Richard A. Lockshin's 1963 PhD dissertation on cell death in insect metamorphosis was conducted under the supervision of Harvard insect physiologist Carroll M. Williams. Lockshin and Williams used this doctoral research as the basis for five articles, with the main title "Programmed Cell Death," that were published between 1964 and 1965 in the Journal of Insect Physiology. These articles examine the cytological processes, neuronal and endocrinal controls, and the influence of drugs on the mechanism of cell death observed in pupal muscle structures of the American silkmoth. Those muscle structures disappeared right after the completion of adult development. Several scientists have credited this series of articles as introducing the now standard term "programmed cell death." Among the five articles, "Endocrine Potentiation of the Breakdown of the Intersegmental Muscles of Silkmoths" (abbreviated hereafter as "Endocrine Potentiation") was published first and has been cited the most often. The article suggests that the endocrinal conditions at the beginning of the adult development are necessary, but not sufficient, for precisely scheduling three weeks later the cell death activities in the pupal intersegmental muscles of American silkmoths. The research was among the first to attempt to pinpoint the role of hormones in regulating cell death, a process integral to development.

Hans Adolf Eduard Driesch was a late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century philosopher and developmental biologist. In the spring of 1891 Driesch performed experiments using two-celled sea urchin embryos, the results of which challenged the then-accepted understanding of embryo development. Driesch showed that the cells of an early embryo, when separated, could each continue to develop into normal larval forms. This finding contrasted with Wilhelm Roux's experiments with frog eggs from which Roux concluded that embryonic cells have predetermined fates - they cannot form into one thing when separated, and a different form when left unseparated. To Roux, embryos were made up of a mosaic of cells, all of which were important and necessary for the viable embryos to form. Driesch, on the other hand, was able to show that individual cells resulting from cleavage of the fertilized egg were all able to form into viable embryos, and not just predetermined parts that Roux believed.

Ann Campbell Burke examines the development and evolution of vertebrates, in particular, turtles. Her Harvard University experiments, described in Development of the Turtle Carapace: Implications for the Evolution of a Novel Bauplan, were published in 1989. Burke used molecular techniques to investigate the developmental mechanisms responsible for the formation of the turtle shell. Burke's work with turtle embryos has provided empirical evidence for the hypothesis that the evolutionary origins of turtle morphology depend on changes in the embryonic and developmental mechanisms underpinning shell production.

In 2011, Cristian Persu, Christopher Chapple, Victor Cauni, Stefan Gutue, and Petrisor Geavlete published “Pelvic Organ Prolapse Quantification System (POP-Q) – A New Era in Pelvic Prolapse Staging,” in the Journal of Medicine and Life. In their article, the authors explain the need for a reliable diagnostic method for describing the state of a pelvic organ prolapse, or a condition that can result from weakness or damage to the muscles that support the pelvic organs, sometimes leading to bladder, bowel, and sexual dysfunction. Persu and colleagues describe a previous diagnostic method, the Baden-Walker Halfway Scoring System, comparing it to the newer system, the Pelvic Organ Prolapse Quantification System, referred to also as POP-Q. By examining the benefits and drawbacks of each pelvic organ prolapse measurement and diagnostic system, the authors proposed a universal acceptance of the POP-Q system, based on its accuracy and reliability.

In 1962 the journal Acta Biotheoretica published the final work of the biologist Edward Stuart Russell, a full eight years after his death. Entitled The Diversity of Animals: an Evolutionary Study, this short, unfinished manuscript on evolution received little recognition in the scientific presses despite both its technical discussion of adaptations in decapods (crabs, shrimp, etc.) and its different approach to evolutionary theory. The precise reason for this neglect is unclear. This book is a continuation of Russell's philosophical perspective, organicism, an interpretation that focuses on the organism as the primary unit of analysis for the biological sciences. Russell first argued for this position in several of his earlier works, such as The Interpretation of Development and Heredity (1930) and The Directiveness of Organic Activities (1946). What was new in The Diversity of Animals lies in Russell's orthogenetic theory of evolution. By "orthogenetic" he means evolutionary change in definite directions. The overall thesis of this work is that transformations in evolution that occur in early ontogenesis, or development, are the best explanation for most diversity in nature. The consequence of Russell's argument is that an understanding of development is fundamental to an explanation of the major transformations in the evolutionary history of life.

In November 2007, Masato Nakagawa, along with a number of other researchers including Kazutoshi Takahashi, Keisuke Okita, and Shinya Yamanaka, published "Generation of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells without Myc from Mouse and Human Fibroblasts" (abbreviated "Generation") in Nature. In "Generation," the authors point to dedifferentiation of somatic cells as an avenue for generating pluripotent stem cells useful for treating specific patients and diseases. They provide background to their research by observing that previous attempts to reprogram somatic cells to a state of greater differentiability with retroviral factors Oct3/4, Sox2, c-Myc, and Klf4 had succeeded in producing induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells that contributed to viable adult chimeras and possessed germline competency. However, as they note, the c-Myc retrovirus contributes to tumors in generated chimeras, rendering iPS cells produced with c-Myc useless for clinical applications. The authors attempt to overcome this problem by modifying the standard protocol for producing iPS cells in mice in such a way that the c-Myc retrovirus is removed. They identify problems and benefits associated with this method, but most importantly note that their method generated iPS cells that did not cause tumors in chimeric mice. Nakagawa and colleagues also report that they successfully reprogrammed adult dermal fibroblasts to return to a pluripotent state without c-Myc.

In 1991, Hugo de Garis' article "Genetic Programming: Artificial Nervous Systems, Artificial Embryos and Embryological Electronics" was published in the book Parallel Problem Solving from Nature. With this article de Garis hoped to create what he envisioned as a new branch of artificial embryology called embryonics (short term for "embryological electronics"). Embryonics is based on the idea of adapting the processes found in embryonic development to build artificial systems.

Jacques Loeb published "Mechanistic Science and Metaphysical Romance" in 1915. His goal for the article was to outline his conception of mechanistic science and its relation to other methods of inquiry. Loeb argued that mechanistic science was the foundation of knowledge and humanity's progress depended on it. Loeb's argument altered the account of science he offered in The Mechanistic Conception of Life insofar as scientists no longer aimed merely to control nature, but also to understand nature s underlying elements and their mechanical relations. Loeb relied on the results of his research into fish embryos and tropisms to bolster his argument.

From 1886 to 1889 Charles Otis Whitman was director of the Allis Lake Laboratory in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The lab was established by Edward Phelps Allis, Jr. to provide a place for biological research separate from a university setting and a place where an independent scholar like Allis himself could work. Allis had hired Whitman as an instructor to establish the lab, direct it, and lead a research program there. The lab lasted for eight years, attracted several researchers, and the papers that came out of the lab included a focus on embryology. This raised the question of where to publish the work since there were few life science journals being published in the United States, which led Whitman to propose a new journal.

Aristotle's On the Generation of Animals is referred to in Latin as De Generatione animalium. As with many of Aristotle's writings, the exact date of authorship is unknown, but it was produced in the latter part of the fourth century B.C. This book is the second recorded work on embryology that is treated as a subject of philosophy, being preceded by contributions in the Hippocratic corpus by about a century. It was, however, the first work to provide a comprehensive theory of how generation works and an exhaustive explanation of how reproduction works in a variety of different animals. As such, De Generatione was the first scientific work on embryology. Its influence on embryologists, naturalists, and philosophers in later years was profound. Among these were Hieronymus Fabricius, William Harvey, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Charles Darwin.