Duncan.Hull · CC BY-SA 4.0

A Columbia biologist who helped turn a glowing jellyfish protein into one of the most widely used tools in modern science. He showed that green fluorescent protein, cloned from Aequorea victoria, could be inserted into other organisms' cells and still glow — letting researchers watch genes switch on and proteins move in real time inside living tissue. That work, shared with Osamu Shimomura and Roger Y. Tsien, earned the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.