Distillations magazine

Was Svante Arrhenius the first climate change believer?

Does history explain why today’s smart machines can seem so dumb?

A manuscript reveals the mark a mysterious American alchemist made on Isaac Newton and other early chemists.

Some of the most indestructible menswear ever made.

Smallpox, polio, and the political and scientific haggling behind two medical triumphs.

Science’s centuries-long hunt for a common language.

Take a trip down Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal with cartographer and citizen scientist Eymund Diegel.

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita displaced more than a million people in 2005, many of whom turned to trailers provided by FEMA. But it soon became apparent that these trailers were making people sick.

In the 1920s author Paul de Kruif turned science into an adventure story.

Comic books have been wrestling with the consequences of the atomic age for as long as their readers.

Before these men became successful chemists they were World War II meteorologists.

As child labor gave way to child education in the early 20th century, do-gooders sought a novel solution to juvenile delinquency.

The Cold War is long gone, but many nuclear weapons remain. What happens when some weapons can’t be retired?

How Victorians found a foolproof way to make science interesting for their children.

How one man’s youthful rebellion may unlock a cure for cancer.

Science writer Philip Ball digs into myth, history, and science to untangle the roots of our fears of artificial life.

Using chemistry to put a lid on unsavory practices.

Many young people living with HIV put themselves at risk by not taking their medication properly.