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,
#3901
Roni Rosenfeld
#103677
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Roni Rosenfeld is an Israeli-American computer scientist and computational epidemiologist, currently serving as the head of the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University. He is an international expert in machine learning, infectious disease forecasting, statistical language modeling and artificial intelligence.
Go to Profile#3902
John Secrist
#191297
Overall Influence
John A. Secrist III is an American chemist, whose work invented Clofarabine, currently at Southern Research and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Go to Profile#3903
Ward Cates
#191741
Overall Influence
1942 - 2016 (74 years)
Willard Cates Jr. was an American epidemiologist and public health advocate known for his work on HIV/AIDS and women's health. In 1974, he began working at the Epidemic Intelligence Service of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , where he researched the epidemiology of abortion. He served as director of the CDC's Division of Sexually Transmitted Diseases from 1982 to 1992. In 1994, he began working at FHI 360, where he became president of the Institute for Family Health in 1998. He was a member of the Institute of Medicine and served as president of both the Society for Epidemiolo...
Go to Profile#3904
Virginia Caine
#189323
Overall Influence
Virginia A. Caine is an American physician who is the director and chief medical officer of the Marion County Public Health Department in Indianapolis, Indiana. She is a specialist in infectious diseases and is nationally recognized for her work with AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases. She is an Associate Professor of Medicine for the Infectious Disease Division of the Indiana University School of Medicine and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Public Health.
Go to Profile#3905
Sarah T. Roberts
#191858
Overall Influence
Sarah T. Roberts is an American epidemiologist. She is a research public health analyst specializing in “the biological, behavioral, social and structural factors that increase the risk of HIV/STI for women and girls in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly the role of gender inequality, male engagement, and intimate partner violence, and in the design of interventions to maximize uptake of and adherence to biomedical HIV prevention strategies in women.“
Go to Profile#3906
Robert E. Marc
#99623
Overall Influence
Robert E. Marc is an American ophthalmologist, currently Distinguished Professor, and previously Calvin & JeNeal Hatch Endowed Chair in Ophthalmology and Mary H. Boesche Professor at University of Utah and previously the Robert Greer of Neural Sciences at University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Society for Neuroscience and Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology.
Go to Profile#3907
Mohsen Naghavi
#192176
Overall Influence
Mohsen Naghavi is an Iranian-American researcher and Professor of Health Metrics Sciences at the University of Washington. He is one of the top highly cited researchers according to webometrics.
Go to Profile#3908
Richard Barohn
#192199
Overall Influence
Richard J. Barohn is an American neurologist and the executive vice chancellor for health affairs at the University of Missouri. He formerly served as the university distinguished professor and Gertrude & Dewey Ziegler Professor at University of Kansas. He is an Elected Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology.
Go to Profile#3909
Paolo G. Casali
#192418
Overall Influence
Paolo Giovanni Casali is an Italian oncologist who served as chair of the European Society for Medical Oncology public policy committee, and is head of the Adult Mesenchymal Tumour Medical Oncology Unit at Istituto Nazionale Tumori in Milan.
Go to Profile#3910
Jack T Landrigan
#192428
Overall Influence
#3911
Ludwig Ferdinand Meyer
1879 - 1954 (75 years)
Ludwig Ferdinand Meyer was a pediatrician and nutrition expert , professor of Medicine at the University of Berlin and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Biography Meyer studied medicine in Munich, Berlin and Bonn, where he graduated in 1902 and worked for three years in the Charite hospital in Berlin before moving in 1905 to work with the eminent pediatrician Heinrich Finkelstein, with whom he also wrote articles and chapters in many medical books many. After Finkelstein's retirement Meyer was appointed director of the Emperor Frederick Berlin Hospital but in May 1933 was forced to resign due to the Nazi racial laws.
Go to Profile#3912
Hélène Sparrow
1891 - 1970 (79 years)
Hélène Sparrow , was a Polish medical doctor and bacteriologist. She is best known for her work on the control of many epidemics including: typhoid fever, cholera, dysentery, and smallpox. Throughout the 1920s, Sparrow worked with the Polish Armed Forces at the State Institute of Hygiene in Warsaw. While at the State Institute of Hygiene, she worked vigilantly to produce the first vaccine against typhus and ran several large-scale vaccination campaigns to control the spread of diphtheria and scarlet fever all along the eastern frontiers of Poland. In 1933, Sparrow began to study flea-borne and...
