List of physicians

This is a list of famous physicians in history:

Physicians famous for their role in advancement of medicine

• William Osler Abbott (1902–1943) - co-developed the Miller-Abbott tube
• Thomas Addis (1881–1949) — 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
• Helen Flanders Dunbar (1902–1959) important early figure in U.S. psychosomatic medicine.
• Galen (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 (born 1923) — studied Kuru, Nobel prize winner
• William Harvey (1578–1657) — English physician, described the circulatory system
• Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) — physician and anatomist
• Henry Heimlich (born 1920) — inventor of the Heimlich Maneuver and the Vietnam War era Chest Drain Valve
• Orvan Hess (1906–2002) — Fetal heart monitor and first successful use of Penicillin
• Hippocrates (c. 460–370 BCE) — Greek father of medicine
• Ashoka Jahnavi-Prasad - introduced sodium valproate as a safer alternative to lithium in bipolar disorders
• Edward Jenner (1749–1823) — English physician popularized vaccination
• Carl Jung (1875–1961) — Swiss psychiatrist
• Leo Kanner (1894–1981) — Austrian-American psychiatrist known for work on autism
• Seymour Kety (1915–2000) — influential American neuroscientist
• Tsendiin Khaidaw — reviver and innovator of traditional Mongolian medicine
• 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
• William Worrall Mayo (1819–1911) — co-founder, Mayo Clinic
• Richard Morton (1637–1698) — identified tubercles in consumption (phthisis) of lungs; basis for modern name tuberculosis.
• Egas Moniz (1874–1955) — developed Lobotomy and brain artery angiography.
• William McBride — discovered teratogenicity of thalidomide
• Herbert Needleman — scientifically established link between lead poisoning and neurological damage; key figure in successful efforts to limit lead exposure
• Charles Jean Henri Nicolle (1866–1936) — microbiologist who won Nobel prize for work on typhus
• Gary Onik - inventor and pioneer of ultrasound guided cryosurgery for both the prostate and the liver
• 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 (1891–1976) — pioneer in neurology
• Joseph Ransohoff (1915–2001) — neurosurgeon who invented the modern technique for removing brain tumors
• Rhazes (c. 854 – 925) (Abu Bakr Mohammad Ibn Zakariya al-Razi)
• Jonas Salk (1914–1995) — developed a vaccine for polio
• Lall Sawh (born 1951) — Trinidadian Surgeon/Urologist and pioneer of Kidney transplantation in the Caribbean
• 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
• Sushruta (c. 500 BCE) — Indian physician and pioneering surgeon
• Thomas Sydenham (1642–1689) — clinician
• James Mourilyan Tanner (born 1920) — developed Tanner stages and advanced auxology
• Helen B. Taussig (1898–1986) — founded field of pediatric cardiology, worked to prevent thalidomide marketing in the US
• Carlo Urbani (1956–2003) — discovered, and died from, SARS
• Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564) — Belgian anatomist, often referred to as the founder of modern human anatomy.
• Vidus Vidius (1508–1569) First professor of Medicine at the College Royal and author of medical texts.
• Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902) — German pathologist, founder of fields of comparative pathology, cellular pathology.
• 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 (born 1935) — One of the leading developers of the techniques of heart and heart-lung transplantation
• Boris Yegorov (1937–1994) Russian - First physician in space, 1964

Physicians otherwise notable as practitioners

• Maimonides (1135–1204) - Physician of the Grand Vizier Alfadhil as well as Sultan Saladin of Egypt
• Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836–1917) - first British woman to practice as a doctor
• Emily Barringer (1876–1961) - American, and first female ambulance surgeon and the first woman to secure a surgical residency
• Elizabeth Blackwell (1821–1910) - first woman to practice modern medicine
• Sir Horace Evans - UK royal physician
• Jack Kevorkian (born 1928) - 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
• Paul Rohmer (1876–1977) french physician considered as the father of the modern paediatrics in the east corner of France

Physicians famous chiefly as eponyms

See also Medical eponyms

Among the better known eponyms:

