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.

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,

#3601

Alan Sugar

#173706

Overall Influence

#3602

Dustin T. Duncan

#173214

Overall Influence

Dustin Troy Duncan is an American public health researcher who is an Associate Dean for Health Equity Research at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Their research considers how environmental factors influence population health and health disparities. In particular, Duncan has focused on the health of sexual minority men and transgender women of color in New York City and the Deep South. Duncan serves as Founder and President of the Dustin Duncan Research Foundation.

#3603

Constance Kies

#168955

Overall Influence

1934 - 1993 (59 years)

Constance Virginia Kies was an American nutrition scientist and dietitian. Kies worked as a public school teacher for three years before going against the traditional gender norms of her time and completing an M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Over the duration of her 30-year career at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Kies researched nutritional biochemistry. She demonstrated relationships between minerals, proteins, and dietary fiber through pioneering human subject research. Her findings led to advancements in human knowledge of copper and protein metabolism. She was honored with the Borden Award and was a fellow of the American College of Nutrition.

#3604

Tom Blackburn

#154937

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Tom Blackburn FBPharmacolS, FRSB is a British industrial pharmacologist. Blackburn studied at both the University of Nottingham and Manchester University, and worked as a senior manager at ICI Pharmaceuticals, Beecham Pharmaceuticals SmithKline Beecham, Synaptic Pharmaceutical Corporation and Helicon Therapeutics.

#3605

David M. Brown

#173970

Overall Influence

#3606

Jodie Ingles

#168346

Overall Influence

Jodie Ingles is an Australian cardiac researcher and professor. They head the Clinical Cardiac Genetics Group in the Molecular Cardiology Program at the Centenary Institute of Cancer Medicine and Cell Biology in Sydney, Australia.

#3607

Richard Edwards

#174295

Overall Influence

#3608

James P. Kushner

#174306

Overall Influence

James P. Kushner is an American hematologist, currently Distinguished Professor Emeritus at University of Utah.

#3609

Johnnie Hines Watts Prothro

Johnnie Hines Watts Prothro

#98735

Overall Influence

1922 - 2009 (87 years)

Johnnie Hines Watts Prothro was an American nutritionist in the Southern United States whose career spanned the eras of racial segregation, Jim Crow laws, and the passing of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act. She was one of the first African American nutritionists and food scientists.

#3610

Margaret McArthur

#84913

Overall Influence

1919 - 2002 (83 years)

Annie Margaret McArthur was an Australian nutritionist, anthropologist and educator. She is remembered for conducting ground-breaking research from the late 1940s into the indigenous peoples of Australia, Papua New Guinea and the Pacific region. After assignments with the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization, in 1965 she was engaged as the first women lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Sydney, becoming a senior lecturer prior to her retirement in 1975.

#3611

Debbie Hay

#147703

Overall Influence

Deborah Lucy Hay is a New Zealand academic. In 2022, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi. Academic career After an undergraduate in pharmacology at the University of Sheffield, Hay did a PhD in molecular pharmacology entitled 'Investigation of the calcitonin receptor-like receptor and receptor activity modifying proteins' at Imperial College London. Hay moved to the University of Auckland, where she rose to full professor. She is now a full professor at the University of Otago and is a Fellow of the British Pharmacological Society.

#3612

Athena Papas

#135507

Overall Influence

Athena Papas is an American dental science scholar, who as of 2017 was the Johansen Distinguished Professor of Dental Research at Tufts University. She is a co-author of several books on dentistry as well as numerous articles.

#3613

John Pratt-Johnson

#126573

Overall Influence

1929 - 2015 (86 years)

John Ashburnham Pratt-Johnson, FRCS, FRCS, was a Canadian ophthalmologist and Emeritus Professor of Ophthalmology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He was a famous pediatric ophthalmologist and trained many fellows at the university. He also involved himself in international cooperation to improve the status of medical care in the area of blindness prevention and access to surgical expertise for under-served areas in poor countries. As part of Orbis and the board of directors of Seva Canada Society he has helped organise funds, build facilities and train he...

#3614

Robert Fullilove

#169289

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Robert Elliot Fullilove is an American public health researcher and civil rights activist. He is a Professor of Sociomedical Sciences at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center and Associate Dean of Community and Minority Affairs. He has worked on the health of people from ethnic minority backgrounds, with a focus on sexually transmitted infections and HIV.

