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,
#4101
Leonard Leibovici
#4102
Walter R. Nickel
1907 - 1989 (82 years)
Walter Russell "Nick" Nickel, M.D. was an American dermatologist who was one of the founders of the field of dermatopathology. He was a co-founder and president of four different professional societies and was the founding chairman of the Division of Dermatology at the University of California, San Diego Medical Center.
Go to Profile#4103
Lindo Ferguson
1858 - 1948 (90 years)
Sir Henry Lindo Ferguson , known as Lindo Ferguson, was a New Zealand ophthalmologist, university professor and medical school dean. He was born in London, England, on 7 April 1858. Ferguson's parents were Louisa Ann Du Bois and William Ferguson. The family moved from Burton upon Trent, England, to Dublin, Ireland, in 1866.
Go to Profile#4104
Bernhard Seyfert
1817 - 1870 (53 years)
Bernhard Seyfert was an Austrian obstetrician and gynecologist. In 1844 he earned his medical degree from Charles University in Prague, spending the next two years as a secondary hospital physician. From 1847 he worked as an assistant to Antonín Jan Jungmann and later Franz Kiwisch von Rotterau at the Prague maternity hospital. In 1854 became a full professor and director of the obstetrics and gynecology hospital in Prague.
Go to Profile#4105
Hilda Lloyd
1891 - 1982 (91 years)
Dr. Dame Hilda Nora Lloyd, DBE was a British physician and surgeon. She was the first woman to be elected as president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Born in Birmingham, the younger of two daughters, she attended King Edward VI High School, Edgbaston before entering Birmingham University .
Go to Profile#4106
William Thorburn
1861 - 1923 (62 years)
Sir William Thorburn KBE, CB, CMG, FRCS DL was an English surgeon and pioneer in modern spinal surgery. At the time of his death he was Emeritus Professor of Clinical Surgery at the Victoria University of Manchester.
Go to Profile#4107
Walter Webb Allport
1824 - 1893 (69 years)
Walter Webb Allport, M.D., D.D.S was an American dentist from New York. Raised on a farm, he left home at the age of fourteen following the Panic of 1837. He studied dentistry at the New York College of Dental Surgery and moved to Chicago, Illinois, shortly after receiving his Doctor of Dental Surgery. He became the preeminent dentist in Chicago, noted for his early use of crystalline gold fillings. He co-founded the American Dental Association in 1859, serving on its board of directors and later serving as president. He also co-founded the Chicago Dental Infirmary. Allport is also noted for ...
Go to Profile#4108
George R. Buchanan
#4109
Hans Heinrich Georg Queckenstedt
1876 - 1918 (42 years)
Hans Heinrich Georg Queckenstedt was a German neurologist remembered for describing Queckenstedt's phenomenon. He graduated from the University of Leipzig in 1900, having studied under Emil Kraepelin. He worked under Sigbert Josef Maria Ganser, and gained his doctorate in 1904. He worked in Rostock, and was habilitated as Privatdozent in 1913. He studied cerebrospinal fluid dynamics, noting the fluctuation of pressure with respiration. This led to experiments with the Valsalva manoeuvre and jugular vein pressure from which his eponymous test was published. He took part in the First World War ...
Go to Profile#4110
William Guy
1859 - 1950 (91 years)
William Guy BDA FDS LLD was a British pioneer of modern dentistry and the widespread use of anaesthesia. He was instrumental in the creation of the 1921 Dentists Act in the United Kingdom. Life He was born in Biddenden in Kent on 3 December 1859, the son of Dr William Guy of Norwich, and attended Norwich Grammar School. He received a Licentiate from the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1892 In 1899 he succeeded William Bowman MacLeod as Dean of the Edinburgh Dental Hospital and served this role for 40 years. The final 5 years were in a transition period with Arthur Cyril William Hu...
Go to Profile#4111
Paul Michaux
1854 - 1923 (69 years)
Doctor Paul Michaux was a French surgeon. After studying at the Paul Verlaine University – Metz, he migrated to Paris, where he actively participated in the Conférence Olivaint and later became president of the organisation. After completing an internship and thesis, his career led him into various hospitals in the city and suburbs, where he developed medical innovations and performed research. As a member of the parish patronage committee, Michaux's moral and religious beliefs led him to establish a type of gymnastics specifically intended for Christian Patriots. His enthusiasm for the sport...
Go to Profile#4112
Hugo Magnus
1842 - 1907 (65 years)
Hugo Magnus was a German ophthalmologist and historian of medicine. He was of Jewish ancestry. He studied medicine at the University of Breslau, where he was a pupil of Albrecht Theodor Middeldorpf and Hermann Lebert. In 1867 he received his medical doctorate, and in 1873 qualified as a lecturer in ophthalmology. In 1883 he became an associate professor at the University of Breslau.
