Sigmund Freud
1856 - 1939 (83 years)
Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies in the psyche through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst.
Go to ProfileIgnaz Semmelweis
1818 - 1865 (47 years)
Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis was an ethnic German-Hungarian physician and scientist born in the Kingdom of Hungary, Austrian Empire, now known as an early pioneer of antiseptic procedures. Described as the "saviour of mothers", Semmelweis discovered that the incidence of puerperal fever could be drastically cut by the use of hand disinfection in obstetrical clinics. Puerperal fever was common in mid-19th-century hospitals and often fatal. Semmelweis proposed the practice of washing hands with chlorinated lime solutions in 1847 while working in Vienna General Hospital's First Obstetrical Clinic, where doctors' wards had three times the mortality of midwives' wards.
Go to ProfileJean-Martin Charcot
1825 - 1893 (68 years)
Jean-Martin Charcot was a French neurologist and professor of anatomical pathology. He worked on hypnosis and hysteria, in particular with his hysteria patient Louise Augustine Gleizes. Charcot is known as "the founder of modern neurology", and his name has been associated with at least 15 medical eponyms, including various conditions sometimes referred to as Charcot diseases.
Go to ProfileWilliam Stewart Halsted
1852 - 1922 (70 years)
William Stewart Halsted, M.D. was a US surgeon who emphasized strict aseptic technique during surgical procedures, was an early champion of newly discovered anaesthetics, and introduced several new operations, including the radical mastectomy for breast cancer. Along with William Osler , Howard Atwood Kelly and William H. Welch , Halsted was one of the "Big Four" founding professors at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. His operating room at Johns Hopkins Hospital is in Ward G, and was described as a small room where medical discoveries and miracles took place. According to an intern who once worke...
Go to ProfileJ. Marion Sims
1813 - 1883 (70 years)
James Marion Sims was an American physician in the field of surgery, known as the "father of modern gynecology" – but also as a controversial figure, due to the ethical questions raised by how he developed his techniques. His most significant work was the development of a surgical technique for the repair of vesicovaginal fistula, a severe complication of obstructed childbirth. He is also remembered for inventing Sims' speculum, Sims' sigmoid catheter, and the Sims' position. However, as medical ethicist Barron H. Lerner states, "one would be hard pressed to find a more controversial figure i...
Go to ProfileHarvey Cushing
1869 - 1939 (70 years)
Harvey Williams Cushing was an American neurosurgeon, pathologist, writer, and draftsman. A pioneer of brain surgery, he was the first exclusive neurosurgeon and the first person to describe Cushing's disease. He wrote a biography of William Osler in three volumes.
Go to ProfileIvan Pavlov
1849 - 1936 (87 years)
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was a Russian physiologist known primarily for his work in classical conditioning. From his childhood days, Pavlov demonstrated intellectual curiosity along with an unusual energy which he referred to as "the instinct for research". Inspired by the progressive ideas which Dmitry Pisarev, a Russian literary critic of the 1860s, and Ivan Sechenov, the father of Russian physiology, were spreading, Pavlov abandoned his religious career and devoted his life to science. In 1870, he enrolled in the physics and mathematics department at the University of Saint Petersburg to stud...
Go to ProfileWilliam Beaumont
1785 - 1853 (68 years)
William Beaumont was a surgeon in the U.S. Army who became known as the "Father of Gastric Physiology" following his research on human digestion. Biography Early life William Beaumont was born to Samuel Beaumont and Lucretia Abel in Lebanon, Connecticut; his father was a farmer. He left his home after he turned twenty-one, moved to Champlain, New York and obtained a teaching job. In 1810 he relocated to St. Albans, Vermont where he trained to become a physician through an apprenticeship with Dr. Truman Powell. In June 1812, the Third Medical Society of the State of Vermont in Burlington exa...
Go to ProfileChristiaan Barnard
1922 - 2001 (79 years)
Christiaan Neethling Barnard was a South African cardiac surgeon who performed the world's first human-to-human heart transplant operation. On 3 December 1967, Barnard transplanted the heart of accident-victim Denise Darvall into the chest of 54-year-old Louis Washkansky, with Washkansky regaining full consciousness and being able to talk easily with his wife, before dying eighteen days later of pneumonia, largely brought on by the anti-rejection drugs that suppressed his immune system. Barnard had told Mr. and Mrs. Washkansky that the operation had an 80% chance of success, an assessment which has been criticised as misleading.
