List of physicians
This is a list of famous physicians in history:
Physicians famous for their role in advancement of medicine
- Thomas Addis (1881-1949) who pioneered urine testing and the study of renal diseases
- Virginia Apgar (1909-1974) - anesthesiologist who devised the Apgar score used after childbirth
- Hans Asperger (1906–1980) - Austrian paediatrician after whom Asperger's Syndrome is named
- Jean Astruc (1684-1766) - wrote one of the first treatises on syphilis
- Averroës (1126-1198)
- Avicenna (980-1037) - Persian physician
- Frederick Banting (1891-1941) - isolated insulin
- Christiaan Barnard (1922-2001) - performed first heart transplant
- Charles Best (1899-1978) - assisted in the discovery of insulin
- Norman Bethune (1890-1939) - developer of battlefield surgical techniques
- Theodor Billroth (1829-1894) - founding father of modern abdominal surgery
- Charaka Indian physician
- Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893) - pioneering neurologist
- Charles R. Drew (1904-1950) - blood transfusion pioneer
- Galen (A.D. 129- c. 210) - Roman physician and anatomist
- Garcia de Orta (1501-1568) - revealed herbal medicines of India, described Cholera
- Christiaan Eijkman (1858-1930) - pathologist, studied beriberi
- Pierre Fauchard father of dentistry
- Girolamo Fracastoro (1473-1553) - wrote on syphilis, forerunner of germ theory
- Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) - founder of psychoanalysis
- Daniel Carleton Gajdusek (b. 1923) - studied Kuru, Nobel prize winner
- William Harvey (1578-1657) - English physician, described the circulatory system
- Hippocrates (c. 460-370 BCE) - Greek father of medicine
- Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) - physician and anatomist
- Edward Jenner (1749-1823) - English physician popularized vaccination
- Carl Jung (1875-1961) - Swiss psychiatrist
- Leo Kanner (1894–1981) - Austrian-American psychiatrist and physician known for his work related to autism
- Robert Koch (1843-1910) - formulated Koch's postulates
- Theodor Kocher - thyroid surgery and first surgeon to win the Nobel Prize
- Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laennec (1781-1826) - inventor of the stethoscope
- Janet Lane-Claypon (1877–1967) - pioneer of epidemiology
- Joseph Lister (1827-1912) - pioneer of antiseptic surgery
- Richard Lower (1631-1691) - studied the lungs and heart
- Amato Lusitano (1511-1568) - discovered venous valves, studied blood circulation
- Madhav (8th century A.D.) - medical text author and systematizer
- Maimonides (1135-1204)
- Marcello Malpighi (1628-1694) - Italian anatomist, pioneer in histology
- Otto Fritz Meyerhof (1884-1951) - studied muscle metabolism (Nobel prize)
- George Richards Minot (1885-1950) - Nobel prize for his study of anemia
- Charles Horace Mayo (1865-1939) - co-founder, Mayo Clinic
- William James Mayo (1861-1939) - co-founder, Mayo Clinic
- Egas Moniz (1874-1955) - developed Lobotomy and brain artery angiography.
