PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: medicine
German scientist and philosopher
Hermann von Helmholtz was a German scientist and philosopher who made fundamental contributions to physiology, optics, electrodynamics, mathematics, and meteorology. He is best known for his statement...
Persian philosopher and scientist
Avicenna was a Muslim physician, the most famous and influential of the philosopher-scientists of the medieval Islamic world. He was particularly noted for his contributions in the fields of Aristotelian...
English physician
William Harvey was an English physician who was the first to recognize the full circulation of the blood in the human body and to provide experiments and arguments to support this idea. Harvey had seven...
German scientist
Rudolf Virchow was a German pathologist and statesman, one of the most prominent physicians of the 19th century. He pioneered the modern concept of pathological processes by his application of the cell...
physician and government official
Vivek Murthy is a doctor who has served (2014–17 and 2021– ) as U.S. surgeon general under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. He is the first person of Indian descent to be surgeon general. Murthy...
Jewish philosopher, scholar, and physician
Moses Maimonides was a Jewish philosopher, jurist, and physician, the foremost intellectual figure of medieval Judaism. His first major work, begun at age 23 and completed 10 years later, was a commentary...
Greek physician
Galen was a Greek physician, writer, and philosopher who exercised a dominant influence on medical theory and practice in Europe from the Middle Ages until the mid-17th century. His authority in the Byzantine...
German bacteriologist
Robert Koch was a German physician and one of the founders of bacteriology. He discovered the anthrax disease cycle (1876) and the bacteria responsible for tuberculosis (1882) and cholera (1883). For his...
German-Swiss physician
Paracelsus was a German-Swiss physician and alchemist who established the role of chemistry in medicine. He published Der grossen Wundartzney (Great Surgery Book) in 1536 and a clinical description of...
Greek physician
Hippocrates was an ancient Greek physician who lived during Greece’s Classical period and is traditionally regarded as the father of medicine. It is difficult to isolate the facts of Hippocrates’ life...
British surgeon and medical scientist
Joseph Lister was a British surgeon and medical scientist who was the founder of antiseptic medicine and a pioneer in preventive medicine. While his method, based on the use of antiseptics, is no longer...
Belgian microbiologist
Peter Piot is a Belgian microbiologist who served as executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), and under-secretary-general of the United Nations (1995–2008), best known...
Italian physician and physicist
Luigi Galvani was an Italian physician and physicist who investigated the nature and effects of what he conceived to be electricity in animal tissue. His discoveries led to the invention of the voltaic...
Italian scientist
Marcello Malpighi was an Italian physician and biologist who, in developing experimental methods to study living things, founded the science of microscopic anatomy. After Malpighi’s researches, microscopic...
German chemist and physician
Georg Ernst Stahl was a German educator, chemist, and esteemed medical theorist and practitioner. His chemical theory of phlogiston dominated European chemistry until the “Chemical Revolution” at the end...
English surgeon
Edward Jenner was an English surgeon and discoverer of a vaccine for smallpox. Jenner was born at a time when the patterns of British medical practice and education were undergoing gradual change. Slowly...
Canadian physician
Sir William Osler, Baronet was a Canadian physician and professor of medicine who practiced and taught in Canada, the United States, and Great Britain and whose book The Principles and Practice of Medicine...
American neurologist
Walter Jackson Freeman II was an American neurologist who, with American neurosurgeon James W. Watts, was responsible for introducing to the United States prefrontal lobotomy, an operation in which the...
German scholar and scientist
Georgius Agricola was a German scholar and scientist known as “the father of mineralogy.” While a highly educated classicist and humanist, well regarded by scholars of his own and later times, he was yet...
American politician and physician
Jill Stein is a former practicing physician and an environmental activist who has run as the candidate of the Green Party of the United States in multiple elections. She was the Green Party’s 2024 presidential...
American neurosurgeon and politician
Ben Carson is an American politician and neurosurgeon who performed the first successful separation of conjoined twins who were attached at the back of the head (occipital craniopagus twins). The operation,...
American neurosurgeon and medical correspondent
Sanjay Gupta is an American neurosurgeon and chief medical correspondent for CNN (Cable News Network). Gupta is best known for his captivating reports on health and medical topics, as well as his appearances...
Australian physician
Weary Dunlop was an Australian physician, one of the most famous Australian World War II veterans, remembered for the compassionate medical care and leadership he provided for fellow prisoners of war (POWs)...
French physician
René Laënnec was a French physician who invented the stethoscope and perfected the art of auditory examination of the chest cavity. When Laënnec was five years old, his mother, Michelle Félicité Guesdon,...
Belgian scientist
Jan Baptista van Helmont was a Flemish physician, philosopher, mystic, and chemist who recognized the existence of discrete gases and identified carbon dioxide. Van Helmont was born into a wealthy family...
