Called, "the breakthrough in computational de novo protein design." This was the proof of concept paper that computers and AI could be used to predict protein structures accurately and much faster than with conventional cryoEM or crystallography. In 2024 Baker shared half of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Demis Hassabis and John Jumper for "revealing protein's secrets through computing and artificial intelligence."

Order of authorship in the original publication: Kuhlman, Dantas, Ireton, Varani...Baker. 

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

The authors cloned and generated the sequence of the lin-14 gene. They discovered that a
segment in lin-14 mRNA (messenger RNA), was necessary for its inhibition by lin-4.

Ruvkun and Ambros (No. 14010) then compared results and shared the sequences of lin-4 and lin-14 genes and noticed that the short lin-4 mRNA matched complementarity sequences in the critical segment of the lin-14 mRNA. Both performed further experiments showing that the lin-4 microRNA turns off the lin-14 by binding to the complementary sequences of its mRNA thus blocking the production of lin-14 protein.

Ambros and Ruvkun concurrently discovered a novel principle of gene regulation,
mediated by a previously unknown type of RNA that they named "microRNA."
Initially the scientific community considered their data a peculiarity of the C.
elegans worm and likely irrelevant to humans and other more complex animals. 

In 2024 Ruvkun and Ambros shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for "the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation."

Order authorship in the original publication: Wightman, Ha, Ruvkun.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Working with the let-7 gene, the authors led by Ruvkun showed that microRNA encoded by the let-7 gene was highly conserved, and present throughout the animal kingdom, proving that gene regulation by microRNA is universal among unicellular organisms on Earth. This paper, published seven years after the initial discovery (No. 14301) provided the evidence to convince skeptics of the existence of microRNA.

Order of authorship in the original publication: Pasquinelli, Reinhart, Slack, Ruvkun.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Abstract:
"An oral solution containing glucose, sodium chloride, sodium bicarbonate, and potassium chloride or citrate was used as maintenance therapy for acute cholera. In comparison with control patients who received only intravenous replacement of their stool losses, the patients who received the oral solution required 80% less intravenous fluids for cure. This reduction in requirements for intravenous fluids could make therapy for acute cholera in adults more widely available."

Nalin and Cash are credited with introducing Oral Hydration Therapy for cholera.

Order of authorship in the original publication: Nalin, Cash, Islam, et al, Phillips.

In 1972 Anfinsen shared half of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Stanford Moore and William H. Stein for "for his work on ribonuclease, especially concerning the connection between the amino acid sequence and biologically active conformation."  Anfinsen's discovery became known as Anfinsen's dogma.

Order of authorship in the original publication: Epstein, Goldberger, Ainfinsen.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

In 1959 Moore and Stein announced the first determination of the complete amino acid sequence of an enzyme, ribonuclease.

In 1972 Moore and Stein shared half of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Christian B. Anfinsen "for their contribution to the understanding of the connection between chemical structure and catalytic activity of the active centre of the ribonuclease molecule."

Outstanding color photographs.

Jacobs was the first woman in the Netherlands to graduate from medical school. In 1882 she founded the first birth control clinic in the Netherlands and "the first clinic in the world devoted solely to dissemtinating information on the topic" (Wikipedia). This was a popular work on woman's health illustrated with color plates with movable flaps.

See Jacobs, Memories: My life as an international leader in health, suffrage, and peace. Edited by Harriet Feinberg. Translated by Annie Wright. Historical afterward by Harriet Pass Freidenreich. Literary afterward by Harriet Feinberg. New York: Feminist Press at CUNY, 1996.

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Discovery of argon, the first discovery of an inert gas. In 1904 Ramsay was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "in recognition of his services in the discovery of the inert gaseous elements in air, and his determination of their place in the periodic system."

For the same discovery Lord Rayleigh received the 1904 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his investigations of the densities of the most important gases and for his discovery of argon in connection with these studies."

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Skou discovered that the active transport of sodium and potassium is carried out in the cell membrane by an enzyme that serves as a sodium and potassium "pump," that catalyzes ATP hydrolysis. He named the enzyme
"sodium and potassium ATPase."

In 1997 Jens Skou shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Paul D. Boyer and John E. Walker "for the first discovery of an ion-transporting enzyme, Na+, K+ -ATPase.”

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

In 1964 Townes shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Nicolay Gennadiyevich Basov and Alexandr Mihailovich Prokhorov "for fundamental work in the field of quantum electronics, which has led to the construction of oscillators and amplifiers based on the maser-laser principle."

Order of authorship in the original publication: Gordon, Zeiger, Townes.

