Description: Cancer, James T. Patterson observed in The Dread Disease, serves as a powerful metaphor in American culture, where the malady mirrors the “manifestation of social, economic, and ideological divisions” in modern life. In the decades since publication of Patterson’s book, medical research has made great strides in methods of detection and treatment. But the challenge for science
Description: [edan-image:id=siris_arc_395101,size=300,left]When Harvard Medical School distributed these photographs of John Clavon Norman, Jr., M.D. (1930-2014) to news services in the 1960s, Dr. Norman was at an exciting stage of his career. The young physician had already made quite a journey, but there would be even more paths to blaze. He had been born in West Virginia to parents who
Description: Science Service photographs, while having good identifying information, can still be helped by the cybercommunity to fill in some of the mission information.
Description: Today’s science museums build on the efforts of biologist George Roemmert (1892-1952), whose “Microvivarium” projected images of amoebas and other microscopic creatures.
Description: For six seasons, beginning in 1984, the television series Smithsonian World opened new windows on the research and scientists at the Smithsonian Institution.
Description: Everyone loves a parade – especially one followed by a banquet. When scientists and politicians met in Washington, D.C., on November 23, 1936, to celebrate the centennial of the U.S. patent system, they listened first to a conventional program of speeches. Then, in the afternoon, Science Service director Watson Davis arranged something different: a “Research Parade” featuring
Description: Long ago and far away, before gray hairs and creaky knees, before history became my passion, I was an undergraduate physics major. Physics seemed fascinating and beautiful, if difficult. Later, after career paths led into history and science policy, I learned that physics, however elegant, did not reside in a cultural vacuum. Its people and discoveries coexisted with
Description: In a world drowning in images, where we swipe past photos of friends, relatives, and selves in mere seconds, a set of remarkable portraits taken in the 1910s and 1920s by Julian Papin Scott (1877-1961) deserve more considered attention. Sometimes, his subjects appear immersed in work, surrounded by microscopes, beakers, or stacks of books, as if unaware of the photographer.