Dolly Parton on stage at The Dominion Theatre in London, United Kingdom, in 1983.Credit: Pete Still/Redferns via GettyLegendary country musician Dolly Parton has died at the age of 80 after “a brief battle with cancer”, her representatives said in a statement on 25 August.Parton, who was born into a poor farming family in Locust Ridge, Tennessee, in 1946, became a singer and performer during her early childhood, and earned a total of 10 Grammys during her career. But she also left a mark on science, public health and education. She donated to medical centres, vaccine research, and disaster relief, and had one of the most famous animals in science named after her: Dolly, the cloned sheep. Scientists around the world paid tribute to Parton following the news of her death.“Dolly provided the soundtrack for my PhD, and is gratefully acknowledged in my thesis as a key contributor! She was the very best of us: we should all strive to be more like Dolly (rhinestones and all)”, Catherine Heymans, Astronomer Royal for Scotland, told Nature by e-mail. “Today is a sad day as we mourn an exceptional artist, a true champion of kindness, and ambassador of science and public health,” wrote Tedros Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, on the social media platform X. Others reflected on the way Parton wielded her fame for good. “Few celebrities use their influence to support science so meaningfully,” wrote Gaurav Kansagara, a cell biologist at the Institute for Stem Cell Science and Regenerative Medicine in Bangalore, India, on Bluesky. Here are five ways that Dolly Parton contributed to science.Research funder One of Parton’s longest-lasting influences on science is her part in creating one of the major vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. In March 2020, Parton gave US$1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), in Nashville, Tennessee, which created the Dolly Parton COVID-19 Research Fund.According to Mark Denison, a Vanderbilt paediatrician and researcher in infectious diseases, the money helped to fund the “critical” early stages of research into a then experimental mRNA vaccine eventually produced by Moderna, a biotechnology firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The fund is acknowledged in the first published report of a phase I trial of the vaccine, which appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine in July 20201. At least 37 research papers credit the Dolly Parton COVID-19 Research Fund with support, according to a Nature analysis of the Dimensions database (part of Digital Science, a firm operated by the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, which has a share in Nature’s publisher, Springer Nature). Music is not a universal language — but it can bring us together when words failEncouraging vaccinations Parton’s advocacy for COVID vaccines didn’t stop at funding research. In March 2021, Parton filmed herself receiving a dose at VUMC, encouraging others to do the same.“I’m old enough to get it, and I’m smart enough to get it”, quipped Parton, before reworking her hit song ‘Jolene’ to include the words, “vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, I’m begging of you please don’t hesitate”. Neil Stone, a clinician and infectious disease researcher at University College London, reposted the video on X after her death, calling Parton a “legend”. “She was a great philanthropist, donating a million dollars to Covid vaccine research which went on to save many lives,” he wrote.Parton getting immunized publicly provided “a ‘shot of hope’, reassuring many that getting the vaccine was best for them and their families,” says William Shaffner, a researcher in preventive medicine at VUMC. “Dolly Parton created a connection between public health and the average person.”Public health Parton’s philanthropy extended to a wealth of different causes. In 1994, she contributed a version of the song You Gotta Be My Baby to a charity album Red Hot + Country that was produced to raise money to fight HIV/AIDS. In her home county of Sevier, Tennessee, she raised $500,000 at a benefit concert for LeConte Medical Center, which opened in 2010 with a dedicated Dolly Parton Center for Women’s Services. She also donated $1 million to paediatric infectious disease research at Vanderbilt, and in February 2026, East Tennessee Children’s Hospital in Knoxville was renamed Dolly Parton Children’s Hospital after an undisclosed “generational” gift, funding a new paediatric residency programme, rural telehealth and specialist recruitment. “Dolly Parton *chose* not to be a billionaire,” wrote Carlie Trott, a social psychologist at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio, on Bluesky. “She never forgot what it means to be in need.”Dolly the sheep was named after Dolly Parton as a reference to the mammary gland cells from which the sheep was cloned, but the choice drew criticism for objectifying Parton.Credit: Mathieu Polak/Sygma/Sygma via GettyDolly the muse The country singer — who held an honorary doctorate from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville — became an inspiration across the research world. Dolly the sheep, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell, was named after her.