This is a list of biochemists. It should include those who have been important to the development or practice of biochemistry. Their research or applications have made significant contributions in the area of basic or applied biochemistry.
David Agard (20th–21st century). American Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at UC San Francisco, whose research is focussed on understanding the basic principles of macromolecular structure and function. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Bruce Alberts (b. 1938). American biochemist at UC San Francisco, known for his work on protein complexes that enable chromosome replication in science, public policy, and as an original author of the textbook Molecular Biology of the Cell. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Robert Alberty (1921–2014). American physical biochemist at MIT, noted for many contributions to enzyme kinetics, including early studies of reactions with two substrates. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Bruce Ames (1928–2024). Biochemist and microbiologist at UC Berkeley. He is an expert on mutagenicity and an inventor of the Ames test. Awarded the National Medal of Science
John E. Amoore (1939–1998). British biochemist and zoologist at UC Berkeley, who postulated the stereochemical theory of olfaction.
Frances Arnold (b. 1956). American biochemist and biochemical engineer at Caltech, pioneer of the use of directed evolution to engineer enzymes. Nobel Prize for Chemistry (2018). Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Helen Asemota (20th–21st century). Nigerian biochemist at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica, who studied the molecular genetics and metabolism of the browning of yam tubers in storage.
Gilbert Ashwell (1916–2014). American biochemist at the NIH, who isolated the first cell receptor.
David Baker (b. 1962). American biochemist and computational biologist at the University of Washington, who studies methods to predict and design the three-dimensional structures of proteins. Nobel Prize in chemistry, 2024.
Tania A. Baker (PhD 1988). American biochemist at MIT, who has studied transposons and enzymes that catalyse protein unfolding. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Clinton Ballou (1923–2021). American biochemist at UC Berkeley, whose research focused on the metabolism of carbohydrates and the structures of microbial cell walls. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Philip A. Beachy (b. 1958). American biochemist at Stanford, known for studies to understand the molecular mechanisms behind the growth of multicellular embryos, especially the role of the Hedgehog signalling pathway. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Steven A. Benner (b. 1954). American chemist at the University of Florida known for establishing synthetic biology and paleogenetics, aas wll as contributing to understanding of the origin of life;
Paul BergFRS (foreign member) (1926–2023). American biochemist at Stanford, known for pioneering work involving gene splicing of recombinant DNA. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1980.
Helen M. Berman (b. 1943). American biochemist at Rutgers University, known for work on nucleic acids, their interactions with proteins, and also the structure of collagen.
Claude Bernard (1813–1878). French physiologist and physician (early biochemist) at the Collège de France, Paris. Introduced concept of homeostasis (given that name by Walter Cannon). Foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Klaus Biemann (1926–2016). Austrian chemist at MIT, the "father of organic mass spectrometry" and particularly noted for his role in advancing protein sequencing with tandem mass spectrometry. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Konrad Emil BlochFRS (1912–2000). German-American biochemist at Harvard, who worked on the mechanism and regulation of cholesterol and fatty acid metabolism. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1964.
Elkan Blout (1919–2006). American biochemist at Harvard, who worked on peptide structure and conformation, including cyclic peptides. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Herman Branson (1914–1995). American physicist and biochemist who participated at Caltech in the discovery of the α-helix
Sydney Brenner (1927–2019). South African biochemist at Cambridge, and later Berkeley, known for work on the genetic code and more recently for establishing Caenorhabditis elegans as a model organism. Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine (2002)
Kenneth Breslauer (b. 1947). American biochemist at Rutgers University (born in Sweden of German parents), who has studied DNA damage and repair, including why certain mutations escape repair and result in cancer.
Bernard Brodie (1907–1989). American biochemist and pharmacologist at the National Heart Institute, regarded as the founder of modern pharmacology. He studied drug metabolism and the mechanisms of drug effects. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Adrian John BrownFRS (1852–1920). British expert on brewing and malting at the University of Birmingham. He was a pioneer of enzyme kinetics and proposed an explanation of enzyme saturation.
Patrick O. Brown (b. 1954). American biochemist at Stanford. Among numerous advances in experimental techniques he has developed experimental methods for using DNA microarrays to investigate the basic principles of genome organization. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Eduard Buchner (1860–1917). German chemist and physiologist at LMU Munich, who overthrew the doctrine of vitalism by showing that cell-free yeast extract could catalyse fermentation, a discovery described by Arthur Kornberg as the beginning of biochemistry. 1907 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Dean Burk (1904–1988). American biochemist at the Fixed Nitrogen Research Laboratory, co-discoverer of biotin. He is credited (with Hans Lineweaver) with introducing the double-reciprocal plot in kinetics. He became a vociferous opponent of water fluoridation.
