Browse the index

Distinguished smallpox from measles and pioneered clinical case records.

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

Named oxygen, killed phlogiston, founded modern chemistry; guillotined at 50.

Built the first battery; the volt is his.

A bookbinder's apprentice who gave humanity electricity on demand.

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

Invented dynamite, then endowed the prizes to redeem the legacy.

Arranged the elements so precisely that he could describe ones nobody had found.

Crop rotation and peanut science that rescued Southern soil and farmers.

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

Ammonia synthesis feeds around half of humanity; also weaponised chlorine gas.

Found the atomic nucleus and split the atom.

Explained nuclear fission; passed over by the Nobel committee. Element 109 is meitnerium.

Discovered pantothenic acid and argued for biochemical individuality — the idea beneath functional medicine.

Solved the structures of penicillin, vitamin B12 and insulin by X-ray.

Chemist whose Auschwitz testimony is the standard of moral witness.

Photographed the shape of the molecule that makes us.

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

Conductive polymers — flexible screens and printed electronics.

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

Mapped the ribosome, the cell's protein factory and antibiotic target.

Proved CFCs destroy ozone; his work produced the Montreal Protocol.

Founded femtochemistry, filming chemical bonds as they break.

Coined and codified functional medicine; founded the Institute for Functional Medicine in 1991.

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

CRISPR gene editing, now in approved sickle-cell therapy.