'If I saw further than others,' said Sir Isaac Newton, 'it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants.'

100 Great Scientists Who Changed the World introduces 100 of these giants and examines their achievements: the men and women who, often in the face of extreme scepticism or worse, have striven and succeeded in pushing back the boundaries of human knowledge. Ranging across the spectrum of scientific endeavour, from the cosmology of Copernicus and Galileo, to the medical revolutions of Hippocrates and Galen, it includes the fields of physics, biology, chemistry and genetics.

This is the story of the ideas that have shaped the world today and have had lasting impacts on our future.