Carlos Bustamante (b. 1951). Peruvian-American biophysicist at UC Berkeley. Known for single-molecule studies, including the use of optical tweezers for measuring the forces that maintain biological structures. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
David E. Cane (b. 1944). American biological chemist at Brown University, recognized for his work on the biosynthesis of natural products, particularly terpenoids and polyketides.
John Carbon (PhD 1955). American cellular biologist at UC Santa Barbara, known for development of techniques for making genome libraries. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Michael Chamberlin (1937–2025). American molecular biologist at UC Berkeley, with research focussed on gene expression in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Christopher Chang (b. 1974). American bioinorganic chemist at UC Berkeley. His research includes molecular imaging sensors for the study of redox biology.
Jean-Pierre Changeux (b. 1936). French biochemist and neuroscientist at the Collège de France and Institut Pasteur. Originator of the allosteric model of cooperativity, but now known mainly for work in neuroscience.
Emmett Chappelle (1925–2019). American biochemist at NASA, known for using bioluminescence to develop a method of detecting ATP.
Erwin Chargaff (1905–2002). Austrian-American biochemist at Columbia, known for Chargaff's rules, according to the first of which the number of guanine units in DNA is equal to the number of cytosine units, and the number of adenine units is equal to the number of thymine units.
Aaron Ciechanover (b. 1947). Israeli biochemist at the Technion, Haifa, known for work on protein turnover. Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2004. Foreign associate Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Vintilă Ciocâlteu (1890–1947) Roumanian physician, biochemist, researcher, professor, and author.
Edwin Joseph Cohn (1892–1953). American protein chemist at Harvard, known for studies on blood and the physical chemistry of protein. Author, with John Edsall of Proteins, Amino Acids and Peptides, a very influential book. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Mildred Cohn (1913–2009). American biochemist, at the University of Pennsylvania, pioneer in the use of nuclear magnetic resonance to study enzyme reactions.
Athel Cornish-Bowden (b. 1943). British enzymologist at the CNRS, Marseille. He has contributed to the development of metabolic control analysis, and is the author of Fundamentals of Enzyme Kinetics.
Nicholas R. Cozzarelli (1938–2006). American biochemist at UC Berkeley, and former editor-in-chief of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Gerald Crabtree (b. 1946). American biochemist at Stanford, known for defining the Ca2+-calcineurin-NFAT signalling pathway, pioneering the development of synthetic ligands for regulation of biological processes.
Pedro Cuatrecasas (1936–2025). American biochemist at UC San Diego, known for the development of affinity chromatography. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Richard D. Cummings (20th–21st century). American biologist at Harvard, known for studying pathways of glycoconjugate biosynthesis and alterations in biosynthesis in human and animal diseases.
Valerie Daggett (BS 1993). American protein chemist at the University of Washington, known for molecular dynamics simulations of proteins and other biomolecules.
Marie Maynard Daly (1921–2003). American biochemist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who studied the chemistry of histones, protein synthesis, the relationships between cholesterol and hypertension, and uptake of creatine by muscle cells.
Keith DalzielFRS (1921–1994). British biochemist at Oxford University, pioneer in analysis of the kinetics of two-substrate enzyme-catalysed reactions.
Ronald W. Davis (b. 1941). American biochemist and geneticist at Stanford, known for developing new technologies in genomics. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Jean Dausset (1916–2009). French immunologist at INSERM who worked on the major histocompatibility complex. Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine (1980). Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. Member of the French Academy of Science
Michael W. Deem (PhD 1994). American biochemist and genetic engineer at Rice University, known for work in evolution, immunology, and materials.
William DeGrado (b. 1955). American pharmaceutical chemist at UC San Francisco, known for protein design, synthesis of peptidomimetics, and characterizing membrane-active peptides and proteins. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Pierre De Meyts (1944–2025). Belgian physician and biochemist at the Université Catholique de Louvain, known for studies of hormone-receptor interaction of peptide hormones and the physiopathogenesis of diabetes.
Willey Glover Denis (1879–1929). American biochemist at Tulane University, a pioneer in clinical chemistry and the measurement of protein in biological fluids.
