Trofim Lysenko, the Stalinist-era biologist who tailored his scientific ideas to suit the Soviet communist party. Denying natural selection and arguing that character traits developed in a parent’s lifetime could be passed onto offspring (like Lamarck), Lysenko put the study of biology in the Soviet Union back by decades. Many actual scientists he competed against […]
This tooth from the mid-6th century contains DNA from the plague, that same pathogen responsible for the Black Death in 14th- Europe. This version of the bubonic plague is known as the “Justinianic Plague,” named after the Byzantine Emperor who reigned during its outbreak in the capital of Constantinople in 541 CE. Many historians have
Justinianic Plague Read More »
This picture of the solar eclipse of May 29, 1919, is not only beautiful but also scientifically important. It was taken by British scientist Arthur Eddington (1882-1944), and was the first physical test of Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. Of course, in retrospect, over 100 years later it might seem obvious that massive objects
Eclipses and the Theory of Relativity Read More »
This is an early 14th copy of the _Trotula_, a medical text on women’s conditions. Trota of Salerno was one of the book’s authors. She was from the 1100s, and was called “magistra” or “female master” because her medical knowledge was so respected in her day.
The origins of human history keeps getting pushed further back in time, as a recent analysis of a wooden structure in Africa dating back almost a half a million years demonstrates. For reference, anthropologists now date the emergence of homo sapiens to about 200,000 years ago (although some argue for 300,000). The wooden structure discovered
Zambia Archaeological Site Has Earliest Known Wooden Structure Read More »
And what, pray tell, is going on here? This macabre device is a 1694 illustration of the weighing chair of Sanctorius Sanctorius (1561-1636), an Italian scientist who was the first (that we know of) to mesh quantitative experiments with the study of how the human body works. For thirty years, Santorio measured people’s sweat. Influenced
The Weighing Chair Read More »
This is a 16th century translation of “The Emerald Tablet”, among the most famous texts on alchemy ever. Although it purports to be from Egypt (that’s where a lot of medieval alchemists thought their sources originated), the first text we know of comes from an Arabic 6th/7th century source. Isaac Newton, himself an occultist, translated
The Emerald Tablet Read More »
This is a photo from 1943 of a detention hospital for infected women in Leesville, Louisiana. And I’m about to deliver a really sad story about the U.S. government’s treatment of women during the 20th century. This is about a series of laws that came to be known as “The American Plan,” and they resulted
Chamberlain-Kahn Act of 1918 Read More »
Fibonacci was an early 13th-century Italian who made Europeans aware that the Arabic number system we use today is much better for doing math than the Roman Numeral system medieval people had been using. Plus he wrote out the Fibonacci numbers, which are shown here in his most important book, _Liber Abaci_ (Book of Calculations).
Fibonacci Writings Read More »
The Lechuguilla Cave in south-eastern New Mexico (you can see a photo of part of it in the first slide) is the second deepest in the US (at 1,604 feet), and it runs underground for 150 miles. Located in the Carlsbad Caverns National Park, the cave isn’t open to regular visitors because it includes an
I would have liked to have met this man, who was as eccentric as this visage here implies. This is none other than Paul Erdös, a Hungarian mathematician who published more papers than any other to date (over 1,500) and worked with so many other scholars (he co-authored with over 500) that math geeks know
This is a jade statuette from 18th-century China of a type of mushroom called the _Lingzhi_. It has been used in Chinese Traditional Medicine for over a millennium, and was associated in the religion of Daoism with immortality. The physician Li Shizhen who lived in the 1500s writes that “it positively affects the life energy,
Al-Biruni’s phases of the moon. Fitting image for the lunar eclipse tonight. Biruni was one of the geniuses of astronomical investigation, active in the 11th century during a Golden Age of Islamic science.
Al-Biruni’s Phases of the Moon Read More »
This baddie not only flourished in 14th and 15th century Eurasia. It also killed millions in the 6th cenuury, and struck again in 19th century China. Scientists are now thinking it might have caused a bottleneck in the population of Europeans in the Neolithic era too!
Creationists frequently bring up the Piltdown Man to support their idea that scientists deliberately lie about human evolution. True, the Piltdown Man was a famous fake (built by *one* “scientist”) – a supposedly missing link between humans and apes. However, it was actually the scientific community that proved the bones to be a forgery.
Catch up on how historical geneticists are unveiling fascinating new discoveries about early human history ( example- new discussion about the so-called “Hobbit” peoples from the Indonesia area). _Who We Are and How We Got Here_ is a great read!
Hobbit Peoples Skull Read More »
The Antikythera Mechanism from Ancient Greece had over 30 gears, and could predict when eclipses would happen, track the irregular orbit of the stars, and figure out when the Olympic games would happen!
The Antikythera Mechanism Read More »
Ah! What could be cooler than the 15th-century Voynich Manuscript, a document that has stumped linguists and cryptographers since its rediscovery? Yeah, It’s super fascinating. It uses different letters and people have tried corresponding them to various languages like Latin (it has some Latin words in the margins). The paintings are about medical/”sciency” stuff, and
15th – Century Voynich Manuscript Read More »
The symbol you see here that means “prescription” comes from an abbreviation of the Latin word “recipe” meaning “take”, as in the command form of the verb recipere, which means “to hold or contain.” It doesn’t come from a joining of the letters R and x, but rather the slashed line through the “R” was
Latin Etymology of Rx Read More »
The stately Classical background of Paris’ Panthéon has been the perfect location to house the invention of 19th-century physicist Léon Foucault: a massive pendulum made of a 62-lb brass-coated led bob, suspended from the Panthéon’s central dome by a 220-foot wire. Foucault debuted his pendulum in 1851, and although the original was damaged in 1995,
Foucault’s Pendulum Read More »
