Distillations magazine
Distillations articles reveal science’s powerful influence on our lives, past and present.
Processed: Food Science and the Modern Meal
The early 20th century was an especially rich time for creating ways to process and preserve food.
Where’s the Beef?
Mix a 19th-century chemist with a South American roader builder. Add cows and boil.
A Mighty Pen
Discover the history of the EpiPen.
“The Popular Dose with Doctors”: Quinine and the American Civil War
During the Civil War necessity drove the North and South to develop different strategies for dealing with malaria.
Laws of Attraction
The magnetic connection between sailors, adultery, and garlic.
Behind the Curtain
Three Hungarian scientists who survived the Nazi occupation of their country and escaped Soviet oppression.
Boom Times
Follow the birth, life, and demise of the Hercules Powder Company, which once dominated the explosives industry in the United States.
Sound Waves
In the 1950s hearing aids shrank from the size of a cigarette packet to the size of a lighter. The secret behind this shrinkage? The mighty transistor.
Wild Ice
For more than 100 years scientists have been discovering and creating bizarre, exotic ices. Ices that can even burn a hole in you!
An Element of Order
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?
Dress for Success
For thousands of years silk symbolized wealth and style. But in the 1930s DuPont gave Americans the next best thing.
No Ill Nature: The Surprising History and Science of Poison Ivy and Its Relatives
Do you think of poison ivy as a scurrilous weed to be avoided at all costs? Think again! There was a time when the daring and curious found promise in poison ivy and its rash-inducing relatives.
Mind and Matter
In the early 1950s French physician Henri Laborit experienced a moment of serendipity that would fundamentally alter the landscape of psychiatry and mental illness.
Leaking Legacy
How did the Hanford nuclear facility become one of America’s most vexing environmental challenges? Jennifer Weeks explores the history and future of the site.
Bright Light
Coal fueled the cities of the Industrial Revolution. But coal did far more than power steam engines and heat homes.
On Poisoned Ground
The largest accidental release of radioactivity in the United States did not occur in 1979 at Three-Mile Island. That very same year a collapsing dam released a flood of radioactive debris into the Navajo Nation.
Dirty Business
Wars are often fought over resources, but as far as we know only one war has ever been fought over fertilizer.
First Lady
In 1667 Margaret Cavendish was the first woman allowed to visit the all-male bastion of the Royal Society, a newly formed scientific society. Who was this woman?