History of Science

The Nobel Prize in Physics for 2025 honors scaled-up quantum physics—while sidestepping controversies swirling around quantum computing

How a determined socialite, inspired by true crime, helped professionalize the field of murder investigations

Total reversals in scientific thinking are rare—but earth-shattering

Neptune’s discovery was a race that ended not long after this magazine came to be

Federal officials seized 3,000 copies of Scientific American in 1950 in a “red scare” era of attacks on science. The move backfired and offers lessons for today

A controversial arsenic microbe study unveiled 15 years ago has been retracted. The study’s authors are crying foul

History tells us what happens when great nations attack science

The most anticipated particle physics result of recent years is here—but the real news came one week before: the “muon g–2 anomaly” might have never existed

Telescopes in space give us a view we literally cannot get from the ground

Kosmos-482, a failed mission to Venus from the former Soviet Union that stalled in Earth orbit in the 1970s, is about to fall back to our planet. Exactly where or when it will strike, however, remains unknown

Einstein offers a lesson for scientists who are protesting an out-of-control nationalist administration attacking U.S. science today

A Trump-aligned prosecutor’s attack on medical journals is a threat to your health care—and the medical establishment should not comply