The Most Famous

BIOLOGISTS from United Kingdom

This page contains a list of the greatest British Biologists. The pantheon dataset contains 1,097 Biologists, 170 of which were born in United Kingdom. This makes United Kingdom the birth place of the most number of Biologists.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary British Biologists of all time. This list of famous British Biologists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of British Biologists.

1. Charles Darwin (1809 - 1882)

With an HPI of 89.30, Charles Darwin is the most famous British Biologist. His biography has been translated into 200 different languages on wikipedia.

Charles Robert Darwin ( DAR-win; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended from a common ancestor is now generally accepted and considered a fundamental scientific concept. In a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace, he introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding. Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history and was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey. Darwin's early interest in nature led him to neglect his medical education at the University of Edinburgh; instead, he helped to investigate marine invertebrates. His studies at the University of Cambridge's Christ's College from 1828 to 1831 encouraged his passion for natural science. However, it was his five-year voyage on HMS Beagle from 1831 to 1836 that truly established Darwin as an eminent geologist. The observations and theories he developed during his voyage supported Charles Lyell's concept of gradual geological change. Publication of his journal of the voyage made Darwin famous as a popular author. Puzzled by the geographical distribution of wildlife and fossils he collected on the voyage, Darwin began detailed investigations and, in 1838, devised his theory of natural selection. Although he discussed his ideas with several naturalists, he needed time for extensive research, and his geological work had priority. He was writing up his theory in 1858 when Alfred Russel Wallace sent him an essay that described the same idea, prompting the immediate joint submission of both their theories to the Linnean Society of London. Darwin's work established evolutionary descent with modification as the dominant scientific explanation of natural diversification. In 1871, he examined human evolution and sexual selection in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, followed by The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). His research on plants was published in a series of books, and in his final book, The Formation of Vegetable Mould, through the Actions of Worms (1881), he examined earthworms and their effect on soil. Darwin published his theory of evolution with compelling evidence in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species. By the 1870s, the scientific community and a majority of the educated public had accepted evolution as a fact. However, many favoured competing explanations that gave only a minor role to natural selection, and it was not until the emergence of the modern evolutionary synthesis from the 1930s to the 1950s that a broad consensus developed in which natural selection was the basic mechanism of evolution. Darwin's scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life.

2. Alexander Fleming (1881 - 1955)

With an HPI of 80.93, Alexander Fleming is the 2nd most famous British Biologist. His biography has been translated into 113 different languages.

Sir Alexander Fleming (6 August 1881 – 11 March 1955) was a Scottish physician and microbiologist, best known for discovering the world's first broadly effective antibiotic substance, which he named penicillin. His discovery in 1928 of what was later named benzylpenicillin (or penicillin G) from the mould Penicillium rubens has been described as the "single greatest victory ever achieved over disease". For this discovery, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain. He also discovered the enzyme lysozyme from his nasal discharge in 1922, and along with it a bacterium he named Micrococcus lysodeikticus, later renamed Micrococcus luteus. Fleming was knighted for his scientific achievements in 1944. In 1999, he was named in Time magazine's list of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th century. In 2002, he was chosen in the BBC's television poll for determining the 100 Greatest Britons, and in 2009, he was also voted third "greatest Scot" in an opinion poll conducted by STV, behind only Robert Burns and William Wallace.

3. Rosalind Franklin (1920 - 1958)

With an HPI of 73.39, Rosalind Franklin is the 3rd most famous British Biologist. Her biography has been translated into 87 different languages.

