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,
#4251
Charles Karsner Mills
1845 - 1930 (85 years)
Charles Karsner Mills, M.D. was an American physician and a pioneer in neurology. He founded the first neurology department in a general hospital in the United States at the Philadelphia General Hospital in 1877 and served as chief of neurology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He was a professor of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania from 1877 to 1915. He founded the Philadelphia Polyclinic and taught there as professor of diseases of the mind and nervous system from 1883 to 1898. He led major reforms to psychiatric hospitals in the Philadelphia area including the cl...
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Joseph Wattmann
1789 - 1866 (77 years)
Joseph Wattmann von Maëlcamp-Beaulieu was an Austrian surgeon. He studied medicine at the surgical academy associated with Vienna General Hospital, afterwards working as a physician and surgeon in Wels. He then served as an assistant to Vincenz Ritter von Kern in Vienna. In 1816 he was appointed professor of theoretical and practical surgery at the Lyceum in Laibach.
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Edgar Hull
1904 - 1984 (80 years)
Edgar Hull Jr. , was a Louisiana physician. He was part of the founding faculty of the Louisiana State University Medical Center in New Orleans, and later served as Dean of the Louisiana State University School of Medicine at Shreveport .
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Trinidad Arroyo
1872 - 1959 (87 years)
Trinidad Arroyo Villaverde was a Spanish ophthalmologist. She was the first woman ophthalmologist in Spain and the third to receive a doctorate degree, obtaining her doctorate in 1896. She was a teacher and researcher at the University of Madrid, and she operated an ophthalmology practice with her husband Manuel Márquez. They were forced to flee the country in 1939 due to the Spanish Civil War, and they resumed their practice in Mexico City, where they lived for the rest of their lives.
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Liverij Darkshevich
1858 - 1925 (67 years)
Liverij Osipovich Darkshevich was a Russian neurologist who was a native of Yaroslavl. His surname is sometimes spelled Darkschewitsch in medical literature. From 1882 to 1887 he studied medicine at the University of Moscow, and afterwards worked and studied at the laboratory of Theodor Meynert in Vienna, the laboratory of Paul Flechsig in Leipzig, Karl Westphal's clinic in Berlin, and at the Salpêtrière in the clinic of Jean-Martin Charcot . During this time period, he also collaborated with Joseph Jules Dejerine and Sigmund Freud on a number of important medical papers.
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Martine J. Piccart
#4257
Leopold Auerbach
1828 - 1897 (69 years)
Leopold Auerbach was a German anatomist and neuropathologist born in Breslau. He is best known for discovering the myenteric plexus aka Auerbach’s plexus, which helps control the GI tract. Education and career Auerbach studied medicine at the Universities of Breslau, Berlin and the Leipzig. He became a physician in 1849, obtained his habilitation in 1863. From 1872 he was an associate professor of neuropathology at the University of Breslau.
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Hermann von Tappeiner
1847 - 1927 (80 years)
Hermann von Tappeiner was an Austrian pharmacologist. He was the son of anthropologist Franz Tappeiner . He studied at the universities of Innsbruck, Göttingen, Leipzig, Heidelberg and Tübingen, receiving his doctorate in 1872. As a student, his influences included Carl Ludwig and Gustav von Hüfner at Leipzig, and Robert Bunsen at the University of Heidelberg. In 1877 he obtained his habilitation at the University of Munich. Two years later, he began teaching classes in physiology and dietetics at the veterinary school in Munich, and in 1884 became an associate professor of medicinal chemistry and pharmacology at the university.
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Heinrich Albers-Schönberg
1865 - 1921 (56 years)
Heinrich Ernst Albers-Schönberg was a German gynecologist and radiologist. He was a native of Hamburg. He studied medicine at the Universities of Tübingen and Leipzig, where in 1891 he earned his medical doctorate under the guidance of Heinrich Curschmann . From 1892 to 1894 he was an assistant at Hamburg-Eppendorf Hospital, afterwards working as an assistant to gynecologist Paul Zweifel at the University of Leipzig. Soon afterwards, he settled in Hamburg as a medical practitioner.
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Trevor J. Orchard
Trevor J. Orchard is a British-American hold epidemiologist currently a Distinguished Professor at University of Pittsburgh. He received the Kelly West Award in 1993.
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Heinz Otto Schild
1906 - 1984 (78 years)
Heinz Otto Schild , was a pharmacologist now known for the development of the Schild plot. Life H.O. Schild was born into a Jewish family in what was Fiume, Austria-Hungary, and is now Rijeka, Croatia. During the rise of fascism he was schooled in Munich then Budapest . He studied medicine in Munich and Berlin in the 1920s, with later studies focused on Pharmacology. In 1932s he moved to England to work in Henry Dale's laboratory, working also with John Gaddum.
