List of medical doctors

This is a list of famous medical doctors in history.

Chronological lists List of ancient physicians List of post-classical physicians

Doctors famous for their role in advancement of medicine

William Osler Abbott (1902–1943) – co-developed the Miller-Abbott tube William Stewart Agras (born 1929) – feeding behavior Virginia Apgar (1909–1974) – anesthesiologist who devised the Apgar score used after childbirth Jean Astruc (1684–1766) – wrote one of the first treatises on syphilis Averroes (1126–1198) – Andalusian polymath Avicenna (980–1037) – Persian physician Gerbrand Bakker (1771–1828) – Dutch physician, with works in Dutch and Latin on midwifery, practical surgery, animal magnetism, worms, the human eye, comparative anatomy, and the anatomy of the brain 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) – father of modern abdominal surgery Elizabeth Blackwell (1821–1910) – first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States; first openly identified woman to receive a medical degree; pioneered the advancement of women in medicine Alfred Blalock (1899–1964) – noted for his research on the medical condition of shock and the development of the Blalock-Taussig Shunt, surgical relief of the cyanosis from Tetralogy of Fallot, known commonly as the blue baby syndrome, with his assistant Vivien Thomas and pediatric cardiologist Helen Taussig James Carson (1772–1843) Charaka ( – 200 CE) – Indian physician Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893) – pioneering neurologist Guy de Chauliac (1290–1368) – one of the first physicians to have an experimental approach towards medicine; also recorded the Black Death Anna Manning Comfort (1845–1931) – first woman medical graduate to practice in the state of Connecticut Loren Cordain (born 1950) – American nutritionist and exercise physiologist, Paleolithic diet Harvey Cushing (1869–1939) – American neurosurgeon; father of modern-day brain surgery Garcia de Orta (1501–1568) – revealed herbal medicines of India, described cholera Gerhard Domagk (1895–1964) – pathologist and bacteriologist; credited with the discovery of sulfonamidochrysoidine (KI-730), the first commercially available antibiotic; won 1939 the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Charles R. Drew (1904–1950) – blood transfusion pioneer Helen Flanders Dunbar (1902–1959) – important early figure in U.S. psychosomatic medicine Galen (129–) – Roman physician and anatomist Paul Ehrlich (1854–1915) – German scientist; won the 1908 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine; developed Ehrlich's reagent Christiaan Eijkman (1858–1930) – pathologist, studied beriberi Pierre Fauchard – father of dentistry René Gerónimo Favaloro (1923–2000) – Argentine cardiac surgeon who created the coronary bypass grafting procedure Alexander Fleming (1881–1955) – Scottish scientist, inventor of penicillin Girolamo Fracastoro (1478–1553) – wrote on syphilis, forerunner of germ theory Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) – founder of psychoanalysis Daniel Carleton Gajdusek (1923–2008) – studied Kuru, Nobel Prize winner George E. Goodfellow (1855–1910) – recognized as first U.S. civilian trauma surgeon, expert in gunshot wound treatment Henry Gray (1827–1861) – English anatomist and surgeon, creator of Gray's Anatomy Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) – physician and anatomist William Harvey (1578–1657) – English physician, described the circulatory system Henry Heimlich (1920–2016) – 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 (–370 BCE) – Greek father of medicine John Hunter (1728–1793) – father of modern surgery, famous for his study of anatomy Kurt Julius Isselbacher (1928–2019) – Former editor of Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, prominent Gastroenterologist, founder of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, Association of American Physicians Kober Medal winner Edward Jenner (1749–1823) – English physician popularized vaccination Elliott P. Joslin (1869–1962) – pioneer in the treatment of diabetes Carl Jung (1875–1961) – Swiss psychiatrist Leo Kanner (1894–1981) – Austrian-American psychiatrist known for work on autism Seymour Kety (1915–2000) – American neuroscientist Robert Koch (1843–1910) – formulated Koch's postulates Theodor Kocher (1841–1917) – thyroid surgery; 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 Thomas Linacre (1460–1524) – founder of Royal College of Physicians Joseph Lister (1827–1912) – pioneer of antiseptic surgery Richard Lower (1631–1691) – studied the lungs and heart, and performed the first blood transfusion Paul Loye (1861–1890) – studied the nervous system and decapitation Wilhelm Frederick von Ludwig (1790–1865) – German physician known for his 1836 publication on the condition now known as Ludwig's angina 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 Barry Marshall (born 1951) 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 Salvador Mazza (1886–1946) – Argentine epidemiologist who helped in controlling American trypanosomiasis William McBride (1927–2018) – discovered teratogenicity of thalidomide Otto Fritz Meyerhof (1884–1951) – studied muscle metabolism; Nobel prize George Richards Minot (1885–1950) – Nobel prize for his study of anemia B. K. Misra – first neurosurgeon in the world to perform image-guided surgery for aneurysms, first in South Asia to perform stereotactic radiosurgery, first in India to perform awake craniotomy and laparoscopic spine surgery. Frederic E. Mohs (1910–2002) – responsible for the method of surgery now called Mohs surgery Egas Moniz (1874–1955) – developed lobotomy and brain artery angiography Richard Morton (1637–1698) – identified tubercles in consumption (phthisis) of lungs; basis for modern name tuberculosis Herbert Needleman (1927–2017) – 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 Ian Olver (born 1953) Gary Onik (born 1952) – inventor and pioneer of ultrasound guided cryosurgery for both the prostate and the liver William Osler (1849–1919) – "father of modern medicine" Ralph Paffenbarger (1922–2007) – conducted classic studies demonstrating conclusively that active people reduce their risk of heart disease and live longer George Papanicolaou (1883–1962) – Greek pioneer in cytopathology and early cancer detection; inventor of the Pap smear Paracelsus (1493–1541) – founder of toxicology Ambroise Paré (1510–1590) – advanced surgical wound treatment Wilder Penfield (1891–1976) – pioneer in neurology Marcus Raichle (born 1937) – father of functional neuroimaging Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852–1934) – father of modern neuroscience for his development of the neuron theory Joseph Ransohoff (1915–2001) – neurosurgeon who invented the modern technique for removing brain tumors Sir William Refshauge (1913–2009) – Australian public health administrator Rhazes (–925) (Abu Bakr Mohammad Ibn Zakariya al-Razi) Juan Rosai (1940–2020) – advanced surgical pathology; discovered the desmoplastic small round cell tumor and Rosai–Dorfman disease Jonas Salk (1914–1995) – developed a vaccine for polio Lall Sawh (born 1951) – Trinidadian surgeon/urologist and pioneer of kidney transplantation in the Caribbean Martin Schurig (1656–1733) – first physician to occupy himself with the anatomy of the sexual organs.Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Ignaz Semmelweis (1818–1865) – a pioneer of avoiding cross-infection – introduced hand washing and instrument cleaning Victor Skumin (born 1948) – first to describe a previously unknown disease, now called Skumin syndrome (a disorder of the central nervous system of some patients after receiving a prosthetic heart valve) John Snow (1813–1858) – anaesthetist and pioneer epidemiologist who studied cholera Thomas Starzl (1926–2017) – performed the first liver transplant Andrew Taylor Still (1828–1917) – father of osteopathic medicine Susruta () – Indian physician and pioneering surgeon Thomas Sydenham (1642–1689) – clinician James Mourilyan Tanner (1920–2010) – developed Tanner stages and advanced auxology Helen B. Taussig (1898–1986) – founded field of pediatric cardiology, worked to prevent thalidomide marketing in the US Jeannette Throckmorton (1883–1963) – served as librarian of the Iowa State Medical Library for almost 34 years 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 and cellular pathology Carl Warburg (1805–1892) – German/British physician and clinical pharmacologist, inventor of Warburg's Tincture, a famed antipyretic and antimalarial medicine of the Victorian era Otto Heinrich Warburg (1883–1970) – German physiologist, medical doctor; Nobel prize 1931 Allen Oldfather Whipple (1881–1963) – devised the Whipple procedure in 1935 for treatment of pancreatic cancer Priscilla White (1900–1989) – developed classification of diabetes mellitus and pregnancy to assess and reduce the risk of miscarriage, birth defect, stillbirth, and maternal death Carl Wood (1929–2011) – developed and commercialized in-vitro fertilization Alfred Worcester (1855–1951) – pioneer in geriatrics, palliative care, appendectomy, cesarean section, student health, nursing education 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) – first physician in space (1964) Zhang Xichun (1860–1933) – first doctor to integrate Chinese and Western medicine

