Famous BiologistsA history of biology in biographyThis section of the website offers biographies describing the lives, contributions, and discoveries of renowned biologists from all eras of biology. Louis Agassiz (1807-1873). Swiss-born American zoologist, geologist, and paleontologist, with a special expertise in ichthyology. Founder and director of Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, one of the most famous scientists of his day. Readmore>> Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605). Italian naturalist and physician. Together with Conrad Gesner, he led the Renaissance movement that put a new emphasis on the study of the nature. Readmore>> Mary Anning (1799-1847). British paleontologist. Often described as the greatest fossil hunter ever known. Readmore>> Werner Arber (1929-). Swiss microbiologist and geneticist. Shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Hamilton Smith and Daniel Nathans for the discovery of restriction endonucleases, which led to the development of recombinant DNA technology. Readmore>> Aristotle (384-322 B.C.). Greek philosopher and early scientist. Often called the "father of biology." Readmore>> FAMOUS BIOLOGISTS (B)Karl Ernst von Baer (1792-1876). German biologist and scientific explorer. One of the founders of embryology, von Baer discovered the notochord and the embryonic blastula. Readmore>>

David Baltimore (1938-). American biologist. Shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Howard Temin and Renato Dulbecco for their discovery of reverse transcriptase.Readmore>>

A dog-cow hybrid?

George Beadle (1909-1975). American geneticist. By means of x-ray irradiation of the mold Neurospora crassa and screening of the resulting mutants, Beadle showed, with Edward Tatum, that mutations induced in genes corresponded to alterations in specific enzymes. This finding led to the acceptance of the one gene/one enzyme hypothesis. Shared with Tatum half the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Readmore>>

FAMOUS BIOLOGISTS (C)Erwin Chargaff (1905-2002). Austro-Hungarian-born American biochemist whose experiments provided crucial information allowing Watson, Crick, and Wilkins to elucidate the double-helix structure of DNA. Readmore>> Georges Cuvier (1769-1832). French naturalist and zoologist. Founder of the fields of vertebrate paleontology and comparative anatomy. One of the most prolific authors of scientific literature in the history of biology. Readmore>>

FAMOUS BIOLOGISTS (D)Raymond Dart (1893-1988). Pioneering paleoanthropologist. Discoverer of the Taung Child, he was the first scientist to provide hard evidence that humans first evolved in Africa. Readmore>> Charles Darwin (1809-1882). English naturalist. One of the most famous scientists who ever lived. His book, On the Origin of Species, convinced many of the reality of evolution. Remembered for the theory of natural selection, the credit for which he had to share with Alfred Wallace, who formulated it independently. This section of the website offers biographies describing the lives, contributions, and discoveries of renowned biologists from all eras of biology. Hugo de Vries (1848-1935). The most influential post-Darwinian saltationist up to the time of Eldredge and Gould, de Vries dominated evolutionary thought during the the early twentieth century. Readmore>> Renato Dulbecco (1914-). Italian virologist. Shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Howard Temin and David Baltimore for their discovery of reverse transcriptase. Readmore>> FAMOUS BIOLOGISTS (E)Niles Eldredge (1943-). American paleontologist, who, along with Stephen Jay Gould, revived the saltationist tradition in biology by pointing out that the typical fossil form comes into being rapidly and remains largely the same thereafter, right up to the time of extinction ("punctuated equilibrium"). Readmore>> Conrad Gesner (1516-1565). Renaissance Swiss naturalist, called the "German Pliny." Both Gesner and his longer-lived contemporary Ulisse Aldrovandi belonged to the generation of scholars who revived the ancient practice of studying the natural world. Readmore>> Richard Goldschmidt (1878-1958) German-born American geneticist. First biologist to integrate genetics, development, and evolution. Although one of the most prominent geneticists of his era, Goldschmidt was rejected by his colleagues when he proposed a saltational theory of evolution. Readmore>> Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002). American paleontologist, who, along with Niles Eldredge, revived the saltationist tradition in biology by pointing out that the typical fossil form comes into being rapidly and remains largely the same thereafter, right up to the time of extinction ("punctuated equilibrium"). Readmore>> Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859). Prussian naturalist and scientific explorer. As a public personification of science, Humboldt was to the nineteenth century, what Einstein was to the twentieth.Readmore>> FAMOUS BIOLOGISTS (K)Frances Oldham Kelsey (1914-). The FDA reviewer who single-handedly prevented marketing of Thalidomide in the U.S. Savior of thousands of children and a leader of the modern American movement toward more stringent regulation of the distribution of drugs. Read more >>

FAMOUS BIOLOGISTS (I)Jan Ingenhousz (1730-1799). Showed light is essential to plant respiration and further demonstrated that the gas released by plants is oxygen. Read more >>

FAMOUS BIOLOGISTS (L)Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829). Early evolutionary theorist. Long before Darwin, Lamarck proposed that human beings had evolved from apes. Read more>>

Louis and Mary Leakey The paleoanthropologist team that convinced the world that humans first evolved in Africa. Readmore>>

Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778). Swedish botanist, zoologist, and taxonomist. Creator of the modern system of scientific nomenclature. Early evolutionary theorist. Readmore>> Charles Lyell (1797-1875). Scottish geologist and paleontologist. Gave the Pliocene Epoch its name. A friend and supporter of Charles Darwin, Lyell, established uniformitarianism as a scientific principle. Readmore>>

