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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Medical,
#401
Lester Breslow
#41093
Overall Influence
1915 - 2012 (97 years)
Lester Breslow was an American physician who promoted public health. Breslow's career had a significant impact. He is credited with pioneering chronic disease prevention and health behavior intervention. His work with the Human Population Laboratory in the Alameda County Study established the connection between mortality and lifestyle issues like exercise, diet, sleep, smoking, and alcohol. He has been called "Mr. Public Health".
Go to Profile#402
Robert T. Knight
#28924
Overall Influence
Robert Thomas Knight is an American neurologist and Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience as well as Neurology and Neurosurgery . His work is focused on attention and memory, neuropsychology, physiology, and cognitive neuroscience. He is an Elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Go to Profile#403
Daniel Roses
#56263
Overall Influence
Daniel F. Roses is an American surgeon who is the Jules Leonard Whitehill Professor of Surgery and Oncology of the New York University School of Medicine and a Senior Attending Surgeon at Tisch Hospital of the New York University Medical Center.
Go to Profile#404
Daniel W. Nebert
#50648
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (87 years)
Daniel Walter Nebert is an American physician-scientist. He is a professor emeritus at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. His research has revolved around the central theme of gene–environment interaction.
Go to Profile#405
Lisa Welander
#48452
Overall Influence
1909 - 2001 (92 years)
Lisa Welander was a Swedish neurologist, and was Sweden's first professor of neurology, taking up her professorship at Umeå University from 1964–75. Career Welander graduated from Örebro University in 1928, and became a medical licentiate in Stockholm in 1937. She received her doctorate of medicine in 1952 from the Karolinska Institute and then became an associate professor of neurology there, and in 1953 at the Medical College of the University of Gothenburg. Welander became a professor of neurology at Umeå University from 1964–75.
Go to Profile#406
Mohit Bhandari
#47362
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (45 years)
Mohit Bhandari is an Indian bariatric surgeon known for his work in laparoscopic and robot-assisted surgery. He is the first surgeon in Asian sub-continent to perform more than twenty one thousand bariatrics and metabolic surgeries. He is the President of IRCAD , India's first centre of excellence solely devoted to training and research & development in the realm of minimally invasive surgery.
Go to Profile#407
Roger Härtl
#50181
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (60 years)
Roger Härtl is an American neurological surgeon at Weill-Cornell Medical College and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. He is the Director of Spinal Surgery at the Weill Cornell Brain & Spine Center. Härtl has been named by Becker's Spine Review as one of the Top 50 Spine Surgeons in the United States as well as one of the Top 10 Spine and Neurosurgeon Leaders at Non-Profit Hospitals. He was named one of New York's Top Doctors by New York Magazine after he saved the life of New York firefighter Eugene Stolowski.
Go to Profile#408
Paolo Macchiarini
#31695
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (67 years)
Paolo Macchiarini is a Swiss-born Italian thoracic surgeon and former regenerative medicine researcher who became known for research fraud and manipulative behavior. He has been convicted of research-related crimes in Italy and Sweden.
Go to Profile#409
Kefah Mokbel
#30025
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (60 years)
Professor Kefah Mokbel FRCS is the lead consultant breast surgeon at the London Breast Institute of the Princess Grace Hospital, Professor of Breast Cancer Surgery at Brunel University London, an honorary consultant breast surgeon at St George's Hospital. Kefah Mokbel is the founder and current president of Breast Cancer Hope; a UK-based charity "dedicated to improving the quantity and quality of life in women diagnosed with breast cancer". He was appointed as a substantive consultant breast surgeon at St George's Hospital NHS trust in February 2001. He was named in Tatler magazine's Best Doctors Guide as one of the featured "Top Breast Surgeons" in 2006, 2007 and 2013.
