The Earth is moving under the worlds of academia, technology, and biology. Chemists, geneticists, and neuroscientists are leaving their cozy university labs to become executives of heavily endowed biotech start-up companies. Entrepreneurs who once brewed beer are CEOs of drug companies. Technologists and engineers without science degrees are solving the riddles of human genomics and proteomics. Think Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein with stock options. Think Henry Ford and Thomas Edison cooking up drugs. Traditional demarcations between biology and commerce, science and technology, advisers and inventors, business folk and ivory-tower researchers have dissolved.
They nurture visions of a future as enticing as our human imaginations can bear: Yes, they insist, we really will conquer cancer, see paraplegics walk again, grow new skin for burn patients, and live to be 300.
Most of the visionaries on this list remain obscure, but that is likely to be temporary. All have soared to superstar status within the science industry, which went white hot after the announcement two years ago that the human genome had been decoded. Since January 1, 2000, investors have pumped $59 billion into the hands of such people. No one is quite certain how many of their promises will come true or what unknown perils may await us as we tinker with the basic building blocks of life. But for these 20 geniuses, the biotech revolution is under way, and none are looking backward as they transform cash, moxie, and imagination into the drugs and treatments of our dreams.
