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,
#4101
Eric Lenneberg
1921 - 1975 (54 years)
Eric Heinz Lenneberg was a linguist and neurologist who pioneered ideas on language acquisition and cognitive psychology, particularly in terms of the concept of innateness. Life and career He was born in Düsseldorf, Germany. Ethnically Jewish, he left Nazi Germany because of rising Nazi persecution. He initially fled to Brazil with his family and then to the United States where he attended the University of Chicago and Harvard University. A professor of psychology and neurobiology, he taught at the Harvard Medical School, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Cornell University and Med...
Go to Profile#4102
Charles A. Hufnagel
1916 - 1989 (73 years)
Charles A. Hufnagel, M.D. was an American surgeon who invented the first artificial heart valve in the early 1950s. Hufnagel was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and reared in Richmond, Indiana. His father was also a surgeon. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame and earned his medical degree from Harvard Medical School. At Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, he began work on the heart and other organ transplants and explored the use of plastic to replace blood vessels, developing a technique called multi-point fixation, which would have great importance in the placement of the artificial aort...
Go to Profile#4103
Felix Fleischner
1893 - 1969 (76 years)
Felix G. Fleischner was an Austrian-American radiologist from Boston. The Fleischner Society for thoracic imaging and diagnosis is named after him. Biography Felix Fleischner was born in Vienna. He became an expert in the field of radiology, and most of his work centered on the chest x-ray. He served as professor and head of radiology of the Second Medical Clinic of the University of Vienna.
Go to Profile#4104
Shanthi Ameratunga
Shanthi Neranjana Ameratunga is a New Zealand public health academic. As of September 2018 she is currently a full professor at the University of Auckland. Academic career After a 2005 PhD titled 'Disability following car crashes: an epidemiological investigation' at the University of Auckland, supervised by Robyn Norton and Rod Jackson, Ameratunga joined the staff, rising to full professor.
Go to Profile#4105
Albert Jodlbauer
1871 - 1945 (74 years)
Albert Jodlbauer was a German pharmacologist and toxicologist. From 1891 to 1896 he studied medicine at the University of Munich, where in 1896 he received his doctorate as a pupil of Otto Bollinger. Following graduation he worked as an assistant in the institute of pharmacology at Munich under the directorship of Hermann von Tappeiner. In 1908 he became an associate professor, and in 1914 was named departmental head of the pharmacological institute. From 1923 onward, he was a full professor of pharmacy and pharmacology at the veterinary faculty of the University of Munich.
Go to Profile#4106
Vincent DePaul Lynch
1927 - 1984 (57 years)
Vincent de Paul Lynch was a pharmacology and toxicology professor at St. John's University from 1958 to 1984. He was appointed Chair of the Department of Pharmacognosy, Pharmacology and Allied Sciences , Chair of Pharmaceutical Sciences , and Chair of the Institutional Review Board . He also served as the director and founder of the school's Bachelor of Science Program in Toxicology , the first program of its kind in the U.S.
Go to Profile#4107
Robert Kienböck
1871 - 1953 (82 years)
Robert Kienböck was an Austrian radiologist who was a native of Vienna. In 1895 he earned his medical doctorate at the University of Vienna, and spent the next year abroad . He returned to Vienna as an assistant to Leopold von Schrötter , a laryngologist, and began working in the new science of radiology. Several years later, he became head of the radiological department at Vienna General Hospital. In 1926 he became an associate professor of radiology.
Go to Profile#4108
Andrija Štampar
1888 - 1958 (70 years)
Andrija Štampar was a distinguished scholar in the field of social medicine from Croatia. Education Štampar was born 1 September 1888 in Brodski Drenovac , at the time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in modern Požega-Slavonia County. From 1898 to 1906, he attended grammar school in Vinkovci. During his secondary schooling, Štampar was a brilliant pupil and, at that time, he wrote his first literary attempt, published in the periodical Pobratim in 1902. He enrolled at the medical school in Vienna in 1906, which was at the time the most important medical center in the world. As a medical s...
Go to Profile#4109
Alexander Fleming
1881 - 1955 (74 years)
Sir Alexander Fleming was a Scottish physician and microbiologist, best known for discovering the world's first broadly effective antibiotic substance, which he named penicillin. His discovery in 1928 of what was later named benzylpenicillin from the mould Penicillium rubens has been described as the "single greatest victory ever achieved over disease". For this discovery, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain.
Go to Profile#4110
Samuel Jay Crumbine
1862 - 1954 (92 years)
Samuel Jay Crumbine was a pioneer in public health who campaigned against the common drinking cup, the common towel, and spitting in public in order to prevent the spread of tuberculosis and other germs.
