Notable Scientists and Inventors

This list is comprised of some of the most recognizable names from the world of science and invention. These lists do not include philosophers, mathematicians, psychologists, theologians who are instead listed with the famous thinkers.
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NameLifespanOther Names
Hippocrates of Cos460-370 BC
Aristarchus of Samosc. 310-c. 230 BC
Apollonius of Pergac. 262-c. 190 BC
Hipparchus of Nicaeac. 190-c. 120 BC
Aglaonice?-c. 100 BC
Pliny the Elderc. 23-79(Plinius, Secundus)
Cai Lun50-121(Ts'ai)
Ptolemyc. 100-c. 168(Ptolemaeus)
Galen129-c. 216
Aryabhata476-550
Jabir ibn Hayyanc. 721-c. 815
Abbas ibn Firnasc. 809-887
Abu Bakr Muhammad al-Razi865-925(Rhazes)
Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi903-986
Ibn al-Haythamc. 965-c. 1040
Abu Rayhan Muhammad al-Biruni973-c. 1050
Ismail al-Jazari1136-1206
Ulugh Beg1394-1449(Taraghay)
Johannes Gutenbergc. 1395-1468
Leonardo da Vinci1452-1519
Nicolaus Copernicus1473-1543
Paracelsus1493-1541
Andreas Vesalius1514-1564(van Wezel)
Conrad Gessner1516-1565
William Gilbert1544-1603
Guidobaldo del Monte1545-1607
Tycho Brahe1546-1601
Giordano Bruno1548-1600
Galileo Galilei1564-1642
Hans Lipperheyc. 1570-1619
Johannes Kepler1571-1630
William Harvey1578-1657
Otto von Guericke1602-1686
Evangelista Torricelli1608-1647
Johannes Hevelius1611-1687
Giovanni Domenico Cassini1625-1712
Robert Boyle1627-1691
Christiaan Huygens1629-1695
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek1632-1723
Robert Hooke1635-1703
Nicolas Steno1638-1686(Steensen)
James Gregory1638-1675
Isaac Newton1642-1727
Ole Rømer1644-1710
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz1646-1716
Maria Sibylla Merian1647-1717
Denis Papin1647-c. 1712
Bartolomeo Cristofori1655-1731
Edmond Halley1656-1742
Thomas Newcomen1664-1729
Antonio Maria Valsalva1666-1723
Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit1686-1736
Daniel Bernoulli1700-1782
Anders Celsius1701-1744
Carl Linnaeus1707-1778
Georges-Louis Leclerc1707-1788
Mikhail Lomonosov1711-1765
Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot1725-1804
Michel Adanson1727-1806
Otto Friedrich Müller1730-1784
Charles Messier1730-1817
Henry Cavendish1731-1810
David Rittenhouse1732-1796
Richard Arkwright1733-1792
James Watt1736-1819
Charles-Augustin de Coulomb1736-1806
Luigi Galvani1737-1798
William Herschel1738-1822
Carl Wilhelm Scheele1742-1786
Antoine Lavoisier1743-1794
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck1744-1829
Alessandro Volta1745-1827
Giuseppe Piazzi1746-1826
Pierre-Simon Laplace1749-1827
Edward Jenner1749-1823
Nicolas Appert1749-1841
Caroline Herschel1750-1848
Joseph Marie Jacquard1752-1834
Barnaba Oriani1752-1832
Benjamin Thompson1753-1814
Jean-Pierre Blanchard1753-1809
James Parkinson1755-1824
Nicéphore Niépce1765-1833
Robert Fulton1765-1815
Eli Whitney1765-1825
William Hyde Wollaston1766-1828
John Dalton1766-1844
Georges Cuvier1769-1832
Niccolò Cacciatore1770-1841
