Famous Scientists a to z

Dian Fossey was a zoologist best known for researching the endangered gorillas of the Rwandan mountain forest from the 1960s to the '80s, and for her mysterious murder.

Jean Foucault was a French physicist and inventor best known for inventing the Foucault pendulum.

Benjamin Franklin is best known as one of the Founding Fathers who drafted the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

British chemist Rosalind Franklin is best known for her role in the discovery of the structure of DNA ,and for her pioneering use of X-ray diffraction.

Italian scientist and scholar Galileo made pioneering observations that laid the foundation for modern physics and astronomy.

Francis Galton was an English explorer and anthropologist best known for his research in eugenics and human intelligence. He was the first to study the effects of human selective mating.

Jane Goodall created one of the most trailblazing studies of primates in modern times when she dwelled with Tanzanian chimps to observe their behavior.

Stephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist and evolutionary biologist, and the best-selling writer of popular science books.

Temple Grandin is a noted animal expert and advocate for autistic populations who has penned the books Animals in Translation and Animals Make Us Human.

Alice Hamilton was a physician and authority on lead poisoning and industrial disease. The NIOSH present an award in her name.

Jack Hanna, animal expert and former director of the Columbus Zoo, makes regular appearances on TV talk shows to teach people about exotic animals.

Stephen Hawking is known for his work regarding black holes and for authoring several popular science books. He suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Tony Hayward was the CEO of BP when its rig Deepwater Horizon sank in the Gulf of Mexico, creating one of the greatest environmental disasters ever.

American biologist A.D. Hershey won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1969 for his research done on viruses that infect bacteria.

Thomas Hobbes, an English philosopher in the 17th century, was best known for his book Leviathan (1651) and his political views on society.

Robert Hooke was an English philosopher, mathematician and architect who discovered the law of elasticity, now known as Hooke's law.

Bernardo Alberto Houssay was an Argentinian doctor whose research on the role of pituitary hormones regulating blood sugar won him a Nobel Prize.

Astronomer Edwin Hubble revolutionized the field of astrophysics. His research helped prove that the universe is expanding, and he created a classification system for galaxies that has been used for several decades.

Naturalist Terri Irwin is well-known as the widow of wildlife expert Steve Irwin. The couple co-hosted the Animal Planet show The Crocodile Hunter.

J.B.S. Haldane was a British geneticist who helped found the theories of population genetics.

Doctor Mae C. Jemison is the first African-American woman ever to be a U.S. astronaut. In 1992, she flew into space aboard the Endeavour.

African-American chemist Percy Julian was a pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs such as cortisone, steroids and birth control pills.

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam is an Indian scientist and politician who served his country as president from 2002 to 2007.

Heike Kamerlingh-Onnes was a Dutch scientist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his production of liquid helium. He also discovered superconductivity.

Biologist Alfred Kinsey wrote Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, which was based on research he and his colleagues conducted at the Institute for Sex Research.

Edwin Land is best known as the inventor of the Polaroid camera and film, and as the co-founder of the Polaroid Corporation.

Immunologist and pathologist Karl Landsteiner received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the major blood types.

Mary Leakey was a paleoanthropologist who, along with husband Louis, made several prominent scientific discoveries. Skull fossils found by the Leakeys advanced our understanding of human evolution.

Wen Ho Lee is a nuclear engineer who was working at Los Alamos National Laboratory when he was accused of being a Chinese spy.

Italian Jewish chemist Primo Levi survived a year at Auschwitz against all odds. He is best known his moving memoir, If This Is a Man.

Rita Levi-Montalcini shared the 1986 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for her part in the discovery of a protein that stimulates nerve cell growth.

French physicist Gabriel Lippmann created the first color photographic plate. The creation earned him the 1908 Nobel Prize for Physics.

British surgeon and medical scientist Joseph Lister is regarded as the founder of antiseptic medicine, which he implemented with amputee patients.

Theodore H. Maiman was a physicist, company leader, consultant and author who created the first working laser in 1960.

Professor Peter Mansfield received the Nobel Prize for further developing magnetic resonance (MRI) technology, leading to its widespread use in hospitals.

Rudolph A. Marcus is a Canadian chemist known for his research in electron-transfer reactions. He established what is known as the Marcus Theory, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1992.

Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell originated the idea of electromagnetic radiation. His ideas formed the basis for quantum mechanics.

Ornithologist Ernst Mayr demonstrated that the development of separate species in higher animals depends on the geographical isolation of precursor populations.

Gregor Mendel was an Austrian monk who discovered the basic principles of heredity through experiments in his garden. Mendel's observations became the foundation of modern genetics and the study of heredity, and he is widely considered a pioneer in the field of genetics.

Dmitri Mendeleyev was a Russian chemist who developed the periodic classification of the elements.

Mexican-born chemist Mario Molina won a Nobel Prize in 1995 for his research on how man-made compounds affect the ozone layer.

English physicist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton, most famous for his law of gravitation, was instrumental in the scientific revolution of the 17th century.

Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel invented dynamite and other explosives. He used his enormous fortune from 355 patents to institute the Nobel Prizes.

Jan Hendrik Oort was a Dutch astronomer who confirmed that the Milky Way rotates in its own plane around the center of the galaxy.

J. Robert Oppenheimer is often called the "father of the atomic bomb" for leading the Manhattan Project, the program that developed the first nuclear weapon during World War II.

English born, English bred, forgotten by the English and the world, James Parkinson identified the "shaking palsy" as a disease of the central nervous system.

Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist and religious philosopher, who laid the foundation for the modern theory of probabilities.

Scientist Louis Pasteur came up with the food preparing process known as pasteurization; he also developed a vaccination for anthrax and rabies.

Russian physiologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov studied "conditioned reflex" through an experiment that made hungry dogs salivate at the sound of a dinner bell.

Psychologist Jean Piaget identified stages of mental development, called Schema, and established the fields of cognitive theory and developmental psychology.