Go to Profile#4111
Arnold Kutzinski
1879 - 1956 (77 years)
Arnold Kutzinski was a controversial German psychiatrist and neurologist, known as both an outspoken critic of psychoanalysis and a supporter of eugenics. He studied medicine at the University of Berlin, University in Munich and at Freiburg, where he graduated in 1905.
Go to Profile#4112
Leon Tochowicz
1897 - 1965 (68 years)
Leon Tochowicz was a Polish internist and cardiologist. For three terms he was a rector of the Medical Academy in Kraków , and was referred to as the "founder of the Kraków school of cardiology". He was the author of nearly one hundred original research papers, mostly in the field of clinical cardiology, and was the initiator of the construction of the Institute of Pediatrics in Kraków-Prokocim, nowadays the University Children's Hospital in Kraków.
Go to Profile#4113
Martin Dobelle
1906 - 1986 (80 years)
Martin Dobelle was an American surgeon. Early life and education Born in New York City December 25, 1906, the son of Harry and Ida Kaplan Dobelle, he grew up in Brooklyn, New York. An alumnus of Boys High School, he received a track and field scholarship to and graduated from Fordham University in 1926 where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. After working in a Brooklyn pharmacy for two years, he studied medicine at the University of Ghent in Belgium, where he received his M.D. degree in 1932. As an intern and resident, he served in various American hospitals, including Boston City Hospital, at which time he held teaching fellowships at both Tufts University and Harvard University.
Go to Profile#4114
Jean-Athanase Sicard
1872 - 1929 (57 years)
Jean-Athanase Sicard was a French neurologist and radiologist born in Marseille. He studied medicine in Marseille and Paris, where he studied with Charles Emile Troisier , Édouard Brissaud , Henri-Alexandre Danlos , Fulgence Raymond and Georges-Fernand-Isidore Widal . With Widal he performed serodiagnostic studies in immunology. In 1899 he obtained his medical doctorate, and in 1910 was appointed chef de service at the Hôpital Necker. In 1923 he became a professor of internal pathology.
Go to Profile#4115
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#4116
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#4117
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#4118
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#4119
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#4120
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#4121
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#4122
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#4123
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#4124
Alexander Carl Otto Westphal
1863 - 1941 (78 years)
Alexander Carl Otto Westphal was a German neurologist and psychiatrist. He was the son of the psychiatrist Karl Friedrich Otto Westphal and Clara Mendelssohn and the grandson of Otto Carl Friedrich Westphal.
Go to Profile#4125
Tito Vanzetti
1809 - 1888 (79 years)
Tito Vanzetti was a famous surgeon and professor of medicine of the 19th century. He studied surgery at the University of Padua under Bartolomeo Signoroni and at the University of Vienna with Joseph Wattmann . Several years later, he was appointed professor of clinical surgery and ophthalmology at the University of Kharkiv. In 1853 he returned to Padua as a professor of clinical surgery.
Go to Profile#4126
Rudolf Boehm
1844 - 1926 (82 years)
Rudolf Albert Martin Boehm was a German pharmacologist, known for his work in the field of experimental pharmacology. He studied medicine at the universities of Munich and Würzburg, and in 1868–70 served as an assistant to Franz von Rinecker at the Juliusspital in Würzburg. In 1871 he obtained his habilitation under Adolf Fick, then during the following year was named a professor of pharmacology, dietetics and history of medicine at the University of Dorpat. Later on, he worked as professor of pharmacology at the universities of Marburg and Leipzig , where on four separate occasions he was named dean to the medical faculty.
Go to Profile#4127
Pierre Dominique Delmas
#4128
Roy R. Grinker Sr.
1900 - 1993 (93 years)
Roy Richard Grinker Sr. was an American neurologist and psychiatrist, Professor of Psychiatry at University of Chicago, and pioneer in American psychiatry and psychosomatics. Biography Grinker was born in Chicago, where his father was a neuropsychiatrist. He received a B.S. from the University of Chicago in 1919 and a M.D. in 1921 from Rush Medical College. Directly afterwards he spent a postgraduate year in Europe. In 1933 back in Europe he took psychoanalytic training with Sigmund Freud.
Go to Profile#4129
Francesco Flarer
1791 - 1859 (68 years)
Francesco Flarer was an Italian ophthalmologist born near Merano, South Tyrol. He initially planned to study theology at Innsbruck, but instead enrolled to take classes in medicine, later relocating to the University of Landshut. Political turmoil made his stays at both institutions brief, and in 1809 transferred to the University of Pavia. In 1815 he received his degree in medicine, followed by a doctorate in surgery shortly afterwards.