Go to Profile#3913
George Smith
1919 - 1984 (65 years)
George Smith was a 20th century Scottish surgeon who emigrated to the United States of America. Life He was born on 4 June 1919 in Carnoustie the son of John Shand Smith and his wife Lilimina Myles Mathers. He was educated at the Grove Academy. He then studied Medicine at St. Andrews University graduating MB ChB in 1942, and starting as an intern at Dundee Royal Infirmary.
Go to Profile#3914
Alfred Bannwarth
1903 - 1970 (67 years)
Alfred Bannwarth was a German neurologist who is credited for first reporting lymphocytic meningoradiculitis. Biography Early life and education After first studying music, Bannwarth studied medicine in Munich, Germany, and later became an assistant to German neurologist Max Nonne in Hamburg.
Go to Profile#3915
Truby King
1858 - 1938 (80 years)
Sir Frederic Truby King , generally known as Truby King, was a New Zealand health reformer and Director of Child Welfare. He is best known as the founder of the Plunket Society. Early life King was born in New Plymouth on 1 April 1858, the son of Thomas and Mary King. His brother, Newton King, was to become a leading Taranaki businessman. Truby King was privately educated by Henry Richmond and proved to be a keen scholar. After working for a short time as a bank clerk he travelled to Edinburgh and Paris to study medicine. In 1886, he graduated with honours with a M.B., C.M, and later completed a BSc in Public Health .
Go to Profile#3916
Henryk Hilarowicz
1890 - 1941 (51 years)
Henryk Hilarowicz was a Polish surgeon, and a professor at the Jan Kazimierz University in Lwów. He was murdered by the Nazis in the Massacre of Lwów professors. Further reading
Go to Profile#3917
Minnie Evangeline Jordon
1865 - 1952 (87 years)
Minnie Evangeline Jordon was an American dentist, and the first dentist in the United States to specialize in pediatric dentistry. Early life Minnie Evangeline Jordon was born in Fulton County, Illinois, the daughter of Eugene B. Jordon and Catherine Rebecca Calvert Jordon. She moved to California in 1887 and graduated from the Los Angeles State Normal School in 1891. She went on to graduate from the University of California's dental program in 1898. While she was in dental school, she ran an oral health clinic at an orphanage in San Francisco.
Go to Profile#3918
Ludwig Guttmann
1899 - 1980 (81 years)
Sir Ludwig Guttmann was a German-British neurologist who established the Stoke Mandeville Games, the sporting event for people with disabilities that evolved in England into the Paralympic Games. A Jewish doctor who fled Nazi Germany just before the start of the Second World War, Guttmann was a founding father of organized physical activities for people with disabilities.
Go to Profile#3919
Vasili Razumovsky
1857 - 1935 (78 years)
Vasili Ivanovich Razumovsky was a Russian and Soviet surgeon who was professor of surgery at Kazan University starting in 1887. Rasumovsky was among the founders of universities at Saratov , Tbilisi , and Baku , and was the first rector of Baku State University . After 1920 he returned to Kazan University, and taught there until 1930.
Go to Profile#3920
Naomi Deutsch
1890 - 1983 (93 years)
Naomi Deutsch was a professional Registered nurse, the organizer and director of the Public Health Unit of the Federal Children's Bureau of the Department of Labor of Washington, D.C. Early life Naomi Deutsch born in Brno, Moravia, on November 5, 1890, the daughter of Rabbi Dr. Gotthard Deutsch and Hermine Bacher. In 1891 the family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where Rabbi Deutsch accepted a position as professor of history at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. He was also a prolific author. Naomi Deutsch from both paternal and maternal side could trace ancestor back into 15th c...
Go to Profile#3921
Jean-François Heymans
1859 - 1932 (73 years)
Jean-François Heymans, also Jan Frans Heymans was a Belgian pharmacologist and physiologist. He was the father of physiologist Corneille Jean François Heymans. He received his education at the University of Leuven, where he earned doctorates in natural sciences and medicine . From 1884 to 1887 he worked as a préparateur in the laboratory of physiology under Ernest Masoin. Afterwards, he travelled to Berlin, where he spent three years as an assistant to Emil Heinrich Du Bois-Reymond. In 1891 he was named professor of pharmacodynamics and general therapeutics at the University of Ghent. Here, he founded a laboratory for experimental pharmacology and therapeutics.
