Chemistry makes its mark on science top 100

The Eureka 100: The Science List features a number of superlative pure chemists and scores more top-flight names in British science whose work depends on the chemical sciences.

Double Nobel-winning chemistry legend Fred Sanger (22nd) led the pack, if you don't count Honorary Fellow of the RSC Sir Richard Friend, the Cambridge entrepreneur of plastic electronics fame, at 17th.

Simon Campbell, Past President of the RSC, took 31st place for his overseeing the development of Viagra at Pfizer, shortly ahead of Nobel laureate and education campaigner Sir Harry Kroto (38th) who discovered the football-shaped form of carbon he called the buckyball, also having been RSC President.

Yet another RSC Past President, Professor Steven Ley of the University of Cambridge, hit position 49 for his prodigious rate of publishing, at nearly 700 scientific articles, and his impressive legacy of top-quality researchers who have passed through his labs. Professor Graham Richards, Chair of Chemistry at Oxford University (65th), was noted for his business nouse not common to scientists, and the success of his company Isis Innovations.

These eminent front-line chemists are joined the Eureka list by scores of other scientists and personalities who use the products of excellent chemical science in their work. The biochemists, medicinal scientists, geneticists, doctors, engineers and materials scientists who make up the bulk of the rest of the list all depend on the chemical sciences to further their craft.

Andrew Witty (CEO, GlaxoSmithKline, 14th) David Brennan (CEO, AstraZeneca, 45th) and John Young (MD, Pfizer, 57th) lead major pharmaceutical operations in the UK. Futurist and climate-change prophet James Lovelock (66th) is a chemist by training, and the experimental gastronomic chemistry of Heston Blumenthal (73rd) led to his becoming an Honorary Fellow of the RSC - despite his failing chemistry GCSE.

Related links

Eureka 100: The Science List
The Times's science supplement ranks the top 100 people in British science (requires a Times Online subscription to access)