Go to Profile#4113
Robert Scot Skirving
1859 - 1956 (97 years)
Robert Scot Skirving was a physician and surgeon in Australia. He was born in the United Kingdom. The University of Sydney named the Scot Skirving Prize in his honour. Life He was born on 18 December 1859 at Campton Farm in the parish of Drem near Haddington, East Lothian. He was the son of Robert Scot Skirving, a farmer, and his wife Elizabeth Owen, daughter of William Owen of Rathdowney in Ireland. His paternal ancestors included both Adam Skirving the songwriter, and Archibald Skirving the artist.
Go to Profile#4114
Santosh Kumar Sen
1910 - 1979 (69 years)
Santosh Kumar Sen was an Indian surgeon and the president of the Association of Surgeons of India. He was the first Indian surgeon to be elected to the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
Go to Profile#4115
Octave Terrillon
1844 - 1895 (51 years)
Octave Roch Simon Terrillon was a French physician and surgeon, known as a pioneer of aseptic surgery. From 1868 he worked as a hospital interne in Paris, where in 1873 he received his medical doctorate. In 1876 he qualified as a hospital surgeon, and eventually became associated with the Salpêtrière Hospital. In 1878 he became an associate professor at the faculty of medicine in Paris.
Go to Profile#4116
Bernard R. Jr. Bach
#4117
Reid Hunt
1870 - 1948 (78 years)
Reid Hunt , was an American pharmacologist, known for his work on adrenal glands; where he postulated that extracts from which cause rise in blood pressure due to its content of adrenaline. When he removed the adrenaline from the extract and he found that it causes fall in blood pressure, which he concluded was due to a derivative of choline, later on known as acetylcholine.
Go to Profile#4118
John Ryle
1889 - 1950 (61 years)
John Alfred Ryle was a British physician and epidemiologist. He was born the son of Brighton medical doctor R J Ryle and brother of the Oxford philosopher Gilbert Ryle. He was educated at Brighton College and Guy's Hospital where he qualified in 1913. He served in the military during World War I and afterwards qualified MD at the University of London. After teaching at Guy's Hospital he was appointed in 1935 Regius Professor of Physic [not Physics; "Physic" here is an archaic term for Medicine] at the University of Cambridge. In 1943 he was appointed chair of the newly created Institute of So...
Go to Profile#4119
Leah Lowenstein
1930 - 1984 (54 years)
Leah Miriam Lowenstein was an American nephrologist, academic administrator, and cellist. In 1982, she became the first woman dean of a co-educational, medical school in the United States upon her appointment at Jefferson Medical College. Lowenstein was previously associate dean and professor of medicine and biochemistry at the Boston University School of Medicine. She served in the Carter administration as a medical advisor to the Assistant Secretary for Health. Lowenstein was an advocate for women in medicine.
Go to Profile#4120
Hugo Liepmann
1863 - 1925 (62 years)
Hugo Karl Liepmann was a German neurologist and psychiatrist born in Berlin, into a Jewish family. Initially, he studied both chemistry and philosophy at the Universities of Freiburg and Leipzig, obtaining his doctorate in 1885. His interests later turned to medicine, and after completion of studies, worked as an assistant to Carl Wernicke in the psychiatric clinic at Breslau. In 1906 he became head physician at Dalldorf , followed by an assignment as director of the Städtische Irrenanstalt zu Lichtenberg in 1914.
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Louis Barnett
1865 - 1946 (81 years)
Sir Louis Edward Barnett was a New Zealand professor of surgery and founder of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. His work at the Otago Medical School, where he was one of the school's earliest students, and with the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons led to the recognition of hydatid disease , a potentially fatal parasitic disease.
Go to Profile#4122
Takashi Uchiyama
#4123
Gerhard Zbinden
#4124
Ernst Kromayer
1862 - 1933 (71 years)
Ernst Kromayer was a German dermatologist. He was the younger brother of historian Johannes Kromayer . He studied medicine at the universities of Strasbourg, Würzburg, and Bonn, receiving his doctorate in 1885. From 1888 he worked as an assistant to Karl Koester at the pathology clinic in Bonn, and in 1890 qualified as a lecturer at the University of Halle. At Halle he established a clinic for skin and venereal diseases that eventually acquired the status of a university clinic. In 1901 he received the title of professor at the university, then in 1904 relocated to Berlin, where he opened a p...
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William F. Windle
1898 - 1985 (87 years)
William Frederick Windle was an American anatomist and experimental neurologist. Biography Windle graduated in 1921 with a B.S. from Denison University. At Northwestern University Medical School , he graduated with an M.S. in 1923 and a Ph.D. in anatomy in 1926. His Ph.D. thesis Studies on the trigeminal nerve with particular reference to the pathway for painful afferent impulses was supervised by S. Walter Ranson .
