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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...

Blood Ties & Pig Genes

In 1980, a young man dies of renal failure when his family hesitates to donate a kidney. In Kagitha Sangaligal, Sujatha Rangarajan, a modernist writer and pioneer of science fiction in Tamil, imagined a tragedy. This simple plot, written in spare, unsentimental prose, asked whether...

Radium Madonna

What does a Polish physicist from the early 20th century have in common with a character played by a Tamil actress from the 1960s? More than you might think. Both navigated love, loss, and the lab—and both challenged what women were allowed to do with...

Kaigari Kleptomaniac

On the Streets of Damascus On this particular morning the younger brother appeared on the balcony and shouted down to the potato peddler: “Are those potatoes firm?” The vendor only turned around quickly and called back up with a bitter smile: “I’m not selling. I’m...

Moonshot for Menstrual Science

By Linda G. Griffith School of Engineering Professor of Teaching Innovation in the Departments of Biological and Mechanical Engineering at MIT THE MORNING of September 11, 2001, I arrived at my MIT office, wondering if I would last to teach my afternoon class. About two...

Meeting Nexi

Nexi, the robot, features in articles on MIT Media Lab’s Center for Future Storytelling. I am not entirely sure why this should be the case. Anyway, I decided to go meet this robot in Cynthea Brazeal’s Personal Robotics Lab . Currently, the humans in the group are training...