Science History Podcast

In prior episodes, I have interviewed many people about the history of physics and physics-adjacent topics such as nuclear disarmament. Many of the physicists we have discussed also made forays into biology. Today I explore this transition of physicists working in biology with William Lanouette. Bill is a writer and public policy analyst who has specialized in the history of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons.

Prior to the rise of Nazism, the University of Göttingen hosted most of the top physicists in the world, either as resident or visiting scientists. With us to discuss the history of physics in Göttingen are Tim Salditt, Kurt Schönhammer, and Sarah Köster. In this conversation over tea at the University of Göttingen, we discuss how Göttingen became a focal point of physics, key moments and people during the decades that Göttingen hosted discovery after discovery, and what happened to the assembly of scholars in Göttingen as Germany descended into the abyss of fascism. Tim Salditt and Sarah Köster are both professors of experimental physics in the Institute for X-Ray Physics, and Kurt Schönhammer is a retired Professor from the Institute for Theoretical Physics.

The history of science is punctuated by moments of technological innovation that produce a paradigm shift and a subsequent flurry of discovery. A recent technological innovation that generated diverse discoveries, ranging from a profound shift in our understanding of the origin of humanity to a seismic change in the criminal justice system, is the polymerase chain reaction, or PCR. With us to discuss the history of PCR is one of its innovators, Henry Erlich. As Director of the Human Genetics Department at Cetus Corporation and later as Director of Human Genetics and Vice President of Exploratory Research at Roche Molecular Systems, Henry led developments in diagnostic applications for infectious and autoimmune diseases, forensic genetics, and organ transplantation. His laboratory performed the first forensic DNA case in the United States in 1986 and the first DNA-based post-conviction exoneration. Henry has published over 450 journal articles and three books, which include PCR Technology: Principles and Applications for DNA Amplification, Silent Witness: Forensic DNA Analysis in Criminal Investigations and Humanitarian Disasters, and Genetic Reconstruction of the Past: DNA Analysis in Forensics and Human Evolution. Henry has received numerous awards, including the Association for Molecular Pathology Award for Excellence (2000) and the Profiles in DNA Courage Award (National Institute of Justice, 2005).

Lise Meitner was the most important female physicist of the 20th century. She made fundamental discoveries on the atom, including, most famously, being the first to discover the idea of fission. This she did as she puzzled over experimental results generated by her colleague Otto Hahn. Hahn, but not Meitner, received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this monumental discovery. More generally, Meitner overcame profound obstacles facing women in science to become a central figure in physics during its heyday as she worked with the likes of Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein to understand the atom, and hence the universe. With us to discuss the life and legacy of Lise Meitner is Marissa Moss. Marissa is the award-winning author and illustrator of over 70 books for children and young adults, including the book we discuss today, The Woman Who Split the Atom: The Life of Lise Meitner.

Humanity's understanding of the universe radically altered with the advent of quantum mechanics in the early 20th century. The theory of quantum mechanics describes how nature behaves at or below the scale of atoms, and the road to that theory was littered with seemingly insurmountable obstacles. With us to discuss the development of quantum mechanics, and the major schools of thought represented by Neils Bohr and Albert Einstein, is Jim Baggott. Today we discuss many of the key players in the development of quantum mechanics, including Bohr, Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, Max Planck, and Max Born.

Societal problems big and small typically have a scientific element, often in a central way, yet most scientists are not directly involved in policy. My guests sought to change that in 1969 when they created the Stanford Workshops on Social and Political Issues, or SWOPSI. SWOPSI was founded by three students, two of whom are with us today: Joel Primack and Robert Jaffe. The third student was Joyce Kobayashi. Also with us today is my uncle Frank, who worked on some of the early SWOPSI initiatives. In this episode, I ask Joel, Bob and Frank: How did they hack Stanford's rules for course credit to create workshops run by graduate students? What were the goals of SWOPSI? How effective were the workshops in tackling local vs. national or international problems? How did SWOPSI help to create programs for scientists to advise Congress on technical issues? Why did SWOPSI perish as an institution at Stanford? How has US military-sponsored research evolved since the Second World War? And is SWOPSI a good model for young scientists today who want to solve societal problems?