Rosalind Elsie Franklin (25 July 1920 – 16 April 1958) was a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work was central to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), RNA (ribonucleic acid), viruses, coal, and graphite. Although her works on coal and viruses were appreciated in her lifetime, Franklin's contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA were largely unrecognised during her life, for which Franklin has been variously referred to as the "wronged heroine", the "dark lady of DNA", the "forgotten heroine", a "feminist icon", and the "Sylvia Plath of molecular biology". Franklin graduated in 1941 with a degree in natural sciences from Newnham College, Cambridge, and then enrolled for a PhD in physical chemistry under Ronald George Wreyford Norrish, the 1920 Chair of Physical Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. Disappointed by Norrish's lack of enthusiasm, she took up a research position under the British Coal Utilisation Research Association (BCURA) in 1942. The research on coal helped Franklin earn a PhD from Cambridge in 1945. Moving to Paris in 1947 as a chercheur (postdoctoral researcher) under Jacques Mering at the Laboratoire Central des Services Chimiques de l'État, she became an accomplished (and famous) X-ray crystallographer. After joining King's College London in 1951 as a research associate, Franklin discovered some key properties of DNA, which eventually facilitated the correct description of the double helix structure of DNA. Owing to disagreement with her director, John Randall, and her colleague Maurice Wilkins, Franklin was compelled to move to Birkbeck College in 1953. Franklin is best known for her work on the X-ray diffraction images of DNA while at King's College London, particularly Photo 51, taken by her student Raymond Gosling, which led to the discovery of the DNA double helix for which Francis Crick, James Watson, and Maurice Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962. Watson suggested that Franklin would have ideally been awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with Wilkins but it was not possible because the pre-1974 rule dictated that a Nobel prize could not be awarded posthumously unless the nomination had been made for a then-alive candidate before 1 February of the award year and Franklin died a few years before 1962 when the discovery of the structure of DNA was recognised by the Nobel committee. Working under John Desmond Bernal, Franklin led pioneering work at Birkbeck on the molecular structures of viruses. On the day before she was to unveil the structure of tobacco mosaic virus at an international fair in Brussels, Franklin died of ovarian cancer at the age of 37 in 1958. Her team member Aaron Klug continued her research, winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1982.

4. Alfred Russel Wallace (1823 - 1913)

With an HPI of 72.20, Alfred Russel Wallace is the 4th most famous British Biologist. His biography has been translated into 81 different languages.

Alfred Russel Wallace (8 January 1823 – 7 November 1913) was an English naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, biologist and illustrator. He independently conceived the theory of evolution through natural selection; his 1858 paper on the subject was published that year alongside extracts from Charles Darwin's earlier writings on the topic. It spurred Darwin to set aside the "big species book" he was drafting and quickly write an abstract of it, which was published in 1859 as On the Origin of Species. Wallace did extensive fieldwork, starting in the Amazon River basin. He then did fieldwork in the Malay Archipelago, where he identified the faunal divide now termed the Wallace Line, which separates the Indonesian archipelago into two distinct parts: a western portion in which the animals are largely of Asian origin, and an eastern portion where the fauna reflect Australasia. He was considered the 19th century's leading expert on the geographical distribution of animal species, and is sometimes called the "father of biogeography", or more specifically of zoogeography. Wallace was one of the leading evolutionary thinkers of the 19th century, working on warning coloration in animals and reinforcement (sometimes known as the Wallace effect), a way that natural selection could contribute to speciation by encouraging the development of barriers against hybridisation. Wallace's 1904 book Man's Place in the Universe was the first serious attempt by a biologist to evaluate the likelihood of life on other planets. He was one of the first scientists to write a serious exploration of whether there was life on Mars. Aside from scientific work, he was a social activist, critical of what he considered to be an unjust social and economic system in 19th-century Britain. His advocacy of spiritualism and his belief in a non-material origin for the higher mental faculties of humans strained his relationship with other scientists. He was one of the first prominent scientists to raise concerns over the environmental impact of human activity. He wrote prolifically on both scientific and social issues; his account of his adventures and observations during his explorations in Southeast Asia, The Malay Archipelago, was first published in 1869. It continues to be both popular and highly regarded.

5. Francis Crick (1916 - 2004)

With an HPI of 71.92, Francis Crick is the 5th most famous British Biologist. His biography has been translated into 89 different languages.

