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Who (besides, obviously, bacteria) doesn't love penicillin? It's on everybody's shortlist of the most important things we've discovered...

In 1964, two publications announced the beginning of two roads out of the centuries-long quagmire represented by the Nature Versus...

Remember back when I said that botanists were the most under-respected members of the scientific community? Well, that's true until you...

Leona Woods (1919-1986) was only 23 years old, fresh from wrapping up her PhD work in spectroscopy in the basement of the University of...

The year is 1990 and a man is sitting across from a monkey. Between them is an object that will, in mere moments, become the Raisin Heard...

In the mid 19th century, American biological science was tentatively feeling its way forward along a half dozen different and...

"I don't know what to write to you, so I shall tell you a story about four little rabbits whose names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and...

Humans have a profound genius for generating terrible ideas. Slavery. Theocratic government. But there is one particular idea we hung...

Mark your calendars! The third book in my Trailblazers of Women in STEM series for Pen & Sword Books, A History of Women in Mathematics,...

In 1989, Angela Merkel was a quantum chemist with a respectable reputation for applying statistical mathematics to chemical analysis. In...

If you were to ask an ancient Greek how it is determined that a baby is born a boy or a girl, they would have had some interesting and...

Reading the life of Harriet Brooks is like watching the gradual, inevitable unfolding of a horror movie. There's that same idyllic,...

Many Hopes Lie Buried Here. These words, etched on the tomb of Inez Prosser (~1895-1934) express an entire constellation of grief and...

The life of Catherine de Parthenay (1554–1631) was dominated by national religious conflict and her decision to take a pivotal role of...

After a life spent studying our closest relatives, and arguing passionately for their protection and that of the wider planet of which...

If you're a scientist, and you've lived long enough, there's a good chance that you'll see your life's work overwritten and forgotten in...

Evolution is great. As an explanatory idea, as a process governing biology, from just about any aspect you care to consider it,...

For a science teacher, perhaps the most dreaded question is "What Is Energy?" Sure, we have a standard answer - "The ability to do work"...

There are few stories in the history of Women in Science with as much innate and compelling drama as that of the Edinburgh Seven, which...