Institutions of higher education, especially in the United States, have received a great deal of attention over the past two generations regarding their ideological march to the left, and the impacts, real or imagined, on society at large. Criticism of American universities has sharpened since Oct. 7, 2023, as the Hamas attack on Israel was closely followed by campus protests against Israel. The ensuing turmoil resulted in the temporary closure of campuses, the resignations of college presidents, the cancellations of speakers and commencement ceremonies, and congressional investigations. How did American universities get to this moment? What are the implications for free speech, social cohesion, and democracy? And what are the repercussions for scholarship and science? My guest, Bret Stephens, has written extensively on the state of American universities, illiberalism, and antisemitism. Bret worked as an assistant editor at Commentary magazine from 1995-1996, after which he moved to the Wall Street Journal. From 2002-2004, Bret served as the editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post, where he oversaw the most comprehensive overhaul of the paper's content in its 70-year history. He then returned to the Wall Street Journal, where he won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. Bret moved to The New York Times in 2017, where he writes as an opinion columnist. He is also a contributor to NBC News and MSNBC, a contributing editor for Commentary magazine, and the editor-in-chief of SAPIR: A Journal of Jewish Conversations.

What was the Western World's understanding of the origins of humanity prior to the Enlightenment? Why did Christopher Columbus have a Hebrew speaker on his voyages of exploration? Why did the American universities founded before the Revolution have Hebrew in their curriculum? What role did linguistics play in the late 19th century modernization of the Hebrew language? What does the literary critic Edmund Wilson have to do with the science of archeology? Finally, and unrelated to science, how did the soft power of the arts - including music, theater, dance, film, literature, and television - help to shape the relationship between the United States and Israel? With us to answer this eclectic set of questions is Shalom Goldman. Shalom is the Pardon Tillinghast Professor of Religion at Middlebury College.

Archeology is the science that most directly connects us with our past, and no city in the world has been subject to more archeological interest than Jerusalem. With us to explore the archeology of Jerusalem is Jodi Magness. Jodi is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Since 2002, she has been the Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Jodi's research interests focus on Palestine in the Roman, Byzantine, and early Islamic periods, and Diaspora Judaism in the Roman world. She has studied ancient pottery, ancient synagogues, Jerusalem, Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Roman army in the East. Today we discuss her most recent book, Jerusalem Through the Ages: From Its Beginnings to the Crusades, published in 2024 by Oxford University Press.

Today I speak with Steve Fetter about his work on a variety of nuclear disarmament efforts, including the Black Sea Experiment, nuclear archeology, the risks associated with a single person having the ability to start a nuclear war, ballistic missile defense, the weaponization of space, nuclear energy, and climate change. Steve received an SB in physics from MIT in 1981 and a PhD in energy and resources from the University of California, Berkeley in 1985. Steve has been a professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland since 1988. Steve also served in government, including five years in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during the Obama administration, where he led the national security and international affairs division and the environment and energy division. Steve is a fellow of the American Physical Society and a recipient of their Leo Szilard Lectureship Award, as well as the Joseph A. Burton Forum Award, the Federation of American Scientists' Hans Bethe Science in the Public Service award, and the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service.

Today we focus on the Soviet nuclear program with Thomas Cochran. Tom directed nuclear disarmament projects at the Natural Resources Defense Council from 1973 until his retirement in 2016. He has received numerous awards for his work on nuclear disarmament, including the public service award from the Federation of American Scientists and the Szilard Award from the American Physical Society, both in 1987. Tom was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1989, and, due to his work, the Natural Resources Defense Council received the AAAS Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award that same year. Today we discuss the Soviet nuclear weapons program, from Stalin finding out about the bomb to Gorbachev's unilateral test moratorium. Tom played key roles in the seismic monitoring experiment, visits by US Congressional delegations to sensitive Soviet military installations, the Black Sea experiment, and other adventures in nuclear de-escalation.

Today we explore the history of the field of endocrine disruption with Patricia Hunt. Pat is a Regents Professor in the School of Molecular Biosciences at Washington State University. She is a distinguished researcher and the recipient of many awards; additionally, she works at the forefront of initiatives to communicate complex scientific findings to the public. 