Richard Trevithick1771-1833
Alois Senefelder1771-1834
Thomas Young1773-1829
Robert Brown1773-1858
André-Marie Ampère1775-1836
Amedeo Avogadro1776-1856
Carl Friedrich Gauss1777-1855
Hans Christian Ørsted1777-1851
Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac1778-1850
Humphry Davy1778-1829
Jöns Jacob Berzelius1779-1848
George Stephenson1781-1848
Friedrich Bessel1784-1846
John James Audubon1785-1851
Karl Drais1785-1851
Joseph von Fraunhofer1787-1826
Louis Daguerre1787-1851
Augustin-Jean Fresnel1788-1827
Georg Ohm1789-1854
Claude Pouillet1790-1868
Samuel Morse1791-1872
Michael Faraday1791-1867
Charles Babbage1791-1871
John Herschel1792-1871
Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis1792-1843
Eliphalet Remington1793-1861
Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge1794-1867
Thomas Addison1795-1860
Rowland Hill1795-1879
Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot1796-1832
Charles Lyell1797-1875
Mary Anning1799-1847
Prosper Menière1799-1862
Henry Fox Talbot1800-1877
John Edward Gray1800-1875
Friedrich Wöhler1800-1882
Charles Goodyear1800-1860
Justus von Liebig1803-1873
Christian Doppler1803-1853
John Deere1804-1886
Wilhelm Eduard Weber1804-1891
William Rowan Hamilton1805-1865
Antonio Meucci1808-1889
Horace Smith1808-1893
Louis Braille1809-1852
Charles Darwin1809-1882
Theodor Schwann1810-1882
Robert Bunsen1811-1899
Isaac Singer1811-1875
John Snow1813-1858
Claude Bernard1813-1878
Samuel Colt1814-1862
Adolphe Sax1814-1894
Werner von Siemens1816-1892
George Henry Corliss1817-1888
C. H. D. Buys Ballot1817-1890(Buis)
Ignaz Semmelweis1818-1865
Hermann Kolbe1818-1884
Lewis H. Morgan1818-1881
James Prescott Joule1818-1889
Léon Foucault1819-1868
Hermann von Helmholtz1821-1894
Rudolf Virchow1821-1902
Rudolf Clausius1822-1888
Heinrich Schliemann1822-1890
Adolf Kussmaul1822-1902
Gregor Mendel1822-1884
Adolph Strecker1822-1871
Louis Pasteur1822-1895
Alfred Russel Wallace1823-1913
William Huggins1824-1910
Gustav Kirchhoff1824-1887
William Thomson1824-1907(Kelvin)
Augustin Mouchot1825-1911
Thomas Henry Huxley1825-1895
Daniel B. Wesson1825-1906
Jean-Martin Charcot1825-1893
Adolf Bastian1826-1905
Joseph Lister1827-1912
John Langdon Down1828-1896
James Clerk Maxwell1831-1879
Nikolaus Otto1832-1891
Edward Burnett Tylor1832-1917
Gustave Eiffel1832-1923
Alfred Nobel1833-1896
Dmitriy Mendeleev1834-1907
Ernst Haeckel1834-1919
Gottlieb Daimler1834-1900
Maurice Raynaud1834-1881
Adolf von Baeyer1835-1917(Baeyer)
Johannes Diderik van der Waals1837-1923
Ernst Mach1838-1916
Ferdinand von Zeppelin1838-1917
Almon Brown Strowger1839-1902
Josiah Willard Gibbs1839-1903
Ernst Abbe1840-1905
John Boyd Dunlop1840-1921
Robert Stawell Ball1840-1913
Emil Theodor Kocher1841-1917
Camille Flammarion1842-1925
John Strutt, Lord Rayleigh1842-1919
Camillo Golgi1843-1926
Valentine Ball1843-1894
Robert Koch1843-1910
Ludwig Boltzmann1844-1906
Carl Benz1844-1929(Vaillant)
Wilhelm Röntgen1845-1923
Ilya Mechnikov1845-1916(Metchnikoff)
Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran1845-1922
