Michele Lyons, curator of the NIH Stetten Museum, loves learning about what has and is happening at the NIH. She'd like people to understand that history is what we are making every day and to think about how we can document the present for the future.
It’s hard to imagine that just 26 years ago, getting email capability was a big achievement, because connectivity and computers go hand in hand. In 1990, the National Institutes of Health Utility Network (NUnet) connected all 36 NIH buildings on and off campus.
Have you ever had a PET scan? (That’s short for positron emission tomography.) This computer board, called a discriminator, was one of 64 in the Neuro-PET scanner designed and built at the NIH under the direction of Dr. Giovanni De Chiro.
Like many in the second wave of women scientists at the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Margaret Kelly began as a technician and got her PhD while she was working. Kelly focused on what caused cancer and what drugs could be used to fight it.
Annaleise Knight is an active, outgoing six-year-old. In her hometown of Grayslake, Illinois, she loves riding her bike, swimming, taking ballet and tap lessons, and playing outside on the swings and trampoline with her three siblings, Nicholas, 16, Braden, 7, and Catherine, 4. Although Annaleise has an exuberant personality, she did not always have the energy and strength to do her favorite activities.
This month we’ll be looking at lesser-known early women scientists at the National Institutes of Health. They did solid work and were leaders in their field, but for some reason, they aren’t well-known.
Ernie Branson began working with his brother Bill as a trans-NIH photographer in 1987, after being at the NIH's National Eye Institute (NEI) for a few years. As a teen, Ernie was a stay-in-school intern at NIH, cleaning cages and working with animals. There he learned about photography from technician Cecil Lee.
Bill Branson has been a photographer at the National Institutes of Health since 1984, when he left the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology at Walter Reed. There, he had photographed the necropsy of the first chimpanzee in space, “Ham,” named for Hollomon Aero MED Air Base.
NIH Blood Bank nurse Peggy Wirtzek guides Clinical Center engineers carrying supplies from an emergency blood cart up 10 floors to the operating room during a power outage in March 1960.
NIH photographer Roy Perry had been a public relations photographer in New York City—a training experience that no doubt helped him when staging science photos.
This page was last updated on Thursday, March 30, 2023
