Charles H. Hennekens

Professor Hennekens is the first Sir Richard Doll Professor of Medicine and Senior Academic Advisor. He was first John Snow and first Eugene Braunwald Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and first Chief of Preventive Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is a Fellow of the American College of Preventive Medicine (FACPM) and the American College of Cardiology (FACC). Since 2002, Professor Hennekens has been a Special Government Employee (SGE) serving as consultant to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). He serves as chair or member of numerous Data and Safety Monitoring Boards of large-scale randomized trials. As of April 2024, Professor Hennekens is the author/co-author of 993 peer-reviewed publications including 661 original reports, 327 commentaries, reviews and book chapters, and 5 text books. From 1995 to 2005 Professor Hennekens was the third most widely cited medical researcher in the world and five of the top 20 were his former fellows and/or trainees. In 2012, Science Heroes ranked him number 81 in the history of the world for having saved more than 1.1 million lives. This ranks him ahead of Jonas Salk, who developed the polio vaccine, at number 83 and Henry Heimlich, who invented the Heimlich maneuver, at number 103.