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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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Bryan B. Molloy
Bryan B. Molloy
1939 - 2004
Gordon E. Moore
1929 - 2023
Giulio Natta, 1963.
Giulio Natta
1903 - 1979
Alfred Nobel
1833 - 1896
A professional portrait of Donald Othmer as a young man, wearing a suit and tie.
Donald F. Othmer
1904 - 1995
black and white photo of a man in a lab
Robert W. Parry
1917 - 2006
Louis Pasteur
1822 - 1895
Linus Carl Pauling
1901 - 1994
Portrait of William Henry Perkin, 1906.
William Henry Perkin
1838 - 1907
Roy J. Plunkett
1910 - 1994
Illustration of Joseph Priestley
Joseph Priestley
1733 - 1804
Undated portrait of William Ramsay.
William Ramsay
1852 - 1916
portrait of Ellen Richards in a cap and gown
Ellen H. Swallow Richards
1842 - 1911
Theodore William Richards
1868 - 1928
Rosenkranz in a suit and tie, smiling
George Rosenkranz
1916 - 2019
Rutherford with a thick mustache wearing a dark three-piece suit
Ernest Rutherford
1871 - 1937
Albert Sabin demonstrates how the oral vaccine for polio is given to children.
Albert Bruce Sabin
1906 - 1993
Black and white photograph of Glenn T. Seaborg in an office
Glenn Theodore Seaborg
1912 - 1999
Phillip Sharp
b. 1944
Hideki Shirakawa
Hideki Shirakawa
b. 1936
Maxine Singer
b. 1931
Richard E. Smalley
1943 - 2005
Susan Solomon
b. 1956
Undated photo of Danish chemist Soren Sorensen working in a lab.
Søren Sørensen
1868 - 1939
Hermann Staudinger
1881 - 1965
Fritz Strassmann.
Fritz Strassmann
1902 - 1980
Albert sits on a chair, leaning forward with his elbows on his legs and hands clasped.
Albert Szent-Györgyi
1893 - 1986
Joseph John “J. J.” Thomson
1856 - 1940
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