science

Nature's 10

Nature's 10 is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Nature's 10 rather than just read about it. In short: Nature's 10 is an annual listicle of ten "people who mattered" in science, produced by the scientific journal Nature. Nominees have made a significant impact in science either for good or for bad.

Key takeaways

Nature's 10 belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Nature's 10 to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Nature's 10 from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Nature's 10 is an annual listicle of ten "people who mattered" in science, produced by the scientific journal Nature. Nominees have made a significant impact in science either for good or for bad. Reporters and editorial staff at Nature judge nominees to have had "a significant impact on the world, or their position in the world may have had an important impact on science". Short biographical profiles describe the people behind some of the year's most important discoveries and events. Alongside the ten, five "ones to watch" for the following year are also listed.

2025 2025 awardees includeded:

Susan Monarez: Public-health guardian Achal Agrawal: Retraction detective Tony Tyson: Telescope pioneer Precious Matsoso: Pandemic negotiator Sarah Tabrizi: Huntington's hero Mengran Du: Deep diver Luciano Moreira: Mosquito rancher Liang Wenfeng: Tech disruptor Yifat Merbl: Peptide detective KJ Muldoon: Trailblazing baby Ones to watch in 2026:

Reid Wiseman: Mission commander Artemis II, NASA Georgina Long: Medical oncologist, Melanoma Institute Australia, University of Sydney Amadou Sall: Virologist, Pasteur Institute of Dakar Alice Xiang: Global head of AI governance, Sony AI Colette Delawalla: Chief executive and founder, Stand Up for Science

2024 2024 awardees included:

Ekkehard Peik: Father time Kaitlin Kharas: Fair-pay champion Li Chunlai: Moon-rock guardian Anna Abalkina: Fraud buster Huji Xu: Daring doctor Muhammad Yunus: Nation builder Placide Mbala: Virus hunter Cordelia Bähr: Climate crusader Rémi Lam: AI weather sleuth Wendy Freedman: Cosmic ranger Ones to watch in 2025:

Mark Thomson: Next director-general, CERN Emma Hodcroft: Co-founder, Pathoplexus Donald Trump: US president-elect

2023 2023 awardees included:

Kalpana Kalahasti: To the Moon Marina Silva: Amazon protector Katsuhiko Hayashi: Rewiring reproduction Annie Kritcher: Fusion igniter Eleni Myrivili: Warming warden Ilya Sutskever: AI visionary James Hamlin: Superconductivity sleuth Svetlana Mojsov: Unsung drug developer Halidou Tinto: Malaria fighter Thomas Powles: Cancer explorer Special awardee:

ChatGPT: Boon and burden? Ones to watch in 2024:

Monica M. Bertagnolli, Director, US National Institutes of Health Colin Waters, Chair, Anthropocene Working Group Ilan Gur, Chief executive, UK Advanced Research and Invention Agency Muhammad Masroor Alam, Molecular biologist, Pakistan National Institutes of Health

2022 2022 awardees included:

Jane Rigby: Sky hunter Yunlong Cao: COVID predictor Saleemul Huq: Climate revolutionary Svitlana Krakovska: Voice for Ukraine Dimie Ogoina: Monkeypox watchman Lisa McCorkell: Long-COVID advocate Diana Greene Foster: Abortion fact-finder António Guterres: Crisis diplomat Muhammad Mohiuddin: Transplant trailblazer Alondra Nelson: Policy principal Ones to watch in 2023:

Sherry Rehman, Minister of climate change, Pakistan Nallathamby Kalaiselvi, Indian Council of Scientific and Industrial Research Sun Chunlan, Chinese Communist Party Renee Wegrzyn, US Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health Anthony Tyson, University of California, Davis

2021

2021 awardees included:

Winnie Byanyima vaccine warrior Friederike Otto, weather detective Zhang Rongqiao, Mars explorer Timnit Gebru, AI ethics leader Tulio de Oliveira, variant tracker John Jumper, protein predictor Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, indigenous defender Guillaume Cabanac, deception sleuth Meaghan Kall, COVID communicator Janet Woodcock, drug chief Ones to watch in 2022:

Chikwe Ihekweazu, epidemiologist at the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence Jane Rigby, astrophysicist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Love Dalén, geneticist at the Swedish Museum of Natural History Xie Zhenhua, China's special envoy on climate change Graziano Venanzoni, physicist at the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics

2020

2020 awardees included:

Tedros Ghebreyesus, Warning the world Verena Mohaupt, Polar patroller Gonzalo Moratorio, Coronavirus hunter Adi Utarini, Mosquito commander Kathrin Jansen, Vaccine leader Zhang Yongzhen, Genome sharer Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, A force in physics Li Lanjuan, Lockdown architect Jacinda Ardern, Crisis leader Anthony Fauci, Science’s defender Ones to watch in 2021:

Marion Koopmans, Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, the Netherlands Zhang Rongqiao, China National Space Administration Karen Miga, University of California, Santa Cruz Rochelle Walensky, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts Jane Greaves, Cardiff University, UK

2019

2019 awardees included:

Ricardo Galvão: Science defender Victoria Kaspi: Sky sleuth Nenad Sestan: Neuroscientist Sandra Díaz: Biodiversity guardian Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum: Ebola fighter Yohannes Haile-Selassie: Origin seeker Wendy Rogers: Transplant ethicist Deng Hongkui: CRISPR translator John M. Martinis: Quantum builder Greta Thunberg: Climate catalyst Ones to watch in 2020:

António Guterres: Secretary-general, United Nations Denis Rebrikov: Kulakov National Medical Research Center for Obstetrics, Gynecology and Perinatology, Moscow Geng Meiyu: Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, China Mariya Gabriel: European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth Markus Rex: Alfred Wegener Institute, Germany

2018

2018 awardees included:

Yuan Cao: Graphene wrangler Viviane Slon: Humanity's historian He Jiankui: CRISPR rogue Jess Wade: Diversity champion Valérie Masson-Delmotte: Earth monitor Anthony Brown: Star mapper Yeo Bee Yin: Force for the environment Barbara Rae-Venter: DNA detective Robert-Jan Smits: Open-access leader Makoto Yoshikawa: Asteroid hunter Ones to watch in 2019:

Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum, Director-general of the Democratic Republic of the Congo National Institute for Biomedical Research Julia Olson, Co-counsel in Juliana v. United States Muthayya Vanitha, Director of India's Chandrayaan-2 Moon mission Maura McLaughlin, Chair at the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves Sandra Díaz, Co-leader of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Global Assessment of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services

2017

2017 awardees included:

David R. Liu: Gene corrector Marica Branchesi: Merger maker Emily Whitehead: Living testimonial Scott Pruitt: Agency dismantler Pan Jianwei: Father of quantum Jennifer Byrne: Error sleuth Lassina Zerbo: Test-ban tracker Victor Cruz-Atienza: Quake chaser Ann Olivarius: Legal champion Khaled Toukan: Opening SESAME Ones to watch in 2018:

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Nature's 10

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Nature's 10 claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Nature's 10 before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Nature's 10 ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Nature's 10

In research: Nature's 10 appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Nature's 10 in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Nature's 10 is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Lists of people in STEM fields, Springer Science+Business Media, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Nature's 10 outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Nature's 10 in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Nature's 10 means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Nature's 10 out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Nature's 10 in simple terms?

Nature's 10 is an annual listicle of ten "people who mattered" in science, produced by the scientific journal Nature. Nominees have made a significant impact in science either for good or for bad.

Why does Nature's 10 matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Nature's 10?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Nature's 10.