologist, research pharmacognosist, lecturer and author. He is the brother of well-known psychedelics proponent Terence McKenna and is a founding board member and the director of ethnopharmacology at the Heffter Research Institute, a non-profit organization concerned with the investigation of the potential therapeutic uses of psychedelic medicines.
Go to Profile#337
Wilhelm Siegmund Feldberg
#54202
Overall Influence
#338
Charles J. Burstone
#45354
Overall Influence
1928 - 2015 (87 years)
Charles J. Burstone was an American orthodontist who was notable for his contributions to biomechanics and force-systems in the field of orthodontics. He was well known for co-development of new orthodontic material such as beta titanium, nickel titanium, and long fiber-reinforced composite. He wrote more than 200 articles in scientific fields.
Go to Profile#339
Arthur A. Dugoni
#48175
Overall Influence
1925 - 2020 (95 years)
Arthur A. Dugoni was the former dean of the Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry at University of the Pacific and a national leader in dentistry and dental education. In addition to heading University of the Pacific's dental school for 28 years, Dugoni served as president of the California Dental Association, the American Dental Association, the American Dental Education Association and the American Board of Orthodontics. He presented some 1,000 lectures, papers, clinics and essays during his career, and published more than 175 articles.
Go to Profile#340
Didier Pittet
#44157
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (68 years)
Didier Pittet is an infectious diseases expert and the director of the Infection Control Programme and WHO Collaborating Centre on Patient Safety, University Hospital of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland. Since 2005, Pittet is also the External Lead of the World Health Organization Global Patient Safety Challenge "Clean Care is Safer Care" and African Partnerships for Patient Safety.
Go to Profile#341
Thomas Felix Lüscher
#54303
Overall Influence
#342
Teri Manolio
#36374
Overall Influence
Teri Ann Manolio is an American physician, epidemiologist, and geneticist. She is director of the Division of Genomic Medicine at the National Human Genome Research Institute , as well as Professor of Medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. She is a fellow of the American College of Physicians and of the American Heart Association's Council on Epidemiology. She also has a clinical appointment at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Before joining the NHGRI, she worked on large cohort studies, such as the Cardiovascular Health Stu...
Go to Profile#343
Henrik Zetterberg
#54341
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (52 years)
Henrik Zetterberg is a Swedish professor of neurochemistry at the University of Gothenburg, where he is the Head of the Department of Neurochemical Pathophysiology and Diagnostics. He is also the leader of the Fluid biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases group at University College London. The groups work on developing early tests for dementia.
Go to Profile#344
Bruce Dobkin
#41477
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Bruce H. Dobkin is an American Professor of Neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, medical director of the UCLA Neurologic Rehabilitation and Research Program, and Co-Director of the UCLA Stroke Center. He serves as editor-in-chief of Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair.
Go to Profile#345
Carla Obermeyer
#28071
Overall Influence
Carla Makhlouf Obermeyer is a medical anthropologist and epidemiologist specializing in the study of fertility and HIV. A former associate professor of Population and International Health at Harvard University, Obermeyer was director of the Center for Research on Population and Health at the American University of Beirut as of 2013. She has also worked for the World Health Organization's Department of HIV/AIDS.
Go to Profile#346
Dorothy M. Horstmann
#33233
Overall Influence
1911 - 2001 (90 years)
Dorothy Millicent Horstmann was an American epidemiologist, virologist, and pediatrician whose research on the spread of poliovirus in the human bloodstream helped set the stage for the development of the polio vaccine. She was the first woman appointed as a professor at the Yale School of Medicine and she held a joint appointment in the Yale School of Public Health.
Go to Profile#347
Viktor Emil Frankl
#54474
Overall Influence
#348
Moyses Szklo
#48213
Overall Influence
Dr. Moyses Szklo is a Brazilian epidemiologist and physician scientist. He is currently University Distinguished Service Professor of Epidemiology and Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University, Editor-in-chief Emeritus of the American Journal of Epidemiology, and director of the Johns Hopkins Summer Institute of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. Szklo has published over 300 articles in peer-reviewed journals as well as a major textbook of epidemiology. He has led several major epidemiologic societies and studies and has been lecturing and leading courses all over the world, including Spain, Italy...
Go to Profile#349
Andrea Natale
#52290
Overall Influence
Andrea Natale is an Italian-born American cardiologist and electrophysiologist, i.e. a heart rhythm specialist. Natale is known for his work in atrial fibrillation ablation, and he is currently the executive director at the Texas Cardiac Arrhythmia Institute.
Go to Profile#350
Earl W. Renfroe
#44103
Overall Influence
1907 - 2000 (93 years)
Earl Wiley Renfroe was and African-American dentist known as an innovator in the field of orthodontics and for breaking down the barriers of racism. Renfroe taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Dentistry from 1933 through the 1980s. For many years, he was acknowledged as one of the best hands-on clinical orthodontics instructors in the world.
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