• Thomas Addison (1793–1860) - Addison's disease
• Alois Alzheimer (1864–1915) - Alzheimer's disease
• 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
• Camillo Golgi (1843–1926) - Golgi apparatus
• 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
• Hans Asperger - Asperger syndrome
• Karl Adolph von Basedow - Basedow disease
• Paul Broca - Broca's area
• David Bruce - Brucellosis
• Denis Parsons Burkitt - Burkitt lymphoma
• Harvey Cushing - Cushing's disease
• John Langdon Down - Down syndrome
• Bartolomeo Eustachi - Eustachian tube
• Gabriele Falloppio - Fallopian tube
• Ernst Gräfenberg - Gräfenberg spot (G-spot)
• Gerhard Armauer Hansen - Hansen's disease
• Thomas Hodgkin - Hodgkin's disease
• George Huntington - Huntington's disease
• Moritz Kaposi - Kaposi sarcoma
• Daniel Elmer Salmon - Salmonella
• Georges Albert Édouard Brutus Gilles de la Tourette - Tourette syndrome
• Gunner Stickler - Stickler syndrome

Physicians famous as criminals

• John Bodkin Adams - British suspected serial killer.
• Karl Brandt (1904–1948) - Nazi human experimentation
• Baruch Goldstein (1956–1994) - assassin
• Shiro Ishii - headed Japan's Unit 731 during World War II which conducted human experimentation for weapons and medical research
• Radovan Karadžić (born 1945) - accused of ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia
• Jack Kevorkian (born 1923) - convicted of second-degree murder, Michigan, April 13, 1999
• Josef Mengele (1911–1979) - known as the Angel of Death, Nazi human experimentation
• Samuel Mudd (1833–1883) - condemned to prison for setting the leg of Abraham Lincoln's assassin
• Herman Webster Mudgett (1860–1896) - American serial killer
• Herta Oberheuser (1911–1978) - Nazi human experimentation
• Richard J. Schmidt - American physician who contaminated his girlfriend with AIDS-tainted blood
• Harold Shipman (1946–2004) - British mass murderer
• Michael Swango (born 1953) - American serial killer

Physicians famous as writers

see also A Roster of Physician Writers

Among the better known writers:

• Mikhail Bulgakov (1891–1940) - Russian novelist and playwright
• Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) - Russian playwright
• Robin Cook - American author of bestselling novels, wrote Coma
• Michael Crichton (born 1942) - American author of Jurassic Park.
• A. J. Cronin (1896–1981) - Scottish novelist and essayist, author of The Citadel.
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) - British author of Sherlock Holmes fame.
• John Keats (1795–1821) - English poet
• W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) - British novelist and short story writer, wrote Of Human Bondage.
• Alfred de Musset (1810–1857) - French playwright, discovered sign of syphilitic aortitis
• François Rabelais (1483–1553) - French author of Gargantua and Pantagruel.
• Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805), German writer, poet, essayist and dramatist.
• William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) - American poet and essayist

And others:

• John Arbuthnot - author
• Patrick Abercromby (1656 – c. 1716) - historian
• Janet Asimov - (born 1926) (née Janet O. Jeppson). American psychiatrist, wife of Isaac Asimov.
• Arnie Baker - cycling coach
• Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682) - British writer
• Georg Büchner - German dramatist
• Ludwig Büchner - German philosopher
• Thomas Campion - poet, composer
• 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.
• Michael Cook - American writer of suspense novels
• Ctesias (5th century B.C.) - Greek historian
• Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802). British poet, grandfather of Charles Darwin
• Georges Duhamel (1884–1966) - French writer, dramatist, poet and humanist
• Havelock Ellis (1859–1940) - British writer and poet, author of The Psychology of Sex
• Victor Frankl (1905–1997) - Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, author of Man's Search for Meaning
• Samuel Garth (1661–1719) - British author and translator of classics
• William Gilbert
• Oliver Goldsmith - American author
• Atul Gawande, surgeon and New Yorker medical writer.
• H. Richard Hornberger author of M*A*S*H
• Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894) - American essayist
• Arthur Johnston (1587–1641) - poet
• Dimitris P. Kraniotis - Greek poet
• Ronald Laing - Scottish writer and poet, leader of the anti-psychiatry movement.
• Stanisław Lem (born 1929) - Polish author of science-fiction (Solaris)
• Carlo Levi (1902–1975) - Italian novelist and writer
• David Livingstone (1813–1873) - Scottish medical missionary, explorer of Africa, travel writer
• Adeline Yen Mah - Chinese-American author.
• Jean-Paul Marat (1743–1793) - French writer, a leader of French Revolution, assassinated in bathtub
• Paolo Mantegazza (1831–1910) - Italian writer, wrote a science fiction book, L'Anno 3000
• Silas Weir Mitchell (1829–1914) - American writer
• Mungo Park
• João Guimarães Rosa - Brazilian writer
• Sir Ronald Ross (1857–1932) - British writer and poet, discovered the malarial parasite.
• Theodore Isaac Rubin (born 1923). American author of Lisa and David.
• Oliver Sacks (born 1933). British essayist (e.g. The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat)
• Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) - German theologian, philosopher, organist, musicologist
• Frank Slaughter (1908–2001) American bestseller author, wrote (Doctor's Wives)
• Tobias Smollett (1721–1771) - author
• Benjamin Spock (1903–1988) - American pediatrician, wrote Baby and Child Care.
• Lewis Thomas (1913–1993) - American essayist and poet
• Sir Henry Thompson, British surgeon and polymath.
• Vladislav Vančura (1891–1942) - Czech writer, scriptwriter and film director
• Francis Brett Young (1884–1954) - English novelist and poet

