Browse the index

Discovered nerve growth factor in a bedroom lab under fascist persecution.

Surgeon-acupuncturist who built a biophysical model of meridian therapy.

Explained the nerve impulse in mathematical terms.

Polio vaccine, unpatented — 'could you patent the sun?'

Ran the first double-blind trials in psychiatry and founded orthomolecular medicine with high-dose niacin.

Personal physician to the Dalai Lama who preserved Tibetan medicine through 17 years of imprisonment.

Psychiatrist whose Wretched of the Earth remains the core text of decolonisation.

Monoclonal antibodies — now a $200bn class of medicines.

Extracted artemisinin from ancient texts; millions of malaria deaths averted.

Physician and writer who broke silence on FGM and patriarchy in the Arab world.

Documented the relaxation response at Harvard and made mind-body medicine measurable.

Framed clinical practice around the tack rule — take out what harms, put in what's missing.

Pioneer of reverse pharmacology, translating classical formulas into clinical trials.

Wrote The Web That Has No Weaver, then founded Harvard's programme in placebo studies.

Discovered telomerase, central to ageing and cancer research.

Co-founded Bastyr University, the first accredited natural-medicine university in the United States.

Drank the bacterium to prove ulcers are infectious, not stress.

Proved lifestyle change can reverse coronary artery disease; first such programme reimbursed by Medicare.

Demoted, defunded, and right: her mRNA work produced the COVID vaccines.

Surgeon who has treated tens of thousands of survivors of wartime sexual violence.

Co-discovered nucleoside-modified mRNA.

Reprogrammed adult cells into stem cells, remaking regenerative medicine.