This is a list of persons known for their research in biophysics.
Gary Ackers (American, 1939 – 2011) — thermodynamics of protein assembly into complexes, protein-DNA interactions and enzyme subunit interactions. He developed the DNase footprinting method which paved way for the developing of biophysical and biochemical methods to study protein-nucleic acid interactions in more complex systems, including time-resolved studies of the kinetics of RNA folding.
David Agard —
Christian B. Anfinsen (American, 1916 – 1995) — author of the postulate about spontaneous protein folding, for which he received a Nobel Prize
Robert L. (Buzz) Baldwin — protein folding
David Baker — Proein structure prediction; protein design; Rosetta software
Adriaan (Ad) Bax (Dutch-born American, 1956– ) — development of methodology for NMR (Nuclear magnetic resonance) spectroscopy
Georg von Békésy (Hungarian, 1899–1972) — research on the human ear
Boris Pavlovich Belousov — known for discovery of Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction
Howard Berg (American, 1934–) — characterized properties of bacterial chemotaxis
Helen M. Berman (American, 1943–) — pioneer in study of nucleic acid structure; head of the worldwide Protein Data Bank
John Desmond Bernal (Irish-born English, 1901–1971) — X-ray crystallography of plant viruses and proteins
Pamela J. Bjorkman (American, 1956-) — first X-ray crystallography of human histocompatibility complex; studies immune recognition, homologs of MHC proteins, and improved antibodies against HIV
Steven Block (American, 1952–) — observed the motions of enzymes such as kinesin and RNA polymerase with optical tweezers
Sir Tom Blundell — crystal structures of HIV protease, renin, insulin and other hormones, growth factors, receptors, and proteins important in cell signalling and DNA repair; developed structure-guided and fragment-based approaches to drug design
Jagadish Chandra Bose (Indian, 1858–1937)
Detlev Wulf Bronk (American, 1897–1975)
Axel Brunger — developed the free R cross-validation index and the X-PLOR/CNS software for macromolecular crystallography
Carlos Bustamante (Peruvian-born American, 1951–) — known for single-molecule biophysics of molecular motors and biological polymer physics
Charles Cantor — Director, Center for Advanced Biotechnology, Boston University. Cantor is a molecular geneticist who developed pulse field electrophoresis for very large DNA molecules with David C. Schwartz in 1984, by adding an alternating voltage gradient to standard gel electrophoresis.
Donald Caspar — theory of quasi-equivalence in icosahedral viruses
Alexander Chizhevsky — founder of heliobiology
Steven Chu — Nobel laureate who helped develop optical trapping techniques used by many biophysicists
G. Marius Clore (British and American) - Pioneer of multidimensional macromolecular NMR spectroscopy laying foundations of 3D structure determination of proteins in solution, and discovery of rare, invisible conformational states of macromolecules
Carolyn Cohen — in 1969, Cohen codiscovered the molecular structure of tropomyosin as a polar coiled coil, also being the first protein crystal structure determined with a 20Å resolution via x-ray crystallography. On the route to this discovey, she also discovered a novel crystal structure, termed the Cohen-Longley paracrystal with 400Å periodicity, in 1966.
Robert Corey — co-discoverer (with Linus Pauling) of the alpha helix and beta sheet structures in proteins
Allan McLeod Cormack — development (with Godfrey Hounsfield) of computer assisted tomography
Christoph Cremer — overcoming the conventional limit of resolution that applies to light based investigations (the Abbe limit) by a range of different methods like SPDM and SMI
Francis Crick — co-discoverer of the structure of DNA. Later participated in the Crick, Brenner et al. experiment which established the basis for understanding the genetic code.
Johann Deisenhofer (German and American) — solved first three-dimensional structure of membrane protein
Max Delbrück — discovered that bacteria become resistant to phages as a result of genetic mutations. Delbrück, Salvador Luria, and Alfred Hershey shared the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the replication mechanism and the genetic structure of viruses"
Emilio Del Giudice (Italian, 1940—2014) — water research
David DeRosier (American) — developed 3-D reconstruction methods for electron microscopy
Friedrich Dessauer — research on radiation, especially X-rays
Ken A. Dill (American, 1947—) — research on folding pathways of proteins.
Christopher Dobson —
Revaz Dogonadze (Russian, 1931 1981) —
Richard H. Ebright — single-molecule enzymology; structure and function of RNA polymerases
Gerald M. Edelman — Nobel laureate, structure of antibodies
David Eisenberg —
Donald Engelman —
S. Walter Englander —
Richard R. Ernst, developer of two-dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy
George Feher (1924) — photosynthesis mechanisms for plants and bacteria
Julio M. Fernandez —
Alan Fersht — pioneered work on protein folding
Adolf Eugen Fick — responsible for Fick's law of diffusion and a method to determine cardiac output
Joachim Frank — pioneered single-particle reconstruction in electron microscopy; studied structure and dynamics of ribosomes.
