Scientists

Sun Xin (July 15, 1938 - May 27, 2025), a native of Yangzhou, Jiangsu, was a Chinese condensed matter physicist and professor at Fudan University.

Gregor Johann Mendel (German: Gregor Johann Mendel, July 20, 1822 - January 6, 1884) was an Austrian biologist, meteorologist, mathematician, and Augustinian monk. He was posthumously known as the "Father of Modern Genetics." Mendel was born into a German-speaking peasant family in Silesia (now part of the Czech Republic) in the Austrian Empire. At the age of 21, he entered the St. Thomas Monastery in Brno, Moravia, and eventually became the abbot. Between 1856 and 1863, Mendel conducted a series of experiments on peas and established a number of genetic laws, which are now known as Mendel's laws of inheritance. Mendel selected seven pairs of pea traits for study: seed shape, flower color, cotyledon color, pod shape, immature pod color, flower placement position, and plant length. Taking seed color as an example, experiments show that when pure yellow peas are crossed with pure green peas, their offspring will always produce yellow seeds. However, in the next generation, green peas reappeared in a ratio of 1 green to 3 yellow. To explain this phenomenon, Mendel coined the terms "recessive" and "dominant" to describe traits (in the previous example, the green trait that seems to disappear in the offspring is recessive, and the yellow trait is dominant). He published research results in 1866 demonstrating that invisible factors (now called genes) could predict and determine the traits of organisms. For more than thirty years, little was known about Mendel's work. In 1900, Hugo de Vries, Carl Kollens, and Eric von Chermak independently verified Mendel's experimental results. The far-reaching significance of Mendel's discovery was recognized, thus opening a new era of modern genetics.

Ann Tsukamoto (Ann Tsukamoto, born July 6, 1952), is an American female inventor, scientist and stem cell scholar. In 1991, Tsukamoto and her colleagues Charles Baum, Irving Weissman, Ashley Buckle, and Bruno Peault successfully identified and isolated hematopoietic stem cells for the first time.

André-Marie Ampère FRS (French: André-Marie Ampère, French pronunciation: [ɑdʁe maʁi ɑpɛʁ], January 20, 1775 – June 10, 1836) was a French physicist, mathematician, and one of the founders of classical electromagnetism. To commemorate his contribution, the SI unit of current, the ampere, was named after his surname.

Sir Andre Konstantinovich Heim, FRS (Russian: Андрей Константинович Гейм, English: Sir Andre Konstantin Geim, born October 21, 1958), is a Russian-born British physicist, director of the Manchester Research Center for Mesoscopic Science and Nanotechnology, Regius Professor at the University of Manchester, UK, research professor at the Royal Society, director of the "Shenzhen Geim Graphene Research Center" at Tsinghua University-Berkeley Shenzhen College, foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, academician of the Royal Society, foreign academician of the US National Academy of Sciences, and winner of the 2000 Ig Nobel Prize in Physics. He won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics together with Konstantin Novoselov for "pioneering experiments on two-dimensional graphene materials" and received the Copley Medal in 2013. On February 25, 2026, the University of Hong Kong issued a press release announcing that Sir Andre Geim, the Nobel Prize winner in physics and a top scientist famous internationally for the discovery of graphene, will officially join the Faculty of Science of the University of Hong Kong in April 2026.

Andrew Zachary Fire (English: Andrew Zachary Fire, April 27, 1959 -) was born in California. He is an American medical scientist and professor of pathology and genetics at Stanford Medical School. In 2006, he and Craig Mello, professor of molecular medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, discovered the phenomenon of RNA interference in eukaryotes and proved that double-stranded RNA can efficiently and specifically block the expression of corresponding genes. Fire called this RNAi (RNA interference), and they jointly won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Andrew Fahe graduated from MIT in 1983 with a Ph.D. Then he worked as a postdoctoral fellow in Professor Sydney Brenner's research group at the University of Cambridge, UK. In 1986, he transferred to the Carnegie Institution of the United States and began research on RNA interference. He has held a professorship at Johns Hopkins University since 1986. In 2003, Fae served as professor of pathology and genetics at Stanford Medical School in the United States.

Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (French: Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier; August 26, 1743 - May 8, 1794), a French aristocrat, chemist, and biologist, was honored as the "Father of Modern Chemistry" by later generations. He transformed chemistry from qualitative to quantitative, named oxygen and hydrogen, and predicted the existence of silicon. He helped establish the metric system. Lavoisier proposed the definition of "element". Based on this definition, he published the first modern list of chemical elements in 1789, listing 33 elements, including light and heat and some compounds that were considered elements at the time. Lavoisier's contribution made chemistry in the 18th century more physical and mathematical. He proposed standardized chemical nomenclature and wrote the first truly modern chemistry textbook, Traité Élémentaire de Chimie. He advocated and improved quantitative analysis methods and used them to verify the law of conservation of mass. He founded the oxidation theory to explain experimental phenomena such as combustion, pointing out that animal respiration is essentially slow oxidation. These epoch-making contributions made him one of the greatest chemists in history. Lavoisier was a tax collector, so he had ample funds for scientific research. But because of this, he was guillotined and died during the French Revolution.

Song Jiashu (March 21, 1932 - June 30, 2024), a native of Shucheng, Anhui, was born in Changsha, Hunan, and was a metal physicist in the People's Republic of China. He graduated from the Department of Physics of Northeast Renmin University in 1954 and graduated from the same school as a graduate student in 1958. Member of the Science and Technology Committee of the China Academy of Engineering Physics. In 1993, he was elected as a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (faculty member).

Song Yuquan (June 12, 1933 - July 27, 2018), Chinese superplasticity expert and member of the China Democratic League. In 1997, he was elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Franklin William Stahl (English: Franklin William Stahl, October 8, 1929 -) is an American molecular biologist. Collaborated with Matthew Matheson to conduct the Matheson-Start experiment, which confirmed the semiconservative nature of DNA replication.

Nicolaus Copernicus (Latin: Nicolaus Copernicus, Polish: Mikołaj Kopernik, February 19, 1473 - May 24, 1543) was a Polish polymath during the Renaissance who advocated the heliocentric model and believed that the sun was the center of the universe. Before his death in 1543, Copernicus published "On the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres", which started the Copernican Revolution and made a considerable contribution to promoting the scientific revolution. Copernicus was born in Royal Prussia, a region that had been part of the Kingdom of Poland since 1466. Copernicus received a doctorate in canon law, was also a doctor, was proficient in many languages, understood classical literature, was a competent translator, served as a consul, a diplomat, and was an economist (none of the subsequent ones had academic degrees). In 1517, Copernicus summarized the quantitative theory of money, which became one of the important foundations of today's economics. In 1519, Copernicus summed up the predecessor of the theory that bad money drives out good money before Thomas Gresham.

Nikola Tesla, a Serbian-American mechanical engineer, inventor and futurist, is regarded as an important promoter of the commercialization of electricity and is widely known for his design of the modern alternating current power supply system. Tesla made many revolutionary inventions in the field of electromagnetic fields. His multiple related patents and theoretical research work on electromagnetics are the cornerstone of modern wireless communications and radio.

Niels Henrik David Bohr Niels Bohr was a Danish physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922 "for his studies of the structure of atoms and of the radiation emitted from them."

Tu Youyou (December 30, 1930 -), Chinese medicinal chemist, native of Ningbo, Zhejiang, member of the Communist Party of China, lifelong researcher and chief researcher of the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, director of the Artemisinin Research Center of the Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, doctoral supervisor, and the discoverer of the antimalarial drugs artemisinin and dihydroartemisinin. These antimalarial drugs improved the health conditions of people in tropical developing countries such as southern Asia, Africa, and South America, and were a significant breakthrough in tropical medicine in the 20th century.

Shinya Yamanaka (Japanese: Yamanaka Shinya/Yamanaka Shinya, Romanized: Yamanaka Shin'ya, September 4, 1962 -) is a Japanese stem cell scientist. He is currently a professor at Kyoto University, a senior researcher at the UCSF-affiliated Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, and an honorary professor at Nara Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. Foreign academician of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, academician of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and member of the Japanese Academy of Sciences. Cultural Medal Commendation. Cultural meritorious person. Top 100 figures of the era. Professor Yamanaka was awarded Japan’s original BBVA Foundation Frontier Knowledge Award. He also won the 2011 Wolf Prize for Medicine with Rudolf Jenisch and the 2012 Millennium Science and Technology Prize with Linus Torvalds. In the same year, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Sir John Gurdon for "the discovery that mature cells can be rewritten into multifunctional cells." In 2013, he won another Life Science Breakthrough Award with a bonus of US$3 million.

