With a net worth of $20 billion, James Watson is the world's richest scientist. Watson is a scientist, geneticist, and zoologist from the United States who is most known for his work on the double helix structure of DNA. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 1947 and Indiana University in 1950 with a Ph.D.

Watson completed his postdoctoral training under Herman Kalckar and Ole Maale at the University of Copenhagen before working at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge in England. Watson initially met Francis Crick, his future collaborator, at Cambridge. Watson was a member of the Harvard University Biology Department faculty from 1956 until 1976, where he promoted molecular biology research.

Watson shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins in 1962 for finding the double helix structure of DNA. This discovery is a watershed moment in molecular biology and cell communication.

From 1968 to 1968, Watson was the director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), when he turned his research focus to cancer research. He resigned as the laboratory's chancellor in 2007 after making comments that claimed there was a genetic link between IQ and race.

Watson is the author of numerous scientific works, including the classic Molecular Biology of the Gene (1965) and the best-selling The Double Helix (1968). Between 1988 to 1992, Watson worked at the National Institutes of Health, where he assisted in the formation of the Human Genome Project, which finished mapping the human genome in 2003.

Estimated Net Worth: $20 billion

Stephen Hawking was a cosmologist and theoretical physicist. Between 1979 to 2009, he was the Lucasian professor of mathematics at the University of Cambridge.

Hawking studied in Oxford at the age of 17 and received a first-class physics degree. In 1962, he began doctoral studies at Trinity Hall Cambridge and graduated in 1963 with a Ph.D. in applied mathematics and theoretical physics with a specialization in general relativity and cosmology.

Hawking is well-known for his black hole discoveries and speculations. He frequently makes public talks and has written a number of publications.

Hawking became famous after appearing in an interview with Arthur C. Clarke and Carl Sagan in the book God, the Universe, and Everything Else, in which the three cosmologists discussed the presence of God, the universe, and the possibility of life in space.

Hawking was a Fellow of the Royal Society, a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences for life, and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. He died on March 14, 2018, at the age of 76, after more than 50 years of living with motor neuron disease.

At the time of his death in 2018, Stephen Hawking was expected to have a net worth of $20 million in 2022.

Estimated Net Worth: $20 billion

Uğur Şahin is an oncologist and immunologist from Germany. He is the founder and CEO of BioNTech. His main scientific interests include cancer and immunology. BioNTech, which went public on the Nasdaq in October 2019, is owned by Sahin. He grew up in Germany after being born in Turkey.

He grew up in Cologne and went to the University of Cologne to study medicine. His doctoral thesis in cancer immunotherapy was successfully finished. He began his career as an oncohematology physician in inpatient care and did research at university hospitals in Saarland and Zürich. In 2000, he established a research group at the University of Mainz, and in 2006, he was promoted to professor of experimental oncology.

Şahin began his entrepreneurial career by co-founding two pharmaceutical companies with his partner and spouse, Zlem Türeci, in 2001 and 2008. BioNTech, in collaboration with Pfizer Inc., produced one of the key vaccines that will be used to combat the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. In 2016, Astellas Pharma purchased the first pharmaceutical firm they formed for $460 million.

Estimated Net worth: $15.2 Billion

Gordon Earle Moore is a co-founder and emeritus chairman of Intel Corporation in the United States. Moore's Law was also written by him. Moore is the co-founder of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and an active philanthropist.

He graduated from the University of California with a bachelor's degree in chemistry. He matriculated at the California Institute of Technology in September 1950, minoring in physics and earning a Ph.D. in chemistry in 1954. From 1953 to 1956, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory.

Moore is the fourth richest scientist in the world, with a net worth of $13 billion.

Estimated Net Worth: $13 billion

With a net worth of $9.8 billion, James Dyson is the sixth richest scientist. He is a landowner, entrepreneur, and industrial designer from the United Kingdom. Dyson invented the bagless Dual Cyclone vacuum cleaner, which works on the cyclonic separation concept.

