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 Philosophy,

#10051

Mirko Tobias Schäfer

Mirko Tobias Schäfer
#91290
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Mirko Tobias Schäfer is a media scholar at Utrecht University. He is an Associate Professor at the Department for Information & Computing Sciences and Science Lead of the Utrecht Data School. Biography Schäfer studied theater and media studies and communication science at the University of Vienna and digital culture at Utrecht University. He obtained a Ph.D. in 2008 at Utrecht University. Schäfer's research revolves around technology, and how it transform society. He publishes on digital culture, cultural theory, new media, big data, and artificial intelligence. In 2011 he was awarded a fellowship at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.
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#10052

Robyn Bluhm

#108189
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Robyn Bluhm , is associate professor at the Department of Philosophy and Lyman Briggs College, Michigan State University, as well as a member of The NeuroGenderings Network – a group which promotes "neurofeminism". She is the current joint editor of the IJFAB: International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics
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#10053

Fred Wabwire-Mangen

#44891
Overall Influence
Frederick Wabwire-Mangen is a Ugandan physician, public health specialist and medical researcher. Currently he is Professor of Epidemiology and Head of Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics at Makerere University School of Public Health. Wabwire-Mangen also serves as the Chairman of Council of Kampala International University and a founding member of Accordia Global Health Foundation’s Academic Alliance
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#10054

Cynthia Willett

#108327
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Cynthia Willett is an American philosopher who is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Philosophy at Emory University, where she is also affiliated faculty with Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and with the Psychoanalytic Studies Program. She has written influential books on intersectional feminism and founded Emory's Institute for the History of Philosophy. Willett was on the American Philosophical Association's Executive Board between 2008 and 2010, and has served as co-director of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. She earned her Ph.D. in 1988 from Pennsylvania State...
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#10055

Elvis Mitchell

Elvis Mitchell
#51892
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Elvis Mitchell is an American film critic, host of the public radio show The Treatment, and visiting lecturer at Harvard University. He has served as a film critic for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the LA Weekly, The Detroit Free Press, and The New York Times. He had also been an interviewer for Interview Magazine. In the summer of 2011, he was appointed as curator of LACMA's new film series, Film Independent at LACMA. He is also currently a Film Scholar and lecturer at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
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#10056

Nanibaa' Garrison

#112082
Overall Influence
Náníbaaʼ Garrison is a bioethicist, geneticist, and associate professor in the Institute for Society and Genetics and Department of Internal Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is a member of the Navajo Nation, and her career has focused on studies of health conditions prevalent in, and attitudes toward genetics research among, the Navajo community.
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#10057

Gian Domenico Borasio

#86960
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Gian Domenico Borasio is a physician specialist of palliative medicine. He is professor of palliative medicine at the University of Lausanne and head of the Service of Palliative Care of the University Hospital of Lausanne .
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#10058

Barry Gordon

#145008
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Barry J. Gordon is an American behavioral neurologist and cognitive neuroscientist. He is the inaugural holder of the therapeutic cognitive neuroscience endowed professorship and a professor of neurology with a joint appointment in cognitive science at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
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#10059

Waljit Dhillo

#134759
Overall Influence
Waljit Dhillo is an endocrinologist and a Professor of Endocrinology & Metabolism at the Imperial College London. He is the Director of Research at the Division of Medicine & Integrated Care at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and the Dean of the National Institute for Health and Care Research Academy. His research focuses on how the endocrine system controls body weight and reproductive functions.
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#10060

Charles Flexner

#33036
Overall Influence
Charles Williams Flexner is an American physician, clinical pharmaceutical scientist, academic, author and researcher. He is a Professor of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
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#10061

Aaron Shirley

#35267
Overall Influence
1933 - 2014 (81 years)
Aaron Shirley was an American physician and civil rights activist. Shirley was born in Gluckstadt, Mississippi. He was Chairman of the Board for the Jackson Medical Mall Foundation, and an associate professor in pediatrics at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.
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#10062

Fred Miller

#150354
Overall Influence
Fred Dycus Miller Jr. is an American philosopher who specializes in Aristotelian philosophy, with additional interests in political philosophy, business ethics, metaphysics, and philosophy in science fiction. He is a professor emeritus at Bowling Green State University.
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#10063

Jane W. Davidson

#146395
Overall Influence
Jane Davidson is Professor of Creative and Performing Arts at The University of Melbourne and Deputy Director of the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions. Early life She began her academic career in 1991, initially as a postdoctoral research fellow at Keele University, Staffordshire, then as lecturer in music at City University, London. From 1995 to 2006 she worked through the ranks from lecturer to full professor at the University of Sheffield. In the UK, she also taught on a sessional basis at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. She ...
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#10064

