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Rare alchemical manuscripts displayed next to centuries-old alchemical art.

Travel back in time with us and find out what the world was like when science and the supernatural weren’t so far apart.

Watch historians re-create a recipe for imitation coral, a popular material in early modern jewelry and home décor.

Designers of the 1950s took up the atom and turned it into a fashion icon.

A story of horror, deadly medicine, and the Ku Klux Klan.

Nikola Tesla’s career epitomizes the scientist as showman.

What do ancient Egyptian mummies, early modern medicines, a 19th-century philosopher, and a 21st-century chemist have in common?

Faced with political opposition to his work, the Czech chemist created the first wearable soft contact lens using a set of toys, a hot plate, and a gramophone motor.

For decades science journalists peacefully worked their beat. But trouble came to their ostensibly objective world. How did science writers get caught in the crossfire of the culture wars?

Scientists are known to be dedicated to accuracy. But sometimes, as in the case of Francesco Redi, a sense of humor can lead one astray.

In Renaissance maps geography becomes an art form.

Fancy some alchemical recipes from 15th-century Italy?

The man who wanted to make the United States a healthier place and the sometimes fuzzy line between science and quackery.

How hard can it be to make a gemstone? Plenty hard. People have been trying for almost 2,000 years, but success finally beckoned in 19th-century France.

For decades serious people have tried to turn the stuff of science fiction—space colonies, self-replicating machines, and solar sails—into scientific reality.

What most frightened the Nobel Prize–winning chemist and explorer of Earth’s deep past?

Three Hungarian scientists who survived the Nazi occupation of their country and escaped Soviet oppression.

In the 1950s hearing aids shrank from the size of a cigarette packet to the size of a lighter. The secret behind this shrinkage? The mighty transistor.

Do you think of poison ivy as a scurrilous weed to be avoided at all costs? Think again! There was a time when the daring and curious found promise in poison ivy and its rash-inducing relatives.

In the early 1950s French physician Henri Laborit experienced a moment of serendipity that would fundamentally alter the landscape of psychiatry and mental illness.

Discover alchemy, the secret science!

Jābir ibn Hayyan, whose name is inextricably bound to the foundations of alchemy, is a man of mystery.

Neon is a dull and invisible gas until it’s trapped in a tube and zapped with electricity. Literally pulled out of thin air, it became a symbol of progress and an essential component of the electronic age.

Boyle’s Sceptical Chymist (London, 1661) is an acknowledged landmark of science. But the book’s reputation is based less on what it is than on what it is perceived to be.

A mother’s dogged search for the cause of her babies’ mental decline led to the discovery of a new disease.

Amphetamine didn’t cure anything, but it did make you feel better. Chemist Gordon Alles faced this paradox after patenting his discovery in 1932.

In the 1950s comic books took Mexico’s youth by storm. But alongside familiar superhuman avengers were other kinds of heroes: real-life chemists.

You can’t tell a book by its cover.

How did a seemingly benign chemical and a near-miraculous public-health initiative spark decades and decades debate?

The impact of the Civil War can still be seen politically, socially, and economically, but its influence on medicine is often obscured.