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,

#3851

Tibor J. Greenwalt

#183717
Overall Influence
1914 - 2005 (91 years)
Tibor Jack Greenwalt was an American hematologist who specialized in transfusion medicine. Greenwalt earned his medical degree from New York University Medical School in 1937 and completed a hematology fellowship under William Dameshek. After serving as a US Army physician in World War I, he settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he became a professor of medicine at the Marquette University School of Medicine. He was a founding member of the American Association of Blood Banks and served as president of the International Society of Blood Transfusion from 1966 to 1972.
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#3852

Juan José Segura-Egea

#171434
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Juan J. Segura-Egea is a Spanish physician who is Professor of Endodontics in University of Seville. He is best known for developing endodontic medicine, which studies the relationships between systemic pathologies, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease or smoking., with apical periodontitis and root canal treatment. He is a Certified Member of the European Society of Endodontology and vice president of the Odontologic Sciences Academy of Spain.
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#3853

Adenike Grange

#156414
Overall Influence
Adenike Grange is a paediatrician, professor, consultant, author and former Nigerian Minister in charge of the Federal Ministry of Health. Appointed on 25 July 2007, she was the first female Minister of Health in Nigeria. During her time in office, she was dedicated to improving healthcare delivery in Nigeria, reducing maternity deaths and reducing diseases among vulnerable groups. She was arrested by the order of President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua for handling 300 million naira of unspent funds. She was investigated by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and stood trial. She resigned fro...
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#3854

Stephen Robinson

#186851
Overall Influence
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#3855

Bill Stone

#162696
Overall Influence
Bill Stone , was a nephrologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He was head of the kidney department at the Nashville Veterans Affairs Medical Center, part of the Tennessee Valley Healthcare System, for over 45 years. There, in the 1970s, he began the first dialysis treatments that could be performed both in a healthcare setting and at home. During this time he helped work out how to administer safe doses of penicillin to people with kidney failure, who otherwise might develop toxic levels of penicillin in their blood.
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#3856

Abby Marlatt

#153230
Overall Influence
1916 - 2010 (94 years)
Abby Lindsey Marlatt, Ph.D. was a social justice activist and a teacher scholar committed to civic engagement. While a professor at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky, she became the center of controversy at UK in the mid-1960s over anti-war protests and whether the university could censor her in her role as a public intellectual. She was honored for her work by many academic, professional and community organizations including the National Conference for Community and Justice, and she was inducted into the Kentucky Civil Rights Hall of Fame in 2001.
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#3857

John Thorp

#169345
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
John Mercer Thorp, Jr. is an American obstetrician-gynecologist a Faculty Fellow at the Carolina Population Center, and the Hugh McAllister Distinguished Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill , where he directs the Division of General Obstetrics and Gynecology and serves as Vice Chair of Research.
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#3858

Satoshi Inoue

#187234
Overall Influence
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#3859

Taiwo Olayemi Elufioye

#177036
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Taiwo Olayemi Elufioye is a Nigerian pharmacologist and researcher. Elufioye works as a professor at the University of Ibadan in the department of pharmacognosy. Elufioye is also a Fulbright Scholar at University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she is investigating drugs for neurodegenerative diseases.
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#3860

Robert Bailey

#84346
Overall Influence
Robert C. Bailey is an American epidemiologist and professor of epidemiology at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health. He is also an adjunct professor in UIC's Department of Anthropology, a research associate at Chicago's Field Museum, and a visiting lecturer at the University of Nairobi.
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#3861

H. Gilbert Welch

#187327
Overall Influence
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#3862

Carol Wham

#100859
Overall Influence
Carol Anne Wham is a New Zealand scientist and professor of public health nutrition at Massey University. Academic career Wham graduated with a MSc from the University of Otago in 1994 and then moved to the University of Adelaide to undertake her PhD, with a thesis titled "Changing New Zealanders' attitudes to milk?". She returned to New Zealand, where she has been on the staff of Massey University since 2006.
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#3863

Bryan Nicholson Brooke

#176003
Overall Influence
1915 - 1998 (83 years)
Bryan Nicholas Brooke MD, M.Chir., was a British surgeon and pioneer of surgery for ulcerative colitis. Biography The son of numismatist George C. Brooke, after education at Bradfield College, he matriculated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he graduated BA in 1936. After clinical training at St Bartholomew's Hospital, he qualified MRCS in 1939 and graduated MB BChir in 1940 and MChir in 1944 from the University of Cambridge. He was elected FRCS in 1942 and was chief surgical assistant at St Bartholomew's Hospital. In 1944 he joined the RAMC and served as a lieutenant colonel in c...
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#3864