In episode 77, I interviewed William Lanouette about Leo Szilard's work on the atom bomb, with a discussion of the roles that Szilard played until the end of World War II. Today, in part two of my interview with Bill, we focus on Szilard's achievements after the war. Bill is a writer and public policy analyst who has specialized in the history of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. He received an A.B. in English with a minor in Philosophy at Fordham College in 1963, and M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Political Science at the London School of Economics and the University of London in 1966 and 1973, respectively. Bill then worked as a journalist for Newsweek, The National Observer, and National Journal, and he was the Washington Correspondent for The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He has also written for The Atlantic, The Economist, Scientific American, The New York Herald Tribune, The Washington Post, and many other outlets. Bill also worked as a Senior Analyst for Energy and Science Issues at the US Government Accountability Office. Bill's first book was Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard, the Man Behind the Bomb, published by Scribner's in 1992, with later editions published by the University of Chicago Press and Skyhorse Publications. Bill also published, in 2021, The Triumph of the Amateurs: The Rise, Ruin, and Banishment of Professional Rowing in The Gilded Age.

Perhaps the most overlooked scientist who played critical roles in the development of the atomic bomb was Leo Szilard. With us to explore Szilard's numerous contributions to science and society is William Lanouette. Bill is a writer and public policy analyst who has specialized in the history of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. He received an A.B. in English with a minor in Philosophy at Fordham College in 1963, and M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Political Science at the London School of Economics and the University of London in 1966 and 1973, respectively. Bill then worked as a journalist for Newsweek, The National Observer, and National Journal, and he was the Washington Correspondent for The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He has also written for The Atlantic, The Economist, Scientific American, The New York Herald Tribune, The Washington Post, and many other outlets. Bill also worked as a Senior Analyst for Energy and Science Issues at the US Government Accountability Office. Bill's first book was Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard, the Man Behind the Bomb, published by Scribner's in 1992, with later editions published by the University of Chicago Press and Skyhorse Publications. Bill also published, in 2021, The Triumph of the Amateurs: The Rise, Ruin, and Banishment of Professional Rowing in The Gilded Age. In this episode, we discuss all things Szilard: the man, the war, the bomb, the innovations, the collaborations, the accusations of espionage, the conflicts, and even the Martians.

Peter Agre received the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of aquaporins. Peter is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and he also directed the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute until 2023. Today we discuss the history of malaria research, and Peter reflects on being a scientist. The interview is followed by Peter's keynote lecture for the University of Arizona One Health symposium, which he gave on February 12, 2024.

In 1994, while attending graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley, I had the pleasure of seeing a lecture by Oliver Sacks in which he discussed his work on sleeping sickness and various other neurological disorders. He also discussed his thoughts on the economy of a life. Today's episode is that lecture in full, with all the insights and charm that was Oliver Sacks.

Novichok is the most deadly chemical weapon ever developed. With us to discuss the history of Novichok is Vil Mirzayanov. Vil worked in the secret Soviet chemical weapons laboratory that developed Novichok. He revealed its existence to the world in 1991 and was then arrested by the Russian counterintelligence service and prosecuted in a secret trial. He won his freedom with the help of an international group of scientists, including three who have appeared as guests on this podcast. He then immigrated to the United States and published his story in the book State Secrets. An Insider's Chronicle of the Russian Chemical Weapons Program, published in 2009 by Outskirts Press.

How could a brilliant scientist and mathematician, an innovator in quantum theory, who worked closely with Jewish colleagues, become an ardent Nazi? How did this man, who has a field of mathematics named after him, escape the scrutiny of his colleagues? And what happened to him upon the collapse of Nazi Germany? The scientist who straddled this strange world of physics and Nazism was Pascual Jordan. With us to explain the history of Pascual Jordan is Ryan Dahn. Ryan is a writer, editor, science historian, and translator. He is the books editor at Physics Today, the flagship physics magazine of the American Institute of Physics.