Go to ProfilePaul Ehrlich
1854 - 1915 (61 years)
Paul Ehrlich was a Nobel Prize-winning German physician and scientist who worked in the fields of hematology, immunology, and antimicrobial chemotherapy. Among his foremost achievements were finding a cure for syphilis in 1909 and inventing the precursor technique to Gram staining bacteria. The methods he developed for staining tissue made it possible to distinguish between different types of blood cells, which led to the ability to diagnose numerous blood diseases.
Go to ProfileAlfred Blalock
1899 - 1964 (65 years)
Alfred Blalock was an American surgeon most noted for his work on the medical condition of shock as well as Tetralogy of Fallot— commonly known as Blue baby syndrome. He created, with assistance from his research and laboratory assistant Vivien Thomas and pediatric cardiologist Helen Taussig, the Blalock-Thomas-Taussig Shunt, a surgical procedure to relieve the cyanosis from Tetralogy of Fallot. This operation ushered in the modern era of cardiac surgery. He worked at both Vanderbilt University and Johns Hopkins University, where he studied both as an undergraduate and worked as chief of surgery.
Go to ProfileAmbroise Paré
1510 - 1590 (80 years)
Ambroise Paré was a French barber surgeon who served in that role for kings Henry II, Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III. He is considered one of the fathers of surgery and modern forensic pathology and a pioneer in surgical techniques and battlefield medicine, especially in the treatment of wounds. He was also an anatomist, invented several surgical instruments, and was a member of the Parisian barber surgeon guild.
Go to ProfileHarold Gillies
1882 - 1960 (78 years)
Sir Harold Delf Gillies was a New Zealand-born British otolaryngologist and father of modern plastic surgery. Early life Gillies was born in Dunedin, New Zealand, the son of Robert Gillies. He attended Wanganui Collegiate School and studied medicine at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where despite a stiff elbow sustained sliding down the banisters at home as a child, he was an excellent sportsman. He was a golf blue in 1903, 1904 and 1905 and also a rowing blue, competing in the 1904 Boat Race.
Go to ProfileJohn Snow
1813 - 1858 (45 years)
John Snow was an English physician and a leader in the development of anaesthesia and medical hygiene. He is considered one of the founders of modern epidemiology, in part because of his work in tracing the source of a cholera outbreak in Soho, London, in 1854, which he curtailed by removing the handle of a water pump. Snow's findings inspired the adoption of anaesthesia as well as fundamental changes in the water and waste systems of London, which led to similar changes in other cities, and a significant improvement in general public health around the world.
Go to ProfileJohn Hunter
1728 - 1793 (65 years)
John Hunter was a Scottish surgeon, one of the most distinguished scientists and surgeons of his day. He was an early advocate of careful observation and scientific method in medicine. He was a teacher of, and collaborator with, Edward Jenner, pioneer of the smallpox vaccine. He is alleged to have paid for the stolen body of Charles Byrne, and proceeded to study and exhibit it against the deceased's explicit wishes. His wife, Anne Hunter , was a poet, some of whose poems were set to music by Joseph Haydn.
Go to ProfileSamuel Hahnemann
1755 - 1843 (88 years)
Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann was a German physician, best known for creating the pseudoscientific system of alternative medicine called homeopathy. Early life Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann was born in Meissen, Saxony, near Dresden. His father Christian Gottfried Hahnemann was a painter and designer of porcelain, for which the town of Meissen is famous.
Go to ProfileEdward Angle
1855 - 1930 (75 years)
Edward Hartley Angle was an American dentist, widely regarded as "the father of American orthodontics". He was trained as a dentist, but made orthodontics his speciality and dedicated his life to standardizing the teaching and practice of orthodontics. He founded the Angle School of Orthodontia in 1899 in St. Louis and schools in other regions of the United States.
Go to ProfileCharles Bell
1774 - 1842 (68 years)
Sir Charles Bell was a Scottish surgeon, anatomist, physiologist, neurologist, artist, and philosophical theologian. He is noted for discovering the difference between sensory nerves and motor nerves in the spinal cord. He is also noted for describing Bell's palsy.
Go to ProfilePierre Marie
1853 - 1940 (87 years)
Pierre Marie was a French neurologist and political journalist close to the SFIO. Medical Career After finishing medical school, he served as an interne , working as an assistant to neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot at the Salpêtrière and Bicêtre Hospitals in Paris. In 1883 he received his medical doctorate with a graduate thesis on Basedow’s disease, being promoted to médecin des hôpitaux several years later . In 1907 he attained the chair of pathological anatomy at the Faculty of Medicine, and in 1917 was appointed to the chair of neurology, a position he held until 1925. In 1911 Marie becam...