Go to Profile#3922
Paul Georges Dieulafoy
1839 - 1911 (72 years)
Paul Georges Dieulafoy was a French physician and surgeon. He is best known for his study of acute appendicitis and his description of Dieulafoy's lesion, a rare cause of gastric bleeding. Life, studies, and career Dieulafoy was born in Toulouse. He studied medicine in Paris and earned his doctorate in 1869. In 1863, during his third year of medical school, Dieulafoy went to Paris to attend the clinical department of Professor Armand Trousseau. The two men remained close until the former's death in 1867, with Dieulafoy being referred to as Trousseau's spiritual son. Dieulafoy later led an am...
Go to Profile#3923
Albert Jesionek
1870 - 1935 (65 years)
Albert Jesionek was a German dermatologist. He studied medicine at the universities of Kiel, Tübingen and Munich, where in 1894 he received his doctorate. After graduation, he spent several years working as an assistant at the municipal hospital in Munich, and from 1900 served as a deputy senior physician at the dermatology clinic in Munich under Karl Posselt . In 1906 he became an associate professor, and later the same year relocated to the University of Giessen, where in 1913 he was appointed director of the Lupusheilstätte . In 1918 he was named a full professor of dermatology at the univ...
Go to Profile#3924
Gilbert Ballet
1853 - 1916 (63 years)
Gilbert Ballet was a French psychiatrist, neurologist and historian who was a native of Ambazac in the department of Haute-Vienne. He studied medicine in Limoges and Paris, and subsequently became Chef de clinique under Jean-Martin Charcot at the Salpêtrière. In 1900 he became a professor of psychiatry, and in 1904 established the department of psychiatry at Hôtel-Dieu de Paris. In 1909 he succeeded Alix Joffroy as chair of clinical psychiatry and brain disorders at the Hôpital Sainte-Anne.
Go to Profile#3925
Jean-Martin Charcot
1825 - 1893 (68 years)
Jean-Martin Charcot was a French neurologist and professor of anatomical pathology. He worked on hypnosis and hysteria, in particular with his hysteria patient Louise Augustine Gleizes. Charcot is known as "the founder of modern neurology", and his name has been associated with at least 15 medical eponyms, including various conditions sometimes referred to as Charcot diseases.
Go to Profile#3926
William Stewart Halsted
1852 - 1922 (70 years)
William Stewart Halsted, M.D. was an American surgeon who emphasized strict aseptic technique during surgical procedures, was an early champion of newly discovered anesthetics, and introduced several new operations, including the radical mastectomy for breast cancer. Along with William Osler , Howard Atwood Kelly and William H. Welch , Halsted was one of the "Big Four" founding professors at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. His operating room at Johns Hopkins Hospital is in Ward G, and was described as a small room where medical discoveries and miracles took place. According to an intern who once...
Go to Profile#3927
Edward Angle
1855 - 1930 (75 years)
Edward Hartley Angle was an American dentist, widely regarded as "the father of American orthodontics". He was trained as a dentist, but made orthodontics his speciality and dedicated his life to standardizing the teaching and practice of orthodontics. He founded the Angle School of Orthodontia in 1899 in St. Louis and schools in other regions of the United States. As the originator of the profession, Angle founded three orthodontic schools between 1905 and 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri, New London, Connecticut and Pasadena, California. These exclusive institutions provided the opportunity fo...
Go to Profile#3928
Harvey Cushing
1869 - 1939 (70 years)
Harvey Williams Cushing was an American neurosurgeon, pathologist, writer, and draftsman. A pioneer of brain surgery, he was the first exclusive neurosurgeon and the first person to describe Cushing's disease. He wrote a biography of physician William Osler in three volumes.
Go to Profile#3929
John Snow
1813 - 1858 (45 years)
John Snow was an English physician and a leader in the development of anaesthesia and medical hygiene. He is considered one of the founders of modern epidemiology, in part because of his work in tracing the source of a cholera outbreak in London's Soho, which he identified as a particular public water pump. Snow's findings inspired the adoption of anaesthesia as well as fundamental changes in the water and waste systems of London, which led to similar changes in other cities, and a significant improvement in general public health around the world.
