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By attempting everything, Dorothy Wrinch ended up accomplishing nothing. For half a century, this was the standard final verdict on the...

If you have been reading this series over the years, you’re used to a particular narrative sequence: (1) Brilliant woman researcher...

Our concept of living in a universe with a knowable and predictable future has taken two stunning blows in the last century, first from...

Whereas few European scientists escaped the politico-intellectual gnash of the 1930s unscathed, arguably none faced quite the looming...

When you first walk into secondary school your first year and plop yourself nervously into a desk in the back of your geometry class...

Before NASA, there was NACA, an oddball collection of aeronautics nerds using black box data and wind tunnel analysis to figure out as...

Beholding a bar of metal, it seems an object almost primal in its simplicity. Solid, reliable, the stuff of which cities are made. Peek...

When Grace Chisholm, at age 28, married the mathematician William Henry Young, she had every prospect of a brilliant career before her....

The IBM 650 was a marvellous beast. The world’s first mass-produced (and first profitable) computer, it was the mainstay machine of the...

Water is that great, terrible thing. Its chemical properties make it a magnificent solvent and coolant, which is wonderful if you’re...

Back in the age when historians favored hard and fast lines between different Eras of world history, 1543 stood as the gold standard...

The first astronaut class to include women candidates, announced in 1978 and self-dubbed the TFNG, or Thirty-Five New Guys, brought six...

When it comes finally time to settle Mars, the most terrifying sound might not be *RRRIP* or ‘I'‘m sorry, Dave, I don'‘t WANT to turn the...

An arrow hits a target as a fifteen year old girl on a horse goes galloping victoriously by. It is not an entirely unusual sight in late...

In between landing on the moon in July of 1969 and launching the first space shuttle into orbit in April of 1981, NASA learned a few...

Dr Beatrice Tinsley lived on our resolutely turning planet for only four decades, but in that time she gifted us a vision of the cosmos...

It is one of the great stories in the Korean royal tradition. A young princess named Deokman is brought a painting of peonies by her...

This day, let us speak of a new type of hero, one whose life story is not told as a sum of new products invented and foisted upon an...

Astronomy is the sifting science. Its practitioners rake the sky, star by star, collecting and cataloguing, and when they are done, they...

The story of the Mercury 13, as it is usually told, features 13 heroes, 2 villains, and a throng of supportive roles stretched between...