#3615

Bernie Machen

#115706

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

James Bernard Machen is an American university professor and administrator. Machen is a native of Mississippi, and earned several academic degrees before becoming a university administrator and president. Machen had been the president of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah and the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida. He also sits on the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute's Board of Trustees. On June 8, 2012, Machen announced he would be stepping down as president in 2013. However, Machen was asked by state and university leaders to stay on, as the school had not yet found a suitable replacement.

#3616

Janet Sawicki

#102869

Overall Influence

Janet Sawicki is an American cancer researcher, and professor emeritus and former deputy director of the Lankenau Institute for Medical Research. Her research is focused on the preclinical development of treatments for cancers using DNA and siRNA.

#3617

Scarlett Bellamy

#152275

Overall Influence

Scarlett Bellamy is an American public health researcher who is a Professor of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Drexel University. At Drexel she is Associate Dean of Diversity, Inclusion and Faculty Development.

#3618

Douglas Kamerow

#154312

Overall Influence

Douglas B. Kamerow is an American family physician, medical researcher, and medical journal editor. He is a professor of family medicine at Georgetown University and Senior Scholar in Residence at the Robert Graham Center. He is also an associate editor and regular columnist for the BMJ.

#3619

Brian Williams

#174734

Overall Influence

#3620

James S. Forrester

James S. Forrester

#114276

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

James S. Forrester III is an American cardiologist. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he received his medical training at the University of Pennsylvania, UCLA, and Harvard University. During the 1970s through 1990s, his research led to three major advancements in the practice of cardiology. Later in his career, he would return to UCLA, this time as a professor, while simultaneously being the Chief of the Division of Cardiology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Forrester has published hundreds of papers and manuscripts dealing with the subject of cardiology, and is the recipient of numerous a...

#3621

Heidi Blanck

#170470

Overall Influence

Captain Heidi Michels Blanck is an American public health epidemiologist, nutrition and obesity researcher, and officer of the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. Blanck is currently chief of the Obesity Prevention and Control Branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a senior advisor at the CDC.

#3622

Diego De Leo

#174818

Overall Influence

#3623

Edward Wild

#104597

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Edward Wild, also known as Ed Wild, is a British neurologist and neuroscientist in the field of Huntington's disease and an advocate for scientific outreach to the public. He co-founded the Huntington's research news platform HDBuzz in 2010. He is a professor of neurology at UCL Institute of Neurology and is an associate director of the UCL Huntington's Disease Centre. He is also a consultant neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London.

#3624

Erin Calipari

#84766

Overall Influence

Erin S. Calipari is an Associate Professor of Pharmacology at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine Basic Sciences. Calipari looks to understand the brain circuitry that is used for adaptive and maladaptive processes in reward, associative learning and motivation.

#3625

Alicia Bertone

#160624

Overall Influence

Alicia L. Bertone is an American academic, administrator, researcher, and veterinary surgeon. She is a professor and a provost in the Office of Academic Affairs at the Ohio State University. Bertone has worked as the Vice-Provost of Graduate Studies, Associate Vice Provost of Data and Analysis, the ENGIE-Axium Endowed Dean of the Graduate School, and the Trueman Family Endowed Chair at the Ohio State University. Bertone is a Professor of Veterinary Clinical Sciences, and, as the Trueman Endowed Chair, established and directed the Comparative Orthopedic Research Laboratory at the University.

#3626

Liza Makowski Hayes

#136850

Overall Influence

Liza Makowski Hayes is an American nutritional biochemist. As a professor at the University of Tennessee, her research focuses on how metabolic stress and inflammation alters the progression of diseases, specifically obesity and cancer.

#3627

Crystal Denlinger

#173928

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Crystal Denlinger is an American medical oncologist. In 2021, she was appointed the Chief Scientific Officer of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. Early life and education Denlinger was born to parents Edgar and Cynthia in New Jersey and grew up alongside her brother Craig. She obtained her medical degree from New Jersey Medical School and completed her internal medicine residency at Mount Sinai Medical Center. Following this, she completed her fellowship in hematology/oncology at Temple University's Fox Chase Cancer Center. Denlinger later said that she chose to pursue a career in on...

