Medical discoveries

This selection brings together events, individual lives, and awards related to medicine. Those types can be separated in the atlas: a biography or prize is not equivalent to a medical discovery.

Canonical records: 400
Events: 155
People: 236
Processes and periods: 9

Compare in the atlas Selection criteria and limits

Topics represented

Medicine (270) · Nobel laureates (233) · People (233) · Physiology or Medicine (116) · Nobel Prizes (116) · Science (43) · Epidemics & public health (7) · Personas científicas (6) · Roman Empire (3) · Vacunación (3) · VIH/sida (3) · Antirretrovirales (2)

View distribution by region and period

Canonical records by regional label and start date. These are numerical analysis bins, not universal historical periods. A multi-region record appears in multiple rows; do not add rows as a unique-record total.
Region	3000–1 BCE	1–1499	1500–1799	1800–1899	1900–1999	Since 2000
Africa	0	3	0	2	3	0
Americas	0	0	0	26	115	2
Asia	0	4	0	2	12	0
Europe	1	3	4	58	170	28
Oceania	0	0	0	2	6	0
Global / no specific region	1	1	0	2	13	1

Records and sources

Ordered by start date. Long lives and processes may begin before the period you want to study.

1956
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1956
The 1956 award linked this prize to André F. Cournand, Werner Forssmann and Dickinson W. Richards. This event records institutional recognition; it does not date the discovery, work, or action being recognized.
1956–… (as of 2026-09-01)
Gregg L. Semenza
Gregg L. Semenza (1956–present) appears in the official census of individual laureates for Physiology or Medicine (2019). This record represents the person’s life; each award is dated separately, and the prize year does not stand for the date of their whole body of work.
1957
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1957
The 1957 award linked this prize to Daniel Bovet. This event records institutional recognition; it does not date the discovery, work, or action being recognized.
1957–… (as of 2026-09-01)
Bruce A. Beutler
Bruce A. Beutler (1957–present) appears in the official census of individual laureates for Physiology or Medicine (2011). This record represents the person’s life; each award is dated separately, and the prize year does not stand for the date of their whole body of work.
1957–… (as of 2026-09-01)
William G. Kaelin Jr
William G. Kaelin Jr (1957–present) appears in the official census of individual laureates for Physiology or Medicine (2019). This record represents the person’s life; each award is dated separately, and the prize year does not stand for the date of their whole body of work.
1958
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1958
The 1958 award linked this prize to George Beadle, Edward Tatum and Joshua Lederberg. This event records institutional recognition; it does not date the discovery, work, or action being recognized.
1959–1980
Smallpox eradication programme
WHO began a smallpox-eradication programme in 1959 and intensified it in 1967, combining vaccination, case finding, and contact containment. The last known natural case occurred in Somalia in 1977, and the World Health Assembly declared eradication in 1980; the result depended on sustained local and international work, not the vaccine in isolation.
1959
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1959
The 1959 award linked this prize to Severo Ochoa and Arthur Kornberg. This event records institutional recognition; it does not date the discovery, work, or action being recognized.
1959–… (as of 2026-09-01)
Drew Weissman
Drew Weissman (1959–present) appears in the official census of individual laureates for Physiology or Medicine (2023). This record represents the person’s life; each award is dated separately, and the prize year does not stand for the date of their whole body of work.
1959–… (as of 2026-09-01)
Andrew Z. Fire
Andrew Z. Fire (1959–present) appears in the official census of individual laureates for Physiology or Medicine (2006). This record represents the person’s life; each award is dated separately, and the prize year does not stand for the date of their whole body of work.
1960
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1960
The 1960 award linked this prize to Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet and Peter Medawar. This event records institutional recognition; it does not date the discovery, work, or action being recognized.
1960
Approval of the oral contraceptive pill
The FDA approves Enovid specifically as an oral contraceptive in the United States. Its reproductive impact coexisted with later debates and reviews concerning safety and trial ethics.
1960–… (as of 2026-09-01)
Fred Ramsdell
Fred Ramsdell (1960–present) appears in the official census of individual laureates for Physiology or Medicine (2025). This record represents the person’s life; each award is dated separately, and the prize year does not stand for the date of their whole body of work.
1960–… (as of 2026-09-01)
Craig C. Mello
Craig C. Mello (1960–present) appears in the official census of individual laureates for Physiology or Medicine (2006). This record represents the person’s life; each award is dated separately, and the prize year does not stand for the date of their whole body of work.
1961
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1961
The 1961 award linked this prize to Georg von Békésy. This event records institutional recognition; it does not date the discovery, work, or action being recognized.
1961–… (as of 2026-09-01)
Mary E. Brunkow
Mary E. Brunkow (1961–present) appears in the official census of individual laureates for Physiology or Medicine (2025). This record represents the person’s life; each award is dated separately, and the prize year does not stand for the date of their whole body of work.
1961–… (as of 2026-09-01)
Carol W. Greider
Carol W. Greider (1961–present) appears in the official census of individual laureates for Physiology or Medicine (2009). This record represents the person’s life; each award is dated separately, and the prize year does not stand for the date of their whole body of work.
1962
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1962
The 1962 award linked this prize to Francis Crick, James Watson and Maurice Wilkins. This event records institutional recognition; it does not date the discovery, work, or action being recognized.
1962–… (as of 2026-09-01)
Shinya Yamanaka
Shinya Yamanaka (1962–present) appears in the official census of individual laureates for Physiology or Medicine (2012). This record represents the person’s life; each award is dated separately, and the prize year does not stand for the date of their whole body of work.
1962–… (as of 2026-09-01)
Edvard I. Moser
Edvard I. Moser (1962–present) appears in the official census of individual laureates for Physiology or Medicine (2014). This record represents the person’s life; each award is dated separately, and the prize year does not stand for the date of their whole body of work.
1963
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1963
The 1963 award linked this prize to Sir John Eccles, Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley. This event records institutional recognition; it does not date the discovery, work, or action being recognized.
1963–… (as of 2026-09-01)
May-Britt Moser
May-Britt Moser (1963–present) appears in the official census of individual laureates for Physiology or Medicine (2014). This record represents the person’s life; each award is dated separately, and the prize year does not stand for the date of their whole body of work.
1964
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1964
The 1964 award linked this prize to Konrad Bloch and Feodor Lynen. This event records institutional recognition; it does not date the discovery, work, or action being recognized.
1965
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1965
The 1965 award linked this prize to François Jacob, André Lwoff and Jacques Monod. This event records institutional recognition; it does not date the discovery, work, or action being recognized.
1966
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1966
The 1966 award linked this prize to Peyton Rous and Charles B. Huggins. This event records institutional recognition; it does not date the discovery, work, or action being recognized.
1967
Human heart transplant
Christiaan Barnard performs the first human-to-human heart transplant.
1967
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1967
The 1967 award linked this prize to Ragnar Granit, Keffer Hartline and George Wald. This event records institutional recognition; it does not date the discovery, work, or action being recognized.
1967–… (as of 2026-09-01)
Ardem Patapoutian
Ardem Patapoutian (1967–present) appears in the official census of individual laureates for Physiology or Medicine (2021). This record represents the person’s life; each award is dated separately, and the prize year does not stand for the date of their whole body of work.
1968
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1968
The 1968 award linked this prize to Robert W. Holley, H. Gobind Khorana and Marshall W. Nirenberg. This event records institutional recognition; it does not date the discovery, work, or action being recognized.
1969
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1969
The 1969 award linked this prize to Max Delbrück, Alfred D. Hershey and Salvador E. Luria. This event records institutional recognition; it does not date the discovery, work, or action being recognized.