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 (1908–1973) - Chilean president
• Emilio Alvarez Montalván - Foreign Minister of Nicaragua
• Arnulfo Arias - Panaman President
• Michelle Bachelet - Current Chilean President
• Hastings Kamuzu Banda (1898–1997) - Prime Minister, President and later dictator of Malawi
• Louis Blanqui - French revolutionary socialist
• Frederick William Borden - Canadian MP and minister of the Militia
• Bob Brown - parliamentry leader of the Australian Greens
• Gro Harlem Brundtland (born 1939) - first Norwegian female prime minister and Director-General of the World Health Organization
• Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) - French statesman
• Margaret Chan - Director General of the WHO and former Director of Health of Hong Kong
• York Chow - Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food of Hong Kong
• 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
• George Habash - founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
• John Pope Hennessy - former Governor of Hong Kong
• Grant Hill (politician) - former Canadian MP
• Wilbert Keon - Canadian senator
• Mohammad Reza Khatami - Iranian politician
• Juscelino Kubitscheck - Brazilian president
• Jean-Paul Marat - French revolution leader
• Keith Martin - Portuguese Canadian MP
• William McGuigan - mayor of Vancouver, British Columbia
• Mahathir bin Mohamad - Malaysian prime minister
• Brendon Nelson - Australian politician
• Agostinho Neto (1922–1979) - MPLA leader and president of Angola
• David Owen - British politician
• Ron Paul (born 1935) - American politician
• Andrew Refshauge - Australian politician
• Navin Ramgoolam - Prime minister of Mauritius
• Maxime Ferrari - Minister for Development Seychelles
• José Rizal (1861–1896) - Filipino revolutionary and national hero
• Théodore Robitaille - Lieutenant Governor of Quebec, Quebec MNA and Senator
• Bidhan Chandra Roy - Indian politician
• Hélio de Oliveira Santos - Brazilian politician, mayor of Campinas
• Tabaré Vázquez - Current Uruguayan President
• Bette Stephenson - Ontario MPP and former Minister of Labour, Minister of Education and Minister of Colleges and Universities
• Sun Yat-Sen (1866–1925) - Founder of republican China
• Donald Matheson Sutherland - MP and former minister of National Defence
• Sir Charles Tupper (1821–1915) - Prime Minister of Canada (1896) and Premier of Nova Scotia (1864–1867); High Commissioner in Great Britain (1884-1887)
• 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
• Thomas Wynne (1627–1691) - Physician to William Penn, speaker of the first two Provincial Assemblies in Philadelphia (1687 & 1688)
• Yeoh Eng-kiong - former Secretary for Health and Welfare of Hong Kong

