Reflections on Papers Past is a collection of back-stories and recollections about famous scientific papers in Ecology, Evolution, Behaviour and Conservation based on interviews with their authors. To find out more about the project click here.
Full interviews with authors about the making of their papers and the papers’ fates after publication
Thematic collections of quotes showcasing human stories behind scientific papers
Scientific papers annotated with author back-stories and reflections
A library of photos and other visuals connected to the back-stories of scientific papers
Latest Posts
Revisiting Badyaev 2005
Around the early 2000s, while it was well-known that stress is a key factor in influencing the adaptive adjustments organisms make to changing environments, how exactly organisms accommodate stress-induced variation was poorly understood. In a review published in...
Revisiting Duboule & Dollé 1989
In a paper published in The EMBO Journal in 1989, Denis Duboule and Pascal Dollé characterised the structure of the HOX-5 homeogene complex in the house mouse, revealing two new genes. Through in-situ hybridisation experiments on these genes and a member of the...
Revisiting Love 2003
In the early days of evo-devo, the split between evolution and development was seen primarily as one between genetics and embryology respectively. Evo-devo, therefore, was often characterised as an attempt to bring together evolutionary theory and embryology using...
Revisiting Newman & Frisch 1979
In a paper published in Science in 1979, Stuart Newman and Harry Frisch presented a mathematical model, based on Alan Turing's reaction-diffusion idea, to explain the patterning of the skeleton during chick limb development. Newman and Frisch proposed that the...
Revisiting Kirschner & Gerhart 1998
In an article published in PNAS in 1998. Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart identified four properties of conserved cellular and developmental processes - versatile proteins, weak regulatory linkage, exploratory mechanisms, and genomic and spatial compartmentation -...
Revisiting Sommer & Sternberg 1994
In a paper published in Science in 1994, Ralf Sommer and Paul Sternberg provided evidence to suggest that the evolution of organ position in organisms involves changes in the induction and competence of cells. At the time, it was already known that vulva formation...
Revisiting Brown 1988
In a paper published in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology in 1988, Joel Brown developed a method to use a forager’s giving up density on a resource patch to understand energetic, predation and missed opportunity costs of foraging and then demonstrated its...
Revisiting Gilbert 2001
In a paper published in Developmental Biology in 2001, Scott Gilbert laid out a vision for the reintegration of developmental biology and ecology. While in its early days, developmental biology paid great attention to the environmental context, in the twentieth...