Science & Technology Figures

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Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen biography: The Man Who Made the Invisible Visible

On a cold evening in early November 1895, a meticulous German professor worked alone in a darkened room at the University of Würzburg. He had been wrestling for weeks with…

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Johannes Kepler Biography: Laws, Life and Legacy

On a winter evening in Prague in the first decade of the seventeenth century, a thin, half-sighted man bends over a desk lit by tallow candles. Outside, carts rattle over…

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Lord Kelvin biography: William Thomson and the Measure of the Modern World

In the Lord Kelvin biography, you meet a man who could turn heat into a ruler, oceans into wires, and Victorian confidence into a scientific brand that still sits in every…

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Nicolaus Copernicus biography: The Man Who Moved the Earth

On a cold Baltic night in the early 1500s, a church canon climbed wooden stairs to a small tower overlooking the Vistula Lagoon, carrying nothing more dramatic than a notebook,…

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Eric Kandel Biography: Memory, Neuroscience & Legacy

On a quiet New York afternoon, long after the flashbulbs of Stockholm faded, Eric Kandel could still be found in his Columbia University office, talking with the same animated urgency…

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Jane Goodall Biography: How One Woman Changed the Way We See Animals

The Jane Goodall biography begins not in a laboratory, but with a little girl hiding in a chicken coop, determined to find out how eggs were laid. That stubborn curiosity,…

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Richard Dawkins Biography: Life, Ideas and Controversy

In the second half of the twentieth century, few writers managed to smuggle such difficult science into everyday conversation as successfully as Richard Dawkins. This Richard Dawkins biography is, in…

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Hans Krebs Biography: The Doctor Behind the Krebs Cycle

In the second half of the twentieth century, few writers managed to smuggle such difficult science into everyday conversation as successfully as Richard Dawkins. This Richard Dawkins biography is, in…

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Hermann Joseph Muller Biography: X-Rays, Genes and Power

At first glance, the Hermann Joseph Muller biography reads like the story of a man obsessed with tiny flies and invisible rays. Look closer and it becomes something bigger: a tale about…

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Sydney Brenner biography: decoding the genetic code

On a dusty high street outside Johannesburg, in a shoe repair shop where his family slept behind the counter, a boy taught himself science from discarded books and old encyclopedias.…

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Theodosius Dobzhansky Biography & Evolutionary Genetics

Long before his famous line that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”, Theodosius Dobzhansky was a shy boy collecting beetles in Kiev. A strong Theodosius…

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J.B.S. Haldane Biography: Rebel of Modern Genetics

One way to begin a J.B.S. Haldane biography is in a muddy trench on the Western Front. A young British officer, already famous in his regiment for a reckless courage that bordered…

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Edward Tatum Biography: The Scientist Who Linked Genes to Chemistry

On a winter day in Stockholm in 1958, a reserved American geneticist stepped onto the Nobel stage, sharing the spotlight with his long-time collaborator George Beadle and the young prodigy…

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George Beadle Biography: The Farmer Who Rewired Genetics

Any honest George Beadle biography has to begin on a patch of Nebraska dirt. In the early 20th century, on a modest farm near the small town of Wahoo, a…

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Susumu Tonegawa biography: from antibodies to memory engrams

On paper, the Susumu Tonegawa biography looks almost impossible. One scientist, born in wartime Japan, solves a century-old riddle about how our immune system makes millions of different antibodies, wins…

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Jennifer Doudna Biography: CRISPR, Ethics and Gene Editing

The story told by any serious Jennifer Doudna biography begins with a deceptively simple question: what happens when a quiet, RNA-obsessed biochemist helps give humanity the power to rewrite life’s…

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Joshua Lederberg Biography: Bacterial Genetics Pioneer

Any Joshua Lederberg biography has to begin with a disconcerting fact: by the time most students are wondering what to do with their lives, he had already helped to redraw…

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Emmanuelle Charpentier Biography & the CRISPR Revolution

The story told in any serious Emmanuelle Charpentier biography begins far from the headlines about gene-editing revolutions and Nobel Prizes. It starts in a quiet commuter town just south of…

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Alexander von Humboldt Biography & Environmental Legacy

In the early nineteenth century, if you wanted to understand the planet, you did not reach for a textbook – you reached for Alexander von Humboldt. Today, the Alexander von Humboldt…

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Svante Pääbo Biography: The Man Who Sequenced Neanderthals

On an autumn morning in Leipzig in 2022, staff at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology threw their director into a pond. It was not a prank gone wrong…

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Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard Biography & Legacy

The Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard biography is, above all, the story of a stubborn curiosity that refused to stay within the boundaries of any textbook. It begins with a girl growing up…

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Peter Medawar Biography: Father of Modern Transplantation

On a September afternoon in 1969, inside Exeter Cathedral, a celebrated scientist stood at the lectern to address Britain’s scientific elite. Moments into the ceremony, he collapsed with a massive…

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E.O. Wilson Biography: Ant Man, Sociobiology & Half-Earth

On a humid Gulf Coast morning in the 1930s, a boy in Alabama leaned so close to a fire-ant mound that it seemed to fill his entire world. Decades later…

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Rudolf Virchow Biography: Father of Modern Pathology

On a cold March morning in 1848, a young Prussian doctor stepped off a carriage, boots caked with mud from the villages of Upper Silesia and pockets full of notes…