CHEMISTS from China

Top 3

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Chinese Chemists of all time. This list of famous Chinese Chemists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

1. Tu Youyou (b. 1930)

With an HPI of 69.10, Tu Youyou is the most famous Chinese Chemist.  Her biography has been translated into 83 different languages on wikipedia.

Tu Youyou (Chinese: 屠呦呦; pinyin: Tú Yōuyōu; born 30 December 1930) is a Chinese malariologist and pharmaceutical chemist. She discovered artemisinin (also known as qīnghāosù, 青蒿素) and dihydroartemisinin, used to treat malaria, a breakthrough in twentieth-century tropical medicine, saving millions of lives in South China, Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America. For her work, Tu received the 2011 Lasker Award in clinical medicine and the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura. Tu is the first Chinese Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine and the first female citizen of the People's Republic of China to receive a Nobel Prize in any category. She is also the first Chinese person to receive the Lasker Award. Tu was born, educated and carried out her research exclusively in China.

2. Edmond H. Fischer (1920 - 2021)

With an HPI of 62.87, Edmond H. Fischer is the 2nd most famous Chinese Chemist.  His biography has been translated into 47 different languages.

Edmond Henri Fischer (April 6, 1920 – August 27, 2021) was a Swiss-American biochemist. He and his collaborator Edwin G. Krebs were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1992 for describing how reversible phosphorylation works as a switch to activate proteins and regulate various cellular processes. From 2007 until 2014, he was the Honorary President of the World Cultural Council. At the time of his death at age 101 in 2021, he was the oldest living Nobel Prize laureate.

3. Ei-ichi Negishi (1935 - 2021)

With an HPI of 62.26, Ei-ichi Negishi is the 3rd most famous Chinese Chemist.  His biography has been translated into 61 different languages.

Ei-ichi Negishi (根岸 英一, Negishi Eiichi, July 14, 1935 – June 6, 2021) was a Japanese chemist who was best known for his discovery of the Negishi coupling. He spent most of his career at Purdue University in the United States, where he was the Herbert C. Brown Distinguished Professor and the director of the Negishi-Brown Institute. He was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for palladium catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis" jointly with Richard F. Heck and Akira Suzuki.