Gabriel Lippmann1845-1921
Wilhelm Maybach1846-1929
Edward Charles Pickering1846-1919
George Westinghouse1846-1914
Thomas Edison1847-1931
Alexander Graham Bell1847-1922
Otto Wallach1847-1931
Sarah Frances Whiting1847-1927
Ivan Pavlov1849-1936
George Huntington1850-1916
Karl Ferdinand Braun1850-1918
Charles Richet1850-1935
Jacobus Kapteyn1851-1922
Emile Berliner1851-1929
Arthur Evans1851-1941
Adolf Gaston Eugen Fick1852-1937
Santiago Ramón y Cajal1852-1934
Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff1852-1911
Henri Moissan1852-1907
William Ramsay1852-1916
Emil Fischer1852-1919
Henri Becquerel1852-1908
Albert Abraham Michelson1852-1931
Adolf von Strümpell1853-1925(Strümpell)
Hendrik Lorentz1853-1928
Wilhelm Ostwald1853-1932
Albrecht Kossel1853-1927
Heike Kamerlingh Onnes1853-1926
James George Frazer1854-1941
Sergei Korsakov1854-1900(Korsakoff)
Paul Ehrlich1854-1915
Emil von Behring1854-1917(Behring)
George Eastman1854-1932
David Dunbar Buick1854-1929
Paul Sabatier1854-1941
John Browning1855-1926
C. V. Boys1855-1944
Emil Kraepelin1856-1926
Nikola Tesla1856-1943
J. J. Thomson1856-1940
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky1857-1935
Heinrich Hertz1857-1894
Ronald Ross1857-1932
Williamina Fleming1857-1911
Georges Gilles de La Tourette1857-1904
William Henry Pickering1858-1938
Charles Eastman1858-1939
Rudolf Diesel1858-1913
Max Planck1858-1947
Antoine Marfan1858-1942
Franz Boas1858-1942
Christiaan Eijkman1858-1930
Vincas Kudirka1858-1899
Svante Arrhenius1859-1927
Pierre Curie1859-1906
Herman Hollerith1860-1929
Eduard Buchner1860-1917
Willem Einthoven1860-1927
Niels Ryberg Finsen1860-1904
Charles Édouard Guillaume1861-1938
Frederick Gowland Hopkins1861-1947
James Naismith1861-1939
Frank Shuman1862-1918
Allvar Gullstrand1862-1930
Philipp Lenard1862-1947
William Henry Bragg1862-1942
Henry Ford1863-1947
Annie Jump Cannon1863-1941
Wilhelm Wien1864-1928
Alois Alzheimer1864-1915
Walther Nernst1864-1941
Richard Adolf Zsigmondy1865-1929
Pieter Zeeman1865-1943
Arthur Harden1865-1940
Antonia Maury1866-1952
Adolf Meyer1866-1950
Thomas Hunt Morgan1866-1945
Alfred Werner1866-1919
Wilbur Wright1867-1912
Marie Curie1867-1934
Theodore William Richards1868-1928
Robert Andrews Millikan1868-1953
Karl Landsteiner1868-1943
Henrietta Swan Leavitt1868-1921
Gustav Mie1868-1957
Arnold Sommerfeld1868-1951
Fritz Haber1868-1934
Charles Thomson Rees Wilson1869-1959
Fritz Pregl1869-1930
Gustaf Dalén1869-1937
William G. Morgan1870-1942
Erik Adolf von Willebrand1870-1949
Jules Bordet1870-1961
Jean Baptiste Perrin1870-1942
Slavoljub Eduard Penkala1871-1922
Victor Grignard1871-1935
Orville Wright1871-1948
Ernest Rutherford1871-1937
Louis Blériot1872-1936
Richard Willstätter1872-1942
Anton Pannekoek1873-1960
Alexis Carrel1873-1944
Alberto Santos-Dumont1873-1932
Ejnar Hertzsprung1873-1967
Johannes Stark1874-1957
Guglielmo Marconi1874-1937
Howard Carter1874-1939
Carl Bosch1874-1940
Chaim Weizmann1874-1952(Vaytsman)
Ferdinand Porsche1875-1951
