The world of science and discovery lost some of its brightest lights in 2013 -- from the second American to orbit Earth[1] to the physiologist who helped create the first test-tube baby[2] to one of the greatest female math prodigies[3] of all time.


Below, find a list of the great minds we lost in 2013.


Note: We haven't included every scientist who died over the past year. If you'd like to suggest another name to the list, please let us know in the comments section.



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  • Janet Rowley, M.D.


    (April 5, 1925 - December 18, 2013) A pioneer in cancer genetics research, Rowley linked cancer with abnormal genes and identified the genetic process called translocation. Her work led to targeted drug treatment for leukemia, and won her the the National Medal of Science and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She died at her home in Chicago. She was 88.




  • Sir John W. Cornforth, Jr., D.Phil.


    (September 7, 1917 – December 8, 2013) An Australian–British chemist, Cornforth won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1975 for his work on the role of enzymes and the three-dimensional structures of molecules in chemical reactions. He died in Sussex, England. He was 96.




  • Willis Ware, Ph.D.


    (August 31, 1920 – November 22, 2013) An electrical engineer, Ware helped build early computers in the 1940s and '50s. He predicted the importance of PCs long before they became ubiquitous. He died in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 93.




  • Fred Kavli


    (August 20, 1927 – November 21, 2013) Kavli, a physicist and entrepreneur, created the Kavli Foundation to fund and support science research around the world. He died at his home in Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 86.




  • Dimitri Mihalas, Ph.D.


    (March 20, 1939 – November 21, 2013) Mihalas, an astrophysicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, died at his home in Santa Fe, N.M. He was 74.




  • Frederick Sanger, Ph.D.


    (August 13, 1918 – November 19, 2013) Sanger, a British biochemist and genetics pioneer, won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1958 and 1980. He is one of only two people to win two prizes in the same category. He died in Cambridge, England. He was 95.




  • Aleksandr Serebrov


    (February 15, 1944 – November 12, 2013) A Soviet-era cosmonaut, Serebrov was a veteran of four spaceflights and spent a total of 373 days in orbit. He died in Moscow at age 69.




  • Nalini Ambady, Ph.D.


    (March 20, 1959 – October 28, 2013) Ambady was a social psychologist. Her ideas about making quick decisions with limited information, called "thin slicing," were made popular in Malcolm Gladwell's <em>Blink</em>. She was the first Indian-American woman to teach psychology at Harvard as well as at Tufts and Stanford. She died in Boston. She was 54.




  • Lawrence Robert Klein, Ph.D.


    (September 14, 1920 – October 20, 2013) An American economist, Klein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1980 for developing statistical models used to predict global economic trends. He died at home in Gladwyne, Pa. He was 93.




  • Scott Carpenter


    (May 1, 1925 – October 10, 2013) Chosen in 1959 as one of NASA's first astronauts, Carpenter was the fourth American astronaut in space and the second to orbit Earth. He died in Denver after suffering a stroke. He was 88.




  • Ruth R. Benerito, Ph.D.


    (January 12, 1916 – October 5, 2013) Benerito, a researcher for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, helped introduce wrinkle-free cotton after World War II -- called by the New York Times one of the most significant inventions of the 20th Century. She died at home in Metairie, La. She was 97.




  • Harold Agnew, Ph.D.


    (March 28, 1921 – September 29, 2013) An American physicist, Agnew helped develop nuclear power. As a member of the Manhattan Project, he helped build the first atomic bomb, and he served as director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory at the height of the Cold War. He died at home in Solana Beach, Calif. He was 92.




  • Ruth Patrick, Ph.D.


    (November 26, 1907 – September 23, 2013) Patrick was a botanist whose research on freshwater ecosystems led to the development of ways to measure pollution in rivers and streams. She died in Lafayette Hill, Pa. She was 105.




  • David Hubel, M.D.


    (February 27, 1926 – September 22, 2013) Hubel, left, was a Canadian neurophysiologist most famous for studying the brain's visual cortex. He shared the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering ways that the brain processes information. He died in Lincoln, Mass. He was 87.




  • Stephen E. Malawista, M.D.


    (April 4, 1934 – September 18, 2013) Malawista was a rheumatologist and infectious-disease researcher whose work led to the discovery of Lyme Disease. He died at home in Hamden, Conn. He was 79.




  • Bruce Murray, Ph.D.


    (November 30, 1931 – August 29, 2013) Murray, an American planetary scientist, served as director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for six years and co-founded The Planetary Society. He died in Oceanside, Calif. of Alzheimer's disease. He was 81.




  • C. Gordon Fullerton


    (October 11, 1936 – August 21, 2013) NASA astronaut, research pilot and Air Force test pilot, Fullerton had a career that spanned almost 50 years. He logged 382 hours of spaceflight. He died in Lancaster, Calif. He was 76.




  • Peter Huttenlocher, M.D.


    (February 23, 1931 – August 15, 2013) A pioneering neuroscientist and pediatric neurologist, Huttenlocher unlocked the secrets of how children's brains develop. He died in Chicago. He was 82.




  • John Billingham, M.D.


