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  Search our site allows searching of the website of the Office of NIH History and Stetten Museum.
  Search our collections uses our new database to search photographs, museum objects, manuscript collections and books.

Marshall Nirenberg: Discovering the Genetic Code
This exhibit explores the Nobel Prize-winning work of NHLBI's Marshall Nirenberg, who cracked the genetic code in the early 1960s with the help of his NIH colleagues.

The Stadtman Way
This exhibit highlights the work of Drs. Thressa and Earl Stadtman, distinguished biochemists who have worked at the National Institutes of Health since 1950.

A History of the Pregnancy Test Kit
This web site looks at the history of the home pregnancy test and examines its place in our culture. Research that led to a sensitive, accurate pregnancy test was done by scientists in the Reproductive Research Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at NIH.

Human Genetics and Medical Research
Cracking the genetic code allowed us to study diseases at the molecular level, which is increasing our knowledge of potential preventions and treatments for diseases. Indeed, genetics has become central to the science of medicine. This exhibit asks many questions: How do genes cause disease? Can gene therapy work? How do we manipulate genes and should we?

Martin Rodbell: How Cells Respond to Signals
This exhibit explains the work of Martin Rodbell and his colleagues in discovering a mechanism that transformed our understanding of how cells respond to signals. In a series of pioneering experiments conducted here at the NIH, Rodbell studied hormones--substances which have specific effects on cells' activity. He could not have predicted the broad impact his findings would have.

The AMINCO-Bowman Spectrophotofluorometer
In the 1950s the NIH's Dr. Robert Bowman developed a sensitive instrument-called the spectrophotofluorometer, or “SPF”-that allowed scientists to use fluorescence as a way to identify and measure tiny amounts of substances in the body. This exhibit explores the instrument and its use in scientific studies ranging from anti-depressant medication to AIDS research and the Human Genome Project.

Rewriting the Book of Nature: Charles Darwin and the Rise of Evolutionary Theory
The life of Charles Darwin, and the fortunes of the theory of evolution by natural selection.

Converging Pathways of Pain Research at NIDCR
The story of how pain research evolved at NIDCR.

Roscoe Brady & Gaucher Disease
How medical researchers study diseases, by answering three basic questions. Focuses on Dr. Roscoe Brady's team at NINDS and their work with Gaucher disease.

Joseph Goldberger & the War on Pellagra
NIH physician Dr. Joseph Goldberger's discovery of the cause for pellagra, a disease, resulting from a diet deficient in vitamin B, that killed many poor Southerners in the early part of the 20th century.

Synthetic Opiates and Opioids
The quest for new painkillers and a synthetic source for morphine and codeine

The Laboratory Instrument Computer
The story of one of the first supercomputers from its conception in MIT's Lincoln Laboratory, through its use in biomedical research laboratories

Howard Bartner & 40 Years of Medical Illustration
Howard Bartner, an NIH medical illustrator, devoted 40 years to portraying human anatomy in his drawings.

Equal Arm Analytical Balances
Instruments, designed on a “seesaw” principle, to measure mass precisely by placing a sample in one pan and known weight in an opposing pan until an equilibrium was established.

Medical Posters
A collection of 24 medical posters drawn by artists at the NIH, representing topics from arthritis to women's health.

Medical Instruments
A cross section of precision instruments from the in-house research program at NIH, used between 1945 and 1965.