The Science History Institute Museum is closed for renovations.
The Othmer Library remains open by appointment.

Distillations magazine

Unexpected Stories from Science’s Past

As Good as Gold

Why do we still study the color of urine?

Read

Distillations articles reveal science’s powerful influence on our lives, past and present.

Health & Medicine

Science, Protector of the Common Good

Using chemistry to put a lid on unsavory practices.

red and white piil capsules
Health & Medicine

Young and Positive

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

Magical Thinking

What happened to physics in Nazi Germany?

Health & Medicine

Making Sense of Making Meth

Anthropologist Jason Pine offers an up-close view of methamphetamine culture in small-town America.

A dog sticks its head in a toilet
Environment

Waste Not, Want Not

Is recycled wastewater too much to swallow?

Arts & Culture

The Petroleum World

A government oilman maps a hidden realm.

Health & Medicine

Sickening Sweet

Relics from a lab hint at centuries spent trying to solve diabetes.

Environment

The Gowanus Canal

The fight for Brooklyn’s coolest Superfund site.

Arts & Culture

Stranger Than Fiction

Is there any truth in truth serums?

Inventions & Discoveries

The French Connection

Inventor Charles Babbage drew inspiration from an unusual source for his analytical engine.

Inventions & Discoveries

Up, Up, and Away

The day a lead balloon flew.

Health & Medicine

Packed Full of Questions

The discovery of vitamins in the early 20th century opened the gates to the flood of dietary supplements we have today. The result has been the marketing of nutritional anxieties against a backdrop of minimal regulation.

Early Science & Alchemy

Tryals and Tribulations

Doctors battle for supremacy in the 17th century.

Color print ad showing a row of men and women wearing sunglasses
Arts & Culture

Plastic Town

A small Massachusetts town of knickknack makers helps mold the material world.

Arts & Culture

The Science of Satisfaction

A Japanese gourmand discovers the fifth element of taste.

Environment

Turf Wars

In the 1960s chemists created artificial turf. But are synthetic fields better than natural grass?

Health & Medicine

The Healing Power of Compressed Yeast

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.

Inventions & Discoveries

Let There Be Light

The story of electricity, danger, nationalism, advertising, and pollution in the lighting of the United States.