Sterility

1. The process of elimination of micro-organisms, such as by chemicals, heat, irradiation or filtration. 2. The operation of making an animal incapable of producing offspring.

sterile

Biotechnology; Genetic engineering

1. Medium or object with no perceptible or viable micro-organisms. 2. Incapable of fertilizing or being infertile.

sterilizer

Military; General military

In mine warfare, a device included in mines to render the mine permanently inoperative on expiration of a pre-determined time after laying.

sterilization

Plants; Plant pathology

The total destruction of living organisms by various means, including heat, chemicals or irradiation.

Sigmund Freud

Health care; Sexual health

(1856–1939) Influential psychoanalyst who believed that we must understand human sexuality if we are to understand human nature. He understood that children have strong sexual ...

Havelock Ellis

Health care; Sexual health

(1859–1939) English author of Studies in the Psychology of Sex (1903–28). Until 1935, Ellis’s Studies, which argued that erotic dreams, foreplay, and masturbation were normal, ...

Katharine Bement Davis

Health care; Sexual health

(1860–1945) Completed the first major study on women’s sexuality, Factors in the Sex Lives of Twenty-Two Hundred Women, which was published in 1929. She gathered data for more ...

Magnus Hirschfeld

Health care; Sexual health

(1868–1935) German sexologist who founded the Institute of Sexual Science in Berlin in 1919. He studied human sexuality in order to provide counseling for sexual problems. He ...

Marie Carmichael Stopes

Health care; Sexual health

(1880–1958) Opened the first British birth control clinic in 1921. One of her books, Married Love, was declared obscene by the U. S. Customs in 1921 because it described the ...

Margaret Sanger

Health care; Sexual health

(1883–1966) Founder of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Margaret Sanger began her career as a nurse who fought to legalize birth control in order to prevent women from ...