Science

Three recent books explore different aspects of opiate addiction in America.

Key plant and animal specimens arrived in Europe on slavers’ ships

The idea that liberal democracies shielded science from politics was always flawed.

For centuries, literalist interpretations of the Book of Genesis have fueled scientific racism and white supremacy.

Apollo’s successful computing software was optimized to deal with unknown problems.

Fifty years ago, faculty and students at MIT grappled with how scientists should take a stand against the Vietnam War.

Our ethics and desires can shape digital networks at least as forcefully as those networks influence us.

A review of "She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity."

However the Little Ice Age came to be, we now know that climatic cooling had profound consequences for contemporary societies.

Civic-minded Midwesterners realized that network access would someday be a necessity, and worked to make it available to everyone, no strings attached.

When Silent Spring was published, the response was overtly gendered. Rachel Carson's critics depicted her as hysterical, mystical, and witchy.

The famed agriculturalist deserves to be known for much more than peanuts.

You can hone in on a specific location and visualize how it has evolved between the Cryogenian Period and the present.

The study of medicine is rife with racist assumptions and experiments that still shape health outcomes today.

How the U.S. government used veterans as atomic guinea pigs.

In a new study, researchers uncovered female programmers who made important but unrecognized contributions to genetics.

Three new books examine how the rise of coal, oil, and gas have permanently remade our world.

In 1972, a photo of a Swedish Playboy model was used to create the JPEG. The model herself was mostly a mystery—until now.

During WWI, the Surgeon General received numerous pitches for miraculous cures for sick and wounded American soldiers.

Joy Lisi Rankin’s book on the history of personal computing looks at the technology’s forgotten democratic promise.

Behind one of the most iconic computer games of all time is a theory of how cities die—one that has proven dangerously influential.

In the early 1800s, David Hosack created one of the nation's first botanical gardens to further his pioneering medical research.

Exploring John Cleves Symmes Jr.’s obsession with a hollow Earth.

Synthetics created in the 20th century have become an evolutionary force, altering human biology and the web of life.

Cloning can help combat climate change.

Ellen Swallow Richards applied chemistry to the home to advocate for consumer safety and women's education.

Yellow fever ravaged Philadelphia in 1793, touching nearly everyone in the city.

How the ’60s counterculture gave birth to personal computers and the vast tech industry that builds and sells them.

A look back at the so-called “Spanish Flu," how it affected the U.S., and why it’s often overlooked today.

Benjamin Franklin, magnetic trees, and erotically-charged séances.