Many of the most important secrets held in international contests are technological or scientific in nature, and wars are often settled due to technological superiority of one side over the other. This leads spy agencies to employ all manner of trickery and tools to obtain those secrets. With us to explore the history of scientific espionage is Eli Lake. Eli was a senior national security correspondent for The Daily Beast and Newsweek, and a syndicated columnist with Bloomberg. Eli is now a columnist for the Free Press and the host of the Re-Education Podcast on Nebulous media. Eli is also a contributing editor for Commentary Magazine.

A retrospective on the Franck-Hertz experiment, which resulted in James Franck and Gustav Hertz receiving the 1925 Nobel Prize in Physics. Image credit: By Infoczo - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35281920

A retrospective on James Franck, recipient of the 1925 Nobel Prize in Physics.

The ability to extract DNA from ancient fragments of biological material has revolutionized our understanding of recent evolutionary history, including human evolution and phylogeography. Analysis of ancient DNA in tandem with radiocarbon dating, along with traditional archeological techniques, has led to a flurry of discoveries. With us to discuss this research is Maanasa Raghavan. Maanasa is a Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Chicago. 

The world just experienced a devastating pandemic, yet in the context of historical pandemics, COVID-19 was a relatively minor event in the history of disease. What do we know about the history of pandemics, including before written records, and what can we learn from this history? With us to answer these and other questions about the origins of epidemics and pandemics is Leslie Reperant. Leslie graduated with a doctorate of veterinary medicine at the National Veterinary School of Lyon, France in 2004 and obtained a PhD at Princeton University in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in 2010. Leslie's doctoral and post-doctoral studies focused on the interplay between the pathogenesis and evolution of influenza viruses, and on factors driving pathogen emergence and spread. Leslie is the author of Fatal Jump: Tracking the Origins of Pandemics, published in 2023 by Johns Hopkins University Press.

Before the advent of the germ theory of disease in the 1870s, quarantine provided one of the few effective means to prevent or alleviate epidemics. The Lazaretto quarantine station in Philadelphia illustrates the history of quarantine both before and after the discovery of pathogenic microbes. With us to explore the history of 18th and 19th century quarantine in Philadelphia, and what it meant for public health, is David Barnes. David teaches the history of medicine and public health at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is an Associate Professor of History and Sociology of Science. David received a BA in history from Yale in 1984 and a Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Berkeley in 1992. His books include The Making of a Social Disease: Tuberculosis in Nineteenth-Century France (University of California Press, 1995), The Great Stink of Paris and the Nineteenth-Century Struggle against Filth and Germs (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), and Lazaretto: How Philadelphia Used an Unpopular Quarantine Based on Disputed Science to Accommodate Immigrants and Prevent Epidemics (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023).

What are the commonalities between scaling the world's highest peaks and tackling the most challenging pollution problems? What was it like to enter the worlds of climbing and chemistry as a woman in the 1960s and 70s? With us to answer these questions is Arlene Blum. Arlene completed a bachelor's degree at Reed College in 1966 and a PhD in biophysical chemistry at Berkeley in 1971. She was a pioneering alpinist early in her career and a founder of the Green Science Policy Institute later in her career. She is the author of Annapurna - A Woman's Place, published by Counterpoint in 1980, and Breaking Trail, A Climbing Life, published by Harcourt in 2005.

Any intellectual endeavor runs the risk of bias. Today we explore ways in which political ideology interferes with scholarship, particularly in the social sciences, with a focus on social psychology. My guest is Lee Jussim, a distinguished professor of social psychology and the leader of the Social Perception Laboratory at Rutgers University. Lee is a prolific author and studies stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination; political radicalization; and other problems that impede science and society. Lee's books include Social Perception and Social Reality, which received the American Association of Publishers award for best book in psychology, as well as the edited volumes The Social Psychology of Morality, The Politics of Social Psychology, and Research Integrity. Lee is also a founding member of the Heterodox Academy, the Academic Freedom Alliance, and the Society for Open Inquiry in the Behavioral Sciences.

