List of physicians

For a list of characters that have appeared in Doctors, see List of Doctors characters.

This is a list of famous physicians in history.

Chronological lists

Ancient physicians

30th century BCE to 4th century CE

• List of ancient physicians

Post-classical physicians

5th century CE to 15th century CE

• List of post-classical physicians

Early modern physicians

16th century CE to the mid-18th century CE

• List of early modern physicians

Late modern physicians

mid-18th century CE to the mid-20th century CE

• List of late modern physicians

Physicians 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 (c. 100 BCE – 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–c. 210) — 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 (c. 460–370 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 (c. 865–925) (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.
• 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 (c. 500 BCE) — 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
• 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 physician to integrate Chinese and Western medicine

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
• Hans Asperger (1906–1980) – Asperger syndrome
• John Brereton Barlow (1924–2008) – 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 (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 – Cushing's disease
• John Langdon Down – Down syndrome
• Bartolomeo Eustachi – Eustachian tube
• Gabriele Falloppio – Fallopian tube
• Camillo Golgi (1843–1926) – Golgi apparatus
• Ernst Gräfenberg – Gräfenberg spot (G-spot)
• Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (1738–1814) – 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 (1790–1865) – Ludwig's angina
• 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
• Juan Rosai (1940–2020) – Rosai–Dorfman disease
• Daniel Elmer Salmon – Salmonella
• Gunnar B. Stickler – Stickler syndrome
• Georges Albert Édouard Brutus Gilles de la Tourette – Tourette syndrome
• Max Wilms (1867–1918) – 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 (1904–1948) – 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 (1956–1994) – 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
• Mario Jascalevich - killed 9 hospital patients using curare
• Radovan Karadžić (born 1945) – convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in Yugoslavia
• Jack Kevorkian (1923–2011) – convicted of second-degree murder, Michigan, April 13, 1999
• Jeffrey R. MacDonald – murdered a pregnant wife and two daughters in 1979
• 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
• 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 (1911–1978) – Nazi human experimentation
• Richard J. Schmidt – American physician who contaminated his girlfriend with AIDS-tainted blood
• Harold Shipman (1946–2004) – British serial killer
• Michael Swango (born 1953) – American serial killer
• An A-Z list of Wikipedia articles of Nazi doctors

Physicians famous as writers

Main article: Physician writer

Among the better known writers:

• Mikhail Bulgakov (1891–1940) - Russian novelist and playwright
• Louis-Ferdinand Celine (1894–1961) - French novelist, author of Journey to the End of the Night
• Graham Chapman (1941–1989) - writer and actor, founding member of Monty Python
• Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) - Russian playwright
• Robin Cook - American author of bestselling novels, wrote Coma
• Michael Crichton (1942–2008) - American author of Jurassic Park
• A. J. Cronin (1896–1981) - Scottish novelist and essayist, author of The Citadel
• Anthony Daniels (born 1949) - as 'Theodore Dalrymple' and under his own name, a British author, critic and social and cultural commentator
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) - British author of Sherlock Holmes fame
• Khaled Hosseini (born 1965) - American author, originally from Afghanistan, of bestselling novels The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns
• John Keats (1795–1821) - English poet
• Morio Kita - Japanese novelist and essayist; son of Mokichi Saitō
• Jean Baptiste Lefebvre de Villebrune (1732–1809) - 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 (1874–1965) - British novelist and short story writer, wrote Of Human Bondage
• Alfred de Musset (1810–1857) - French playwright, discovered sign of syphilitic aortitis
• Taslima Nasrin
• Mori Ōgai - Japanese novelist, poet, and literary critic
• Walker Percy (1916–1990) - American philosopher and writer
• François Rabelais (1483–1553) - French author of Gargantua and Pantagruel
• Mokichi Saitō - Japanese poet
• Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805), German writer, poet, essayist and dramatist
• William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) - American poet and essayist

And others:

