Trending Science: 2019’s 10 most influential people in science

The prestigious journal released a list of people who “might have achieved amazing discoveries, brought attention to crucial issues, or even gained notoriety for controversial actions.” The journal adds: “Although not an award or a ranking,” it “highlights individuals who had a role in some of the year’s most significant moments in science.”

Ricardo Galvão is a 72-year-old fusion physicist and head of the National Institute for Space Research in Brazil. His team’s report on Amazon deforestation angered President Jair Bolsonaro. He was fired soon after, only to be reinstated. He’s now seen as a hero and advocate for science.

Victoria Kaspi, an astrophysicist at McGill University in Canada, helped build the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment, one of the world’s top telescopes. This revolutionary new radio telescope searches for mysterious fast radio bursts – millisecond-long blips of intense and unexplained radio signals that pop up all over the sky.

Nenad Sestan, a neuroscientist at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, led a research team in reviving brain cells in dead pigs. Even though the discovery challenged definitions of life and death, it received unenthusiastic press coverage, including some that was sensationalist.

Sandra Díaz, an ecologist at Argentina’s National University of Córdoba, helped prepare the most in-depth study ever of the world’s biodiversity. The message was clear: 1 million species will become extinct because of humans, and drastic action is needed to reverse course.

Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum, co-discoverer of Ebola, is leading Congo’s efforts to combat the most hazardous outbreak to date. The epidemic has claimed over 2 200 lives since mid-2018. His investigations and clinical trials have helped to lessen new Ebola cases.

Yohannes Haile-Selassie, a palaeoanthropologist at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in Ohio, discovered a 3.8 million-year-old skull of humankind’s oldest-known ancestor in an Ethiopian desert in 2016. He presented his findings of the skull in 2019, offering important clues on human evolution.

Wendy Rogers, a bioethicist at Macquarie University in Sydney, led a study claiming papers that report research on Chinese transplant recipients don’t conform to global ethical standards because they use research involving organs that may have been harvested from executed Chinese prisoners. Mass transplant report retractions followed, and brought the grim reality of human organ harvesting to the spotlight.

Hongkui Deng, a Chinese scientist at Peking University in Beijing, demonstrated that clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) gene editing can be used without harm in adults with HIV. The technology of CRISPR has the potential to correct mutations at precise locations in the human genome in treating genetic causes of disease. Studies showed how CRISPR gene editing can produce a potentially unlimited supply of immune cells that are resistant to HIV infection.

John Martinis, a physicist and Google’s chief scientist for quantum hardware, spearheaded a breakthrough in computing research. He used a quantum computer to solve in minutes a complex problem that would take today’s most powerful supercomputer thousands of years to crack.

Greta Thunberg is an environmental activist on climate change whose campaigning has galvanised millions worldwide into taking action on what she calls a climate crisis. Her global activism has inspired everyone from scientists to policymakers. More importantly, she’s managed to mobilise young people, empowering them to save the planet.