History of Science

The triumph of NASA’s first crewed lunar mission in a half-century is a reminder of what the moon really means for Earth—and why we’re going back

A new calculation helps narrow down the mass of the W boson, one of the heaviest fundamental particles in the universe

A daring 10-day voyage will take four astronauts on a loop around the moon and set the stage for future forays to the lunar surface

Agnes Pockels achievements in surface science have long been overshadowed by a popular and likely untrue story that she became interested in the subject while doing the dishes

A century after Robert Goddard’s first-ever launch of a liquid-fueled rocket, two NASA experts weigh in on what his legacy still holds for spaceflight’s future

We trace the final chapter of Katharine Burr Blodgett’s career, her retirement from GE and her disappearance from public memory

The discovery adds to the Archimedes Palimpsest, an important medieval manuscript containing texts from the Greek mathematician Archimedes

At the height of her career, chemist and physicist Katharine Burr Blodgett faced challenges that not even her closest colleagues suspected

When Katharine Burr Blodgett discovered nonreflecting glass, the General Electric Company’s public relations machine made her a star

On Thursday the U.S. president ordered the release of federal files related to UFOs and aliens, although no evidence of extraterrestrials visiting Earth is known to exist

From Schenectady, N.Y., to the University of Cambridge, Katharine Burr Blodgett’s brilliance impressed the world’s leading physicists

When a young Katharine Burr Blodgett joined future Nobel Prize winner Irving Langmuir at the General Electric Company’s industrial research laboratory in Schenectady, N.Y, it was the start of her brilliant career