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Category
Era
Countries (85)
12 figures
Charles Darwin
1809 – 1882Explained the whole of life with one mechanism: descent with modification.
Louis Pasteur
1822 – 1895Proved that invisible organisms cause disease — and that we can beat them.
Gregor Mendel
1822 – 1884Pea plants in a monastery garden gave the world genetics.
Camillo Golgi
1843 – 1926The silver stain that made neurons visible.
Santiago Ramón y Cajal
1852 – 1934Founded neuroscience by drawing the neuron doctrine.
George Washington Carver
1864 – 1943Crop rotation and peanut science that rescued Southern soil and farmers.
Carlos Chagas
1879 – 1934Described a disease, its parasite and its vector single-handedly.
Marie Stopes
1880 – 1958Opened Britain's first birth-control clinic; the charity still operates in 37 countries.
Alexander Fleming
1881 – 1955Penicillin; antibiotics have saved an estimated 200 million lives.
Nikolai Vavilov
1887 – 1943Built the world's first seed bank; starved to death in Stalin's prison.
Erwin Schrödinger
1887 – 1961Wave mechanics and What Is Life?, which inspired the DNA hunters.
Macfarlane Burnet
1899 – 1985Acquired immune tolerance, the basis of transplantation.