From August 2011 to July 2017, he was the Provost of the Royal College of Art. Dyson founded the Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology, which he established in September 2017.

Dyson attended the Byam Shaw School of Art from 1965 to 1966. Between 1966 and 1960, he studied furniture and interior design at the Royal College of Art before engineering.

Dyson invented the sea truck while studying at the Royal College of Art. The Ballbarrow, a modified version of a wheelbarrow, was his first original innovation. The Trolleyball and Whaleboat were his next inventions.

James Dyson and his wife Deidre presently reside in Singapore. With his wife, he has two sons and a daughter. They live in Singapore but have many houses throughout the world.

Estimated Net Worth: $9.8 billion

Ronda Stryker, the daughter of Lee Stryker and his first wife Betty Stryker, was born in 1954. She graduated from the University of Northern Colorado with a bachelor's degree and Western Michigan University with a master's degree.

Her grandpa, Homer Stryker, founded Stryker Corporation, a medical device company that specialized in trauma surgery implants and joint replacements. Ronda Stryker has been the company's director for over three decades. She has been involved in numerous product inventions and advancements.

With revenue of $17.1 billion in 2021, Stryker is the largest individual stakeholder in Stryker Corp. She owns 6% of the corporation, and her siblings have shared as well. Greenleaf Trust, her husband's wealth management firm, manages additional Stryker shares for its customers.

Estimated Net Worth: $7.8 billion

Gayle Cook also has her name on our list of the richest scientists, with a net worth of $6.2 billion. Gayle and her late husband Bills launched the Cook Group in 1963. The Cook Group specializes in stents and catheters with antibiotics pre-injected. In the medical equipment market, Cook is another titan. Gayle inherited her late husband's stake on the company's board of directors after his death in 2011.

She was born in Bloomington, Indiana, and graduated from Indiana University with a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts in 1956. When the opportunity to form the Cook Group presented itself, she went into medicine.

Estimated Net Worth: $6.2 billion

Robert Langer is one of the richest scientists in the world. Mr. Langer runs the Langer Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is a professor and scientist.

Langer is a founder shareholder in Moderna, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotech company. He owns 3% of the company and has never sold any of his shares.

He also owns shares in SQZ Biotechnologies and Frequency Therapeutics, both of which were founded by postdocs from his laboratory.

Langer is also the most cited engineer in history, with over 320,000 citations and over 1,500 articles published.

He also possesses over 1,400 patents, which have been licensed over 400 times to biotech and pharmaceutical companies.

Estimated Net Worth: $4.9 Billion

Hao Hong is the chairman of Asymchem Laboratories, a pharmaceutical outsourcing company based in Shenzhen. The Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences awarded Hao a Ph.D. in pharmaceutical chemistry. He started the business in 1995.

The Chinese scientist is the ninth richest scientist in the world and the 181st richest person in China, with a net worth of $3.9 billion.

Estimated Net Worth: $3.9 Billion

Xie Liangzhi is the chairman of Sinocelltech Group, a Beijing-based biological product supplier.

Xie also holds a doctorate in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He worked as a senior engineer at Merck & Co. in the United States from 1997 until 2002. He was in charge of three vaccines' development and production technologies (Varivax®, Proquad®, and Zostavax®). For the adenovirus vector AIDS vaccine, he built globally advanced production technology. The technology is a way of producing the greatest number of cells and viruses for use in a human live virus vaccine. It has achieved cGMP production at scales of 2000L and even 15000L, according to process certification.

After spending 12 years in the United States, Xie returned to China in 2002 to start a business. Sino Biological Inc, a biomedical high-tech firm situated in Beijing's Economic and Technological Development Zone, is led by him. The labs and offices are almost 3,000 square meters in size, and 100 scientists work on animal cell expression biotechnology product research and development.

Estimated Net Worth $3.2 Billion