29 articles
Ali Rowhani-Rahbar
Ali Rowhani-Rahbar is an Iranian-born American epidemiologist at the University of Washington who studies firearm injury prevention and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2023.
Bonnie Henry
Bonnie Henry, Canadian physician and BC's Provincial Health Officer since 2018, first woman in the role; led British Columbia's COVID-19 pandemic and overdose emergency responses; formerly Toronto SARS response lead and BCCDC executive.
Cyril Wecht
Cyril H. Wecht (1931–2024), American forensic pathologist, attorney, and Allegheny County coroner 1970–1980 and 1996–2006; leading critic of the Warren Commission's single-bullet theory and commentator on JFK, Elvis Presley, and JonBenét Ramsey deaths.
David G. Hoel
David G. Hoel is an American biostatistician and environmental epidemiologist, a Distinguished University Professor at the Medical University of South Carolina and National Academy of Medicine member.
David Heymann (epidemiologist)
David Heymann is an infectious disease epidemiologist and professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine who led the World Health Organization's 2003 SARS response.
Deborah Birx
Deborah Birx (Deborah Leah Birx, born 1956), American physician and diplomat; U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator 2014–2020 overseeing PEPFAR, led RV 144 Thai HIV vaccine trial, and White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator 2020–2021.
Donald A. Henderson
Donald A. Henderson (1928–2016) was an American physician who directed the WHO smallpox eradication program from 1966 to 1977, then served as dean at Johns Hopkins.
Floyd J. Malveaux
Floyd J. Malveaux is an American physician-scientist in allergy and asthma who served as dean of Howard University College of Medicine and led the Merck Childhood Asthma Network.
Gaëtan Dugas
Gaétan Dugas (1953–1984), French-Canadian Air Canada flight attendant wrongly dubbed AIDS "Patient Zero"; marked Patient O (Outside of California) in a 1984 CDC cluster study; exonerated by 2016 Nature genome analysis showing HIV reached New York around 1971.
Godfrey P. Oakley Jr.
Godfrey P. Oakley Jr. was an American epidemiologist and Emory professor who led the campaign that made the FDA require folic acid fortification of enriched grains to prevent spina bifida.
Harrison C. Spencer
Harrison C. Spencer, born Harrison Clark Spencer Jr., was an American malaria epidemiologist who led the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and ASPPH.
Ignaz Semmelweis
Ignaz Semmelweis (Ignác Fülöp Semmelweis, 1818–1865), Hungarian obstetrician called the savior of mothers, showed childbed fever spread on doctors' hands and cut Vienna clinic mortality from 10% to 2% using 4% chlorinated lime handwashing from May 1847.
James Lind
James Lind (1716–1794), Scottish naval surgeon, ran the 1747 HMS Salisbury trial of six scurvy treatments on 12 sailors, showed citrus cured scurvy, and published A Treatise of the Scurvy (1753).
John Snow
John Snow (1813–1858), English physician and anesthesiologist to Queen Victoria, proved cholera was waterborne via the 1854 Broad Street pump investigation and the south London Grand Experiment, founding modern epidemiology.
Jonathan Van-Tam
Jonathan Van-Tam (JVT), British influenza specialist and Deputy Chief Medical Officer for England 2017-2022, led health protection, the COVID-19 Vaccine Taskforce work, and televised pandemic briefings; later Nottingham Pro-Vice-Chancellor.
Josiah D. Rich
Josiah D. Rich is an American infectious disease and addiction medicine physician-researcher at Brown University, known for building Rhode Island's statewide prison medication-assisted treatment program.
Judy Mikovits
Judy Mikovits, former Whittemore Peterson Institute research director, led the retracted 2009 Science paper linking XMRV to chronic fatigue syndrome; later an anti-vaccine activist featured in the false-claim Plandemic video.
Martin McKee
Martin McKee, born Clifford Martin McKee in 1956, is a Northern Ireland–trained physician and professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Mary Jo Trepka
Mary Jo Trepka is an American infectious disease and health-disparities epidemiologist who chairs epidemiology at Florida International University and received the 2010 Presidential Early Career Award from President Obama.
Mary Mallon
Mary Mallon (1869-1938), "Typhoid Mary", Irish-born New York cook and first identified asymptomatic carrier of Salmonella typhi in the US; infected at least 122 people and spent about 26 years quarantined on North Brother Island.
Plague doctor
Plague doctor (medico della peste): a municipally contracted plague physician, iconically depicted in a beaked mask costume attributed to Charles de Lorme and the 1656 Rome/Naples engravings; used briefly in 17th-century Italy and southern France against miasma.
Robert G. Petersdorf
Robert G. Petersdorf (1926–2006) was an American infectious-diseases physician who chaired medicine at the University of Washington and served as AAMC president from 1986 to 1994.
Robert William Philip
Robert William Philip (1857–1939) was a Scottish physician who founded the world's first tuberculosis dispensary in Edinburgh in 1887; his Edinburgh Scheme became national policy in Britain after 1906.
Rodrigo V. Guerrero
Rodrigo V. Guerrero, born Rodrigo Guerrero Velasco in 1938, is a Colombian physician and epidemiologist who treated urban violence as a public health problem as mayor of Cali, winning the first Roux Prize in 2014.
Ruth Pfau
Ruth Pfau (1929–2017), German physician and Daughters of the Heart of Mary sister, called Pakistan's Mother Teresa; founded Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centre Karachi in 1960 and led Pakistan's National Leprosy Control Programme, achieving WHO leprosy control in 1996.
Subbian Panayampalli
Subbian Panayampalli, also known as Panayampalli Subbian Satheshkumar, is a CDC scientist who leads poxvirus and rabies diagnostics research and received a 2019 PECASE award.
Thomas E. Bryant
Thomas E. Bryant is a public health practitioner-researcher whose 2019 study in DeLand, Florida, found providers knew Florida's prenatal HIV testing rule but often did not follow it.
Walter Reed
Walter Reed (1851-1902), U.S. Army physician and epidemiologist, led the 1900 Yellow Fever Commission proving mosquitoes transmit yellow fever; namesake of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
Wu Lien-teh (伍连德)
Wu Lien-teh (伍连德, 1879–1960), Penang-born Cambridge physician, led the 1910–11 Manchurian pneumonic plague response, invented the Wu mask precursor to the N95, founded China's modern public health system, and was nominated for the 1935 Nobel Prize in Medicine.