History of Science

Grover Krantz was onto something when he had his remains donated to science. A professor of anthropology, he didn't see why death should interrupt his life-long teaching.

Atmospheric conditions and human actions combined to drive the 1930s megadrought

If or when we make contact with extraterrestrials, the effect on our religious sensibilities will be profound, says astronomer David Weintraub
 

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, an international celebration of women in science, technology, engineering, and math. If you’d like to read about women in math for the occasion, you're in serious danger of coming across an article about Hypatia, Emmy Noether, Sophie Germain, or Sofia Kovalevskaya.

Yes, the Cold War ended long ago, but we still live in a nuclear-armed world, in which the possibility of nuclear war, terrorism and accidents is all too real.

In this excerpt from his new book author Tom Shachtman explores the influence of scientific analogies and principles on the philosophies and actions of early American colonial and revolutionary politics

Reported in Scientific American This Week in World War I: October 10, 1914 Drones are at the forefront of warfare in the 21st century. These unarmed and unpiloted aircraft, big and small, circle far above the battlefield, collecting images and reporting back to headquarters, electronically.

A tomato expert and viola player uses plant statistics to trace the history of the violin

Editor's Note: Veteran science journalist Philip Hilts is working with a team of archeologists, engineers and divers off the shore of Antikythera, a remote Greek island, where a treasure ship by the same name sank in 70 B.C.

Archaeologists have determined that artwork found in limestone caves on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi is far older than previously thought.

The 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded to Eric Betzig, Stefan W. Hell and William E. Moerner for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy. The winning work is explained by chemistry Nobel Committee members Sven Lidin and Måns Ehrenberg

 

Mark your calendars. Set your clocks.is coming to Me and team of other zany public loving scientists will spend 2 whole days delivering fun hands-on science activities to families attending the ever awesome Geek Girl Con.