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I Told You So!

When the Renaissance scientist Galileo defended the heliocentric model of the Universe, he was condemned by the Catholic Church. Modern scientists, however, frequently face their fiercest opposition not from religious authorities but from within their own ranks. In his new book, I Told You So!, Matt Kaplan—a...

The Feather Detective

On 4 October 1960, Eastern Air Lines Flight 375 took off from Logan International Airport on a clear fall evening and plunged almost immediately into the icy waters of Boston Harbor, killing all but ten of the seventy-two people on board. It remains the deadliest...

Blue: In Search of Nature’s Rarest Color

The first time he saw the colour, M.A. Subramanian could not believe his eyes. The U.S.-based professor had asked a graduate student to grind a trio of dull oxides and bake the mixture at around 1,200° Celsius. The goal was to make a multiferroic or...

Atlas of Perfumed Botany

The gods created scents; humans make perfumes. Naked and frail, they survive only by artifice (trickery). Jean Giono In the late 1960s, Jean-Claude Ellena, an apprentice perfumer in France, tried to reproduce Eau Sauvage, a cologne from the fashion house of Christian Dior. Ellena...

The Secret History of The Rape Kit

Pagan Kennedy, author of Inventology, the 2016 book on inventions that bring about social change, and the people behind them, became fascinated by what she describes as a “a piece of technology designed to hold men accountable for brutalizing women.” So, who invented the standardized...

Elements of Marie Curie

If there is a book reading/discussion by Dava Sobel at a bookstore near you -- you should absolutely go. Dava is such a charming, intelligent and articulate person, chances are, you will immediately decide to read anything/everything she has ever written. Her beat is historical...