Category Archives: Science and Society

Fernando Bejarano Last year, gender inequality in science hit the headlines of numerous major scientific journals. Several remarks from notable scientists about their thoughts on women working in science brought up again the dearth of women in STEM (science, technology, … Continue reading →

Part XXII: Roderick MacKinnon, 2003 Prize in Chemistry Joseph Luna In the early 1950s, two English physiologists named Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley wrote a five-part magnum opus of papers formally describing the electrochemical basis of action potentials, those short … Continue reading →

Juliette Wipf Over the last decade, nationalist and anti-immigration parties have gained voters throughout Europe (Front National, Golden Dawn, Alternative für Deutschland, Lega Nord, and many more). Brexit is not the first case where citizens have decided in favor of … Continue reading →

Part XXI: Paul Nurse, 2001 Prize in Physiology or Medicine Joseph Luna All cells, in the end, are copies of copies. But unlike the loss of quality in the Xerox sense of making a copy, a cell needs to be … Continue reading →

Johannes Buheitel “Cool” and “Awesome” are just two of many joyous exclamations I hear while I am trying to squeeze through the crowd of children, parents and other interested individuals filling up the NYU Kimmel Center to the brim. On … Continue reading →

Aileen Marshall What were your science laboratory classes like when you were in grade school or high school? Did you ever get a chance to use a fluorescence microscope? Or sequence DNA? I never did. What if you had never … Continue reading →

By Guadalupe Astorga Last January 11, a human clinical trial in phase I caused brain death in one healthy volunteer, while five others were hospitalized. Unfortunately, this is not the only case where healthy volunteers have died or been severely … Continue reading →

Part XIX: Günter Blobel, 1999 Prize in Physiology or Medicine By Joseph Luna Let’s start with a fantastical scene: picture a band of Neolithic humans in a hot air balloon overlooking modern New York City. What would they see and … Continue reading →

By Aileen Marshall Have you heard of the Lowline? No? Well maybe because it doesn’t fully exist yet. And no, it’s not under the Highline, although its name was inspired by it. It will be an underground park in an … Continue reading →

Part XVIII: Robert Bruce Merrifield, 1984 Prize in Chemistry By Joseph Luna By the time Bruce Merrifield sat down to write in his lab notebook in May 1959, a scientific puzzle had been twirling in his head for quite some … Continue reading →

By Susan Russo There is a wealth of enjoyment in exploring Nobel Prize information online. There are videos, such as a documentary of the four 2012 Laureates’ discoveries in medical research; Mother Teresa’s and Elie Wiesel’s speeches after their awards … Continue reading →

By Susan Russo In 1913, the Rockefeller Institute appointed its first woman researcher, Louise Pearce, M.D., who worked as an assistant to Simon Flexner. Pearce was promoted to Associate Member in 1923, and continued in this position until 1951, when … Continue reading →

Part XVII: Torsten Wiesel, 1981 Prize in Physiology or Medicine. By Joseph Luna In the late 1950’s, two scientists sat with a cat in a darkened room and flicked on a projector screen. For this particular movie night with kitty, … Continue reading →

By Aileen Marshall March 14 through the 20 was National Brain Awareness Week. In honor of that, the Rockefeller University’s Science and Media Group sponsored an event called Neuroscience Night, run by the organization KnowScience. The event consisted of several … Continue reading →

By Paul Jeng Where does science live? For me these days, it’s in the fifteen open tabs lagging my browser as I switch from email to PubMed. It’s in hot coffee in the morning and red velvet seminar cookies in … Continue reading →

Part XVI: David Baltimore, 1975 Prize in Physiology or Medicine. By Joseph Luna On June 19th 1946, a captive rhesus monkey in the Mengo district near the town of Entebbe, Uganda developed unexplained hind-limb paralysis. British and American scientists, part … Continue reading →

By Sarala Kal Hillary Clinton said “he was like the worst bad date you can imagine,” and many others call him the villain of the pharmaceutical industry. Thirty-two-year-old Martin Shkreli is a Brooklyn native, whose placement in a high school … Continue reading →

Part XV: Christian de Duve, 1974 Prize in Physiology or Medicine. By Joseph Luna In his two-volume book A Guided Tour of the Living Cell, Christian de Duve vividly describes a most hostile setting, where “everywhere we look are scenes … Continue reading →