Kurt Gudewill

Kurt Gudewill
#113067
Overall Influence
1911 - 1995 (84 years)
Kurt Gudewill was a German musicologist and University lecturer. From 1952 to 1976 he was professor at the musicological institute of the Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel. He rendered outstanding services to Heinrich Schütz and Lied research.
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#10065

Alex Toth

Alex Toth
#12950
Overall Influence
1928 - 2006 (78 years)
Alexander Toth was an American cartoonist active from the 1940s through the 1980s. Toth's work began in the American comic book industry, but he is also known for his animation designs for Hanna-Barbera throughout the 1960s and 1970s. His work included Super Friends, Fantastic Four, Space Ghost, Sealab 2020, The Herculoids and Birdman. Toth's work has been resurrected in the late-night, adult-themed spin-offs on Cartoon Network’s late night sister channel Adult Swim: Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Sealab 2021 and Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law.
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#10066

Averil Mansfield

Averil Mansfield
#45302
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Dame Averil Olive Bradley , known professionally as Averil Mansfield, is a retired English vascular surgeon. She was a consultant surgeon at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington, central London, from 1982 to 2002, and in 1993 she became the first British woman to be appointed a professor of surgery.
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#10067

Gita Ramjee

#25118
Overall Influence
1956 - 2020 (64 years)
Gita Ramjee was a Ugandan-South African scientist and researcher in HIV prevention. In 2018, she was awarded the ‘Outstanding Female Scientist’ award from the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership. She died in Umhlanga, Durban, South Africa, from COVID-19 related complications.
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#10068

Staffan Normark

Staffan Normark
#22827
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Jan Staffan Normark is a Swedish physician, microbiologist and infectious disease researcher. He grew up in Umeå and was awarded his Ph.D. at Umeå University in 1971. At the end of the 1970s, he was one of the first Swedish scientists to use the new genetic engineering tools in infection-related research. In 1980, he was made a professor at Umeå University, then the university's youngest. 1989 he was recruited as professor of molecular microbiology to Washington University in St. Louis. 1993 he returned to Sweden as professor of infectious disease control, in particular clinical bacteriology, at Karolinska Institutet.
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#10069

Harry Ostrer

#169128
Overall Influence
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#10070

John Hadley

#124163
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
John Hadley is an Australian philosopher whose research concerns moral and political philosophy, including animal ethics, environmental ethics, and metaethics. He is currently a senior lecturer in philosophy in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University. He has previously taught at Charles Sturt University and the University of Sydney, where he studied as an undergraduate and doctoral candidate. In addition to a variety of articles in peer-reviewed journals and edited collections, he is the author of the 2015 monograph Animal Property Rights and the 2019 monograph Animal Neopragmatism .
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#10071

David Dowdy

#128715
Overall Influence
David Wesley Dowdy is an American infectious disease epidemiologist. He is the B. Frank and Kathleen Polk Professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Early life and education Dowdy earned his Bachelor of Science degree from Duke University in 1999 before enrolling at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health for his Master's degree, PhD, and Medical degree. He completed his PhD under the guidance of Richard Chaisson, a tuberculosis and HIV expert, who encouraged him to study epidemiological modeling of tuberculosis.
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#10072

Jerome A. Miller

#167050
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Jerome Aloysius Miller is a contemporary American philosopher and professor emeritus at Salisbury University. Miller's research interests lie in the areas of philosophy of religion and phenomenology. Miller received a B.A. in philosophy from Scranton University, and his doctorate in philosophy from Georgetown University.
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#10073

Jozo Zovko

#33201
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Jozo Zovko, OFM is a Herzegovinian Croat Franciscan priest, most notable for being a parish priest in Medjugorje during the alleged apparitions of the Virgin Mary in 1981. He was very active in the promotion of apparitions around the world. He is an adherent of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. Zovko is currently under a suspension imposed on him by his bishops in 1989, 1994 and 2004 for disobedience and is forbidden to perform priestly duties in his home Diocese of Mostar-Duvno.
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#10074

Kristin Gjesdal

#153545
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Kristin Gjesdal is a Norwegian philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at Temple University. She is known for her expertise in the field of hermeneutics , nineteenth-century philosophy, aesthetics, and phenomenology. Gjesdal is a member of The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and she has served on the editorial board of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as a subject area expert for 19th Century Philosophy.
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#10075

Shomron Ben-Horin

#168612
Overall Influence
Shomron Ben-Horin is an Israeli physician, a co-founder & Chief Medical Officer of Evinature, and professor of medicine at the Tel-Aviv University. Shomron Ben-Horin was born and raised in Tel Aviv, Israel.
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#10076

