Paul Allen

He created the first complete brain atlas. Now he's giving the data away.

If the brain is science's great frontier, you need someone to lead the expedition someone with smarts and curiosity, not to mention a large bank account to finance the journey. In the terra incognita of the brain, that's Paul Allen.

Co founder of Microsoft, owner of three sports teams and lead backer of SpaceShipOne, which in 2004 made the first private manned space flight, Allen, 55, is also head of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, which was founded in 2001 with the goal of mapping the brain, cell by cell and gene by gene. His scientific team began with the mouse brain and finished the job in 2006, posting all the data online. Scientists everywhere now have a free neural GPS to learn where and how specific genes are expressed a vital tool for studying similar functions in human brains.

The institute has now begun its own effort to map human gene expressions, hoping for insight into the molecular basis of consciousness and creativity. Allen founded his institute in the belief that with the right tools you can transform the speed of science itself. Not many people accomplish that even once. Allen is doing it yet again.

J. Craig Venter

The scientist ruffles some feathers, but he has a knack for innovations that change the world.

There have always been two kinds of innovators: those who have an incandescent idea that changes the world and those who keep having them. Increasingly, J. Craig Venter, 61, is establishing himself as a member of that second group.

Already admired as the scientist who conceived of the high speed, "shotgun" approach to DNA sequencing, he was honored last year with a place on the TIME 100 list for his studies involving biodiversity in the oceans. This year he's back for the startling achievement of having built the first synthetic genome. Most of a cell is simply a living enclosure for the DNA that makes an organism what it is. Design and assemble that DNA the way a software designer writes code, and you come awfully close to inventing a living thing. That's what Venter did this year. For now, his work is limited to a one celled organism, but it could advance fast.

So many accomplishments coming so quickly have evoked a range of emotions in Venter's fellow scientists. There has been almost universal admiration, even a touch of envy, but there are people who regard his entrepreneurialism and reported egotism as suspect, which then actually not proved. We should be rewarded him for his bold thinking, ethical sensitivity and creativity. The life of the scientist should be one of imagination and joy—-and in his case, it is. At best, it should yield rewards not just for the person doing the work but also for anyone else who is touched by it. If that's the standard, Venter could be finding his way onto lists like this one for a long time.