Distillations magazine

The gas mask’s grip on our collective consciousness.

Seventy years ago, a group of Philadelphia scientists and a brave 18-year-old pushed surgery to its final frontier.

Dow’s gamble on magnesium helped push the boundaries of human exploration and launched an ocean of consumer products.

Alternative currencies flourish in desperate times and situations.

A centuries-old sailor’s hack enters the ecologist’s toolkit.

A reclusive expert of 19th-century photography laid the foundation for green chemistry solutions emerging today.

How an obsession with crustaceans guided the naturalist toward his most consequential insights.

A lucky streak sends a meteorologist on the flight of a lifetime.

Gore-Tex changed the way Americans went outside.

Wicked creatures and a defiant chemist make their mark on the periodic table.

Despite a lack of evidence, many have been captivated by the electrical whiz’s most mysterious project.

How a radio pioneer transformed life at sea.

What happens when an earth-shattering discovery runs up against the scientifically impossible?

A fighter pilot’s tragic flight into a nuclear explosion leads to the discovery of two elements.

In the 1960s RCA created the world’s first liquid-crystal displays. How did the company fail to cash in on one of the modern world’s most ubiquitous technologies?

In the 1920s a pioneering journalist summoned the might of American women to revive a Nobelist’s career.

New forensics techniques are allowing researchers to solve historical mysteries based on the small traces we leave on everyday objects.

In the 1980s workers in an English peat bog started unearthing bodies, the apparent victims of violence.