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Philip Handler
1917 - 1981 (64 years)
Philip Handler was an American nutritionist, and biochemist. He was President of the United States National Academy of Sciences for two terms from 1969 to 1981. He was also a recipient of the National Medal of Science.
Go to Profile#4127
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...
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Maury Massler
1912 - 1990 (78 years)
Maury Massler was a pioneer in developing two dental specialty areas. He established the Department of Pediatric Dentistry at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Dentistry, serving as head of the department from 1946 to 1965. A prolific researcher, he co-authored two textbooks, contributed to four others, and published more than 275 papers in scientific journals. Along with Isaac Schour, he created a chart of tooth development. He was a renowned expert on abnormal tooth development. Dr. Massler shared his expertise with the world, serving as a visiting professor and consultant in Italy, Germany, South America, India, Australia, Scandinavia, South Africa, and Israel.
Go to Profile#4129
Alan J Thompson
Alan J. Thompson, MD, FMedSci, FRCP, FRCPI, is Dean of the Faculty of Brain Sciences at UCL; Pro-Provost for London at UCL; Garfield Weston Professor of Clinical Neurology and Neurorehabilitation at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology. He is also a consultant neurologist at the University College London NHS Hospitals Foundation Trust working at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery. He is Editor-in-Chief for Multiple Sclerosis Journal.
Go to Profile#4130
Geoffrey Jefferson
1886 - 1961 (75 years)
Sir Geoffrey Jefferson was a British neurologist and pioneering neurosurgeon. Jefferson was born in Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham, the son of surgeon Arthur John Jefferson , and Cecilia James. He was educated in Manchester, England, obtaining his medical degree in 1909. He became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons two years later. He married in 1914, and moved to Canada. On the outbreak of World War I, he returned to Europe and worked at the Anglo-Russian Hospital in Petrograd, Russia, and then with the Royal Army Medical Corps in France.
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Leo Alexander
1905 - 1985 (80 years)
Leo Alexander was an American psychiatrist, neurologist, educator, and author, of Austrian-Jewish origin. He was a key medical advisor during the Nuremberg Trials. Alexander wrote part of the Nuremberg Code, which provides legal and ethical principles for scientific experiment on humans.
Go to Profile#4132
Paul Trendelenburg
1884 - 1931 (47 years)
Paul Trendelenburg was a German pharmacologist. He studied medicine at the universities of Grenoble, Leipzig and Freiburg, where from 1909 to 1918, he worked as an assistant in the pharmacological institute and at the surgical clinic. In 1912 he received his habilitation in pharmacology and toxicology, and from 1916 was an associate professor. In 1919 he became a full professor at the University of Rostock and later on, he served as a professor of pharmacology at the universities of Freiburg and Berlin .
Go to Profile#4133
Nicolaas Swellengrebel
1885 - 1970 (85 years)
Nicolaas Hendrik Swellengrebel was a Dutch epidemiologist, parasitologist, pathologist, and specialist on several human diseases, particularly malaria. He pioneered an ecological approach to the management of the habitat to control vector species that he called as "species sanitation." The N.H. Swellengrebel Laboratory for Tropical Hygiene in Amsterdam is named after him.
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Edgar D. Coolidge
1881 - 1967 (86 years)
Dr. Edgar D. Coolidge was an American dentist and endodontist. Early life Born on a farm in Galesburg, Illinois, he attended Knox College from 1901 to 1903 and received a DDS degree from the Chicago College of Dental Surgery, which later became the Loyola University Chicago Dental School. He earned a Master of Science degree from Northwestern University in 1930.
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Philipp Schwartz
1894 - 1977 (83 years)
Philipp Schwartz was a Hungarian-born neuropathologist. In the interwar period he was a professor in Frankfurt, Germany. He became a major figure in the community of German émigré scientists after 1933 and founded the .
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Margaret Kelly
1906 - 1968 (62 years)
Margaret Georgia Kelly was an American pharmacologist specialized in the pharmacology of drugs used in cancer chemotherapy, carcinogenesis, and chemical protection against radiation and alkylating agents. Kelly was a senior investigator in the National Cancer Institute's laboratory of chemical pharmacology.
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Rod Jackson
Rodney Thornton Jackson is a New Zealand medically trained epidemiologist who has had lead roles in publicly funded research focussing on systems to effectively identify risk factors in the epidemiology of chronic diseases, in particular cardiovascular diseases . This involved linking large cohort studies to regional and national electronic health databases and enabling the generation of new risk-prevention equations using web-based tools, such as the PREDICT model, to implement, monitor and improve risk assessment and management guidelines. Research on asthma in which Jackson participated in...
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Gary Ghahremani
Gary G. Ghahremani is an Iranian-American radiologist specializing in diagnostic and gastrointestinal imaging with over 40 years experience as Professor of Radiology. His work has been cited in over 5000 medical papers.
