Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations. Biophysical research shares significant overlap with biochemistry, molecular biology, physical chemistry, physiology, nanotechnology, bioengineering, computational biology, biomechanics, developmental biology and systems biology.
Kurt Wüthrich is a Swiss chemist/biophysicist and Nobel Chemistry laureate, known for developing nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) methods for studying biological macromolecules.
Carlos José Bustamante is a Peruvian-American scientist. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Hartmut Michel is a German biochemist, who received the 1988 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for determination of the first crystal structure of an integral membrane protein, a membrane-bound complex of proteins and co-factors that is essential to photosynthesis.
Joseph Lyman DeRisi is an American biochemist, specializing in molecular biology, parasitology, genomics, virology, and computational biology.
Patrick Cramer is a German chemist, structural biologist, and molecular systems biologist. In 2020, he was honoured to be an international member of the National Academy of Sciences. He became president of the Max Planck Society in June 2023.
Peter Walter is a German-American molecular biologist and biochemist. He is currently the Director of the Bay Area Institute of Science at Altos Labs and an emeritus professor at the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator until 2022.
Richard Henderson is a British molecular biologist and biophysicist and pioneer in the field of electron microscopy of biological molecules. Henderson shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2017 with Jacques Dubochet and Joachim Frank."Thanks to his work, we can look at individual atoms of living nature, thanks to cryo-electron microscopes we can see details without destroying samples, and for this he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry."
Eva Nogales is a Spanish-American biophysicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where she served as head of the Division of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Structural Biology of the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology (2015–2020). She is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.
Matthias Mann is a scientist in the area of mass spectrometry and proteomics.
Carolyn Ruth Bertozzi is an American chemist and Nobel laureate, known for her wide-ranging work spanning both chemistry and biology. She coined the term "bioorthogonal chemistry" for chemical reactions compatible with living systems. Her recent efforts include synthesis of chemical tools to study cell surface sugars called glycans and how they affect diseases such as cancer, inflammation, and viral infections like COVID-19. At Stanford University, she holds the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professorship in the School of Humanities and Sciences. Bertozzi is also an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and is the former director of the Molecular Foundry, a nanoscience research center at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
David Baker is an American biochemist and computational biologist who has pioneered methods to predict and design the three-dimensional structures of proteins. He is the Henrietta and Aubrey Davis Endowed Professor in Biochemistry and an adjunct professor of genome sciences, bioengineering, chemical engineering, computer science, and physics at the University of Washington. He serves as the director of the Rosetta Commons, a consortium of labs and researchers that develop biomolecular structure prediction and design software. The problem of protein structure prediction to which Baker has contributed significantly has now been largely solved by DeepMind using artificial intelligence. Baker is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences. He is also the director of the University of Washington's Institute for Protein Design.
The Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences is intended to recognize breakthrough research in pure or applied life science research that is distinguished by its excellence, originality and impact on our understanding of biological systems and processes. The award may recognize a specific contribution or series of contributions that demonstrate the nominee's significant leadership in the development of research concepts or their clinical application. Particular emphasis will be placed on research that champions novel approaches and challenges accepted thinking in the biomedical sciences.
Sir Christopher Martin Dobson was a British chemist, who was the John Humphrey Plummer Professor of Chemical and Structural Biology in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, and Master of St John's College, Cambridge.
Nathan Sharon was an Israeli biochemist.
The Bijvoet Centre for Biomolecular Research is a research institute at Utrecht University. The Bijvoet Centre performs research on the relation between the structure and function of biomolecules, including proteins and lipids, which play a role in biological processes such as regulation, interaction and recognition. The Bijvoet Centre houses advanced infrastructures for the analysis of proteins and other biomolecules using NMR, X-ray crystallography, electron microscopy and mass spectrometry. The institute is named after famous Dutch chemist Johannes Martin Bijvoet, who worked at Utrecht University.
Joachim Heinrich Seelig is a German physical chemist and specialist in NMR Spectroscopy. He is one of the founding fathers of the Biozentrum of the University of Basel. He reached emeritus status in 2012.
Elena Conti is an Italian biochemist and molecular biologist. She serves as Director and Scientific Member of the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany, where she uses structural biology and biophysical techniques to study RNA transport and RNA metabolism. Together with Elisa Izaurralde, she helped characterize proteins important for exporting mRNA out of the nucleus.
Ari Helenius is a Finnish emeritus professor of biochemistry who is known for his research in virology.
Wolfgang P. Baumeister is a German molecular biologist and biophysicist. His research has been pivotal in the development of Cryoelectron tomography.
