1/ Robert F Furchgott was born 4 June 1916 in Charleston, SC, USA. A biochemist, Furchgott showed the signalling function of nitric oxide in the cardiovascular system. In 1966 he noticed a substance in cells on the interior surface of blood vessels were capable of relaxing the blood vessels.

1/ Aristides Agramonte y Simoni was born 3 June 1868 in Camaguey, Cuba. Agramonte was a physician, pathologist and bacteriologist who discovered the role of the mosquito in the transmission of yellow fever in 1901.

1/ Otto Loewi was born 3 June 1873 in Frankfurt-on-the-Main, Germany. Loewi was a pharmacologist and physician. He is credited with the discovery of the first neurotransmitter, acetylcholine, in the brain.

1/ Charles R Drew was born 3 June 1904 in Washington DC, USA. An African-American physician and surgeon, Drew specialised in blood transfusion. He helped improve techniques for blood storage and the development of large-scale blood banks in the early part of the Second World War.

1/ Werner Arber was born 3 June 1929 in Granichen, Switzerland. A geneticist and microbiologist, Arber shared the 1978 #NobelPrize in 1978 for helping to discover restriction enzymes and showing their application in molecular genetics

1/ Max Sterne was born 1st June 1905 in Trieste, Austria. Sterne pioneered a vaccine against anthrax in 1935 which effectively wiped out the disease.

1/ Stanley B Prusiner was born 28 May 1942 in Des Moines, Iowa, USA. Prusiner is a biochemist and neurologist who is known for his discovery of prions in 1982, a class of proteins he believed caused infections by improper protein folding, resulting in fatal disease in the brain and neural tissue.

1/ Edwin R Lankester was born 15 May 1847 in London, UK. Lankester was a zoologist and evolutionary biologist who was one of the first to discover protozoan parasites in the blood of vertebrates.

1/ Dorothy M Crowfoot Hodgkin was born 12 May 1910 in Cairo, Egypt. She was a British chemist who pioneered protein crystallography, a technique the uses x-ray crystallography to determine the three dimensional structure of protein crystals.

1/ Robert Koffler Jarvik was born 11 May 1946 in Midland, Michigan, USA. Jarvik is a medical scientist best known for having invented the first artificial heart used as a permanent replacement for a natural heart.

1/ H Robert Horvitz was born 8 May 1947 in Chicago IL, USA. Horvitz is a biologist who shared the 2002 #NobelPrize for Medicine for discoveries into how genes regulate tissue and organ development through cell death.

1/ Andre Lwoff was born 8 May 1902 in Ainay-le-Chateau, France. Lwoff was a microbiologist. He shared the 1965 #NobelPrize for Medicine for 'discoveries concerning genetic control of enzyme and virus synthesis'.

1/ Sidney Altman was born 7 May 1939 in Montreal, Canada. Altman was a molecular biologist who shared the 1989 #NobelPrize for Chemistry for discovering the catalytic properties of RNA.

1/ Paul C Lauterbur was born 6 May 1929 in Sidney, Ohio, USA. Lauterbur was an American chemist who is credited with the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for scanning the body for diagnosis.

1/ Hans Kosterlitz was born 27 April 1903 in Berlin, Germany. Kosterlitz was a phamacologist whose initial career focused on investigating carbohydrate metabolism.

1/ Andrew Z Fire was born 27 April 1959. A biologist, pathologist and geneticist, in 1998 Fire he and other colleagues reported the discovery of tiny snippets of double-stranded RNA (dsRNA).

1/ Rita Levi-Montalcini was born 22 April 1909 in Turin, Italy. Levi-Montalcini is best known for sharing the Nobel Prize in 1986 for helping to discover and isolate the nerve growth factor which helps regulate the growth, maintenance, proliferation and survival of certain neurons.

1/ Georges Kohler was born 17 April 1946 in Munich, Germany. Together with Cesar Milstein, Kohler developed the first unlimited supply of long-lasting monoclonal antibodies. Their technique now underpins the development and application of many diagnostics and therapeutics.

1/ Carol W Greider was born 15 April 1961 in San Diego CA, USA. She is known for her discovery of telomerase, an enzyme made up of protein and RNA subunits that help elongate and protect chromosomes. The enzyme is found in fetal tissues, adult germ cells and also tumour cells.

1/ Michael S Brown was born 13 April 1941 in New York, USA. Brown is a geneticist who shared the 1985 #NobelPrize with Joseph L Goldstein for discovering how cholesterol metabolism is regulated.

1/ Bernardo Alberto Houssay was born 10 April 1887 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Houssay was a physiologist who discovered how the pituitary gland regulates glucose or blood sugar levels. his he determined while studying the pituitary gland in dogs and toads during the early 1940s.

1/ Robert Burns Woodward was born 10 April 1917 in Boston MA, USA. An organic chemist, Woodward who won the 1965 #NobelPrize in Chemistry for opening up the field of artificial synthesis.

1/ Marshall W Nirenberg was born 10 April 1927 in New York. A biochemist and geneticist, Nirenberg shared the 1968 #NobelPrize for Medicine for interpreting the genetic code and its function of protein synthesis.

1/ Charles-Edouard Brown-Sequard was born 8 April 1817 in Port Louis, Mauritius. A physiologist and neurologist, Brown-Sequard is best known for his discovery of the physiology of the spinal cord and the need for the adrenal gland. In addition, he predicted the existence of hormones.

1/ Harvey W Cushing was born 8 April 1869 in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. A major pioneer of brain surgery, Cushing was the first to describe Cushing disease, a condition caused by the body producing too much of a hormone called cortisol, often caused by a tumour or excess growth in the pituitary gland.