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J. A. R. Lenman
1924 - 1985 (61 years)
John Andrew Reginald Lenman FRSE FRCPE was a British neurologist and medical author. Life He was born at Shillong in India in 1924, the son of the Bishop of Bhagalpur. He was educated at the Rudolph Steiner School in London. He then studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, graduating with an MB ChB in 1948. He undertook further training under Sir Stanley Davidson and Professor Norman Dott.
Go to Profile#4140
M. G. Kini
1893 - 1952 (59 years)
Mangalore Gopal Kini , better known as M. G. Kini M.C., M.B., M.Ch., F.R.C.S., was an Indian Orthopedic Surgeon. He was considered by the Indian Orthopedic surgical community as the forerunner of Orthopedic Surgery in India. The "Kini Memorial Oration" has been held by the Indian Orthopaedic Association every year since 1958.
Go to Profile#4141
Leif Efskind
1904 - 1987 (83 years)
Leif Efskind was a Norwegian surgeon. He was the first to perform regular heart surgery in Norway. He was born at Verdal in Nord-Trøndelag, Norway. He graduated from the University of Oslo. He was associated with the Rikshospitalet and was a professor of surgery at the University of Oslo. He was the father of Lasse Efskind.
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Geoffrey Donnan
Geoffrey Alan Donnan is an Australian neurologist. He was named an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2012 "for distinguished service to neurology as a clinician and academic leader, and through international contributions to research, particularly in the prevention and treatment of stroke." He also received the William M. Feinberg Award for Excellence in Clinical Stroke and Johann Jacob Wepfer Award for their work in the field of stroke research at the European Stroke Conference.
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Alfred Hauptmann
1881 - 1948 (67 years)
Alfred Hauptmann was a German-Jewish psychiatrist and neurologist. His most important contribution remained the article written in 1912 on the effectiveness of the phenobarbital as an anti-epileptic. After his emigration, he and the internist Siegfried Thannhauser, who had also emigrated, described an autosomal dominant inherited myopathy for the first time in 1941, which is now known as Hauptmann-Thannhauser muscular dystrophy.
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Latunde Odeku
1927 - 1974 (47 years)
E. Latunde Odeku was the first Nigerian neurosurgeon trained in the United States who also pioneered neurosurgery in Africa. Early life and education Of Yoruba heritage, Latunde was born in Lagos, Nigeria. His father was a native of Awe while his mother was a Lagosian. He attended Methodist Boys High School, Lagos. and proceeded to Howard University and graduated summa cum laude in Zoology in 1950. He was subsequently awarded a scholarship to study Medicine at Howard University, earning his MD in 1954.
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Tadeusz Krwawicz
1910 - 1988 (78 years)
Tadeusz Krwawicz was a Polish ophthalmologist. He pioneered the use of cryosurgery in ophthalmology. He was the first to formulate a method of cataract extraction by cryoadhesion in 1961, and to develop a cryogenic probe for removal of cataracts.
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Stanley D. Tylman
1893 - 1982 (89 years)
Dentist Stanley D. Tylman taught more than 1,000 students at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Dentistry in his career as a professor of dentistry and head of the Department of Fixed Partial Prosthodontics, and also influenced dentists internationally.
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Isabella Forshall
1900 - 1989 (89 years)
Isabella Forshall FRCSE was an English paediatric surgeon who played a leading role in the development of the speciality of paediatric surgery in the United Kingdom. She took a particular interest in neonatal surgery and was instrumental in the establishment of the Liverpool Neonatal Surgical Unit, the first neonatal intensive care unit in the UK and indeed in the world.
Go to Profile#4148
Pearl Swanson
1895 - 1980 (85 years)
Pearl Pauline Swanson was an American nutritionist. She received several prizes and honors including the Outstanding Achievement Award from the University of Minnesota in 1951 and the Borden Award in 1955. She also wrote nearly 90 papers and publications.
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Milicent Hathaway
1898 - 1974 (76 years)
Milicent Louise Hathaway was an American nutritionist and physiological chemist best known for her research on human metabolism. She taught for several colleges from 1930 to 1966 and worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the postwar period.
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Paul Pulewka
1896 - 1989 (93 years)
Paul Pulewka was a German pharmacologist from Elbing . Pulewka graduated from the Königsberg Medical Faculty in 1923 and earned doctorates in pharmacology and toxicology from the Pharmacology Institute of the same university in 1927. Pulewka was appointed Docent at the University of Tübingen in 1929. In May 1933, he was promoted to Professor Extraordinarius of Pharmacology and Toxicology at Tübingen where he lectured on the toxicology of poisonous gases and the protection against them. He was elected to the university's Senate. However, Behrend Behrens, Pulewka's former assistant whom he and ...
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