PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: biology
British naturalist
Charles Darwin was an English naturalist whose scientific theory of evolution by natural selection became the foundation of modern evolutionary studies. An affable country gentleman, Darwin at first shocked...
British biologist
Thomas Henry Huxley was an English biologist, educator, and advocate of agnosticism (he coined the word). Huxley’s vigorous public support of Charles Darwin’s evolutionary naturalism earned him the nickname...
French chemist and microbiologist
Louis Pasteur was a French chemist and microbiologist who was one of the most important founders of medical microbiology. Pasteur’s contributions to science, technology, and medicine are nearly without...
British naturalist
Alfred Russel Wallace was a British humanist, naturalist, geographer, and social critic. He became a public figure in England during the second half of the 19th century, known for his courageous views...
French biologist
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck was a pioneering French biologist who is best known for his idea that acquired characters are inheritable, an idea known as Lamarckism, which is controverted by modern genetics and...
British biologist
Ian Wilmut was a British developmental biologist who was the first to use nuclear transfer of differentiated adult cells to generate a mammalian clone, a Finn Dorset sheep named Dolly, born in 1996. Wilmut...
American biologist
E.O. Wilson was an American biologist recognized as the world’s leading authority on ants. He was also the foremost proponent of sociobiology, the study of the genetic basis of the social behaviour of...
French naturalist
Georges-Louis Leclerc, count de Buffon was a French naturalist, remembered for his comprehensive work on natural history, Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière (begun in 1749). He was created a...
Italian scientist
Marcello Malpighi was an Italian physician and biologist who, in developing experimental methods to study living things, founded the science of microscopic anatomy. After Malpighi’s researches, microscopic...
Dutch scientist
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was a Dutch microscopist who was the first to observe bacteria and protozoa. His researches on lower animals refuted the doctrine of spontaneous generation, and his observations...
English scientist
Lancelot Thomas Hogben was an English zoologist, geneticist, medical statistician, and linguist, known especially for his many contributions to the study of social biology. Hogben’s birth was premature...
Belgian physician
Andreas Vesalius was a Renaissance physician who revolutionized the study of biology and the practice of medicine by his careful description of the anatomy of the human body. Basing his observations on...
English biologist
Charles Elton was an English biologist credited with framing the basic principles of modern animal ecology. Elton was educated first at Liverpool College and then at New College, Oxford, from which he...
American biologist
Alfred Sherwood Romer was a U.S. paleontologist widely known for his concepts of evolutionary history of vertebrate animals. The explicit use of comparative anatomy and embryology in studies of fossil...
Swiss physician and naturalist
Conrad Gesner was a Swiss physician and naturalist best known for his systematic compilations of information on animals and plants. Noting his learning ability at an early age, his father, an impecunious...
German biologist
August Weismann was a German biologist and one of the founders of the science of genetics. He is best known for his opposition to the doctrine of the inheritance of acquired traits and for his “germ plasm”...
American scientist
Theodosius Dobzhansky was a Ukrainian-American geneticist and evolutionist whose work had a major influence on 20th-century thought and research on genetics and evolutionary theory. The son of a mathematics...
American geneticist and biophysicist
James Watson is an American geneticist and biophysicist who played a crucial role in the discovery of the molecular structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), the substance that is the basis of heredity....
American scientist
Charles Henry Turner was an American behavioral scientist and early pioneer in the field of insect behaviour. He is best known for his work showing that social insects can modify their behaviour as a result...
British physician
Sir Hans Sloane, Baronet was a British physician and naturalist whose collection of books, manuscripts, and curiosities formed the basis for the British Museum in London. As a child Sloane possessed a...
American biologist
Lynn Margulis was an American biologist whose serial endosymbiotic theory of eukaryotic cell development revolutionized the modern concept of how life arose on Earth. Margulis was raised in Chicago. Intellectually...
American molecular biologist
Susan L. Lindquist was an American molecular biologist who made key discoveries concerning protein folding and who was among the first to discover that in yeast, inherited traits can be passed to offspring...
American physician and biologist
Robert J. Lefkowitz is an American physician and molecular biologist who demonstrated the existence of receptors—molecules that receive and transmit signals for cells. His research on the structure and...
Canadian immunologist and cell biologist
Ralph M. Steinman was a Canadian immunologist and cell biologist who shared the 2011 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (with American immunologist Bruce A. Beutler and French immunologist Jules A....
American scientist
Norman Ernest Borlaug was an American agricultural scientist and plant pathologist, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1970. Known as the “Father of the Green Revolution,” Borlaug helped lay the...
