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Rapid Detection: Millicent “Mimi” Goldschimdt and the Probing of the Microbial World
“Even though she’ll be a spinster, she’ll be able to support herself.” These lines, uttered in 1948, were the gateway to a professional...
Dale DeBakcsy
Mar 14
26 views


A Raptor Story: Jadn Soper and the New Generation in Predator Conservation Efforts.
There is something instantly mesmerizing about looking into the face of a raptor, a wordless communication between two species which are...
Dale DeBakcsy
Feb 6
105 views


Achtung, Brainy: Grace Lindsay and the Mathematical Modeling of the Human Brain.
You are placed in front of a screen that is black save for one spot of red in the center, and are told to focus strictly and solely upon...
Dale DeBakcsy
Jan 25
74 views


The Ice Woman: Mary Engle Pennington’s Revolutionary World of Refrigeration.
In the early 20th century, buying and consuming food of any sort in an urban center was a fraught proposition, particularly in the days...
Dale DeBakcsy
Jul 8, 2024
352 views


Sex After Sixty: The Geriatric Gynecology of Anna Kleegman Daniels.
Sex after menopause. Drug addiction. Abortion. In the early to mid-twentieth century, to be seen as casting an understanding eye on any...
Dale DeBakcsy
Jun 10, 2024
202 views


Semi-Social: Biruté Galdikas and the Complicated Simplicity of the Bornean Orangutan.
By 1971, when a 24 year old anthropology student by the name of Biruté Galdikas set foot in the wilds of Borneo to study the largely...
Dale DeBakcsy
May 10, 2024
200 views


Emma Darwin and the Invisible Heroism of the Scientific Caretaker.
The road leading to the creation and publication of The Origin of the Species was one of the most tortuous and personally costly in the...
Dale DeBakcsy
May 2, 2024
240 views


The Last Woman Who Knew Everything: The Omnivorous Mind of Clémence Royer.
When Clémence Royer died on February 7, 1902, she took with her into oblivion perhaps the last human brain that believed in and aimed for...
Dale DeBakcsy
Apr 21, 2024
221 views


Jeanne Altmann, Baboon Moms, and the Justice League of Primatology.
It is a long standing saying* that the pantheon of primatology is essentially the Justice League of America, with Jane Goodall as...
Dale DeBakcsy
Mar 18, 2024
105 views


The Strangers Within: Lynn Margulis and the Rebirth of Endosymbiosis
In terms of cell count, ninety percent of you isn't you at all. Bacteria, though by mass they only make up about two percent of a human...
Dale DeBakcsy
Mar 5, 2024
144 views


Raising Nature Girls: How 18th Century Botanist Catharina Helena Dörrien Created Girls' Science Education.
Pondering the Enlightenment, one's thoughts tend to turn Frenchwards. The verbal barbs of Voltaire, the neuroses of Rousseau, the...
Dale DeBakcsy
Mar 1, 2024
614 views


Lead, TNT, and Rayon: Alice Hamilton's Battle Against Industrial Poisons.
The lack of regulation in American industry during the early Twentieth Century is the stuff of horrific legend - from the grotesqueries...
Dale DeBakcsy
Feb 27, 2024
293 views


Taking the Wheel: Jennifer Doudna, Emmanuelle Charpentier, and the CRISPR-Cas9 Revolution in Gene Editing.
Over the course of the last two decades, humanity has taken its first quiet steps from being the blind victims of genetic-molecular...
Dale DeBakcsy
Feb 19, 2024
168 views


The Professor and the Frogs: The Ecology and Herpetology of Margaret Stewart.
Amphibians today are experiencing a population crisis of unprecedented scale. Frogs are going extinct, according to the most...
Dale DeBakcsy
Feb 6, 2024
83 views


Anne Innis Dagg, Giraffe, and the Winding Road of the Citizen Scientist.
Before Jane and Dian, Biruté and Jeanne, there was Anne. In 1957 Anne Innis (b. 1933) became the first woman to attempt a solo animal...
Dale DeBakcsy
Jan 25, 2024
55 views


All Creatures Small: Libbie Hyman's Invertebrates.
Science is a creature of lurches and inchings, presided over by two (mostly) mutually exclusive castes. We know the lurchers well,...
Dale DeBakcsy
Dec 6, 2023
66 views


Capping the Chromosome: Elizabeth Blackburn and the Discovery of Telomerase
Telomerase is one of those enzymes which just won’t let you come to a settled opinion. When it runs wild, it promotes cancer. But it...
Dale DeBakcsy
Nov 26, 2023
313 views


Steering the Future of Women in Science: The Institutional Wizardry of Microbiologist Rita Colwell.
One of the exciting and daunting things about doing science in the Twenty-First century is the sheer number of competencies it demands. ...
Dale DeBakcsy
Nov 23, 2023
48 views


Born Not Taught: Marian Koshland and the Source of Antibody Variation.
The human body is a truly wonderful place to live, if you can fit in it. It's warm and protected and, because humans are such clever at...
Dale DeBakcsy
Oct 24, 2023
747 views


Making the Gradient: Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard and the Mysteries of Embryo Development
How is it that, starting from a single fertilized egg, employing only mechanical processes, you can form a kangaroo, a housefly, or a...
Dale DeBakcsy
Oct 20, 2023
49 views
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