Browse the index

Abbess, composer, and author of the first known European medical texts by a woman.

His Aristotle commentaries restarted European philosophy.

Guide for the Perplexed reconciled reason and revelation for Judaism.

Dissected humans himself and corrected Galen; founded modern anatomy.

Invented vaccination; smallpox is the only human disease ever eradicated.

Proved handwashing saves mothers' lives; ridiculed and died in an asylum.

Proved that invisible organisms cause disease — and that we can beat them.

The silver stain that made neurons visible.

Founded neuroscience by drawing the neuron doctrine.

Invented psychoanalysis and the modern language of the unconscious.

Doctor-playwright who invented modern drama's subtext.

The only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences.

Isolated a pancreatic hormone before the Toronto insulin team.

Co-authored the founding text of anthroposophic medicine and opened its first clinic in Arlesheim.

Opened Britain's first birth-control clinic; the charity still operates in 37 countries.

Penicillin; antibiotics have saved an estimated 200 million lives.

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

Explained the nerve impulse in mathematical terms.

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

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