Gail Marlow Taylor began her graduate studies in history following a 25-year career in laboratory medicine. She completed her master's degree in 2008 with a thesis entitled: "Al-Razi's Book of Secrets: The Practical Laboratory in the Medieval Islamic World." This analysis, which included her English translation of the Book of Secrets, won the 2009 Outstanding Thesis Award at California State University, Fullerton. In June, 2014, she was awarded a doctorate in history at University of California, Irvine. Her dissertation analyzed the reception of New World medicinal plants in sixteenth-century