This 20th century ornithologist earned the respect of her contemporaries for her animal behavior research that went against the grain of traditional science.
No contemporary portrait of Robert Hooke seems to have survived. This 2004 oil painting is based on descriptions during his lifetime.
Rita Greer
Born on July 18, 1635, this polymath broke ground in fields ranging from pneumatics, microscopy, mechanics and astronomy to civil engineering and architecture.
Women played a role as both readers and authors in the history of science writing.
Shutterstock/Africa Studio
The early days of science writing were largely confined to men, with women treated to texts labelled “for the ladies”. Things have changed, but more needs to be done.
Left off publications due to Nazi prejudice, this Jewish woman lost her rightful place in the scientific pantheon as the discoverer of nuclear fission.
Illustrations from the Nuremberg Chronicle, by Hartmann Schedel (1440-1514)
Laura Sumrall, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
Reports of demonic possession are once again on the rise. But during the devil’s last apogee in early modern Europe, demonic afflictions were taken seriously by both priests and physicians.
Weather towers like this one in a park in Vienna were a popular way for the 19th-century public to track the influence of weather on their lives.
Source: Wikimedia
Climate science in the computer age is the pursuit of elite scientists. A historian of science sees an upside to the popular, participatory approach of studying changes to the climate from the 19th century.
Scientific pursuits need to be coupled with a humanist tradition — to highlight not just how psychedelics work, but why that matters.
(Shutterstock)
Once associated with mind-control experiments and counter-cultural defiance, psychedelics now show great promise for mental health treatments and may prompt a re-evaluation of the scientific method.
Some of the ‘remarkable beetles’ Wallace collected in Borneo.
A.R. Wallace
An evolutionary biologist visits the remote jungle mountaintop where a little-known naturalist wrote his insightful paper about the mechanisms of evolution that spurred on a rivalrous Charles Darwin.
The 19th-century British anatomist Richard Owen downplayed the role of colonial contributors and largely ignored the importance of Aboriginal testimony and knowledge in describing the marsupial lion.