Physicians famous for other activities

• Abd-el-latif — traveller
• Anderson Ruffin Abbott
• Keith Ablow — television psychiatrist
• Jane Addams — social activist
• Georg Agricola — mineralologist
• David Alter — inventor
• Oswald Avery (1877–1955) — molecular biologist who discovered DNA carried genetic information
• Ali Bacher — cricketer
• Josiah Bartlett — American statesman and chief justice of New Hampshire
• T. Romeyn Beck (1791–1855) — American forensic medicine pioneer
• Maximilian Bircher-Benner (1867–1939) — nutritionist
• Herman Boerhaave — humanist
• Alexander Borodin — composer
• Thomas Bowdler — censor
• Shahrul Ezam Borhan — College of Public Care Medicine of Malaysia [1]
• Lafayette Bunnell — explorer of Yosemite Valley
• Gerolamo Cardano
• John Caius (1510–1573) — physician and educator
• Graham Chapman — British comedian of Monty Python fame
• Laurel B. Clark (1961–2003) — American Astronaut, killed in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster
• Arthur Dee
• Sextus Empiricus (2nd–3rd century C.E.) — philosopher
• Gordon S. Fahrni
• Niels Ryberg Finsen
• Luigi Galvani — physicist
• Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) — philosopher
• William Gilbert (1544–1603) — physician and physicist
• W. G. Grace — cricketer
• Nehemiah Grew — botanist
• Samuel Hahnemann — founder of homeopathy
• John Hall (died 1635) — son-in-law of William Shakespeare
• Armand Hammer — entrepreneur
• Samuel Gridley Howe — abolitionist
• Hermann von Helmholtz — physicist
• Jan Baptist van Helmont (1577–1655) — physiologist
• Mae Jemison (born 1956) — astronaut
• Stuart Kauffman (born 1939) — biologist
• John Harvey Kellogg
• Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909) — based his system of criminology on physiognomy
• John Lovelock (1910–1949) — Olympic athlete
• John McAndrew (born 1927) — All-Ireland Gaelic Footballer
• June McCarroll — inventor of lane markings
• James McHenry (1753–1816) — signer of the United States Constitution
• Archibald Menzies — naturalist
• Franz Mesmer (1734–1815) — proponent of mesmerism and the idea of animal magnetism
• Jonathan Miller — television presenter and stage director
• Paul Möhring (1710–1792) — zoologist, botanist
• Maria Montessori — educator
• Boris V. Morukov — cosmonaut
• Lee "Final Table" Nelson — professional poker player
• Haing S. Ngor — Oscar winning film actor
• Nostradamus — French esoterist
• Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers (1758–1840) — astronomer
• Caspar Peucer
• Christian Hendrik Persoon — South African botanist
• Claude Perrault — architect
• Philippe Pinel
• Pope John XXI
• Mowaffak al-Rubaie — human rights advocate, member of the Interim Iraqi Governing Council
• John Ray — plant taxonomer
• Peter Mark Roget — English lexicographer
• Jacques Rogge — sports official
• Benjamin Rush — signer of the United States Constitution
• Daniel Rutherford (1749–1819) — chemist
• Felix Savart — physicist
• Alfred Schopenhauer — philosopher
• Albert Schweitzer — humanist
• Michael Servetus (1511–1553) — burnt at the stake by Calvinists for heresy
• Rob Sitch — comedian
• Sócrates (born 1954, Sócrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira) — Brazilian football (soccer) player, one of the best midfielders ever, is a doctor of medicine and earned the degree while concurrently playing professional football, to top it he holds a doctorate degree in philosophy
• L.Subramaniam — violonist
• James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) — British missionary to China and founder of the China Inland Mission
• Norman Earl Thagard — astronaut
• Debi Thomas (born 1967) — Olympic figure skater
• William E. Thornton — astronaut
• Nasiruddin al-Tusi — astronomer
• William Walker — Latin American Adventurer
• Andrew Wakefield — conducted studies on disputed link between vaccines and neurodevelopmental disorders, which had many serious consequences
• John Clarence Webster — Canadian historian
• Wilhelm Weinberg — with G.H. Hardy, developed the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium model of population genetics
• Michael Welner — Forensic psychiatrist
• JPR Williams — rugby union player
• Thomas Young — scientist
• Ayman al-Zawahiri — Al-Qaeda leader

See also

• List of fictional physicians
• List of psychiatrists
• Famous figures in psychiatry
• Fictional psychiatrists