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Ludwig Andreas Buchner
1813 - 1897 (84 years)
Ludwig Andreas Buchner was a German pharmacologist. His father was pharmacologist Johann Andreas Buchner . Academic background After attending classes in Munich, he continued his education at the Universities of Giessen and Paris. In 1839, he obtained his PhD, followed by his doctorate of medicine in 1842. In 1847, he became an associate professor of physiological and pathological chemistry at Munich, followed by a full professorship of pharmacy and toxicology in 1852.
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Norman Dott
1897 - 1973 (76 years)
Norman McOmish Dott, CBE FRCSE FRSE FRCSC was a Scottish neurosurgeon. He was the first holder of the Chair of Neurological Surgery at the University of Edinburgh. Life Norman Dott was born in Edinburgh on 26 August 1897, the third of the five children of Rebecca Morton and Peter McOmish Dott , a picture dealer based at 127 George Street in Edinburgh's New Town. He was educated at George Heriot's School and originally intended a career in engineering. However a serious motorcycle accident on Lothian Road, hospitalised him and left him with a permanent leg injury . The long spell in hospital re-inspired Dott and he changed his ambition to focus upon medicine rather than engineering.
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Édouard Claparède
1873 - 1940 (67 years)
Édouard Claparède was a Swiss neurologist, child psychologist, and educator. Career Claparède studied science and medicine, receiving in 1897 an MD from the University of Geneva, and working 1897–98 at La Salpêtrière hospital in Paris. In 1901 he founded the Archives de psychologie with his cousin, Théodore Flournoy, which he edited until his death. He was based from 1904 onward at the University of Geneva, where he became director of the experimental psychology lab.
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Carl Caspar von Siebold
1736 - 1807 (71 years)
Carl Caspar von Siebold was a German surgeon and obstetrician who was a native of Nideggen in the Duchy of Jülich. From 1760 to 1763 he studied medicine in Würzburg, and afterwards furthered his medical education in Paris, London and Leiden. In 1769 he became a professor of anatomy, surgery and obstetrics at the University of Würzburg. He remained a professor at Würzburg until his death in 1807. He was grandfather to German naturalist Philipp Franz von Siebold .
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Robert Battey
1828 - 1895 (67 years)
Robert Battey was an American physician who is known for pioneering a surgical procedure then called Battey's Operation and now termed radical oophorectomy . Biography Robert Battey was born in Augusta, Georgia to Cephas and Mary Agnes Magruder Battey. He was educated in Augusta and at Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. He graduated from Philadelphia College of Pharmacy in 1856. He went on to take courses at Jefferson Medical College, graduating in 1857. In the same year he studied at the Obstetrical Institute of Philadelphia gaining a diploma from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1...
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Guido Holzknecht
1872 - 1931 (59 years)
Guido Holzknecht was an Austrian radiologist who was a native of Vienna. He studied in Strasbourg, Königsberg, and Vienna, and became the director of the X-ray laboratory at Vienna General Hospital in 1905 . He later established a central radiology department at the hospital, which became known as the Guido Holzknecht Institute. With radiologist Robert Kienböck , he was a co-founder of the Wiener Röntgengesellschaft .
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Giovanni Mingazzini
1859 - 1929 (70 years)
Giovanni Mingazzini was an Italian neurologist. He trained at the institute of physiology in Rome with Jacob Moleschott , followed by work as an assistant to anatomist Francesco Todaro . Afterwards, he studied neuroanatomy in Munich with Bernhard von Gudden . In 1895 he was appointed professor of psychiatry and neurology at the University of Rome.
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Takaoki Sasaki
1878 - 1966 (88 years)
was a Japanese biochemist and oncologist known for demonstrating the induction of liver cancer in rats by Ortho-Aminoazotoluene with his pupil Tomizo Yoshida. In addition, he was also known as a master of fencing in Japan. He received the Imperial Prize of the Japan Academy twice .
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Otto Veraguth
1870 - 1944 (74 years)
Otto Veraguth was a Swiss neurologist. In 1895 he received his doctorate at Zurich, where he trained under Constantin von Monakow . In 1900 he obtained his habilitation for neurology, and in 1918 was appointed associate professor of physical therapy at the University of Zurich. From 1922 to 1924 he was president of the Schweizerischen Neurologischen Gesellschaft .
