People

Vietnamese surgeon Tôn Thất Tùng (10 May 1912 – 7 May 1982) developed a pioneering technique that reduced the risks and mortality rate of liver operations.

Michiaki Takahashi (17 February 1928 – 16 December 2013) was a Japanese virologist who developed the first chickenpox vaccine.

Maggie Lim (5 January 1913 – November 1995) was a Singaporean physician who promoted family planning and expanded the access to clinics to improve the quality of life for mothers and children in Singapore’s early days.

The founder of the Adyar Cancer Institute in India, Muthulakshmi Reddy (30 July 1886 – 22 July 1968), fought to uplift women and girls from impoverished situations.

Through her iconic stories featuring fictional scenes from the history of the Philippines, language teacher and academic Genoveva Matute (3 January 1915 – 21 March 2009) helped strengthen the Filipino identity.

Rajeshwari Chatterjee (24 January 1922 – 3 September 2010) was the first female engineer from Karnataka in India.

U Hla Myint (1920 – 2017) was a celebrated economist from Myanmar. Considered a prodigy, he was admitted to Rangoon University to study economics when he was just 14 years old. He went on to earn a Ph.D. at the London School of Economics (LSE).

Little is known about Ali, a teenager from Sarawak, Malaysia, who was chief assistant to the famous naturalist Alfred Wallace. Most of what is known comes from Wallace’s writings. Ali accompanied Wallace on expeditions throughout the Malay Archipelago from December 1855 to February 1862.

Indian scientist and physician Upendranath Brahmachari (19 December 1873–6 February 1946) is best known for creating a drug called Urea Stibamine, used to safely and reliably treat visceral leishmaniasis (or Kala-azar), a severe infection caused by the Leishmania parasite.

Sir Mokshagundam Srinivasa Shastry Vishveshwarayya (15 September 1860 – 14 April 1962) is widely regarded as India’s most outstanding engineer. In a career that spanned almost his entire life, Vishveshwarayya played a pivotal role in several engineering projects, including designing the Krishnarajasagara dam that is still the source of irrigation and drinking water for parts of Karnataka today.

Tsuneko (7 June 1933) and Reiji Okazaki (8 October 1930 – 1 August 1975) were a Japanese couple who discovered Okazaki fragments – short sequences of DNA that are synthesized during DNA replication and linked together to form a continuous strand.