Bernard Gotfryd · Public domain

An American biologist who worked out the molecular structure of antibodies, showing how the immune system generates the vast diversity needed to recognize almost any invader — work that shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Rodney Porter. Edelman later turned to neuroscience, arguing that the brain's circuitry develops through a selection process much like the immune system's, and spent his later career building a theoretical framework connecting the two fields.