Aurora | Page 7

Volume 1, Issue 1 Page 7 Robert Jarvik – 11th May (1863-Present) An American scientist, researcher and entrepreneur, he is widely known for the invention of the first permanent total artificial heart, Jarvik 7+ In the mid-70s, he and his fellow researchers at the University of Utah designed and developed the air driven Jarvik-7 total artificial heart, the first of its kind with a goal of lifelong support for a dying patient+ In 1987, he moved to New York and founded the Jarvik Research, Inc+ Today, Dr+ Jarvik is President and CEO of Jarvik Heart, Inc+ He holds numerous patents for medical device technology, and degrees from Syracuse University, New York University, and the University Of Utah College Of Medicine+ Dorothy Hodgkin – 12th May (1910-1994) Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin became a leading practitioner of the use of X-ray crystallography in determining the three dimensional structure of complex organic molecules+ Though diagnosed at age 24 with rheumatoid arthritis, she became one of the most skilled crystallographers of her time+ She attend- ed Cambridge and then later oxford, and she always chose projects that were thought impossible+ She had a sudden interest in penicillin, and even though it took four long years, she cracked penicillin’s complex and misleading structure in 1946+ This knowledge helped manufactures create semisynthetic penicillin+ Almost ten years later, she announced the structure of vitamin B12, and in 1964 she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry Ronald Ross – 13th May (1857-1932) Ronald Ross spent half his life in India, having being born there as well+ He entered the Indian Medical Service in 1881 and became very interested the study of malaria+ He was determined to prove the hypothesis of Scottish physician, Sir Patrick Manson that mosquitoes were in fact related to the disease malaria+ He made is breakthrough July 1897 when he found out the malarial parasite in the gastrointestinal tract of mosquito which led to the realization that malaria was transmitted by mosquitoes, and laid the foundation for combating the disease+ He published his works in December 1897 issue of the British Medical Journal+ He also won The Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1902 for his work in malaria+ 7