The Scientist, Inaugural Issue, 1986

Twenty-five years later, the magazine is still hitting many of the same key discussion points of science.

Written byJef Akst

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Funding, salaries, human genomes—the hot topics of interest to scientists in the 1980s are still making headlines today. Here, The Scientist revisits some of the stories featured in its premiere issue, published on October 20, 1986.

In 1986, US scientists celebrated a 17.5 percent increase in the National Institutes of Health’s budget for the next fiscal year. Today, despite continued economic hardship and threats of budget cuts, NIH funding continues to climb, reaching $30 billion in 2010—nearly six times what it was when The Scientist published its first issue, and more than three times what would be predicted based on inflation. “It’s a very healthy thing,” says Alan Edwards, product leader for Kelly Scientific Resources, a scientific and clinical research staffing company. But, he adds, ...

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Meet the Author

Jef Akst
Go to The Scientist's LinkedIn Page
Jef (an unusual nickname for Jennifer) got her master’s degree from Indiana University in April 2009 studying the mating behavior of seahorses. After four years of diving off the Gulf Coast of Tampa and performing behavioral experiments at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, she left research to pursue a career in science writing. As The Scientist's managing editor, Jef edited features and oversaw the production of the TS Digest and quarterly print magazine. In 2022, her feature on uterus transplantation earned first place in the trade category of the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism. She is a member of the National Association of Science Writers.
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