List of physicians
This is a list of famous physicians in history.
Chronological list of physicians
Ancient world
- 1200BC SUSHRUTA – Indian physician author of Sushruta samhita, considered as father of surgery & father of Plastic surgery
- 300BC-Charaka-was one of the principal contributors to Ayurveda, a system of medicine and lifestyle developed in Ancient India & author of
Charaka Saṃhitā - 460–370 BC Hippocrates considered the most outstanding figure in the history of medicine.
- 129 AD – /), Galen the most accomplished of all medical researchers of antiquity,
- d.260 Gargilius Martialis short Latin handbook on Medicines from Vegetables and Fruits
- 325–400 Oribasius 70 volume encyclopedia
- 369 Basil of Caesarea founded at Caesarea in Cappadocia an institution called Basilias, with several buildings for patients, nurses, physicians, workshops, and schools
- 375 Ephrem the Syrian opened a hospital at Edessa They spread out and specialized nosocomia for the sick, brephotrophia for foundlings, orphanotrophia for orphans, ptochia for the poor, xenodochia for poor or infirm pilgrims, and gerontochia for the old.
- 400 first hospital in Latin Christendom was founded by Fabiola at Rome
- 420 Caelius Aurelianus doctor from Sicca Veneria handbook On Acute and Chronic Diseases in Latin.
Middle Ages 5th–16th centuries
- 480 -547 Benedict of Nursia founder of "monastic medicine"
- 525–605 Alexander of Tralles Alexander Trallianus
- 500-550 Aetius of Amida Encyclopedia 4 books each divided into 4 sections
- 550–630 Stephanus of Athens
- 560 – 636 Isidore of Seville
- c. 630 Paul of Aegina Encyclopedia in 7 books very detailed surgery used by Albucasis
- 790–869 Leo Itrosophist also Mathematician or Philosopher wrote "Epitome of Medicine"
Islamic Middle Ages 9th–12th
- c. 800–873 Al-Kindi De Gradibus
- 820 Benedictine hospital founded, School of Salerno would grow around it
- 857d Mesue the elder Syriac Christian
- c. 830–870 Hunayn ibn Ishaq Syriac-speaking Christian also knew Greek and Arabic. Translator and author of several medical tracts.
- c. 838–870 Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari, writes an encyclopedia of medicine in Arabic.
- c.910d Ishaq ibn Hunayn
- 9th century Yahya ibn Sarafyun Syriac physician Johannes Serapion, Serapion the Elder
- c. 865–925 Rhazes pediatrics, and makes the first clear distinction between smallpox and measles in his al-Hawi.
- d.955 Isaac Judaeus Isḥāq ibn Sulaymān al-Isrāʾīlī Egyptian born Jewish physician
- 913–982 Shabbethai Donnolo alleged founding father of School of Salerno wrote in Hebrew
- d. 990 Al-Tamimi, the physician
- d. 982–994 'Ali ibn al-'Abbas al-Majusi Haly Abbas
- 1000 Albucasis surgery Kitab al-Tasrif, surgical instruments.
- d.1075 Ibn Butlan Christian physician of Baghdad Tacuinum sanitatis the Arabic original and most of the Latin copies, are in tabular format
- 1018–1087 Michael Psellos or Psellus a Byzantine monk, writer, philosopher, politician and historian. several books on medicine
- 1021 Alhazen
- c. 1030 Avicenna The Canon of Medicine The Canon remains a standard textbook in Muslim and European universities until the 18th century.
- c. 1071–1078 Simeon Seth or Symeon Seth an 11th-century Jewish Byzantine translated Arabic works into Greek
- 1084 First documented hospital in England Canterbury
- 1087d Constantine the African
- 1083–1153 Anna Komnene Latinized as Comnena
- 1095 Congregation of the Antonines, was founded to treat victims of "St. Anthony's fire" a skin disease.
- late 11th early 12th century Trotula
- 1123 St Bartholomew's Hospital founded by the court jester Rahere Augustine nuns originally cared for the patients. Mental patients were accepted along with others
- 1127 Stephen of Antioch translated the work of Haly Abbas
- 1100–1161 Avenzoar, teacher of Averroes
- 1126–1198 Averroes
Scholastic Medicine 13th–16th centuries
- c.1161d Matthaeus Platearius
- 1204 Innocent III organized the hospital of Santo Spirito at Rome inspiring others all over Europe
- 1242 Ibn an-Nafis suggests that the right and left ventricles of the heart are separate and discovers the pulmonary circulation and coronary circulation
- c. 1248 Ibn al-Baitar wrote on botany and pharmacy, studied animal anatomy and medicine veterinary medicine.