Daphne Haas-Kogan

#183708
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Daphne Adele Haas-Kogan is an American radiation oncologist. She is the Willem and Corrie Hees Family Professor of Radiation Oncology at Harvard Medical School. Early life and education Haas-Kogan was born on March 26, 1964. She was born to father Martin Haas, a Holocaust survivor from the south of the Netherlands. Following the Holocaust, he relocated to Israel then brought his family to San Diego in 1980.
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#3865

Bradley R. Wilcox

Bradley R. Wilcox
#82746
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Bradley Ray Wilcox is a professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University and has been a counselor in the Young Men general presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since April 2020.
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#3866

Douglas Mata

#187596
Overall Influence
Douglas Alexander Mata is an American pathologist and epidemiologist currently at Foundation Medicine, Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, known for his contributions to molecular pathological epidemiology and neuropsychiatric epidemiology. His textbook Statistics for Pathologists is a reference text in pathology medical education and his meta-analytical studies on physician mental health have circulated widely in the popular press.
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#3867

Gwyneth Lewis

#182304
Overall Influence
Gwyneth Helen Lewis is a British physician who is a professor at University College London. She previously served as National Clinical Director for Maternal Health and Maternity Services for the Department of Health. Lewis helped to write Maternity Matters, a strategy that outlined the future of maternity care in the United Kingdom.
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#3868

Denise Wilson

#169032
Overall Influence
Denise Lucy Wilson is a New Zealand health academic. She is currently a full professor of Māori health at the Auckland University of Technology. She is a fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi. Academic career After a background in nursing Wilson did an MSc titled 'Through the looking glass: nurses' responses to women experiencing partner abuse' and PhD titled 'Ngā kairaranga oranga / The weavers of health and wellbeing: a grounded theory study at the Massey University. She then moved to the Auckland University of Technology, rising to full professor.
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#3869

Kevin Gorey

#182110
Overall Influence
Kevin Michael Gorey is an American epidemiologist and social worker. He is a professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada. He is known for his Canada-USA comparative research on cancer treatment access and survival. He has also published research showing that well endowed preschool interventionss can increase children's IQ scores by an average of nearly 15 points.
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#3870

Anna-Maria Belli

#187901
Overall Influence
Anna-Maria Belli, MD, FCIRSE is a British interventional radiologist known for her work in vascular interventional radiology and for holding leadership positions in interventional radiology societies in Britain and Europe.
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#3871

Emma Weigley

Emma Weigley
#135765
Overall Influence
1933 - 2020 (87 years)
Emma Seifrit Weigley was an American professor of nutrition. Her husband was military historian Russell Weigley. Early life Emma Seifrit was born in Reading, Pennsylvania. She graduated from Albright College in 1954. She completed doctoral studies in nutrition at New York University in 1971, with a thesis titled Sarah Tyson Rorer , a Biographical Study.
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#3872

Jim Davis

#175592
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
James Wayland Davis is an American politician and orthodontist who served as a member of the North Carolina General Assembly. He represented the Senate's fiftieth district, which includes Cherokee, Clay, Graham, Haywood, Jackson, Macon, and Swain counties from 2011 until 2021.
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#3873

Laure Wynants

#181595
Overall Influence
Laure Wynants is a Belgian epidemiologist who is a professor at Maastricht University. She studies prediction models in medicine and hospital acquired infections. Early life and education Wynants studied biostatistics at KU Leuven in Belgium. She remained there for her doctoral research, where she focused on prediction models. Her doctorate sought to predict whether ovarian tumours are benign or malignant, and how likely it is that the insertion of a catheter will cause bloodstream infection.
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#3874

Soma Sengupta

#186605
Overall Influence
Soma Sengupta, MD, PhD, MBA, FRCP, FANA, FAAN is a British-American physician-scientist. She is a specialty board certified neuro-oncologist board certified Neurologist, fellowship-trained in Integrative Medicine, and recipient of an MBA. Her clinical interests span treatment of brain tumor patients, integrative approaches in neurology and oncology, as well as healthcare policy. She is a full-time faculty member of the Department of Neurology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she is a Full Professor, Vice Chair, and Chief of the Division of Neuro-Oncology. She is also ...
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#3875

Jacqueline C. M. Witteman

#188383
Overall Influence
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#3876

John Broughton

John Broughton
#181512
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
John Renata Broughton is a New Zealand academic. He is Māori, of Ngāi Tahu and Ngāti Kahungunu descent, and since 2012 has been a full professor at the University of Otago. Early life and family Broughton was born in Hastings in 1947, the son of Leonard Broughton, from Ngāti Kahungunu who graduated from the University of Otago in medicine in 1944, and Margaret Evans, who was the granddaughter of Tame Parata. He was educated at Hastings Boys' High School, and went on to study microbiology at Massey University, graduating Bachelor of Science in 1971.
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#3877