Malcolm DixonFRS (1899–1985). British biochemist at the University of Cambridge. Research on enzyme structure, kinetics, and properties. His book (with Edwin C. Webb) Enzymes was very influential.
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George H. Dodd (c. 1942–2020). British biochemist who studied perfumes and pheromones.
Ralph Dorfman (1911–1985). American biochemist at Stanford, known for treatments for cancer and rheumatoid arthritis
Jennifer Doudna (b. 1964). American biochemist at UC Berkeley, known for CRISPR-mediated genome editing. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 2020.
Alexander Dounce (1909–1997). American protein chemist at the University of Rochester, active in early work on the genetic code, one of the first to suggest that it was triplet-based.
Conrad Elvehjem (1901–1962). American biochemist and nutritionist at the University of Wisconsin, known for identifying two vitamins, nicotinic acid, and nicotinamide.
Lars Ernster (1920–1998; original name Ernster László). Swedish biochemist at Stockholm, of Hungarian origin. Member of the Board of the Nobel Foundation (1977–1988). Known for work on mitochondria and energy transduction. Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Earl Evans (1910–1999). American biochemist at the University of Chicago known for developing techniques in radiobiology and other fields.
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Leone N. Farrell (1904–1986). Canadian biochemist and microbiologist at Connaught Laboratories (Toronto) who discovered a way to isolate live virus in bulk quantities, sufficient for producing the polio vaccine.
David Fell (b. 1947). British biochemist at Oxford Brookes University who has contributed to the development of systems biology. Author of Understanding the control of metabolism.
Otto Folin (1867–1934). Swedish-American chemist at Harvard, best known for developing methods for the determination of the constituents of protein-free blood filtrates. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Karl August Folkers (1906–1997). American biochemist at Merck, known for work on the antibiotics cathomycin and cycloserine.
Ivar Asbjørn Følling (1888–1973). Norwegian biochemist and geneticist who first described phenylketonuria.
Sidney W. Fox (1912–1998). American biochemist at the University of Miami who worked on the production of amino acids in abiotic conditions.
Heinz Fraenkel-Conrat (1910–1999). German-American biochemist at UC Berkeley, known for research on viruses such as tobacco mosaic virus. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Rosalind Franklin (1920–1958). British X-ray crystallographer at King's and Birkbeck Colleges, London, who worked on the structure of DNA
Joseph S. Fruton (1912–2007). Polish-American biochemist at the Rockefeller Institute. He worked on proteases, but is best known for his influential book General Biochemistry, written with his wife Sofia Simmonds, and for later work on the history of biochemistry. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
F. Peter Guengerich (b. 1949). Biochemist and toxicologist at Vanderbilt University, working on cytochromes P450, DNA damage and carcinogenesis, and drug metabolism. Note. His personal Wikipedia page is very uninformative.
Herbert GutfreundFRS (1921–2021). Austrian-British biochemist at Bristol, known for enzyme kinetics and for developing methods for studying fast reactions.
J. B. S. Haldane (John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, 1892–1964). British (and later Indian) geneticist, biochemist (study of enzymes) and statistician, at University College London and at the end of his life at the Indian Statistical Institute. Apart from his contributions to science, he was notable for political activism and wrote many articles for the Daily Worker.
Philip Handler (1917–1981). American nutritionist and biochemist, noted for the understanding of nicotinic acid deficiency and the discovery of the tryptophan-nicotinic acid relationship. He was at Duke University until he became President of the Natl. Acad. Sci. USA
Arthur HardenFRS (1865–1940). British biochemist at the Lister Institute, known for work on the fermentation of sugar and fermentative enzymes. Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1929).
Max Henius (1859–1935). Danish-American biochemist who specialized in fermentation processes. Founder of the Chicago-based American Brewing Academy.
Victor Henri (1872–1940). French physical chemist of Russian parents at the University of Liège. He was the first to apply ideas of physical chemistry to the properties of enzymes.
Avram Hershko (b. 1937 as Herskó Ferenc). Hungarian-Israeli biochemist at the Technion (Haifa), known for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation. Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2004). Foreign associate Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
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Evelyn Hickmans] (1883–1972). British biochemist, pioneer in treatment of phenylketonuria
Archibald Vivian HillFRS (1886–1977). British protein biophysicist at University College London known primarily for work in muscle biochemistry, but also for the Hill equation, still widely used for quantifying protein cooperativity. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1922).