This series of three lectures was an analytical review by Cushing of the three main categories of scientific work that he had accomplished during the previous 25 years. Remarkably, Cushing completed this review and delivered the lectures during the same year in which his biography of Osler was published. Prior Cameron lecturers included Pasteur (1889), Lister (1890), Ferrier (1891) and Horsley (1891).

(Thanks to Malcolm Kottler for this reference.)

Walker used X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of ATP synthase (ATPase or adenosine triphosphatase). In 1997 Walker shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Paul Boyer and Jens C. Skou “for their elucidation of the enzymatic mechanism underlying the synthesis of adenosine triphosphate (ATP).”

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

In 1997 Boyer shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with John Walker and Jens C. Skou “for their elucidation of the enzymatic mechanism underlying the synthesis of adenosine triphosphate (ATP).” The Nobel Prize committee stated that "In 1974 Paul Boyer presented a theory explaining how ATP synthase works. The theory was substantiated in 1994 when John Walker used X-ray crystalography to determine the structure of ATP synthase."

Regarding Boyer's discovery, see Douglas Allchin, "To err and win a Nobel Prize: Paul Boyer, ATP synthase and the emergence of bioenergetics," Journal of the History of Biology, 35, 2002, 149-172.

Boyer published his 1974 paper, and others later on the subject, as single author papers. His most comprehensive review, issued the year of the Nobel award, was "ATP synthase -- A splendid molecular machine," Ann. Rev. of Biochem., 66, 1997, 717-749.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Owen was the first anatomist, after Petrus Camper, to distinguish decisively between the chimpanzee and the orangutan. He began studying the anatomy of non-human primates in the 1830s, when the Regent’s Park Zoo in London obtained its first orangutan (1830) and chimpanzee (1835). “Because of the primitive conditions of care under which the animals were held captive, they died from a few days to a few years after entering the zoo. To Owen, the cloud of these deaths had a silver lining in that the carcasses provided him an opportunity to dissect and describe the animals. His first zoological—as distinct from medical—paper was ‘On the anatomy of the orang-outang,’ presented to the Zoological Society in 1830; and in 1835 the death of the Society’s first chimpanzee enabled Owen to start his classic series on the comparative osteology of the orang and chimpanzee . . . His work on the chimps and orangs from Regent’s Park Zoo, combined with [his later work] on the Gabon gorillas . . . made Owen one of very few European authorities on primates and the foremost authority on primate osteology” (Rupke, Richard Owen, Victorian Naturalist, pp. 260; 262).

"This letter was received for publication on the date indicated (January 28, 1941), but was voluntarily withheld from publication until the end of the war."
Seaborg and McMillan discovered element 94, which they named plutonium. In 1951 Seaborg and McMillan shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for their discoveries in the chemistry of the transuranium elements."

Order of authorship in the original publication: Seaborg, McMillan, Kennedy, Wahl.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

The first manual on hand surgery.
Digital facsimile from wellcomecollection.org at this link.

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Second edition, hugely revised, expanded, and improved. The pagination of the first edition (1819) was 456 pp. in vol. 1 and 472 pp. in vol. 2. The second edition was expanded to 728pp. in vol. 1 and 790 pp. in vol. 2.

Laennec’s invention of the stethoscope, announced in the first edition of De l’Auscultation médiate (No. 2673) provided the first adequate method for diagnosing diseases of the thorax, and represented the greatest advance in physical diagnosis between Auenbrugger’s percussion and Röntgen’s discovery of x-rays. The second edition, 1826, is even more important, since it gives not only the various physical signs elicited in the chest, but adds the pathological anatomy, diagnosis, and treatment of each disease encountered.

“In the first edition [of De l’Auscultation médiate] (1819), Laennec pursues the analytic method, giving the different signs elicited by percussion and auscultation, with the corresponding anatomic lesions . . . In the second edition (1826), the process is turned about and the method is synthetic, each disease being described in detail in respect of diagnosis, pathology, and (most intelligent) treatment, so that this edition is, in effect, the most important treatise on diseases of the thoracic organs ever written” (Garrison, History of Medicine, p. 412; emphasis ours). Some copies of the second edition were sold with colored plates at a higher price.

https://hmddirectory.nlm.nih.gov/

A world directory of history of medicine libraries edited and published online by NLM. The date this was first published is not stated. I entered it into this database in 2024 and arbitrarily assigned that date to the entry.

