Scientific American Magazine

In the first half of this century man has vastly enlarged his understanding and control of nature. An introduction to the 10 articles in this issue

The big telescopes and subtler instruments have gathered and analyzed light from within the solar system to a frontier a billion light-years away

The great experiments and heroic theories have revolutionized our view of the physical world and brought us closer to its underlying unity

Aided by the new ideas of physics, the chemists have welded a huge body of facts into a unified system. Many of their fundamental advances have quickly become part of technology

The search for the origin of major geological features has advanced further into the depths of the earth and time. A survey from the standpoint of physical geology

Pure mathematicians have become more rigorous and applied mathematicians less inhibited. The interaction of mathematics and physics continues to enrich both

The organized study of the mechanism of heredity evolution began only with the 20th century and rediscovery of the lost work of Gregor Mendel

Another young science, viewing living things as dynamic processes rather than machines, has notably investigated the intricate chemical reactions common to all organisms

The earlier physiologists were principally concerned with the general organization of the body. Today their interest has shifted toward its physics and chemistry

Faced with problems of discouraging complexity, its workers tried to fractionate them. Now the trend is toward placing the problems in their natural context

The powerful concept of culture has been extended to explain much of human behavior and to eliminate some artificial distinctions among groups of men