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MONSTROUS HEAD: This profile of a deformed colt accompanied a paper, published on July 3, 1665, in Philosophical Transactions, describing Boyle’s use of ethyl alcohol to preserve the head, which Boyle had “hastily and rudely cut off” for further study.Philosophical Transactions (1665-1678)

Boyle’s Monsters, 1665

By Sabrina Richards | May 1, 2012

From accounts of deformed animals to scratch-and-sniff technology, Robert Boyle’s early contributions to the Royal Society of London were prolific and wide ranging.

A WORLDLY COLLECTION: Ole Worm began collecting items for his cabinet in 1621, and continued until his death in 1654. Among the oddest pieces was a mechanical human figure (shown propped against the far back wall) that could move its arms at the turn of a hidden wheel.Smithsonian Institution Libraries

The World in a Cabinet, 1600s

By Sabrina Richards | April 1, 2012

A 17th century Danish doctor arranges a museum of natural history oddities in his own home.

SMALL NEW WORLD: Ernest Fullam was the first to operate a commercial electron microscope—the RCA Corporation’s EMB 1940 model—in New York City. He used it to capture this micrograph of an intact fibroblast from a chicken embryo. The image revealed for the first time an unknown subcellular structure later identified as the endoplasmic reticulum (circled).KR Porter, J Exp Med, 81:233-46, 1945

The Subcellular World Revealed, 1945

By Cristina Luiggi | March 1, 2012

The first electron microscope to peer into an intact cell ushers in the new field of cell biology.

TRUE BLUE: Digital copy of the cyanotype of Fucus vesiculosus var. linearis, scanned from the edition of Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions, Part XI, once owned by John Frederick William Herschel, inventor of the cyanotype process and neighbor of Anna Atkins. The volume, which now resides at the New York Public Library, is one of only 13 extant editions of the book.New York Public Library

Botanical Blueprints, circa 1843

By Cristina Luiggi | February 1, 2012

Anna Atkins, pioneering female photographer, revolutionized scientific illustration using a newly invented photographic technique.

Portrait of Barbara McClintock, 1947The Barbara McClintock Collection, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives

Before the Genes Jumped, 1930s

By Sabrina Richards | January 1, 2012

How Nobel Laureate Barbara McClintock nearly gave up genetics for meteorology

An interpretive drawing of William Buckland crawling into Kirkdale Cave where he found extinct cave hyenas and the remains of their prey. Drawn by Buckland’s friend William Conybeare.

The Hyena Den, discovered 1821

By Jef Akst | December 1, 2011

A 19th century geologist and minister investigates a prehistoric cave full of hyena bones in his native England.

Walter Bodmer, along with Walter Gilbert, a 1980 Nobel laureate in chemistry and a Harvard University professor, wrote opinions advocating for a project to sequence the human genome in the premier issue of The Scientist magazine, published October 20, 1986. See bigger version.

The Human Genome Project,
Then and Now

By Walter F. Bodmer | October 1, 2011

An early advocate of the sequencing of the human genome reflects on his own predictions from 1986.

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The Scientist, Inaugural Issue, 1986

By Jef Akst | October 1, 2011

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

This illustration, from Galvani’s De Viribus Electricitatis in Motu Musculari, published in 1791, shows the experimental setup Galvani used to study the effect of atmospheric electricity on dead frogs.

Animal Electricity, circa 1781

By Jessica P. Johnson | August 31, 2011

How an Italian scientist doing Frankenstein-like experiments on dead frogs discovered that the body is powered by electrical impulses.

Ernst Haeckel’s Pedigree of Man, or Stammbaum des Menschen, as it appeared in The Evolution of Man, an 1897 translation of Anthropogenie, oder Entwickelungsgeschicte des Menschen, published in Germany in 1874.

Ernst Haeckel’s Pedigree of Man, 1874

By Hannah Waters | August 1, 2011

The 19th century naturalist crafted numerous real evolutionary trees that organized the overwhelming number of species on Earth.