Life Sciences

Sir Thomas Browne was born in London on October 19, 1605, educated at Winchester and Oxford, and trained for the practise of medicine. After traveling on the Continent he finally settled as a physician in Norwich, and enjoyed a distinguished professional reputation. Later he became equally famous as a scholar and antiquary, and was knighted by Charles II on the occasion of the King's visit to Norwich in 1671. In 1641 he married, and he was survived by four of his ten children. He died on his seventy-seventh birthday.

From the ancient classics to the masterpieces of the 20th century, the Great Books are all the introduction you’ll ever need to the ideas, stories and discoveries that have shaped modern civilization.

The Nobel Prize is the first international award given yearly since 1901 for achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace. The prize consists of a medal, a personal diploma, and a prize amount.

The first "pulp magazine" has not actually been identified per se, but it probably appeared in the 1880's. Some authorities claim that the first all fiction issue of The Argosy (Oct. 1896) is the first "pulp magazine," but there are hundreds of true pulp magazines that are not "all fiction". Why quibble? In April, 1894, The Argosy became a monthly magazine in the traditional 7 x 10 inch format, and it's a convenient place to start. There were some Horatio Alger stories in these early issues, and even a science fiction serial: A. Laurie's "A Month in the Moon", Feb.- Aug, 1897. Pulpdom's purpose is to explore and expose the pulp magazine phenomenom, so this is just the begining.

The EUL Manuscript Collection is among the foremost of such collections in Scotland and is of national and international significance. It includes valuable source material on a large range of subjects, such as mediaeval through to modern literature, Scottish history, African missions, covering a wide chronological span that reflects the important role of this University and its Library in Scottish society during the time the University and Library were begun in 1583 and 1580 respectively.

The Hunterian collections are extensive and wide-ranging with just over one million objects. The recently published Scottish National Audit of all museum collections ranked the Hunterian as third in Scotland in terms of overall collection size, and in terms of the proportion of our collections which are of international importance. For a summary of individual collections, please choose from the list at the side.

Welcome to The Science Behind The X-Files! As you can see, this page has undergone some serious restructuring, but it's still committed to bringing you all the cool science facts that can be found in each episode of The X-Files.
Just choose an episode at right to look at its science file. To make things easier, I've added a text-only version of each file, just in case you want to print it out. I've also cleaned out a bunch of dead links from the files and tried to reduce the load time of each page. (Aren't you lucky?)

Civilizations as early as the Chaldean in southwestern Asia were among the first to have a belief in plants that never existed, and the practice continued well beyond the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Originally, this was done to disperse the mystery surrounding certain seemingly-miraculous events and to symbolically embody in a physical form various aspects - wealth, happiness, fertility, illness, etc. Later, people began to invent "nonsense plants" to enliven the tale of an otherwise boring voyage, and with the invention of the printed book, to entertain readers who loved to believe in such fables. Even spices, which were an important element of Medieval food, commerce, trade, & society, were given exotic & incredible backgrounds. The fabulous trees and fauna discussed here are just a small example of the many fantastic plants our medieval forebears believed in. As will be evident, trees, because of their longevity and immensity, have been foremost among the plants considered sacred, mystic, or mythical.

Interesting WWW Sites about Science
Science: News, History and Museums

Collections
The Field Museum was founded to house the biological and anthropological collections assembled for the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. These objects form the core of the Museum's collections which have grown through world-wide expeditions, exchange, purchase, and gifts to more than twenty million specimens. The collections form the foundation of the Museum's exhibition, research and education programs, which are further informed by a world-class natural history library of more than 250,000 volumes.