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The researchers, philosophers, and subcultures who built these ideas — and the arguments they have with each other.
26 of 26 shown
Swedish computational neuroscientist and futures researcher who co-wrote the whole brain emulation roadmap and works on the physical limits of long-term civilization.
British biogerontologist who proposed the SENS damage-repair framework for rejuvenation and popularized the idea of longevity escape velocity.
The practice of modifying one's own biology outside institutional medicine, ranging from subdermal implants to do-it-yourself gene transfer and open-source medical devices.
American molecular geneticist whose 1993 finding that a single daf-2 mutation doubles the lifespan of C. elegans made aging a tractable genetic problem.
Australian-American biologist at Harvard known for sirtuin and NAD+ research, the information theory of aging, and disputes over the strength of his public claims.
An online techno-optimist movement holding that technological acceleration is a moral imperative and that precautionary restraint on AI causes more harm than it prevents.
French microbiologist who identified the second RNA that CRISPR-Cas9 requires, co-authored the 2012 paper that made the system programmable, and shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
American engineer who proposed molecular nanotechnology, wrote Engines of Creation and Nanosystems, and later worked on AI strategy at Oxford.
The first organized transhumanist movement, built around a set of optimistic principles for self-directed human transformation and dissolved as an institution in 2006.
Iranian-American futurist, born Fereidoun M. Esfandiary, who defined the transhuman as a transitional being and was cryopreserved on his death in 2000.
American geneticist who helped invent direct genomic sequencing, founded the Personal Genome Project, and co-founded dozens of biotechnology companies.
The main international transhumanist membership organization, founded in 1998 as the World Transhumanist Association and now largely dormant as an institution.
American biochemist who co-authored the 2012 paper showing CRISPR-Cas9 could be programmed to cut chosen DNA sequences, and shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Australian bioethicist who formulated procreative beneficence and, with Ingmar Persson, the argument for moral bioenhancement; the leading academic advocate of human enhancement.
American physician and bioethicist who chaired the President's Council on Bioethics and made the strongest philosophical case that mortality gives human life its meaning.
American microbiologist who showed in 1961 that normal human cells divide a finite number of times in culture, and who argued for fifty years afterwards that aging is not a disease.
British-American philosopher who founded extropianism, wrote the principles that gave transhumanism its first organized programme, and led Alcor from 2011 to 2020.
American designer and theorist who wrote the Transhumanist Arts Statement, designed the Primo Posthuman body concept, and led Humanity+ for much of the 2010s.
Swedish philosopher who defined existential risk as a field, wrote Superintelligence, and formulated the simulation argument and the vulnerable world hypothesis.
Israeli-American physician-scientist whose centenarian genetics work and proposed TAME trial aim to make aging itself an acceptable regulatory indication.
American inventor and futurist who formulated the law of accelerating returns and forecasts human-level machine intelligence by 2029 and a technological singularity by 2045.
American researcher whose Nanomedicine volumes set out detailed numerical designs for medical nanorobots, among them the respirocyte, none of which has been fabricated.
Japanese physician-scientist who showed that four transcription factors can reprogram adult cells to a pluripotent state, sharing the 2012 Nobel Prize for the discovery.
The belief that a technological singularity is likely and that it should be actively prepared for, together with the movements organized around that belief.
German-American biostatistician who built the first multi-tissue epigenetic clock, giving aging research a quantitative readout it could test and argue about.
The intellectual and cultural movement holding that human beings can and should use technology to overcome the biological limits of the human condition.