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The orders of magnitude spanned by perfect numbers reveal how few orders were required to build the observable universe from the Planck length … Read More

In 1874, George Johnstone Stoney scrapped kilograms, meters, and seconds replacing them with units based on Nature itself. A century later … Read More

In 1870, Ernst Schroeder revealed the concept of Schröder numbers. Nobody realized that two thousand years earlier, the greatest of ancient astronomers, Hipparchus, was already using these numbers … Read More

Moved by letters from workers, who could not afford the book or who needed to pool their money to buy and share a single copy between several people … Read More

The wife of a leading scientist opened her mail one morning. She was shocked to find a threatening message saying that her husband wouldn’t live long enough to … Read More

The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests … Read More

Kepler said to himself that God’s design for the universe must be aesthetically pleasing, regular, and logical. Kepler trusted God to have wanted His universe to have these properties. Following this line of thinking … Read More

Charles Babbage, designer in 1837 of the world’s first general purpose computer, frequently worked himself up into a rage about people playing music in the street … Read More

Einstein insisted that his paper showed gravitational waves were a mathematical quirk, and he vowed never to submit another paper to the Physical Review … Read More

Leonard Susskind begins Chapter 4 with some remarkable lines – you’ll see them below – from Lewis Carroll’s 1865 masterpiece Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland … Read More

Here are some of the greatest scientists in history whose difficult backgrounds made their achievements all the more remarkable … Read More

Here are some of the greatest scientists in history who were home-schooled … Read More

The question of whether Archimedes’ father was really an astronomer has wider implications for our pursuit of knowledge. … Read More

Pythagoras and his followers believed 10 was a divine number. Their holy symbol the tetractys or decad consisted of 10 points; the number symbolized … Read More

Why are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead … Read More

Einstein is so venerated that when people have a point to make, they call on the great man’s authority to back them up. And when they can’t find an apt quote … Read More

In our view the evolution of terrestrial life is controlled and directed by the continuing input of cometary debris in the form of bacteria, fragments of bacteria … Read More

Crick threatened Watson with legal action for defamation if the book were published. He saw it as a huge invasion of privacy; he had always avoided … Read More

DNA’s structure and replication mechanism were discovered by Francis Crick and James Watson in 1953 – the greatest discovery in twentieth century biology. Remarkably … Read More

The iconoclastic Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman once likened his fellow scientists to worms in a jar crawling over one another to reach the top … Read More

The Ancient Greeks were well-acquainted with sophisticated metal gearing mechanisms and valves, enabling them to produce a surprising variety of machines … Read More

Some technology has been around for a long time. Concepts and machines we might think were invented recently are actually thousands of years old … Read More

Here are 16 scientists whose achievements made them famous and whose tragically short lives have left us wondering how much more they might have achieved … Read More

Most scientific mistakes are made in private – scientists don’t like bungling in public. But some of the greatest scientists and inventors in history have bungled in public … Read More

These days it’s unlikely that any reputable scientist would publicly admit that they believe in ghosts. This wasn’t always the case. Here are seven prominent … Read More

Carl Friedrich Gauss, probably the greatest mathematician in history, realized that alternative two-dimensional geometries are possible – he described them as non-Euclidean. … Read More

Here are some of the greatest scientists in history who were also deeply committed to their Christian faiths. … Read More

Ever wondered what scientists have to say about their own subject? Like Einstein, who said science is great, provided you don’t have to earn a living doing it. Here are … Read More

Who have been history’s most influential physicists? I tried to pick the physicists most influential in fulfilling … Read More

Benford’s number law can be used to detect fraud in financial and scientific documents. Joan Smith was falling behind with mortgage payments and needed money fast … Read More

In November 1886 Heinrich Hertz became the first person to transmit and receive controlled radio waves. Considering how indispensable his wireless transmissions quickly became, it seems a little odd looking back that … Read More

The concepts of evolution and natural selection have very long histories, with the first theories preceding Darwin and Wallace’s by thousands of years. About 2600 years ago, a genius by the name of … Read More

An eclectic mix of fantastically quotable scientists talking about biology. Victor Scheffer: Although Nature needs thousands or millions of years to create a new species, man needs only a few dozen years to destroy one … Read More