American-born physicist and spy
Theodore Hall was an American-born physicist and spy who during World War II worked on the Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bomb and also delivered details on its design to the Soviet Union....
German-American scientist
Günter Blobel was a German-born American cellular and molecular biologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1999 for his discovery that proteins have signals that govern their...
British biologist
John Gurdon is a British developmental biologist who was the first to demonstrate that egg cells are able to reprogram differentiated (mature) cell nuclei, reverting them to a pluripotent state, in which...
American molecular biologist and biochemist
Elizabeth Blackburn is an Australian-born American molecular biologist and biochemist who was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, along with American molecular biologist Carol W. Greider...
American physiologist
Phillip A. Sharp is an American molecular biologist, awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, along with Richard J. Roberts, for his independent discovery that individual genes are often...
American biologist and educator
Ruth Patrick was an American aquatic biologist and educator widely regarded as one of the early pioneers of the science of limnology. She is best known for her work with diatoms (a type of algae encased...
American molecular biologist
Carol W. Greider is an American molecular biologist who was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, along with American molecular biologist and biochemist Elizabeth H. Blackburn and American...
American microbiologist
Carl Woese was an American microbiologist who discovered the group of single-cell prokaryotic organisms known as archaea, which constitute a third domain of life. Woese attended Amherst College in Massachusetts,...
American biologist
James Thomson is an American biologist who was among the first to isolate human embryonic stem cells and the first to transform human skin cells into stem cells. Thomson grew up in the Chicago suburb of...
Swedish biologist
Torsten Wiesel is a Swedish neurobiologist, recipient with David Hunter Hubel and Roger Wolcott Sperry of the 1981 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. All three scientists were honoured for their investigations...
American biologist
Rachel Carson was an American biologist well known for her writings on environmental pollution and the natural history of the sea. Carson early developed a deep interest in the natural world. She entered...
Soviet biologist and agronomist
Trofim Lysenko was a Soviet biologist and agronomist, the controversial “dictator” of Communistic biology during Joseph Stalin’s regime. He rejected orthodox genetics in favor of “Michurinism” (named for...
Canadian-American scientist
Sidney Altman was a Canadian American molecular biologist who, with Thomas R. Cech, received the 1989 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for their discoveries concerning the catalytic properties of RNA, or ribonucleic...
American physician and biologist
Brian K. Kobilka is an American physician and molecular biologist whose research on the structure and function of cell-surface molecules known as G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs)—the largest family...
French naturalist
Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire was a French naturalist who established the principle of “unity of composition,” postulating a single consistent structural plan basic to all animals as a major tenet of...
American paleontologist
Stephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and science writer. Gould graduated from Antioch College in 1963 and received a Ph.D. in paleontology at Columbia University in...
British biologist
Sir Julian Huxley was an English biologist, philosopher, educator, and author who greatly influenced the modern development of embryology, systematics, and studies of behavior and evolution. Julian, a...
Japanese biologist
Tonegawa Susumu is a Japanese molecular biologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1987 for his discovery of the genetic mechanisms underlying the great diversity of antibodies...
American biochemist and cell biologist
James E. Rothman is an American biochemist and cell biologist who discovered the molecular machinery involved in vesicle budding and membrane fusion in cells. Cellular vesicles, which are bubblelike structures,...
American scientist
Thomas Robert Cech is an American biochemist and molecular biologist who, with Sidney Altman, was awarded the 1989 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for their discoveries concerning RNA (ribonucleic acid). Cech...
American biochemist and cell biologist
Randy W. Schekman is an American biochemist and cell biologist who contributed to the discovery of the genetic basis of vesicle transport in cells. Bubblelike vesicles transport molecules such as enzymes,...
American paleoecologist
Margaret Bryan Davis was an American paleoecologist best known for her pioneering work in the science of palynology (the study of plant pollen and spores). Her most-influential work involved the use of...
British biologist
William Bateson was a British biologist who founded and named the science of genetics and whose experiments provided evidence basic to the modern understanding of heredity. A dedicated evolutionist, he...
Canadian biologist
Timothy Parsons is a Canadian marine biologist who advocated a holistic approach to studying ocean environments. Parsons attended McGill University, Montreal, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in agriculture...
American physician and microbiologist
Albert Bruce Sabin was a Polish American physician and microbiologist best known for developing the oral polio vaccine. He was also known for his research in the fields of human viral diseases, toxoplasmosis,...
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