Home › Science & Medicine › Science & Mathematics
Science & Mathematics
43 people
Frances Arnold b. 1956Science & MedicineChemical engineer who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for directed evolution of enzymes.John Bardeen 1908–1991Science & MedicineOnly person to win two Nobel Prizes in Physics, for the transistor and superconductivity theory.George Beadle 1903–1989Science & MedicineGeneticist who won the Nobel Prize for showing that genes control biochemical reactions in cells.Hans Bethe 1906–2005Science & MedicinePhysicist who explained stellar energy production and led theoretical work at Los Alamos before becoming a prominent arms-control voice.Annie Jump Cannon 1863–1941Science & MedicineDeveloped the stellar spectral classification system still used to categorize stars.Wallace Carothers 1896–1937Science & MedicineLed the DuPont research that produced neoprene and nylon and established polymer science.Jennifer Doudna b. 1964Science & MedicineBiochemist who co-developed CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing, revolutionizing genetics and medicine.Albert Einstein 1879–1955Science & MedicineGerman-American theoretical physicist whose theory of relativity revolutionized modern physics.Enrico Fermi 1901–1954Science & MedicineItalian-American physicist who built the first nuclear reactor and won the Nobel Prize in Physics.Richard Feynman 1918–1988Science & MedicineTheoretical physicist known for his work in quantum mechanics and his accessible teaching style.Murray Gell-Mann 1929–2019Science & MedicineTheoretical physicist who discovered quarks and won the Nobel Prize for his standard model of particle physics.Josiah Willard Gibbs 1839–1903Science & MedicineFounded chemical thermodynamics and statistical mechanics through his work on heterogeneous equilibrium at Yale.Kurt Gödel 1906–1978Science & MedicineProved the incompleteness theorems and spent his later career at the Institute for Advanced Study.Stephen Jay Gould 1941–2002Science & MedicinePaleontologist and essayist who advanced punctuated equilibrium and became a leading public interpreter of evolution.Edwin Hubble 1889–1953Science & MedicineAstronomer whose discovery of expanding galaxies provided the foundation for the Big Bang theory.Percy Lavon Julian 1899–1975Science & MedicinePioneered synthesis of cortisone and other steroids from plant sterols.Stephanie Kwolek 1923–2014Science & MedicineInvented Kevlar aramid fiber while working as a DuPont research chemist.Ernest Lawrence 1901–1958Science & MedicineInvented the cyclotron and built the Berkeley model of large-scale team physics.Henrietta Swan Leavitt 1868–1921Science & MedicineDiscovered the Cepheid period-luminosity relation that made measuring cosmic distances possible.Willard Libby 1908–1980Science & MedicineDeveloped radiocarbon dating — transforming archaeology and geology — and won the 1960 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.Percival Lowell 1855–1916Science & MedicineFounded Lowell Observatory and initiated the search that led to Pluto's discovery.Benoit Mandelbrot 1924–2010Science & MedicineDeveloped fractal geometry during a long research career at IBM and Yale.Maria Goeppert Mayer 1906–1972Science & MedicinePhysicist and Nobel laureate who developed the nuclear shell model, a fundamental account of atomic nuclei.Barbara McClintock 1902–1992Science & MedicineCytogeneticist who discovered transposable elements and won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.Maria Mitchell 1818–1889Science & MedicineFirst American woman professional astronomer who discovered a comet and taught at Vassar College.John Forbes Nash Jr. 1928–2015Science & MedicineFormulated the Nash equilibrium and proved major results in differential geometry.J. Robert Oppenheimer 1904–1967Science & MedicineTheoretical physicist who led the Manhattan Project and became known as the father of the atomic bomb.Linus Pauling 1901–1994Science & MedicineChemist and peace activist who won two unshared Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and Peace.Vera Rubin 1928–2016Science & MedicineMeasured galaxy rotation curves that provided the main observational evidence for dark matter.Carl Sagan 1934–1996Science & MedicineAstronomer and science communicator who brought cosmology to millions through Cosmos and popular books.Glenn T. Seaborg 1912–1999Science & MedicineCo-discovered plutonium and nine other transuranium elements and chaired the Atomic Energy Commission.Harlow Shapley 1885–1972Science & MedicineDetermined the size of the Milky Way and displaced the Sun from its center.James Smithson 1765–1829Science & MedicineBritish scientist whose bequest founded the Smithsonian Institution, America's museum complex.Edward Teller 1908–2003Science & MedicinePhysicist and advocate of the hydrogen bomb whose work and policy influence shaped Cold War science and defense.Kip Thorne b. 1940Science & MedicineTheoretical physicist whose work on gravitational waves earned a Nobel Prize and inspired the film Interstellar.Charles Townes 1915–2015Science & MedicinePhysicist who invented the maser and co-invented the laser, earning a Nobel Prize.Neil deGrasse Tyson b. 1958Science & MedicineAstrophysicist and science communicator who has made cosmology accessible to millions through television.John von Neumann 1903–1957Science & MedicineHungarian-American mathematician and engineer whose computer architecture remains the basis of modern computing.James Watson 1928–2025Science & MedicineCo-discoverer of the DNA double helix structure, earning a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.Steven Weinberg 1933–2021Science & MedicineTheoretical physicist who unified electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force, earning a Nobel Prize.Norbert Wiener 1894–1964Science & MedicineMathematician who founded cybernetics, influencing computing, automation, neuroscience, and theories of communication and control.E. O. Wilson 1929–2021Science & MedicineBiologist whose studies of ants, biodiversity, and sociobiology reshaped ecology, evolution, and conservation debate.Chien-Shiung Wu 1912–1997Science & MedicineExperimental physicist whose decisive work on parity violation transformed particle physics and challenged assumptions about natural symmetry.