Great Thinkers

Meet the great minds whose ideas have shaped the world — philosophers, scientists, artists, leaders, and revolutionaries whose thinking still matters today.

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Subject: Medicine & Health × Era: Modern ×
Medicine & Health
Florence Nightingale
1820-1910 · England, United Kingdom
Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) was a British nurse, statistician, and public health reformer. She was born into a wealthy English family and received an unusually thorough…
Health literacy Research skills Scientific thinking Numeracy and mathematical thinking +1
"The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm."
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Medicine & Health
Françoise Barré-Sinoussi
1947-present · France
Françoise Barré-Sinoussi is a French virologist. She is one of the two scientists who discovered the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), the cause of AIDS. She…
Scientific thinking Research skills Critical thinking Ethical thinking +1
"We are not making science for science. We are making science for the benefit of humanity."
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Medicine & Health
Ignaz Semmelweis
1818-1865 · Hungary / Austria
Ignaz Semmelweis (1818-1865) was a Hungarian physician working in Vienna. He was born in Buda, in what is now Budapest, and studied medicine at the…
Scientific thinking Health literacy Critical thinking Research skills +1
"God only knows the number of patients who have gone prematurely to their graves because of me."
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Medicine & Health
Rudolf Virchow
1821-1902 · Germany
Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902) was a German physician, pathologist, anthropologist, and politician. He was born in Schivelbein in Pomerania, now part of Poland, and studied medicine…
Health literacy Scientific thinking Citizenship Systems thinking +1
"Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing but medicine on a large scale."
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Medicine & Health
Tu Youyou
1930-present · China
Tu Youyou is a Chinese medical scientist. In 2015 she won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering artemisinin, a malaria drug that…
Scientific thinking Problem solving Research skills Cultural heritage and identity +1
"A bunch of qinghao; soak in two sheng of water; wring out the juice and drink it all."
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