Bengt Nyman from Vaxholm, Sweden · CC BY 2.0

A geneticist whose lab at Brandeis cloned the fruit fly's "period" gene in 1984, the opening move in decades of work mapping the molecular machinery that keeps living cells on a roughly 24-hour clock. Later discoveries from his group, including the cycle and clock genes and a light-sensing protein called cryptochrome, filled in how that internal clock resets itself daily. He shared the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Michael W. Young and Jeffrey C. Hall for the work, foundational to understanding circadian rhythms in humans as well as flies.