Distillations magazine

Unexpected Stories from Science’s Past

Something Old, Something New

Humans owe a huge medical debt to horseshoe crabs. Now there’s an opportunity to pay it back.

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Distillations articles reveal science’s powerful influence on our lives, past and present.

A Soviet propaganda poster translates as “Soviet man, be proud. You opened the road to the stars from Earth!” (russiatrek.org)

Sputnik Fever

How did the launch of Sputnik I in 1957 change the lives of two Americans?

black and white photo of a deceased man
Arts & Culture

A Good Death

Death Salon founder Megan Rosenbloom tells us what a good death means to her.

Eugene Pfizenmayer (left) excavating a mammoth carcass on the banks of the Berezovka River in Siberia, ca. 1901. (Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution)
Inventions & Discoveries

Mammoth Undertaking

Can scientists bring the woolly mammoth back from extinction? And should they?

People & Politics

Butter-in-Law

Pity butter’s poor relative, margarine, which has shifted from outlaw to savior to villain in the space of 100 years.

Early Science & Alchemy

Cloth of the World

In Renaissance maps geography becomes an art form.

Inventions & Discoveries

Tiny Productions

Sometimes scientific discovery requires an unusual tool.

People & Politics

The Invisible Woman

Katharine Burr Blodgett was the first female scientist hired by General Electric. Her work was truly invisible, deliberately so.

Arts & Culture

Colors Run Riot

The rise of synthetic color and the scientists and designers who tried to save society from itself.

Arts & Culture

The Philosophers’ Stove

Fancy some alchemical recipes from 15th-century Italy?

Health & Medicine

Write for a Free Booklet: Howard Bishop’s Crusade to Decontaminate America

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

Arts & Culture

Making Gemstones

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.

Color illustrations of a donut-shaped space colony
Inventions & Discoveries

A Future without Limits

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

Harvard Cyclotron
Inventions & Discoveries

Accelerating Oncology

How a machine used to create atom bombs became a tool for healing.

Color illustration of an open mouth showing a diseased tongue
Health & Medicine

Yellow Fever Fiend

A Confederate doctor had no problem breaking the Hippocratic oath.

Environment & Nature

Clearing the Air

Three atmospheric scientists describe carrying their work beyond the lab.

Inventions & Discoveries

Harold C. Urey: Science, Religion, and Cold War Chemistry

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

Inventions & Discoveries

Whales in Space

Whale oil has been used in soap, explosives, and even margarine. Has it also fueled space exploration?

Inventions & Discoveries

Peak Phosphorus?

What does a world short on phosphorous look like?