Go to ProfilePierre Fauchard
1679 - 1761 (82 years)
Pierre Fauchard was a French physician, credited as being the "father of modern dentistry". He is widely known for writing the first complete scientific description of dentistry, Le Chirurgien Dentiste , published in 1728. The book described basic oral anatomy and function, signs and symptoms of oral pathology, operative methods for removing decay and restoring teeth, periodontal disease , orthodontics, replacement of missing teeth, and tooth transplantation.
Go to ProfilePaul Broca
1824 - 1880 (56 years)
Pierre Paul Broca was a French physician, anatomist and anthropologist. He is best known for his research on Broca's area, a region of the frontal lobe that is named after him. Broca's area is involved with language. His work revealed that the brains of patients suffering from aphasia contained lesions in a particular part of the cortex, in the left frontal region. This was the first anatomical proof of localization of brain function. Broca's work also contributed to the development of physical anthropology, advancing the science of anthropometry.
Go to ProfilePercivall Pott
1714 - 1788 (74 years)
Percivall Pott was an English surgeon, one of the founders of orthopaedics, and the first scientist to demonstrate that a cancer may be caused by an environmental carcinogen. Career He served his apprenticeship with Edward Nourse, assistant surgeon to St Bartholomew's Hospital, and in 1736 was admitted to the Barbers' Company and licensed to practice. He became assistant surgeon to St Bartholomew's in 1744 and full surgeon from 1749 till 1787.
Go to ProfileCarl Wernicke
1848 - 1905 (57 years)
Carl Wernicke was a German physician, anatomist, psychiatrist and neuropathologist. He is known for his influential research into the pathological effects of specific forms of encephalopathy and also the study of receptive aphasia, both of which are commonly associated with Wernicke's name and referred to as Wernicke encephalopathy and Wernicke's aphasia, respectively. His research, along with that of Paul Broca, led to groundbreaking realizations of the localization of brain function, specifically in speech. As such, Wernicke's area has been named after the scientist.
Go to ProfileHoward Atwood Kelly
1858 - 1943 (85 years)
Howard Atwood Kelly , M.D., was an American gynecologist. He obtained his B.A. degree and M.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He, William Osler, William Halsted, and William Welch together are known as the "Big Four", the founding professors at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. He is credited with establishing gynecology as a specialty by developing new surgical approaches to gynecological diseases and pathological research. He also developed several medical innovations, including the improved cystoscope, Kelly's clamp, Kelly's speculum, and Kelly's forceps. Becau...
Go to ProfileDominique Jean Larrey
1766 - 1842 (76 years)
Baron Dominique Jean Larrey was a French surgeon and military doctor, who distinguished himself in the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. An important innovator in battlefield medicine and triage, he is often considered the first modern military surgeon.
Go to ProfileArchie Cochrane
1909 - 1988 (79 years)
Archibald Leman Cochrane CBE was a Scottish doctor noted for his book Effectiveness and Efficiency: Random Reflections on Health Services. This book advocated the use of randomized control trials to make medicine more effective and efficient. His advocacy of randomized controlled trials eventually led to the development of the Cochrane Library database of systematic reviews, the establishment of the UK Cochrane Centre in Oxford and the international organisation Cochrane. He is known as one of the fathers of modern clinical epidemiology and evidence-based medicine and is considered to be the ...
Go to ProfileOliver Sacks
1933 - 2015 (82 years)
Oliver Wolf Sacks, was a British neurologist, naturalist, historian of science, and writer. Born in Britain, Sacks received his medical degree from The Queen's College, Oxford in 1960, before moving to the United States, where he spent most of his career. He then interned at Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco and completed his residency in neurology and neuropathology at the University of California, Los Angeles . After a fellowship at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, he served as neurologist at Beth Abraham Hospital's chronic-care facility in the Bronx, where he worked with a grou...
Go to ProfileThomas Willis
1621 - 1675 (54 years)
Thomas Willis FRS was an English doctor who played an important part in the history of anatomy, neurology and psychiatry. He was a founding member of the Royal Society. Life Willis was born on his parents' farm in Great Bedwyn, Wiltshire, where his father held the stewardship of the Manor. He was a kinsman of the Willys baronets of Fen Ditton, Cambridgeshire. He graduated M.A. from Christ Church, Oxford in 1642. In the Civil War years he was a royalist, dispossessed of the family farm at North Hinksey by Parliamentary forces. In the 1640s Willis was one of the royal physicians to Charles I of England.Once qualified B.