Vesto Slipher1875-1969
Otto Diels1876-1954
Róbert Bárány1876-1936
Willis Carrier1876-1950
Adolf Windaus1876-1959
Charles Glover Barkla1877-1944
Francis William Aston1877-1945
Frederick Soddy1877-1956
Henry Norris Russell1877-1957
Lise Meitner1878-1968
Otto Hahn1879-1968
Albert Einstein1879-1955
Owen Willans Richardson1879-1959
Max von Laue1879-1960
Alfred Wegener1880-1930
Irving Langmuir1881-1957
Hermann Staudinger1881-1965
Hans Fischer1881-1945
Alexander Fleming1881-1955
Clinton Davisson1881-1958
Percy Williams Bridgman1882-1961
James Franck1882-1964
Robert H. Goddard1882-1945
Max Born1882-1970
Arthur Eddington1882-1944
Marius Barbeau1883-1969
Victor Francis Hess1883-1964
Peter Debye1884-1966
Bronisław Malinowski1884-1942
Burrill Bernard Crohn1884-1983
Theodor Svedberg1884-1971
Friedrich Bergius1884-1949
Hermann Rorschach1884-1922
George de Hevesy1885-1966
Niels Bohr1885-1962
Karl von Frisch1886-1982
Manne Siegbahn1886-1978
Hedwig Kohn1887-1964
Ruth Benedict1887-1948
Julian Huxley1887-1975
Gustav Ludwig Hertz1887-1975
Erwin Schrödinger1887-1961
Friedrich Paneth1887-1958
Leopold Ružička1887-1976
James B. Sumner1887-1955
Otto Stern1888-1969
Inge Lehmann1888-1993
Frits Zernike1888-1966
Selman Waksman1888-1973
John Logie Baird1888-1946
C. V. Raman1888-1970
Paul Karrer1889-1971
Igor Sikorsky1889-1972
Edwin Hubble1889-1953
Vannevar Bush1890-1974
William Lawrence Bragg1890-1971
Jaroslav Heyrovský1890-1967
Walther Bothe1891-1957
John Howard Northrop1891-1987
James Chadwick1891-1974
Frederick Banting1891-1941
George Paget Thomson1892-1975
Louis de Broglie1892-1987
Edward Victor Appleton1892-1965
Arthur Compton1892-1962
Marcel Minnaert1893-1970
Harold Urey1893-1981
Albert Szent-Györgyi1893-1986
Satyendra Nath Bose1894-1974
Pyotr Kapitsa1894-1984
Georges Lemaître1894-1966
Artturi Ilmari Virtanen1895-1973
Igor Tamm1895-1971
Buckminster Fuller1895-1983
Gerhard Domagk1895-1964
Nikolay Semyonov1896-1986
Gerty Cori1896-1957
Hugo Bernatzik1897-1953
John Cockcroft1897-1967
Tadeusz Reichstein1897-1996
Irène Joliot-Curie1897-1956
Patrick Blackett1897-1974
Guy Stewart Callendar1898-1964
Fritz Zwicky1898-1974
Isidor Isaac Rabi1898-1988
Howard Florey1898-1968
Karl Ziegler1898-1973
John Hasbrouck Van Vleck1899-1980
Henrik Sjögren1899-1986
László Bíró1899-1985
Frédéric Joliot-Curie1900-1958
Wolfgang Pauli1900-1958
Charles Francis Richter1900-1985
Jan Oort1900-1992
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin1900-1979
Dennis Gabor1900-1979
Hans Adolf Krebs1900-1981
Linus Pauling1901-1994
Ernest Lawrence1901-1958
Enrico Fermi1901-1954
Werner Heisenberg1901-1976
Margaret Mead1901-1978
Amil Kumar Das1902-1961
Walter Houser Brattain1902-1987
Alfred Kastler1902-1984
Barbara McClintock1902-1992
Kurt Alder1902-1958
Paul Dirac1902-1984
Arne Tiselius1902-1971
Eugene Wigner1902-1995
Giulio Natta1903-1979
Adolf Butenandt1903-1995
Ernest Walton1903-1995
Konrad Lorenz1903-1989
Lars Onsager1903-1976
Cecil Frank Powell1903-1969
J. Robert Oppenheimer1904-1967
Pavel Cherenkov1904-1990
