The Life of Country Music Icon Dolly Parton

In 1996 and 1997, her name entered one of the decade’s biggest science stories when the world’s first cloned mammal from an adult cell was named Dolly the sheep. The name was a playful pop-culture reference to Dolly Parton.

The connection was unusual, but it showed how widely recognizable her image had become outside music and film. Her name could now appear in scientific history, children’s literacy, tourism, and country music at once, making her public identity even harder to categorize.