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Filter by category and discipline, then by continent, country and century of birth. Countries not yet represented can be drafted at the research desk.

35 figures

Shiv Sharma

1906 – 1980

Led the campaign that won Ayurveda statutory recognition in independent India.

India·Ayurveda · Education

Hideki Yukawa

1907 – 1981

Predicted the meson and the nuclear strong force.

Japan·PhysicsNobel

Zhu Lian

1909 – 1978

Wrote New Acupuncture (1951) and led the state institute that standardised the practice.

China·Traditional Chinese Medicine · Public Health

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

1910 – 1995

Worked out at nineteen why some stars must collapse into black holes.

India·Astronomy · Physics · MathematicsNobelFull profile

Yoshio Manaka

1911 – 1989

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

Japan·Traditional Chinese Medicine · Medicine

Taiichi Ohno

1912 – 1990

Designed the Toyota Production System — lean manufacturing worldwide.

Japan·Business · Engineering

Deng Tietao

1916 – 2019

Master physician of Guangzhou whose spleen-stomach theory shaped modern TCM curricula.

China·Traditional Chinese Medicine · Education

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

1918 – 2008

Exported Transcendental Meditation and revived classical Ayurveda as a global health programme.

India·Ayurveda · Integrative Medicine

B. K. S. Iyengar

1918 – 2014

Turned yoga into a precise therapeutic method taught in clinics and studios worldwide.

India·Integrative Medicine · Education

Brihaspati Dev Triguna

1920 – 2013

The century's most celebrated pulse diagnostician; chaired India's central Ayurvedic council.

India·Ayurveda

Tenzin Choedrak

1922 – 2001

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

China·Integrative Medicine · Medicine

Lee Kuan Yew

1923 – 2015

Turned a port city into a high-income state — the developmental-state exemplar and its critics.

Singapore·Politics · Economics

Pramoedya Ananta Toer

1925 – 2006

Composed the Buru Quartet orally in a prison camp.

Indonesia·Literature

Abdus Salam

1926 – 1996

Unified the electromagnetic and weak forces; first Muslim science laureate.

Pakistan·PhysicsNobel

Michio Kushi

1926 – 2014

Carried macrobiotics from postwar Japan to the West and into the diet-and-disease debate.

Japan·Nutrition · Integrative Medicine

Tu Youyou

b. 1930

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

China·Medicine · ChemistryNobel

Amartya Sen

b. 1933

Recast famine as a failure of entitlement, not food supply.

India·Economics · PhilosophyNobel

Daniel Kahneman

1934 – 2024

Prospect theory founded behavioural economics and modern policy 'nudging'.

Israel·Economics · PsychologyNobel

Kenzaburō Ōe

1935 – 2023

Wrote disability, Hiroshima and postwar conscience.

Japan·LiteratureNobel

Ada Yonath

b. 1939

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

Israel·Chemistry · BiologyNobel

Muhammad Yunus

b. 1940

Lent $27 of his own money and started a global industry for the poor.

Bangladesh·Economics · Business · PeaceNobelFull profile

Ashok Vaidya

1940 – 2023

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

India·Ayurveda · Medicine

Vasant Lad

b. 1943

Founded the Ayurvedic Institute in New Mexico and trained the first Western practitioners.

India·Ayurveda · Education

Aung San Suu Kyi

b. 1945

Fifteen years under house arrest; later a contested civilian leader.

Myanmar·PeaceNobel

Deepak Chopra

b. 1946

Endocrinologist turned global voice of mind-body medicine; contested by clinical researchers.

India·Integrative Medicine · Ayurveda

Orhan Pamuk

b. 1952

Novelist of Istanbul's melancholy and East–West fracture.

Türkiye·LiteratureNobel

Vandana Shiva

b. 1952

Philosopher of seed sovereignty and critic of industrial agriculture.

India·Philosophy · Environment · Agriculture

Kailash Satyarthi

b. 1954

Freed tens of thousands of children from bonded labour.

India·PeaceNobel

Mo Yan

b. 1955

Hallucinatory realism of rural Shandong across China's violent century.

China·LiteratureNobel

Shinya Yamanaka

b. 1962

Reprogrammed adult cells into stem cells, remaking regenerative medicine.

Japan·Medicine · BiologyNobel

Ha-Joon Chang

b. 1963

Kicking Away the Ladder documented how rich states industrialised behind protection.

South Korea·Political Economy · Economics

Baba Ramdev

b. 1965

Made yoga and Ayurveda a mass movement and a corporate empire; repeatedly censured over health claims.

India·Ayurveda

Han Kang

b. 1970

Confronts historical trauma and bodily fragility; The Vegetarian, Human Acts.

South Korea·LiteratureNobel

Tawakkol Karman

b. 1979

Journalist who led Yemen's 2011 uprising.

Yemen·PeaceNobel

Malala Yousafzai

b. 1997

Shot for going to school; now the youngest Nobel laureate in history.

Pakistan·Peace · LiteratureNobel