Name the Biologist - week 22

This week should technically be called, "Name the scientist" as he wasn't a biologist. I'm including him though as I read an article on the news claiming he's largely unknown and I don't think that's true. Maybe he's only well known in Science circles or maybe it's just me being drawn to larger than life scientists. Let's see.

As for last week's "genuine" Biologists they were


Carl Woese, Leslie Orgel and Francis Crick They are all connected with the discovery of the ribozyme an RNA molecule that can catalyse reactions and helped formulate the idea of the "RNA world" in which RNA based life (or a precursor to life) may have existed as the sole molecule for storing information and catalysing reactions before these roles were superceded by DNA (data) and proteins (reactions). The theory fascinated me while I was at university as it provides a simpler stepping stone to the somewhat complicated system we currently have. Not to worry, RNA still has a very important role :)