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8 Things You Didn't Know About Copernicus
A portrait of Nicolaus Copernicus painted in 1580Image file from Wikimedia CommonsIt's Nicolaus Copernicus's 540th birthday today. He is widely considered the father of modern astronomy and is best...
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300 Previously Unpublished Darwin Letters To Be Posted Online
Darwin & HookerLeft: Photo by Leonard Darwin on Wikimedia Commons. Right:In a move that would have been unimaginable to the Victorian-age gentleman, the University of Cambridge is undertaking the...
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Big Pic: Ho Ho Ho, Don’t Forget About Tuberculosis!
Stamp Out TuberculosisIllustrated by Ernest Hamlin Baker. Available online from the U.S. National Library of Medicine.Why is this merry fellow advertising about tuberculosis? He's on a 1924 poster for...
View ArticleGallery: Darwin's Library From the HMS Beagle—The Digital Edition
For all five years of the 1831-1836 scientific voyage of HMS Beagle, young scientist Charles Darwin worked and slept in the same cabin as the ship's library. The 404-volume, multi-language collection...
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Why A Blue LED Is Worth A Nobel Prize
LEDs!PiccoloNamek on Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0Three scientists have jointly earned the Nobel Prize in physics for their work on blue LEDs, or light-emitting diodes. Why blue in particular? Well,...
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150 Years After the Civil War: Reflections on Medical Care
Andersonville National Cemetery in Georgia, Confederate prisoner-of-war camp during the American Civil WarKen Lund/Flickr Today is the sesquicentennial of Robert E. Lee’s surrender at the Appomattox...
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The Doctor Who Thought Bed Bugs Spread Smallpox
The smallpox virusPan Am. Health Organization When my book Infested published last month and I started revisiting some of its stories during interviews, I was reminded of those I didn’t include in the...
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Today Should Henceforth Be Known As Thales Day
Partial Solar EclipseNASAThousands of Chicagoans are taking to the streets this week to celebrate the 2,600th anniversary of science.Thales of Miletus, "Father Of Science"Ernst Wallis et al.Obviously...
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The Infested Summer Reading List
Straight from my bookshelf.Brooke Borel It’s June, the month of summer reading lists, and Our Modern Plagues is jumping on the trend. But rather than offering the latest and greatest releases, my list...
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Humans Calculated Paths Of Planets 1,400 Years Earlier Than We Thought
Science On Ancient Babylonian tablets, a precursor of calculus It has been generally accepted in the heady world of mathematical history that the use of geometry to calculate and track celestial...
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