PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: medicine
German scientist and philosopher
Hermann von Helmholtz, German scientist and philosopher who made fundamental contributions to physiology, optics, electrodynamics, mathematics, and meteorology. He is best known for his statement of the...
English physician
William Harvey, 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 brothers...
Persian philosopher and scientist
Avicenna, 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 philosophy...
German scientist
Rudolf Virchow, 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 theory...
Greek physician
Galen, 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-Swiss physician
Paracelsus, 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 syphilis...
German bacteriologist
Robert Koch, 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 discoveries...
Jewish philosopher, scholar, and physician
Moses Maimonides, 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 on...
Greek physician
Hippocrates, 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 from the...
British surgeon and medical scientist
Joseph Lister, 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 employed,...
Italian physician and physicist
Luigi Galvani, 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 pile,...
English surgeon
Edward Jenner, English surgeon and discoverer of vaccination for smallpox. Jenner was born at a time when the patterns of British medical practice and education were undergoing gradual change. Slowly the...
German chemist and physician
Georg Ernst Stahl, German educator, chemist, and esteemed medical theorist and practitioner. His chemical theory of phlogiston dominated European chemistry until the “Chemical Revolution” at the end of...
Italian scientist
Marcello Malpighi, Italian physician and biologist who, in developing experimental methods to study living things, founded the science of microscopic anatomy. After Malpighi’s researches, microscopic anatomy...
German scholar and scientist
Georgius Agricola, 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 singularly...
Canadian physician
Sir William Osler, Baronet, 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...
British physician
Erasmus Darwin, 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 Darwin...
French physician
René Laënnec, 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, died...
American neurologist
Walter Jackson Freeman II, American neurologist who, with American neurosurgeon James W. Watts, was responsible for introducing to the United States prefrontal lobotomy, an operation in which the destruction...
Belgian physician
Andreas Vesalius, 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 dissections...
Belgian scientist
Jan Baptista van Helmont, 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 of...
Hungarian physician
Ignaz Semmelweis, 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...
Swiss physician and naturalist
Conrad Gesner, 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 furrier,...
American pathologist and bacteriologist
Walter Reed, 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 Hospital, Washington, D.C., was named...
Japanese physician
Hiroshi Nakajima, 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 went...
British physician
John Snow, 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 Street...
American neurosurgeon and politician
Ben Carson, 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,...
English physician
William Withering, 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 accumulation...
British neurologist and writer
Oliver Sacks, 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 his...
American neurosurgeon and medical correspondent
Sanjay Gupta, 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...
British-born American physician and geneticist
Alexander Gordon Bearn, 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...
United States statesman and physician
Benjamin Rush, American physician and political leader, a member of the Continental Congress and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. His encouragement of clinical research and instruction was...
American physician
Helen Brooke Taussig, 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....
British American physician
Elizabeth Blackwell, 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 educated...
American physician
Jack Kevorkian, 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 University...
Spanish theologian
Michael Servetus, 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....
United States senator
Bill Frist , 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 University...
American physician and biologist
Robert J. Lefkowitz, 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 function...
American physician
Dean Ornish, 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 a...
Alsatian-German theologian and physician
Albert Schweitzer, Alsatian-German theologian, philosopher, organist, and mission doctor in equatorial Africa, who received the 1952 Nobel Prize for Peace for his efforts in behalf of “the Brotherhood...
American oncologist
Bert Vogelstein, 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,...
American relief worker and reformer
Annie Turner Wittenmyer, American relief worker and reformer who helped supply medical aid and dietary assistance to army hospitals during the Civil War and was subsequently an influential organizer in...
Scottish physician and professor
William Cullen, Scottish physician and professor of medicine, best known for his innovative teaching methods. Cullen received his early education at Hamilton Grammar School, in the town where he was born...
American businesswoman
Lydia E. Pinkham, successful American patent-medicine proprietor who claimed that her Vegetable Compound could cure any “female complaint” from nervous prostration to a prolapsed uterus. Lydia Estes grew...
American physician
Sara Josephine Baker, American physician who contributed significantly to public health and child welfare in the United States. Baker prepared at private schools for Vassar College, but the death of her...
American physician
Mary Putnam Jacobi, American physician, writer, educator, and suffragist who is considered to have been the foremost woman doctor of her era. Mary Putnam was the daughter of George Palmer Putnam, founder...
American physician and government official
Regina Benjamin, 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 families...
American physician
William H. Masters, American gynecologist who was a pioneer in the field of human sexuality research and sex therapy. With partner Virginia E. Johnson, Masters conducted groundbreaking research on sex...
American physician and reformer
Mary Edwards Walker, American physician and reformer who is thought to have been the first female surgeon formally engaged for field duty during the Civil War. She is the only woman to receive the Medal...
American physician
Andrew Weil, American physician and popularizer of alternative and integrative medicine. Weil was the only child of parents who owned a millinery supply store. As a child, he developed a strong interest...
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