Doctors once had to wait weeks for work on samples to return from a laboratory to diagnose patients. Thanks to Swiss analytic chemist and nanoscientist Andreas Manz, 58, today there is technology that takes all of the chemistry equipment of a lab and shrinks it onto a microchip-sized wafer – allowing for immediate, point-of-care diagnostics that could one day save millions of lives in impoverished or remote areas.

Kornelis Schouhamer Immink’s inventions jump-started a digital revolution. The 68-year-old has fathered three very successful generations, from the birth of the CD in 1982 and the DVD in 1995 to the first Blu-ray disc in 2006. Now he is named on more than a thousand patents worldwide.

As 15th-century alchemist Paracelsus once said: “The art of healing comes from nature, not from the physician. Therefore the physician must start with nature and an open mind.” Accordingly, the Latvian scientist and inventor Ivars Kalvins has dedicated his research career to the improvement of medicine through chemicals found in nature.

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