For science — as for politics and economics — 2011 was a year of upheaval, the effects of which will reverberate for decades.

The United States lost three venerable symbols of its scientific might: the space-shuttle programme, the Tevatron particle collider and blockbuster profits from the world's best-selling drug all came to an end.

But the year also saw stirrings of science's future: hopes that research might blossom following the Arab Spring; cheap vaccines rolling out in Africa; and the first fruits of genome sequencing being used in the clinic.

All this was overshadowed by the triple trauma of Japan's devastating earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown, and a continual chipping away at science funding as nations struggled with the financial crisis.

The stem-cell roller coaster

It has been an emotional year for advocates and opponents of embryonic stem (ES) cell research...

Puzzling over particles

What a cliff-hanger...

Battered reputations

No year is free of scientific scandal, but 2011 saw some particularly high-profile cases...

Arab awakening

Elated scientists joined jubilant revellers throughout Egypt on 11 February, when Hosni Mubarak resigned after 30 years as the nation's president...

A drying drug pipeline

The world's best-selling drug, Lipitor (atorvastatin), racked up more than US$100 billion in sales for its maker Pfizer over the past 14 years...

Scientists under pressure

In a year in which some scientific societies came under fire for shifting their human-rights work away from traditional campaigning on behalf of oppressed researchers, there were many examples of scientists who needed that support...

Brave new worlds

After 30 years and 135 missions, the space-shuttle era is over...

Sequencing: Cheap as chips

Care for a fish-and-chip genome?

Even Japan, the nation best prepared for a tsunami, was overwhelmed by the monster waves that struck the coast of Sendai on 11 March, following a magnitude-9.0 earthquake...

Living in the Anthropocene

The world's population passed 7 billion this year, and our carbon emissions carried on rising too. Little wonder that geologists gathered in May to discuss whether human impact on the planet deserved recognition through the declaration of a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene...