science history
-
Holding The World’s Breath At 11,135 Feet
MAUNA LOA OBSERVATORY, HAWAII”There are just a few moments from my past that, having left an indelible mark on my life, I can now return to in an instant. My first dance at my wedding to “I Only Have Eyes for You.” The phone call I received, as I dressed to go to work, telling…
-
How Ancient Star Maps Gave Rise To Modern Astronomy
Image: British Library, Public Domain Scientists have incredibly advanced tools to look at the stars today, but in the era before light pollution, star-gazing was much easier and simpler for the average person — just step outside at night. Pretty early on, and in a variety of cultures, people realised that they could chart the…
-
This Babylonian Astronomy Text Changes History
More than a thousand years before the first telescopes, Babylonian astronomers tracked the motion of planets across the night sky using simple arithmetic. But a newly translated text reveals that these ancient stargazers also used a far more advanced method, one that foreshadows the development of calculus over a thousand years later.
-
Badarse Historical Chemists: The Woman Behind Antoine Lavoisier
Antoine Lavoisier is deservedly considered one of the great chemists in history. We might not know of his experiments if it weren’t for his wife. She became a remarkable, if unconventional, chemist herself and had one of the weirder lives in history.