1/ Melvin Calvin was born 8 April 1911 in St. Paul MN, USA. A biochemist, Calvin shared the 1961 #NobelPrize for Chemistry for helping to demonstrate the chemical pathways of photosynthesis.

1/ Jacques Loeb was born 7 April 1859 in Mayen, Germany. Loeb was a physiologist and biologist who demonstrated the possibility of reproduction without male fertilisation, parthenogenesis, in sea urchin eggs.

1/ Louis F Fieser was born 7 April 1889 in Columbus, Ohio, USA. Fieser was an organic chemist. He won many research awards for his work on blood-clotting agents, including for the synthesis of vitamin K, which he achieved in 1939.

1/ Feodor Lynen was born 6 March 1911 in Munich, Germany. Lynen was a biochemist who was director of the Max Plank Institute for Cellular Chemistry. He helped determine the chemical mechanism for the production and regulation of cholesterol and fatty acid metabolism.

1/ Edmond H Fischer was born 6 April 1920 in Shanghai, China. A biochemist, Fischer helped to discover and describe reversible protein phosphorylation, a biological and chemical reaction that regulates the activities of cell proteins.

James D Watson was born 6 April 1928 in Chicago, IL, USA Watson is a molecular biologist and geneticist who helped to determine the double-helix structure of DNA in 1953, for which he shared the 1962 #NobelPrize for Medicine.

1/ Clarence E McClung was born 5 April 1870 in Clayton, California, USA. McClung was a zoologist. He is best known for identifying the role of chromosomes in determining the sex of a species. This he did through a series of experiments with insects between 1901 and 1902.

1/ Joseph Lister was born 5 April 1927 in West Ham, London, UK. Lister pioneered the practice of cleanliness in surgery by introducing the routine use of carbolic acid on surgical instruments and wounds.

1/ Walter Sutton born 5 April 1877 in Utica, New York, USA. A geneticist and physician, Sutton is famous for putting forward the theory that chromosomes are the carriers of genetic material. He developed the idea in 1902-1903 based on his work with grasshoppers.

1/ Alfred Blalock was born 5th April 1899 in Culloden, Georgia, USA. He was a surgeon who in 1944 helped to pioneer a new surgical procedure, known as subclavian-pulmonary artery anastomosis, for infants born with 'blue baby' syndrome (tetralogy of Fallot).

1/ Hattie Elizabeth Alexander was born 5 April 1901 in New York City, USA. Alexander was a paediatrician and microbiologist. In the 1940s she developed the first effective treatment against Haemophilus influenzae (Hib), a major killer of infants.

1/ Matthias J Schleiden was born 5 April 1894 in Hamburg, Germany. Based on his study of plant structures under the microscope he helped develop the theory that cells are the basic structure in all organisms and the basic unit of reproduction.

On this day, 2 April 1953, Nature published Francis Crick and James Watson's double-helix model of DNA which they accomplished with the help of work by Rosalind Franklin, Ray Gosling and Maurice Wilkins.

1/ John C Kendrew was born 23 March 1917 in Oxford, United Kingdom. Kendrew was a biochemist and crystallogapher. He is best known for elucidating the structure of myoglobin, a protein that stores oxygen in muscle cells, for which he shared the #NobelPrize in 1962.

1/ Cesar Milstein died on 24 March 2002. Milstein was an Argentinian biochemist. Together with Georges Kohler, Milstein developed the first unlimited supply of long-lasting monoclonal antibodies. Their technique now underpins the development and application of many diagnostics and therapeutics.

1/ Daniel Bovet was born 23 March 1907 in Neuchatel, Switzerland. Bovet won the 1957 #NobelPrize for Medicine for discovering 'synthetic compounds that inhibit the action of certain bodily substances, especially their action on the vascular system and the skeletal muscles.'

1/ Norman Klinman was born 23 March 1937 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Klinman was an immunologist who developed the splenic focus assay, a tool that allowed analysis of antibody production derived from single clones of B cells.

1/ Hubert Schoemaker was born 23 March 1950 in Deventer, The Netherlands. He was co-founder and first Chief Executive Officer of Centocor, an American biotechnology company that pioneered the commercialisation of some of the first monoclonal antibody diagnostics and therapeutics.

1/ Katsuko Saruhashi was born 22 March 1920 in Tokyo, Japan. Saruhashi is renowned for being the first scientist to demonstrate the dangers of radioactive fallout in seawater that resulted from nuclear bomb testing in 1954. Her evidence was used to prevent further nuclear testing by governments.

1/ On 22 March 1996 the first experiments were published demonstrating in mice that blocking the CTLA-4 molecule on immune cells could cure cancer. The discovery was made by Jim Allison.

Delighted to announce a report from a survey undertaken with Ravi Gupta and #cambridgebrc.nihr.ac.uk to understand the challenges people with weakened or impaired immunity face with #COVID19 to improve prevention and treatment strategies for them whatisbiotechnology.org/index.php/va...

1/ Walter R Hess was born 17 March 1881 in Frauenfeld, Switzerland. Hess was a physiologist who won the #Nobelrize in Physiology or Medicine in 1949 for identifying parts of the brain that control internal organs

1/ William Withering was born 17 March 1741 in Wellington, Shropshire, UK. A physician, Withering made the first systematic investigations of digitalis.

1/ Walter R Hess was born 17 March 1881 in Frauenfeld, Switzerland. Hess was a physiologist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1949 for identifying parts of the brain that control internal organs.

Luis Ernesto Miramontes was born 16 March 1925 in Tepic, Nayarit, Mexico. A chemist, Miramontes helped to synthesise norethindrone, one of the first compounds used as an oral contraceptive. This he did in 1951 when he was 26 years old.