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In 1983, one of the great pillars of modern physics was cemented in place when CERN announced the discovery of a group of particles that...

The last decade of Countess Melitta von Stauffenberg's life was ringed by impossible decisions, choices that you and I will never...

Last week my stepfather, a retired electrical engineer, passed away at the age of 89, and in the boxes and boxes of papers he had kept as...

In the 1750s, when France was foundering scientifically in the Cartesian shallows, it took Émilie du Châtelet’s French translation of...

Clara Barton resided on this planet for nine decades, and spent roughly seven of those locked in institutional struggles that would have...

When you picture an anthropologist, the first thing that comes to mind is probably a person in khakis sitting at the edge of a tribal...

Content Note: By the end of this article, you are not going to like Albert Einstein much.  If this is a problem for you, if part of your...

In popular mythology, the 1687 publication of Newton’s Principia was the culminating moment when one human told the world how the...

What did Ada Lovelace do? She is one of the most fetishized scientists today - at conventions when I'm taking sketch commissions she...

In a room across the hall from where I teach, a group of a dozen kids between the ages of nine and thirteen are learning how to program...

Science is a creature of lurches and inchings, presided over by two (mostly) mutually exclusive castes.  We know the lurchers well,...

Culture is not a thing. It is a negotiation, an ongoing tumult of borrowings and innovations hung upon a skeleton of previously...

Telomerase is one of those enzymes which just won’t let you come to a settled opinion. When it runs wild, it promotes cancer. But it...

We have been living without the menace of Scarlet Fever for a solid century now, and in that time it has devolved from a creature of...

One of the exciting and daunting things about doing science in the Twenty-First century is the sheer number of competencies it demands. ...

Every day, we subject our eyes to a nearly ceaseless barrage of screen-mediated experiences - phones, computers, televisions, tablets,...

Carbon. Its astounding versatility is matched only by our total and historic complacency in the face of its wonders. “Carbon? Whatever...

The life of Russian psychologist Sabina Spielrein (1885-1942) began in emotional and physical abuse, and ended with the murder of herself...

To fully appreciate Lise Meitner, you have to first forget everything you learned about the atom in high school. Forget that the nucleus...

You want to see tough? Take a look at this picture of Marie Curie near life’s end. It’s not an image you see a lot, but there is no...