- William Worrall Mayo (1819-1911) - co-founder, Mayo Clinic
- William McBride discovered teratogenicity of thalidomide
- Charles Jean Henri Nicolle (1866-1936) - microbiologist who won Nobel prize for work on typhus
- William Osler (1849-1919) - called the "Father of Modern Medicine"
- Ralph Paffenbarger - conducted classic studies demonstrating conclusively that active people reduce their risk of heart disease and live longer
- Paracelsus (1493-1541)
- Ambroise Paré (1510-1590) - advanced surgical wound treatment
- Wilder Penfield (1891-1876) - pioneer in neurology
- Joseph Ransohoff (1915-2001) - neurosurgeon who invented the modern technique for removing brain tumors
- Rhazes (A.D. c. 854-925) (Abu Bakr Mohammad Ibn Zakariya al-Razi)
- Jonas Salk (1914-1995) - developed a vaccine for polio
- Ignaz Semmelweis (1818-1865) - a pioneer of avoiding cross-infection - introduced hand washing and instrument cleaning
- John Snow (1813-1858) - anaesthetist and pioneer epidemiologist who studied cholera
- Susruta (c. 500 BCE) Indian physician and pioneering surgeon
- Thomas Sydenham (1642-1689) - clinician
- Maria C. Tan (1971- ) - pediatric infectious disease researcher
- James Mourilyan Tanner (1920- ) - developed Tanner stages and advanced auxology
- Carlo Urbani (1956-2003) - discovered, and died from, SARS
- Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) - Belgian anatomist
- Craig Wexler (1954- ) - Pioneer in the field of podiatry
- Allen Oldfather Whipple (1881-1963) - devised the Whipple procedure in 1935 for treatment of pancreatic cancer
- Carl Wood in vitro fertilization
- Ole Wormius (1588-1654) - pioneer in embryology
- Sir Magdi Yacoub (1935- ) - One of the leading developers of the techniques of heart and heart-lung transplantation
Physicians otherwise notable as practitioners
- Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836-1917) - first British woman to practice as a doctor
- Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910) - first woman to practice modern medicine
- Sir Horace Evans - UK royal physician
- Jack Kevorkian (1923- ) - right-to-assisted-death advocate
- Alphonse Laveran (Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran) (1845-1922) - parasitology
- Johann Friedrich Struensee (1737-1772) - royal physician of Christian VII of Denmark
Physicians famous chiefly as eponyms
- Thomas Addison (1793-1860) - Addison's disease
- Alois Alzheimer (1864-1915) - Alzheimer's disease
- Robert Barany (1876-1936) - the Barany chair is used in the study of vertigo
- Charles Édouard Brown-Sequard (1817-1894)
- Albert Calmette (1863-1933)- Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), a vaccine for tuberculosis
- Carlos Chagas (1879-1934) - Chagas disease
- Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893) - Maladie de Charcot, Charcot joints, Charcot's triad, Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease
- Burrill Bernard Crohn (1884-1983) - Crohn's disease
- Louis Hamman (1877-1946) Hamman's sign, Hamman's syndrome Hamman-Rich syndrome
- Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (1738-1814) - Guillotine
- Charles Mantoux (1877-1947) - Mantoux test for tuberculosis
- Antoine Marfan (1858-1942) - Marfan syndrome
- Silas Weir Mitchell (1829-1914) - Mitchell's disease
- James Paget (1814-1899) - Paget's disease
- James Parkinson (1755-1824) - Parkinson's syndrome
- Cecil Charles Worster-Drought (1888-1971) Worster-Drought syndrome
Physicians famous as criminals
- Karl Brandt (1904-1948) - Nazi human experimentation
- Baruch Goldstein - assassin
- Radovan Karadžić (b. 1945) - accused of ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia
- Josef Mengele (1911-1979) - known as the Angel of Death, Nazi human experimentation
- Samuel Mudd - condemned to prison for setting the leg of Abraham Lincoln's assassin
- Herta Oberheuser (1911-1978) - Nazi human experimentation
- Jack Kevorkian (1923- ) - convicted of second-degree murder, Michigan, April 13, 1999
- Harold Shipman - British mass murderer
Physicians famous as writers
see also A Roster of Physician Writers
The most famous writers:
- Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) - Russian playwright
- Erasmus Darwin - English poet
- Alfred de Musset (1810-1857) - known as a writer, but also discovered de Musset's sign, an indicator of syphilitic aortitis
- John Keats (1795-1821) - British poet.
- François Rabelais (1483-1553) - French author of Gargantua and Pantagruel.
- Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805), German writer, poet, essayist and dramatist.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) - British author of Sherlock Holmes fame.
- William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) - American writer, essayist and poet
- A. J. Cronin (1896-1981) - Scottish novelist and essayist, author of The Citadel.
- W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) - British writer (e.g., Of Human Bondage.
- Michael Crichton (born 1942) - American author of Jurassic Park blockbuster fame.
- Robin Cook - American author of The Year of the Intern (1972), Coma (1977), Outbreak (1987), Fatal Cure (1994), Toxin (1999), and other novels.