FAMOUS BIOLOGISTS (M)Barbara McClintock (1902-1992). American cytogeneticist. One of the foremost biologists of the twentieth century. During her research on color mosaicism in maize in the early 1940s, she discovered transposons, mobile genetic elements that can move from one location to another within the genome. McClintock produced the first genetic map for maize. Also a pioneer in theory, she proposed the idea of gene regulation and showed how it could be affected by transposition long before such a notion was accepted or even considered by other biologists. She also demonstrated many basic genetic phenomena, such as meiotic crossing over, and the roles of telomeres and centromeres. Other scientists had trouble understanding her conceptually difficult papers and rejected her claims about transposition and gene regulation. It was more than twenty years before they realized she had been right. For her discovery of transposition she received the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. No other woman biologist has ever been awarded the unshared prize in that category. Gregor Mendel (1822-1884). Austrian scientist/monk. Showed inheritance of traits follows particular rules, now known as Mendel's Laws. In an fascinating, original article, guest author David Allen, discusses Mendel's hybridization research, and how it has been misrepresented at times by both sides of the modern debate between Darwinians and creationists. Read more >> Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866-1945). American geneticist. Elucidated the connection between meiosis and genetic segregation. His discoveries about genes and their locations on chromosomes helped make biology into an experimental science. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1933). FAMOUS BIOLOGISTS (N)Daniel Nathans (1928-1999). American microbiologist. Shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Hamilton Smith and Werner Arber for the discovery of restriction endonucleases, which led to the development of recombinant DNA technology. Read more >> FAMOUS BIOLOGISTS (P)Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD). Ancient Roman naturalist, also known as Gaius Plinius Secundus or Caius Plinius Secundus. Pliny's only surviving work, his great Natural History, covers nearly the entire field of ancient knowledge about the natural world. Read more >> FAMOUS BIOLOGISTS (R)John Ray (1628-1705). English naturalist. Perhaps the most important classifier prior to Linnaeus. He was a leading figure in the movement to abandon the Scholastic tradition and base biological classification on the observed traits of organisms. Major works: Historia Plantarum (1686); Synopsis methodica Animalium Quadrupedum et Serpentini Generis (1693); Historia Insectorum (1710); Synopsis methodica Avium et Piscium (1713). Ren Antoine Ferchault de Raumur (1683-1757). French scientist. Made important contributions to many fields of biology, especially entomology, ornithology, and agriculture.

FAMOUS BIOLOGISTS (S)Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873). British paleontologist. Namer of the Devonian and Cambrian periods. One of the foremost scientists of his era. Read more >> Hamilton O. Smith (1931-). American microbiologist. Shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Werner Arber and Daniel Nathans for the discovery of restriction endonucleases, which led to the development of recombinant DNA technology. Read more >> William Smith (1769-1839). Established from geological evidence, independently of Cuvier, the fact that evolution has occurred over time. Read more >>

FAMOUS BIOLOGISTS (T)Edward Lawrie Tatum (1909-1975). American geneticist. By means of x-ray irradiation of the mold Neurospora crassa and screening of the resulting mutants, Tatum showed, with George Beadle, that mutations induced in genes corresponded to alterations in specific enzymes. This finding led to the acceptance of the one gene/one enzyme hypothesis. Shared with Beadle half of the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Read more >> Howard Martin Temin (1934-). American geneticist. Shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Renato Dulbecco and David Baltimore for their discovery of reverse transcriptase. Read more >> Theophrastus (c. 372 - c. 287 B.C.). Ancient Greek philosopher, successor of Aristotle as head of the Lyceum. His Enquiry into Plants (Historia plantarum) and Origins of Plants (Causae plantarum) are the beginning of all subsequent botanical thought. Remarkably, Theophrastus knew that plants engaged in sexual reproduction, a fact thereafter forgotten and not rediscovered until the eighteenth century.

FAMOUS BIOLOGISTS (V)Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564). The founder of modern human anatomy. Born in Brussels near a hill where condemned criminals were tortured, executed, and left to rot, Vesalius must have been familiar with the details of human anatomy even as a child. As a medical professor, he went on to make the acquaintance intimate by handling and dissecting the bodies himself this had been the job of underling barber-surgeons up to that time. Though bodies were in short supply, he used every means legal, and sometimes, illegal to get the materials he needed for his studies. In his memoirs he recalls forays by night to search the stakes and gibbets for classroom materials. His gristly habits paid off. Unlike his predecessors, Vesalius' drawings were based on direct observation. He transformed his field of research and forever changed the teaching of medicine. Vesalius' masterwork, De humani corporis fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body, 1543, 1555), remained the basis of medical illustration for generations and still influences how we look at our bodies today.

FAMOUS BIOLOGISTS (W-Z)Alfred Wallace (1823-1913). British naturalist. Developed the theory of natural selection independently of Charles Darwin. One of the most creative, adventurous, and amiable biologists of the 19th century. Read more >> John Xantus (1825-1894) Hungarian naturalist. Collected and identified many new animals and plants in the southwestern U.S. and Mexico. Read more >> Norton Zinder (1928-) American biologist. Discoverer of bacterial transduction, the transfer of genetic material from one bacterium to another by bacteriophages. This process is now much used in the intentional genetic transformation of bacteria.