The world's environmental problems demand solutions for the common good, which in turn necessitate environmental diplomacy. With us to untangle the messy history of environmental diplomacy is Mark Lytle. In addition to his long tenure as a professor at Bard College, Mark has taught at Yale, Vassar, and University College Dublin. Mark's books include The Origins of the Iranian-American Alliance, 1941-1953, America's Uncivil Wars: The Sixties Era from Elvis to the Fall of Richard Nixon, The Gentle Subversive: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Rise of the Environmental Movement, and The All-Consuming Nation: Pursuing the American Dream Since World War II.

Certain fields of science attract broad interest because of what they tell us about humanity, and no field does this more directly than paleoanthropology. Today we explore the history of paleoanthropology with a focus on Louis and Mary Leakey, who made key discoveries at an inflection point of our understanding of human evolution. With us to discuss this history is Evan Hadingham. Evanis the Senior Science Editor of the award-winning PBS series NOVA. Today we discuss his new book, Discovering Us, Fifty Great Discoveries in Human Origins, published in partnership with the Leakey Foundation in 2021.

How could a conservation easement be anything other than a great thing? With us to answer this question are Jaimi Dowdell and Andrea Januta, both of whom are investigative reporters and data journalists with Reuters. Jaimi and Andrea were part of the Reuters team that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting. Today we discuss their Reuters special report entitled "How Boeing created a nature preserve that may also preserve pollution", published on July 20, 2022.

For thousands of years, scholars have struggled with what it means to be human. One critical dimension of humanity is foresight, and with us to decipher the evolution of foresight is Thomas Suddendorf. Thomas is a professor at the University of Queensland, where he investigates mental capacities in young children and in animals to answer fundamental questions about the nature and evolution of the human mind. Thomas is the author of over 140 research articles and two books: The Gap: The science of what separates us from other animals, published in 2013 by Basic Books, and The invention of tomorrow: a natural history of foresight (with co-authors Jonathan Redshaw and Adam Bulley), published in 2022, also by Basic Books.  Today we discuss archaeological finds related to stone tools, fire, hunting, ornaments, containers, burial, watercraft, maps, music, and storytelling - and what they tell us about the evolution of foresight.

Johan Rockström and colleagues first proposed the concept in 2009 of planetary boundary threats and a safe operating space for humanity. This conceptual framework clarifies environmental problems that are of planetary significance, such as biodiversity loss, climate change, and stratospheric ozone depletion. The most recently articulated planetary boundary threat, or set of threats, relates to chemical pollution of the biosphere. With us to unpack planetary boundary threats as they relate to pollution is Bethanie Carney Almroth. Bethanie is a professor at the University of Gothenburg, where she researches threats posed to our planet due to the immense number and quantities of synthetic chemicals released into the environment.

The Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the ensuing worldwide Great Depression left families in economic shock and despair. International trade collapsed to less than half of its previous levels and unemployment skyrocketed. Into this devastating mess stepped Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who began his long presidency in 1933. FDR spearheaded a series of programs known as the New Deal to revive the United States. The most popular of these was the government work relief program called the Civilian Conservation Corps, which ran from 1933 to 1942. Three million American men joined the Corps, gaining skills and employment while also attending to widespread conservation problems. With us to explain the significance of the Civilian Conservation Corps is Neil Maher. Neil is a professor of history in the Federated History Department at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University, Newark, and he is the author of Apollo in the Age of Aquarius and Nature's New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement.

The ways people think about matters both big and small, from climate change to daily tasks, impact the outcomes. Throughout the history of science and society, key insights arose through a thought process of simplification and subtraction, though the human tendency leans towards complication and addition. Today I discuss the power of subtraction with Leidy Klotz. Leidy is a professor at the University of Virginia, where he studies the science of design. He is the author of Subtract, published in 2021 by Flatiron Books.

No matter our claims to the contrary, we are all biased in our perceptions and beliefs. But bias is not random and its directions relate to our evolutionary history and culture, especially to how these interface with human sociality. With us to decipher bias is Jim Zimring. Jim is the author of What Science is and How it Really Works, published by Cambridge University Press in 2019, and Partial Truths: How Fractions Distort Our Thinking, published by Columbia University Press in 2022. Today we discuss flawed thinking about fractions, the No True Scotsman Fallacy, what we see when we read, heuristics, stories vs. statistics, confirmation bias, the prosecutor's fallacy, cherry picking, tautology, hindsight bias, the Bible code, the fine-tuning argument, armor on WWII bombers and the Anthropic Principle, and the reproducibility crisis.