And others:
- Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) - British writer
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894) - American essayist
- Ctesias (5th century B.C.) - Greek historian
- David Livingstone
- Albert Schweitzer(1875 – 1965) - German theologian and philosopher
- Mungo Park
- Sir William Gilbert
- Thomas Campion - poet, composer
- Arnie Baker - cycling coach
- John Arbuthnot - author
- H. Richard Hornberger author of M*A*S*H
- Oliver Goldsmith - American author
- Michael Cook - American writer of suspense novels
- Tobias Smollett (1721-1771) - author
- Patrick Abercromby (1656 - ~ 1716) - historian
- Arthur Johnston (1587-1641) - poet
- Georg Büchner - German dramatist
- Ludwig Büchner - German philosopher
- Kurt Schopenhauer - German writer and philosopher
- João Guimarães Rosa - Brazilian writer
- Silas Weir Mitchell (1829-1914) - American writer
- Lewis Thomas (1913-1993) - American essayist and poet
- Adeline Yen Mah - Chinese-American author.
- Janet Asimov - (born 1926) (née Janet O. Jeppson). American psychiatrist, wife of Isaac Asimov.
- Deepak Chopra - Indian/American writer of self-help and health books
- Alex Comfort (1920-2000) - British writer and poet, author of The Joy of Sex.
- Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802). British poet and founder of the Lunar Society. The grandfather of Charles Darwin and Francis Galton
- Theodor Drachman (1904-19880 - American author
- Georges Duhamel (1884-1966) - French writer, dramatist, poet and humanist
- Havelock Ellis (1859-1940) - British writer and poet, author of The Psychology of Sex
- Samuel Garth (1661-1719) - British author and translator of classics
- William A. Hammond (1828-1900) - American writer.
- Ronald Laing - American writer and poet, leader of the anti-psychiatry movement.
- Stanisław Lem (1929-) - Polish author of science-fiction (Solaris)
- Carlo Levi (1902-1975) - Italian novelist and writer
- Jean Paul Marat (1743-1793) - French writer and philosopher, also a leader of the French Revolution, was assassinated in a bathtub (see play by Peter Weiss and famous painting by Jacques-Louis David)
- Sir Ronald Ross (1857-1932) - British writer and poet, immortalized also as the discoverer of the malaria parasite.
- Theodore Isaac Rubin (1923-). American author of Lisa and David fame.
- Oliver Sacks (1933-). British essayist (e.g. The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat)
- Frank Slaughter (1908-) American bestseller author (e.g., Doctor's Wives)
- Benjamin Spock (1903-1988) - American pediatrician, wrote Baby and Child Care.
- Sir Henry Thompson, British surgeon and polymath.
- Atul Gawande, surgeon and New Yorker medical writer.
- Vladislav Vančura (1891-1942) - Czech writer, scriptwriter and film director
- Paolo Mantegazza (1831-1910) - Italian writer, wrote a science fiction book, L'Anno 3000
Physicians famous as politicians
- Bashar Al-Assad - President of Syria
- Ibrahim Al-Jaafari - Prime minister of Iraq
- Iyad Allawi - interim Prime Minister of Iraq
- Salvador Allende - Chilean president
- Arnulfo Arias - Panaman President
- Hastings Kamuzu Banda (1898-1997) - Prime Minister, President and later dictator of Malawi
- Louis Blanqui - French revolutionary socialist
- Gro Harlem Brundtland (born 1939) - first Norwegian female prime minister and Director-General of the World Health Organization
- Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929) - French statesman
- Tom Coburn (born 1948) - U.S. Senator
- Howard Dean (born 1948) - American politician
- François Duvalier (1907-1971) - also known as Papa Doc - President and later dictator of Haiti
- Antônio Palocci Filho - Brazilian politician, Finance Minister
- Christian Friedrich, Baron von Stockmar - Anglo-Belgian statesman
- Bill Frist (born 1952) - United States Senate Majority Leader
- Hedy Fry (born 1941) - Canadian politician, member of parliament
- Che Guevara Latin American revolutionary leader
- Mohammad Reza Khatami - Iranian politician
- Juscelino Kubitscheck - Brazilian president
- Mahathir bin Mohamad - Malaysian prime minister
- Agostinho Neto (1922-1979) - MPLA leader and president of Angola
- David Owen - British politician
- Ron Paul (born 1935) - American politician
- Navin Ramgoolam - Prime minister of Mauritius
- Bidhan Chandra Roy - Indian politician
- Hélio de Oliveira Santos - Brazilian politician, mayor of Campinas
- Sun Yat-Sen (1866-1925) - Founder of republican China
- Ali Akbar Velayati (born 1945) - Iranian Foreign Minister from 1981 to 1997.