Rosalind Franklin, pioneer of DNA crystallography and co-discoverer of the structure of DNA
Clara Franzini-Armstrong —
Hans Frauenfelder — pioneering work on experiment and theory to understand dynamic behavior in protein structure
Luigi Galvani — discoverer of bioelectricity
Walter (Wally) Gilbert — Nobel laureate; introduced intron/exon concept, proposed RNA world hypothesis
Angela Gronenborn —member of National Academy of Sciences
Martin Gruebele — Protein Folding
Taekjip Ha (South-Korean-born American, 1968– ) — single-molecule biophysics
Hermann von Helmholtz (Prussian-born German, 1821–1894) — first to measure the velocity of nerve impulses; studied hearing and vision
Stefan Hell — developed the principle of STED microscopy
Richard Henderson — scientist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, developed the use of cryo-EM to study membrane protein structures.
Wayne Hendrickson — developed robust methods of phasing and refinement for protein crystallography
A.V. Hill (English, 1886–1977) — Nobel laureate, Hill coefficient for cooperativity in enzyme kinetics, physics of nerves and muscles
Alan Hodgkin — mathematical theory of how ion fluxes produce nerve impulses (with Andrew Huxley)
Dorothy Hodgkin (English, 1910–1994) — winner of the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, known for determining the structures of penicillin, vitamin B12, and insulin
Alexander Hollaender (American, 1898–1986) — founded the science of radiation biology; early evidence for nucleic acid as the genetic material
Barry H. Honig (American) — pioneered theory and computation for electrostatics in biological macromolecules
John J. Hopfield — worked on error correction in transcription and translation (kinetic proofreading), and associative memory models (Hopfield net)
Arthur L. Horwich — chaperonins
Godfrey Hounsfield — development (with Allan Cormack) of computer assisted tomography
Wayne L. Hubbell — circa 1989, he oversaw the development of the technique termed site-directed spin labeling (SDSL), used for determining protein structure and dynamics through genetically creating an attachment point for a nitroxide spin labeled probe. The technique allows insight on the nature of how a protein's structure and conformational changes create/form protein function.
Andrew Huxley — mathematical theory of how ion fluxes produce nerve impulses (with Alan Hodgkin)
Hugh Huxley (English, 1924– ) — muscle structure and contraction
James S. Hyde (American Biophysicist, 1934- ) - Developer of EPR and MRI instrumentation, holder of 35 U.S. Patents
Shinya Inoué (Japanese-born American, 1921— ) — cytoskeletal dynamics
Louise Johnson — (English, 1940-2012) Crystal structure of lysozyme (1st enzyme) with David Phillips, then glycogen phosphorylase. Wrote influential crystallography textbook with Tom Blundell.
Pascual Jordan (German, 1902–1980)
Martin Karplus (American, 1930–) — research on molecular dynamical simulations of biological macromolecules.
Michael Kasha (American, 1920-2013) — founder of Institute of Molecular Biophysics at Florida State University
Bernard Katz (British, 1911–2003) — discovered how synapses work
Ephraim Katzir —
Walter Kauzmann was one of the first to recognize the role of hydrophobic effect in protein folding
Jeffery W. Kelly — protein misfolding and aggregation
John Kendrew (British, 1917–1997) — pioneer of protein crystallography
Dorothee Kern —
Aaron Klug (British, 1926–) — winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his development of crystallographic electron microscopy and his structural elucidation of biologically important nucleic acid-protein complexes
Brian Kobilka (American, 1955– ) — winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (with Robert Lefkowitz) for his work on the structure and activity of G-protein-coupled receptors
Stephen Kowalczykowski — "visual biochemistry" of DNA repair and homologous recombination
John Kuriyan —
Robert S. Langer — biotechnology, drug delivery, and tissue engineering; Wolf Prize in Chemistry; Priestley Medal
Paul Lauterbur — development of magnetic resonance imaging
Stephen D. Levene — DNA-protein Interactions, DNA looping, and DNA topology
Michael Levitt — winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (with Arieh Warshel) for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems
Karolin Luger — studies of chromatin and nucleosome structure.