#3628

Mia M. Gaudet

#105245

Overall Influence

Mia M. Gaudet is an American molecular epidemiologist pectized in cancer prevention research and managing cohort studies. She is a senior scientist in the division of cancer epidemiology and genetics at the National Cancer Institute.

#3629

Laura Beane Freeman

#172810

Overall Influence

Laura Elizabeth Beane Freeman is an American environmental epidemiologist who is a senior investigator in the occupational and environmental epidemiology branch at the National Cancer Institute. Life Beane Freeman completed a M.S. and Ph.D. in epidemiology from the University of Iowa. Her dissertation was titled Arsenic exposure, artificial tanning and melanoma in Iowa. Leslie K. Dennis was her doctoral advisor.

#3630

Sofia Gruskin

#170925

Overall Influence

Sofia Gruskin is a scholar and advocate in the field of health and human rights whose contributions range from global policy to the grassroots level. For more than 25 years her work has been instrumental in developing the conceptual, methodological, and empirical links between health and human rights, with a focus on sexual and reproductive health, HIV and AIDS, child and adolescent health, gender-based violence, non-communicable disease, and health systems. Currently, Gruskin is a professor at the Keck School of Medicine and Gould School of Law at the University of Southern California. Gruski...

#3631

Helen Burt

#156427

Overall Influence

Helen M. Burt is a British-Canadian pharmaceutical scientist who is the Angiotech Professor of Drug Delivery at the University of British Columbia. She serves as Associate Vice President of Research and Innovation at UBC. Her research considers novel therapeutics based on nanotechnology, including drug delivery systems for the treatment of bladder cancer and coronary artery disease.

#3632

Sara Del Valle

#44614

Overall Influence

Sara Yemimah Del Valle is a senior scientist and mathematical epidemiologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory . At the LANL, Del Valle leads the Fusion Team, where she combines internet data with satellite imagery to forecast disease outbreaks. During the COVID-19 pandemic Del Valle created a computational model that could predict the spread of COVID-19 around the United States.

#3633

Helena Legido-Quigley

#174449

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Helena Legido-Quigley is a Spanish public health researcher who is an associate professor in Health Systems at Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health at the National University of Singapore. She serves as an associate fellow of Chatham House and is a member of the Council of the World Economic Forum. She is editor-in-chief of Elsevier's Journal of Migration and Health.

#3634

Nicoletta Sacchi

#74461

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Nicoletta Sacchi is an Italian professor of oncology at the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. She is the co-discoverer of the acid guanidinium thiocyanate-phenol-chloroform extraction method to extract RNA from biological samples with Trizol. As a consequence of this groundbreaking discovery she is now considered the most cited woman scientist in the world.

#3635

Nita Patel

#105214

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Nita K. Patel is an Indian-American vaccinologist who leads vaccine development at Novavax. She oversaw the development of the Novavax COVID-19 vaccine. Early life and education Patel was born in Sojitra, a farming village in Gujarat. When she was four years old her father contracted tuberculosis, and came close to death. This experience motivated Patel to become a physician and attempt to find a cure for tuberculosis. She went on to earn a master's degree in microbiology at Sardar Patel University and a master's degree in biotechnology at Johns Hopkins University.

#3636

Yoram Lass

#132781

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Yoram Lass is an Israeli physician, researcher, scientist, and former politician. He served as Director-General of the Ministry of Health and was a member of the Knesset for the Labor Party between 1992 and 1996.

#3637

Ann Kurth

#170155

Overall Influence

Ann Elizabeth Kurth, PhD, CNM, MPH, FAAN, FACNM is President of The New York Academy of Medicine , a leading nonprofit organization focused on health equity; she is the first epidemiologist to lead NYAM in its 176-year history. Previously she was the dean and Linda Koch Lorimer Professor at Yale School of Nursing . She is a fellow of the National Academy of Medicine and was a member of the United States Preventive Services Task Force. She is an expert in global health and HIV with work funded by the National Institutes of Health, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, CDC, and others, for studies in the US and internationally.

#3638

Julie Corliss

#100220

Overall Influence

Julie Corliss is an American medical writer with more than sixteen years of experience in consumer health issues. Her work has been published in Newsweek, HealthNews and Harvard Health Publications. She helped Dr. George L. Blackburn write Break Through Your Set Point a weight loss book published by HarperCollins.

