Life scientists

Ernst Hadorn

Ernst Hadorn (1902–1976) was a Swiss developmental biologist and geneticist, professor of zoology and rector at the University of Zurich, known for discovering transdetermination in Drosophila imaginal discs.

Ernst Hafen

Ernst Hafen (born 1956) is a Swiss developmental geneticist who showed how fruit flies control cell and organ size, and served as President of ETH Zurich from 2005.

Ernst Klenk

Ernst Klenk (1896–1971) was a German biochemist who discovered the gangliosides of nerve cells and isolated neuraminic acid, and defined the lipid storage diseases Niemann-Pick and Gaucher.

Ernst Knobil

Ernst Knobil (1926–2000) was an American physiologist and endocrinologist, a National Academy of Sciences member known for discovering growth hormone's species specificity and that the hypothalamus drives reproduction through pulsatile GnRH secretion.

Ernst Lengyel

Ernst Lengyel is a gynecologic oncologist and ovarian cancer researcher who chairs Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Chicago, where he studies how ovarian cancer spreads in the abdominal cavity.

Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke

Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke (1819–1892) was a German-born physiologist who headed physiology at the University of Vienna from 1849 to 1890, taught Sigmund Freud, and postulated water channels in 1843.

Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker

Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker, born 1941 in Frankfurt, is a German geneticist and biochemist who founded the Gene Center Munich and served as DFG president from 1998 to 2006.

Errol C. Friedberg

Errol C. Friedberg was a South African-born American biologist whose research established how cells repair DNA damage, especially in xeroderma pigmentosum, and who led pathology at UT Southwestern.

Ervin H. Epstein

Ervin H. Epstein is an American dermatologist who spent 35 years at UCSF, helped identify the PTCH gene behind basal cell nevus syndrome, and led the 2012 vismodegib trial.

Erwin Bünning

Erwin Bünning (1906–1990) was a German biologist and botanist, counted among the co-founders of chronobiology, known for his 1936 hypothesis that endogenous circadian clocks underlie photoperiodism.

Erwin Chargaff

Erwin Chargaff (1905–2002) was an Austro-Hungarian-born American biochemist at Columbia University whose Chargaff's rules on DNA base composition helped lay the groundwork for the double-helix model.

Erwin F. Wagner

Erwin F. Wagner, born 1950 in Austria, is a molecular biologist known for engineering the mouse genome to define what the AP-1 complex does in bone, liver, and skin disease.

Erwin Frink Smith

Erwin Frink Smith (1854–1927) was an American plant pathologist with the USDA who proved bacteria cause plant diseases and identified the crown gall bacterium in 1907.

Erwin Neher

Erwin Neher, born in 1944, is a German biophysicist who co-invented the patch-clamp technique for measuring single ion channels, winning the 1991 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Sep 17, 2026

Eske Willerslev

Eske Willerslev (born 1971) is a Danish evolutionary geneticist, Prince Philip Professor at Cambridge and director of GeoGenetics, Copenhagen; pioneer of environmental DNA (2003) and leader of the first ancient human genome sequencing.

Esmond E. Snell

Esmond E. Snell (1914–2003) was an American biochemist who helped discover folic acid, identified pyridoxal and pyridoxamine as coenzyme forms of vitamin B6, and pioneered microbiological vitamin assays.

Esteban Ballestar

Esteban Ballestar is a Spanish epigeneticist who has led the Epigenetics and Immune Disease Group at the Josep Carreras Research Institute in Barcelona since 2019.

Sep 17, 2026

Esteban Domingo

Esteban Domingo, also known as Esteban Domingo Solans, is a Spanish virologist known for establishing the quasispecies concept in RNA virus biology at CSIC in Madrid.

Esther H. Chang

Esther H. Chang, also known as Esther Chang, is an American molecular oncologist, professor at Georgetown University, known for her 1982 oncogene and 1990 p53 Nature papers.

Esther Lederberg

Esther Lederberg (1922–2006) was an American microbiologist who discovered lysogenic phage lambda in 1951, co-developed replica plating, and helped identify the F fertility factor of E. coli.

Ethan Bier

Ethan Bier is an American geneticist, Distinguished Professor at UC San Diego, known for active genetics and the mutagenic chain reaction, a CRISPR method bypassing Mendelian inheritance with gene-drive applications.

Ethan Dmitrovsky

Ethan Dmitrovsky is an American physician-scientist known for helping establish retinoic acid differentiation therapy for acute promyelocytic leukemia, and a former director of the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research.

Ethan M. Shevach

Ethan M. Shevach is an American immunologist whose NIH laboratory performed pioneering studies of regulatory T cells; he retired in 2025 after a 53-year career at NIAID.

Ethylin Wang Jabs

Ethylin Wang Jabs, also published as Ethylin W. Jabs, is a human geneticist who chairs Clinical Genomics at Mayo Clinic and identified genes mutated in craniofacial malformation syndromes.

Étienne Koechlin

Étienne Koechlin is a French cognitive neuroscientist at Inserm and the École normale supérieure in Paris, known for his hierarchical model of prefrontal executive control.

Étienne Wolff

Étienne Wolff (1904–1996) was a French experimental embryologist who founded experimental teratogenesis, showing in 1936 that aimed X-ray beams reproduce major malformations in chick embryos, and who led a French school at the Collège de France.

Étienne-Émile Baulieu

Étienne-Émile Baulieu, born Étienne Blum, was a French biochemist and endocrinologist known for mifepristone (RU-486), the first abortion pill, and for founding neurosteroid research; he died in 2025.

Étienne-Jules Marey

Étienne-Jules Marey (1830–1904) was a French physiologist who spent fifty years recording movement in living bodies, improving the sphygmograph in 1860 and pioneering chronophotography, a direct forerunner of cinema.

Ettore Appella

Ettore Appella, born in Italy in 1933, is an Italian-born scientist at the National Cancer Institute who helped identify the p53 tumor suppressor protein and discovered the Wip1 phosphatase.