Roderick MacKinnon — determined first three-dimensional structure of voltage-gated transmembrane ion channel
David H. MacLennan (Canadian) —
Marvin Makinen — pioneer of the structural basis of enzyme action
Peter Mansfield — development of magnetic resonance imaging
Brian W. Matthews (Australian-born American) — explicated the energetic and structural effects of mutations in proteins, using phage T4 lysozyme studied by protein crystallography
Ann McDermott — study of biological samples using solid-state NMR
Martti Mela (Finnish, 1933-2005) —
Peter D. Mitchell — discovered the chemiosmotic mechanism of ATP synthesis
Manuel Morales (Honduran-born American, 1919-2009) — molecular basis of muscle contraction
Hermann Joseph Muller — discovered that X-rays cause mutations
Erwin Neher — development of the patch clamp and single-channel recording (along with Bert Sakmann)
Seiji Ogawa (Japanese, 1934—) — development of functional magnetic resonance imaging
Wilma Olson Professor at Rutgers, pioneer in study of DNA structure
Yuri Ovchinnikov (Soviet, 1934—1988)
George Palade Nobel Laureate in physiology or medicine for protein secretion and cell ultra-structure from electron microscopy studies
Linus Pauling — co-discoverer (with Robert Corey) of the alpha helix and beta sheet structures in proteins
Max Perutz — pioneer of protein crystallography
Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini — biophysicist and cognitive scientist; organized the first conference on biolinguistics
Ernest C. Pollard — founder of the Biophysical Society
Fritz-Albert Popp (German, 1938–)— biophoton research and coherence systems in biology
Oleg Ptitsyn —protein folding
Bernard Pullman — pioneered applications of Quantum Chemistry in Biology
Sir George Radda (György Károly Radda) — early developer of Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Gopalasamudram Narayana Iyer Ramachandran — Famous for the Ramachandran plot of protein backbone conformation
Venkatraman (Venki) Ramakrishnan (Indian-born American and British, 1952– ) — winner of 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (with Steitz and Yonath) for crystal structure of the 30S subunit of the bacterial ribosome
Ayyalusamy Ramamoorthy — solid-state NMR
Sir John Randall — X-ray and neutron diffraction of proteins and DNA
Zihe Rao (Chinese) — structural biologist, member Chinese Academy of Sciences, president of Nankai University
Nicolas Rashevsky —, former Editor of the first journal of mathematical and theoretical biophysics entitled " The Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics " (1940—1973) and author of the two-factor model of neuronal excitation, biotopology and organismic set theory
Frederic M. Richards —
Jane Richardson (American, 1941—) — developed the ribbon diagram for representing the 3D structure of proteins
Robert Rosen — theoretical biophysicist and mathematical biologist, author of: metabolic-replication systems, categories of metabolic and genetic networks, quantum genetics in terms of von Neumann's approach, non-reductionist complexity theories, dynamical and anticipatory systems in biology.
Michael Rossmann — worked with Max Perutz on the crystal structure of hemoglobin, then in his own lab solved structures of enzymes including lactate dehydrogenase, the prototype of the Rossmann fold, and of many viruses including the common cold virus.
Benoit Roux — continues to conduct research at the University of Chicago in classical molecular dynamics and other theoretical techniques to determine the function of biological systems on the molecular level. He is a distinguished pioneer in the study of membrane proteins and bridging the gap between theoretical and experimental biophysics through computation.
Erich Sackmann — founder of the bottom-up approach to understanding of the cell mechanics and adhesion
Bert Sakmann — development of the patch clamp and single-channel recording (along with Erwin Neher)
Francis O. Schmitt (American, 1903–1995)
Timothy Springer —
James Spudich — molecular motors
Thomas A. Steitz —
Lubert Stryer —
Attila Szabo —Founders award of the Biophysical Society for theoretical analysis of biophysics experiments
Janet Thornton (British, 1949–) — Director of the European Bioinformatics Institute; early pioneer in structural and functional bioinformatics, including the development of ProCheck for structure validation and CATH for protein structure classification
Nikolay Timofeev-Ressovsky — one of pioneers in radiation biology
Ignacio Tinoco —
Chikashi Toyoshima — Ca-ATPase ion pump
Roger Tsien — Nobel laureate, green fluorescent protein
Jerome Vinograd — developed density gradient ultracentrifugation
Steven Vogel — biomechanics
Mikhail Volkenshtein —
Douglas Warrick — specializing in bird flight (hummingbirds and pigeons)
Arieh Warshel (Israeli-born American, 1940– ) — development of QM/MM approaches for a quantitative understanding of enzymatic reactions; introduction of molecular dynamics simulations in biology; introduction of consistent electrostatic calculations in proteins.
James D. Watson — co-discoverer of the structure of DNA.
Anthony Watts — Early proponent of the idea of both structural and functional significance of “Lipid-protein interactions”, and developer of solid state NMR for biology.
Watt W. Webb — developer of multiphoton microscopy
Gregorio Weber —
John Wikswo — research on biomagnetism and cardiac electrophysiology
Don Craig Wiley — applied molecular biophysics to study of viruses
Maurice Wilkins (New Zealand-born British, 1916–2004) — pioneer of DNA crystallography and co-discoverer of the structure of DNA.
Kurt Wüthrich Nobel Laureate in physiology or medicine for 2D-FT NMR of protein structure in solution
Sunney Xie — single-molecule enzymology
King-Wai Yau (Chinese-born American, 1948– ) fundamental contributions to understanding the mechanisms of sensory transduction in rod, cone, and non-image visual systems and in olfaction
Ada Yonath (Israeli, 1939– ) winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (with Steitz and Ramakrishnan) for solving the crystal structure of the large subunit of the ribosome
Douglas Youvan — light reactions of photosynthesis, genetic code, imaging spectroscopy and directed evolution
Bruno Zimm — co-developer of the Zimm-Bragg model of helix formation
List of biophysicists Wikipedia (Text) CC BY-SA