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In 1956, the All India Institutes of Medical Science, or AIIMS, was established thanks to the efforts of Health Minister Amrit Kaur to create a center that would serve a crucial triple purpose - not only to heal the sick, but to allow research to be carried out on the diseases unique to the Indian subcontinent, and most importantly, to train the medical personnel needed to bring a high standard of medical care to those remote regions of the nation that had effectively no mode

On April 10, 1862, Union brigadier general Quincy Gillmore asked for the surrender of the Confederate stronghold, Fort Pulaski. When they refused, he used his newly arrived rifled cannons to decimate the stone wall of the fort, causing its quick surrender, and changing the local momentum of the war in the process. One of the great unspoken consequences of this victory was that it convinced the uncle of a fourteen year old girl named Susan Ann Baker (1848-1912) to leave the pl

Two Stinsons. One named Katherine, the other named Katharine. Both pioneers in aviation, Katherine as a world-famous aviator, Katharine as an internationally respected aviation engineer, their legacies forever fated to be mingled and conflated with each other. Katherine Stinson (1891-1977), otherwise known as “The Flying Schoolgirl” or “The Queen of the Air”, is, of the two, the individual who has lived most fixedly in our memory. This is virtually unavoidable, because every

Prior to the arrival of C. Everett Koop (1916-2013) as Surgeon General of the United States in 1982, the position was a relatively low profile affair held by career officers dedicated to the task of gathering data on matters related to public health and suggesting policies to address problems uncovered thereby. In 1964, Surgeon General Luther Terry published a report on the dangers of tobacco, and before him, in 1959, Leroy Burney released an important report on environmental

Sometimes, science goes pfft. A promising line of investigation is begun, resources are marshalled, research is conducted, and at the end of it all, in spite of a mass of cleverness and a wealth of honorable intentions, what you are left with is decades of data that sum to a shrug. Results inconclusive. Better luck next life. The question, then, for us as science history enthusiasts, is what to do with the individuals who, through no fault of their ow