Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences

Isadore Perlman (April 12, 1915 – August 3, 1991) was an American nuclear chemist noted for his research of Alpha particle decay.

The National Academy of Sciences called Perlman "a world leader on the systematics of alpha decay".
He was also recognized for his research of nuclear structure of the heavy elements.
He was also noted for his isolation of Curium,

as well as for fission of tantalum, bismuth, lead, thallium and platinum.

Perlman discovered uses of radioactive iodine and phosphorus for medical purposes.
He played a key role in Manhattan Project's plutonium production.

Donald Edward Osterbrock (July 13, 1924 – January 11, 2007) was an American astronomer, best known for his work on star formation and on the history of astronomy.

Deane Montgomery (September 2, 1909 – March 15, 1992) was an American mathematician specializing in topology who was one of the contributors to the final resolution of Hilbert's fifth problem in the 1950s. He served as president of the American Mathematical Society from 1961 to 1962.
Born in the small town of Weaver, Minnesota, he received his B.S. from Hamline University in St. Paul, MN and his Master's and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1933; his dissertation advisor was Edward Chittenden.In 1941 Montgomery was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1988, he was awarded the American Mathematical Society Leroy P. Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement.
He was a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Robert Lee Metcalf (November 13, 1916 – November 11, 1998) was an American entomologist, environmental toxicologist, and insect chemical ecologist.

Metcalf was noted for making environmentally safe pest control achievable.Metcalf was a member of the National Academy of Sciences,
a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
a member of National Research Council,
a fellow and president of the Entomological Society of America.
He was a member of Environmental Protection Agency's Pesticide Advisory Panel.
The National Center for Biotechnology Information called Metcalf "one of the leading entomologists of the 20th century".
The National Academies Press called him the twentieth century most influential entomologist.
The University of Florida called him "a brilliant scientist and educator".

Clement Lawrence Markert (April 11, 1917 – October 1, 1999) was an American biologist credited with the discovery of isozymes (different forms of enzymes that catalyze the same reaction). He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and served as president of several biology societies.
Markert was born in Las Animas, Colorado and raised in Pueblo, Colorado. He attended the University of Colorado, and in 1937, left college to fight in the Spanish Civil War—stowing away aboard a freighter to circumvent government travel restrictions. After returning to college, Markert completed his bachelor's degree in 1940; upon graduation, he married Margaret Rempfer, and they moved to UCLA for graduate work. He enrolled in the United States Merchant Marine to take part in World War II; by 1954 they had three children. After the war, he finished a master's degree at UCLA followed by a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1948.Markert's Ph.D. research, and subsequent postdoctoral work at Caltech, focused on the sexuality and other physiological and genetic aspects of Glomerella, a genus of pathogenic plant fungi. At Caltech, he also worked with George Beadle on corn and Neurospora genetics.
In 1950 he began teaching at the University of Michigan, part of the new wave of what later became molecular biology. In 1954, Markert became a victim of McCarthyism; he was suspended from teaching because he refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was later reinstated, and continued at the University of Michigan until moving to Johns Hopkins in 1957, followed by Yale University—as head of the Department of Biology. In 1966, he served as president of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. He remained at Yale until retiring in 1986 to North Carolina State University, where he continued researching until 1993.Early in his career, Markert developed the concept of isozymes based on electrophoresis and histochemical staining of enzymes. He found that often what had been assumed to be a single enzyme catalyzing a specific reaction was in fact multiple enzymes, with different proteins present in different tissues. In biochemistry, this forced a re-evaluation of some basic assumptions of enzyme kinetics; in genetics, it contributed to the shift from the "one gene-one enzyme hypothesis" to the "one gene-one polypeptide" concept. Markert's early work with isozymes, many of which are formed by gene duplication, was a precursor to the concept of gene families. Markert's later career focused on developmental biology, particularly developmental genetics in experiments with mosaic animals.Markert was Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Experimental Zoology from 1963 to 1985. He also edited the Journal of Developmental Biology.In 1990, the University of Michigan created the annual "Davis, Markert, Nickerson Lecture on Academic and Intellectual Freedom" series, in honor of Markert and two other Michigan faculty suspended for refusing to testify in 1954.In 1992, it was reported in National Geographic that Markert was attempting an experiment to create a "superpig" by crossbreeding the extremely fertile Meishan pig with domestic pigs, speeding up the process by altering the genes of fertilized embryos. It was hoped that this would, within 5 years of beginning the program, create a hybrid that combined the fertility and early sexual maturation of the Meishan pig with the lean physique and quick growing times of domestic pigs.

Robert Benjamin Leighton (; September 10, 1919 – March 9, 1997) was a prominent American experimental physicist who spent his professional career at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). His work over the years spanned solid state physics, cosmic ray physics, the beginnings of modern particle physics, solar physics, the planets, infrared astronomy, and millimeter- and submillimeter-wave astronomy. In the latter four fields, his pioneering work opened up entirely new areas of research that subsequently developed into vigorous scientific communities.

Robert Paul Kraft (June 16, 1927 – May 26, 2015) was an American astronomer. He performed pioneering work on Cepheid variables, stellar rotation, novae, and the chemical evolution of the Milky Way. His name is also associated with the Kraft break: the abrupt change in the average rotation rate of main sequence stars around spectral type F8.

Harold Lester Johnson (April 17, 1921 – April 2, 1980) was an American astronomer.
Harold Johnson was born in Denver, Colorado, on April 17, 1921. He received his early education in Denver public schools and went to the University of Denver, graduating with a degree in mathematics in 1942. Johnson was recruited by the MIT Radiation Laboratory to work on World War II related radar research. After the war Johnson began graduate studies in astronomy at University of California, Berkeley where he completed his thesis under Harold Weaver in 1948.
In the following years working at Lowell Observatory, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Yerkes Observatory (where he met William Wilson Morgan), McDonald Observatory, University of Texas–Austin, the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in Tucson, Arizona, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico he applied his instrumental and electronic talents to developing and calibrating astronomical photoelectric detectors.
He died of a heart attack in Mexico City in 1980. He and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Jones, had two children.
Johnson was awarded the Helen B. Warner Prize by the American Astronomical Society in 1956. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1969. He is remembered for introducing the UBV photometric system (also called the Johnson or Johnson-Morgan system), along with William Wilson Morgan in 1953.

Francis Clark Howell (November 27, 1925 – March 10, 2007), generally known as F. Clark Howell, was an American anthropologist.
Born in Kansas City, Missouri, F. Clark Howell grew up in Kansas, where he became interested in natural history. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, from 1944 to 1946 in the Pacific Theater. Howell was educated at the University of Chicago, where he received his Ph.B., A.M. and Ph.D. degrees under the tutelage of Sherwood L. Washburn.
Dr. Howell died of metastatic lung cancer on March 10, 2007, at age 81 at his home in Berkeley, California.

Donald Frederick Hornig (March 17, 1920 – January 21, 2013) was an American chemist, explosives expert, teacher and presidential science advisor. He served as president of Brown University from 1970 to 1976.