Foundations

Bacteriologist Alice Evans identified the pathogen that causes undulant fever, leading her to push for the pasteurization of milk.

Prehistoric Andeans seemed especially fond of trepanation—holes drilled in the skull as a treatment for various ills.

James Herrick, a Chicago doctor, was the first to describe sickled red blood cells in a patient of African descent.

Juan Valverde de Amusco’s anatomical drawings corrected some earlier errors while making anatomy more accessible.

The Challenger expedition's data on ocean temperatures and currents, seawater chemistry, life in the deep sea, and the geology of the seafloor spurred the rise of modern oceanography.

Austrian-American botanist Joseph Rock collected thousands of plant samples in his 27 years in the Middle Kingdom, leaving after the Communist Party’s takeover.

Victor McKusick’s pioneering investigations provided insight into hereditary disorders.

William Halsted’s approach to mastectomy took the medical world by storm at the turn of the last century.

The incubator exhibitions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries publicized the care of premature babies.

Lampbrush chromosomes, first observed in the 19th century, still offer an unparalleled glimpse into how genetic information is organized in the cell.

Giovanni Schiaparelli’s maps of Mars sparked the belief that intelligent life exists on the planet.

Fifty years ago, Arthur Kornberg announced to reporters that his team had synthesized functional DNA.

A decades-old neurological procedure developed under unique and difficult conditions in postwar Japan remains critical to the treatment of epilepsy.

French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat took on many roles over the course of his life, including physician and scientist.

Most didn’t believe French doctor Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran when he said he’d spotted the causative agent of the disease—and that it was an animal.

Activists demanded greater access to and involvement in clinical research for AIDS treatments—and their protests were heard.

In the 1960s, immunologists took matters into their own hands—and under their own skin—to characterize an immunoglobulin involved in allergies.

The 19th century biologist’s drawings, tainted by scandal, helped bolster, then later dismiss, his biogenetic law.

In the middle of the 20th century, the National Cancer Institute began testing plant extracts for chemotherapeutic potential—helping to discover some drugs still in use today.