Wendell Meredith Stanley1904-1971
Louis Néel1904-2000
Emilio G. Segrè1905-1989
Carl David Anderson1905-1991
Nevill Francis Mott1905-1996
Felix Bloch1905-1983
Gerard Kuiper1905-1973
Albert Hofmann1906-2008
Clyde Tombaugh1906-1997
Hans Asperger1906-1980
Tomonaga Shin'ichirō1906-1979
Maria Goeppert-Mayer1906-1972
Hans Bethe1906-2005
Vladimir Prelog1906-1998
Grace Hopper1906-1992
Ernst Ruska1906-1988
Sergei Korolev1907-1966
Yukawa Hideki1907-1981
Melba Phillips1907-2004
Rachel Carson1907-1964
J. Hans D. Jensen1907-1973
Edwin McMillan1907-1991
Edward Teller1908-2003
Bengt Strömgren1908-1987
Lev Landau1908-1968
John Bardeen1908-1991
Hannes Alfvén1908-1995
Ilya Frank1908-1990
Willard Libby1908-1980
Olin Chaddock Wilson1909-1994
Rita Levi-Montalcini1909-2012
Virginia Apgar1909-1974
Leo Fender1909-1991
Jacques Monod1910-1976
William Shockley1910-1989
Dorothy Hodgkin1910-1994
Konrad Zuse1910-1995
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar1910-1995
Polykarp Kusch1911-1993
Maus Gatsonides1911-1998
Melvin Calvin1911-1997
Luis Walter Alvarez1911-1988
William Alfred Fowler1911-1995
Samuel Warren Carey1911-2002
Harry Klinefelter1912-1990
Wernher von Braun1912-1977
Glenn T. Seaborg1912-1999
Edward Mills Purcell1912-1997
Willis Lamb1913-2008
Britton Chance1913-2010
Wolfgang Paul1913-1993
Norman Borlaug1914-2009
Adriaan Blaauw1914-2010
Raymond Davis Jr.1914-2006
Jonas Salk1914-1995
Robert Hofstadter1915-1990
Ivan Supek1915-2007
Les Paul1915-2009
Charles H. Townes1915-2015
Norman Foster Ramsey Jr.1915-2011
Claude Shannon1916-2001
Francis Crick1916-2004
Alexander Prokhorov1916-2002
Vitaly Ginzburg1916-2009
Maurice Wilkins1916-2004
Ilya Prigogine1917-2003
Robert Burns Woodward1917-1979
Andrew Huxley1917-2012
James Rainwater1917-1986
Gertrude B. Elion1918-1999
Julian Schwinger1918-1994
Frederick Reines1918-1998
Kai Siegbahn1918-2007
Richard Feynman1918-1988
Frederick Sanger1918-2013
Martin Ryle1918-1984
Ward Goodenough1919-2013
Olin J. Eggen1919-1998
Mikhail Kalashnikov1919-2013
Henry Heimlich1920-2016
Nicolaas Bloembergen1920-2017
Owen Chamberlain1920-2006
Rosalind Franklin1920-1958
Marie Tharp1920-2006
Yoichiro Nambu1921-2015
Arthur Leonard Schawlow1921-1999
Andrei Sakharov1921-1989
Rosalyn Yalow1921-2011(Sussman)
Har Gobind Khorana1922-2011
Clair Patterson1922-1995
Aage Bohr1922-2009
Leon M. Lederman1922-2018
John B. Goodenough1922-2023
Arthur Ashkin1922-2020
Yang Chen-Ning1922-
Nikolay Basov1922-2001
Val Logsdon Fitch1923-2015
Jack Kilby1923-2005
Philip W. Anderson1923-2020
Freeman Dyson1923-2020
Bruce C. Heezen1924-1977
Antony Hewish1924-2021
Georges Charpak1924-2010
Willard Boyle1924-2011
Douglas Engelbart1925-2013
Adolf Seilacher1925-2014
Reona Esaki1925-
Roy J. Glauber1925-2018
Robert Edwards1925-2013
Simon van der Meer1925-2011
Abdus Salam1926-1996
David Attenborough1926-
John Shipley Rowlinson1926-2018
Asım Orhan Barut1926-1994
Paul Berg1926-2023
Ben Roy Mottelson1926-2022
Koshiba Masatoshi1926-2020
Donald A. Glaser1926-2013
Lee Tsung-Dao1926-
