List of Famous Biochemists

Isaac Asimov (January 2, 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American writer and biochemistry professor at Boston University. He wrote science fiction and popular science. Asimov edited or wrote more than 500 books and estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. His books appeared in nine of the ten major Dewey Decimal Classification categories.Asimov wrote hard science fiction. He was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers alongside Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke.

Linus Carl Pauling (February 28, 1901 – August 19, 1994) was an American chemist, biochemist, peace activist, author, educator, and the husband of Ava Helen Pauling. He published over 1,200 papers and books, with about 850 dealing with scientific topics. New Scientist named him one of the 20 greatest scientists of all time. As of 2000, he was rated the 16th most important scientist in history. Pauling founded quantum chemistry and molecular biology. His work on the theory of the chemical bond included the concept

Peggy Annette Whitson was born February 9, 1960. She is an American biochemistry researcher, retired NASA astronaut, and former NASA Chief Astronaut. Her first space mission occurred in 2002 aboard the International Space Station as a member of Expedition 5. Her second mission launched October 10, 2007, where she became the first female commander with Expedition 16. She flew a third long-duration space flight and commanded the International Space Station for Expedition 51. She handed over command to Fyodor Yurchikhin on June 1, 2017.

Shannon Matilda Wells Lucid (born January 14, 1943) is an American biochemist and a retired NASA astronaut. She held the record for the longest duration stay in space by an American and by a woman. She flew in space five times, including a prolonged mission aboard the Mir space station in 1996. Lucid is the only American woman to have served aboard Mir. In 2002, Discover magazine recognized her as one of the 50 most important women in science.

Lawrence James "Larry" DeLucas (O. D., Ph.D.) is an American biochemist who flew aboard NASA Space Shuttle mission STS-50 as a Payload Specialist. He was born on July 11, 1950, in Syracuse, New York, and has three children. His hobbies include basketball, scuba diving, bowling, model airplanes, astronomy, and reading.

Gerty Theresa Cori (née Radnitz) was a Jewish Austro-Hungarian-American biochemist, born August 15, 1896, and died October 26, 1957. In 1947, she became the third woman and first American woman to win a Nobel Prize in science. She received the award for her role in discovering glycogen metabolism. Cori was born in Prague, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now the Czech Republic. Gerty was named after an Austrian warship, not a nickname. She grew up during a time when women faced limited educational opportunities in science.

Miloslav Rechcigl, Jr., or Mila Rechcigl, is a biochemist, nutritionist, and cancer researcher. He is also a writer, editor, historian, bibliographer, and genealogist. He was one of the founders and past Presidents of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences.

Elizabeth Helen Blackburn (born November 26, 1948) is an Australian-American Nobel laureate and former President of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. She previously researched telomere, a structure at the end of chromosomes that protects them, while working as a biological researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. In 1984, Blackburn co-discovered telomerase, the enzyme that replenishes telomeres, with Carol W. Greider. For this work, she received the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, shared with Greider and Jack W. Szostak.

Roger Yonchien Tsien (Chinese: 錢永健; February 1, 1952 – August 24, 2016) was a Chinese-American biochemist. He taught chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego. He won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering and developing green fluorescent protein, collaborating with Osamu Shimomura and Martin Chalfie. Tsien also pioneered calcium imaging.

Noel Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham (December 9, 1900 – March 24, 1995) was a British biochemist, historian, and sinologist. He researched the history of Chinese science and technology. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1941 and a fellow of the British Academy in 1971. In 1992, Queen Elizabeth II conferred upon him the Companionship of Honour. The Royal Society noted he was the only living person to hold these three titles.

Pehr A. B. Harbury (born 1965) is an American biochemist and Associate Professor of Biochemistry at Stanford University. He is from Menlo Park. He earned a BA from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry from Harvard Medical School in 1994.

Norman Richard Pace Jr. (born 1942) is an American biochemist and Distinguished Professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at the University of Colorado. He serves as principal investigator at the Pace lab.

