Today in History - November 1, 1848 - opening of the Boston Female Medical College, the first medical school for women in the world. Twelve women enroll in the first class and graduate in 1850. The Boston medical establishment’s reaction was immediately condemnatory, claiming women had insufficient stamina to deal with the tension of medical [...]

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Today in History - October 18, 1962 - Watson, Crick, and Wilkins receive Nobel Prize for the discovery of DNA as a double helix. They first proposed their model for the structure of DNA in 1953. As this model was composed of two right-handed, antiparallel, polynucleotide chains coiled around a common axis it is sometimes referred [...]

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Today in History - May 23, 1930 - U.S. Plant Patent Act of the Hawley-Smot Trariff allows plants to be patented. This new U.S. Plant Patent Act provided, for the first time, patent protection for new and distinct varieties of asexually reproduced plants. Plant breeders now had a financial incentive to perform plant breeding [...]

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Today in History – November 14, 1967 – DNA was first created in a test tube. Working with a variety of bacteria, Arthur Kornberg synthesized genetically active DNA. He used very small bacterial viruses (phages), such as the phi X174 and M13 viruses of E. coli, for his study. Their relatively comparatively [...]

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Today in History – December 2, 1982 – Dr. William C. DeVries carried out a series of five implants in Utah over the next three years using the Jarvik total artificial heart. Although the first patients did not live past a year, further patients received the artificial heart designed by Robert K. Jarvik, MD, [...]

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