Browse Items (76 total)

After her marriage in 1933 to Harold S. Vanderbilt (“Mike” to friends and family), Gertie sailed as one of the few women allowed on board racing J-class yachts in the 1930s. Aboard Rainbow in 1937, the couple successfully defended the America’s Cup…

Harriet Smiley was born in Vermont in 1838; her family included Revolutionary War officer Colonel John Barrett. She graduated from the Knoxville Female Academy and married William Henderson in November 1866. Harriet’s fashionable dress dates this…

The mosquito heart is a long muscular tube tethered to the dorsal cuticle (the mosquito’s back), extending the length of the abdomen. To obtain this fluorescence microphotograph, a mosquito was dissected, isolating the dorsal portion of the abdomen.…

Dr. Ernest Goodpasture was chair of pathology at Vanderbilt University from 1924-1955 and remains known for his work developing vaccines by culturing them in fertile chicken eggs. Goodpasture used so-called immortal HeLa cells as many pathologists…

The three-day battle in 1863 produced the greatest bloodshed of the Civil War. Monuments, tours, and photographs were produced rapidly to commemorate the fallen. The memorial cemetery opened in 1864. John Batchelder designed this 1892 monument and…

This image shows the central region of the Perseus cluster, which contains hundreds of galaxies, even more invisible dark matter, and is one of the most massive objects in the universe. Each orange dot in this map is a galaxy. In all, the SDSS…

Jack Corn described his work as dependent on lighting conditions: “No matter how much talent a professional photographer has, one keeper, i.e. a good photograph, per one roll of film is a good harvest.” He made these images from 1956 to 1979 in…

James H. Kirkland studied grammar and literature in Leipzig in the 1880s, part of a wave of Americans earning degrees abroad. He believed that study of bigger philosophical questions was important, not merely for career advancement, but for personal…

Edward Emerson Barnard worked in John H. Van Stavoren's Nashville photography studio as a nine-year-old. He had to keep this solar camera, designed to make life-sized enlargements on silvered paper from negatives, directed on the sun to avoid setting…

In June 1900, anti-western riots in Peking and the 54-day siege of foreign embassies by Chinese militants made headlines. In this image of the foreigners' quarter, Ketteler Street has been renamed for the murdered German Minister Clemens von…