Laura Lee Kiessling (born 21 September 1960) is an American chemist and the Novartis Professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Kiessling's research focuses on elucidating and exploiting interactions on the cell surface, especially those mediated by proteins binding to carbohydrates. Multivalent protein-carbohydrate interactions play roles in cell-cell recognition and signal transduction. Understanding and manipulating these interactions provides tools to study biological processes and design therapeutic treatments. Kiessling's interdisciplinary research combines orga

Virginia "Ginny" Heinlein (April 22, 1916 – January 18, 2003), born Virginia Doris Gerstenfeld, was an American chemist, biochemist, engineer, and the third wife of Robert A. Heinlein, a prominent and successful author often considered as one of the "Big Three" of science fiction (along with Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke).

Kun-Liang Guan (Chinese: 管坤良; pinyin: Guǎn Kūnliǎng; born 1963), is a Chinese-born American biochemist. He won the MacArthur Award in 1998.

Christopher J. Chetsanga (born 1935 in Murehwa, Rhodesia) is a prominent Zimbabwean scientist who is a member of the African Academy of Sciences.

Martin Rodbell (December 1, 1925 – December 7, 1998) was an American biochemist and molecular endocrinologist who is best known for his discovery of G-proteins. He shared the 1994 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Alfred G. Gilman for "their discovery of G-proteins and the role of these proteins in signal transduction in cells." According to a Plaque posted in Silver Spring Maryland, Dr. Martin Rodbell was a "Nobel Laureate in medicine for discovering that cells were like computer chips."

Edward Adelbert Doisy (November 13, 1893 – October 23, 1986) was an American biochemist. He received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1943 with Henrik Dam for their discovery of vitamin K (K from "Koagulations-Vitamin" in German) and its chemical structure. Doisy was born in Hume, Illinois, on November 13, 1893. He completed his A.B. degree in 1914 and his M.S. degree in 1916 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He completed his Ph.D. in 1920 from Harvard University.In 1919 he accepted a faculty appointment in the Department of Biochemistry at Washington University

Bruce Michael Alberts (born April 14, 1938 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American biochemist and the Chancellor’s Leadership Chair in Biochemistry and Biophysics for Science and Education at the University of California, San Francisco. He has done important work studying the protein complexes which enable chromosome replication when living cells divide. He is known as an original author of the "canonical, influential, and best-selling scientific textbook" Molecular Biology of the Cell, and as Editor-in-Chief of Science magazine.Alberts was the president of the National Academy of Sciences from 1

Elmer Verner McCollum (March 3, 1879 – November 15, 1967) was an American biochemist known for his work on the influence of diet on health. McCollum is also remembered for starting the first rat colony in the United States to be used for nutrition research. His reputation has suffered from posthumous controversy. Time magazine called him Dr. Vitamin. His rule was, "Eat what you want after you have eaten what you should."Living at a time when vitamins were unknown, he asked and tried to answer the questions, "How many dietary essentials are there, and what are they?" He and Marguerite Davis dis

Otto Fritz Meyerhof (April 12, 1884 – October 6, 1951) was a German physician and biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1922.

Eugene Huu-Chau "Gene" Trinh (Vietnamese: Trịnh Hữu Châu, born September 14, 1950) is a Vietnamese American biochemist who flew aboard NASA Space Shuttle mission STS-50 as a Payload Specialist, becoming the first Vietnamese American astronaut in space.

Norman George Heatley OBE (10 January 1911 – 5 January 2004) was an English biologist and biochemist. He was member of the team of Oxford University scientists who developed penicillin. Norman Heatley developed the back-extraction technique for efficiently purifying penicillin in bulk.

