Science

Rereading Priscilla Wald’s "Contagious" and Nancy Tomes’ "Gospel of Germs" amidst a 21st-century pandemic.

These scientists spent weeks underwater doing research—and convincing NASA women could also go into space.

A new book "examines legal cases of women accused of infanticide and concealment of stillbirth."

Reflecting on the trailblazing chemist’s fight for dignity and the myths we tell about our scientific heroes.

Our own world is built from copper, and so too will future worlds be.

In "The Car," Bryan Appleyard sets out to celebrate the freedom these vehicles granted. But what if they were a dangerous technology from the start?

BMI is a simple calculation, but how it is translated into a diagnosis is complex and flawed.

Why a powerful House Republican wants to ban a common insurance practice.

A new interactive digital project recovers biographies of women in science, and recreates the social networks that were essential to sustaining their work.

Loss of control over knowledge of the female body cemented women’s status as second-class citizens.

How one doctor’s letter and a string of dodgy studies spurred a public health panic.

The U.S. Army's contributions to meteorology.

Fertilizers filled with the nutrient boosted our ability to feed the planet. Today, they’re creating vast and growing dead zones in our lakes and seas.

Decades before paleontology’s formal establishment, Black and Native Americans discovered—and correctly identified—millennia-old fossils.

Throughout its history, the technology sector has been dependent on the federal budget.

What is an industry-made disaster, and what is caused by natural factors like weather?

Some see the reaction to Sen. Fetterman’s announcement as a sign of progress, but that’s less true than you might think.

How Emily Dickinson, scientists, and other writers theorized plant intelligence in the nineteenth century.

Medical schools in the antebellum U.S. were critical in the formation of a medical community that shared ideas about racial science.

The Great Epizootic, an equine flu in 1872-1873, infected most U.S. horses. Streetcars and mail delivery stopped across the country while fires raged.

Stephen Casper, a medical historian, argues that the danger of C.T.E. used to be widely acknowledged. How did we unlearn what we once knew?

We’ve been fighting over gas stoves for decades.

A relic of '80s scofflaw gun culture is still lethal.

As two warring bone hunters sought to destroy each other, they laid the foundations for our knowledge of dinosaurs.

A 1940s Red Cross rule, which racially segregated blood, propped up notions of racial difference and Black inferiority.

The history—and danger—of a modern safety obsession.

Catastrophic accidents at power plants have heightened fears about the safety of nuclear energy, but it's getting renewed attention as a way to fight global warming.

The prospect of removing people from communities to be put in institutions has been a project of social control.

Manhattan Project physicist was infamously stripped of his security clearance in 1954.

Archaeology and genetics can’t yet agree on when humans first arrived in the Americas. That’s good science, and here’s why.