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Proved that art and science are one act of looking.

Dissected humans himself and corrected Galen; founded modern anatomy.

Coined 'gas' and ran the first quantitative plant-growth experiment.

Ground lenses in a draper's shop and discovered the microbial world.

Binomial nomenclature: every species on Earth still carries his two-name system.

A poet who also did serious science, and defined what a modern European is.

Invented the idea that nature is a single connected web — and that we can wreck it.

Explained the whole of life with one mechanism: descent with modification.

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

Pea plants in a monastery garden gave the world genetics.

The silver stain that made neurons visible.

Founded neuroscience by drawing the neuron doctrine.

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

Penicillin; antibiotics have saved an estimated 200 million lives.

Built the world's first seed bank; starved to death in Stalin's prison.

Wave mechanics and What Is Life?, which inspired the DNA hunters.

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

Defined what a computer is, then was destroyed by the country he saved.

Explained the nerve impulse in mathematical terms.

Co-described the double helix and the central dogma of molecular biology.

Photographed the shape of the molecule that makes us.

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