Life and health scientists

James L. Maller

James L. Maller (1946–2018) was an American biochemist and University of Colorado pharmacology professor who purified maturation-promoting factor, the complex of Cdc2 and cyclin B that drives cell division.

James L. Manley

James L. Manley is a Columbia University molecular biologist known for discovering the first alternative splicing factor and for characterizing the factors that polyadenylate messenger RNA precursors.

James L. McGaugh

James L. McGaugh, born 1931, is an American neuroscientist who spent his career at UC Irvine showing that stress hormones acting on the amygdala strengthen memory consolidation.

James L. Mills

James L. Mills is an American perinatal epidemiologist and Senior Investigator in the Epidemiology Branch of NIH's Eunice Kennedy Shriver NICHD, known for research on folic acid in preventing neural-tube defects.

James L. Salzer

James L. Salzer is an American cellular neuroscientist and professor of neuroscience and neurology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, known for studies of myelination, Schwann cells, and remyelination.

James L. Tullis

James Lyman Tullis (1914–1996) was an American physician and blood researcher at New England Deaconess Hospital in Boston who identified leukocyte and platelet antibodies behind transfusion reactions and purpura.

James L.M. Ferrara

James L.M. Ferrara is an American physician-scientist and Ward-Coleman Professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, known for research on graft-versus-host disease, the major complication of bone marrow transplantation.

James Lawder Gamble

James Lawder Gamble (1883–1959) was an American pediatrician and clinical physiologist at Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital, Boston, elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1945.

James Learmonth Gowans

Sir James Learmonth Gowans (1924–2020) was a British immunologist who showed that small lymphocytes recirculate between blood and lymph, work that underpinned selective immunosuppression in organ transplantation.

James Leonard Brierley Smith

James Leonard Brierley Smith (1897–1968) was a South African chemist-turned-ichthyologist at Rhodes University who identified the first living coelacanth in 1938 and led the fourteen-year search that recovered a second specimen in 1952.

James Letts

James Letts is an American-trained membrane protein biochemist and structural biologist who solved the first atomic-resolution structures of mammalian mitochondrial complex I, winning the 2025 PECASE.

James Lovelock

James Ephraim Lovelock (1919–2022), British independent scientist and inventor of the electron capture detector, originated the Gaia hypothesis that the biosphere self-regulates Earth's chemistry and climate, and co-developed the Daisyworld model with Andrew Watson.

James Lubitz

James Lubitz is a health services researcher at CMS and NCHS known for New England Journal of Medicine studies of Medicare spending in the last year of life.

James M. Berger

James M. Berger is an American structural biologist and biochemist at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, known for determining the structures of type II DNA topoisomerases and helicases.

James M. Hughes

James M. Hughes is an American infectious-disease epidemiologist who led the CDC's National Center for Infectious Diseases from 1992 to 2005 and is now a professor at Emory University.

James M. Musser

James M. Musser is a physician-scientist in bacterial pathogenesis and genomic medicine, chair of pathology at Houston Methodist, known for studies of group A Streptococcus and tuberculosis.

James M. Ogle

James M. Ogle is a structural biologist who, in Venki Ramakrishnan's group at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, solved the 30S ribosomal subunit structures explaining decoding.

James M. Roberts

James M. Roberts is an American maternal-fetal medicine physician-scientist, professor at the University of Pittsburgh and National Academy of Medicine member, known for establishing preeclampsia as an endothelial dysfunction disorder.

James M. Shine

James M. Shine, also published as Mac Shine, is an Australian systems neuroscientist and medically trained professor at the University of Sydney who studies neuromodulation and large-scale brain dynamics.

James M. Sprague

James M. Sprague, also known as James Mather Sprague, was an American systems neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania, elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1984.

James M. Swanson

James M. Swanson is an American child psychiatry researcher at the University of California, Irvine, known for decades of work on ADHD, including the MTA treatment study.

James M. Tiedje

James M. Tiedje is an American microbial ecologist and Michigan State University professor known for denitrification research, biodegradation of chlorinated pollutants, and the Ribosomal Database Project.

James M. Tielsch

James M. Tielsch is an American epidemiologist, professor of global health at George Washington University, whose Nepal vitamin A trial reduced preschool child mortality by 30%.

James M. Turner (geneticist)

James M. Turner is a geneticist who leads the Sex Chromosome Biology Laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute in London, studying X and Y chromosome silencing and infertility.

James M. Wells

James M. Wells is an American developmental biologist at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center known for directing human pluripotent stem cells to form intestinal tissue and other gastrointestinal organs.

James Mackenzie (cardiologist)

Sir James Mackenzie (1853–1925) was a British general practitioner in Burnley who became a founder of modern cardiology, using his ink-writing polygraph to distinguish cardiac irregularities, including atrial fibrillation.

James Madara

James L. Madara is an American pathologist and epithelial cell biologist who served as chief executive officer of the American Medical Association from 2011 to 2025.

James McCluskey

James McCluskey is an Australian immunologist and physician-scientist at the University of Melbourne known for work on HLA immunity and MR1 presentation to MAIT cells.

James Mourilyan Tanner

James Mourilyan Tanner (1920–2010) was a British pediatrician at the Institute of Child Health in London who created the Tanner stages of puberty and the Tanner–Whitehouse bone age method.