Facets

1899

#12286

Die Grundform des arteriellen Pulses.

"The First Mathematical Description of the Pressure-Volume Diagram "Not until 60 years after 1899 Otto Frank's mathematical formulation of the volume-pressure diagram and his concept of the mechanism of the cardiac wo…

1902

#6399

Iatromathematiker vornehmlich im 15. und 16. Jahrundert.

Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

1907

#1709

Probability: The foundation of eugenics.

1907

#13333

A new method by which sponges may be artificially reared.

In one of the first dissociation-reaggregation experiments Wilson demonstrated that mechanically dissociated sponge cells can reaggregate and self-organize to generate a whole organism. Digital facsimile from zenodo.o…

1908

#243

Mendelian proportions in a mixed population.

Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium.

1908

#244

Überden Nachweis der Vererbung beim Menschen.

Weinberg, a general practitioner and obstetrician in Stuttgart, was also a founder of population genetics. He co-discovered the Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium.

1908

#12276

Design in nature illustrated by spiral and other arrangements in the inorganic and organic kingdoms as exemplified in matter, force, life, growth, rhythms, &c., especially in crystals, plants, and animals. 3 vols.

"Illustrated by nearly two thousand figures, mostly original and from nature." Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

1909

#12426

Der Lymphozyt als gemeinsame Stammzelle der verschiedenen Blutelemente in der embryonalen Entwicklung und im postfetalen Leben der Säugetiere.

Maximow developed and introduced a unitarian theory of hematopoiesis, a theory upon which the modern concept of blood cells' origin and differentiation is based. He introduced the term "stem cell." Translated into Eng…

1912

#7482

The depths of the ocean. A general account of the modern science of oceanography based largely on the scientific researches of the Norwegian Steamer Michael Sars in the North Atlantic.

Digital facsimile from the Biodiversity Heritage Library, Internet Archive at this link.

1914

#1711

On the handicapping of the first-born.

1916

#14094

The differentiation of cells as a criterion for cell identification, considered in relation to the small cortical cells of the thymus.

First use of the term "stem cells" in English. Digital facsimile from rupress.org at this link.

1917

#6972

On growth and form.

Thompson's description of the mathematical beauty of nature eventually inspired others, such as Alan Turing, to develop the scientific explanation of morphogenesis, the process by which patterns are formed in plants a…

1918

#248

The correlation between relatives on the supposition of Mendelian inheritance.

"Fisher put forward a genetics conceptual model that shows that continuous variation amongst phenotypic traits could be the result of Mendelian inheritance. The paper also contains the first use of the statistical ter…

1924

#907.1

Ergebniss einer biostatischen zusammenfassenden Betrachtung über die erblichen Blutstrukturen des Menschen.

Bernstein, a mathematician, determined the correct blood group inheritance pattern of multiple alleles at one locus through statistical analysis.

1926

#145.64

Variazioni e fluttuazioni del numero d’individui in specie animali conviventi.

The mathematician Volterra created the basic equations for two species interactions. Abridged English translation as appendix to R. Chapman, Animal ecology, New York, 1931.

1930

#253

The genetical theory of natural selection.

The first coherent general algebraic analysis of Mendelian population behavior. The work contains Fisher’s rigorous development of his “fundamental theorem of natural selection”–”the rate of increase in fitness of any…

1931

#253.1

Evolution in Mendelian populations.

First detailed presentation of Wright’s quantitative theory of the effects of mutation, migration, selection, and population size on changes in gene frequencies in populations. Digital facsimile from Genetics.org at t…

1932

#1715

Contributions to the history of statistics.

1932

#254

The causes of evolution.

Haldane’s summary of his mathematical theory of natural selection. The detailed mathematical theory appeared as Mathematical theory of natural and artificial selection, first published (Pt. I) in Trans. Camb. philos. …

1935

#4400.5

Der Schenkelhalsbruch, Ein mechanische Problem.

Pioneering study of the biomechanics of the hip joint.

1939

#3098

Studies on leukemia with the aid of radioactive phosphorus.

Therapeutic use of radioactive isotopes for the treatment of leukemia. John H. Lawrence was the brother of Ernest Orlando Lawrence, inventor of the cyclotron; John Lawrence also worked at the Lawrence Berkeley Nationa…

1940

#9483

A preliminary report on the use of fast neutrons in the treatment of malignant disease.

First report on the introduction of neutron therapy for cancer. See Hans Svensson & Torsten Landberg, "Neutron therapy--the historical background," Acta Oncologica, 33:3 (1984) 227-231. In 1938 Stone began clinical tr…

1942

#2700.01

Metabolic studies on neoplasm of bone with the aid of radioactive strontium.

Radioisotopic bone scanning. With B. Low-Beer, H. Friedell, and J. Lawrence.

1943

#7357

A logical calculus of the ideas immanent in nervous activity.

This paper described the McCulloch-Pitts neuron, the first mathematical model of a neural network. Digital text available at this link.

1944 –1960

#11603

Medical physics. Edited by Otto Glasser. 3 vols.

This nearly 4000 page work in three unusually thick volumes, written by hundreds of authors, was an encyclopedia of medical physics for its time.

1945

#9891

On the use of matrices in certain population mathematics.

"... the Leslie matrix is a discrete, age-structured model of population growth that is very popular in population ecology.... The Leslie matrix (also called the Leslie model) is one of the most well known ways to des…

1946

#3106

Leukaemia treated with urethane compared with deep x-ray therapy.

Urethane in treatment of leukemia. With A. Haddow, I. Ap Thomas, and J. M. Watkinson.

