Here are a few people who died in the last year and who had huge contributions to the society (I'm sure I have missed many). Hundreds of millions of people are alive today because of people like Emil Freireich, Bernard Lown, Helen Murray Free, Yuan Longping, and many others on this list, yet practically no-one even knows their names. In the same time we are supposed to mourn someone who who has barely done anything more that wear stupid hats in public...
- Isamu Akasaki - Nobelist for the invention of the LED lighting
- Emil Freireich - Pioneer in the treatment of cancer, developed chemotherapy, known as the father of modern leukemia therapy
- Richard R. Ernst - Nobel winner for the development of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, which paved the way for M.R.I.
- Bernard Lown - Inventor and developer of the defibrillator for cardiac resuscitation, the cardioverter for correcting rapid disordered heart rhythms and the drug lidocaine to control heartbeat disturbances
- Andrew Brooks - Developer of the first FDA-approved rapid saliva test for COVID-19 diagnosis
- Helen Murray Free - Chemist who developed the diabetes testing
- Yuan Longping - Plant scientist developed the first hybrid rice varieties, that were instrumental in curbing famine
- Geert Jan van Oldenborgh - Climatologist who first linked natural disasters to climate change
- Clive Sinclair - Pioneer in the development of personal computers, created the first electronic pocket calculator
- Aaron T. Beck - Developer of cognitive behavior therapy
- Albert Bandura - Leading psychologist in several fields of psychology, including social cognitive theory, therapy, and personality psychology, the transition between behaviorism and cognitive psychology. He is known as the originator of the social cognitive theory
- Antony Hewish - Astronomer honored for the discovery of pulsars
- Luc Montagnier - Nobelist for his discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)
- Rosalind Cartwright - A neuroscientist, psychologist and an early researcher of sleep disorders
- Chuck Geschke - Father of desktop publishing, founder of Adobe Inc. and co-creator of the PDF document format
- Edmond H. Fischer - Nobelist who discovered how proteins regulate various cellular processes
- Carolyn Shoemaker - Hunter of comets and asteroids, she discovered 32 comets (a record for the most by an individual) and more than 500 asteroids
- Toshihide Maskawa - Nobelist for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry and at least three families of quarks in nature
- Yves Coppens - Anthropologist, the discoverer of Lucy, together with Donald Johanson
- Kamoya Kimeu - Paleontologist responsible for some of the most significant fossil finds that shaped our understanding of our evolutionary past, including a Homo habilis skull, an almost complete Homo ergaster skeleton known as Turkana Boy, the jaw of a Paranthropus boisei hominid, known as the Peninj Mandible
- Arthur Dale Riggs - Geneticist who expressed the first artificial gene in bacteria
- Sidney Altman - Nobelist for his work on the catalytic properties of RNA
- Michael Collins - Astronaut, “third man” of the moon landing
- Steven Weinberg - Nobelist in physics for the unification of the weak force and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles
- Ei-ichi Negishi - Nobelist in chemistry for his discovery of the Negishi coupling
- Myriam Sarachik - Leading researcher of the physics of electronic transport in solids and molecular magnetism
- George Bass - Father of underwater archaeology
- Joseph Sonnabend - Pioneer in HIV/AIDS research
- Martinus Veltman - Nobelist for his work on particle theory
- Thomas Lovejoy - Amazon rescuer and climate change fighter
- E.O. Wilson - Pioneer of evolutionary biology
- Muriel Lezak - Leading authority on research, assessment, and rehabilitation of brain injuries