Michael J. Behe ( BEE-hee; born January 18, 1952) is an American biochemist, author, and advocate of the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design (ID). He serves as professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and as a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. Behe is best known as an advocate for the validity of the argument for irreducible complexity (IC), which claims that some biochemical structures are too complex to be explained by known evolutionary mechanisms and are therefore probably the result of intelligent design. Behe has

Wendell L. Roelofs (born July 26, 1938) was the first researcher to characterize insect sex pheromone structures, developing microchemical techniques for the isolation and identification of pheromone components. Roelofs obtained his B.S. in chemistry in 1960 from Central College in Pella, Iowa and his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Indiana University in 1964. He is the Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Insect Biochemistry in the Department of Entomology at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. In his spare time, Roelofs coache[d] a youth league football team of kids aged eleven and twelve. R

Alexander Ivanovich Oparin (Александр Иванович Опарин; March 2 [O.S. February 18] 1894 – April 21, 1980) was a Soviet biochemist notable for his theories about the origin of life, and for his book The Origin of Life. He also studied the biochemistry of material processing by plants and enzyme reactions in plant cells. He showed that many food-production processes were based on biocatalysis and developed the foundations for industrial biochemistry in the USSR.

Stanley Cohen (born November 17, 1922) is an American biochemist. With Rita Levi-Montalcini, they won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1986 for isolating nerve growth factor and discovering epidermal growth factor.

Lafayette Benedict Mendel (February 5, 1872 – December 9, 1935) was an American biochemist. He collaborated with Thomas B. Osborne and studied Vitamin A, Vitamin B, lysine, and tryptophan.

Aila Inkeri Keto AO (born March 14, 1943) founded the Rainforest Conservation Society in Queensland, Australia. The society is now the Australia Rainforest Conservation Society. In 2005, Keto received the Queensland Greats Awards. Born in Tully, Queensland, Australia, Dr. Keto studied biochemistry at the University of Queensland. She was awarded the Officer of the Order of Australia in 1994 and nominated for Queenslander of the Year in 2000. In 2001, she received the Centenary Medal.

Nadrian C. "Ned" Seeman (born December 16, 1945) is an American nanotechnologist and crystallographer. He invented the field of DNA nanotechnology. Seeman studied biochemistry at the University of Chicago and crystallography at the University of Pittsburgh. He became faculty at the State University of New York at Albany, moving to the Department of Chemistry at New York University in 1988. He developed the concept of DNA nanotechnology starting in the early 1980s. Seeman was inspired by the M. C. Escher woodcut in the fall of 1980.

Allan Charles Wilson (October 18, 1934 – July 21, 1991) was a Professor of Biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. He pioneered molecular methods to understand evolutionary change and reconstruct phylogenies. Wilson contributed greatly to the study of human evolution. He is the only New Zealander to win the MacArthur Fellowship. He is best known for experimentally demonstrating the concept of the mo

Frederick Sanger (August 13, 1918 – November 19, 2013) was a British biochemist. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry twice. He was one of only two people to win the prize in the same category (the other is John Bardeen in physics). He was the fourth person overall with two Nobel Prizes and the third person overall with two prizes in the sciences. In 1958, he received a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on protein structure, especially insulin. In 1980, Walter Gilbert and Sanger shared half of the prize for determining base sequences.

Kazimierz Funk, commonly known as Casimir Funk, was a Polish biochemist. In 1912, he formulated the concept of vitamins, which he called "vital amines" or "vitamines". He was born February 23, 1884, and died November 19, 1967.

Robert Huber (born February 20, 1937) is a German biochemist and Nobel laureate. He worked to crystallize an intramembrane protein important in photosynthesis. He used X-ray crystallography to determine the protein's structure.

David Baker is an American biochemist and computational biologist. He pioneered methods to predict and design the three-dimensional structures of proteins. Baker serves as the Henrietta and Aubrey Davis Endowed Professor in Biochemistry. He also holds adjunct professor roles at the University of Washington for Genome Sciences, Bioengineering, Chemical Engineering, Computer Science, and Physics. He directs the Rosetta Commons, a consortium developing biomolecular structure prediction software.

Douglas Harold Copp was a Canadian scientist. He discovered and named the hormone calcitonin, which treats bone disease. Born in Toronto, Ontario, he earned his M.D. from the University of Toronto in 1939. He received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of California at Berkeley in 1943. In 1950, Copp became the first head of the physiology department at the University of British Columbia. He was elected to both the Royal Society (1971) and the Royal Society of Canada.

Charles Glen King (October 22, 1896 – January 23, 1988) was an American biochemist. He pioneered nutrition research and isolated vitamin C alongside Albert Szent-Györgyi. Many feel he deserves equal credit with Szent-Györgyi for this discovery.