Francis Harry Compton Crick (8 June 1916 – 28 July 2004) was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist. He, James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, and Maurice Wilkins played crucial roles in deciphering the helical structure of the DNA molecule. Crick and Watson's paper in Nature in 1953 laid the groundwork for understanding DNA structure and functions. Together with Maurice Wilkins, they were jointly awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material". Crick was an important theoretical molecular biologist and played a crucial role in research related to revealing the helical structure of DNA. He is widely known for the use of the term "central dogma" to summarise the idea that once information is transferred from nucleic acids (DNA or RNA) to proteins, it cannot flow back to nucleic acids. In other words, the final step in the flow of information from nucleic acids to proteins is irreversible. During the remainder of his career, he held the post of J.W. Kieckhefer Distinguished Research Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. His later research centered on theoretical neurobiology and attempts to advance the scientific study of human consciousness. He remained in this post until his death; "he was editing a manuscript on his death bed, a scientist until the bitter end" according to Christof Koch.

6. Thomas Henry Huxley (1825 - 1895)

With an HPI of 70.91, Thomas Henry Huxley is the 6th most famous British Biologist. His biography has been translated into 72 different languages.

Thomas Henry Huxley (4 May 1825 – 29 June 1895) was an English biologist and anthropologist who specialized in comparative anatomy. He has become known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The stories regarding Huxley's famous 1860 Oxford evolution debate with Samuel Wilberforce were a key moment in the wider acceptance of evolution and in his own career, although some historians think that the surviving story of the debate is a later fabrication. Huxley had been planning to leave Oxford on the previous day, but, after an encounter with Robert Chambers, the author of Vestiges, he changed his mind and decided to join the debate. Wilberforce was coached by Richard Owen, against whom Huxley also debated about whether humans were closely related to apes. Huxley was slow to accept some of Darwin's ideas, such as gradualism, and was undecided about natural selection, but despite this, he was wholehearted in his public support of Darwin. Instrumental in developing scientific education in Britain, he fought against the more extreme versions of religious tradition. Huxley coined the term "agnosticism" in 1869 and elaborated on it in 1889 to frame the nature of claims in terms of what is knowable and what is not. Huxley had little formal schooling and was virtually self-taught. He became perhaps the finest comparative anatomist of the later 19th century. He worked on invertebrates, clarifying relationships between groups previously little understood. Later, he worked on vertebrates, especially on the relationship between apes and humans. After comparing Archaeopteryx with Compsognathus, he concluded that birds evolved from small carnivorous dinosaurs, a view now held by modern biologists. The tendency has been for this fine anatomical work to be overshadowed by his energetic and controversial activity in favour of evolution, and by his extensive public work on scientific education, both of which had significant effects on society in Britain and elsewhere. Huxley's 1893 Romanes Lecture, "Evolution and Ethics", is exceedingly influential in China; the Chinese translation of Huxley's lecture even transformed the Chinese translation of Darwin's Origin of Species.

7. Robert Brown (1773 - 1858)

With an HPI of 69.88, Robert Brown is the 7th most famous British Biologist. His biography has been translated into 59 different languages.