1948

#1716

Medical statistics from Graunt to Farr.

FitzPatrick Lectures, 1941 and 1943.

1948

#4991.1

Cybernetics: or control and communication in the animal and the machine.

Foundation of "the science of control and communication theory, named ‘cybernetics’ by Wiener, from the Greek word ‘kubernetes’ or steersman. Automation, information feedback, regulators in engineering and biology, an…

1949

#7992

The Army Medical Library research project at the Welch Medical Library.

One of the first reports on one of the earliest projects in automating information retrieval, the expression for which was coined by Calvin Mooers the following year. At this early date electronic computers were not y…

1949

#12635

X-ray crystallographic investigation of the structure of penicillin. IN: Clarke, Johnson, Robinson (eds.) Chemistry of penicillin (1949) 310-67.

Hodgkin and colleagues, including biochemist Barbara Low, solved the structure of penicillin in 1945, demonstrating, contrary to scientific opinion at the time, that it contains a β-lactam ring. The discovery was orig…

1949

#14289

The mind of mechanical man.

Jefferson’s paper on the differences between electronic computers and the human brain inspired Alan Turing to respond with his famous paper, “Computing machinery and intelligence” (1950), which introduced the “Turing …

1951 –1952

#6910

The computation of Fourier syntheses with a digital electronic calculating machine.

The first paper published in a scientific journal on the application of an electronic computer to computational biology. At the second English computer conference held in Manchester from July 9-12, 1951 computer scien…

1953

#7993

The Welch Medical Library indexing project.

A progress report on this pioneering information retrieval project. Digital facsimile from PubMedCentral at this link.

1953

#14290

Switching systems as mechanized brains.

Written in the earliest days of automatic switching systems when few electronic computers existed, Meszar's paper raised the question of whether certain aspects of human thought are computable and others are not. Mesz…

1958

#6911

A three-dimensional model of the myoglobin molecule obtained by x-ray analysis.

Initial paper on the first solution of the three-dimensional molecular structure of a protein. Computing the molecular structure in 3 dimensions was possible through the use of the Cambridge EDSAC stored-program elect…

1959

#6908

Reasoning foundations of medical diagnosis.

The beginning of the development of clinical decision support systems (CDSS) — interactive computer programs, or expert systems, designed to assist physicians and other health professionals with decision making tasks,…

1959

#11560

Digital recording of electrocardiographic data for analysis by a digital computer.

This is probably the earliest paper on the use of computers to analyze electrocardiograms. The abstract: "A corrected orthogonal 3-lead system has been used to record electrocardiograms directly from patients at Veter…

1959

#12655

Programs with Common Sense. IN: Mechanisation of thought processes, Proceedings of the Symposium of the National Physics Laboratory, pages 77-84.

"Programs with Common Sense was probably the first paper on logical AI, i.e. AI in which logic is the method of representing information in computer memory and not just the subject matter of the program. The paper was…

1959

#13334

Transfusions et greffes de moelle osseuse homologue chez des humains irradiés a haute dos accidentellement.

Order of authorship in the original publication: Mathé, Jammet, Pendic et al. Mathé performed the first bone marrow graft between unrelated donors and hosts in order to save six Yugoslavian nuclear researchers who had…

1960

#6912

Structure of myoglobin: A three-dimensional Fourier synthesis at 2 Å resolution.

Kendrew's second paper reporting the first solution of the three-dimensional molecular structure of a protein, for which he shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in chemistry with Max Perutz, who solved the structure of the rel…

1960

#12654

Recursive functions of symbolic expressions and their computation by machine, Part 1.

The original paper on LISP, the first programming language designed for symbolic computation, which made the development of artificial intelligence programming possible. Part 2 was never published. Digital text from j…

1961

#13057

Bionics Symposium. Living prototypes-the key to new technology. Wadd Technical Report 60-600. Edited by Joan C. Robinette.

1962

#256.12

Adult frogs derived from the nuclei of single somatic cells.

Demonstration that somatic and germinal nuclei are genetically equivalent. Using somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), Gurdon (Nobel Prize 2012) transplanted cell nuclei from mature intestinal tadpole cells into enucl…

1962

#8484

Data acquisition and processing in biology and medicine. Proceedings of the 1961 Rochester conference. Edited by Kurt Enslein.

Records of the first conference on "biomedical data processing" held in a medical school in the United States.

1963

#7947

The MEDLARS story at the National Library of Medicine.

Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

1963

#8149

Representation of a Function by its Line Integrals, with Some Radiological Applications.

Cormack showed that changes in tissue density could be computed from x-ray data. Because of limitations in computing power no machine was constructed during the 1960s. Cormack's papers generated little interest until …

1963

#12427

Cytological demonstration of the clonal nature of spleen colonies derived from transplanted mouse marrow cells.

McCulloch and Till discovered the blood-forming stem cell, the hematopoietic stem cell (HSC), through their pioneering work in mice. McCulloch and Till began a series of experiments in which bone marrow cells were inj…

1963

#12428

The distribution of colony-forming cells among spleen colonies.

Evidence that stem cells are capable of self-renewal. (Order of authorship in the original publication: Siminovitch, McCullch, Till). Digital facsimile from tspace.library.utoronto.ca at this link.

1964

#8174

HPP-64-1 DENDRAL-64-A system for computer construction, enumeration and notation of organic molecules as three structures and cyclic graphs. Interim report to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, December 15, (1964).

DENDRAL is considered the first expert system because it automated the decision-making process and problem-solving behavior of organic chemists. The project consisted of research on two main programs, Heuristic Dendra…