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We're asking you to tell us which biologist you think has changed the world the most.

 

We've gone through scientists with commemorative plaques, historically recognised greats of the past, and sought nominations from the public. We've taken 40 of these individuals with links to the UK, and now we want your help to find the top 10!

 

The poll has now closed, and we'll be announcing the top ten shortly!

 

Ada Lovelace

English mathematician who worked on the early mechanical general-purpose computer and has become a figurehead of women in STEM

Alan Hodgkin

English physiologist and biophysicist who shared the Nobel Prize in 1963

Alec Jeffreys

British geneticist who developed techniques for DNA fingerprinting

Alfred Russel Wallace

British naturalist best known for independently conceiving the theory of evolution through natural selection

Anthony Carlisle

English surgeon who discovered electrolysis with William Nicholson

Barbara Pickersgill

British botanist with a special interest in the domestication of crops

Beatrix Potter

English author, illustrator, natural scientist and conservationist who created several mycological illustrations

Bridget Ogilvie

Australian and British scientist who studied the immune responses to nematodes and was director of the Wellcome Trust

CB Williams

English entomologist and ecologist

Charles Darwin

English naturalist and geologist, best known for his contributions to evolutionary theory

David Attenborough

English broadcaster and naturalist who has been the face and voice of natural history programmes for over 60 years

David Hopwood

British microbiologist and geneticist

Dorothy Hodgkin

British biochemist credited with the development of protein crystallography

Edward Jenner

English physician and scientist who was the pioneer of the smallpox vaccine

Florence Nightingale

English social reformer and statistician who helped popularise the graphical representation of statistical data

Fred Sanger

British biochemist who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry twice

Frederick Twort

English bateriologist and the original discoverer of bacteriophages

Gerald Durrell

English naturalist who worked as a zookeeper, conservationist, author and television presenter, founding the Durrell Wildlife Park on the Channel Island of Jersey

Helen Muir

British rheumatologist who did pioneering work into the causes of osteoarthritis

Honor Fell

British scientist whose contributions included the development of 'organ culture method'

James Lovelock

British scientist and environmentalist who proposed the Gaia hypothesis

Jane Goodall

British primatologist, ethologist and anthropologist best known for her 45 year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees

John Maynard Smith

British theoretical evolutionary biologist and geneticist

Kathleen Mary Drew-Baker

British phycologist from Lancashire whose research on edible seaweed led to a breakthrough for commercial growing

Marjory Stephenson

British biochemist who was one of the first female Fellows of the Royal Society

Mary Anning

British fossil collector, dealer and paleontologist

Mary Barber

British pathologist and bacteriologist who studied antibiotic resistance and was a pioneer in documenting penicillin resistance

Mary Lyon

English geneticist who is best known for her discovery of X-chromosome inactivation

Maurice Wilkins

English physicist and molecular biologist best known for work on the scientific understanding of phosphoresence

Niko Tinbergen

Dutch ethologist and ornithologist who moved to England to work at the University of Oxford following World War II

Patrick Steptoe

British obstetrician and gynaecologist and pioneer of fertility treatment

Paul Nurse

English geneticist and cell biologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Richard Dawkins

English ethologist and evolutionary biologist

Robert Brown

Scottish botanist and palaeobotanist who made contributions to botany through his use of the microscope

Ronald Fisher

English statistician and one of the chief architects of neo-Darwinian synthesis

Rosalind Franklin

British biophysicist and x-ray crystallographer who made contributions to the understanding of the structure of DNA

Susan Greenfield

British scientist, writer and broadcaster who is researching a novel approach to the treatment of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease

Tim Hunt

English biochemist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2001

William Bateson

English geneticist who was the first person to use the term genetics to describe the study of heredity and biological inheritance

William Harvey

English physician and the first to describe completely the systemic circulation and properties of blood being pumped around the body