Dorothy HodgkinFRS (1910–1994). British X-ray crystallographer at the University of Oxford, pioneer in protein crystallography. Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1964)
Kenneth Charles Holmes FRS (1934–2021), British molecular biologist and a pioneer in using synchrotron X-ray radiation
Mei Hong (born 1970). Chinese-American biophysical chemist known for development solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance to elucidate the structures and mechanisms of membrane proteins
Linda Hsieh-Wilson (PhD 1996). American chemist known for work in chemical neurobiology and the structure and function of carbohydrates in the nervous system
Harvey Itano (1920–2010). American biochemist at UC San Diego, best known for work on the molecular basis of sickle cell anaemia. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
William JencksFRS (foreign member) (1927–2007). American biochemist at Brandeis University, known for applying chemical mechanisms to enzyme-catalysed reactions and for his masterly book Catalysis in Chemistry and Enzymology. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Thomas H. Jukes (1906–1999). British-American biologist at UC Berkeley known for work in nutrition and molecular evolution. He was very active in denouncing pseudoscience.
John Michael Jumper (b. 1985). American chemist and computer scientist at DeepMind Technologies. Nobel Prize in chemistry, 2024.
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Henrik KacserFRSE (1918–1995). British geneticist and biochemist at Edinburgh, founder of metabolic control analysis.
Douglas Kell (b. 1953). British biochemist at the University of Manchester, known for research on functional genomics, metabolomics and the yeast genome.
Judith Klinman (b. 1941). American chemist, biochemist, and molecular biologist at UC Berkeley, known for her work on enzyme catalysis. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Arthur Kornberg (1918–2007). American biochemist at Stanford, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1959) for discovery of DNA polymerase. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Roger D. Kornberg (b. 1947). American biochemist at Stanford, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2006) for studies on RNA polymerase. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Sylvy Kornberg (1917–1986). American biochemist at Stanford, who worked in collaboration with Arthur Kornberg on DNA replication and polyphosphate synthesis.
Thomas B. Kornberg (b. 1948). American biochemist at UC San Francisco, who works on Drosophila melanogaster development.
Douglas Koshland (b. 1953). Molecular and cellular biologist at UC Berkeley.
Edwin Gerhard Krebs (1918–2009) was an American biochemist at the University of Washington, Seattle, and Nobel prizewinner, known for the study of phosphorylation/hydrolysis cycling.
Sir Hans Adolf KrebsFRS (1900–1981). British biochemist at Sheffield and Oxford, known for many advances in metabolism, most notably the tricarboxylate ("Krebs") cycle. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1953).
Marc Lacroix (b. 1963). Belgian biochemist at the Institut Jules Bordet (Brussels), who specializes in breast cancer biology, metastasis and therapy.
Keith Laidler (1916–2003). British-Canadian chemist and biochemist at the University of Ottawa. Expert on chemical and enzyme kinetics. Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Michel Lazdunski (b. 1938). French biochemist and neuroscientist at Sophia Antipolis. Known especially for work on ion channels. Full Member of the French Academy of Sciences.
Jack Legge (1917–1996). Australian biochemist known for his work on blood pigment metabolism and participation in mustard gas trials on Australian Defence Force volunteers during WW2.
Albert L. Lehninger (1917–1986). American biochemist at the University of Wisconsin. He discovered, with Eugene P. Kennedy, that mitochondria are the site of oxidative phosphorylation in eukaryotes. Author of several influential texts, including The Mitochondrion, Bioenergetics and Biochemistry. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Luis Federico LeloirFRS (foreign associate) (1906–1987). Argentinian biochemist at the Fundación Instituto Campomar (Buenos Aires) who worked on sugar nucleotides, carbohydrate metabolism, and renal hypertension. Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1970).
Michael LevittFRS (b. 1947). American-British-Israeli-South African biophysicist at Stanford. Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2013). Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Justus von Liebig (1803–1873). German scientist at the University of Giessen who made major contributions to agricultural and biological chemistry; one of the founders of organic chemistry.
Anthony William LinnaneFRS (1930–2017). Australian biochemist at Monash University, known for work on mitochondria, and in particular for the relationship between mitochondrial damage and aging. Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.
