Sir Alexander Fleming FRS FRSE FRCS[1] (6 August 1881 11 March 1955) was a

Scottish biologist, pharmacologist and botanist. His best-known discoveries are the enzyme lysozyme in 1923
and the world's first antibiotic substance benzylpenicillin (Penicillin G) from the mould Penicillium notatum in
1928, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Howard Florey and Ernst Boris
Chain.[3][4][5] He wrote many articles on bacteriology, immunology, and chemotherapy.

Fleming was knighted for his scientific achievements in 1944.[6] In 1999, he was named in Time magazine's list of
the 100 Most Important People of the 20th century. In 2002, he was chosen in the BBC's television poll for
determining the 100 Greatest Britons, and in 2009, he was also voted third "greatest Scot" in an opinion poll
conducted by STV, behind only Robert Burns and William Wallace. During World War I, Fleming witnessed the
death of many soldiers from sepsis resulting from infected wounds. Antiseptics, which were used at the time to
treat infected wounds, often worsened the injuries.[9] In an article he submitted for the medical journal The
Lancet during World War I, Fleming described an ingenious experiment, which he was able to conduct as a result
of his own glass blowing skills, in which he explained why antiseptics were killing more soldiers than infection
itself during World War I. Antiseptics worked well on the surface, but deep wounds tended to shelter anaerobic
bacteria from the antiseptic agent, and antiseptics seemed to remove beneficial agents produced that protected
the patients in these cases at least as well as they removed bacteria, and did nothing to remove the bacteria that
were out of reach.[10] Sir Almroth Wright strongly supported Fleming's findings, but despite this, most army
physicians over the course of the war continued to use antiseptics even in cases where this worsened the
condition of the patients.[7]

At St Marys Hospital Fleming continued his investigations into antibacterial substances. Testing the nasal
secretions from a patient with a heavy cold, he found that nasal mucus had an inhibitory effect on bacterial
growth.[11] This was the first recorded discovery of lysozyme, an enzyme present in many secretions including
tears, saliva, skin, hair and nails as well as mucus. Although he was able to obtain larger amounts of lysozyme
from egg whites, the enzyme was only effective against small counts of harmless bacteria, and therefore had little
therapeutic potential.[9]

Lee Jong-wook (12 April 1945 22 May 2006) was the director-general of the World Health Organization for
three years. He joined the WHO in 1983, working on a variety of projects including the Global Programme for
Vaccines and Immunizations and Stop Tuberculosis. He began his term as director-general in 2003. He was the
first figure from Korea (both North and South) to lead an international agency. In 2004, he was one of the 100
people who shapes our lives and most powerful people in the world by Time Magazine.[1] He worked at the World
Health Organisation (WHO), at country, regional and headquarter levels for 23 years.[3] His work in WHO started
in 1983 when he worked with leprosy in Fiji. He started his work as an advisor on leprosy, and later also
treated tuberculosis and promoted the vaccination of children against preventable diseases.[4]

In 1994, Lee moved to Geneva to work at WHO headquarters as chief in prevention and vaccines. In 1995, he
was nicknamed Vaccine Czar according to Scientific American.[5] Lee became official candidate for 6th director-
generals of WHO.

1983-2006 : Staff of WHO

1994-98 : Director in Global Programme for Vaccines and Immunization, and Executive Secretary,
Children's Vaccine Initiative

1998-99 : Senior Policy Adviser to 5th General, Gro Harlem Brundtland

1999-2000 : Special Representative of the Director-General

2003-2006 : Director-General of WHO[6]

He had said that global efforts to control the HIV/AIDS pandemic would be the right course that would give
meaning to his tenure as director-general of the agency.[7]
The 3 by 5 policy, which was the basic idea of Lee, was largely criticized by many concerned people.
International AIDS Society president Joep Lange, had a comment that the project was totally unrealistic.
Mdecins sans Frontires, also expressed similar reservations toward Lee's plan.[8]
He visited 60 countries in the three years of his Generalship including Darfur, Sudan, sites of the Indian Ocean
tsunami, Madagascar, Mauritius.[9] He was famed as a man of action during this time. His adventurous spirit led
him to "experience more, see more, and do more," said his son Tadahiro.[10]

David Da-i Ho (Chinese: ; born November 3, 1952) is a Taiwanese-American medical

doctor and HIV/AIDS researcher who was born in Taiwan and has made many innovative state of the
art scientific contributions to the understanding and technological treatment of HIV infection.[1][2][3][4][5] He is the
scientific director and chief executive officer of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center and the Irene
Diamond Professor at Rockefeller University in New York City. Ho has been at the forefront of AIDS research for
three decades. He published over 400 papers (cited June 2011), enabling the scientific community to understand
the mechanism of HIV replication.[7] He championed the combination anti-retroviral therapy[8]which had earlier
been developed by scientists at NIAID and Merck.[9] This approach allowed the control of HIV replication in
patients.[10]

Ho's research team is working on developing vaccines for AIDS. He heads a consortium of organization in China
and the U.S. to address the crisis of HIV/AIDS in China. In a June 13, 2011 interview with Asian Scientist
Magazine, he discusses his team's progress with Ibalizumab, the antibody his team is developing for HIV
vaccination with support from the Gates Foundation.[11]

Ho keeps good relations with the Taiwanese government in Taiwan[12][13][14] and the top scientific research institution
of Taiwan, Academia Sinica. He has been playing an important role in the state-sponsored research and
development of biotechnology in Taiwan.[15][16][17]

Ho is a member of the Committee of 100, a Taiwanese American leadership organization, in addition to several
scientific groups.[citation needed]

Marie Skodowska Curie (/kjri, kjri/;[2] French: [kyi]; Polish: [kiri]; 7 November 1867 4 July 1934),
born Maria Salomea Skodowska [marja salma skwdfska], was a Polish and naturalized-
French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to
win a Nobel Prize, the first person and only woman to win twice, the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two
different sciences, and was part of the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. She was also the first woman to
become a professor at the University of Paris, and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own
merits in the Panthon in Paris.