Evangelina Villegas (October 24, 1924 – April 24, 2017) was a Mexican cereal biochemist. Her work on maize led to the development of quality protein maize (QPM). She shared the 2000 World Food Prize for this achievement with her colleague, Surinder Vasal.

Mark Edward Whitacre was an American business executive. In 1995, he gained public attention as the president of the BioProducts Division at Archer Daniels Midland (ADM). At ADM, he became the highest-level corporate executive in U.S. history to become an FBI whistleblower. From 1992 to 1995, Whitacre acted as a cooperating witness for the FBI investigating ADM price fixing. In the late 1990s, Whitacre received a nine-year federal prison sentence for embezzling $9.5 million from ADM.

Karl Sune Detlof Bergström (January 10, 1916 – August 15, 2004) was a Swedish biochemist. In 1975, he joined the Nobel Foundation Board of Directors in Sweden. He received the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University, sharing it with Bengt I. Samuelsson. Bergström shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1982 with Bengt I. Samuelsson and John R. Vane for discoveries regarding prostaglandins and related substances. He became a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1965 and its President in 1983.

Henry A. Lardy (August 19, 1917 – August 4, 2010) was a biochemist and professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Biochemistry Department. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1958. Research in his laboratory focused on understanding metabolism.

Lancelot Lionel Ware OBE (June 5, 1915 – August 15, 2000) was an English barrister and biochemist. He co-founded Mensa, the international society for intellectually gifted people, with Australian barrister Roland Berrill in 1946. Mensa was originally called the "High IQ Club".

John Jacob Abel (May 19, 1857 – May 26, 1938) was an American biochemist and pharmacologist. He established the pharmacology department at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1893. He became America's first full-time professor of pharmacology there. Abel made medical advancements during his time at Hopkins, especially in hormone extraction. He also founded scientific journals like the Journal of Biological Chemistry and the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.

Alberto Granado Jiménez (August 8, 1922 – March 5, 2011) was an Argentine–Cuban biochemist, doctor, writer, and scientist. He traveled with Che Guevara during their 1952 motorcycle tour in Latin America. Granado founded the University of Santiago de Cuba School of Medicine. He wrote the memoir, Traveling with Che Guevara: The Making of a Revolutionary. This book served as a reference for the 2004 film The Motorcycle Diaries, starring Rodrigo de la Serna. Alberto Granado appeared briefly at the end of that film.

Zheng Ji (Chinese: 郑集) (6 May 1900 – 29 July 2010) was a Chinese nutritionist and a pioneering biochemist. He was reputed to be the world's oldest professor and the founder of modern nutrition science in China, having lived to the age of 110.

Nick Lane (born 1967) is a British biochemist and writer. He is a professor in evolutionary biochemistry at University College London. He has published four books which have won several awards.

Felisa Wolfe-Simon is an American microbial geobiologist and biogeochemist. In 2010, Wolfe-Simon led a team that discovered GFAJ-1, an extremophile bacterium that they claimed was capable of substituting arsenic for a small percentage of its phosphorus to sustain its growth, thus advancing the remarkable possibility of non-RNA/DNA-based genetics. However, these conclusions were immediately debated and criticized in correspondence to the original journal of publication, and have since come to be widely disbelieved. In 2012, two reports refuting the most significant aspects of the original resul

Michael John Denton (born 25 August 1943) is a British-Australian proponent of intelligent design and a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. He holds a degree in biochemistry. Denton’s book, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, inspired intelligent design proponents Phillip Johnson and Michael Behe.

Michael A. Marletta is an American biochemist. He graduated from the State University of New York at Fredonia with an A.B. degree in biology and chemistry, and from the University of California, San Francisco with a Ph.D. degree in pharmaceutical chemistry, where he studied with George Kenyon. He was John G. Searle Professor of Medicinal Chemistry in the College of Pharmacy and Professor of Biological Chemistry at University of Michigan. In 2001, he moved to the University of California, Berkeley to assume roles as Aldo DeBenedictis Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Biochem