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,
#4001
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#4002
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#4003
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#4004
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#4005
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#4006
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#4007
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#4008
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#4009
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#4010
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.
Go to Profile#4011
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#4012
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#4013
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...
Go to Profile#4014
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.
Go to Profile#4015
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#4016
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.
Go to Profile#4017
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#4018
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.
Go to Profile#4019
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...
Go to Profile#4020
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.
Go to Profile#4021
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.
Go to Profile#4022
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.
Go to Profile#4023
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.
Go to Profile#4024
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.
Go to Profile#4025
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.
Go to Profile#4026
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.
Go to Profile#4027
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.
Go to Profile#4028
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.
Go to Profile#4029
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.
Go to Profile#4030
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#4031
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.
Go to Profile#4032
Hippolyte Bernheim
1840 - 1919 (79 years)
Hippolyte Bernheim was a French physician and neurologist. He is chiefly known for his theory of suggestibility in relation to hypnotism. Life Born into a Jewish family, Bernheim received his education in his native town and at the University of Strasbourg, where he was graduated as doctor of medicine in 1867. The same year he became a lecturer at the university and established himself as a physician in the city.
Go to Profile#4033
Guido Fanconi
1892 - 1979 (87 years)
Guido Fanconi was a Swiss pediatrician. He was born in Poschiavo, a small village in the Canton of Grisons. Fanconi is regarded as one of the founders of modern pediatrics. He received his secondary school education in Zurich. In 1911, he began his medical training in Lausanne. In 1920, he entered the Kinderspital of the University of Zurich, where, with the exception of one year, he remained for 45 years.
Go to Profile#4034
Max Nonne
1861 - 1959 (98 years)
Max Nonne was a German neurologist. Biography Max Nonne received his early education at the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums in Hamburg, and later studied medicine at the universities of Heidelberg, Freiburg, and Berlin, obtaining his doctorate in 1884. After graduation, he served as an assistant in the Heidelberg medical clinic under Wilhelm Heinrich Erb and in the surgical clinic in Kiel under Johannes Friedrich August von Esmarch , then in 1889 returned to Hamburg as a neurologist. During the same year, he became head physician in the department of internal medicine at the Red Cross Hospital.
Go to Profile#4035
Mokutaro Kinoshita
1885 - 1945 (60 years)
Mokutarō Kinoshita was the pen-name of a Japanese author, dramaturge, poet, art historian and literary critic, as well as a licensed doctor specializing in dermatology during Taishō and early Shōwa period Japan. His other pen names included Horikason , Chikaisshakusei , Sounan and others. As professor of dermatology and a noted leprosy researcher, he served at four universities .
Go to Profile#4036
Hans Berger
1873 - 1941 (68 years)
Hans Berger was a German psychiatrist. He is best known as the inventor of electroencephalography in 1924, which is a method used for recording the electrical activity of the brain, commonly described in terms of brainwaves, and as the discoverer of the alpha wave rhythm which is a type of brainwave. Alpha waves have been eponymously referred to as the "Berger wave."
Go to Profile#4037
Gheorghe Marinescu
1863 - 1938 (75 years)
Gheorghe Marinescu was a Romanian neurologist, founder of the Romanian School of Neurology. History After attending the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Bucharest, Marinescu received most of his medical education as preparator at the laboratory of histology at the Brâncoveanu Hospital and as assistant at the Bacteriological Institute under Victor Babeș, who had already published several works on myelitis transversa, hysterical muteness, and dilatation of the pupil in pneumonia.
Go to Profile#4038
Frederic Lewy
1885 - 1950 (65 years)
Fritz Heinrich Lewy , known in his later years as Frederic Henry Lewey, was a German-born American neurologist. He is best known for the discovery of Lewy bodies, which are a characteristic indicator of Parkinson's disease and dementia with Lewy bodies.
Go to Profile#4039
Alexander Gettler
1883 - 1968 (85 years)
Alexander Oscar Gettler was a toxicologist with the Office of Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York between 1918 and 1959, and the first forensic chemist to be employed in this capacity by a U.S. city. His work at OCME with Charles Norris, the chief medical examiner, created the foundation for modern medicolegal investigation in the U.S. and Gettler has been described by peers as "the father of forensic toxicology in America."
Go to Profile#4040
Allan G. Brodie
1897 - 1976 (79 years)
Allan Gibson Brodie was an American dentist and orthodonist. An orthodontics teacher, writer, and researcher, Brodie served in a variety of professional positions, such as President of the Chicago Association of Orthodontics, served on advisory boards, achieved a number of professional awards, and was a member of the American Association of Orthodontists , where he established the Prize Essay Award to promote research.
