1. August Kekule (1820)

Chemist

Prominent German chemist who revolutionized chemistry by introducing chemical structure theory in 1857. His notable work was on the structure of benzene.

2. Victor Gustav Bloede (1970)

Chemist

Chemist and president of the Victor G. Bloede Company which manufactured chemicals and made advances in methods of dyeing cotton fabrics. In his career he received 15 or 20 patents...

3. William Merriam Burton (1865)

Chemist

Chemist whose thermal cracking process, which he invented in 1913, greatly expanded the amount of gasoline that could be obtained from raw petroleum. He was the president of Standard Oil...

4. William Hultz Walker (1869)

Chemist

Chemist who was the chair of industrial chemistry at MIT. He helped write the first American textbook of chemical engineering, Principles of Chemical Engineering, which was published in 1924 and...

5. Francis William Aston (1877)

Chemist

A British chemist who won the 1922 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering isotopes in a large number of non-radioactive elements. He was also the first to fully formulate the...

6. Hans Fischer (1881)

Chemist

A German organic chemist who won the 1930 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his research in haemin and chlorophyll. He committed suicide in Munich after all of his work was...

7. Paul Kogerman (1970)

Chemist

Estonian chemist who is best known for his revelations in researching oil shale. He was the president of the Estonian Naturalists' Society from 1929 to 1936.

8. Georg Wittig (1970)

Chemist

A German chemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1979 for his discovery of the Wittig reaction. He became the head of the organic chemistry department at the...

9. Kurt Alder (1902)

Chemist

German chemist who is most famous for his work in discovering the Diels-Alder reaction. The insecticide, Aldrin, is caused by the reaction and is named after him.

10. Severo Ochoa (1905)

Chemist

Doctor and biochemist who won the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the synthesis of RNA. He split the prize with American biochemist Arthur Kornberg.

11. Willard Frank Libby (1908)

Chemist

Physical chemist whose carbon dating method of determining age revolutionized archaeology and earned him the 1960 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He also did research on tritium and found that it...

12. Glenn T. Seaborg (1912)

Chemist

Winner of the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of plutonium and transuranium, which is heavier than uranium. He was also the Chairman of the United States Atomic...

13. Herbert C. Brown (1912)

Chemist

A chemist who won the 1979 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work with organoboranes. He also discovered a method for producing sodium borohydride.

14. Henry Taube (1970)

Chemist

Canadian-born American chemist who won the Nobel Prize in that field in 1983 for his research into the mechanisms of electron-transfer reactions. His book, Electron Transfer Reactions of Complex Ions...

15. Robert Burns Woodward (1917)

Chemist

One of the preeminent organic chemist of the 20th century who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1965 for demonstrating through his research that natural products could be synthesized....

16. William Knowles (1917)

Chemist

An American chemist who the 2001 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in asymmetric synthesis.

17. Robert K. Crane (1919)

Chemist

Biochemist who discovered sodium-glucose, which helped develop better pharmaceutical products. His discovery is used in drugs such as Prozac, which is used to treat people with depression by nhibiting the...

18. Joachim Heinrich Seelig (1970)

Chemist

Physical chemist and NMR Sprectroscopy specialist who co-founded the University of Basel's Biozentrum.

19. Karl Barry Sharpless (1970)

Chemist

An American chemist who is best known for his work on stereoselective reactions.

20. Spencer Silver (1941)

Chemist

Chemist whose development of a re-usable adhesive led to the co-invention of the Post-It Note in 1974. He won 3M's highest honors for his contributions to engineering and research.

21. Adam Hart Davis (1943)

Chemist

Scientist, author, historian and broadcaster who is best known for hosting the educational BBC television series Local Heroes and What the Romans Did for Us.