Valerie Wright-St Clair

#185841
Overall Influence
Valerie Wright-St Clair is a New Zealand registered occupational therapist, occupational scientist and Professor of Social Gerontology and Occupational Science in the School of Health Sciences at Auckland University of Technology .
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#3878

Michael R. Reich

#188888
Overall Influence
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#3879

Jennifer Clare Jones

#113849
Overall Influence
Jennifer Clare Jones is an American radiation oncologist and biologist. She is an investigator and head of the translational nanobiology section at the National Cancer Institute. Education Jones completed a M.D. and Ph.D. from Stanford University. She is a board-certified radiation oncologist specialized training in radiosurgery, with graduate and postdoctoral training in both cancer biology and general immunology. Her doctoral advisor was . Jones' dissertation in 2001 was titled, Identification of Tapr, a T cell and airway phenotype regulatory locus, and positional cloning of the Tim gene fam...
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#3880

Giselle Corbie-Smith

#144695
Overall Influence
Giselle Corbie-Smith is the Kenan Distinguished Professor of Social Medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. She serves as Director of the UNC Center for Health Equity Research and Associate Provost of the Institute of Rural Innovation. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2018. Her research considers racial disparities in healthcare.
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#3881

Rida al-Tubuly

#185184
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Rida Ahmed al-Tubuly is a Libyan pharmacologist and activist. She teaches at the University of Tripoli as a professor of pharmacology. She is an activist for equality and has campaigned to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325. She was selected as one of the BBC 100 Women in 2019.
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#3882

James L. Mills

#188151
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
James Louis Mills is an American epidemiologist and Senior Investigator in the Epidemiology Branch of the Division of Intramural Population Health Research in the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. He has studied the effects of iodine and folic acid consumption on outcomes such as female fertility and the risk of birth defects.
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#3883

Yael Bar-Zeev

#189225
Overall Influence
Yael Bar-Zeev is an Israeli Public Health Physician, behavioral scientist, epidemiologist, and a tobacco treatment specialist. She has been a faculty member at the Hebrew University-Hadassah Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine since 2019. She is also the Chair of the Israel Medical Association for Smoking Cessation and Prevention.
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#3884

Zoltán Szabó

#109839
Overall Influence
1929 - 2015 (86 years)
Zoltán Szabó was a Hungarian heart surgeon, cardiologist, and professor emeritus of the Városmajor Heart and Vascular Centre. Szabo served as the Director of the Városmajor Heart and Vascular Centre from 1981 until 1992. In January 1992, he performed Hungary's first successful heart transplant following years of research.
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#3885

Chen Chien-jen

#54032
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Chen Chien-jen is a Taiwanese diplomat. Political career Chen served in the Legislative Yuan for one term from 1993 to 1996. He was then named the minister of the Government Information Office in 1998. The next year, he was appointed to lead the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Chen planned to retire after stepping down at the end of President Lee Teng-hui's final term in 2000. However, Lee's successor Chen Shui-bian asked Chen Chien-jen to reconsider. Chen eventually chose to accept the post of representative to the United States. He postponed retirement again in 2004 to become the representative to the European Union and Belgium.
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#3886

Brian Perry

#189462
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Brian Derek Perry, OBE is a British veterinary surgeon and epidemiologist renowned for the integration of veterinary epidemiology and agricultural economics, as a tool for disease control policy and strategy development, and specialised in international agricultural development. He is an Honorary Professor at the University of Edinburgh, a Visiting Professor at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Oxford.
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#3887

Sir James Fraser, 2nd Baronet

#179483
Overall Influence
1924 - 1997 (73 years)
Sir James David Fraser, 2nd Baronet, FRCS, FRCSEd was a Scottish academic surgeon and a foundation professor at the medical school of Southampton, England, when it was established in 1969. He subsequently became Postgraduate Dean at the University of Edinburgh and served as President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh from 1982 to 1985.
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#3888

Joyce Kakuramatsi Kikafunda

#174513
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Joyce Kakuramatsi Kikafunda is a Ugandan diplomat and academic who has served as High Commissioner of Uganda to the United Kingdom since 2013. A professor of agriculture and food science at Makerere University, she has been involved with projects to eradicate poverty and reduce childhood malnutrition. She was also a member of the Board of Trustees of the International Rice Research Institute from 2010-2015.
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#3889

