The history of science and technology links many disciplines and cultures: scientific, technological, humanistic and social. Smith’s program in the history of science and technology is designed to ...

History of Science coverage from Scientific American, featuring news and articles about advances in the field.

Science isn’t a “triumphant march”—it’s sloppy, messy, and full of stops and starts. Meet the people who tell that story. On October 4, 1957, Americans were shattered when Sputnik 1 launched into ...

Early scientific theories—such as those explaining basic phenomena like gravity, burning, and the movement of molecules in water—centered on presumed inherent properties rather than external factors, ...

For decades, science educators have been encouraged to "stick to the science" and leave politics at the classroom door. But as disinformation spreads online and public trust in science seems to erode ...

Prof. Emeritus Noel M. Swerdlow, a distinguished historian of science and the world’s foremost expert on Ptolemy and Copernicus, died July 24. He was 79. Swerdlow was famous for his approach to ...

A common technique in science popularization is to take some modern scientific idea, and connect it to some much earlier notion. The classic example of this is the regular invocation of the ancient ...

Lorraine Daston, a visiting professor in UChicago’s John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought and the Department of History, has been awarded the Dan David Prize for her achievements in the research of ...