Go to Profile#4130
Alexis Boyer
1757 - 1833 (76 years)
Alexis Boyer was a French surgeon, born in Corrèze. He was the son of a tailor, and he obtained his first medical knowledge in the shop of a barber surgeon. When he moved to Paris, he had the good fortune to attract the attention of renowned surgeons Antoine Louis and Pierre-Joseph Desault . Boyer persevered at his profession, and became notorious for his anatomical knowledge and surgical dexterity. At the age of 37 he was appointed second surgeon to the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris. On the establishment of the École de Sante, he was named chair of operative surgery, but soon exchanged it for the chair of clinical surgery.
Go to Profile#4131
Julius Geppert
1856 - 1937 (81 years)
August Julius Geppert was a German pharmacologist born in Berlin. He studied medicine at the Universities of Heidelberg and Berlin, earning his doctorate in 1880 with a thesis titled . From 1880 to 1885 he worked as an assistant at the second medical clinic in Berlin, becoming a lecturer at the University of Bonn during the following year. From 1893 he was an associate professor of pharmacology, attaining the title of "full professor" in 1899 at the University of Giessen.
Go to Profile#4132
Klaus Conrad
1905 - 1961 (56 years)
Klaus Conrad was a German neurologist and psychiatrist with important contributions to neuropsychology and psychopathology. He joined the Nazi Party in 1940. He was best known as a professor of psychiatry and neurology, and director of the University Psychiatric Hospital in Göttingen from 1958 until his death.
Go to Profile#4133
Karl Fürstner
1848 - 1906 (58 years)
Karl Fürstner was a German neurologist and psychiatrist born in Strasburg, Uckermark. He studied medicine in Würzburg and Berlin, where he received his doctorate in 1871. In 1872 he was an assistant at the pathological institute of the University of Greifswald, and afterwards worked under Karl Westphal in the psychiatric department at the Berlin-Charité. In 1878 he became the first physician to hold the chair of psychiatry at the University of Heidelberg. He kept this position until 1890, when he became professor of nervous and mental diseases at the University of Strasbourg. At Heidelberg his vacancy was filled by Emil Kraepelin .
Go to Profile#4134
Charles Loomis Dana
1852 - 1935 (83 years)
Charles Loomis Dana was an American physician, professor of nervous and mental disease at Cornell Medical College. Early and personal life Dana was born in Woodstock, Vermont. He was a descendant of Richard Dana .
Go to Profile#4135
Paul Leopold Friedrich
1864 - 1916 (52 years)
Paul Leopold Friedrich was a German surgeon and bacteriologist born in the town of Roda, Saxe-Altenburg. In 1888 he received his doctorate at the University of Leipzig, and as a young assistant worked under Robert Koch at the Reich Health Office in Berlin. From 1894 he worked as a privat-docent of surgery in Leipzig, where in 1896 he became an associate professor. Later he served as a professor at the Universities of Greifswald , Marburg and Königsberg . At Greifswald he succeeded August Bier as director of the Surgical University Hospital. Two of Friedrich's well-known assistants were Fer...
Go to Profile#4136
Albert Narath
1864 - 1924 (60 years)
Albert Narath was an Austrian surgeon and anatomist. He was an assistant of Theodor Billroth at the University of Vienna, and from 1896 to 1906 was a professor of surgery at Utrecht. In 1906 he succeeded Vincenz Czerny as chair of surgery at the University of Heidelberg surgical clinic. He resigned this position in 1910 due to health reasons, but continued to contribute articles to scientific publications during the ensuing years.
Go to Profile#4137
R. C. Williams
1888 - 1984 (96 years)
Ralph Chester Williams was an Assistant Surgeon General with the U.S. Public Health Service, with rank of rear admiral. He also served as the national president of Tau Kappa Epsilon and Theta Kappa Psi fraternities.
Go to Profile#4138
Malcolm Harold Lader
#4139
Morinosuke Chiwaki
1870 - 1947 (77 years)
Morinosuke Chiwaki was a dentist and the Chairman of the Japan Dental Association. He was one of the founders of Takayama Dental School , which was later named Tokyo Dental College . He was known as Hideyo Noguchi's patron.
Go to Profile#4140
Joseph Hasner
1819 - 1892 (73 years)
Joseph Hasner, Ritter von Artha was an Austrian ophthalmologist born in Prague. His brother, Leopold Hasner von Artha , was an influential Austrian politician. He studied medicine at the University of Prague, and subsequently worked at the local general hospital . In 1843 he was an assistant at Johann Fischer's eye clinic. In 1848 he gained his habilitation, and in 1852 he became an associate professor. From 1856 he was a "full professor" of ophthalmology and a primary physician in Prague. Starting in 1869 he was an editor of the Vierteljahrsschrift für die praktische Heilkunde .
