The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology ( AJOG ) will begin a new series of articles featuring “giants” in our discipline. Many times, we wished that we could have spoken with a person who made a seminal contribution that changed the practice of obstetrics and gynecology or the understanding of disease in our field, to reconstruct the thought process that led to a particular discovery. Sadly, many stories of discovery were lost over time; for example, to learn from George Papanicolaou and Andrew Marchetti how they came to understand the value of cytology in the diagnosis of uterine cancer, and what motivated them to pursue this line of investigation, would have been enlightening and inspiring.

In this series, we aim to recognize individuals who have changed the practice of medicine and to learn about their journeys of discovery, inspiration, and challenge. We also hope to learn how these giants envision the future of our discipline.

With each article, we will present a profile of the individual along with a video recording of a conversation posted on the World Wide Web site of AJOG .

Other disciplines have their own “Giants” series, as they have been featured in the Journal of Clinical Investigation (“Giants in Medicine”) and Chest (“Giants in Chest Medicine“) . Both have been very well-received.

We believe there are many obstetricians and gynecologists deserving of recognition–our professional societies have a venue to recognize them; however, our focus will be on the stories behind the headlines.