The oceans have been used as the dumping grounds for all manner of toxic waste. Outrage over such dumping led to the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act of 1972 in the United States and the London Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter in 1975. Today I discuss the dumping of DDT and other wastes off the coast of Southern California with Dave Valentine. Dave completed a BS in chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California San Diego in 1995, followed by an MS in chemistry also at UCSD the following year. He then completed MS and PhD degrees in earth system science at the University of California Irvine in 1998 and 2000. Dave is now the Norris Presidential Chair in Earth Science at UC Santa Barbara. He has participated in 25 oceanographic expeditions, including 13 as chief scientist.

Many landmarks of environmental history share a connection with a single molecule: DDT. During and after the Second World War, it was broadcast into the environment at a scale that far surpassed the applications of any prior chemical. The public met this mass spraying of DDT with enthusiasm, as the war proved it to be highly effective against the vectors of malaria, yellow fever, typhus, and other insect-borne diseases. But these public health successes were short-lived as insects quickly evolved resistance. Nevertheless, DDT use skyrocketed around the world, especially in agriculture. It was also used on a massive scale in forestry, in the Sisyphean fight against invasive insects, and in the home, where clever companies impregnated all manner of commercial products with DDT, ranging from bug bombs to house paint to wallpaper for the nursery. Due primarily to its massive impact on the environment, but also to effects on human health, a backlash ensued, driven most forcefully by Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring. The chemical was banned throughout the world in the 1970s and 80s, and yet its story continued. With us to unravel this complex tale, and its relation to science denial and corporate malfeasance, is Elena Conis. Elena is a historian of medicine and an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Journalism and Department of History at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on scientific controversies, science denial, and public understanding of science. She is the author of Vaccine Nation: America's Changing Relationship with Immunization, and a co-editor of Pink and Blue: Gender, Culture, and the Health of Children. Today we discuss her most recent book, How to Sell a Poison: The Rise, Fall, and Toxic Return of DDT.

At the start of the 20th century, physicists probed the structure of nature. Their discoveries changed our fundamental understanding of matter, of life, and of war. At the center of these discoveries stood the Danish physicist Niels Bohr. Bohr approached problems of atomic structure and quantum theory with a philosophical perspective and an ability to skirt paradoxes with his principle of complementarity. Perhaps as important as Bohr's discoveries on the atom was his hosting of international collaborations at his institute in Copenhagen, which in turn led to fundamental insights in physics and chemistry. Bohr also played significant humanitarian and diplomatic roles during World War II in Denmark, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Many Jewish refugee scientists passed through Bohr's institute after escaping Nazi Germany, and Bohr then facilitated their immigration to safe harbors. With us to decipher Bohr's complex legacy is John Heilbron. John is a member of the International Academy of the History of Science, for which he served as president from 2001-2005. He is also a member of The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and The American Philosophical Society. He is the recipient of many awards for his scholarship on the history of science.

The advent of agriculture over 10,000 years ago forever altered the trajectory of humanity. Communities grew larger until cities and nations dotted the landscape, labor became specialized, new diseases emerged, civilizations flourished and vanished, warfare increased in scale and lethality, and people colonized every corner of the globe. Agriculture facilitated the exponential growth of the human population, which necessitated ever greater efficiency and productivity and eventually led to the industrialization of farming. But this efficiency has come at a cost – the loss of crop varieties and the local knowledge and cultural practices associated with those crops. With us to understand these radical changes in agricultural practices, and their implications for society, is Helen Anne Curry. Helen is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Churchill College. Her research focuses on the histories of seeds, crop science, and industrial agriculture. She is author of Evolution Made to Order: Plant Breeding and Technological Innovation in Twentieth Century America and Endangered Maize: Industrial Agriculture and the Crisis of Extinction.

