History
The Birth of Genius
Leonardo da Vinci, polymath and victim of the vagaries of science funding, was born on this day
The Bra-and-Girdle Maker That Fashioned the Impossible for NASA
Crafting a spacesuit demanded perfection from seamstresses to gluers to engineers — every stitch could mean life or death
The Creator of the SAT Was an Infamous Eugenicist
The racist origin story of the most common college entrance exam
A Very Unscientific History of Scientific Hoaxes
The past, present, and future of academic deception
The Martyrs, Hunters, and Nature Lovers Who Came Together to Save Birds
An interview with James McCommons, author of The Feather Wars, about the past and future of bird conservation
How Three Students Designed an Atomic Bomb
A top-secret 1960s project tasked physics postdocs with building The Bomb
The Thrill of Science in 2042
A science historian explains how science got its groove back. A fictional dispatch from the future.
How Energy Politics Played Out on the White House Roof
The quick removal of Jimmy Carter’s futuristic solar panels echoes more recent feuds over renewables
The Missing Pieces of the Donner Party Narrative
People have only recently included Indigenous voices in the story
Space Age Technology Reveals Secrets of Bronze Age Sword
Scientists in Berlin performed a battery of tests on a 3,400-year-old weapon
The Retiree Who Inspired the Wright Brothers to Take Flight
Octave Chanute’s engineering prowess laid the foundation for powered planes
The Mountain Man Who Measured the Sky’s Brilliance
Pioneering alpinist and scientist Horace Bénédict de Saussure brought us a curious relic to capture the blues above us