Go to Profile#410
Anne B. Newman
#51146
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Anne B. Newman is an American scientist who researches epidemiology and gerontology. She received her Bachelor's, Master's and M.D. degrees from the University of Pittsburgh. Newman's primary focus of study is on atherosclerosis, longevity and what specific factors allow for people to thrive while aging. She focuses on geriatrics, gerontology and epidemiology. She was the first scholar to be awarded the Katherine M. Detre Endowed Chair of Population Health Science at the University of Pittsburgh. She has been listed on the annual ISI Web of Knowledge most highly cited scientists for 2015, as published by Thomson Reuters.
Go to Profile#411
Manley West
#33486
Overall Influence
1929 - 2012 (83 years)
Manley Elisha West OM was a Jamaican pharmacologist who studied the marijuana plant. He investigated medicines for glaucoma. Education West was born in Fairy Hill, Portland Parish, Jamaica. He studied at Titchfield High School and later moved to the UK, attendingThames High School in Surrey. Eventually he began to study pharmacology at the University of London. He worked in St Helier Hospital. West remained there for his postgraduate studies, earning a PhD in 1967.
Go to Profile#412
Joseph Volpe
#56933
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (87 years)
Joseph J. Volpe is an American physician, the Bronson Crothers Professor of Neurology, Emeritus at Harvard Medical School and Neurologist-in-Chief Emeritus at Boston Children's Hospital. He was an early contributor to the field of neonatal neurology and has authored several editions of an influential textbook, Neurology of the Newborn.
Go to Profile#413
Allan H. Conney
#60922
Overall Influence
#414
Daoud Hanania
#37437
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (91 years)
Daoud Anastas Hanania is a Jordanian heart surgeon. Hanania is a former Lieutenant General in the Jordanian Armed Forces and former Senator in the Jordanian Parliament. Family background and education Daoud Hanania was born into an Orthodox Christian Palestinian family originally hailed from Jerusalem, Palestine. His father, Anastas Hanania, was a lawyer and politician. The Hananias lived in West Jerusalem until 1948. In the early 1950s they permanently moved to Amman, Jordan, where Hanania's father came to hold several cabinet positions in the Jordanian government, including Foreign Minister, Minister of Justice, Minister for Refugees and Minister of Finance.
Go to Profile#415
Anita Harding
#40625
Overall Influence
1952 - 1995 (43 years)
Anita Elizabeth Harding was an Irish-British neurologist, and Professor of Clinical Neurology at the Institute of Neurology of the University of London. She is known for the discovery with Ian Holt and John Morgan-Hughes of the "first identification of a mitochondrial DNA mutation in human disease and the concept of tissue heteroplasmy of mutant mitochondrial DNA", published in Nature in 1986. In 1985 she established the first neurogenetics research group in the United Kingdom at the UCL Institute of Neurology.
Go to Profile#416
Kenneth J. Pienta
#61110
Overall Influence
Kenneth J. Pienta is a medical doctor and the Donald S. Coffey professor of urology and professor of oncology and pharmacology and molecular sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He also serves as the director of research at the Brady Urological Institute.
Go to Profile#417
Jerry A. Shields
#61114
Overall Influence
#418
Marc Weissbluth
#40893
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
Marc Weissbluth is an American pediatrician who has written several books on infant sleep. He is a sleep disorders specialist at the Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago. Education and early research Weissbluth was born in Brooklyn, New York and graduated from Palo Alto High School in California. He received his B.A. from Stanford University with Department of Biology Science Honors in 1965. Weissbluth graduated from Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine and was Chief Resident at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.
Go to Profile#419
Stephen S. Morse
#22327
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Stephen S. Morse is an American epidemiologist, influenza researcher and specialist on emerging infectious diseases, who has served as an adviser on the epidemiology of infectious diseases and on improving disease early warning systems to numerous government and international organizations. As of 2016, he is Professor of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University. His seminal book Emerging Viruses was selected by American Scientist for its list of "100 Top Science Books of the 20th Century".
