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,
#4401
William Valentine Mayneord
1902 - 1988 (86 years)
William Valentine Mayneord, CBE FRS was a British physicist and pioneer in the field of medical physics. Early life and education He was born in Redditch, Worcestershire to Walter and Elizabeth Mayneord but after the early death of his mother was adopted by an aunt in Evesham. He was educated at Prince Henry's School, Evesham and gained a Bachelor of Science at the University of Birmingham
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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#4403
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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Cecil Kent Drinker
1887 - 1956 (69 years)
Cecil Kent Drinker was an American physician and founder of the Harvard School of Public Health. He was professor at Harvard School of Public Health from 1923 till 1935. Drinker was involved in the effect of radium on the women painting luminous dials. Drinker's father was railroad man and Lehigh University president Henry Sturgis Drinker; his siblings included lawyer and musicologist Henry Sandwith Drinker, Jr., industrial hygienist Philip Drinker and biographer Catherine Drinker Bowen.
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Daniel H. Lowenstein
Daniel H. Lowenstein is an American neurologist who is the Robert B. and Ellinor Aird Professor of Neurology and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost at the University of California, San Francisco . He is known for his work in the field of epilepsy including laboratory-based and clinical research, the clinical care of patients with epilepsy, and advocacy for the needs of patients and family members living with epilepsy. He was the originator of the “Academy of Medical Educators” concept, and is the recipient of teaching awards both at UCSF and nationally. He has served as the Dean for Medical Education at Harvard Medical School, and as President of the American Epilepsy Society.
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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.
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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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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.
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Austin Bradford Hill
1897 - 1991 (94 years)
Sir Austin Bradford Hill was an English epidemiologist and statistician, pioneered the randomised clinical trial and, together with Richard Doll, demonstrated the connection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. Hill is widely known for pioneering the "Bradford Hill" criteria for determining a causal association.
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Arnold Gesell
1880 - 1961 (81 years)
Arnold Lucius Gesell was an American psychologist, pediatrician and professor at Yale University known for his research and contributions to the fields of child hygiene and child development. Early life Gesell was born in Alma, Wisconsin, and later wrote an article analyzing his experiences there entitled "The Village of a Thousand Souls". The eldest of five children, Arnold and his siblings were born to photographer Gerhard Gesell and schoolteacher Christine Giesen. His first experience in observing child development involved watching his younger siblings learn and grow until he graduated fr...
Go to Profile#4411
Lester Dragstedt
1893 - 1975 (82 years)
Lester Reynold Dragstedt was an American surgeon who was the first to successfully separate conjoined twins. He was considered nationally known, and a leading authority on ulcers and gastroneuro surgery.
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Alexander Brunschwig
1901 - 1969 (68 years)
Alexander Brunschwig was born in El Paso, Texas. He died in 1969 at the age of 67 of coronary disease. Brunschwig developed pelvic exenteration surgery, which removes major organs from the patient's pelvic cavity. He performed 847 procedures, with a death rate similar to those of others later with more modern anesthesia. Pelvic exenteration is controversial, because it is one of the most aggressive and disfiguring surgeries used in oncology, and has not been subject to controlled clinical trials.
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Alexander Burns Wallace
1906 - 1974 (68 years)
Alexander Burns Wallace was a Scottish plastic surgeon. He was a founding member and president of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons, and the first editor of the British Journal of Plastic Surgery. In authorship he appears as A. B. Wallace.
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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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John Crighton Bramwell
1889 - 1976 (87 years)
John Crighton Bramwell was a British cardiologist, professor of medicine, and one of the founders of cardiology as a specialist subject in the UK. Education and career and Martha Crighton, he was education at Cheltenham College, before matriculated in 1907 at Trinity College, Cambridge. There he was influenced by the physiologist Keith Lucas. In 1911 Bramwell started clinical medical training at the Manchester Royal Infirmary. At the start of WWI he joined the 1st East Lancashire Territorial Field Ambulance in Egypt. In 1915 he was granted leave for two months to take his final examination at the University of Manchester, where he graduated MB CHB.
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Jane Worcester
1901 - 1989 (88 years)
Jane Worcester was a biostatistician and epidemiologist who became the second tenured female professor, after Martha May Eliot, and the first female chair of biostatistics in the Harvard School of Public Health.
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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
#4426
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
#4432
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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