The Mosher Report
The sexual habits of American women, examined half a century before KinseyKathryn Allamong JacobJune/july 1981The nineteenth century was, according to the stereotype, ashamed and fearful of all things...
View ArticleA Demonstration At Shippingport
Coming on LineRichard RhodesJune/july 1981From the beginning it was clear—in this case the beginning was December 2, 1942, the day the first man-made nuclear reactor was nudged to criticality in a...
View ArticleMr. Harriman Requests The Pleasure Of Your Company
Was it science, sport, or the prospect of a round-the-world railroad that sent the tycoon off on his costly Alaskan excursion?Kay SloanJune/july 1982The railroad tycoon Edward Harriman was a man of...
View ArticleWilliam James Finds His Vocation
One of America s truly great men—scientist, philosopher, and literary genius—forged his character in the throes of adversityJacques BarzunFebruary/march 1983 THE YEAR IS 1890 and the place Cambridge,...
View ArticleScientists At War
THE BIRTH OF THE RAND CORPORATION During World War II, America discovered that scientists were needed to win it—and to win any future war. That’s why RAND came into being, the first think tank and the...
View Article“life On Mars Is Almost Certain!”
…And what’s more, the planet’s highly civilized inhabitants live together in perfect harmony. So argued an eminent astronomer named Percival Lowell, and for decades tens of thousands of Americans...
View ArticleThe Prizewinners
America has won more Nobel Prizes in medicine than any other nation: it’s easy when you have the money, the technology, and people from every other nationRobert B. BrownOctober/november 1984In 1977...
View ArticleThe Oddest Of Characters
Slovenly, impulsive, impoverished, and grotesque, Constantine Samuel Rafinesque was the greatest naturalist of his age. But nobody knew it.Peggy RobbinsJune/july 1985It is quite fitting,” wrote a...
View ArticleKnowledge Beyond Numbers
At a time when our civilization is trying to organize itself on scientific principles of mathematical probabilities, statistical modeling, and the like, is traditional narrative history of any real...
View ArticlePart I Four Centuries Of Surprises
We talk about it constantly and we arrange our lives around it. So did our parents; and so did the very first colonists. But it took Americans a long time to understand their weather—and we still have...
View ArticlePart Iii What Can We Do About It?
For more than two hundred years, Americans have tried to change the weather by starting fires, setting off explosions, cutting trees, even planning to divert the Gulf Stream. The question now is not...
View ArticleElm Street Blues
A HERITAGE PRESERVED Since 1930, more than half of America’s splendid elm trees have succumbed to disease. But science is now fighting back and gaining ground.Howard MansfieldOctober/November 1986They...
View ArticleDusting Off America’s First Dinosaur
It was discovered in New Jersey in 1858, was made into full-size copies sent as far away as Edinburgh, and had a violent run-in with Boss Tweed in 1871. Now, after fifty years out of view, the ugly...
View ArticleAstounding Story
Frederik PohlSeptember/october 1989What makes science fiction the literature of choice for so many? Arthur C. Clarke, the novelist and scientist, gave a good answer once, when asked why he chose to...
View ArticleThe New Creationists
The foremost student of a belief held by nearly half of all Americans traces its history from Darwin’s bombshell through the storms of the Scopes trial to today’s “scientific creationists”—who find...
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