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.
The plaza in front of Building 1 was named for Paul G. Rogers, a Congressional representative from Florida also known as “Mr. Health.” The only outdoor honor for a lawmaker on the campus, the plaza pleased Rogers because of his interests in health and the environment.
Having loved government-issued pens for…well, many years…I was surprised to learn that they were mandated by Congress under the 1938 Wagner-O’Day Act to be bought from firms employing blind Americans.
Before flash drives, index cards provided portable information. Dr. Jack Davidson created a set about the NIH Clinical Center’s Nuclear Medicine Department (NMD). This month, we’ll be highlighting a few of the NIH Office of History's more recent accessions.
An example of preventive medicine added to the 1951 NIH Clinical Center time capsule was a vial of synthetic folic acid, a B vitamin. Folic acid had first been isolated in crystalline form in 1943, but in 1951, Dr. James Hundley wrote that the “exact chemical form in which folic acid exists as a functional unit in metabolism is still in doubt."
Only one building was restricted during the 1951 NIH open house—Building 7, specially designed for infectious disease research. Children under 16 were not admitted. And there was only one demonstration: Dr. Karl Habel of NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) showed the special procedures necessary in the collecting and handling of material for research on and vaccine development for rickettsial diseases carried by ticks. In this photo, is Dr. Habel following his own advice?
In 1951, Dr. Robert Bowman showed visitors to NIH’s Building 3 his prototype of a device that scanned wavelengths of fluorescent light emitted from various samples. Bowman’s spectrophotofluorometer, or “SPF,” allowed scientists to use fluorescence as a way to identify and measure tiny amounts of substances in the body. This scientific breakthrough is still used today.
Here’s a mystery with some history: President Harry Truman laid the cornerstone of the NIH Clinical Center on June 22, 1951. Someone removed it for construction reasons on June 14-17, 1977. Where is it now?
This page was last updated on Thursday, March 30, 2023