Robert Brown (21 December 1773 – 10 June 1858) was a Scottish botanist and paleobotanist who made important contributions to botany largely through his pioneering use of the microscope. His contributions include one of the earliest detailed descriptions of the cell nucleus and cytoplasmic streaming; the observation of Brownian motion; early work on plant pollination and fertilisation, including being the first to recognise the fundamental difference between gymnosperms and angiosperms; and some of the earliest studies in palynology. He also made numerous contributions to plant taxonomy, notably erecting a number of plant families that are still accepted today; and numerous Australian plant genera and species, the fruit of his exploration of that continent with Matthew Flinders. Robert Brown was born in Montrose, Scotland on 21 December 1773, in a house that existed on the site where Montrose Library currently stands. He was the son of James Brown, a minister in the Scottish Episcopal Church with Jacobite convictions so strong that in 1788 he defied his church's decision to give allegiance to George III. His mother was Helen Brown née Taylor, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister. As a child Brown attended the local Grammar School (now called Montrose Academy), then Marischal College at Aberdeen, but withdrew in his fourth year when the family moved to Edinburgh in 1790. His father died late the following year. Brown enrolled to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh, but developed an interest in botany and ended up spending more of his time on the latter than the former. He attended the lectures of John Walker; made botanical expeditions into the Scottish Highlands, alone or with nurserymen such as George Don; and wrote out meticulous botanical descriptions of the plants he collected. He also began corresponding with and collecting for William Withering, one of the foremost British botanists of his day. Highlights for Brown during this period include his discovery of a new species of grass, Alopecurus alpinus, and his first botanical paper, "The botanical history of Angus", read to the Edinburgh Natural History Society in January 1792 but not published in print in Brown's lifetime. Brown dropped out of his medical course in 1793. Late in 1794 he enlisted in the Fifeshire Fencibles, and his regiment was posted to Ireland shortly after. In June 1795 he was appointed Surgeon's Mate. His regiment saw very little action and he had a good deal of leisure time, almost all of which he spent on botany. He was frustrated by his itinerant lifestyle, which prevented him from building his personal library and specimen collection as he would have liked, and cut him off from the most important herbaria and libraries. During this period Brown was especially interested in cryptogams, and these would be the subject of Brown's first, albeit unattributed, publication. Brown began a correspondence with James Dickson, and by 1796 was sending him specimens and descriptions of mosses. Dickson incorporated Brown's descriptions into his Fasciculi plantarum cryptogamicarum britanniae, with Brown's permission but without any attribution. By 1800 Brown was firmly established amongst Irish botanists and was corresponding with a number of British and foreign botanists, including Withering, Dickson, James Edward Smith and José Correia da Serra. He had been nominated to the Linnean Society of London; had contributed to Dickson's Fasciculi; was acknowledged in a number of other works; and had had a species of algae, Conferva brownii (now Aegagropila linnaei) named after him by Lewis Weston Dillwyn. He had also begun experimenting with microscopy. However, as an army surgeon stationed in Ireland there seemed little prospect of him attracting the notice of those who could offer him a career in botany. In 1798 Brown heard that Mungo Park had withdrawn from a proposed expedition into the interior of New Holland (now Australia), leaving a vacancy for a naturalist. At Brown's request, Correia wrote to Sir Joseph Banks, suggesting Brown as a suitable replacement: Science is the gainer in this change of man; Mr Brown being a professed naturalist. He is a Scotchman, fit to pursue an object with constance and cold mind. He was not selected, and the expedition did not end up going ahead as originally proposed, though George Caley was sent to New South Wales as a botanical collector for Banks. In 1800, however, Matthew Flinders put to Banks a proposal for an expedition that would answer the question whether New Holland was one island or several. Banks approved Flinders' proposal, and in December 1800 wrote to Brown offering him the position of naturalist to the expedition. Brown accepted immediately. Brown was told to expect to sail at the end of 1800, only a few weeks after being offered the position. A succession of delays meant the voyage did not get under