Go to ProfileAlexander Fleming
1881 - 1955 (74 years)
Sir Alexander Fleming was a Scottish physician and microbiologist, best known for discovering the world's first broadly effective antibiotic substance, which he named penicillin. His discovery in 1928 of what was later named benzylpenicillin from the mould Penicillium rubens is described as the "single greatest victory ever achieved over disease." For this discovery, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain.
Go to ProfileAndreas Vesalius
1514 - 1564 (50 years)
Andreas Vesalius was a 16th-century anatomist, physician, and author of one of the most influential books on human anatomy, De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem . Vesalius is often referred to as the founder of modern human anatomy. He was born in Brussels, which was then part of the Habsburg Netherlands. He was a professor at the University of Padua and later became Imperial physician at the court of Emperor Charles V.
Go to ProfileJohn Hughlings Jackson
1835 - 1911 (76 years)
John Hughlings Jackson, FRS was an English neurologist. He is best known for his research on epilepsy. Biography He was born at Providence Green, Green Hammerton, near Harrogate, Yorkshire, the youngest son of Samuel Jackson, a brewer and yeoman who owned and farmed his land, and Sarah Jackson , the daughter of a Welsh revenue collector. His mother died just over a year after giving birth to him. He had three brothers and a sister; his brothers emigrated to New Zealand and his sister married a physician. He was educated at Tadcaster, Yorkshire and Nailsworth, Gloucestershire before attending the York Medical and Surgical School.
Go to ProfileVladimir Bekhterev
1857 - 1927 (70 years)
Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev was a Russian neurologist and the father of objective psychology. He is best known for noting the role of the hippocampus in memory, his study of reflexes, and Bekhterev’s disease. Moreover, he is known for his competition with Ivan Pavlov regarding the study of conditioned reflexes.
Go to ProfileAlexander Shulgin
1925 - 2014 (89 years)
Alexander Theodore "Sasha" Shulgin was an American medicinal chemist, biochemist, organic chemist, pharmacologist, psychopharmacologist, and author. He is credited with introducing 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine to psychologists in the late 1970s for psychopharmaceutical use and for the discovery, synthesis and personal bioassay of over 230 psychoactive compounds for their psychedelic and entactogenic potential.
Go to ProfileJoseph Murray
1919 - 2012 (93 years)
Joseph Edward Murray was an American plastic surgeon who performed the first successful human kidney transplant on identical twins Richard and Ronald Herrick on December 23, 1954. Murray shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1990 with E. Donnall Thomas for their discoveries concerning "organ and cell transplantation in the treatment of human disease."
Go to ProfileJonas Salk
1914 - 1995 (81 years)
Jonas Edward Salk was an American virologist and medical researcher who developed one of the first successful polio vaccines. He was born in New York City and attended the City College of New York and New York University School of Medicine.
Go to ProfileAlbert Sabin
1906 - 1993 (87 years)
Albert Bruce Sabin was a Polish-American medical researcher, best known for developing the oral polio vaccine, which has played a key role in nearly eradicating the disease. In 1969–72, he served as the President of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.
Go to ProfileDenton Cooley
1920 - 2016 (96 years)
Denton Arthur Cooley was an American heart and cardiothoracic surgeon famous for performing the first implantation of a total artificial heart. Cooley was also the founder and surgeon in-chief of The Texas Heart Institute, chief of Cardiovascular Surgery at clinical partner Baylor St. Luke's Medical Center, consultant in Cardiovascular Surgery at Texas Children's Hospital and a clinical professor of Surgery at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.
Go to ProfileFerdinand Ritter von Hebra
1816 - 1880 (64 years)
Ferdinand Karl Franz Schwarzmann, Ritter von Hebra was an Austrian physician and dermatologist known as the founder of the New Vienna School of Dermatology, an important group of physicians who established the foundations of modern dermatology.
Go to ProfileFe del Mundo
1911 - 2011 (100 years)
Fe Villanueva del Mundo, , was a Filipina pediatrician. She founded the first pediatric hospital in the Philippines and is known for shaping the modern child healthcare system in the Philippines. Her pioneering work in pediatrics in the Philippines while in active medical practice spanned eight decades. She gained international recognition, including the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service in 1977. In 1980, she was conferred the rank and title of National Scientist of the Philippines, and in 2010, she was conferred the Order of Lakandula. She was the first female president of the Philippine Pediatric Society and the first woman to be named National Scientist of the Philippines in 1980.
