As a deadly smallpox outbreak ravaged Boston, one of the city’s leaders advocated for a preventive measure he’d learned about from Onesimus, an enslaved man.

Watch Nobel Laureate Rita Levi-Montalcini tell the story of how she continued her transformative cell biology research as World War II raged.

Neuroscientist Rita Levi-Montalcini began her Nobel Prize–winning work in a makeshift laboratory in Italy during the Second World War.

Lore has always surrounded argonauts, pelagic octopuses that build shells and travel the seas.

In the past, it was not uncommon for researcher to test their experimental therapeutics and vaccines on themselves. Some even volunteered to be exposed to pathogen-carrying vectors.

Electron microscopy revealed that a deadly disease of birds was not a form of flu, but a different type of virus entirely.

A new book explores the history of scientists’ efforts to classify living things.

Scientists are taking their own vaccines, an ethically murky practice that has a long and sometimes celebrated history in medicine.

The medical scientist made important contributions to polio treatment and Australian environmental policy—despite substantial resistance.