The Science History Institute will be closed on Wednesday, December 31 and Thursday, January 1.

Distillations magazine

Unexpected Stories from Science’s Past

People & Politics

Science in a world of rules, regulations, and conflict

People & Politics

Full Boyle

Robert Boyle is best known in chemistry classrooms for Boyle’s law, but the law was never stated outright in Boyle’s work.

Frank Field working with an ionization instrument at Humble Oil in the 1950s
People & Politics

An Emerging Field

Chemist Frank Field turned a hand-me-down mass spectrometer into pioneering career.

People & Politics

Factory to Farm

The 1944 Morgenthau Plan envisioned postwar Germany as an agrarian state. Fortunately, the Marshall Plan was adopted instead.

People & Politics

Behind the Barbed Wire of Manzanar: Guayule and the Search for Natural Rubber

Faced with a sudden shortage of rubber, the wartime United States turned to an unlikely place: a Japanese American internment camp in California.

People & Politics

Pipe Dreams: America’s Fluoride Controversy

How did a seemingly benign chemical and a near-miraculous public-health initiative spark decades and decades debate?

Color illustration of a high mountaineering scene
People & Politics

A Notorious Life

In the so-called Hamel Catastrophe of 1820, a scientific expedition lost three local guides after the entire party fell 1,200 feet in an avalanche.

Old newspaper illustration of a man conducting a scientific experiment
People & Politics

Palmer the Poisoner

In 1856 William Palmer was convicted in Victorian England’s trial of the century, a case that pulled chemical analysis into the courts.

People & Politics

Birmingham Toast

Famed British caricaturist James Gillray targets famed scientist Joseph Priestley after the devastating Priestley Riots.

People & Politics

Chemical Relations: William and Lawrence Knox, African American Chemists

For brothers William and Lawrence Knox, earning PhDs in chemistry was not enough to overcome discrimination.

People & Politics

The Pursuit of Sweet

From lab accident to wonder drug to chemical has-been, saccharin’s history tracks the rise of consumer consciousness, government regulation, and the uncertainties underlying scientific evidence.

Black and white photo of an award ceremony with group of people
People & Politics

Social Scientist

Assessing J. Robert Oppenheimer as a leader.

People & Politics

Christmas at Hanford

How 50,000 people tried to maintain a normal existence while living in isolation at the largest the Manhattan Project site.

Rudolph Pariser
People & Politics

Hard Times and Good Fortune

Rudolph Pariser’s early life and career were shaped by world wars and other international events.