Akinyinka Omigbodun

#13123
Overall Influence
Akinyinka Omigbodun is a Nigerian professor of Gynecology, Obstetrics and former provost of the College of Medicine, University of Ibadan. He once served as president of the West African College of Surgeons and chair of the management board of the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa .
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#10077

Cassidy Sugimoto

#129039
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Cassidy R. Sugimoto is an American information scientist who is the Professor and Tom and Marie Patton School Chair in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She studies the ways knowledge is processed and disseminated. She is the author of the 2016 MIT Press book Big Data is Not a Monolith.
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#10078

Wulf H. Utian

Wulf H. Utian
#107370
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Wulf H. Utian is a physician, reproductive endocrinologist, clinical researcher, and academic women's health department administrator. He is best known for first recognizing menopause as a potential health-related issue. He is the co-founder of the International Menopause Society and founder of the North American Menopause Society. Previously he has worked as a medical department Director at the Mount Sinai Medical Center, the University Hospitals of Cleveland, and academic chairman of the department of Reproductive Biology at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. He is currently the Arthur H.
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#10079

Kim Solez

Kim Solez
#75079
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Kim Solez is an American pathologist and co-founder of the Banff Classification, the first standardized international classification for renal allograft biopsies. He is also the founder of the Banff Foundation for Allograft Pathology.
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#10080

Tayyeb Tizini

#138384
Overall Influence
1934 - 2019 (85 years)
Tayeb Tizini was a Syrian philosopher, researcher and academic. born in the city of Homs, a supporter of Marxist nationalist thought. He relies on the historical dialectic in his philosophical project to re-read Arab thought since before Islam until now. He died at the age of 85 after struggle with disease in his city, Homs.
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#10081

James Webster

#63128
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
James Webster is a musicologist, specializing in the music of Joseph Haydn and other composers of the classical era. His professional position is as the Goldwin Smith Professor of Music at Cornell University.
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#10082

William S. Pierce

#83831
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
William S. Pierce is the cardiothoracic surgeon and chemical engineer who led development of the first pneumatic heart assist pump. The Pierce-Donachy Ventricular Assist Device, also known as the Penn State Assist Pump, was designated an International Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1990.
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#10083

Yusuke Nakamura

#169288
Overall Influence
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#10084

Chiaki Mukai

Chiaki Mukai
#4577
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
is a Japanese physician and JAXA astronaut. She was the first Japanese woman in space, the first Japanese citizen to have two spaceflights, and the first Asian woman in space. Both were Space Shuttle missions; her first was STS-65 aboard Space Shuttle Columbia in July 1994, which was a Spacelab mission. Her second spaceflight was STS-95 aboard Space Shuttle Discovery in 1998. In total she has spent 23 days in space.
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#10085

John Tooze

#21419
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
John Tooze FRS was a British research scientist, research administrator, author, science journalist, former executive director of EMBO/EMBC, director of research services at the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute and a vice president at The Rockefeller University.
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#10086

Richard Colledge

#169329
Overall Influence
Richard J. Colledge is an Australian philosopher and Head of the School of Philosophy at Australian Catholic University. He is the Chair of the Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy. Colledge is known for his research on Heidegger and Kierkegaard.
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#10087

Elmer Sprague

#131428
Overall Influence
1950 - 2019 (69 years)
Elmer Sprague was a professor at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, where he taught philosophy for 44 years. He obtained a B.A. from the University of Nebraska, and a B.A. and D.Phil. from Oxford. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford , and was the Paul Robert and Jean Shuman Hanna Professor of Philosophy at Hamline University .
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#10088

Phoebe Gilman

#83446
Overall Influence
1940 - 2002 (62 years)
Phoebe Gilman was a Canadian-American children's book author and illustrator. Her books were notable for their strong lead female characters. Her book Something from Nothing, adapted from an old Yiddish tale, won the 1993 Ruth Schwartz Award for best children's book, and was later adapted for television. Born in The Bronx, New York, where she lived her first years, she later lived in Europe, Israel, and finally settled in Canada in 1972.
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#10089

Allen Kent

#18320
Overall Influence
1921 - 2014 (93 years)
Allen Kent was an American information scientist. Early life He was born in New York City. At City College of New York he earned a degree in chemistry. During World War II, he served in the United States Army Air Forces. After the war, he worked on a classified project at MIT in mechanized document encoding and search.
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#10090

