Navigating the ethics of ancient human DNA research
The 2022 Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine has brought fresh attention to paleogenomics, the sequencing of DNA of ancient
Next up for CRISPR: Gene editing for the masses?
In the early days, CRISPR gene-editing technology was used to simply make cuts in DNA. Today, it’s being tested
What happens when a philosopher starts taking drugs
Justin Smith writes: "At a cultural moment when psychedelics are getting a second wind, and even someone as upstanding as
This inventor made two of history’s biggest mistakes
In the fall of 1940, Thomas Midgley contracted polio, and the dashing, charismatic inventor soon found himself in a wheelchair,
In search of stolen gods
In the town of Bungamati, Nepal, above an ancient spring, stand two stone shrines and a temple. One of those
My mother the troll, and the sad ending to her life
Brenda Leyland was a stylish, well-spoken and rather private woman who lived in a picturesque village in Leicestershire. Her son
The little-known origin story of the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics
In November 1949, Chien-Shiung Wu and her graduate student, Irving Shaknov, descended to a laboratory below Columbia University's Pupin Hall.
One woman's discovery shook the foundations of geology
Marie Tharp spent the fall of 1952 hunched over a drafting table, surrounded by charts, graphs, and jars of India
Did scientists really discover a new superconductor?
At the American Physical Society’s annual March meeting in Las Vegas, Ranga Dias, a physicist at the University of
Anne and Mary, fearsome pirates who were also lovers
Historian Rebecca Simon writes: Anne Bonny made an unforgettable impression from the bow of the pirate ship, Revenge, in the