    (March 18, 1930 – August 4, 2013) Billingham was an expert in space medicine and was on the hunt for extraterrestrial life. He joined NASA in 1963 and started NASA's SETI (search for extra-terrestrial intelligence) program. Later, he became a senior scientist at the SETI Institute. He died in Grass Valley, Calif. He was 83.




  • Douglas Engelbart, Ph.D.


    (January 30, 1925 – July 2, 2013) An American engineer and inventor, Engelbart developed the first computer mouse prototype (shown at left). He died at home in Atherton, Calif. He was 88.




  • John Anthony "Tony" Llewellyn, Ph.D.


    (April 22, 1933 - July 2, 2013) A Welsh-born chemist, Llewellyn served for five years as an aquanaut with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He was picked to be a NASA astronaut in 1967 but dropped out of flight school and resigned from the space program a year later. He died in Madeira Beach, Fla. He was 80.




  • Margherita Hack


    (June 12, 1922 – June 29, 2013) An Italian astrophysicist, Hack communicated her research on the stars in plain language for the public and was hailed as a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/29/margherita-hack-dead-italian-astrophysicist-dies_n_3521670.html" target="_blank">“high-level personality in the world of scientific culture.”</a> She was the first woman to head the observatory in Trieste, Italy, serving from 1964 to 1987. Hack died in Cattinara, Italy. She was 91.




  • James Martin


    (October 19, 1933 – June 24, 2013) Martin, a pioneering computer scientist, was called “the guru of the Information Age” for his influential textbooks on how technology would impact the future. He died near his home in Bermuda. He was 79.




  • James P. Gordon, Ph.D.


    (March 20, 1928 – June 21, 2013) Gordon was a distinguished American physicist who paved the way for lasers with his development of the "maser," a device that emits microwave energy. He died at the age of 85.




  • Kenneth G. Wilson, Ph.D.


    (June 8, 1936 – June 15, 2013) An American theoretical physicist, Wilson won the 1982 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on phase transitions. He died in Saco, Me. He was 77.




  • Robert Fogel, Ph.D.


    (July 1, 1926 – June 11, 2013) Fogel, whose work on the economics of slavery triggered a furious national debate, received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1993. He died in Oak Lawn, Ill. after a brief illness. He was 86.




  • Franz Halberg, M.D.


    (July 5, 1919 – June 9, 2013) Halberg coined the term "circadian" and founded the field of modern chronobiology. He died at the age of 93.




  • Jerome Karle, Ph.D.


    (June 18, 1918 - June 6, 2013) An American physical chemist, Karle was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1985 for his work in crystallography. He died in Annandale, Va. He was 94.




  • Gerald E. Brown, Ph.D.


    (July 22, 1926 - May 31, 2013) Brown was an American theoretical physicist. He died in Setauket, N.Y. of complications from pneumonia. He was 86.




  • Heinrich Rohrer, Ph.D.


    (June 6, 1933 – May 16, 2013) Rohrer was a Swiss physicist who shared the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics for designing the scanning tunneling microscope (STM), which helped give rise to the science of nanotechnology. He died in Wollerau, Switzerland. He was 79.




  • Christian de Duve, M.D.


    (October 2, 1917 – May 4, 2013) De Duve, a Belgian biochemist, explored the inner workings of cells. He discovered two cell organelles, lysosomes and peroxisomes, for which he shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1974. His findings shed light on the biology behind genetic disorders like Tay-Sachs disease. He died at home in Nethen, Belgium. He was 95.




  • Shakuntala Devi


    (November 4, 1929 – April 21, 2013) Known as the "Human Computer," Devi was an Indian math prodigy and writer. In 1982 she set a world record after she correctly multiplied two 13-digit numbers in 28 seconds. She died in her hometown of Bangalore, India. She was 83.




  • Kenneth Appel, Ph.D.


    (October 8, 1932 – April 19, 2013) Appel was an American mathematician who solved one of the most famous problems in mathematics, the four-color theorem. He died in Dover, N.H. He was 80.




  • François Jacob, M.D.


    (June 17, 1920 – April 19, 2013) Jacob, a French biologist, and his colleagues discovered that cells can switch on and off certain genetic information. This research won them the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Dr. Jacob died in Paris. He was 92.




  • Robert Edwards, Ph.D.


    (September 27, 1925 – April 10, 2013) Edwards was a British biologist whose research led to the creation of the world's first "test-tube" baby. His research won him the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He died in England. He was 87.




  • Donald Glaser, Ph.D.


    (September 21, 1926 – February 28, 2013) An American physicist and neurobiologist, Glaser won the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention of the bubble chamber used to track subatomic particles. He died at home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 86.




  • David S. McKay, Ph.D.


    (September 25, 1936 – February 20, 2013) A pioneer in Mars research, McKay was the chief scientist for astrobiology at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston from 1996 to 2013. He died in Houston. He was 77.




  • Robert Coleman Richardson, Ph.D.


    (June 26, 1937 – February 19, 2013) An American experimental physicist, Richardson shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics for cooling a rare form of helium atoms and converting them into a strange liquid state. He died in Ithaca, N.Y. He was 75.




  • Brigitte "Ita" Askonas, Ph.D.


    (April 1, 1923 - January 9, 2013) Askonas was one of the founders of modern immunology. Her work led to major insights into the progression of diseases, and the development of new vaccines. She died at the age of 84.