There was a time when medicine and chemical engineering hadn't been properly introduced. Then Robert Langer crashed the party.

That was in 1974, when Langer, now Kenneth J. Germeshausen Professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering at MIT, signed on as a postdoc in Judah Folkman's cancer lab at Boston's Children's Hospital. Mingling with the surgeons and scientists, the young chemical engineer was far afield. Far enough, in fact, to discover his uncommon calling: molding materials that turn biological discoveries into medical cures.

Synthetic polymers are Langer's specialty. He crafts, from plastic, implantable dispensing machines for some of biotechnology's most esoteric therapies, as well as safer delivery devices for more conventional medicines. Langer's work is one of the pillars of the multibillion-dollar drug-delivery industry. But the pace of his progress is such (his name appears on more than 330 patents) that he has populated not one, but two new industries with ideas and students. Langer's second sphere of innovation is tissue engineering, an emerging discipline in which his synthetic polymers are helping researchers grow replacement body parts in the laboratory.