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Science

35 Who Made a Difference: Mark Plotkin

An ethnobotanist takes up the cause of rain forest conservation

35 Who Made a Difference: Douglas Owsley

Dead people tell no tales—but their bones do, when he examines them

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35 Who Made a Difference: Janis Carter

The primate who taught other primates how to survive in the wild

35 Who Made a Difference: James Watson

After DNA, what could he possibly do for an encore?

35 Who Made a Difference: John Dobson

Come one, come all. Share the sky with the father of sidewalk astronomy

Dr. Henderson a week after he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bush

35 Who Made a Difference: D. A. Henderson

Eradicating one of history’s deadliest diseases was just the beginning

35 Who Made a Difference: Wes Jackson

In Kansas, a plant geneticist sows the seeds of sustainable agriculture

35 Who Made a Difference: Robert Langridge

His quest to peer into the essence of life no longer seems so strange

35 Who Made a Difference: Richard Leakey

The leader of the Hominid Gang asks what he can do for his continent

35 Who Made a Difference: Jane Mt. Pleasant

Iroquois tradition plus Western science equals a more sustainable future

On June 18, 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman in space as a mission specialist on STS-7.

35 Who Made a Difference: Sally Ride

A generation later, the first female astronaut is still on a mission

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35 Who Made a Difference: Clyde Roper

He’s spent his life chasing a sea monster that’s never been taken alive

35 Who Made a Difference: Daphne Sheldrick

When feelings of kinship transcend the species boundary

35 Who Made a Difference: Edward O. Wilson

Vindicated for his controversial sociobiology? Yes. Satisfied? Not yet

Raymond Tritt, 52, dresses a fallen bull on the spring caribou hunt. Like virtually every Gwich'in man, he still remembers every detail of his first successful hunt, four decades later. The 100,000-plus caribou of the Porcupine River herd are a focal point for the Gwich'in people: they are a main source of sustenance as well as the key element in the group's rituals, dances and stories. "If we lose the caribou," says a tribal elder, "we lose our way of life."

ANWR: The Great Divide

The renewed debate over drilling for oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge hits home for the two Native groups nearest the nature preserve

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The Dying of the Dead Sea

The ancient salt sea is the site of a looming environmental catastrophe

A giraffe in South Africa.

Hiding in Plain Sight

A veteran photographer shows the extraordinary knack that some animals have for…disappearing

Building A Better Banana

It is the world’s No. 1 fruit, now diseases threaten many varieties, prompting a search for new hybrids of the “smile of nature”

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Oh Deer!

Contraception shows promise, but other measures may be needed to lessen the toll that the deer boom is having on forests and suburbs

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Fuel for Thought

Cars that run on vegetable oil? Do-it-yourselfers and entrepreneurs alike fill ‘er up with the nation’s fastest-growing propellant

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