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Margaret Sanger
1879 - 1966 (87 years)
Margaret Higgins Sanger , also known as Margaret Sanger Slee, was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. Sanger popularized the term "birth control", opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established organizations that evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Go to Profile#3931
Max Joseph von Pettenkofer
1818 - 1901 (83 years)
Max Joseph Pettenkofer, ennobled in 1883 as Max Joseph von Pettenkofer was a Bavarian chemist and hygienist. He is known for his work in practical hygiene, as an apostle of good water, fresh air and proper sewage disposal. He was further known as an anti-contagionist, a school of thought, named later on, that did not believe in the then novel concept that bacteria were the main cause of disease. In particular he argued in favor of a variety of conditions collectively contributing to the incidence of disease including: personal state of health, the fermentation of environmental ground water, and also the germ in question.
Go to Profile#3932
Pierre Marie
1853 - 1940 (87 years)
Pierre Marie was a French neurologist and political journalist close to the SFIO. Medical career After finishing medical school, he served as an interne , working as an assistant to neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot at the Salpêtrière and Bicêtre Hospitals in Paris. In 1883 he received his medical doctorate with a graduate thesis on Basedow’s disease, being promoted to médecin des hôpitaux several years later . In 1907 he attained the chair of pathological anatomy at the Faculty of Medicine, and in 1917 was appointed to the chair of neurology, a position he held until 1925. In 1911 Marie becam...
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Carl Wernicke
1848 - 1905 (57 years)
Carl Wernicke was a German physician, anatomist, psychiatrist and neuropathologist. He is known for his influential research into the pathological effects of specific forms of encephalopathy and also the study of receptive aphasia, both of which are commonly associated with Wernicke's name and referred to as Wernicke encephalopathy and Wernicke's aphasia, respectively. His research, along with that of Paul Broca, led to groundbreaking realizations of the localization of brain function, specifically in speech. As such, Wernicke's area has been named after the scientist.
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Dorothea Dix
1802 - 1887 (85 years)
Dorothea Lynde Dix was an American advocate on behalf of the indigent mentally ill who, through a vigorous and sustained program of lobbying state legislatures and the United States Congress, created the first generation of American mental asylums. During the Civil War, she served as a Superintendent of Army Nurses.
Go to Profile#3935
Vladimir Bekhterev
1857 - 1927 (70 years)
Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev was a Russian neurologist and the father of objective psychology. He is best known for noting the role of the hippocampus in memory, his study of reflexes, and Bekhterev’s disease. Moreover, he is known for his competition with Ivan Pavlov regarding the study of conditioned reflexes.
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Otto Loewi
1873 - 1961 (88 years)
Otto Loewi was a German-born pharmacologist and psychobiologist who discovered the role of acetylcholine as an endogenous neurotransmitter. For this discovery, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1936, which he shared with Sir Henry Dale, who was a lifelong friend that helped to inspire the neurotransmitter experiment. Loewi met Dale in 1902 when spending some months in Ernest Starling's laboratory at University College, London.
Go to Profile#3937
Joseph Babinski
1857 - 1932 (75 years)
Joseph Jules François Félix Babinski was a French-Polish professor of neurology. He is best known for his 1896 description of the Babinski sign, a pathological plantar reflex indicative of corticospinal tract damage.
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Hans Asperger
1906 - 1980 (74 years)
Johann Friedrich Karl Asperger was an Austrian physician. Noted for his early studies on atypical neurology, specifically in children, he is the namesake of the autism spectrum disorder Asperger syndrome. He wrote more than 300 publications on psychological disorders that posthumously acquired international renown in the 1980s. His diagnosis of autism, which he termed "autistic psychopathy", also garnered controversy. Further controversy arose during the late 2010s over allegations that Asperger referred children to a Nazi German clinic responsible for murdering disabled patients, although hi...
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Henry Hallett Dale
1875 - 1968 (93 years)
Sir Henry Hallett Dale was an English pharmacologist and physiologist. For his study of acetylcholine as agent in the chemical transmission of nerve pulses he shared the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Otto Loewi.
