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Scientific Biographies

Science is a human pursuit. Meet the people behind some of the most significant achievements and discoveries in the history of chemistry, chemical engineering, and the life sciences.
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Jonas Salk and Albert Bruce Sabin

In the 1950s Salk and Sabin developed separate vaccines—one from killed virus and the other from live virus—to combat the dreaded polio disease.

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Edward Goodrich Acheson
1856 - 1931
Signed portrait of a man
Svante August Arrhenius
1859 - 1927
portrait of Amedeo Avogadro
Amedeo Avogadro
1776 - 1856
Leo Hendrik Baekeland
1863 - 1944
Frederick Banting and Charles Best on the roof of the University of Toronto’s Medical Building in 1922. Dogs were used as experimental subjects in the insuli. From the F. G. Banting Papers. Courtesy Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto.
Frederick Grant Banting
1891 - 1941
Jacqueline K. Barton
b. 1952
Arnold O. Beckman
1900 - 2004
Ruth Benerito
1916 - 2013
Reinhold Benesch
1919 - 1986
Reinhold and Ruth Benesch.
Ruth Benesch
1925 - 2000
Paul Berg
1926 - 2023
Joan Berkowitz
1931 - 2020
Solomon A. Berson, 1945. Archives of the Frederick L. Ehrman Medical Library
Solomon A. Berson
1918 - 1972
portrait of Jons jokob Brezelius
Jöns Jakob Berzelius
1779 - 1848
Charles Herbert Best
Charles Herbert Best
1899 - 1978
Katherin Blodgett at General Electric Research Laboratories, 1938.
Katharine Burr Blodgett
1898 - 1979
Herbert Boyer in 2005.
Herbert W. Boyer
b. 1936
painting of Robert Boyle wearing a long wig
Robert Boyle
1627 - 1691
St. Elmo Brady in a chemistry lab at Fisk University. He is pouring a liquid from one beaker into another. There are counters of lab equipment surrounding him.
St. Elmo Brady
1884 - 1966
Rachel Fuller Brown
1898 - 1980
old portrait of two men in suits
Robert Bunsen
1811 - 1899
Black and white photo of Cain in a suit and tie
Gordon A. Cain
1912 - 2002
Undated portrait of Stanislao Cannizzaro
Stanislao Cannizzaro
1826 - 1910
Wallace Hume Carothers
1896 - 1937
Rachel Carson
Rachel Carson
1907 - 1964
black and white photo of George Washington Carver
George Washington Carver
ca. 1864 - 1943
man in lab coat conducting an experiment
Ernst Boris Chain
1906 - 1979
Professional portrait of E. M. A. Chandler, ca. 1930. He looks over his left shoulder and is wearing a suit.
Edward Chandler
1887 - 1973
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