Abstract:
"Importance  Interest in artificial intelligence (AI) has reached an all-time high, and health care leaders across the ecosystem are faced with questions about where, when, and how to deploy AI and how to understand its risks, problems, and possibilities.
"Observations  While AI as a concept has existed since the 1950s, all AI is not the same. Capabilities and risks of various kinds of AI differ markedly, and on examination 3 epochs of AI emerge. AI 1.0 includes symbolic AI, which attempts to encode human knowledge into computational rules, as well as probabilistic models. The era of AI 2.0 began with deep learning, in which models learn from examples labeled with ground truth. This era brought about many advances both in people’s daily lives and in health care. Deep learning models are task-specific, meaning they do one thing at a time, and they primarily focus on classification and prediction. AI 3.0 is the era of foundation models and generative AI. Models in AI 3.0 have fundamentally new (and potentially transformative) capabilities, as well as new kinds of risks, such as hallucinations. These models can do many different kinds of tasks without being retrained on a new dataset. For example, a simple text instruction will change the model’s behavior. Prompts such as “Write this note for a specialist consultant” and “Write this note for the patient’s mother” will produce markedly different content.
"Conclusions and Relevance  Foundation models and generative AI represent a major revolution in AI’s capabilities, offering tremendous potential to improve care. Health care leaders are making decisions about AI today. While any heuristic omits details and loses nuance, the framework of AI 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 may be helpful to decision-makers because each epoch has fundamentally different capabilities and risks."

Order of authorship in the original publication: Howell, Corrado, DeSalvo.

“On October 16, 1846, at Massachusetts General Hospital, Warren participated in the first public demonstration of anesthesia for surgery. He was the surgeon for the first surgical patient given ether anesthesia, and William T. G. Morton was the anesthetist…. More than a year later, in November 1847, Sir James Young Simpson of Edinburgh discovered the anesthetic properties of chloroform. However, on January 28, 1848, the first fatal chloroform anesthesia was reported. Within a year, reports of more than 10 such cases appeared. As an authority on surgical anesthesia, Warren was often asked by concerned physicians about the safety of this new anesthetic. To draw his own conclusions, Warren reviewed and analyzed all of the fatal cases of chloroform anesthesia….Because of the potential hazards of chloroform, Warren proposed that the agent not be used in minor surgical cases and encouraged its substitution with chloric ether and sulfuric ether” (Sim, The Heritage of Anesthesia, pp. 85-86, 135). 

(Thanks to Malcolm Kottler for this reference.)

"For centuries, pharmacists and clinicians have relied on the traditional method of macroscopic identification to assess the quality and authenticity of medicinal materials. Macroscopic identification uses the naked senses to assess herbal quality, combining appearance, texture, aroma, and taste with traditional methods of fire and water testing. For the first time, this text brings this specialized discipline of knowledge to English readers using a concise, illustrated format that distills the experience of China’s foremost authorities in visually rich, easy-to-understand format. Chinese Medicinal Identification: An Illustrated Approach records 429 commonly used Chinese medicinal materials (including associated medicinals), using the Chinese Pharmacopoeia (2005) combined with domestic and international market investigation as a basis for determining medicinal nomenclature. For each medicinal, details are provided on nomenclature, origin, harvesting and post-harvest handling, functions and properties, macroscopic characteristics, and decoction pieces. The book can be referenced via a Chinese stroke order index, a Pinyin index, and indexes organized by Latin Pharmaceutical names and Latin binomials. This book emphasizes the experience-based differentiation of Chinese medicinal materials, which is a treasure of China’s cultural heritage that has been inherited and systematized, combining the technical terms derived from experience in differentiation with a modern scientific perspective. At the same time, the authors draw upon a foundation of years of field research and experiments related to medicinal materials, synthesizing information on trade, literature, and techniques, dissecting each detail. The book visually illustrates the art and science of macroscopic identification of medicinal materials in a way that is easy to learn, easy to remember, and easy to disseminate, supplementing the insufficient state of illustrations in the current literature" (publisher).

(Thanks to Malcolm Kottler for this reference.)

The authors determined the first high resolution structure of an ion channel, called KcsA from
the bacterium Streptomyces lividans. The structure that they revealed was perfectly adapted to allow entry of potassium ions while excluding smaller sodium ions, thus explaining the high K+ selectivity and the high transport rate for the first time.

In 2003 MacKinnon received half of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "for structural and mechanistic studies of ion channels."

Order of authorship in the original paper: Doyle, Cabral...MacKinnon.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

The authors first obtained the crystal structure of a Ca2+ - gated K+ ion channel and then deciphered how ion channels open and close, a process called "gating" in response to cues in their environment. They determined the structure of the opened state and revealed the complex molecular nature of the way gating transitions occur.
In 2003 Roderick MacKinnon shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry Peter Agre with  “for discoveries concerning channels in cell membranes."

Order of authorship in the original publication: Jiang, Lee, Chen...MacKinnon.