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Eduard Hitzig
1838 - 1907 (69 years)
Eduard Hitzig was a German neurologist and neuropsychiatrist of Jewish ancestry born in Berlin. Eduard was the son of Friedrich Hitzig and his grandfather had converted to Protestantism. He studied medicine at the Universities of Berlin and Würzburg under the instruction of famous men such as Emil Du Bois-Reymond , Rudolf Virchow , Moritz Heinrich Romberg , and Karl Friedrich Otto Westphal . He received his doctorate in 1862 and subsequently worked in Berlin and Würzburg. In 1875, he became director of the Burghölzli asylum, as well as professor of psychiatry at the University of Zurich. In 1...
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Stanley Fahn
#4273
Friedrich Jolly
1844 - 1904 (60 years)
Friedrich Jolly was a German neurologist and psychiatrist who was a native of Heidelberg, and the son of physicist Philipp von Jolly . He studied medicine at Göttingen under Georg Meissner , and in 1867 received his doctorate at Munich. In 1868 he became an assistant to Bernhard von Gudden and Hubert von Grashey at the mental institution in Werneck, and in 1870 was an assistant to Franz von Rinecker at the Juliusspital in Würzburg.
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Abraham Myerson
1881 - 1948 (67 years)
Abraham Myerson was a Lithuanian neurologist, psychiatrist, clinician, pathologist, and researcher. He had a special interest in the heredity of psychiatric and neurologic disease. Early life and education Myerson was born in Lithuania, the son of a Jewish school teacher. His father emigrated to the United States in 1885, and sent for his family in 1886, settling in New Britain, Connecticut. In 1892, the family moved to Boston, Massachusetts. He attended the Boston public schools, graduated from high school in 1898, and then worked for seven years to earn money to attend medical school. He at...
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Max Lewandowsky
1876 - 1916 (40 years)
Max Lewandowsky was a German neurologist, who was a native of Berlin, born into a Jewish family. Personal life Lewandowsky studied medicine at the Universities of Marburg, Berlin and Halle, earning his medical doctorate at Halle in 1898. In 1902 he obtained his post-graduate qualification for physiology, and in 1904, received training in clinical neurology and psychiatry under Karl Bonhoeffer and Franz Nissl at the University of Heidelberg. Afterwards he travelled to Paris, where he studied under neurologist Pierre Marie. Beginning in 1905 he worked in the Berlin-Friedrichshain hospital. Duri...
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Nathan Ryno Smith
1797 - 1877 (80 years)
Nathan Ryno Smith was an American surgeon and medical school professor. Smith was born in Cornish, New Hampshire. He was the son of Sarah Hall Chase and Nathan Smith. Like his father Smith went into the medical profession, but he went to Yale instead of Harvard, receiving his MD in 1820. Smith had received his bachelor's degree in 1817, and had worked as a tutor for a family in Fauquier County, Virginia for a time before taking up medical studies.
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Vladimir Derevenko
1879 - 1936 (57 years)
Vladimir Nikolaevich Derevenko was a Russian Empire and Soviet medical doctor and surgeon who served at the court of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia. Time with the Romanovs Before the revolution, Derevenko was a physician who served at the court of the last Tsar, Nicholas II. He was a specialist doctor assigned to look after the Tsarevich in 1912, who suffered from haemophilia. His son, Kolya Derevenko, was a friend of Alexei. Nicholas II abdicated in March 1917 and was exiled with his family to the Siberian village of Tobolsk that August, a journey on which Derevenko and his family voluntarily embarked.
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Paolo Mantegazza
1831 - 1910 (79 years)
Paolo Mantegazza was an Italian neurologist, physiologist, and anthropologist, noted for his experimental investigation of coca leaves into its effects on the human psyche. He was also an author of fiction.
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Friedrich Schultze
1848 - 1934 (86 years)
Friedrich Schultze was a German neurologist and native of Rathenow, Brandenburg. He is known for being the founder of child neurology. In 1871 he earned his doctorate at Heidelberg, and afterwards spent several years as an assistant to pathologist Nikolaus Friedreich . In 1887 he was invited as a "full professor" to the University of Dorpat, and shortly afterwards became director of the medical clinic and policlinic at the University of Bonn, where he spent the remainder of his career.
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Christian Heinrich Bünger
1782 - 1842 (60 years)
Christian Heinrich Bünger was professor of anatomy and was the first surgeon to introduce rhinoplasty. Education He received his MD in c. 1805 from the University of Helmstedt under Justus Ferdinand Christian Loder and Gottfried Christoph Beireis.
