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Scientific Biographies

Science is a human pursuit. Meet some of the people who have contributed to the history of chemistry, chemical engineering, and the life sciences.
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Percy Lavon Julian

The grandson of enslaved people, Julian overcame racial barriers to achieve scientific, business, and personal success.

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Dr. Percy Lavon Julian is pictured at the newly constructed chemistry building named in his honor at MacMurray College, 1972.
Science History Institute
Dr. Percy Lavon Julian honored at MacMurray College

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Otto Hahn.
Otto Hahn
1879 - 1968
Anna Jane Harrison
1912 - 1998
Elizabeth Lee Hazen
1885 - 1975
Dorothy Hodgkin in 1991 is shown seated and smiling. Her hair is half up and she is wearing a floral dress with brown panels.
Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin
1910 - 1994
woman with gray hair wearing glasses
Darleane C. Hoffman
1926 - 2025
photo of older man wearing glasses
Roald Hoffmann
b. 1937
Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie in their laboratory in 1935
Frédéric Joliot
1900 - 1958
old photograph of two people in a lab
Irène Joliot-Curie
1897 - 1956
August Kekulé
1829 - 1896
A vintage portrait of Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (left) and Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen.
Gustav Kirchhoff
1824 - 1887
Irving Langmuir at home enjoying Harper’s Magazine.
Irving Langmuir
1881 - 1957
•\tLavoisier. Engraved by François Séraphin Delpech, after a drawing by Belliart, after the painting by Jacques Louis David.
Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier
1743 - 1794
Lewis wearing a dark suit and tie
Gilbert Newton Lewis
1875 - 1946
Portrait of Justus von Liebig, after 1845.
Justus von Liebig
1803 - 1873
Russell Earl Marker
1902 - 1995
A black-and-white photograph of a woman with a serious expression, wearing a dark top with a white collar.
Lise Meitner
1878 - 1968
Portrait of Dmitri Mendeleev, ca. 1900.
Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev
1834 - 1907
Julius Lothar Meyer.
Julius Lothar Meyer
1830 - 1895
Giulio Natta, 1963.
Giulio Natta
1903 - 1979
black and white photo of a man in a lab
Robert W. Parry
1917 - 2006
Linus Carl Pauling
1901 - 1994
Portrait of William Henry Perkin, 1906.
William Henry Perkin
1838 - 1907
Illustration of Joseph Priestley
Joseph Priestley
1733 - 1804
Undated portrait of William Ramsay.
William Ramsay
1852 - 1916
black and white photo of a man in a lab
Petr Rehbinder
1898 - 1972
Theodore William Richards
1868 - 1928
Rutherford with a thick mustache wearing a dark three-piece suit
Ernest Rutherford
1871 - 1937
Black and white photograph of Glenn T. Seaborg in an office
Glenn Theodore Seaborg
1912 - 1999
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