- 1249 Roger Bacon writes about convex lens spectacles for treating long-sightedness
- 1257–1316 Pietro d'Abano also known as Petrus De Apono or Aponensis
- 1260 Louis IX established, Les Quinze-vingt; originally a retreat for the blind, it became a hospital for eye diseases, and is now one of the most important medical centers in Paris
- 1284 Mansur hospital of Cairo
- c. 1275-c. 1328 Joannes Zacharias Actuarius a Byzantine physician wrote the last great compendium of Byzantine medicine
- 1300 concave lens spectacles to treat myopia developed in Italy.
- 1292–1350 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziya
- William of Saliceto also known as Guilielmus de Saliceto
- Henri de Mondeville
- Mondino de Luzzi "Mundinus" carried out the first systematic human dissections since Herophilus of Chalcedon and Erasistratus of Ceos 1500 years earlier.
- Guy de Chauliac d.1368
- John of Arderne
- Heinrich von Pfolspeundt f.1460
- Antonio Benivieni Pathological anatomy
Renaissance to Early Modern period 16th–18th centuries
- Paracelsus 1493–1541 burned the works of Avicenna, Galen, and Hippocrates and denounced humoral medicine On the relationship between medicine and surgery surgery book
- Ambroise Paré 1510–1590 pioneered the treatment of gunshot wounds.
- *Bartholomeo Maggi at Bologna, Felix Wurtz of Zurich, Léonard Botal in Paris, and the Englishman Thomas Gale,, all published works urging similar treatment to Paré's. But it was Paré's writings which were the most influential.
- Pierre Franco 1500?–1561
- Caspar Stromayr or Stromayer Sixteenth Century
- Hieronymus Fabricius His "Surgery" is mostly that of Celsus, Paul of Aegina, and Abulcasis citeing them by name.
- William Clowes 1540–1604 Surgical chest for military surgeons
- Peter Lowe 1550–1612
- Richard Wiseman 1621–1676
- William Cheselden 1688–1752
- Lorenz Heister 1683–1758
- Percivall Pott 1714–1789
- John Hunter 1728–1793
- Pierre-Joseph Desault 1744–1795 First surgical periodical
- Dominique Jean Larrey 1766–1842 Surgeon to Napoleon
- Antonio Scarpa 1752–1832
- Astley Cooper 1768–1843 lectures principles and practice
- The Bells of Scotland
- * Benjamin Bell 1749–1806 Leading surgeon of his time and father of a surgical dynasty system of surgery
- *Charles Bell 1774–1842
- *John Bell 1763–1820
19th century: Rise of modern medicine
- Baron Guillaume Dupuytren 1777–1835 Head surgeon at Hôtel-Dieu de Paris, The age Dupuytren
- James Marion Sims 1813–1883 Vesico-vaganial surgery Father of surgical genocology Biography
- Joseph Lister 1827–1912 Anti-septic surgery Father of modern surgery
Physicians famous for their role in advancement of medicine
- William Osler Abbott — co-developed the Miller-Abbott tube
- William Stewart Agras — feeding behavior
- Virginia Apgar — anesthesiologist who devised the Apgar score used after childbirth
- Jean Astruc — wrote one of the first treatises on syphilis
- Averroes — Andalusian polymath
- Avicenna — Persian physician
- Gerbrand Bakker — 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 — isolated insulin
- Christiaan Barnard — performed first heart transplant
- Charles Best — assisted in the discovery of insulin
- Norman Bethune — developer of battlefield surgical techniques
- Theodor Billroth — father of modern abdominal surgery
- Elizabeth Blackwell — 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 — 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
- Charaka — Indian physician
- Jean-Martin Charcot — pioneering neurologist
- Guy de Chauliac — one of the first physicians to have an experimental approach towards medicine; also recorded the Black Death
- Loren Cordain — American nutritionist and exercise physiologist, Paleolithic diet
- Harvey Cushing — American neurosurgeon; father of modern-day brain surgery
- Garcia de Orta — revealed herbal medicines of India, described cholera
- Gerhard Domagk — pathologist and bacteriologist; credited with the discovery of Sulfonamidochrysoidine, the first commercially available antibiotic; won 1939 the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
- Charles R. Drew — blood transfusion pioneer
- Helen Flanders Dunbar — important early figure in U.S. psychosomatic medicine
- Galen — Roman physician and anatomist
- Paul Ehrlich — German scientist; won the 1908 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine; developed Ehrlich's reagent