Masatoshi Shima (born August 22, 1943), a Japanese microprocessor design expert, is one of the designers of the world's first commercial microprocessor, the Intel 4004. Former professor at Aizu University.

Brad Cox (English: Brad Cox, May 2, 1944 – January 2, 2021) was an American computer scientist, known for his work in the following fields: Software engineering, especially code reuse Software composition Objective-C

Blaise Pascal (French: Blaise Pascal; June 19, 1623 - August 19, 1662, also translated as Blaise Pascal, Blaise Pascal), a French polymath, theologian, philosopher, mathematician, physicist, chemist, musician, educator, and meteorologist. Pascal conducted early research in natural and applied sciences, made important contributions to the manufacture of mechanical calculators and the study of fluids, expanded the work of Torricelli, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum. Pascal also vigorously defended the scientific method. Mathematically, Pascal contributed to two important new areas of research. At the age of 16, he wrote a paper entitled Projective Geometry. In 1654, he began corresponding with Pierre de Fermat to discuss probability theory, which profoundly affected the development of modern economics and social sciences. After a mystical experience of faith in late 1654, he left mathematics and physics and concentrated on meditation and writing on theology and philosophy. He was a staunch believer in the Jansen sect, and his humanistic thoughts were greatly influenced by Montaigne. His religious polemic work "Lettres provinciales" (Lettres provinciales) is regarded as a model of French writing, and his notebooks were compiled into "Thoughts" after his death.

Hypatia (Ancient Greek: Ὑπατία, born between about 350 and 370, died in March 415) was a Neoplatonist scholar in the late Roman Empire. She was a famous and popular female philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, astrologer and teacher at that time. She lived in Alexandria, an Egyptian district, and made great contributions to the city's intellectual community. According to later research, she had commented on Diophantus's Arithmetica, Apollonius's Conics, and Ptolemy's works, but none of them have survived. Her intellectual background can be seen from the letters written to her by her student Synesis: she belonged to the Platonic school - although we can only assume that she had adopted the teachings of Plotinus (Plotinus was a disciple of Plato in the third century AD and the founder of the Neoplatonic school). There is also some evidence that Hypatia's most famous contribution to science was the invention of the hydrometer. She was eventually tortured and killed by the mob. In 2009, Hypatia's life was adapted into the Spanish film "Gone with the Storm" and put on the screen.

Hironaka Heisuke (Japanese: Hironaka Heisuke/Hironaka Heisuke, Romanized: Hironaka Heisuke, April 9, 1931 - March 18, 2026), a Japanese mathematician, was born in Yuu Town, Kuku County, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan (now Iwakuni City). Member of the Japanese Academy of Sciences. In 1970, he won the Fields Medal for his achievements in algebraic geometry.

Kurt Friedrich Gödel (German: Kurt Friedrich Gödel, April 28, 1906 - January 14, 1978), an American mathematician, logician and philosopher born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was a member of the Vienna Circle (Vienna Group). Gödel is one of the greatest logicians of the twentieth century. His most outstanding contribution is the relative consistency proof of Gödel's incompleteness theorem and the continuum hypothesis. Gödel was born in Brno, Czech Republic (formerly Austria-Hungary) in 1906. He graduated from the University of Vienna. He immigrated to the United States in 1940 and worked at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton until his retirement in 1976. Gödel died in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1978.

Kang Le (April 1959-), Chinese insect and ecologist. Researcher at the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. In June 2017, he was appointed as the president of Hebei University.

Conyers Herring (November 15, 1914 - July 23, 2009) was an American physicist and professor of applied physics at Stanford University. He won the 1985 Wolf Prize in Physics for his significant contributions to the basic theory of solids, especially the behavior of electrons in metals. He first predicted the existence of Weyl fermions in solid-state systems with band structures. His doctoral supervisor was Eugene Wigner.

Liao Shijun, professor, main research fields include applied mathematics, nonlinear waves, ocean engineering, etc. The founder of "Homotopy Analysis Method". Distinguished professor of the third batch of "Changjiang Scholars" of the Ministry of Education of China. He has won awards such as China's "Second Prize of National Natural Science Award", published hundreds of papers, and published many English monographs.