Medicine

People advancing health and medical knowledge.

People in Medicine

109 profiles

Nurse

Florence Nightingale

Helping establish modern professional nursing.

Microbiologist

Alexander Fleming

Discovering penicillin’s antibacterial effect.

Physician

Edward Jenner

Developing smallpox vaccination using material from cowpox.

Microbiologist

Selman Waksman

Leading the soil-microbe research programme that produced streptomycin.

Chemist

Tu Youyou

Discovering artemisinin, a breakthrough in malaria treatment.

Physician

Jonas Salk

Developing the first widely used vaccine against polio.

Physician

Christiaan Barnard

Leading the first human-to-human heart transplant operation.

Physician

Fe del Mundo

Building children’s healthcare services and paediatric training in the Philippines.

Biochemist

Katalin Karikó

Helping make messenger RNA usable in vaccines through discoveries about modified RNA.

Physician

Carlos Chagas

Identifying Chagas disease and tracing its parasite and insect transmission.

Physician

Ibn Sina

Writing The Canon of Medicine and influential works of philosophy.

Physician

Albert Sabin

Developing the oral polio vaccine used in mass vaccination campaigns.

Physician

Wu Lien-teh

Leading the response to the Manchurian plague of 1910–1911.

Physician

Oswaldo Cruz

Leading campaigns against yellow fever, plague and smallpox in Brazil.

Physician

Al-Razi

Distinguishing smallpox from measles and advancing clinical observation.

Physician

Charles R. Drew

Developing blood-banking methods that improved the storage and supply of plasma.

Biochemist

Gertrude Elion

Helping develop medicines for leukaemia, organ transplantation and viral infections.

Microbiologist

Shibasaburō Kitasato

Pioneering tetanus antitoxin research and modern bacteriology in Japan.

Microbiologist

Hideyo Noguchi

Identifying the syphilis bacterium in brain tissue affected by general paralysis.

Physician

Patricia Bath

Inventing a laser-based cataract treatment device and expanding access to eye care.

Physician

Joseph Lister

Pioneering antiseptic surgery by tackling the germs that caused deadly wound infections.

Physician

Frederick Banting

Co-discovering insulin and helping turn diabetes from a frequently fatal disease into a treatable condition.

Biologist

Elizabeth Blackburn

Discovering how chromosome ends are protected and co-discovering the enzyme telomerase.

Physician

Kadambini Ganguly

Breaking barriers to women’s medical education and becoming one of India’s first practising women physicians.

Physician

Ogino Ginko

Becoming Japan’s first woman licensed under its modern medical system and treating women facing barriers to care.

Physician

Matilde Montoya

Becoming the first woman to qualify as a physician at Mexico’s National School of Medicine in 1887.

Neuroscientist

Ardem Patapoutian

Discovering molecular sensors that let cells detect pressure and help the body sense touch and position.

Microbiologist

Robert Koch

Identifying the tuberculosis bacterium and helping establish that specific microbes cause specific diseases.

Physician

Virginia Apgar

Creating the Apgar score used to assess newborn babies immediately after birth.

Physician

Barry Marshall

Showing with Robin Warren that a bacterial infection causes many stomach ulcers.

Physician

Muthulakshmi Reddy

Founding Chennai’s Cancer Institute and campaigning for women’s education, welfare and legal rights.

Biochemist

Satoshi Ōmura

Discovering microorganisms that led to avermectin and treatments for parasitic disease.

Physician

Eloísa Díaz

Becoming Chile’s first woman physician and developing school health services.

Biologist

Françoise Barré-Sinoussi

Helping discover HIV, the virus responsible for AIDS.

Biologist

Carol W. Greider

The scientist who co-discovered telomerase, the enzyme that maintains the protective ends of chromosomes.

Physician

Robin Warren

The pathologist who helped establish that Helicobacter pylori bacteria cause many stomach ulcers.

Physician

Rukhmabai

The pioneering doctor whose resistance to an unwanted child marriage became a landmark legal controversy.

Physician

Tasuku Honjo

The scientist whose discovery of PD-1 helped make cancer immunotherapy possible.

Physician

Bernardo Houssay

Showing how pituitary hormones affect blood sugar and diabetes.

Physician

Elizabeth Blackwell

Becoming the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States.

Physician

Alexa Canady

Becoming the first Black woman neurosurgeon in the United States and specialising in children’s care.

Physician

Anandi Gopal Joshi

Becoming one of the first Indian women to earn a degree in Western medicine.

Biochemist

César Milstein

Co-developing the technique used to produce monoclonal antibodies.

Physician

Paul Ehrlich

Pioneering immunology and developing Salvarsan, an early targeted treatment for syphilis.

Physician

Susan La Flesche Picotte

Becoming the first Native American woman to earn a medical degree and serving her Omaha community.

Physician

Baruj Benacerraf

Showing that inherited genes influence immune responses.

Biologist

Élie Metchnikoff

Discovering how immune cells engulf and destroy invading material.

Physician

Drew Weissman

Discovering, with Katalin Karikó, RNA modifications that helped make effective mRNA vaccines possible.

Scientist

Emil von Behring

Developing serum treatment against diphtheria, earning the first Nobel Prize in Medicine.

Scientist

Stanley Cohen

Discovering growth factors that help explain how cells grow and respond to signals.

Scientist

Ronald Ross

Showing how mosquitoes carry malaria parasites.