- Christiaan Eijkman — pathologist, studied beriberi
- Pierre Fauchard — father of dentistry
- René Gerónimo Favaloro — Argentine cardiac surgeon who created the coronary bypass grafting procedure
- Alexander Fleming — Scottish scientist, inventor of penicillin
- Girolamo Fracastoro — wrote on syphilis, forerunner of germ theory
- Sigmund Freud — founder of psychoanalysis
- Daniel Carleton Gajdusek — studied Kuru, Nobel prize winner
- George E. Goodfellow — recognized as first U.S. civilian trauma surgeon, expert in gunshot wound treatment
- Henry Gray — English anatomist and surgeon, creator of Gray's Anatomy
- Ernst Haeckel — physician and anatomist
- William Harvey — English physician, described the circulatory system
- Henry Heimlich — inventor of the Heimlich maneuver and the Vietnam War-era chest drain valve
- Orvan Hess — fetal heart monitor and first successful use of penicillin
- Hippocrates — Greek father of medicine
- John Hunter — father of modern surgery, famous for his study of anatomy
- Kurt Julius Isselbacher — 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 — English physician popularized vaccination
- Elliott P. Joslin — pioneer in the treatment of diabetes
- Carl Jung — Swiss psychiatrist
- Leo Kanner — Austrian-American psychiatrist known for work on autism
- Seymour Kety — American neuroscientist
- Robert Koch — formulated Koch's postulates
- Theodor Kocher — thyroid surgery; first surgeon to win the Nobel Prize
- Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laennec — inventor of the stethoscope
- Janet Lane-Claypon — pioneer of epidemiology
- Thomas Linacre — founder of Royal College of Physicians
- Joseph Lister — pioneer of antiseptic surgery
- Richard Lower — studied the lungs and heart, and performed the first blood transfusion
- Paul Loye — studied the nervous system and decapitation
- Wilhelm Frederick von Ludwig — a German physician known for his 1836 publication on the condition now known as Ludwig's angina
- Amato Lusitano — discovered venous valves, studied blood circulation
- Madhav — medical text author and systematizer
- Maimonides
- Marcello Malpighi — Italian anatomist, pioneer in histology
- Barry Marshall
- Charles Horace Mayo — co-founder, Mayo Clinic
- William James Mayo — co-founder, Mayo Clinic
- William Worrall Mayo — co-founder, Mayo Clinic
- Salvador Mazza — Argentine epidemiologist who helped in controlling American trypanosomiasis
- William McBride — discovered teratogenicity of thalidomide
- Otto Fritz Meyerhof — studied muscle metabolism; Nobel prize
- George Richards Minot — 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 — responsible for the method of surgery now called Mohs surgery
- Egas Moniz — developed lobotomy and brain artery angiography
- Richard Morton — identified tubercles in consumption of lungs; basis for modern name tuberculosis
- Herbert Needleman — scientifically established link between lead poisoning and neurological damage; key figure in successful efforts to limit lead exposure
- Charles Jean Henri Nicolle — microbiologist who won Nobel prize for work on typhus
- Ian Olver
- Gary Onik — inventor and pioneer of ultrasound guided cryosurgery for both the prostate and the liver
- William Osler — "father of modern medicine"
- Ralph Paffenbarger — conducted classic studies demonstrating conclusively that active people reduce their risk of heart disease and live longer
- George Papanicolaou — Greek pioneer in cytopathology and early cancer detection; inventor of the Pap smear
- Paracelsus — founder of toxicology
- Ambroise Paré — advanced surgical wound treatment
- Wilder Penfield — pioneer in neurology
- Marcus Raichle — father of functional neuroimaging
- Santiago Ramón y Cajal — father of modern neuroscience for his development of the neuron theory
- Joseph Ransohoff — neurosurgeon who invented the modern technique for removing brain tumors
- Sir William Refshauge — Australian public health administrator
- Rhazes
- Juan Rosai — advanced surgical pathology; discovered the desmoplastic small round cell tumor and Rosai–Dorfman disease
- Jonas Salk — developed a vaccine for polio
- Lall Sawh — Trinidadian surgeon/urologist and pioneer of kidney transplantation in the Caribbean
- Martin Schurig — first physician to occupy himself with the anatomy of the sexual organs.