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Matthew Flinders
1774 - 1814 (40 years)
Captain Matthew Flinders was a British navigator and cartographer who led the first inshore circumnavigation of mainland Australia, then called New Holland. He is also credited as being the first person to utilise the name Australia to describe the entirety of that continent including Van Diemen's Land , a title he regarded as being "more agreeable to the ear" than previous names such as Terra Australis.
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Rudolf Otto Neumann
1868 - 1952 (84 years)
Rudolf Otto Neumann was a German hygienist. He studied pharmacy and medicine at the Universities of Greifswald, Leipzig, Erlangen and Würzburg, receiving his habilitation in 1902 at the University of Kiel. In 1904 he relocated to Hamburg, where he was appointed departmental head of the state hygienic institute. During the same year he was part of an expedition to Brazil in order to research yellow fever.
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Johann Andreas Buchner
1783 - 1852 (69 years)
Johann Andreas Buchner was a German pharmacologist working in the area of alkaloids. He was the father of pharmacologist Ludwig Andreas Buchner . He studied at Johann Bartholomäus Trommsdorff's pharmaceutical institute in Erfurt, obtaining his PhD in 1807. In 1809, he became Oberapotheker of the Zentral-Stiftungs-Apotheke for hospitals in Munich. In 1818, he was appointed an associate professor of pharmacy, medical formula instruction and toxicology at the University of Landshut, where he later became a full professor of pharmacy . When the university relocated to Munich, he moved back to his...
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Constantin von Monakow
1853 - 1930 (77 years)
Constantin von Monakow was a Russian-Swiss neuropathologist who was a native of Bobretsovo in the Vologda Governorate. He studied at the University of Zurich while working as an assistant at the Burghölzli Institute under the directorship of Eduard Hitzig . After graduation, he was an assistant at St. Pirminsberg, where he performed scientific investigations of cerebral anatomy. In 1885 he returned to Zurich, where he later became director of the brain anatomy institute. In 1917 he founded the journal Schweizer Archiv für Neurologie und Psychiatrie , and was its editor-in-chief until his death.
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H. Houston Merritt
1902 - 1979 (77 years)
Hiram Houston Merritt Jr. was a renowned academic neurologist. Serving as chair of the Neurological Institute of New York and Neurologist-in-Chief at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center in Manhattan's Washington Heights from 1948 to 1967, Merritt played a pivotal role in the training of numerous neurologists, with 35 of his students ascending to department chair positions in universities across the US. He also held the deanship of the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons from 1958 to 1970.
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Meinhard von Pfaundler
1872 - 1947 (75 years)
Meinhard von Pfaundler ; was an Austrian pediatrician born in Innsbruck. He was the son of Leopold Pfaundler. In 1890 he began his medical studies in Innsbruck with anatomist Wilhelm Roux . Shortly afterwards he transferred to the University of Graz, where he was influenced by neurologist Gabriel Anton , gynecologist Alfons von Rosthorn , histologist Alexander Rollett , internist Friedrich Kraus and pediatrician Theodor Escherich , who was also his brother-in-law. After receiving his doctorate he became an assistant to Franz Hofmeister
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James Jackson Putnam
1846 - 1918 (72 years)
James Jackson Putnam was an American neurologist. Biography Born in Boston, Massachusetts and graduated from Harvard College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1866, Putnam went to Europe to study in the company of Baron Carl von Rokitansky, Theodor Meynert and John Hughlings Jackson. He then attended Harvard Medical School from 1872-1875, graduating in 1876 with a Doctor of Medicine degree. On his return to the Massachusetts General Hospital he opened a clinic which became the Department of Neurology at Harvard Medical School.
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William Dameshek
1900 - 1969 (69 years)
William Dameshek was an American hematologist. He graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Medical School and spent the early part of his career at Beth Israel Hospital . He was the founder of Blood, the prime core clinical journal of hematology, in 1946. He is also credited with describing the concept of myeloproliferative diseases in 1951. In addition, he participated in the first studies of nitrogen mustard in various hematological malignancies, widely considered the first uses of chemotherapy in malignant diseases. Dr Dameshek was also the first one who described chronic lymphocytic leu...
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Arthur Kreindler
1900 - 1988 (88 years)
Arthur Kreindler was a Romanian neurologist of Jewish origin, academic, professor of neurology at the Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Bucharest, and director of the Institute of Neurology Research of the Romanian Academy.
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Nikolaus Friedreich
1826 - 1882 (56 years)
Nikolaus Friedreich was a German pathologist and neurologist, and a third generation physician in the Friedreich family. His father was psychiatrist Johann Baptist Friedreich , and his grandfather was pathologist Nicolaus Anton Friedreich , who is remembered for his early description of idiopathic facial paralysis, which would later be known as Bell's palsy.