Scientist

Paul Greengard

Revealing how chemical signals change the activity of nerve cells.

Physician

Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran

Discovering the parasite responsible for malaria.

Scientist

David Julius

Identifying molecular sensors that help the body detect heat and cold.

Biochemist

Severo Ochoa

Discovering an enzyme that enabled laboratory synthesis of RNA.

Anatomist

Carl Gegenbaur

Using comparative anatomy to investigate evolutionary relationships.

Physician

Johannes Fibiger

Receiving a Nobel Prize for cancer research whose central conclusion was later rejected.

Physician

Prakash Amte

Providing healthcare and education through Lok Biradari Prakalp.

Physiologist

Joseph Barcroft

Investigating how blood carries oxygen.

Physiologist

Archibald Hill

Explaining heat production and mechanical work in muscle.

Psychiatrist

Phon Sangsingkeo

Advancing humane mental-health care in Thailand.

Biochemist

Sune Bergström

Identifying prostaglandins and their biological roles.

Physician

Niels Ryberg Finsen

Developing light treatment for lupus vulgaris.

Neuroscientist

Arvid Carlsson

Establishing dopamine’s importance in brain signalling and movement.

Biochemist

Albrecht Kossel

Identifying key chemical components of nucleic acids.

Surgeon

John Belchier

Using madder dye to investigate bone growth.

Physiologist

William Bayliss

Discovering secretin with Ernest Starling.

Geneticist

Lionel Penrose

Investigating the genetics of intellectual disability.

Surgeon

Ravindra Laxman Thatte

Advancing reconstructive surgery and surgical education in India.

Biochemist

Dieter Oesterhelt

Discovering bacteriorhodopsin and its light-driven proton-pump function.

Physiologist

Johannes Peter Müller

Systematising physiology and advancing the study of sensation.

Physiologist

Claude Bernard

Establishing experimental physiology and the idea of the body’s internal environment.

Neuroscientist

John Eccles

Explaining how synapses excite and inhibit nerve cells.

Physiologist

Ulf von Euler

Identifying noradrenaline’s role in nerve signalling.

Physician

Cynthia Maung

Providing border health care through the Mae Tao Clinic.

Scientist

Daniel Bovet

Discovering compounds that block histamine and other signalling chemicals.

Physiologist

Corneille Heymans

Explaining how the body senses blood chemistry to regulate breathing.

Physician

Émile Roux

Developing diphtheria serum treatment and helping establish the Pasteur Institute.

Biochemist

Albert Szent-Györgyi

Identifying vitamin C and investigating biological oxidation.

Biochemist

Hugo Theorell

Explaining the action of oxidation enzymes.

Microbiologist

Renato Dulbecco

Sharing the 1975 Nobel Prize for research on tumour viruses.

Microbiologist

Harald zur Hausen

Discovering the role of human papillomaviruses in cervical cancer.

Microbiologist

Hidesaburo Hanafusa

Explaining how tumour viruses interact with cancer-causing genes.

Anatomist

William Hewson

Investigating blood clotting and the structure of blood cells.

Surgeon

Emil Theodor Kocher

Advancing thyroid surgery and understanding thyroid function.

Biochemist

Hans Kosterlitz

Helping discover the body’s opioid peptides.

Scientist

Peter Doherty

Discovering how T cells recognise virus-infected cells with Rolf Zinkernagel.

Microbiologist

Gerhard Domagk

Discovering the antibacterial action of Prontosil.

Biochemist

Christian de Duve

Discovering lysosomes and peroxisomes.

Surgeon

John Hunter

Bringing anatomical observation and experimentation into surgery.

Scientist

Rolf M. Zinkernagel

Discovering with Peter Doherty how immune cells recognise infected cells.

Microbiologist

Ludwik Gross

Identifying cancer-causing viruses in laboratory mice.

Biophysicist

James Till

Providing experimental evidence for blood-forming stem cells.

Biologist

Jack W. Szostak

Discovering how telomeres protect chromosomes.

Biologist

Georges J. F. Köhler

Developing the hybridoma method for producing monoclonal antibodies.

Geneticist

Paul Nurse

Identifying genes that control cell division.

Biologist

Michael Heidelberger

Establishing a chemical basis for understanding antibodies.

Physician

Peter J. Ratcliffe

Discovering how cells sense oxygen availability

Biologist

Luc Montagnier

Co-discovering HIV with colleagues at the Pasteur Institute.

Biochemist

Bernard Beryl Brodie

Pioneering the measurement of drugs and their metabolism in the body.

Physician

Ralph M. Steinman

Discovering dendritic cells and their role in adaptive immunity.

Microbiologist

Karl Friedrich Meyer

Tracing infections between animals, food and people.

Microbiologist

Charles Nicolle

Identifying lice as the carriers of epidemic typhus.

Scientist

Sunetra Gupta

Mathematical studies of infectious-disease transmission.

Physiologist

Otto Loewi

Demonstrating chemical transmission of nerve signals.

Physiologist

Robert Edwards

Developing in vitro fertilisation with Patrick Steptoe and Jean Purdy.

Physician

Krasae Chanawongse

Expanding rural health care in northeastern Thailand.

Physician

Louie Mar Gangcuangco

HIV research and the novel Orosa-Nakpil, Malate.

Physician

Alvin P. Shapiro

Research linking hypertension with behavioural factors.