- Ignaz Semmelweis — a pioneer of avoiding cross-infection — introduced hand washing and instrument cleaning
- Victor Skumin — first to describe a previously unknown disease, now called :fr:Syndrome de Skumin|Skumin syndrome
- John Snow — anaesthetist and pioneer epidemiologist who studied cholera
- Thomas Starzl — performed the first liver transplant
- Andrew Taylor Still — father of osteopathic medicine
- Susruta — Indian physician and pioneering surgeon
- Thomas Sydenham — clinician
- James Mourilyan Tanner — developed Tanner stages and advanced auxology
- Helen B. Taussig — founded field of pediatric cardiology, worked to prevent thalidomide marketing in the US
- Carlo Urbani — discovered and died from SARS
- Andreas Vesalius — Belgian anatomist, often referred to as the founder of modern human anatomy
- Vidus Vidius — first professor of medicine at the College Royal and author of medical texts
- Rudolf Virchow — German pathologist, founder of fields of comparative pathology and cellular pathology
- Carl Warburg — German/British physician and clinical pharmacologist, inventor of Warburg's Tincture, a famed antipyretic and antimalarial medicine of the Victorian era
- Otto Heinrich Warburg — German physiologist, medical doctor; Nobel prize 1931
- Allen Oldfather Whipple — devised the Whipple procedure in 1935 for treatment of pancreatic cancer
- Priscilla White — developed classification of diabetes mellitus and pregnancy to assess and reduce the risk of miscarriage, birth defect, stillbirth, and maternal death
- Carl Wood — developed and commercialized in-vitro fertilization
- Alfred Worcester — pioneer in geriatrics, palliative care, appendectomy, cesarean section, student health, nursing education
- Ole Wormius — pioneer in embryology
- Sir Magdi Yacoub — one of the leading developers of the techniques of heart and heart-lung transplantation
- Boris Yegorov — first physician in space
- Zhang Xichun — first physician to integrate Chinese and Western medicine
Physicians famous chiefly as eponyms
- Thomas Addison – Addison's disease
- Alois Alzheimer – Alzheimer's disease
- Hans Asperger – Asperger syndrome
- John Brereton Barlow – Barlow's syndrome
- Karl Adolph von Basedow – Basedow disease
- Hulusi Behçet – Behçet's disease
- Paul Broca – Broca's area
- David Bruce – Brucellosis
- Denis Parsons Burkitt – Burkitt lymphoma
- Albert Calmette – Bacillus Calmette-Guérin, a vaccine for tuberculosis
- Carlos Chagas – Chagas disease
- Jean-Martin Charcot – Maladie de Charcot, Charcot joints, Charcot's triad, Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease
- Jerome W. Conn – Conn's Syndrome
- Burrill Bernard Crohn – Crohn's disease
- Harvey Cushing – Cushing's disease
- John Langdon Down – Down syndrome
- Bartolomeo Eustachi – Eustachian tube
- Gabriele Falloppio – Fallopian tube
- Camillo Golgi – Golgi apparatus
- Ernst Gräfenberg – Gräfenberg spot
- Joseph-Ignace Guillotin – guillotine
- Gerhard Armauer Hansen – Hansen's disease
- Thomas Hodgkin – Hodgkin's disease
- George Huntington – Huntington's disease
- Moritz Kaposi – Kaposi's sarcoma
- Wilhelm Frederick von Ludwig – Ludwig's angina
- Charles Mantoux – Mantoux test for tuberculosis
- Antoine Marfan – Marfan syndrome
- Silas Weir Mitchell – Mitchell's disease
- James Paget – Paget's disease
- James Parkinson – Parkinson's syndrome
- Juan Rosai – Rosai–Dorfman disease
- Daniel Elmer Salmon – Salmonella
- Gunnar B. Stickler – Stickler syndrome
- Georges Albert Édouard Brutus Gilles de la Tourette – Tourette syndrome
- Max Wilms – Wilms' tumor
- Samuel Alexander Kinnier Wilson – Wilson's disease
Physicians famous as criminals
- John Bodkin Adams – British general practitioner; suspected serial killer, thought to have killed over 160 patients; acquitted of one murder in 1957 but convicted of prescription fraud, not keeping a dangerous drug register, obstructing a police search and lying on cremation forms
- Karl Brandt – Nazi human experimentation
- Edme Castaing – murderer
- George Chapman – Polish poisoner and Jack the Ripper suspect
- Robert George Clements – murderer
- Nigel Cox – only British doctor to be convicted of attempted euthanasia
- Thomas Neill Cream – murderer
- Hawley Harvey Crippen – executed for his wife's murder
- Baruch Goldstein – assassin
- Linda Hazzard – convicted of murdering one patient but suspected of 12 in total
- H.H. Holmes – American serial killer
- Shirō Ishii – headed Japan's Unit 731 during World War II which conducted human experimentation for weapons and medical research
- Radovan Karadžić – convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in Yugoslavia
- Jack Kevorkian – convicted of second-degree murder, Michigan, April 13, 1999
- Jeffrey R. MacDonald – murdered a pregnant wife and two daughters in 1979
- Josef Mengele – known as the Angel of Death; Nazi human experimentation
- Samuel Mudd – condemned to prison for setting the leg of Abraham Lincoln's assassin
- Herman Webster Mudgett – American serial killer