Go to Profile#420
Geraint Rees
#17509
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (58 years)
Geraint Ellis Rees is Vice-Provost of research, innovation & global engagement at University College London . Previously he served as Dean of the UCL Faculty of Life Sciences, UCL Pro-Provost , Pro-Vice-Provost and a Professor of Cognitive Neurology at University College London. He is also a Director of UCL Business and a trustee of the Guarantors of Brain.
Go to Profile#421
Ayub Ommaya
#41303
Overall Influence
1930 - 2008 (78 years)
Ayub Khan Ommaya, MD, ScD , FRCS, FACS was a Pakistani American neurosurgeon and the inventor of the Ommaya reservoir. The reservoir is used to provide chemotherapy directly to the tumor site for brain tumors. Ommaya was also a leading expert in traumatic brain injuries.
Go to Profile#422
Lindsey A. Criswell
#35256
Overall Influence
Lindsey A. Criswell is an American rheumatologist and physician-scientist. She is director of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases. Criswell was vice chancellor of research at University of California, San Francisco where she held the Jean S. Engleman Distinguished Professorship in Rheumatology.
Go to Profile#423
Sapan Desai
#30403
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (46 years)
Sapan Sharankishor Desai is an American physician, and the owner of Surgisphere, originally a textbook marketing company that claimed to provide large sets of medical data on COVID-19 patients. This data and the research using it has been discredited, and two papers Desai co-authored that used this data were retracted after being published in prominent medical journals.
Go to Profile#424
Charles Antzelevitch
#52572
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
Charles Antzelevitch is an American cardiovascular research scientist in the fields of cardiac electrophysiology and cardiac arrhythmia syndromes. Education Antzelevitch graduated from Queens College, City University of New York with a BA in biology. He earned a PhD in pharmacology from State University of New York Upstate Medical University in 1978. From 1977 to 1980, he held a postdoctoral fellowship in the department of experimental cardiology at the Masonic Medical Research Laboratory in Utica, New York.
Go to Profile#425
Rahul Potluri
#32226
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (42 years)
Rahul Potluri is a British physician, researcher and founder of ACALM Study Unit, United Kingdom . His clinical epidemiology research unit is one of the first to use big data in healthcare and medical research. His work has shown for the first time a link between high cholesterol and breast cancer. Further research has suggested the role of cholesterol and possibly statins improving the mortality in patients with breast cancer, lung cancer, prostate cancer and bowel cancer. Other prominent studies include health services research evaluating differences in death rates from weekend admission ...
Go to Profile#426
Thomas Vogl
#61772
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (67 years)
Thomas Joseph Vogl is a German radiologist. He is a professor for radiography at the University of Frankfurt and director of the Institute for Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology at the University Hospital Frankfurt/Main. Vogl's work is in the fields of interventional oncology, vascular procedures, multidetector computed tomography , magnetic resonance imaging , evaluation of contrast agent and MR-guided procedures.
Go to Profile#427
S. Jay Olshansky
#27725
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Stuart Jay Olshansky is a professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago concentrating on biodemography and gerontology and is co-founder and Chief Scientist at Lapetus Solutions, Inc.
Go to Profile#428
Ana Diez-Roux
#41656
Overall Influence
Ana Victoria Diez-Roux is the dean of the Dornsife School of Public Health and Distinguished University Professor of epidemiology at Drexel University. Her research focuses on the social determinants of health, and the impacts of neighborhoods on health.
Go to Profile#429
Diane Harper
#33130
Overall Influence
Diane Medved Harper is a professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Michigan. Her area of expertise is human papillomavirus and the diseases associated with it, as well as colposcopy, and she was one of the investigators in the clinical trials of Gardasil and Cervarix, vaccines against HPV.