- William Walker (soldier) (1824-1860) - ruler of Nicaragua
- Dave Weldon - US congressman and autism activist
- Ray Lyman Wilbur (1875-1949) - United States Secretary of the Interior, president of Stanford University
Physicians famous for other activities
- Jane Addams - social activist
- Josiah Bartlett -American statesman and chief justice of New Hampshire
- Michael Servetus (1511–1553) — burnt at the stake by Calvinists for heresy
- John Hall (d. 1635) — son-in-law of William Shakespeare
- Franz Mesmer (1734–1815) — proponent of mesmerism and the idea of animal magnetism
- Oswald Avery (1877–1955) — molecular biologist who discovered DNA carried genetic information
- Hans Sloan
- Thomas Young — scientist
- Maria Montessori — educator
- Benjamin Rush — signer of the United States Constitution
- Solomon Drowne — Revolutionary War physician, settler of Marietta, Ohio, author, orator
- Georg Agricola — mineralologist
- Ali Bacher — cricketer
- Thomas Bowdler — censor
- Lafayette Bunnell — explorer of Yosemite Valley
- Gerolamo Cardano
- Arthur Dee
- Luigi Galvani — physicist
- Caspar Peucer
- Philippe Pinel
- Gordon S. Fahrni
- W. G. Grace — cricketer
- Claude Perrault — architect
- Nehemiah Grew — botanist
- Herman Boerhaave — humanist
- Jonathan Miller — television presenter and stage director
- Hermann von Helmholtz — physicist
- Niels Ryberg Finsen
- Albert Schweitzer — humanist
- Boris V. Morukov — cosmonaut
- Armand Hammer — entrepreneur
- Abd-el-latif — traveller
- Samuel Hahnemann — founder of homeopathy
- Norman Earl Thagard — astronaut
- Samuel Gridley Howe — abolitionist
- Archibald Menzies — naturalist
- William E. Thornton — astronaut
- John Clarence Webster — Canadian historian
- Wilhelm Weinberg — with G.H. Hardy, developed the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium model of population genetics
- Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909) — based his system of criminology on physiognomy
- Paul Möhring (1710–1792) — zoologist, botanist
- William Gilbert (1544–1603) — physician and physicist
- John Caius (1510–1573) — physician and educator
- Mouwafak al-Rabii — human rights advocate, member of the Interim Iraqi Governing Council
- Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) — philosopher
- Stuart Kauffman (b. 1939) — biologist
- James McHenry (1753–1816) — signer of the United States Constitution
- John Lovelock (1910–1949) — Olympic athlete
- Haing S. Ngor (Oscar winning film actor)
- Sextus Empiricus (2nd–3rd century C.E.) - philosopher
- Daniel Rutherford (1849–1819) — chemist
- Maximilian Bircher-Benner (1867–1939) — nutritionist
- Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers (1758–1840) — astronomer
- Jan Baptist van Helmont (1577–1655) — physiologist
- Mae Jemison (b. 1956) — astronaut
- Nostradamus — French esoterist.
- Ashoka Jahnavi-Prasad — introduced sodium valproate as a safer alternative to lithium
- Kurt Schopenhauer — philosopher
- William Walker Latin American Adventurer
- Sócrates — football (soccer) player
- JPR Williams — rugby union player
- Peter Mark Roget — English lexicographer
- Jacques Rogge — sports official
- Pope John XXI
- John Harvey Kellogg
- Felix Savart - physicist
- June McCarroll — inventor of lane markings
- Rob Sitch comedian
- Ayman al-Zawahiri Al-Qaeda leader