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An Institute fellow sheds light on an enigmatic trio.
Hesse changed medicine and the life sciences when she introduced agar, a jelly derived from seaweed, into laboratory research.
Join us in celebrating the outstanding achievements of Purdue professor Graham Cooks, technology transfer consultant Lita Nelsen, and MIT professor Timothy Swager.
In early modern Europe, collecting was a way to press order on a world made increasingly strange.
The Soviet physical chemist discovered that a film of lubricant weakens the surfaces of materials, especially metals and rocks. This was an early example of the influence of mechanochemical effects.
We’re still scratching our heads over how the brain works.
The story of the 1975 Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA.
A biography of the fictional Elisabeth Bakker highlights the experiences of middle-class women in the history of early chemistry.
This digital exhibition explores the history of artificial grass playing surfaces and the controversies they sprout.
A recent discovery in a remote Puerto Rican cave sheds new light on the hysteria that greeted Halley’s Comet a century ago.
Award-winning historian and author Surekha Davies explores why humans make monsters and what monsters tell us about humanity.
Professor and author Beth Linker reveals the surprising origins of our concerns over poor posture.
Why do we still study the color of urine?
It’s the 80th anniversary of the Dutch Hongerwinter during World War II, which led to widespread starvation and an inadvertent breakthrough in treating deadly celiac disease.
Jacobo Isaac Ochoterena y Mendieta was a self-taught scientist who created new programs for biology education and research in 20th-century Mexico.
After 40 years of studying snakes, Karl Schmidt suffered his first bite. And when he did, he kept a gruesome diary to document the danger—right to the edge of death.
Parasites can force animals to do nefarious things by manipulating their minds—including, uncomfortably, the minds of human beings.
One of the most prolific botanists of the 20th century, Bravo-Hollis was the first woman to receive an advanced degree in biology in Mexico.
One hundred historical videos and films from the Othmer Library are now available online!
FDA scientist Frances Oldham Kelsey spared thousands of babies from deadly birth defects and revolutionized drug research. But was her legacy all good? It’s a complicated story.
A mutable chemical and our collective choices.
Learn about the multiyear effort at the American Philosophical Society to find evidence of forgotten women scientists in the APS collections.
Japanese physicist Fusa Miyake has sparked a revolution in archaeology by studying radioactive tree rings—work that also terrifies astronomers, who fear it foretells doom for our civilization.
A woman who drowned in Paris became one of the most famous faces in the world as the model for CPR dummies, saving millions of lives while remaining completely unknown.
This ExhibitLab uses the lens of science history to show how women’s healthcare products have developed over time.
How the creepy crawlies in our collections turned my “Eww” into “Wow!”
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In the early 1800s, the first Egyptian mummies in Europe served as a crucial test for evolution—a test that, according to people then, evolution flunked.
Our annual library open house in honor of National Library Week is sold out!
In the 1800s, mummies found their way into everything from fertilizer to food, and were especially prized as medicine. Mummy mania was a strange time.