You know their work.
Now meet the people.
60 profiles. Discovery is collective: every story follows the people, teams, evidence and systems that made the work matter.
Tu Youyou
An ancient text. A stubborn question. A malaria treatment.
Read the story ↗Katherine Johnson
The mathematics behind a journey beyond Earth.
Read the story ↗Norman Borlaug
The scientist whose work changed fields of wheat.
Read the story ↗Rosalind Franklin
A clearer image helped reveal a hidden structure.
Read the story ↗Jonas Salk
An answer to the fear of polio.
Read the story ↗Alan Turing
A way to think about what a machine can compute.
Read the story ↗Marie Curie
Her work with Pierre Curie helped establish research into radioactivity.
Read the story ↗Pierre Curie
He and Marie Curie conducted pioneering studies of radiation phenomena.
Read the story ↗Henri Becquerel
He discovered spontaneous radioactivity while studying uranium salts.
Read the story ↗Ernest Rutherford
He investigated the disintegration of elements and the chemistry of radioactive substances.
Read the story ↗Max Planck
He introduced energy quanta to account for black-body radiation.
Read the story ↗Albert Einstein
His work on the photoelectric effect established a key quantum insight.
Read the story ↗Niels Bohr
He advanced understanding of atomic structure and radiation.
Read the story ↗Louis de Broglie
He proposed the wave nature of electrons.
Read the story ↗Alexander Fleming
His observation of penicillin's antibacterial activity began a longer development effort.
Read the story ↗Howard Florey
He led research that helped turn penicillin into a medicine.
Read the story ↗Ernst Chain
He helped develop the therapeutic use of penicillin with Florey and colleagues.
Read the story ↗Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin
She used X-ray methods to determine important molecular structures.
Read the story ↗Barbara McClintock
She discovered mobile genetic elements in maize.
Read the story ↗Kary Mullis
He developed the polymerase chain reaction method.
Read the story ↗Richard Ernst
He developed high-resolution nuclear magnetic resonance methods.
Read the story ↗Gertrude Elion
She helped develop principles of drug treatment and several important medicines.
Read the story ↗Rita Levi-Montalcini
She discovered nerve growth factor with Stanley Cohen.
Read the story ↗Frederick Banting
His work with colleagues helped discover insulin as a treatment.
Read the story ↗John Macleod
He contributed to the insulin research carried out in Toronto.
Read the story ↗Severo Ochoa
He helped uncover mechanisms of RNA synthesis.
Read the story ↗Arthur Kornberg
He identified mechanisms of DNA synthesis.
Read the story ↗James Watson
He co-developed the double-helix model using evidence from several researchers.
Read the story ↗Francis Crick
He co-developed the double-helix model with Watson, drawing on crucial experimental evidence.
Read the story ↗Maurice Wilkins
His work in X-ray diffraction contributed to understanding DNA.
Read the story ↗Linus Pauling
He investigated the nature of the chemical bond and molecular structure.
Read the story ↗Robert Burns Woodward
He developed powerful approaches to organic synthesis.
Read the story ↗Ahmed Zewail
He studied transition states with ultrafast spectroscopy.
Read the story ↗Frances Arnold
She developed directed evolution of enzymes.
Read the story ↗Jennifer Doudna
She co-developed a method for genome editing with CRISPR-Cas9.
Read the story ↗Emmanuelle Charpentier
She co-developed CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing.
Read the story ↗Katalin Karikó
Her work on nucleoside modifications helped enable effective mRNA vaccines.
Read the story ↗Drew Weissman
He worked with Karikó on nucleoside modifications in mRNA.
Read the story ↗Svante Pääbo
He developed methods to sequence genomes of extinct hominins.
Read the story ↗Ardem Patapoutian
He identified receptors for touch and pressure.
Read the story ↗David Julius
He identified a receptor responding to heat using capsaicin.
Read the story ↗May-Britt Moser
She co-discovered grid cells with Edvard Moser.
Read the story ↗Edvard Moser
He co-discovered grid cells with May-Britt Moser.
Read the story ↗John O'Keefe
He discovered place cells in the hippocampus.
Read the story ↗Shinya Yamanaka
He showed mature cells could be reprogrammed into pluripotent cells.
Read the story ↗John Gurdon
His nuclear-transfer experiments showed mature cells could be reprogrammed.
Read the story ↗Elizabeth Blackburn
She helped discover how telomeres and telomerase protect chromosomes.
Read the story ↗Carol Greider
She co-discovered the enzyme telomerase.
Read the story ↗Jack Szostak
He helped demonstrate the protective role of telomeres.
Read the story ↗Peter Medawar
He helped discover acquired immunological tolerance.
Read the story ↗Françoise Barré-Sinoussi
She co-discovered HIV with Luc Montagnier.
Read the story ↗Luc Montagnier
He co-discovered HIV.
Read the story ↗Barry Marshall
He helped establish the role of Helicobacter pylori.
Read the story ↗Robin Warren
He identified bacteria associated with gastritis and ulcers.
Read the story ↗Mario Capecchi
He developed principles of gene targeting in mice.
Read the story ↗Martin Evans
He helped develop embryonic stem-cell methods for gene targeting.
Read the story ↗Oliver Smithies
He developed techniques for modifying genes in mice.
Read the story ↗Charles Kao
He pioneered the use of optical fibers for communication.
Read the story ↗Donna Strickland
She co-developed chirped pulse amplification.
Read the story ↗George P. Smith
He developed phage display of peptides and antibodies.
Read the story ↗Recognition is learned.
A short quiz without a score or a verdict. Culture taught us some names. It can teach others too.