Brown, a graduate of Rosalind Franklin University's medical school in North Chicago, Ill.

WSJ: U.S. Track's Unconventional Physician

Some revolutionaries were slighted by the scientific establishments of their time--like Rosalind Franklin's exclusion from sharing in the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the structure of DNA. Described by her peers as a "genius, " she exposed herself to massive amounts of radiation to try to get the best possible X-ray photograph of a strand of DNA, dying of cancer at 37.

FORBES: Fifteen People Who Changed The World