• Patrick Abercromby (1656–c. 1716) - historian
• Chris Adrian
• Jacob Appel - short story writer
• John Arbuthnot
• Janet Asimov (1926-2019) (née Janet O. Jeppson) - American psychiatrist, wife of Isaac Asimov
• Arnie Baker - cycling coach
• Cora Belle Brewster (1859–?), writer, editor
• Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682) - 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 (1920–2000) - British writer and poet, author of The Joy of Sex
• Ctesias (5th century B.C.) - Greek historian
• Steven Clark Cunningham (born 1972), children's poem writer
• 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
• Viktor Frankl (1905–1997) - Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, author of Man's Search for Meaning
• Samuel Garth (1661–1719) - British author and translator of classics
• Elmina M. Roys Gavitt (1828–1898) - American physician; medical journal founder, editor-in-chief
• 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. (1809–1894) - American essayist
• Richard Hooker - author of M*A*S*H
• Arthur Johnston (1587–1641) - poet
• Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) - American psychiatrist, syndicated political columnist
• R. D. Laing - Scottish writer and poet, leader of the anti-psychiatry movement
• Stanisław Lem (1929–2006) - 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
• Paolo Mantegazza (1831–1910) - Italian writer, author of science fiction book L'Anno 3000
• Jean-Paul Marat (1743–1793) - French writer, a leader of French Revolution; assassinated in bathtub
• Silas Weir Mitchell (1829–1914) - American writer
• Mungo Park - Scottish physician and explorer
• Hakim Syed Zillur Rahman - Indian author and translator of classical manuscripts
• José Rizal (1861–1896) - Filipino novelist, scientist, linguist, and national hero
• João Guimarães Rosa - Brazilian writer
• Sir Ronald Ross (1857–1932) - British writer and poet, discovered the malarial parasite
• Theodore Isaac Rubin (1923–2019) - American author of David and Lisa
• Oliver Sacks (1933–2015) - British essayist (The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat)
• Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) - German charitative worker, Nobel Peace Prize laureate (1952), 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
• Patrick Taylor - Canadian best-selling novelist
• Osamu Tezuka - Japanese cartoonist and animator; the "father of anime"
• Lewis Thomas (1913–1993) - American essayist and poet
• Sir Henry Thompson — British surgeon and polymath
• Vladislav Vančura (1891–1942) - Czech writer, screenwriter and film director
• Francis Brett Young (1884–1954) - English novelist and poet

Physicians famous as politicians

• Nazira Abdula, Mozambican Minister of Health
• Ayad Allawi - interim Prime Minister of Iraq
• Salvador Allende (1908–1973) - Chilean president
• Emilio Álvarez Montalván - Foreign Minister of Nicaragua
• Arnulfo Arias - Panamanian President
• Firdous Ashiq Awan - Pakistani politician
• Bashar Al-Assad - Syrian national leader
• Michelle Bachelet (born 1951) - Chilean president
• Hastings Kamuzu Banda (1898–1997) - Prime Minister, President and later dictator of Malawi
• Gro Harlem Brundtland (born 1939) - 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 (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
• 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 (born 1945) - 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 (1922–1979) - 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 (1861–1896) - Filipino revolutionary and national hero
• Bidhan Chandra Roy - Indian politician
• Hélio de Oliveira Santos - Brazilian politician, mayor of Campinas
• Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925) - founder of the Republic of China
• Tabaré Vázquez - former Uruguayan President
• Ali Akbar Velayati (born 1945) - Iranian Foreign Minister, 1981–1997
• Ursula von der Leyen (born 1958) - German Federal Minister of Defence
• William Walker (1824–1860) - ruler of Nicaragua
• Ram Baran Yadav (born 1948) - first elected president of the republic of Nepal
• Yeoh Eng-kiong - former Secretary for Health and Welfare of Hong Kong

Argentina

• Luis Agote (1868–1954)
• Nicolas Bazan (born 1942)
• Hermes Binner
• Eduardo Braun-Menéndez (1903–1959)
• Ramón Carrillo (1906–1956)
• Bernardo Houssay (1887–1971)
• René Favaloro (1923–2000)
• Arturo Umberto Illia - 35th President of Argentina (1963–1966)
• Luis Federico Leloir (1906–1987)
• Julia Polak (1939–2014)
• Alberto Carlos Taquini (1905–1998)

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

• Philippe Couillard- former Prime Minister of Quebec
• 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 (born 1941) - 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 (1821–1915) - Prime Minister of Canada (1896) and Premier of Nova Scotia (1864–1867); High Commissioner in Great Britain (1884–1887)

France

• Louis Auguste Blanqui - French revolutionary socialist
• Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) - French statesman
• Jean-Paul Marat - French revolution leader

Italy

• Guido Baccelli (1830–1916) - 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