Go to ProfileGuy de Chauliac
1300 - 1368 (68 years)
Guy de Chauliac , also called Guido or Guigo de Cauliaco , was a French physician and surgeon who wrote a lengthy and influential treatise on surgery in Latin, titled Chirurgia Magna. It was translated into many other languages and widely read by physicians in late medieval Europe.
Go to ProfileHorace Wells
1815 - 1848 (33 years)
Horace Wells was an American dentist who pioneered the use of anesthesia in dentistry, specifically the use of nitrous oxide . Early life Wells was the first of three children of Horace and Betsy Heath Wells, born on January 21, 1815 in Hartford, Vermont. His parents were well-educated and affluent land owners, which allowed him to attend private schools in New Hampshire and Amherst, Massachusetts. At the age of 19 in 1834, Wells began studying dentistry under a 2-year apprenticeship in Boston. The first dental school did not open until 1840 in Baltimore.
Go to ProfileOtto Loewi
1873 - 1961 (88 years)
Otto Loewi was a German-born pharmacologist and psychobiologist who discovered the role of acetylcholine as an endogenous neurotransmitter. For his discovery he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1936, which he shared with Sir Henry Dale, who was a lifelong friend that helped to inspire the neurotransmitter experiment. Loewi met Dale in 1902 when spending some months in Ernest Starling's laboratory at University College, London.
Go to ProfileDaniel Hale Williams
1858 - 1931 (73 years)
Daniel Hale Williams was an American general surgeon, who in 1893 performed what is referred to as "the first successful heart surgery". In 1913, Williams was elected as the only African-American charter member of the American College of Surgeons.
Go to ProfileFerdinand Sauerbruch
1875 - 1951 (76 years)
Ernst Ferdinand Sauerbruch was a German surgeon. Biography Sauerbruch was born in Barmen , Germany. He studied medicine at the Philipps University of Marburg, the University of Greifswald, the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, and the University of Leipzig, from the last of which he graduated in 1902. He went to Breslau in 1903, where he developed the Sauerbruch chamber, a pressure chamber for operating on the open thorax, which he demonstrated in 1904. This invention was a breakthrough in thorax medicine and allowed heart and lung operations to take place at greatly reduced risk. As a b...
Go to ProfileGeorge E. Goodfellow
1855 - 1910 (55 years)
George Emory Goodfellow was a physician and naturalist in the 19th- and early 20th-century American Old West who developed a reputation as the United States' foremost expert in treating gunshot wounds. As a medical practitioner in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, Goodfellow treated numerous bullet wounds to both lawmen and outlaws. He recorded several significant medical firsts throughout his career, including performing the first documented laparotomy for treating an abdominal gunshot wound and the first perineal prostatectomy to remove an enlarged prostate. He also pioneered the use of spinal ...
Go to ProfileRichard Doll
1912 - 2005 (93 years)
Sir William Richard Shaboe Doll was a British physician who became an epidemiologist in the mid-20th century and made important contributions to that discipline. He was a pioneer in research linking smoking to health problems. With Ernst Wynder, Bradford Hill and Evarts Graham, he was credited with being the first to prove that smoking increased the risk of :lung cancer and :heart disease.
Go to ProfileNikolay Pirogov
1810 - 1881 (71 years)
Nikolay Ivanovich Pirogov was a Russian scientist, medical doctor, pedagogue, public figure, and corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences , one of the most widely recognized Russian physicians. Considered to be the founder of field surgery, he was the first surgeon to use anaesthesia in a field operation and one of the first surgeons in Europe to use ether as an anaesthetic. He is credited with invention of various kinds of surgical operations and developing his own technique of using plaster castss to treat fractured bones.
Go to ProfileRonald Ross
1857 - 1932 (75 years)
Sir Ronald Ross was a British medical doctor who received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1902 for his work on the transmission of malaria, becoming the first British Nobel laureate, and the first born outside Europe. His discovery of the malarial parasite in the gastrointestinal tract of a mosquito in 1897 proved that malaria was transmitted by mosquitoes, and laid the foundation for the method of combating the disease. He was a polymath, writing a number of poems, published several novels, and composed songs. He was also an amateur artist and natural mathematician. He worked in the Indian Medical Service for 25 years.
Go to ProfileJoseph Babinski
1857 - 1932 (75 years)
Joseph Jules François Félix Babinski was a French-Polish professor of neurology. He is best known for his 1896 description of the Babinski sign, a pathological plantar reflex indicative of corticospinal tract damage.
Go to ProfileFerid Murad
1936 - Present (86 years)
Ferid Murad is an American physician and pharmacologist, and a co-winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He is married to Carol A. Murad with whom he has five children and nine grandchildren.
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