"Mr. Vaccine." Biochemist who joined the University of California, San Francisco in 1968, Dr. Rutter was a principal actor in the formation of the biotech industry. Cofounded Chiron (Novartis) in 1981 and developed the first recombinant vaccine for Hepatitis B. He contributed to the sequencing of the HIV genome in 1984, and discovered and cloned the Hepatitis C virus in 1987. Spawned therapy research for cancer and metabolic disease. These accomplishments aside, we list Dr. Rutter for Synergenics, a consortium he established in 1991 to help biotech startups rapidly develop and commercialize their products. Has founded or collaborated in 12 startups since 1992, including: iMetrikus in 1998, an innovator in remote monitoring and patient data collection, and ReLia Diagnostic Systems, which makes a low-cost kit for remote diagnostics. Honors include his election to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, his name is plastered on about half the buildings of the UCSF campus.

In 1994, speaking of Chiron, and the importance of scalability:

"A small company like ours produces products that must and should be provided to the world's populations. The issue has been how to do it." Rutter founded Synergenics so other entrepreneurs will have it a bit easier then he did.