(Thanks for Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Using strips of corpus cavernosum tissue from 21 male volunteers, the authors showed how the interaction of nitric oxide with the musculo/vascular system of the human penile corpora cavernosa initiated and maintained a penile erection. In this paper they used a drug designated ‘M&B 22948’ which is an inhibitor of cyclic guanosine monophosphate (GMP), to show that this drug has the same vasodilatory effect that nitric oxide has after its molecular interaction with the GMP/guanylate cyclase system on the penis. They determined that this drug was a ‘phosphodiesterase-5 (PD5), inhibitor’ and in doing so, they were the very first to observe the action of a PD5 inhibitor on the erection process. The discovery was commercialized with erection drugs such as Viagra and Cialis.

Order of authorship in the original publication: Rajfer, Aronson...Ignarro.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Order of authorship in the original publication: Rabi, Zacharais,...Kusch.
Followed by:
(2) The magnetic moments of ₃Li⁶, ₃Li⁷, and ₉F¹⁹. Physical Review 53, 1938.
(3) The molecular beam resonance method for measuring nuclear magnetic moments: The magnetic moments of ₃Li⁶, ₃Li⁷, and ₉F¹⁹. Physical Review, 55, 1939, 526-535.
Discovery of Nuclear magnetic resonance, the foundation of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). For this discovery Rabi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1944.

Stilling’s great work on the pons Varolii, the structure that links the brain to the spinal cord, includes the first accurate description of the red nucleus (superior olive), a structure in the midbrain involved in motor coordination. According to Stilling’s fellow neurologist Robert Remak, Stilling’s 1846 discovery of the red nucleus “supplied the first demonstration of the connection of multipolar cells with motor fibers” (E. Clarke and L. S. Jacyna, Nineteenth-Century Origins of Neuroscientific Concepts, p. 87). Stilling’s work on the pons, with bilingual Latin and German text, was issued under the general title Disquisitiones de structura et functionibus cerebri / Untersuchungen über den Bau und die Verrichtigungen des Gehirns. It was apparently intended to serve as the first volume in a series; however, no further volumes were published.

Published as a 20-page pamphlet.

In this paper Smith invented "phage display technology," a technique where a specific protein sequence is artifically inserted into the coat protein gene of a bacteriophage, causing the protein to be expressed on the outside of the bacteriophage.  In 2018 Smith shared half of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Sir Gregory Winter  "for the phage display of peptides and antibodies."

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Working in the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge University, Winter became interested in the idea that all antibodies have the same basic structure, with only small changes making them specific for one target. In 1984 Georges J. F. Köhler and César Milstein had won the Nobel Prize for their work at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, discovering a method to isolate and reproduce individual, or monoclonal, antibodies from among the multitude of different antibody proteins that the immune system makes to seek and destroy foreign invaders attacking the body. These monoclonal antibodies had limited application in human medicine, because monoclonal antibodies are rapidly inactivated by the human immune response, which prevents them from providing long-term benefits. In 1986-1988 Winter pioneered a technique to "humanize" monoclonal antibodies,  elminating the reactions that many monoclonal antibodies caused in some patients. This achievement was the starting point of a pharmaceutical revolution for making monoclonal antibodies, using phage display of functional antibody fragments invented by George P. Smith for the selection of high affinity binders for a specific antigen. 

Prior to publication of this paper, in 1989 McCafferty, Griffiths and Winter founded Cambridge Antibody Technology Ltd to manufacture monoclonal antibodies. This was one of the early biotech companies involved in antibody engineering. One of the most successful antibody drugs developed was HUMIRA (adalimumab), which was discovered by Cambridge Antibody Technology as D2E7, and developed and marketed by Abbott Laboratories. HUMIRA, an antibody to TNF alpha, was the world's first fully human antibody. HUMIRA became the world's top selling pharmaceutical with sales of over $18Bn in 2017.

In 2018 Gregory Winter shared half of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with George P. Smith "for the phage display of peptides and antibodies."

Order of authorship of the original paper: McCafferty, Griffiths, Winter, Chiswell.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Arnold introduced a biochemical molecule manipulating technique to mimic the process of natural selection in creating new enzymes adapted to a specific catalytic reaction. She directed evolution of subtilisin E to obtain an enzyme variant which was active in a highly unnatural (denaturing) environment. In 2018 Arnold received half of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for the directed evolution of enzymes."

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

In the forward Martin D. Jenkins pointed out that while African Americans made important contributions to the natural sciences the awareness of the public and even other scientists was rather low. In the first chapter Herman R. Branson provided an overview and the challenges facing the Negro scientist, and in the chapters that followed influential black scientists described their contributions to biology, chemistry, mathematics, and physics. Branson worked with Linus Pauling on protein stricture. Montague Cobb, another contributor, was the first African American to earn a PhD in anthropology. Physicist Warren Henry, well known for his outstanding work on superconductivity, also contributed to this work.