Douglas A. Lockard · CC BY-SA 3.0

An MIT chemical engineer who turned drug delivery into an engineering discipline: his lab pioneered the polymer systems that let drugs and vaccines release into the body on a controlled schedule rather than all at once, work underlying modern cancer chemotherapy implants and the lipid-nanoparticle technology in mRNA vaccines. He holds over 1,400 patents and helped found more than 40 biotech companies, including Moderna. He is the only person to win both the Charles Stark Draper Prize and the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, the field's two highest honors.