Go to Profile#430
Sohan Singh Hayreh
#62273
Overall Influence
#431
Nahid Toubia
#40603
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Nahid Toubia is a Sudanese surgeon and women's health rights activist, specializing in research into female genital mutilation. Toubia is the co-founder and director of RAINBO, the Research, Action and Information Network for Bodily Integrity of Women. She is an associate professor at Columbia University School of Public Health. She sits on scientific and advisory committees for the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and UNDP. She is also vice-chair of the advisory committee of the Women's Rights Watch Project of Human Rights Watch.
Go to Profile#432
W. Ian Lipkin
#40554
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Walter Ian Lipkin is the John Snow Professor of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and a professor of Neurology and Pathology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. He is also director of the Center for Infection and Immunity, an academic laboratory for microbe hunting in acute and chronic diseases. Lipkin is internationally recognized for his work with West Nile virus, SARS and COVID-19.
Go to Profile#433
Steven Zeisel
#62560
Overall Influence
Steven H. Zeisel is a Kenan Distinguished University Professor in Nutrition and Pediatrics; former chairman, Department of Nutrition; Director Nutrition Research Institute, Director UNC Human Clinical Nutrition Research Center, Director UNC Center for Excellence in Children's Nutrition, School of Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Go to Profile#434
Werner Hacke
#53497
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
Werner Hacke, born 1948 in Duisburg, Germany, was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Neurology, University of Heidelberg, from 1987 to 2014 and holds now a Senior Professorship of Neurology at the University of Heidelberg, Germany.
Go to Profile#435
Marek Harat
#62693
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (67 years)
Marek Harat is a Polish neurosurgeon, professor of medical sciences , colonel of the reserve. In 1993, he completed an internship in Canada, including at Toronto Western Hospital. Author of a number of publications and innovative neurosurgical procedures , including those related to deep brain stimulation. Promoter and reviewer of doctoral theses. Clinical Consultant in Neurosurgery at the 10th Military Clinical Hospital with Polyclinic in Bydgoszcz, he also works at the Medical College in Bydgoszcz of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun. He was awarded the Bronze Cross of Merit .
Go to Profile#436
Gregory L. L. Moneta
#62733
Overall Influence
#437
Margaret Whitehead
#52439
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
Dame Margaret McRae Whitehead holds the W.H. Duncan chair in Public Health at the University of Liverpool. She heads the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Policy Research on the Social Determinants of Health.
Go to Profile#438
Gordon B. Mills
#58385
Overall Influence
Gordon B. Mills is the Wayne and Julie Drinkward Endowed Chair in Precision Oncology, Director of Precision Oncology, Director of SMMART Trials and Professor in Cell, Development and Cancer Biology in the Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health & Science University.
Go to Profile#439
Jon Sudbø
#41703
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (64 years)
Jon Sudbø is a Norwegian dentist, physician, and former medical researcher, who was exposed as a scientific fraudster in 2006. Over a period of several years, he fabricated results in the field of oncology which he published in leading medical journals. The article that led to his downfall, which was published in The Lancet, was based on 900 patients Sudbø had fabricated entirely. The editor of The Lancet described this as the biggest scientific fraud conducted by a single researcher ever.
Go to Profile#440
Alberto Carlos Taquini
#34281
Overall Influence
1905 - 1998 (93 years)
Alberto Carlos Taquini was an Argentine cardiologist, clinical researcher and academic. Early life and education Taquini was born in Buenos Aires to Carlota Castiglioni and Alberto Taquini. He enrolled at the University of Buenos Aires, and graduated with a Medical Degree in 1929. His work on the University of Buenoes Aires School of Medicine research team earned Taquini a 1939 scholarship from the Argentine Society for the Advancement of Science, with which he completed further studies at the Harvard School of Medicine.
