Distillations magazine
Controversy, Control, and Cosmetics in Early Modern Italy
In a society that damned women for both plainness and adornment, wearing makeup became a defiant act of survival.
Distillations articles reveal science’s powerful influence on our lives, past and present.
Paracelsus, the Alchemist Who Wed Medicine to Magic
Historian Bruce Moran reveals the life of an itinerant doctor whose work influenced modern science.
The Rise and Fall of Polywater
What happens when an earth-shattering discovery runs up against the scientifically impossible?
Our Oldest, Deadliest Foe
Tracing the immense misery wreaked by the mosquito.
The Anatomy Riot of 1788
When New York’s poor revolted against the city’s grave-robbing medical establishment.
Spying in Plain Sight: Scientific Diplomacy during the Cold War
The covert politics behind American efforts to establish scientific freedom around the world.
Element Hunting in a Nuclear Storm
A fighter pilot’s tragic flight into a nuclear explosion leads to the discovery of two elements.
Choosing a Better High-Tech Future
Rare earth elements make modern devices faster, brighter, and lighter, but it will take the creaky gears of government to make their production cleaner and more equitable.
How RCA Fell Flat on Flat-Screen TVs
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?
Searching for Schizophrenia
In the late 1960s an international contingent of psychiatrists took up a monumental task: making schizophrenia mean the same thing to doctors around the world.
Smallpox and the Long Road to Eradication
It’s one thing to make a scientific discovery, but making it count is another thing entirely.
The Transfermium Wars: Scientific Brawling and Name-Calling during the Cold War
The transfermium elements—the fleeting, lab-made substances that populate the end of the periodic table—have a history built on pride and acrimony.
Marie Curie, Marie Meloney, and the Significance of a Gram of Radium
In the 1920s a pioneering journalist summoned the might of American women to revive a Nobelist’s career.
How the First American Science Writer Found (Then Lost) God in the Cosmic Ray
In the 1930s a pride- and faith-fueled dispute between two Nobel Prize–winning physicists spilled onto the front page of the New York Times.
Smith Griswold Sells the War against Smog
To fight air pollution, officials first had to convince Californians that carmakers were the enemy, not cars.
Hunting the Nazi Nuclear Hoard
In the last years of World War II a group of American scientists and soldiers raced to capture enemy physicists, sabotage Hitler’s nuclear ambitions, and do it all before their Soviet allies were any the wiser.
San Francisco’s Plague Years
As officials spread disinformation, a deadly epidemic edged its way into the United States.
Poison Pill: The Mysterious Die-Off of India’s Vultures
India’s vultures have been driven to the brink of extinction in a matter of decades. Their loss threatens the well-being of the country’s human population.
Harvey Wiley’s Fierce Pursuit of Food Safety
Science writer Deborah Blum chronicles one chemist’s fight to bring order to a lawless food industry.