She was born in Warsaw, in what was then the Kingdom of Poland, part of the Russian Empire. She studied at
Warsaw's clandestine Floating University and began her practical scientific training in Warsaw. In 1891, aged 24,
she followed her older sister Bronisawa to study in Paris, where she earned her higher degrees and conducted
her subsequent scientific work. She shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband Pierre Curie and
with physicist Henri Becquerel. She won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Her achievements included the development of the theory of radioactivity (a term that she coined[3][4][5]), techniques
for isolating radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of two elements, polonium and radium. Under her direction,
the world's first studies were conducted into the treatment of neoplasms, using radioactive isotopes. She founded
the Curie Institutes in Paris and in Warsaw, which remain major centres of medical research today. During World
War I, she established the first military field radiological centres.[citation needed]
While a French citizen, Marie Skodowska Curie (she used both surnames)[6][7] never lost her sense of Polish
identity. She taught her daughters the Polish language and took them on visits to Poland.[8] She named the
first chemical element that she discoveredpolonium, which she isolated in 1898after her native country.[a]

Curie died in 1934, aged 66, at a sanatorium in Sancellemoz (Haute-Savoie), France, due to aplastic
anemia brought on by exposure to radiation while carrying test tubes of radium in her pockets during research,
and in the course of her service in World War I mobile X-ray units that she had set up.[9]

Jonas Edward Salk (/slk/; October 28, 1914 June 23, 1995) was an American medical
researcher and virologist. He discovered and developed one of the first successful polio vaccines. Born in New
York City, he attended New York University School of Medicine, later choosing to do medical research instead of
becoming a practicing physician. In 1939, after earning his medical degree, Salk began an internship as a
scientist physician at Mount Sinai Hospital.[1] Two years later he was granted a fellowship at the University of
Michigan, where he would study flu viruses with his mentor Thomas Francis, Jr..[2]

Until 1955, when the Salk vaccine was introduced, polio was considered one of the most frightening public health
problems in the world. In the postwar United States, annual epidemics were increasingly devastating. The 1952
U.S. epidemic was the worst outbreak in the nation's history. Of nearly 58,000 cases reported that year, 3,145
people died and 21,269 were left with mild to disabling paralysis,[3] with most of its victims being children. The
"public reaction was to a plague", said historian William L. O'Neill.[4]"Citizens of urban areas were to be terrified
every summer when this frightful visitor returned." According to a 2009 PBS documentary, "Apart from the atomic
bomb, America's greatest fear was polio."[5] As a result, scientists were in a frantic race to find a way to prevent or
cure the disease. In 1938, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the world's most recognized victim of the
disease, had founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (known as March of Dimes Foundation since
2007), an organization that would fund the development of a vaccine. Salk campaigned for mandatory
vaccination, claiming that public health should be considered a "moral commitment."[7] His sole focus had been to
develop a safe and effective vaccine as rapidly as possible, with no interest in personal profit. When asked who
owned the patent to it, Salk said, "There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?"[8] In 1960, he founded the Salk
Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, which is today a center for medical and scientific research.
He continued to conduct research and publish books, including Man Unfolding (1972), The Survival of the
Wisest (1973), World Population and Human Values: A New Reality (1981), and Anatomy of Reality: Merging of
Intuition and Reason (1983). Salk's last years were spent searching for a vaccine against HIV. His personal
papers are stored at the University of California, San Diego Library.[9][10]
Sir Frederick Grant Banting KBE MC FRS FRSC[1] (November 14, 1891 February 21, 1941) was
a Canadian medical scientist, physician, painter, and Nobel laureate noted as the co-discoverer of insulin and its
therapeutic potential.[2]

In 1923 Banting and John James Rickard Macleod received the Nobel Prize in Medicine.[3] Banting shared the
award money with his colleague, Dr. Charles Best. As of November 2016, Banting, who received the Nobel Prize
at age 32, remains the youngest Nobel laureate in the area of Physiology/Medicine.[4] In 1923 the Government of
Canada granted Banting a lifetime annuity to continue his work. In 1934 he was knighted by King George V.

An article he read about the pancreas piqued Banting's interest in diabetes. Banting had to give a talk on the
pancreas to one of his classes at the University of Western Ontario on November 1, 1920, and he was therefore
reading reports that other scientists had written.[7]:5152 Research by German pathologist Bernhard Naunyn, Oskar
Minkowski, American physician and pathologist Eugene Lindsay Opie, English physiologist Edward Albert
Sharpey-Schafer, and others suggested that diabetes resulted from a lack of a protein hormone secreted by
the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas. Schafer had named this putative hormone "insulin". Insulin was thought
to control the metabolism of sugar; its lack led to an increase of sugar in the blood which was then excreted in
urine. Attempts to extract insulin from ground-up pancreas cells were unsuccessful, likely because of the
destruction of the insulin by the proteolysis enzyme of the pancreas. The challenge was to find a way to extract
insulin from the pancreas prior to it being destroyed.[8]