- Conrad Murray – convicted of involuntary manslaughter in death of pop star Michael Jackson
- Arnfinn Nesset – Norwegian serial killer
- William Palmer – British poisoner
- Marcel Petiot – French serial killer
- Herta Oberheuser – Nazi human experimentation
- Richard J. Schmidt – American physician who contaminated his girlfriend with AIDS-tainted blood
- Harold Shipman – British serial killer
- Michael Swango – American serial killer
- An A-Z list of Wikipedia articles of Nazi doctors
Physicians famous as writers
- Mikhail Bulgakov - Russian novelist and playwright
- Louis-Ferdinand Celine - French novelist, author of Journey to the End of the Night
- Graham Chapman - writer and actor, founding member of Monty Python
- Anton Chekhov - Russian playwright
- Robin Cook - American author of bestselling novels, wrote Coma
- Michael Crichton - American author of Jurassic Park
- A. J. Cronin - Scottish novelist and essayist, author of The Citadel
- Anthony Daniels - as 'Theodore Dalrymple' and under his own name, a British author, critic and social and cultural commentator
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - British author of Sherlock Holmes fame
- Khaled Hosseini - American author, originally from Afghanistan, of bestselling novels The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns
- John Keats - English poet
- Morio Kita - Japanese novelist and essayist; son of Mokichi Saitō
- Jean Baptiste Lefebvre de Villebrune - French physician who translated several works from Latin, English, Spanish, Italian, and German into French
- Luke the Evangelist - one of the four Gospel writers of the Bible
- John S. Marr - proposed natural explanations for the ten plagues of Egypt
- W. Somerset Maugham - British novelist and short story writer, wrote Of Human Bondage
- Alfred de Musset - French playwright, discovered sign of syphilitic aortitis
- Taslima Nasrin
- Mori Ōgai - Japanese novelist, poet, and literary critic
- Walker Percy - American philosopher and writer
- François Rabelais - French author of Gargantua and Pantagruel
- Mokichi Saitō - Japanese poet
- Friedrich von Schiller, German writer, poet, essayist and dramatist
- William Carlos Williams - American poet and essayist
- Patrick Abercromby - historian
- Chris Adrian
- Jacob Appel - short story writer
- John Arbuthnot
- Janet Asimov - American psychiatrist, wife of Isaac Asimov
- Arnie Baker - cycling coach
- Sir Thomas Browne - British writer
- Georg Büchner - German dramatist
- Ludwig Büchner - German philosopher
- Thomas Campion - poet, composer
- Ethan Canin - novelist, short story writer
- Deepak Chopra - Indian/American writer of self-help and health books
- Alex Comfort - British writer and poet, author of The Joy of Sex
- Ctesias - Greek historian
- Steven Clark Cunningham, children's poem writer
- Erasmus Darwin - British poet, grandfather of Charles Darwin
- Georges Duhamel - French writer, dramatist, poet and humanist
- Havelock Ellis - British writer and poet, author of The Psychology of Sex
- Viktor Frankl - Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, author of Man's Search for Meaning
- Samuel Garth - British author and translator of classics
- Atul Gawande - surgeon and New Yorker medical writer
- William Gilbert - British author; father of W. S. Gilbert
- Oliver Goldsmith - British author
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. - American essayist
- Richard Hooker - author of M*A*S*H
- Arthur Johnston - poet
- Charles Krauthammer - American psychiatrist, syndicated political columnist
- R. D. Laing - Scottish writer and poet, leader of the anti-psychiatry movement
- Stanisław Lem - Polish author of science-fiction
- Carlo Levi - Italian novelist and writer
- David Livingstone - Scottish medical missionary, explorer of Africa, travel writer
- Adeline Yen Mah - Chinese-American author
- Paolo Mantegazza - Italian writer, author of science fiction book L'Anno 3000
- Jean-Paul Marat - French writer, a leader of French Revolution; assassinated in bathtub
- Silas Weir Mitchell - American writer
- Mungo Park- Scottish physician and explorer
- Hakim Syed Zillur Rahman - Indian author and translator of classical manuscripts
- José Rizal - Filipino novelist, scientist, linguist, and national hero
- João Guimarães Rosa - Brazilian writer
- Sir Ronald Ross - British writer and poet, discovered the malarial parasite
- Theodore Isaac Rubin - American author of David and Lisa
- Oliver Sacks - British essayist
- Albert Schweitzer - German charitative worker, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, theologian, philosopher, organist, musicologist
- Frank Slaughter - American bestseller author, wrote
- Tobias Smollett - author
- Benjamin Spock - American pediatrician, wrote Baby and Child Care
- Patrick Taylor - Canadian best-selling novelist
- Osamu Tezuka - Japanese cartoonist and animator; the "father of anime"
- Lewis Thomas - American essayist and poet