Go to Profile#441
Henri Gastaut
#42960
Overall Influence
1915 - 1995 (80 years)
Henri Jean Pascal Gastaut was a French neurologist and epileptologist. Biography Gastaut was educated in medicine at the University of Marseille, obtaining his medical doctorate in 1945. Thereafter he trained in neurology with Henri Roger and in neuroanatomy with Lucien Cornil in Marseille. In 1953 he became head of the neurobiological laboratories at the Marseille Hospital. In 1954 he succeeded Cornil as professor of anatomical pathology and in 1960 he was appointed as director of the regional centre for epileptic children. In 1973 a chair of clinical neurophysiology was created for him, a t...
Go to Profile#442
Richard Restak
#26608
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
Richard Restak is an American neurologist, neuropsychiatrist, author and professor. Education Restak is a graduate of Gettysburg College and Georgetown University School of Medicine. He performed his postgraduate training in New York City at St. Vincent's Hospital , where he completed his internship. His first psychiatric residency was also in New York City at Mount Sinai Hospital. This was followed by two residencies in Washington, D.C.: a psychiatric residency at Georgetown University Hospital and a residency in neurology at George Washington University Hospital.
Go to Profile#443
Irwin Freedberg
#40703
Overall Influence
1931 - 2005 (74 years)
Irwin Mark Freedberg was an American dermatologist. He taught dermatology at Harvard Medical School, was director of the department of dermatology at Johns Hopkins University, was the first chief of dermatology at Beth Israel Hospital, and was the George Miller MacKee Professor and chairman of the Ronald O. Perelman Department of Dermatology at the New York University Medical Center. He studied the protein keratin and keratinocytes .
Go to Profile#444
Michelle Monje
#44527
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (47 years)
Michelle Leigh Monje-Deisseroth is a neuroscientist and neuro-oncologist. She is a professor of neurology at Stanford University and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She develops new treatments for diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma.
Go to Profile#445
Lawrence A. Tabak
#21395
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Lawrence A. Tabak is an American dentist and biomedical scientist serving as the principal deputy director of the National Institutes of Health. He served as acting director from 2021 to 2023. Previously he was the director of the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research from 2000 to 2010.
Go to Profile#446
Camran Nezhat
#24075
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
Camran Nezhat, FACOG, FACS is an American laparoscopic surgeon, reproductive endocrinology and infertility sub-specialist who has been teaching and practicing medicine and surgery as an adjunct clinical professor of surgery, and obstetrics and gynecology at Stanford University Medical Center in Palo Alto, California since 1993. Nezhat is also chair of the Association of the Adjunct Clinical Faculty, Stanford University School of Medicine, and a clinical professor of OB/GYN at the University of California, San Francisco.
Go to Profile#447
Paul Whelton
#48966
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
Paul Kieran Whelton is an Irish-born American physician and scientist who has contributed to the fields of hypertension and kidney disease epidemiology. He also mentored several public health leaders including the deans of the schools of public health at Johns Hopkins and Columbia . He currently serves as the Show Chwan Health Care System Endowed Chair in Global Public Health and a Clinical Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. He is the founding director of the Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology, and Clinica...
Go to Profile#448
Donald M. Bers
#63283
Overall Influence
#449
Pamela Gillies
#30741
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Professor Pamela Gillies is a Scottish academic and educator who served as Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University from March 2006 until January 2023. Education The first in her family to go to university, Gillies attended the University of Aberdeen, graduating in 1976 with a BSc in Physiology, a PGCE and a Masters in Education and Philosophy. In 1976 she was awarded a competitive Scottish Home and Health Department Fellowship to train in community health in England. She graduated first with an MMedSci and then subsequently with a PhD in Epidemiology from the Universit...
Go to Profile#450
Katherine O'Brien
#36600
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (62 years)
Katherine "Kate" L. O'Brien is a Canadian American pediatric infectious disease physician, epidemiologist, and vaccinologist who specializes in the areas of pneumococcal epidemiology, pneumococcal vaccine trials and impact studies, and surveillance for pneumococcal disease. She is also known as an expert in infectious diseases in American Indian populations. O’Brien is currently the Director of the World Health Organization's Department of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals.
Go to Profile