The brain is the most mysterious and complex organ of the body, and when things go awry, we may be confronted with personal tragedy and we may gain insights on what it means to be human. With us to discuss neurological disorders and the history of their discovery is Sara Manning Peskin. Sara completed an AB in biochemistry at Harvard University in 2009, an MS in cellular and molecular biology at the University of Pennsylvania in 2013, and an MD also at U Penn in 2015. She completed postgraduate training and a fellowship in various aspects of neurology also at U Penn, where she is now an Assistant Professor of Clinical Neurology. Today we discuss a cornucopia of neurological disorders, including Huntington's disease, Alzheimer's disease, Lewy body dementia, Pick's disease, pellagra, and kuru disease (and its association with cannibalism) – all drawn from the pages of her new book, A Molecule Away from Madness, published in 2022 by W.W. Norton & Company.

Nothing is so intertwined with human success and folly as economics. The economy, for better or for worse, drives much of our fate from our household budget to our national policies to the outbreak of war. But economic activity also has profound effects on the environment and a close inspection of economics opens the question of whether humans can live sustainably on the only planet we have. The field of economics that focuses on sustainability and the environmental costs of economic activity is ecological economics. With us to discuss this field is one of its founders, Herman Daly. Herman received a B.A. in economics from Rice University in 1960 and a PhD in from Vanderbilt University in 1967. He was a professor of economics at Louisiana State University until 1988, and then served as senior economist in the environment department of the World Bank until 1994. He then joined the faculty at the University of Maryland in the School of Public Affairs. Herman is the author of over 100 articles in professional journals, as well as many books, including: Toward a Steady-State Economy (1973), Steady-State Economics (1977), Valuing the Earth (1993), Beyond Growth (1996), Ecological Economics and the Ecology of Economics (1999), Ecological Economics: Principles and Applications (2004), and Ecological Economics and Sustainable Development (2007). He is co-author with theologian John B. Cobb, Jr. of the award-winning book, For the Common Good (1989). He also co-founded the journal Ecological Economics and the International Society of Ecological Economics. Herman has received too many awards to list here, but they include Sweden's Honorary Right Livelihood Award, the Heineken Prize for Environmental Science from the Netherlands, the Sophie Prize for Environment and Development from Norway, the Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Republic, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Council for Science and the Environment, and the Blue Planet Prize.

The 60s hosted the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union, which occurred in the midst of the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and civil unrest. How did the culture wars of the 1960s relate to the space race, especially in the United States? How did the Civil Rights Movement, the New Left, environmentalism, the women's movement, and the Hippie counterculture influence NASA, and vice versa? With us to answer these questions is Neil Maher. Neil received a B.A. in history from Dartmouth College in 1986, an MA in U.S. history from New York University in 1997, and a Ph.D. in history, also from New York University, in 2001. He is a professor of history in the Federated History Department at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University, Newark, where he teaches environmental history, political history, and the history of environmental justice. Neil has received numerous fellowships, awards, and grants from the Smithsonian Institution, NASA, Harvard University's Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, and Ludwig Maximilian University's Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich, Germany. His books include Nature's New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement (Oxford University Press, 2008), and Apollo in the Age of Aquarius (Harvard University Press, 2017).

