history of science

In 1801, Thomas Young passed light through two slits and saw stripes on a screen that only waves can produce. The same experiment later revealed the quantum nature of matter.

Évariste Galois invented group theory, solved a 350-year-old problem, survived prison, and died in a duel at 20. Here is how he changed mathematics forever.

William Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781, found infrared radiation in 1800, built the world's largest telescope, and only became an astronomer after a career as an oboist.

From variolation and Jenner's cowpox to Pasteur, polio, smallpox eradication, and mRNA — the full history of vaccines and modern frontiers.

The Black Death killed a third of Europe. The 1918 flu killed more people than World War I. Epidemics have redirected history more than any army.

Mathematics is the only field where we prove things are true forever. The story of how humans discovered that power spans 2,300 years and several revolutions in thought.

The atom went from a philosophical guess to a nuclear reality in about 150 years. Each model that replaced the last was stranger than anyone expected.

Before 1846, surgery meant unbearable agony and a near-certain chance of fatal infection. Here's how medicine solved both problems within a generation.

DNA was discovered in 1869, but nobody knew what it did. Working out its role and structure took 84 more years, and the story is more collaborative, and more complicated, than the famous version.

In 144 years, European thinkers traded inherited doctrine for measurement, experiment, and proof, and built the method science still runs on.

Ampère discovered that electric currents create magnetic fields and developed the mathematical framework of electromagnetism. His laws still govern electrical engineering.

Medicine has gone from bloodletting and prayer to gene editing in just a few centuries. Here's how we got there.