Search Results
Using chemistry to put a lid on unsavory practices.
What happened to physics in Nazi Germany?
A Japanese gourmand discovers the fifth element of taste.
Fleischmann’s Yeast for Health campaign turned unappetizing blocks of fresh yeast into one of the first health-food fads by using brazen, relentless advertising marked by unverifiable claims and “scientific” language.
In the years following World War II, chemical companies sold not only products but a lifestyle.
In a time of rapid technological change and globalization, separating the fake from the real was not always easy. Sound familiar?
Can a parasite in your cat’s litter box take control of your mind?
Albert Edelfelt broke the rules when he painted his friend Louis Pasteur in the scientist’s natural element.
For more than 2,000 years human ingenuity has turned natural and synthetic poisons into weapons of war.
Designers of the 1950s took up the atom and turned it into a fashion icon.
In 1916 the United States sent its first official observer to the trenches of Europe, where he found a new kind of warfare.
During the Napoleonic Wars one man in particular kept scientific knowledge flowing between enemies.
In the early 20th century, chemists prophesied a future that seemed both surreal and somehow within reach.
The technology to scrub noxious gases from car exhausts has existed since the 1950s. Why did the U.S. government wait until the 1970s to mandate its use?
What do ancient Egyptian mummies, early modern medicines, a 19th-century philosopher, and a 21st-century chemist have in common?
Faced with political opposition to his work, the Czech chemist created the first wearable soft contact lens using a set of toys, a hot plate, and a gramophone motor.
Did alchemists disappear from history, or did they just change their coats?
How did the launch of Sputnik I in 1957 change the lives of two Americans?
Katharine Burr Blodgett was the first female scientist hired by General Electric. Her work was truly invisible, deliberately so.
The man who wanted to make the United States a healthier place and the sometimes fuzzy line between science and quackery.
How hard can it be to make a gemstone? Plenty hard. People have been trying for almost 2,000 years, but success finally beckoned in 19th-century France.
How a machine used to create atom bombs became a tool for healing.
What does a world short on phosphorous look like?
The early 20th century was an especially rich time for creating ways to process and preserve food.
Mix a 19th-century chemist with a South American roader builder. Add cows and boil.
Discover the history of the EpiPen.
During the Civil War necessity drove the North and South to develop different strategies for dealing with malaria.
Three Hungarian scientists who survived the Nazi occupation of their country and escaped Soviet oppression.
Many scientists devised periodic systems in the 1860s, but Dmitri Mendeleev is today recognized as the father of the periodic table. How did this Russian provincial come to possess one of the most famous names in science?
In the early 1950s French physician Henri Laborit experienced a moment of serendipity that would fundamentally alter the landscape of psychiatry and mental illness.