Pakistan

• Firdous Ashiq Awan
• Asim Hussain
• Ghulam Hussain

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 (born 1962) - U.S. Congressman from Indiana
• Michael C. Burgess (born 1950) - U.S. Congressman from Texas
• Ben Carson (born September 18, 1951) - United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
• Tom Coburn (1948-2020) - U.S. Senator
• Howard Dean (born 1948) - former Governor of Vermont
• Scott Ecklund - member of the South Dakota House of Representatives
• Joe Ellington (born 1959) - member of the West Virginia House of Delegates
• Bill Frist (born 1952) - United States Senate Majority Leader
• Joe Heck (born 1961) - U.S. Congressman
• Steve Henry (born 1953) - Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky
• Jim McDermott - U.S. Congressman
• Larry McDonald - U.S. Congressman
• Ralph Northam (born 1959) - Governor of Virginia
• Christopher Ottiano (born 1969) - member of the Rhode Island Senate
• Rand Paul (born 1963) - U.S. Senator
• Ron Paul (born 1935) - U.S. Congressman
• Tom Price (American politician) (born October 8, 1954) - U.S. Congressman from Georgia and former Secretary of Health and Human Services
• David Watkins - member of the Kentucky House of Representatives
• Dave Weldon - U.S. Congressman and autism activist
• Ray Lyman Wilbur (1875–1949) - United States Secretary of the Interior, president of Stanford University
• Milton R. Wolf
• Thomas Wynne (1627–1691) - physician to William Penn, speaker of the first two Provincial Assemblies in Philadelphia (1687 & 1688)

Physicians famous as sportspeople

• Tenley Albright — Olympic figure skating champion
• Lisa Aukland — American professional bodybuilder and powerlifter
• Sir Roger Bannister (1929–2018) — 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 (1910–1949) — Olympic athlete
• Richard Mamiya (1925–2019) — 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 (Sócrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira) — 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 (born 1939) - first Norwegian female prime minister; Director-General of the World Health Organization

Pakistan

• Shaista Lodhi
• Ayesha Gul
• Fahad Mirza

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
• 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

• Mahmure Birsen Sakaoğlu, Miss Turkey 1936
• 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 (pediatrician), First Lady of New Hampshire
• Mildred Scheel, wife of Walter Scheel

Physicians famous for other activities

• Anderson Ruffin Abbott
• Jane Addams — social activist
• Dav and ultrasound technologies to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
• Oswald Avery (1877–1955) — 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 (1791–1855) — American forensic medicine pioneer
• Ramon Betances — surgeon, PR nationalist
• Maximilian Bircher-Benner (1867–1939) — nutritionist
• Oscar Biscet — human rights advocate
• Herman Boerhaave — humanist
• Alexander Borodin — composer, chemist
• Thomas Bowdler — censor
• Lafayette Bunnell — explorer of Yosemite Valley
• John Caius (1510–1573) — 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 (1961–2003) — American astronaut, killed in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster
• Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) — mathematician and astronomer
• Merv Cross
• Ted Eisenberg — Guinness World Record holder for most breast augmentation surgeries performed.
• Steven Eisenberg — known as "The Singing Cancer Doctor."
• Sextus Empiricus (2nd–3rd century C.E.) — philosopher
• Ken Evoy
• Giovanni Fontana — Venetian physician, engineer, and encyclopedist
• Luigi Galvani — physicist
• Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) — philosopher
• William Gilbert (1544–1603) — physicist
• Carl Goresky — physician and scientist
• W. G. Grace — cricketer
• John Franklin Gray (1804–1881) — 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 (1577–1655) — physiologist
• Harry Hill — British comedian
• Courtney Howard, Yellowknife-based ER physician and one-time leadership candidate, Green Party of Canada
• Samuel Gridley Howe — abolitionist
• Ebenezer Kingsbury Hunt (1810–1889) — President of the Connecticut State Medical Society; director of the Retreat for the Insane
• Varsha Jain - UK Space doctor/researcher for women's health
• Mae Jemison (born 1956) — astronaut
• David Johnson — American swimmer
• Stuart Kauffman (born 1939) — biologist
• John Keats — poet and author
• John Harvey Kellogg — cereal manufacturer
• Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) — columnist and political commentator
• Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909) — based his system of criminology on physiognomy
• John McAndrew (1927–2013) — All-Ireland Gaelic Footballer
• June McCarroll — inventor of lane markings
• Pat McGeer — Canadian basketball player
• 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 (1934–2019) — 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
• Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers (1758–1840) — 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 (1749–1819) — chemist
• Bendapudi Venkata Satyanarayana
• Félix Savart — physicist
• Albert Schweitzer — humanist
• Michael Servetus (1511–1553) — burnt at the stake by Calvinists for heresy
• Paul Sinha — British comedian
• Rob Sitch — Australian comedian
• Sócrates (1954–2011, Sócrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira) — Brazilian football (soccer) player
• 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
• 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 (1866–1957) — 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

See also

• List of fictional physicians
• List of psychiatrists
• List of neurologists and neurosurgeons
• List of presidents of the Royal College of Physicians
• List of Iraqi physicians
• List of Russian physicians and psychologists
• List of Slovenian physicians
• List of Turkish physicians