William Lipscomb Jr. (1919–2011). American inorganic and organic chemist at Harvard, who worked on nuclear magnetic resonance, theoretical chemistry, boron chemistry, and biochemistry. Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1976). Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Feodor Felix Konrad LynenFRS (1911–1979). German biochemist at the Max-Planck Institute for Cellular Chemistry (Munich), who worked on the mechanism and regulation of cholesterol and fatty acid metabolism. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1964). Foreign associate Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
John MacleodFRS (1876–1935). British biochemist and physiologist at the University of Toronto, discoverer of insulin. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1923).
Harden M. McConnell (1927–2014). American biochemist at Stanford known for the technique of spin-labels, whereby electron and nuclear magnetic resonance can be used to study the structure and kinetics of proteins. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Maud Menten (1879–1960). Canadian biochemist at the University of Pittsburgh who carried out early work on enzyme kinetics. Later she pioneered the use of electrophoresis to study haemoglobin variants.
Otto Fritz MeyerhofFRS (foreign member) (1884–1951). German-American physician and biochemist at the University of Pennsylvania, who pioneered the study of muscle biochemistry. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1922).
Catherine Anne Money (b. 1940), Australian biochemist known for revolutionizing leather production
Jacques MonodFRS (foreign member) (1910–1976). French biochemist and microbiologist at the Pasteur Institute, known for many discoveries and for the theory of allostery. His philosophical book Chance and Necessity has been influential. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1965).
Jennifer Moyle (1921-2016), British biochemist involved in the development of the chemiosmosic theory
Kary Mullis (1944–2019). American biochemist at the Cetus Corporation (Emeryville, California), inventor of the polymerase chain reaction. Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1993).
Joseph NeedhamFRS (1900–1995). British biochemist at Cambridge, historian and sinologist, noted for embryology and morphogenesis, and also in Chinese science.
Eva J. Neer (1937–2000). American physician and biochemist at Harvard, who researched on G-protein cell biology. Member of the National Academy of Medicine.
Joe Neilands (1921–2008). Canadian-born American biochemist and political activist at UC Berkeley, known for studies of microbial iron transport, and as author, with Paul K. Stumpf of Outlines of Enzyme Chemistry.
Michael Neuberger (1953–2013). British biochemist and immunologist at Cambridge University known for delineating the role of DNA deamination in immunity.
Hermann Niemeyer (1918–1991). Chilean biochemist. National Prize of Science (Chile). Member of the Academy of Science of Chile.
Marshall Warren Nirenberg (1927–2010). American biochemist and geneticist at the NIH, who showed that UUU codes for phenylalanine, the first step in deciphering the genetic code. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1968). Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Roland Victor Norris (1888–1950). British biochemist at the Indian Institute of Science, who worked on glycogen metabolism and yeast fermentation, and later pioneered biochemistry in India.
Alexander George OgstonFRS (1911–1996). British biochemist at Oxford University, known for the three-point attachment explanation of how an achiral substance can have a chiral product in the tricarboxylate cycle.
Tsuneko Okazaki (b. 1933). Japanese molecular biologist at Nagoya University, known for discovering Okazaki fragments, an essential step for understanding DNA replication. L'Oréal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science.
Linus Pauling (1901–1994). American chemist and biochemist at Caltech, known for many advances in chemistry, including the α-helical structure of proteins. Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1954).
Louis PasteurFRS (foreign associate) (1822–1895). French biologist, microbiologist and chemist at the Pasteur Institute (Paris), who made many contributions to microbiology, stereochemistry and medicine, including the first vaccines for rabies and anthrax. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA (foreign associate).
Max PerutzFRS (1914–2002). Austrian-British molecular biologist and X-ray crystallographer at Cambridge University, who solved the crystal structure of haemoglobin. Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1962).
George RaddaFRS (1936–2024). Hungarian biochemist at Oxford University, known for applying nuclear magnetic resonance to complex biological material, and many other contributions.
Samuel Mitja Rapoport (1912–2004). Austrian and German biochemist at the Humboldt University, Berlin noted for studies of mitochondria, and for discovering a method for preserving blood for transfusions. Leader of biochemistry in the German Democratic Republic. Member of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin.
Lynne Regan (Ph.D. 1987). British biochemist and biotechnologist at the University of Edinburgh which studies interactions between proteins and nucleic acids.
Jens Reich (b. 1939). German biophysicist at the Central Institute of Molecular Biology of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin-Buch, pioneer in systems biology. Founder of the New Forum (civil rights movement).