Faʻafetai Sopoaga

#186981
Overall Influence
Faumuinā Faʻafetai Sopoaga is a Samoan-New Zealand academic specialising in Pacific health, Pacific workforce development, Pacific students, and Pacific communities. She is a professor at the Dunedin School of Medicine at the University of Otago, Dunedin. When she was appointed, she became the first Pacific woman medical doctor to be appointed in a professorial role at any university in Australia or New Zealand, and the first Pacific woman to be appointed a professor at the University of Otago.
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#3890

Shitaye Alemu

#190821
Overall Influence
Shitaye Alemu Balcha is an Ethiopian physician and academic, "a venerated local internist who pioneered diabetes care in northern Ethiopia". An expert in non-communicable diseases, she has published on diabetes, epilepsy and HIV/AIDS in rural Ethiopia. She is Professor of Internal Medicine in the College of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of Gondar.
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#3891

David Lodge

David Lodge
#190152
Overall Influence
David Lodge is a research fellow in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at the University of Bristol. Education Lodge was awarded a Bachelor of Veterinary Science degree in 1963 and worked in University of Bristol as a surgeon and anaesthetist, before doing postgraduate research with Tim J. Biscoe on the neuropharmacology of amino acids, he was awarded his PhD in 1974.
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#3892

Alan Purwin

#188554
Overall Influence
1961 - 2015 (54 years)
Alan David Purwin was an American helicopter pilot, aerial film operator, entrepreneur and philanthropist. Purwin founded and owned Helinet Aviation. Purwin contributed to the aerial cinematography industry and aided in the filming of hundreds of Hollywood movies such as Pearl Harbor, Pirates of the Caribbean film series and the Transformers film series.
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#3893

Jack Thrasher

#104153
Overall Influence
1938 - 2017 (79 years)
Jack Dwayne Thrasher was an American immunotoxicologist. His area of expertise was primarily the toxicity of formaldehyde, as well as chlorpyrifos, and he has acted as an expert witness and consultant since 1984. He obtained his bachelor's degree from California State University, Long Beach, after which he traveled to UCLA for five years, during which time he published a paper about the effects of administering thymidine to mice. After he obtained his PhD in 1964, he became an assistant professor at the University of Colorado, Denver, before switching to the Department of Anatomy at the University of California, Los Angeles from 1966 to 1972.
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#3894

Amanda Simanek

#191018
Overall Influence
Amanda Simanek is an American epidemiologist. Previously she was an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee’s Joseph J. Zilber School of Public Health. she is currently at the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science as the Director of the Michael Reese Foundation Center for Health Equity Research and Associate Professor of Epidemiology. She is also a founding member of Those Nerdy Girls.
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#3895

Carlos José Belmonte López

#191169
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Carlos José Belmonte López is a Spanish pharmaceutical researcher. He is the editor and founder, together with Germán Fuertes Otero, Amparo Miralles Lobato, Marta Aguilar Vera, Isaac Escudero Bermúdez and Marcel Quirós Reyes, of the scientific journal PharmaSalud and is a Pharmaceutical Doctor graduated from the University of Oxford since 2022. He is known for his work in the field of pharmacological health and medicinal plants and their effects on the body.
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#3896

Yūichirō Kan'no

#191195
Overall Influence
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#3897

Jarbas Barbosa

#191230
Overall Influence
Jarbas Barbosa da Silva Jr. is a public health expert from Brazil who is currently serving as the Director of the Pan American Health Organization and Regional Director for the Americas of the World Health Organization ; his five-year term in this position starting on 01 February 2023. He is replacing Carissa Etienne of Dominica, who had served has the PAHO Director since 2013.
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#3898

Joseph Alliluyev

#98944
Overall Influence
1945 - 2008 (63 years)
Iosif Grigor'evich Alliluyev was a Russian cardiologist and a grandson of Joseph Stalin. The son of Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva, Iosif was seven years old when Stalin, his maternal grandfather, died in March 1953. Although he kept a low profile, he did take part in a television interview on Russian Channel One. He spoke about his relationship with his mother and how she fled to the United States.
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#3899

John Williams

#71074
Overall Influence
John Gordon Williams is a British health services researcher and clinical academic gastroenterologist. He led the establishment of the Postgraduate Medical School in Swansea, created and developed the Health Informatics Unit at the Royal College of Physicians, and was the founding president of WAGE, the Welsh Association for Gastroenterology and Endoscopy Williams was appointed a CBE for services to medicine in 2014.
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#3900

Jeffrey W. Hutter

#145065
Overall Influence
Jeffrey W. Hutter is an American dentist and a former director of the American Board of Endodontics. Biography Hutter obtained a D.M.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a certificate in endodontics from the Naval Dental School. He obtained a master's degree in education and human development from the George Washington University. He is a diplomat and former director of the American Board of Endodontics.
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