Go to Profile#4041
Ludwig Edinger
1855 - 1918 (63 years)
Ludwig Edinger was an influential German anatomist and neurologist and co-founder of the University of Frankfurt. In 1914 he was also appointed the first German professor of neurology. Edinger was born into a Jewish family and grew up in Worms, where his father was a successful textile salesman and democratic congressman in the state parliament of Hesse-Darmstadt. His mother was the daughter of a physician from Karlsruhe. He was not ashamed that he started his career as a poor man. Indeed, he proposed free schooling for all children in 1873, but without success.
Go to Profile#4042
Ulf von Euler
1905 - 1983 (78 years)
Ulf Svante von Euler was a Swedish physiologist and pharmacologist. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1970 for his work on neurotransmitters. Life Ulf Svante von Euler-Chelpin was born in Stockholm, the son of two noted scientists, Hans von Euler-Chelpin, a professor of chemistry, and Astrid Cleve, a professor of botany and geology. His father was German and the recipient of Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1929, and his maternal grandfather was Per Teodor Cleve, Professor of Chemistry at the Uppsala University, and the discoverer of the chemical elements thulium and holmium.
Go to Profile#4043
Leopold Freund
1868 - 1943 (75 years)
Leopold Freund was an Austrian-Jewish radiologist, considered the founder of medical radiology and radiotherapy. Leopold Freund was born in Miskovice in Central Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, now part of the Czech Republic. He died in Brussels in 1943.
Go to Profile#4044
John Jacob Abel
1857 - 1938 (81 years)
John Jacob Abel was an American biochemist and pharmacologist. He established the pharmacology department at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1893, and then became America's first full-time professor of pharmacology. During his time at Hopkins, he made several important medical advancements, especially in the field of hormone extraction. In addition to his laboratory work, he founded several significant scientific journals such as the Journal of Biological Chemistry and the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.
Go to Profile#4045
Doc Holliday
1851 - 1887 (36 years)
John Henry Holliday , better known as Doc Holliday, was a dentist and later a gambler, gunfighter, and a close friend and associate of lawman Wyatt Earp. Holliday is best known for his role in the events surrounding and his participation in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. He developed a reputation as having killed more than a dozen men in various altercations, but modern researchers have concluded that, contrary to popular myth-making, Holliday killed only one to three men. Holliday's colorful life and character have been depicted in many books and portrayed by well-know...
Go to Profile#4046
Rudolf Buchheim
1820 - 1879 (59 years)
Rudolf Buchheim was a German pharmacologist born in Bautzen . Rudolf Bucheim and his well-known student, chemist Oswald Schmiedeberg are considered to be the founders of modern pharmacology, with Bucheim sometimes described as the "Father of Pharmacology".
Go to Profile#4047
Antoni Leśniowski
1867 - 1940 (73 years)
Antoni Leśniowski was a Polish surgeon, credited with publishing what may have been the earliest reports of the condition which later became known as Crohn's disease. He graduated in medicine from the University of Warsaw in 1890, and studied further in Berlin. From 1892 to 1912 he worked as a surgeon at the Infant Jesus Hospital in Warsaw, specialising in urology. Despite this, his most notable reports were on several cases of inflammatory bowel disease. On May 10, 1903, Medycyna, a weekly medical newspaper, published an article in which he described several cases of intestinal disease, conc...
Go to Profile#4048
Martin Kirschner
1879 - 1942 (63 years)
Martin Kirschner was a German surgeon. Kirschner was born in Breslau, the son of Margarethe Kalbeck and Judge Martin Kirschner , who later served as city councillor of Breslau since 1873 and a member of the city parliament as of 1879. In 1892, he became burgomaster of Berlin and advanced to its Lord Mayor holding that office between 1899 and 1912.
Go to Profile#4049
Paul Julius Möbius
1853 - 1907 (54 years)
Paul Julius Möbius was a German neurologist born in Leipzig. His grandfather was German mathematician and theoretical astronomer, August Ferdinand Möbius . Prior to entering the medical field in 1873, he studied philosophy and theology at the Universities of Leipzig, Jena and Marburg. After earning his medical doctorate in 1876, he enlisted in the army, attaining the rank of Oberstabsarzt . After leaving the army, he returned to Leipzig, where he opened a private practice and worked as an assistant to neurologist Adolph Strümpell at the university policlinic. In 1883 he obtained his habilita...
Go to Profile#4050
Karl Friedrich Otto Westphal
1833 - 1890 (57 years)
Karl Friedrich Otto Westphal was a German psychiatrist from Berlin. He was the son of Otto Carl Friedrich Westphal and Karoline Friederike Heine and the father of Alexander Karl Otto Westphal . He was married to Klara, daughter of the banker Alexander Mendelssohn.
Go to Profile