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Antonin Poncet
1849 - 1913 (64 years)
Antonin Poncet was a French surgeon. Son of Jean Joseph Poncet and Catherine Jeanne Chabalier, he was inspired by his grandfather Jean-Pierre Antoine Chabalier, surgeon in the Imperial Army. He studied medicine in Lyon, where he served as interne des hôpitaux. He was a member of the Lyon ambulance corps during the Franco-Prussian War, and in 1878 became a member of the surgical section of the Lyon faculty of medicine. In 1883 he attained the chair of operative medicine in Lyon.
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Gaspare Tagliacozzi
1545 - 1599 (54 years)
Gaspare Tagliacozzi was an Italian surgeon, pioneer of plastic and reconstructive surgery. Biography Tagliacozzi was born in Bologna. Tagliacozzi began his medical studies in 1565. He studied at the University of Bologna under Gerolamo Cardano for medicine, Ulisse Aldrovandi for natural sciences and Julius Caesar Aranzi for anatomy. At the age of twenty-four, he earned his degree in philosophy and medicine.
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Carl Lange
1834 - 1900 (66 years)
Carl Georg Lange was a Danish physician who made contributions to the fields of neurology, psychiatry, and psychology. Born to a wealthy family in Vordingborg, Denmark, Lange attended medical school at the University of Copenhagen and graduated in 1859 with a reputation for brilliance. After publishing on the neurological pathologies of aphasia, bulbar palsy, tabes dorsalis, and pathologies of the spinal cord, he achieved world fame with his 1885 work "On Emotions: A Psycho-Physiological Study". In it, he posited that all emotions are developed from, and can be reduced to, physiological reactions to stimuli.
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Holly Broadbent Sr.
1939 - 1977 (38 years)
Birdsall Holly Broadbent Sr. was an American orthodontist who is credited with developing and introducing the technique of cephalometric roentgenography to orthodontics. He also devised the cephalometer, which accurately positions a patient's head with reference to the x-ray source.
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Ernst Siemerling
1857 - 1931 (74 years)
Ernst Siemerling was a German neurologist and psychiatrist born in Müssow near Greifswald. In 1882 he obtained his medical doctorate from the University of Marburg. In 1883-84 he was an assistant at the psychiatric clinic at Halle, and afterwards an assistant to Karl Westphal at the Berlin psychiatric clinic.
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Arthur Robertson Cushny
1866 - 1926 (60 years)
Arthur Robertson Cushny FRS FRSE LLD , was a Scottish pharmacologist and physiologist who became a Fellow of the Royal Society. Life Cushny was born on 6 March 1866 in Fochabers, Moray, Scotland, the fourth son of Rev John Cushny of Speymouth and his wife, Catherine Ogilvie Brown.
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Heinrich von Ranke
1830 - 1909 (79 years)
Heinrich von Ranke was a German physiologist and pediatrician. He was the son of theologian Friedrich Heinrich Ranke and the brother of anthropologist Johannes Ranke . Famed historian Leopold von Ranke was his uncle.
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John Bell
1763 - 1820 (57 years)
John Bell was a Scottish anatomist and surgeon. Life Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland; an elder brother of Sir Charles Bell. After completing his professional education at Edinburgh, he carried on from 1790 in Surgeons' Square an anatomical lecture-theatre, where, in spite of much opposition, due partly to the unconservative character of his teaching, he attracted large audiences by his lectures, in which he was for a time assisted by his younger brother Charles. From 1793 to 1795, he published Discourses on the Nature and Cure of Wounds. He is considered, along with Pierre-Joseph Desault...
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Eugen von Hippel
1867 - 1939 (72 years)
Eugen Adolf Arthur von Hippel was a German ophthalmologist born in Königsberg. Family Eugen is the son of Arthur von Hippel , brother of Robert von Hippel and Richard von Hippel, and uncle of Arthur R. von Hippel.
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Edmund Rose
1836 - 1914 (78 years)
Edmund Rose was a German surgeon who was a native of Berlin. He studied medicine in Berlin and Würzburg, and subsequently was an assistant to surgeon Robert Ferdinand Wilms in Berlin from 1860 until 1864. From 1867 to 1881, he was a professor of surgery at the University Hospital of Zurich, and afterwards a professor at the Bethanien Hospital in Berlin . Among his assistants at Zurich was surgeon Rudolf Ulrich Krönlein.
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