Doctors famous chiefly as eponyms

Among the better known eponyms: Thomas Addison (1793–1860) – Addison's disease Alois Alzheimer (1864–1915) – Alzheimer's disease Hans Asperger (1906–1980) – Asperger syndrome John Brereton Barlow (1924–2008) – Barlow's syndrome Karl Adolph von Basedow (1799–1854) – Basedow disease Hulusi Behçet (1889–1948) – Behçet's disease Paul Broca (1824–1880) – Broca's area David Bruce (1855–1931) – Brucellosis Denis Parsons Burkitt (1911–1993) – Burkitt lymphoma 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 Jerome W. Conn (1907–1981) – Conn's Syndrome (primary hyperaldosteronism) Burrill Bernard Crohn (1884–1983) – Crohn's disease Harvey Cushing (1869–1939) – Cushing's disease John Langdon Down (1828–1896) – Down syndrome Bartolomeo Eustachi (c. 1500–1510 – 1574) – Eustachian tube Gabriele Falloppio (1522/23 – 1562) – Fallopian tube Camillo Golgi (1843–1926) – Golgi apparatus Ernst Gräfenberg (1881–1957) – Gräfenberg spot (G-spot) Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (1738–1814) – guillotine Gerhard Armauer Hansen (1841–1912) – Hansen's disease