Kimryn Rathmell

#167832
Overall Influence
W. Kimryn Rathmell is an American physician-scientist whose work focuses on the research and treatment of patients with kidney cancers. She is the Hugh Jackson Morgan Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center , and Physician-in-Chief for Vanderbilt University Adult Hospital and Clinics in Nashville, Tennessee. On Nov. 17, 2023, Rathmell was announced as the intended next Director of the National Cancer Institute.
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#10091

Ruth Wynne-Davies

#136328
Overall Influence
1926 - 2012 (86 years)
Ruth Wynne-Davies or Ruth Blower was a British medical doctor and scholar of orthopaedics. She researched and wrote about clubfoot and scoliosis. Life and career Wynne-Davies was born in London in 1926. She attended Oswestry High School for Girls. After finishing school, she was a land girl. She then worked as a secretary before starting her training in medicine at the Royal Free School of Medicine. She was encouraged and financially supported to do so by her uncle, Llewellyn Wynne-Davies. In 1959, she changed her name to Wynne-Davies, in his honour.
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#10092

Douglas Black

#69983
Overall Influence
1913 - 2002 (89 years)
Sir Douglas Andrew Kilgour Black was a Scottish physician and medical scientist who played a key role in the development of the National Health Service. He conducted research in the field of public health and was famous as the author of the Black Report. He was also known for the Black Formula, a translation of the Pignet formula to British measurements.
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#10093

Gregory Fernando Pappas

#147960
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Gregory Fernando Pappas is a professor of philosophy at Texas A&M University. He is currently a National Humanities Center Fellow And was senior fellow at Maria Sibylla Merian International Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences Conviviality-Inequality in Latin America. Pappas works within the American Pragmatist and Latin American traditions in ethics and social-political philosophy. He is the author of numerous articles on the philosophy of William James, John Dewey, and Luis Villoro.
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#10094

Susanna Paasonen

#141292
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Susanna Paasonen is a Finnish feminist scholar. She is a Professor of Media Studies at the University of Turku, and was a visiting scholar at MIT in 2016. She gained her PhD from the University of Turku in 2002; her dissertation was on gender and the popularization of the internet, which was later published through Peter Lang. After holding positions at the universities of Tampere, Jyväskylä and Helsinki, Paasonen was appointed Professor of Media Studies at the University of Turku on 1 August 2011, and publishes on internet research, media theory, sexuality, pornography and affect.
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#10095

Rolf Niedergerke

#23813
Overall Influence
1921 - 2011 (90 years)
Rolf Nidergerke was a German physiologist and physician, and one of the discoverers of the sliding filament theory of muscle contraction. He and Andrew Huxley, complimenting the independent works of Hugh Huxley and Jean Hanson, revealed that muscle contraction is due to shortening of the muscle fibres. He studied medicine throughout the Second World War, and obtained his MD degree as the war ended in 1945. After a brief practise in his hometown, he chose a research career. He became associated with Huxley, whom he joined at Cambridge University. Together they published a landmark paper in Nat...
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#10096

Chia‐hung Kao

#169450
Overall Influence
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#10097

Reidar Lie

#162953
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Reidar Krummradt Lie is a Norwegian philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University of Bergen. He is also adjunct professor at the Institute of Basic Medical Sciences in Beijing, China, and adjunct researcher at the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda Maryland, US. He was previously adjunct professor at the Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand, and director of the Center for Medical Ethics at the University of Oslo in Norway. Lie is known for his research on bioethics and research ethics.
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#10098

Kathryn C. Thornton

Kathryn C. Thornton
#10549
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Kathryn Ryan Cordell Thornton is an American scientist and a former NASA astronaut with over 975 hours in space, including 21 hours of extravehicular activity. She was the associate dean for graduate programs at the University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science, currently a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering.
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#10099

Diederik Gommers

#55534
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Diederik Gommers is a Dutch Intensive Care physician. He works at the Erasmus MC in Rotterdam and is chairman of the Dutch Union for Intensive Care. COVID-19 pandemic During the COVID-19 pandemic in the Netherlands, Gommers has been part of the Outbreak Management Team that instructs the government of Mark Rutte on measures required to reduce the spread of the disease Covid-19. He is also responsible for informing the Tweede Kamer on the current state of Intensive Care units in the Netherlands during the crisis.
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#10100

Sue Goldie

#42440
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Sue J. Goldie is the Roger Irving Lee Professor of Public Health, the Director of the Center for Health Decision Science , Director of the Global Health Education and Learning Incubator at Harvard University, and founding Faculty Director of the Harvard Global Health Institute . Goldie has a secondary appointment as Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine . Her professional agenda includes improving women's health in all parts of the world, using evidence-based policy to reduce global health inequities, building bridges between disciplines to tackle critical public health challenges...
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