Barry P. Rosen (b. 1944), American biochemist at Florida International University known for pioneering research into the molecular mechanisms of arsenic and antimony transport and detoxification.
Sinaida Rosenthal (1932–1988). German biochemist and molecular biologist at the Humboldt University of Berlin who studied molecular biological and genetic aspects of physiology.
Oliver SmithiesFRS (foreign associate) (1925–2017). British-American geneticist and physical biochemist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who introduced starch as a medium for gel electrophoresis. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2007.
Liz Specht (21st century). American research scientist specializing in chemical engineering and synthetic biology
Alberto Sols (1917–1989). Spanish biochemist at the Spanish National Research Council. Known for studies of hexokinase, and metabolic regulation in general. Member of the Real Academia Nacional de Medicina.
Marjory StephensonFRS (one of the first two women elected) (1885-1948). British biochemist and microbiologist at Cambridge University, most widely remembered for her seminal book, Bacterial Metabolism.
Lubert Stryer (1938–2024). American biophysicist at Stanford who pioneered the use of fluorescence spectroscopy, particularly Förster resonance energy transfer, to monitor the structure and dynamics of biological macromolecules. He is best known for his textbook Biochemistry. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Albert Szent-Györgyi (1893–1986). Hungarian biochemist at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, the first to isolate vitamin C. He discovered the components and reactions of the TCA cycle. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1937. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Herbert Tabor (1918–2020). American biochemist at NIH who studied the function of polyamines and their role in human health and disease. He was editor-in-chief of the Journal of Biological Chemistry for nearly 40 years. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Chen-Lu Tsou (邹承鲁 Zou Chenglu in Pinyin, 1923–2006). Chinese biochemist at the Academia Sinica, known for work on enzyme inactivation kinetics, and even more as the "face of Chinese biochemistry" for many years in the west. Member of the Academia Sinica.
Donald Van Slyke (1883–1971). Dutch American biochemist at the Brookhaven National Laboratory noted for the measurement of gas and electrolyte levels in tissues. A unit of measurement for buffering activity, the slyke, is named after him. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Selman Waksman (1888–1973). Ukrainian-American biochemist at Rutgers University, known for discovering streptomycin and other antibiotics. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1952).
Christopher T. Walsh (1944–2023). American biochemist at Harvard, known for work on enzymes and enzyme inhibition, and especially for his book Enzymatic Reaction Mechanisms. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Xiaodong Wang, (b. 1963), Chinese-American biochemist at the National Institute of Biological Sciences, Peking, known for his work with cytochrome c. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Arieh Warshel (b. 1940). Israeli-American biochemist and biophysicist at the University of Southern California, a pioneer in computational studies on functional properties of biological molecules. Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2013). Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. Foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Hans Westerhoff (b. 1953). Dutch biochemist at the Universities of Amsterdam and of Manchester, known for work in systems biology and metabolic regulation.
Frank Henry Westheimer (1912–2007). American chemist at Harvard who did pioneering work in physical organic chemistry, applying techniques from physical to organic chemistry and integrating the two fields. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
William Joseph WhelanFRS (1924–2021). British-American biochemist at the University of Miami, who worked on the structure of glycogen, and discovered the protein glycogenin at its core. He was very active in the creation of international organizations, including the IUB (now IUBMB) and FEBS.
Maurice WilkinsFRS (1916–2004). New Zealand and British x-ray crystallographer at King's College London, whose work on DNA played an essential part in recognizing its double-helical structure. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1962).
Robert Joseph Paton WilliamsFRS (1926–2015). British bioinorganic chemist at Oxford University, with many contributions to understanding the role of metals in biological systems. Foreign Member of the Swedish, Portuguese, Czechoslovak and Belgian science academies.
Allan Charles WilsonFRS (1934–1991). New Zealand biochemist and evolutionary biologist at UC Berkeley, a pioneer in molecular approaches to understand evolutionary change and reconstruct phylogenies.
Friedrich Wöhler (1800–1882). German chemist at the University of Giessen, known for his synthesis of urea from ammonium cyanate (a nail in the coffin of vitalism). Foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Ada Yonath (1939–2026). Israeli crystallographer at the Weizmann Institute of Science, best known for her pioneering work on the structure of the ribosome. Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2009). Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.
Donald Zilversmit (1919–2010). Dutch-American nutritional biochemist at Cornell University, with many contributions to the understanding of the relationship between diet and cardiovascular disease. Member Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.