Go to Profile#4141
James Spence
1812 - 1882 (70 years)
James Spence FRSE FRCSEd was a Scottish surgeon. He served as President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh 1867/68. Life He was born on 31 March 1812 at 12 South Bridge in Edinburgh, the son of James Spence, a perfumer, and his third wife.
Go to Profile#4142
Zheng Ji
1900 - 2010 (110 years)
Zheng Ji also known as Libin T. Cheng , was a Chinese nutritionist and a pioneering biochemist. He was reputed to be the world's oldest professor and the founder of modern nutrition science in China, having lived to the age of 110.
Go to Profile#4143
Alfred Goldscheider
1858 - 1935 (77 years)
Johannes Karl Eugen Alfred Goldscheider was a German neurologist born into a Jewish family in Sommerfeld, Kingdom of Prussia. He studied medicine at Friedrich-Wilhelm Medical-Surgical Institute in Berlin , and subsequently spent the next seven years as a military physician. During this period of time, he also served as an assistant to physiologist Emil du Bois-Reymond . He later became a professor at the University of Berlin.
Go to Profile#4144
Anton von Frisch
1849 - 1917 (68 years)
Anton von Frisch , full name Anton Ritter von Frisch, was an Austrian urologist. Frisch was born in Vienna. He studied at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, afterwards returning to Vienna, where he served as a demonstrator under Josef Hyrtl and as an assistant to Theodor Billroth . In 1874 he became a professor at the University of Vienna. In 1899 he was appointed head of the department of urology at the Allgemeine Poliklinik Wien . Through Frisch's efforts, urology became recognized as an independent subject at the medical faculty in Vienna.
Go to Profile#4145
Jacob Fidelis Ackermann
1765 - 1815 (50 years)
Jacob Fidelis Ackermann was a German professor of anatomy and surgery. Ackermann was born in Rüdesheim am Rhein. He began his studies at Würzburg and earned his doctorate in Mainz in 1787. After extensive research travel he was promoted to private lecturer for forensic medicine in 1789. He acquired the regular professorship in botanics and later in anatomy when Samuel Thomas von Sömmering resigned his office.
Go to Profile#4146
Rudolf Kobert
1854 - 1918 (64 years)
Rudolf Kobert was a German pharmacologist and toxicologist born in Bitterfeld. In 1877 he graduated from the University of Halle, afterwards working as an assistant to physiologist Friedrich Goltz and pharmacologist Oswald Schmiedeberg at the University of Strasbourg. In 1887 he was appointed professor of pharmacology, dietetics and history of medicine at the University of Dorpat. One of his students was Peter Hermann Stillmark who was the founder of lectinology with the publication of his thesis about ricin.
Go to Profile#4147
Ida Mann
1893 - 1983 (90 years)
Professor Dame Ida Caroline Mann, Mrs Gye, DBE, FRCS was "a distinguished ophthalmologist ... equally well known for her pioneering research work on embryology and development of the eye, and on the influences of genetic and social factors on the incidence and severity of eye disease throughout the world". Only six other women were Fellows at this time.
Go to Profile#4148
Bernice Eddy
1903 - 1989 (86 years)
Bernice Eddy was born on September 30, 1903. She is best-known for her work as an epidemiologist and virologist, particularly her work with polio vaccine trials. Eddy was born in Glen Dale, West Virginia. She attended Marietta College for her undergraduate work and pursued a master’s degree and PhD in bacteriology from the University of Cincinnati. After graduation, Eddy began working for the Biologics Control Division National Institutes of Health. She tested polio vaccines for 5 different companies in this capacity. One of the five vaccines tested was made by Cutter Laboratories. Eddy disco...
Go to Profile#4149
Lynne Warner. Stevenson
#4150
Jacob Hermann Knapp
1832 - 1911 (79 years)
Jacob Hermann Knapp , also known as Hermann Knapp, was a German-American ophthalmologist and otolaryngologist. Biography Knapp was born in Dauborn, Nassau. He earned his medical degree from the University of Giessen in 1854. As a young physician he studied with Franciscus Cornelis Donders in Utrecht, William Bowman in London, Albrecht von Graefe in Berlin and Hermann von Helmholtz in Heidelberg. From 1860 until 1868 he was a professor of ophthalmology at Heidelberg.
Go to Profile