- Sir Henry Thompson — British surgeon and polymath
- Vladislav Vančura - Czech writer, screenwriter and film director
- Francis Brett Young - English novelist and poet
Physicians famous as politicians
- Ayad Allawi - interim Prime Minister of Iraq
- Salvador Allende - Chilean president
- Emilio Álvarez Montalván - Foreign Minister of Nicaragua
- Arnulfo Arias - Panaman President
- Bashar Al-Assad - Syrian national leader
- Michelle Bachelet - Chilean president
- Hastings Kamuzu Banda - Prime Minister, President and later dictator of Malawi
- Gro Harlem Brundtland - first Norwegian female prime minister; Director-General of the World Health Organization
- Margaret Chan - Director General of the WHO; former Director of Health of Hong Kong
- Chen Chi-mai - former mayor of Kaohsiung, Taiwan
- York Chow - Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food of Hong Kong
- Denzil Douglas - Prime Ministers of Saint Kitts and Nevis, 1995–2015
- François Duvalier - 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
- Che Guevara - Latin American revolutionary leader
- George Habash - founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
- Ibrahim al-Jaafari - Prime minister of Iraq
- Radovan Karadžić - first President of Republika Srpska, now facing charges for genocide and crimes against humanity
- Mohammad-Reza Khatami - Iranian politician
- Ewa Kopacz - Polish Prime Minister who succeeded Donald Tusk, 2014–2015
- Juscelino Kubitscheck - Brazilian president
- Mahathir bin Mohamad - Malaysian prime minister
- Agostinho Neto - MPLA leader and president of Angola
- Navin Ramgoolam - Prime minister of Mauritius
- Lloyd Richardson - President of the Parliament of Sint Maarten, 2014–2015
- José Rizal - Filipino revolutionary and national hero
- Bidhan Chandra Roy - Indian politician
- Hélio de Oliveira Santos - Brazilian politician, mayor of Campinas
- Sun Yat-sen - founder of the Republic of China
- Tabaré Vázquez - former Uruguayan President
- Ali Akbar Velayati - Iranian Foreign Minister, 1981–1997
- Ursula von der Leyen - German Federal Minister of Defence
- William Walker - ruler of Nicaragua
- Ram Baran Yadav - first elected president of the republic of Nepal
- Yeoh Eng-kiong - former Secretary for Health and Welfare of Hong Kong
Argentina
- Luis Agote
- Nicolas Bazan
- Hermes Binner
- Eduardo Braun-Menéndez
- Ramón Carrillo
- Bernardo Houssay
- René Favaloro
- Arturo Umberto Illia – 35th President of Argentina
- Luis Federico Leloir
- Julia Polak
- Alberto Carlos Taquini
Azerbaijan
- Karim bey Mehmandarov
Australia
- Bob Brown - parliamentary leader of the Australian Greens
- Andrew Laming - Australian politician
- Peter Macdonald
- Brendan Nelson - Australian politician
- Sir Earle Page - Prime Minister of Australia
- Dinesh Palipana - first quadriplegic medical graduate in Queensland, disability advocate
- Andrew Refshauge - Australian politician
- Mal Washer
- Michael Wooldridge
Canada
- Thomas "Tommy" Douglas
- Carolyn Bennett
- Stanley K. Bernstein
- Frederick William Borden – Canadian MP and minister of the Militia
- Bernard-Augustin Conroy
- John Waterhouse Daniel
- Hedy Fry – Canadian politician, member of parliament
- Dennis Furlong
- Charles Godfrey
- Grant Hill - former Canadian MP
- Wilbert Keon – Canadian senator
- Keith Martin - Portuguese Canadian MP
- William McGuigan – mayor of Vancouver, British Columbia
- Théodore Robitaille – Lieutenant Governor of Quebec, Quebec MNA and Senator
- Bette Stephenson – Ontario MPP and former Minister of Labour, Minister of Education and Minister of Colleges and Universities
- Donald Matheson Sutherland - MP and former minister of National Defence
- David Swann
- Sir Charles Tupper - Prime Minister of Canada and Premier of Nova Scotia ; High Commissioner in Great Britain
France
- Louis Auguste Blanqui – French revolutionary socialist
- Georges Clemenceau – French statesman
- Jean-Paul Marat – French revolution leader
Italy
- Guido Baccelli, seven times Minister of education
Japan
- Tomoko Abe - Representative of Japan
- Ichirō Kamoshita - Representative of Japan, former Environment Minister
- Taro Nakayama - former Representative of Japan, former Foreign Minister
- Chikara Sakaguchi - Representative of Japan, former Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare
- Koichiro Shimizu - former Representative of Japan, one of Koizumi Children
- Tsutomu Tomioka - former Representative of Japan, one of Koizumi Children
The Netherlands
- Frederik van Eeden
- J. Slauerhoff
- Simon Vestdijk
- Leo Vroman
United Kingdom
- Liam Fox - British Secretary of State for Defence
- John Pope Hennessy - former Governor of Hong Kong
- David Owen - British politician
United States
- Stewart Barlow - member of the Utah House of Representatives
- Larry Bucshon - U.S. Congressman from Indiana
- Michael C. Burgess - U.S. Congressman from Texas
- Ben Carson - United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
- Tom Coburn - U.S. Senator
- Howard Dean - former Governor of Vermont
