This 1964 poster featured what at that time, was CDC’s national symbol of public health, the “Wellbee”, who here was reminding the public to get a booster vaccination.

How Three Women Led the Fight against Pertussis

As whooping cough killed thousands of kids annually, a trio of public health workers were deeply involved in the production and distribution of a vaccine.
Matilda Joslyn Gage

Erasing Women from Science? There’s a Name for That

Countless women scientists have have been shunted to the footnotes, with credit for their work going to male colleagues. This is called the Matilda Effect.
Venus photographed in ultraviolet light by the Pioneer Venus Orbiter (Pioneer 12) spacecraft, Feb. 26, 1979.

Could Venus’s Hell Climate Predict Earth’s Future?

The answer will require a probe that can withstand the planet's heat and atmospheric pressure to send back good data.
Mary Fields c. 1895

How Mary Fields Became “Stagecoach Mary”

Born enslaved, she made her way to Montana and eventually became the first Black woman to deliver mail on a "star route."
Sans Dessus Dessous by Jules Verne

How Early Sci-Fi Authors Imagined Climate Change

A century before the modern “cli-fi” genre, many authors envisioned unsettling worlds shaped by man-made climate chaos.
Fuchsia

Plant of the Month: Fuchsia

Too popular for its own good? The career of a flower so powerfully beautiful, fashion would inevitably declare it over.
Swimming beaver (Castor fiber)

A Comeback for Beavers?

As two researchers found out, rewilding a species can be done in different ways, sometimes with different outcomes.
Mary Ritter Beard

Mary Beard and the Beginning of Women’s History

She was one half of a powerhouse academic couple and an influential historian in her own right. But she's still often overlooked.
Cover illustration for "Female Convict" by Vincent E. Burns. Illustration by Robert Maguire, 1952

Lesbians in Prison: The Making of a Threat

A scandal at a Massachusetts women's prison marked a change in the construction of the "dangerous" female homosexual.
Black and white of Eartha Kitt

When Eartha Kitt Condemned Poverty and War at the White House

It was supposed to be a genteel luncheon with the first lady dedicated to discussing crime policy. The chanteuse had other ideas.