way until July 1801. Brown spent much of the meantime preparing for the voyage by studying Banks' Australian plant specimens and copying out notes and descriptions for use on the voyage. Though Brown's brief was to collect scientific specimens of all sorts, he was told to give priority to plants, insects, and birds, and to treat other fields, such as geology, as secondary pursuits. In addition to Brown, the scientific staff comprised the renowned botanical illustrator Ferdinand Bauer; the gardener Peter Good, whose task was to collect live plants and viable seed for the use of Kew Gardens; the miner John Allen, appointed as mineralogist; the landscape artist William Westall; and the astronomer John Crosley, who would fall ill on the voyage out and leave the ship at the Cape of Good Hope, being belatedly replaced at Sydney by James Inman. Brown was given authority over Bauer and Good, both of whom were instructed to give any specimens they might collect to Brown, rather than forming separate collections. Both men would provide enthusiastic and hard-working companions for Brown, and thus Brown's specimen collections contain material collected by all three men. HMS Investigator sailed from London on 18 July. They made brief landfalls at Bugio Island (Desertas Islands) and Madeira, but Brown was disappointed to collect almost nothing of note from either site. They arrived at the Cape of Good Hope on 16 October, staying a little over two weeks, during which time Brown made extensive botanical expeditions and climbed Table Mountain at least twice. Many years later he would write to William Henry Harvey, who was considering emigrating there, that "some of the pleasantest botanizing he ever had was on Devil's Mountain, near Cape Town, and he thought I could not pitch on a more delightful field of study." Amongst the plants collected at the Cape were two new species of Serruria (Proteaceae), S. foeniculacea and S. flagellaris. Investigator arrived in King George Sound in what is now Western Australia in December 1801. For three and a half years Brown did intensive botanic research in Australia, collecting about 3400 species, of which about 2000 were previously unknown. A large part of this collection was lost when Porpoise was wrecked en route to England. Brown remained in Australia until May 1805. He then returned to Britain where he spent the next five years working on the material he had gathered. He published numerous species descriptions; in Western Australia alone he is the author of nearly 1200 species. The list of major Australian genera that he named includes: Livistona, Triodia, Eriachne, Caladenia, Isolepis, Prasophyllum, Pterostylis, Patersonia, Conostylis, Thysanotus, Pityrodia, Hemigenia, Lechenaultia, Eremophila, Logania, Dryandra, Isopogon, Grevillea, Petrophile, Telopea, Leptomeria, Jacksonia, Leucopogon, Stenopetalum, Ptilotus, Sclerolaena and Rhagodia. In early 1809 he read his paper called On the natural order of plants called Proteaceae to the Linnean Society of London. This was subsequently published in March 1810 as On the Proteaceae of Jussieu. It is significant for its contribution to the systematics of Proteaceae, and to the floristics of Australia, and also for its application of palynology to systematics. This work was extensively plagiarised by Richard Anthony Salisbury, who had memorised much of the Linnean reading and then inserted it in Joseph Knight's 1809 publication On the cultivation of the plants belonging to the natural order of Proteeae. In 1810, he published the results of his collecting in his famous Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae Van Diemen, the first systematic account of the Australian flora. Over half of New Zealand's orchid genera were first described in the work. That year, he succeeded Jonas C. Dryander as Sir Joseph Banks' librarian, and on Banks' death in 1820 Brown inherited his library and herbarium. This was transferred to the British Museum in 1827, and Brown was appointed Keeper of the Banksian Botanical Collection. In 1818 he published Observations, systematical and geographical, on the herbarium collected by Professor Christian Smith, in the vicinity of the Congo. In 1822, he was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society and a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1827 he became correspondent of the Royal Institute of the Netherlands, three years later he became associated member. When the institute became the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1851 Brown joined as foreign member. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1849. Brown was one of the seven founding members of the Royal Geographical Society which formed on 16 July 1830. In a paper read to the Linnean society in 1831 and published in 1833, Brown named the cell nucleus. The nucleus had been observed before, perhaps as early as 1682 by the Dutch microscopist Leeuwenhoek, and Franz Bauer had noted and drawn it as a regular feature of plant cells in 1802, but it was Brown who gave it the name it bears to this day (while giving credit to Bauer's drawings). Neither Bauer nor Brown thought the nucleus to be universal, and Brown thought it to be primarily confined to Monocotyledons. After the division of the Natural History Department of the British Museum into three sections in 1837, Robert Brown became the first Keeper of the Botanical Department, remaining so until his death. He was succeeded by John Joseph Bennett. He served as president of the Linnean Society from 1849 to 1853. Brown died at 17 Dean Street, Soho Square in London, on 10 June 1858. He was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery in London. Brown's name is commemorated in the Australian herb genus Brunonia as well as numerous Australian species such as Eucalyptus brownii, Banksia brownii and the moss Brown's Tetrodontium Moss (Tetrodontium brownianum), a species which he discovered growing at Roslin near Edinburgh whilst still a student. The plant can still be found at the site of its discovery. Brown's River, south of Hobart, upon the banks of which he collected botanical samples, was named in his honour. In South Australia, Mount Brown and Point Brown (near Smoky Bay) were named for him by Flinders during the Investigator expedition. Mount Brown in British Columbia, Canada was named for him by David Douglas.: 30 In 1938 the London County Council commemorated Brown, as well as botanists Joseph Banks and David Don, and meetings of the Linnean Society, with a rectangular stone plaque at 32 Soho Square. A small New Zealand tree Pisonia brunoniana was named in recognition of him, and Cape Brown (Greenland) was named by William Scoresby (1789–1857) in 1822 in his honour. The standard author abbreviation R.Br. is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name. In 1827, while examining grains of pollen of the plant Clarkia pulchella suspended in water under a microscope, Brown observed minute particles, now known to be amyloplasts (starch organelles) and spherosomes (lipid organelles), ejected from the pollen grains, executing a continuous jittery motion. He then observed the same motion in particles of inorganic matter, enabling him to rule out the hypothesis that the effect was life-related. Although Brown did not provide a theory to explain the motion, the phenomenon is now known as Brownian motion. In recent years controversy arose over whether Brown's microscopes were sufficient to reveal phenomena of this order. Brown's discoveries were denied in a brief paper in 1991. Shortly thereafter, in an illustrated presentation, British microscopist Brian J. Ford presented to Inter Micro 1991 in Chicago a reprise of the demonstration using Brown's original microscope. His video sequences substantiated Brown's observations, suggesting Brown's microscope was sufficient to allow him to see motion. Physicist Phil Pearle and colleagues presented a detailed discussion of Brown's original observations of particles from pollen of Clarkia pulchella undergoing Brownian motion, including the relevant history, botany, microscopy, and physics. For a list of Brown's publications, see Wikisource. Joel Schwartz. Robert Brown and Mungo Park: Travels and Explorations in Natural History for the Royal Society. Cham Switzerland: Springer Nature, 2022. Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae Van Diemen Brown's taxonomic arrangement of Banksia List of Australian plant species authored by Robert Brown European and American voyages of scientific exploration Character and description of Kingia Taxa named by Robert Brown Brown, Robert (1866). The Miscellaneous Botanical Works of Robert Brown. Vol. 1. London: Robert Hardwicke. Brown, Robert (1866). The Miscellaneous Botanical Works of Robert Brown. Vol. 2. London: Robert Hardwicke. Mabberley, David (1985). Jupiter botanicus: Robert Brown of the British Museum. British Museum (Natural History). ISBN 978-3-7682-1408-7. Mabberley, David (2002), 'Brown, Robert', in R. Aitken and M. Looker (eds), Oxford Companion to Australian Gardens, South Melbourne, Oxford University Press, pp. 108–10. Moore, D. T. and Groves, E.W . A catalogue of plants written by Robert Brown (1773–1858) in New South Wales: first impressions of the flora of the Sydney region. Archives of Natural History 24 (2): 281–293 (June 1997). Munster, P., (2002), 'Robert Brown at Swan Bay', Australian Garden History, 14 (3), p. 10. Classic papers by Robert Brown PDFs of several original papers by Robert Brown are available from this webpage. Robert Brown's Australian Botanical Specimens, 1801–1805 at the British Museum (BM) A comprehensive database. Robert Brown's work on orchids. Robert Brown on Ask.com Serle, Percival (1949). "Brown, Robert". Dictionary of Australian Biography. Sydney: Angus & Robertson. Retrieved 5 August 2006.

