History of science

The James Webb Space Telescope has the potential to rewrite the history of the cosmos and reshape humanity’s position within it. But first, a lot of things have to work just right.

Today’s powerful but little-understood artificial intelligence breakthroughs echo past examples of unexpected scientific progress.

The concept of dimension seems simple enough, but mathematicians struggled for centuries to precisely define and understand it.

The thorny thought experiment has been turned into a real experiment — one that physicists use to probe the physics of information.

Radio waves, longer and less energetic than visible light, give astronomers access to some of the most obscure physics in the cosmos.

The relationships among the properties of flexible shapes have fascinated mathematicians for centuries.

Christine Darden worked at NASA for 40 years, helping make supersonic planes quieter and forging a path for women to follow in her footsteps.

Today’s information age is only possible thanks to the groundbreaking work of a lone genius.

For almost a century, the anonymous members of Nicolas Bourbaki have written books intended as pure expressions of mathematical thought.