- Scott Ecklund - member of the South Dakota House of Representatives
- Joe Ellington - member of the West Virginia House of Delegates
- Bill Frist - United States Senate Majority Leader
- Joe Heck - U.S. Congressman
- Steve Henry - Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky
- Jim McDermott - U.S. Congressman
- Larry McDonald - U.S. Congressman
- Ralph Northam - Governor of Virginia
- Christopher Ottiano - member of the Rhode Island Senate
- Rand Paul - U.S. Senator
- Ron Paul - U.S. Congressman
- Tom Price - U.S. Congressman from Georgia and former Secretary of Health and Human Services
- David Watkins- member of the Kentucky House of Representatives
- Dave Weldon - US congressman and autism activist
- Ray Lyman Wilbur - United States Secretary of the Interior, president of Stanford University
- Milton R. Wolf
- Thomas Wynne - physician to William Penn, speaker of the first two Provincial Assemblies in Philadelphia
Physicians famous as sportspeople
- Tenley Albright — Olympic figure skating champion
- Lisa Aukland — American professional bodybuilder and powerlifter
- Sir Roger Bannister — first man to break the four-minute mile; English neurologist
- Tim Brabants — sprint kayaker, Olympic gold medalist
- Felipe Contepomi — Argentine rugby union footballer
- Ted Eisenberg — American 2018 world champion in long distance tomahawk throwing
- Gail Hopkins — American professional baseball player
- David Gerrard — New Zealand swimmer
- Randy Gregg — ice hockey player
- Jack Lovelock — Olympic athlete
- Richard Mamiya — football player
- Doc Medich, American baseball player
- Stephen Rerych — American swimmer, Olympic champion, and former world record-holder
- Dot Richardson — American softball player, Olympics; orthopedic physician
- Sócrates — Brazilian soccer player, played for the national team 1979–1986
Physicians famous for their role in television and the media
Australia
- Jeremy Cumpston
- Jonathan LaPaglia
- Peter Larkins
- Renee Lim
- Andrew Rochford
- Rob Sitch
Brazil
- Lúcia Petterle
Finland
- Emilia Vuorisalmi
Germany
- Marianne Koch
- Gunther Philipp
Ireland
- Ronan Tynan
Malta
- Gianluca Bezzina
Norway
- Anders Danielsen Lie
- Gro Harlem Brundtland - first Norwegian female prime minister; Director-General of the World Health Organization
South Africa
- Phil du Plessis
Spain
- El Gran Wyoming
Sweden
- Staffan Hallerstam
- Jesper Salén
- Rebecka Liljeberg
United Kingdom
- Carina Tyrrell
- Tony Gardner
- Harry Hill
- Christian Jessen
- Sunshine Martyn
- Pixie McKenna
- Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller
- Darwin Shaw
- Hank Wangford
United States
- Jennifer Ashton
- Andrew Baldwin
- Jennifer Berman
- Jessica Carlson
- Deepak Chopra
- Lyn Christie
- Terry Dubrow
- Garth Fisher
- Leo Galland
- Anthony C. Griffin
- Sanjay Gupta
- Randal Haworth
- Jason Todd Ipson
- Matt Iseman
- Ken Jeong
- Sean Kenniff
- Will Kirby
- C. Everett Koop
- John S. Marr
- Lucky Meisenheimer
- Paul Nassif
- Andrew P. Ordon
- Mehmet Oz
- Nicholas Perricone
- Drew Pinsky
- Bernard Punsly
- Brent Ridge
- Nancy Snyderman
- Benjamin Spock
- Travis Stork
Physicians famous as beauty queens
- Eva Andersson-Dubin, Miss Sweden 1980
- Deidre Downs, Miss America 2005
- Anna Malova, Miss Russia 1998
- Lúcia Petterle, Miss World 1971
- Limor Schreibman-Sharir, Miss Israel 1973
Physicians famous as first ladies
- Susan Lynch, First Lady of New Hampshire
- Mildred Scheel, wife of Walter Scheel
Physicians famous for other activities
- Anderson Ruffin Abbott
- Jane Addams — social activist
- David Alter — inventor
- Rosalind Ambrose introduced CAT scan, fluoroscopy, mammography, teleradiology and ultrasound technologies to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
- Oswald Avery — molecular biologist who discovered DNA carried genetic information
- Ali Bacher — cricketer
- Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi — traveller
- Roger Bannister — runner, first sub-four-minute miler
- Josiah Bartlett — American statesman and chief justice of New Hampshire
- T. Romeyn Beck — American forensic medicine pioneer
- Ramon Betances — surgeon, PR nationalist
- Maximilian Bircher-Benner — nutritionist
- Oscar Biscet — human rights advocate
- Herman Boerhaave — humanist
- Alexander Borodin — composer, chemist
- Thomas Bowdler — censor
- Lafayette Bunnell — explorer of Yosemite Valley
- John Caius — physician and educator
- Roberto Canessa — survivor of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, which crashed in the Andes Mountains in 1972
- Gerolamo Cardano — mathematician
- Alexis Carrell — transplant surgeon, eugenicist, Vichy sympathizer
- Ben Carson — African-American neurosurgeon
- Anton Chekhov — Writer
- Laurel B. Clark — American astronaut, killed in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster
- Nicolaus Copernicus — mathematician and astronomer
- Merv Cross
- Ted Eisenberg, the Guinness World Record holder for most breast augmentation surgeries performed.
