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.
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List of the most influential people in Medical,
#4151
Adam Gruca
1893 - 1983 (90 years)
Adam Gruca was a famous Polish orthopaedist, inventor, and surgeon. He is considered to be the founder of modern orthopedic surgery in Poland. Gruca also invented various orthopaedic instruments and appliances.
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Jean Lhermitte
1877 - 1959 (82 years)
Jacques Jean Lhermitte was a French neurologist and neuropsychiatrist. Early life and education Lhermitte was born in Mont-Saint-Père, Aisne, son of Léon Augustin Lhermitte, a French realist painter. Following his early education at Saint-Etienne, he studied in Paris and graduated in medicine in 1907. He specialised in neurology and became Chef-de-clinique for nervous diseases in 1908, Chef de laboratoire in 1910, and professeur agrégé for psychiatry 1922.
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Stewart Duke-Elder
1898 - 1978 (80 years)
Sir William Stewart Duke-Elder was a Scottish ophthalmologist, a dominant force in his field for more than a quarter of a century. Life Duke-Elder was born in the manse in Tealing near Dundee. His father, Rev Neil Stewart Elder, was the village minister of the Free Church of Scotland. His mother was Isabelle Duke, daughter of Rev John Duke of the Free Church in Campsie, Stirlingshire.
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Franz König
1832 - 1910 (78 years)
Franz König was a German surgeon. The son of a physician, he was born in Rotenburg an der Fulda. In 1855 he received his doctorate from the University of Marburg, and was later district wound surgeon in Hanau. Afterwards he was a professor of surgery at the universities of Rostock and Göttingen , and eventually at the Charité-Berlin, where in 1895 he succeeded Heinrich Adolf von Bardeleben. In 1904 he was succeeded at the Charité by Otto Hildebrand.
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Theodor Meynert
1833 - 1892 (59 years)
Theodor Hermann Meynert was a German-Austrian psychiatrist, neuropathologist, and anatomist born in Dresden. Meynert believed that disturbances in brain development could be a predisposition for psychiatric illness and that certain psychoses are reversible.
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Moritz Benedikt
1835 - 1920 (85 years)
Moritz Benedikt also spelt Moriz was a Hungarian-Austrian neurologist who was a native of Eisenstadt. He was an instructor and professor of neurology at the University of Vienna. Benedikt was a physician with the Austrian army during the Second Italian War of Independence and the Austro-Prussian War.
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Friedrich Ludwig Meissner
1796 - 1860 (64 years)
Friedrich Ludwig Meissner was a German obstetrician, gynecologist and pediatrician. He studied medicine in Leipzig, earning his PhD in 1819. From 1821, he taught classes at the University of Leipzig, becoming a professor of obstetrics and gynecology in 1831. In 1838, he founded an obstetrics clinic.
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Patrick Russell
1726 - 1805 (79 years)
Patrick Russell was a Scottish surgeon and naturalist who worked in India. He studied the snakes of India and is considered the "Father of Indian Ophiology". Russell's viper, Daboia russelii, is named after him.
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Harold Stiles
1863 - 1946 (83 years)
Sir Harold Jalland Stiles was an English surgeon who was known for his research into cancer and tuberculosis and for treatment of nerve injuries. Early years Harold Stiles was born in Spalding, Lincolnshire in 1863 the son of Henry Tournay Stiles MD and his wife, Elizabeth Ellen Jalland. He came from a family of doctors. He studied Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, graduating MB ChB in 1885. He earned the Ettles scholarship for the most distinguished graduate of the year. For two years he then taught anatomy at Edinburgh. He was House Surgeon to Professor John Chiene FRSE, Demonstrat...
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C. U. Ariëns Kappers
1877 - 1946 (69 years)
Cornelius Ubbo Ariëns Kappers was a Dutch neurologist and anatomist. Life As a student, Ariëns Kappers was influenced by the work of the German neurologist Ludwig Edinger and Dutch anatomist Louis Bolk . During his career, he amassed around 450 whole brains from over 300 species and over 30,000 brain slices.
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Adolphe-Marie Gubler
1821 - 1879 (58 years)
Adolphe-Marie Gubler was a French physician and pharmacologist born in Metz. Originally a student of botany, he began his medical studies in 1841 at Paris, where he was a pupil of Armand Trousseau . In 1845 he became an interne des hôpitaux, earning his doctorate in 1849. Afterwards he worked as a physician at the Hôpital Beaujon, and in 1853 earned his agrégation with a thesis on cirrhosis of the liver. In 1868 he was appointed professor of therapy to the medical faculty in Paris, maintaining this position until his death in 1879.
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Ōmori Harutoyo
1852 - 1912 (60 years)
Ōmori Harutoyo was a Japanese surgeon who became the first president of the Fukuoka Medical College that was founded in 1903 as a branch of the Medical Faculty of Kyōto University . Ōmori was born in Edo, but he grew up in the domain Kaminoyama where his father Ōmori Kaishun served as a physician to lord Matsudaira Nobumichi. In 1879 he graduated from Tokyo University; the same year he went to a new post in the newly established Fukuoka Medical School. In 1888 when this school was abolished, he was appointed as the first director of the Fukuoka Prefectural Hospital. In 1885, he performed the first cesarean operation in Japan.