8. Christian de Duve (1917 - 2013)

With an HPI of 66.21, Christian de Duve is the 8th most famous British Biologist. His biography has been translated into 59 different languages.

Christian René Marie Joseph, Viscount de Duve (2 October 1917 – 4 May 2013) was a Nobel Prize-winning Belgian cytologist and biochemist. He made serendipitous discoveries of two cell organelles, peroxisomes and lysosomes, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1974 with Albert Claude and George E. Palade ("for their discoveries concerning the structural and functional organization of the cell"). In addition to peroxisome and lysosome, he invented scientific names such as autophagy, endocytosis, and exocytosis on a single occasion. The son of Belgian refugees during the First World War, de Duve was born in Thames Ditton, Surrey, England. His family returned to Belgium in 1920. He was educated by the Jesuits at Our Lady College, Antwerp, and studied medicine at the Catholic University of Leuven. Upon earning his MD in 1941, he joined research in chemistry, working on insulin and its role in diabetes mellitus. His thesis earned him the highest university degree agrégation de l'enseignement supérieur (equivalent to PhD) in 1945. With his work on the purification of penicillin, he obtained an MSc degree in 1946. He went for further training under (later Nobel Prize winners) Hugo Theorell at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, and Carl and Gerti Cori at the Washington University in St. Louis. He joined the faculty of medicine at Leuven in 1947. In 1960 he was invited to the Rockfeller Institute (now Rockefeller University). With mutual arrangement with Leuven, he became professor in both universities from 1962, dividing his time between Leuven and New York. In 1974, the same year he received his Nobel Prize, he founded the ICP, which would later be renamed the de Duve Institute. He became emeritus professor of the University of Louvain in 1985, and of Rockefeller in 1988. De Duve was granted the rank of Viscount in 1989 by King Baudouin of Belgium. He was also a recipient of Francqui Prize, Gairdner Foundation International Award, Heineken Prize, and E.B. Wilson Medal. In 1974, he founded the International Institute of Cellular and Molecular Pathology in Brussels, eventually renamed the de Duve Institute in 2005. He was the founding President of the L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Awards. He died by legal euthanasia after long suffering from cancer and atrial fibrillation.

9. Richard Owen (1804 - 1892)

With an HPI of 66.02, Richard Owen is the 9th most famous British Biologist. His biography has been translated into 58 different languages.

Sir Richard Owen (20 July 1804 – 18 December 1892) was an English biologist, comparative anatomist and palaeontologist. Owen is generally considered to have been an outstanding naturalist with a remarkable gift for interpreting fossils. Owen produced a vast array of scientific work, but is probably best remembered today for coining the word Dinosauria (meaning "Terrible Reptile" or "Fearfully Great Reptile"). An outspoken critic of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, Owen agreed with Darwin that evolution occurred but thought it was more complex than outlined in Darwin's On the Origin of Species. Owen's approach to evolution can be considered to have anticipated the issues that have gained greater attention with the recent emergence of evolutionary developmental biology. Owen was the first president of the Microscopical Society of London in 1839 and edited many issues of its journal – then known as The Microscopic Journal. Owen also campaigned for the natural specimens in the British Museum to be given a new home. This resulted in the establishment, in 1881, of the now world-famous Natural History Museum in South Kensington, London. Bill Bryson argues that, "by making the Natural History Museum an institution for everyone, Owen transformed our expectations of what museums are for." While he made several contributions to science and public learning, Owen was a controversial figure among his contemporaries, both for his disagreements on matters of common descent and for accusations that he took credit for other people's work.

10. John Edward Gray (1800 - 1875)

With an HPI of 65.18, John Edward Gray is the 10th most famous British Biologist. His biography has been translated into 61 different languages.

John Edward Gray (12 February 1800 – 7 March 1875) was a British zoologist. He was the elder brother of zoologist George Robert Gray and son of the pharmacologist and botanist Samuel Frederick Gray (1766–1828). The standard author abbreviation J.E.Gray is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name. The same is used for a zoological name. Gray was keeper of zoology at the British Museum in London from 1840 until Christmas 1874, before the natural history holdings were split off to the Natural History Museum. He published several catalogues of the museum collections that included comprehensive discussions of animal groups and descriptions of new species. He improved the zoological collections to make them amongst the best in the world.

People

Pantheon has 190 people classified as British biologists born between 1545 and 1962. Of these 190, 18 (9.47%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living British biologists include John Gurdon, Martin Evans, and Desmond Morris. The most famous deceased British biologists include Charles Darwin, Alexander Fleming, and Rosalind Franklin. As of April 2024, 19 new British biologists have been added to Pantheon including John Sims, John Hutchinson, and Marmaduke Tunstall.