Scientists
Top Gene-Editing Scientists
The researchers whose work built the field — including those usually left out of the story.
How this list is built
The familiar names are here, and so are the ones popular accounts tend to skip: the microbiologist who worked out what CRISPR was for, the food scientists who proved it, and the researcher in Vilnius who published the same result at nearly the same time.
| # | Entry | Category | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jennifer Doudna Structural biochemist who, with Emmanuelle Charpentier, showed that Cas9 could be… | Biochemistry | |
| 2 | Emmanuelle Charpentier Microbiologist who discovered tracrRNA, the missing component of the CRISPR-Cas9 system… | Microbiology | |
| 3 | Feng Zhang Bioengineer who led one of the first demonstrations of CRISPR genome editing in human… | Bioengineering | |
| 4 | David Liu Chemical biologist whose laboratory invented base editing and prime editing — the two… | Chemical biology | |
| 5 | George Church Geneticist whose laboratory independently demonstrated CRISPR editing in human cells in… | Genetics | |
| 6 | Virginijus Šikšnys Lithuanian biochemist who independently showed that Cas9 could be programmed to cut DNA… | Biochemistry | |
| 7 | Francisco Mojica Microbiologist who recognised what CRISPR sequences actually were, and who gave the… | Microbiology | |
| 8 | Rodolphe Barrangou Food scientist who, with colleagues at a yogurt company, provided the first experimental… | Food microbiology | |
| 9 | Fyodor Urnov Coined the term 'genome editing', worked on zinc finger nucleases before CRISPR, and now… | Genome editing | |
| 10 | He Jiankui The scientist who edited human embryos and brought about the birth of gene-edited… | Ethics case | |
| 11 | Kiran Musunuru Cardiologist and geneticist who co-led the first bespoke base-editing treatment designed… | Cardiovascular genetics | |
| 12 | Andrew Anzalone First author of the 2019 paper introducing prime editing, conceived while a postdoctoral… | Molecular biology |
What this list does not tell youCredit in this field is genuinely contested, including in court. Ordering here is editorial and is not a ranking of importance.