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Stanley Sarnoff
1917 - 1990 (73 years)
Stanley J. Sarnoff was an American doctor who produced over 200 papers and 60 patents during his long career. His work included the development of such widely used devices as the "auto-injector," which included the AtroPen, which was filled with Atropine Hydrochloride as an anti-nerve-gas antidote for military use; the LidoPen, which was filled with Lidocaine hydrochloride, for cardiac patients, the EpiPen, containing Epinephrine, for people whose allergies cause anaphylaxis, and the 24-hour cardiac monitor. In addition to his own work, he was devoted to philanthropy and, though the creation...
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Fred. A. Mettler
#4165
Photinos Panas
1832 - 1903 (71 years)
Photinos Panas was an ophthalmologist born on the Greek island of Cefalonia. In 1860 he obtained his medical degree at Paris, where he would later spend his entire medical career. He was the first professor of ophthalmology at the University of Paris, and in 1879 established the ophthalmology clinic at the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris. In 1881 with Edmund Landolt and Antonin Poncet , he founded the Archives d'ophtalmologie.
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Johann Hoffmann
1857 - 1919 (62 years)
Johann Hoffmann was a German neurologist born in Hahnheim. He is remembered for describing Hoffmann's reflex and Werdnig–Hoffmann disease . He is also known for the adult-onset hypothyroid myopathy, Hoffmann syndrome. He was educated at Worms and studied medicine at Heidelberg. He worked under Professor Wilhelm Erb, and succeeded him as head of neurology at Heidelberg.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Pierre Dominique Delmas
#4171
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 .
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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 .
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Bernard R. Jr. Bach
#4183
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.
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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...
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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.
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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.
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Takashi Uchiyama
#4189
Gerhard Zbinden
#4190
John Smith
1825 - 1910 (85 years)
John Smith was a Scottish dentist, philanthropist and pioneering educator. The founder of the Edinburgh school of dentistry, he served as president of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and president of the British Dental Association. He was the official surgeon/dentist to Queen Victoria when in Scotland.
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William E. Waters
#4192
David Ca Mant
#4193
Pierre-Félix Lagrange
1857 - 1928 (71 years)
Pierre-Félix Lagrange was a French ophthalmologist. Early life Pierre-Félix Lagrange was born on January 22, 1857, in Soumensac, département lot-et-Garonne, France. He studied medicine at the University of Bordeaux in Bordeaux.
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Joachim Yahalom
#4195
Vasily Stroganov
1858 - 1938 (80 years)
Vasily Vasilyevich Stroganov, also known as Stroganoff, was a Russian physician specializing in obstetrics and gynaecology. His works mostly dealt with treatment of eclampsia. The Stroganoff method is named after him.
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Erich Harnack
1852 - 1915 (63 years)
Friedrich Moritz Erich Harnack was a pharmacologist and toxicologist from the Russian Empire of Baltic-German ethnicity. From 1869 he studied medicine at the University of Dorpat, receiving his doctorate in 1873 with the dissertation Zur Pathogenese und Therapie des Diabetes mellitus . From 1873 he worked as an assistant at the pharmacological institute of the University of Straßburg, and in 1877 obtained his habilitation. In 1880 he became an associate professor of pharmacology and physiological chemistry at the University of Halle, where in 1889 he attained a full professorship. In 1891 he founded an institute of pharmacology at the university.
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T.R. Johns
1924 - 1988 (64 years)
Thomas Richard Johns II, MD was an American neurologist, a subspecialist in neuromuscular disease, and a clinical researcher on myasthenia gravis based at the University of Virginia. Johns founded the Department of Neurology in 1963 and was its first chairman. He graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Medical School.
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Grace Arabell Goldsmith
1904 - 1975 (71 years)
Grace Arabell Goldsmith was a U.S. physician best known for her research on nutritional deficiency diseases, B-complex vitamins, and the vitamin enrichment of foods. She identified the cause of the disease pellagra.
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Filipp Ovsyannikov
1827 - 1906 (79 years)
Filipp Vasilievich Ovsyannikov was the first Russian histologist and the founder of sturgeon breeding. Ovsyannikov graduated from the University of Dorpat in 1853. He worked in Claude Bernard's laboratory in 1860 and in Carl Ludwig's laboratory in 1869. He held the chair in physiology at the University of Kazan from 1858 to 1862 and the chair in anatomy at the University of Saint Petersburg from 1864 to 1886. In 1864, he established the Physiological Laboratory for the Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Ovsyannikov's laboratory was used for research by such young physiologists as Elias von Cyon ...
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Hermann Zingerle
1870 - 1935 (65 years)
Hermann Zingerle was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist born in Trento. In 1894 he earned his medical degree from the University of Innsbruck, becoming an assistant at the University of Graz during the following year. In 1899 he received his habilitation for psychiatry and neuropathology, and from 1909 to 1926 was an associate professor at Graz.
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