Sydney Brenner1927-2019
K. Alex Müller1927-2023
Manfred Eigen1927-2019
Martin Lewis Perl1927-2014
James Watson1928-
Charles David Keeling1928-2005
Alexei A. Abrikosov1928-2017
Vera Rubin1928-2016(Cooper)
Martin Cooper1928-
Akasaki Isamu1929-2021
Rudolf Mössbauer1929-2011
Ivar Giaever1929-
Peter Higgs1929-
Murray Gell-Mann1929-2019
Richard E. Taylor1929-2018
Leon Cooper1930-
Zhores Alferov1930-2019
Jerome Isaac Friedman1930-
George E. Smith1930-
Tu Youyou1930-
Burton Richter1931-2018
John Robert Schrieffer1931-2019
Martinus J. G. Veltman1931-2021
Roger Penrose1931-
James Cronin1931-2016
Riccardo Giacconi1931-2018
Dian Fossey1932-1985
Luc Montagnier1932-2022
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes1932-2007
Melvin Schwartz1932-2006
François Englert1932-
Sheldon Lee Glashow1932-
Claude Cohen-Tannoudji1933-
Arno Allan Penzias1933-
Steven Weinberg1933-2021
Heinrich Rohrer1933-2013
Charles K. Kao1933-2018
Paul J. Crutzen1933-2021
Carlo Rubbia1934-
Jane Goodall1934-
John L. Hall1934-
David J. Thouless1934-2019
Carl Sagan1934-1996
Jim Peebles1935-
Robert Woodrow Wilson1936-
Samuel C. C. Ting1936-
Harald zur Hausen1936-2023
Kenneth G. Wilson1936-2013
Margaret Hamilton1936-
Gerhard Ertl1936-
Robert Coleman Richardson1937-2013
Albert Fert1938-
Anthony James Leggett1938-
Peter Grünberg1939-2018
Ada Yonath1939-
Brian David Josephson1940-
Toshihide Maskawa1940-2021
Kip Thorne1940-
Dan Shechtman1941-
David Gross1941-
Richard Dawkins1941-
Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr.1941-
Dennis Ritchie1941-2011
Theodor W. Hänsch1941-
Stephen Hawking1942-2018
Michel Mayor1942-
Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard1942-
Ken Thompson1943-
Mario Molina1943-2020
J. Michael Kosterlitz1943-
Klaus von Klitzing1943-
Jocelyn Bell Burnell1943-
Arthur B. McDonald1943-
David Jeffrey Wineland1944-
Ernő Rubik1944-
Serge Haroche1944-
Yoshinori Ōsumi1945-(Ohsumi)
George Smoot1945-
Ahmed Zewail1946-2016
Jack Horner1946-
Gerard 't Hooft1946-
John C. Mather1946-
Aziz Sancar1946-
Michio Kaku1947-
Linda B. Buck1947-
Roger D. Kornberg1947-
Gerd Binnig1947-
Françoise Barré-Sinoussi1947-
Steven Chu1948-
Kathy Reichs1948-
William Daniel Phillips1948-
Elizabeth Blackburn1948-
Horst Ludwig Störmer1949-
Hugh David Politzer1949-
Georg Bednorz1950-
Steve Wozniak1950-
Robert B. Laughlin1950-
Russell Alan Hulse1950-
Carl Wieman1951-
Frank Wilczek1951-
Edward Witten1951-
Duncan Haldane1951-
Barry Marshall1951-
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan1952-
Nakamura Shuji1954-
Ayyub Guliyev1954-
Svante Pääbo1955-
Tim Berners-Lee1955-
Frances Arnold1956-
Wolfgang Ketterle1957-
Neil deGrasse Tyson1958-
Andre Geim1958-
Kajita Takaaki1959-
Donna Strickland1959-
Saul Perlmutter1959-
Amano Hiroshi1960-
David Graeber1961-2020
Carol W. Greider1961-
May-Britt Moser1963-
Jennifer Doudna1964-
Andrea Mia Ghez1965-
Didier Queloz1966-
Carolyn Bertozzi1966-
Brian Schmidt1967-
Emmanuelle Charpentier1968-
Adam Riess1969-
Linus Torvalds1969-
Konstantin Novoselov1974-