Animal rights activists, feminists, and students clashing with one-another and the police… It may sound like it happened recently, but it actually happened over a century ago, between … Read More

A scientist is someone who investigates the secrets of nature. An inventor is someone who tries to create useful products and devices. Some people have been incredibly successful in both endeavors. Here are twelve of the best: … Read More

Throughout the ages, men have worn beards. Sometimes beards have been fashionable, and sometimes not. Scientists born in the first half of the 19th century seem to have been especially susceptible … Read More

Here are profiles of 82 great scientists who lived into their 90s, from Pearl Kendrick, who developed the world’s first whooping cough vaccine, to Charles Townes, who invented the laser. It’s by no means … Read More

Here are profiles of 25 great scientists who lived for over 100 years, with the oldest reaching 110 years of age. The highest age at which any of the people featured here published new work was 103. The four who reached the greatest ages were all … Read More

In 1815, the same year as the Battle of Waterloo, French scientist Jean-Baptiste Biot discovered he could make up solutions of organic chemicals that rotated the plane of polarized light to the left or right. He proposed a remarkable cause for the phenomenon … Read More

We’ve all had ideas – some good, some not so good. I can’t begin to imagine how hair-pullingly frustrating it must be to hatch a brilliant new idea, believe passionately that it’s right, then find everyone else ignoring you … Read More

Magnificent mathematicians talk mathematics and, for the sake of balance, a few non-mathematicians’ thoughts too! … Read More

Violent death is something modern scientists don’t usually need to worry about. This hasn’t always been the case. Here are seven of the most famous examples of scientists whose lives were brought to an abrupt end. … Read More

Can you tell truth from myth? Test yourself with these tales. Each could be true, part-myth or myth. The truth about each story can be found below the image that follows the story. … Read More

Fantastically quotable scientists on physics: “Physics is very muddled again at the moment; it is much too hard for me anyway, and I wish I were a movie comedian or something like that and had never heard anything about physics!” … Read More

Here are the 11 youngest winners of a scientific Nobel Prize, with a quick, interesting ‘did you know’ fact about each of them. And also the teenager: … Read More

Challenge: try our science quiz. It’s just ten questions. Decide which events came first to test your knowledge of scientific progress. … Read More

While we sleep, our subconscious minds continue to work on problems our conscious minds have failed to solve. ‘Sleeping on it’ has led to major scientific discoveries, such as the seven … Read More

Once upon a time, about 200 million human lifetimes ago, a universe began. This was not just any universe. It was a universe with some very remarkable properties. … Read More

Advances in technology are allowing us to learn more and more about how birds can travel huge distances under their own power. Very light GPS tracking equipment can be used to track birds without … Read More

Pop music needs science and technology: microphones, amplifiers, electric guitars, synthesizers, light shows and dry-ice are all examples of science applied to the world of entertainment. While scientists and science aren’t what pop groups usually sing about, a few … Read More

A selection of brilliantly quotable quotes from chemists through the ages … Read More

You want bad ideas, but they have to be good bad ideas? You’ve come to the right place. First, a brilliant mathematician, who had already found one planet by sheer mind-power … Read More

James Joule and James Watt were having a drink together and talking about their research. Joule said to Watt, “Oh, here are my wife and children, come over and meet them … Read More

Mr. Spock would appreciate the answer to this question, because it’s completely logical. To get the most daylight, you need to go where the sun never sets! … Read More

1789 was the year of the French Revolution. Dr. Joseph Priestley wholeheartedly approved of the Revolution. Priestley had discovered oxygen; invented fizzy, carbonated water … Read More

20 years ago, comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 made headlines around the world when it crashed into Jupiter. The impacts produced the biggest planetary explosions scientists have ever seen. … Read More

Fantastically quotable scientists on science … Read More

Many of us have genes from extinct human species in our DNA. Some of these genes have been helpful, but others seem to be destructive. … Read More

Archimedes was fascinated by curves. His powerful mind had mastered straight line shapes in both 2D and 3D. He needed something more intellectually challenging to test him. This came … Read More

Archimedes was fed up with people saying you couldn’t calculate the number of grains of sand on a beach. In response to this nonsense (as he saw it) he invented new, enormous numbers. … Read More

One of your ancestors had a terrifying experience? New research shows your genes might have a memory of this terrifying experience built into them … Read More