#3639

Ko Wen-je

#74031

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Ko Wen-je is a Taiwanese politician and physician who served as the mayor of Taipei from 2014 to 2022. He has been the chairman of the Taiwan People's Party since 2019. Before becoming mayor, he was a doctor at National Taiwan University Hospital. He was also a professor at National Taiwan University College of Medicine, and specialized in fields including trauma, intensive care, organ transplant, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation , and artificial organs. Due to his profession, he has been nicknamed Ko P or KP . Ko was responsible for standardising organ transplant procedures in Taiwan, and was the first physician to bring ECMO to Taiwan.

#3640

Diana Buist

#175289

Overall Influence

Diana S.M. Buist is an American epidemiologist. She is a senior investigator and director of research and strategic partnerships at Kaiser Permanente Washington Research Institute. Early life and education Buist was born to the United Kingdom born physician-researchers Sonia and Neil Buist. She earned her PhD in epidemiology from the University of Washington and her MPH in the same subject from Yale University.

#3641

Fiona Marshall

#170396

Overall Influence

Fiona Hamilton Marshall is a British pharmacologist, founder and Senior Vice President of Discovery, Preclinical & Translational Medicine at Merck & Co. She will become the next president of the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research. She previously served as Chief Scientific Officer at Heptares Therapeutic, where she was Vice President of the Japanese biopharmaceutical company Sosei. She was elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2016 and the Royal Society in 2021.

#3642

Shari Barkin

#131304

Overall Influence

Shari L. Barkin is an American pediatrician. In 2021, she was elected a Member of the National Academy of Medicine for "pioneering pragmatic randomized controlled trials in community settings, undertaken in collaboration with parents and community partners, and addressing health disparities in pediatric obesity."

#3643

Julie A. Johnson

#172153

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Julie Ann Johnson is an American clinical pharmacist and translational scientist. She currently serves as associate dean for clinical and translational research and holds the Dr. Samuel T. and Lois Felts Mercer Professorship of Medicine and Pharmacology at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. She is also be associate vice president for research at Ohio State. Johnson comes to Ohio State from the University of Florida, where she was dean emeritus of pharmacy and a distinguished professor of pharmacy and medicine in the Department of Pharmacotherapy & Translational Research. For four ...

#3644

Jimmy Steele

#170263

Overall Influence

1962 - 2017 (55 years)

James George Steele was a British dentist. He authored the Steele Review in 2009 which proposed reforms to the dental services provided by the National Health Service. Early life and education Born in Fairmilehead, Edinburgh to George and Christelle Steele, Jimmy Steele attended Royal High School before studying dentistry at the University of Dundee. He had an older sister, Alison.

#3645

Brigitte C. Widemann

#176389

Overall Influence

Brigitte C. Widemann is German-American pediatric oncologist. She is chief of the pediatric oncology branch and clinical deputy director of the center for cancer research at the National Cancer Institute. She is also the special advisor to the NCI director for childhood cancer.

#3646

Shih-Jen Hwang

#173473

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Shih-Jen Hwang is a Taiwanese-American biostatistician and epidemiologist. She is a staff scientist in the Laboratory for Cardiovascular Epidemiology and Genomics at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. She is an investigator on the Framingham Heart Study.

#3647

Feng Chuanhan

#169228

Overall Influence

1914 - 2019 (105 years)

Feng Chuanhan was a Chinese orthopaedic surgeon and professor. He served as Vice President of Beijing Medical College and President of Peking University People's Hospital. A pioneer in the research of bone cancer in China, he was awarded the Ho Leung Ho Lee Prize and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Chinese Medical Association.

#3648

Angela Kashuba

#133815

Overall Influence

Angela Kashuba is the Dean of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Eshelman School of Pharmacy. She is the John A. and Deborah S. McNeill Jr. Distinguished Professor of Pharmacy, Chair of the Division of Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapeutics, and Director of the UNC CFAR Clinical Pharmacology and Analytical Chemistry Core.

#3649

Michael Levy

#176580

Overall Influence

#3650

Jean Harvey

#143492

Overall Influence

Jean Harvey, PhD, RDN, is currently the Robert L. Bickford, Jr. Endowed Professor, the Associate Dean for Research, and the Chair of the Department of Nutrition and Food Science in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Vermont. Her specialty is behavioral weight management with a specific focus on technology-based programs.

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