- Steven Eisenberg, known as "The Singing Cancer Doctor."
- Sextus Empiricus — philosopher
- Ken Evoy
- Giovanni Fontana — Venetian physician, engineer, and encyclopedist
- Luigi Galvani — physicist
- Pierre Gassendi — philosopher
- William Gilbert — physicist
- Carl Goresky — physician and scientist
- W. G. Grace — cricketer
- John Franklin Gray — American educator, first practitioner of homeopathy in the US
- Nehemiah Grew — botanist
- Samuel Hahnemann — founder of homeopathy
- Armand Hammer — entrepreneur
- Daniel Harris
- Karin M. Hehenberger — diabetes expert
- Hermann von Helmholtz — physicist
- Jan Baptist van Helmont — physiologist
- Harry Hill — British comedian
- Samuel Gridley Howe — abolitionist
- Ebenezer Kingsbury Hunt — President of the Connecticut State Medical Society; director of the Retreat for the Insane
- Mae Jemison — astronaut
- David Johnson — American swimmer
- Stuart Kauffman — biologist
- John Keats — poet and author
- John Harvey Kellogg — cereal manufacturer
- Charles Krauthammer — columnist and political commentator
- Cesare Lombroso — based his system of criminology on physiognomy
- John McAndrew — All-Ireland Gaelic Footballer
- June McCarroll — inventor of lane markings
- Pat McGeer — Canadian basketball player
- James McHenry — signer of the United States Constitution
- Archibald Menzies — naturalist
- Franz Mesmer — proponent of mesmerism and the idea of animal magnetism
- Jonathan Miller — television presenter and stage director
- Paul Möhring — zoologist, botanist
- Maria Montessori — educator
- Boris V. Morukov — cosmonaut
- Lee "Final Table" Nelson — professional poker player
- Haing S. Ngor — Oscar-winning film actor
- Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers — astronomer
- Dinesh Palipana — physician with disability and advocate
- Roza Papo — army general
- James Parkinson — physician, geologist, political activist
- Claude Perrault — architect
- Christian Hendrik Persoon — South African botanist
- Pope John XXI — pope
- Scott Powell — co-founder of the nostalgia group Sha Na Na
- Weston A. Price — traveler, educator
- Syed Ziaur Rahman — physician and medical scientist
- John Ray — plant taxonomer
- Prathap C. Reddy
- Bradbury Robinson — threw the first legal forward pass in American football history while a medical student at St. Louis University
- Peter Mark Roget — English lexicographer
- Jacques Rogge — sports official
- Mowaffak al-Rubaie — human rights advocate, member of the Interim Iraqi Governing Council
- Benjamin Rush — signer of the United States Constitution
- Daniel Rutherford — chemist
- Bendapudi Venkata Satyanarayana
- Félix Savart — physicist
- Albert Schweitzer — humanist
- Michael Servetus — burnt at the stake by Calvinists for heresy
- Paul Sinha — British comedian
- Rob Sitch — Australian comedian
- Sócrates — Brazilian football player
- James Hudson Taylor — British missionary to China and founder of the China Inland Mission
- Norman Earl Thagard — astronaut
- Debi Thomas — Olympic figure skater
- William E. Thornton — astronaut
- John Tidwell — American basketball player
- Nasiruddin al-Tusi — astronomer
- Andrew Wakefield — conducted studies on disputed link between vaccines and neurodevelopmental disorders, which had many serious consequences
- William Walker — Latin American adventurer
- Moshe Wallach — founder and director of Shaare Zedek Hospital, Jerusalem, for 45 years
- John Clarence Webster — Canadian historian
- Wilhelm Weinberg — with G. H. Hardy, developed the Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium model of population genetics
- JPR Williams — rugby union player
- Hugh Williamson — American patriot, statesman, Surgeon General of SC
- Thomas Young — scientist