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Franco Basaglia
1924 - 1980 (56 years)
Franco Basaglia was an Italian psychiatrist, neurologist, and professor, who proposed the dismantling of psychiatric hospitals, pioneer of the modern concept of mental health, Italian psychiatry reformer, figurehead and founder of Democratic Psychiatry, architect, and principal proponent of Law 180, which abolished mental hospitals in Italy. He is considered to be the most influential Italian psychiatrist of the 20th century.
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Hulusi Behçet
1889 - 1948 (59 years)
Hulusi Behçet , was a Turkish dermatologist and scientist. He described a disease of inflamed blood vessels in 1937, which is named after him as Behçet's disease. His portrait was depicted on a former Turkish postcard stamp.
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Wilhelm Heinrich Erb
1840 - 1921 (81 years)
Wilhelm Heinrich Erb was a German neurologist. He was born in Winnweiler, and died in Heidelberg. Academic career In 1864 he received his medical degree from the University of Heidelberg, where for several years he served as an assistant to pathologist Nikolaus Friedreich . As a young man, he also worked for a period of time under Ludwig von Buhl in Munich. In 1880 Erb attained the chair of special pathology at the University of Leipzig, where he was also appointed head of its policlinic. In 1883 he succeeded Friedreich at the University of Heidelberg, where he worked until his retirement in 1907.
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Alois Alzheimer
1864 - 1915 (51 years)
Alois Alzheimer was a German psychiatrist and neuropathologist and a colleague of Emil Kraepelin. Alzheimer is credited with identifying the first published case of "presenile dementia", which Kraepelin would later identify as Alzheimer's disease.
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Pedanius Dioscorides
40 - 90 (50 years)
Pedanius Dioscorides , "the father of pharmacognosy", was a Greek physician, pharmacologist, botanist, and author of —a 5-volume Greek encyclopedia about herbal medicine and related medicinal substances , that was widely read for more than 1,500 years. For almost two millennia Dioscorides was regarded as the most prominent writer on plants and plant drugs.
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Otfrid Foerster
1873 - 1941 (68 years)
Otfrid Foerster was a German neurologist and neurosurgeon, who made innovative contributions to neurology and neurosurgery, such as rhizotomy for the treatment of spasticity, anterolateral cordotomy for pain, the hyperventilation test for epilepsy, Foerster's syndrome, the first electrocorticogram of a brain tumor, and the first surgeries for epilepsy. He is also known as the first to describe the dermatomes , and he helped map the motor cortex of the cerebrum.
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Norman Bethune
1890 - 1939 (49 years)
Henry Norman Bethune was a Canadian thoracic surgeon, early advocate of socialized medicine, and member of the Communist Party of Canada. Bethune came to international prominence first for his service as a frontline trauma surgeon supporting the Republican government during the Spanish Civil War, and later supporting the Chinese Communist Party's Eighth Route Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Bethune helped bring modern medicine to rural China, treating both sick villagers and wounded soldiers.
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Victor Horsley
1857 - 1916 (59 years)
Sir Victor Alexander Haden Horsley was a British scientist and professor. He was born in Kensington, London. Educated at Cranbrook School, Kent, he studied medicine at University College London and in Berlin, Germany and, in the same year, started his career as a house surgeon and registrar at the University College Hospital. From 1884 to 1890, Horsley was Professor-Superintendent of the Brown Institute.
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John Addison Fordyce
1858 - 1925 (67 years)
John Addison Fordyce , was an American professor of dermatology, whose name is associated with Fordyce's spot, angiokeratoma of Fordyce, Brooke–Fordyce trichoepithelioma, and Fox–Fordyce disease.
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Charles R. Drew
1904 - 1950 (46 years)
Charles Richard Drew was an American surgeon and medical researcher. He researched in the field of blood transfusions, developing improved techniques for blood storage, and applied his expert knowledge to developing large-scale blood banks early in World War II. This allowed medics to save thousands of Allied forces' lives during the war. As the most prominent African American in the field, Drew protested against the practice of racial segregation in the donation of blood, as it lacked scientific foundation, and resigned his position with the American Red Cross, which maintained the policy un...
Go to Profile#3950
Theobald Smith
1859 - 1938 (79 years)
Theobald Smith FRS HFRSE was a pioneering epidemiologist, bacteriologist, pathologist and professor. Smith is widely considered to be America's first internationally-significant medical research scientist.
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