As a Navy mathematician in the 1950s and beyond, she played an unheralded but foundational role in making possible the global satellite-based mapping system.
His pioneering work on the origins of cancer was later overshadowed by his contrarian views, notably his rejection of the established theory that H.I.V. causes AIDS.
Peter H. Duesberg in 1985, holding a tray of petri dishes containing cultured cancer cells. In the late 1960s, he discovered the first known cancer-causing gene, or oncogene.
Drawing on his love of fly-fishing, he developed a balloon catheter that removes blood clots from patients’ limbs in a minimally invasive way. It has saved millions of lives.
Dr. Thomas J. Fogarty in 2000 on receiving the Lemelson-M.I.T. Prize for his work in developing medical technologies. He “single-handedly changed the face of cardiovascular surgery,” a colleague said.
His containment strategy helped wipe out the disease in the 1970s, one of the world’s greatest public health triumphs. He also led the C.D.C. and promoted childhood vaccination worldwide.
William H. Foege in 1985. He played a critical role in making smallpox the first infectious disease to be altogether eliminated. He stood beside a bust of Hygeia, the Greek goddess of health, at C.D.C. headquarters in Atlanta.
She and her staff at Union Carbide created synthetic materials that improved various industrial processes, including purifying water. She also developed a way to make emeralds.
Edith Flanigen in 1990. Ms. Flanigen was so widely respected that “when she walked into a room of senior management at Union Carbide, they would all stand up,” a former colleague said.
Louis E. Brus in 2023. “The entire field of nanoscience and nanotechnology owes a huge debt to him,” said Moungi Bawendi, a chemist who shared the Nobel Prize with Dr. Brus and Aleksey Yekimov.
A professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, he was a key contributor to a landmark paper that laid out how the universe came to look like it does today.
When not guiding students in a compassionate approach to patient care, he led a tiny publishing imprint that put out a much-rejected debut novel that won a surprise Pulitzer Prize.
Installed as an outsider, he engineered a comeback, shifting the company’s focus from a waning mainframe computer business toward consulting and services.
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