Hungarian physician
Ignaz Semmelweis was a Hungarian physician who discovered the cause of puerperal (childbed) fever and introduced antisepsis into medical practice. Educated at the universities of Pest and Vienna, Semmelweis...
Japanese physician
Hiroshi Nakajima was a Japanese physician and director general of the World Health Organization (WHO; 1988–98). Nakajima studied at Tokyo Medical College, where he received a doctorate in 1954. He then...
American pathologist and bacteriologist
Walter Reed was a U.S. Army pathologist and bacteriologist who led the experiments that proved that yellow fever is transmitted by the bite of a mosquito. The Walter Reed National Military Medical Center,...
British physician
Erasmus Darwin was a British physician, poet, and botanist noted for his republican politics and materialistic theory of evolution. Although today he is best known as the grandfather of naturalist Charles...
Belgian physician
Andreas Vesalius was a Renaissance physician who revolutionized the study of biology and the practice of medicine by his careful description of the anatomy of the human body. Basing his observations on...
Somalian physician, lawyer, and activist
Hawa Abdi was a Somali physician, lawyer, community leader, and human rights activist. Amid the dangerous landscape of the Somali Civil War, Abdi organized a safe shelter, school, and clinical camp for...
British neurologist and writer
Oliver Sacks was a British neurologist and writer who won acclaim for his sympathetic case histories of patients with unusual neurological disorders. Sacks spent most of his childhood in London, though...
American physician and reformer
Susan La Flesche Picotte was the first Native American to earn a medical degree in the United States. La Flesche Picotte dedicated herself to the care of the Omaha tribal community to which she belonged....
Swiss physician and naturalist
Conrad Gesner was a Swiss physician and naturalist best known for his systematic compilations of information on animals and plants. Noting his learning ability at an early age, his father, an impecunious...
British physician
John Snow was an English physician known for his seminal studies of cholera and widely viewed as the father of contemporary epidemiology. His best-known studies include his investigation of London’s Broad...
British-born American physician and geneticist
Alexander Gordon Bearn was a British-born American physician and geneticist who discovered the hereditary nature of Wilson disease and established the basis for diagnostic tests and novel forms of treatment...
Turkish American surgeon, educator, and author
Mehmet Oz is a Turkish American surgeon, educator, author, and television personality who cowrote the popular YOU series of health books and hosted The Dr. Oz Show (2009–22). In 2022 Oz ran as a Republican...
English physician
William Withering was an English physician best known for his use of extracts of foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) to treat dropsy (edema), a condition associated with heart failure and characterized by the...
American physician
Helen Brooke Taussig was an American physician recognized as the founder of pediatric cardiology, best known for her contributions to the development of the first successful treatment of “blue baby” syndrome....
American physician
Jack Kevorkian was an American physician who gained international attention through his assistance in the suicides of more than 100 patients, many of whom were terminally ill. Jack Kevorkian attended the...
British physician
William Farr was a British physician who pioneered the quantitative study of morbidity (disease incidence) and mortality (death), helping establish the field of medical statistics. Farr is considered to...
British American physician
Elizabeth Blackwell was an Anglo-American physician who is considered the first woman doctor of medicine in modern times. Elizabeth Blackwell was of a large, prosperous, and cultured family and was well...
American physician and government official
Regina Benjamin is an American physician who served as the 18th surgeon general of the United States (2009–13). Prior to her government appointment, she had spent most of her medical career serving poor...
Spanish theologian
Michael Servetus was a Spanish physician and theologian whose unorthodox teachings led to his condemnation as a heretic by both Protestants and Roman Catholics and to his execution by Calvinists from Geneva....
American physician
Dean Ornish is an American physician and author whose approach to treating heart disease through radical diet modification and exercise generated significant debate in the medical community and attracted...
American physician and biologist
Robert J. Lefkowitz is an American physician and molecular biologist who demonstrated the existence of receptors—molecules that receive and transmit signals for cells. His research on the structure and...
American oncologist
Bert Vogelstein is an American oncologist known for his groundbreaking work on the genetics of cancer. Vogelstein was raised in Baltimore and attended a private middle school from which he was often truant,...
German physician
Magnus Hirschfeld was a German physician who was an important theorist of sexuality and a prominent advocate of gay rights in the early 20th century. Hirschfeld was born to Jewish parents in a Prussian...
United States senator
Bill Frist is an American politician and physician who served as a U.S. senator (1995–2007) from Tennessee. A Republican, he was Senate majority leader from 2003 to 2007. Frist graduated from Princeton...
British physician
Archibald Leman Cochrane was a British physician who contributed greatly to the development of epidemiology, emphasized the necessity for randomized control trials (RCTs) in medical studies, and was a...
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