Today's episode marks the four-year anniversary of the Science History Podcast, where we have explored all manner of science and relevant policy spanning from gravitational waves to bioterrorism. So it is fitting that today's guest, Dick Garwin, has worked on just about every major scientific and technology problem with a defense application since just after the Second World War, ranging from the first thermonuclear weapon in 1951 all the way to the U.S. response to pandemics. Today we discuss it all, including space nuclear detonations and electromagnetic pulses, spy satellites, anti-submarine warfare, sequential memory for computers, magnetic resonance imaging, laser printers, touch-screen monitors, nuclear weapons testing, nuclear reactor accidents, Ebola, the Iraq War, the BP Deep Water Horizon oil spill, and even gravitational waves. Dick was born in Ohio in 1928. He received a BS in physics from Case Institute of Technology in 1947 at the age of 19, and then a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago in 1949, at the age of 21. Two years later, in 1951, for a summer project at Los Alamos, he designed the first hydrogen bomb. Dick joined the IBM Corporation in 1952, where for over 40 years he helped to design diverse technology with military applications. He also held numerous posts in universities and at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, in addition to advising presidents on science and technology, from Eisenhower to Kennedy to Johnson to Nixon. He also served on various technical committees for subsequent American administrations, all the way through to the Obama presidency. Dick has published over 500 papers and been granted 47 U.S. patents. He also coauthored many books, including Nuclear Weapons and World Politics (1977), Nuclear Power Issues and Choices (1977), Energy: the Next Twenty Years (1979), Science Advice to the President (1980), Managing the Plutonium Surplus: Applications and Technical Options (1994), and Megawatts and Megatons: A Turning Point in the Nuclear Age? (2001). Dick is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Academy of Medicine. Dick received too many awards to list them all here, but they include the 2003 National Medal of Science, awarded by President George W. Bush, and the 2016 Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded by President Barack Obama. In sum, he is a treasure of 20th Century American science, and I hope you enjoy this opportunity to hear his thoughts as we tour the last 70 years of science, technology and policy.

Today we explore the history of nuclear disarmament with Zia Mian. Zia is a physicist and co-director of Princeton's Program on Science and Global Security, part of the School of Public and International Affairs, where he has worked since 1997. His research interests include issues of nuclear arms control, nonproliferation and disarmament, and international peace and security. Zia is co-editor of the journal Science & Global Security, and he is the co-author of Unmaking the Bomb, published by MIT Press in 2014. He is also co-chair of the International Panel on Fissile Materials. Zia received the 2014 Linus Pauling Legacy Award for “his accomplishments as a scientist and as a peace activist in contributing to the global effort for nuclear disarmament and for a more peaceful world.” He also received the American Physical Society's 2019 Leo Szilard Award “for promoting global peace and nuclear disarmament”. In 2021, Zia was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society for “promoting global nuclear risk reduction and disarmament.”

How do we distinguish real science from hogwash? How does real science evolve over time into pseudoscience? Why will science always be plagued with sister movements on the fringe that make us cringe? With us to explore these topics and their relationship to the demarcation problem is Michael Gordin. Michael is the Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History and the director of the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts at Princeton University. He specializes in the history of modern science in Russia, Europe, and North America, especially issues related to the history of fringe science, the early years of the nuclear arms race, Russian and Soviet science, language and science, and Albert Einstein. He is the author of On the Fringe, which we discuss today, as well as The Pseudoscience Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe, Scientific Babel: How Science Was Done Before and After Global English, and Red Cloud at Dawn: Truman, Stalin, and the End of the Atomic Monopoly. Today we discuss diverse topics in fringe science, including Bigfoot, extra sensory perception, UFOs, astrology, alchemy, the ether, Aryan physics, Lysenkoism, phrenology, cryptozoology, Velikovsky, Mesmerism, Uri Geller, cold fusion, and where all of this leaves us as we navigate the waters between science and pseudoscience.

Uncertainty is inherent to science and exploited by those who wish to stymie regulations that would promote environmental quality and public health. Chemical companies, oil companies, tobacco companies, and many others, kept their products on the marketplace and promoted consumerism by stressing the unsettled nature of research. With us to explore this history, and how it relates to the environment and public health, is Mark Lytle. Mark is among those historians seeking to develop the field of “Environmental Diplomacy.” The author of The Origins of the Iranian-American Alliance, 1941-1953, he began his career as a student of American relations with Iran and the role of oil in postwar foreign policy. Since then, in his books America's Uncivil Wars: The Sixties Era from Elvis to the Fall of Richard Nixon and The Gentle Subversive: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Rise of the Environmental Movement, he has focused on the history of the 1960s and environmentalism. His interest in history education inspired the writing with James West Davidson of After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection. His latest book is The All-Consuming Nation: Pursuing the American Dream Since World War II. In addition to his long tenure as a professor at Bard, he has taught at Yale, Vassar, and as the Mary Ball Washington Professor at University College Dublin.

The study of wildlife has a history full of adventures in remote corners of the Earth, discoveries of remarkable behaviors, and achievements in conservation. George Schaller is a pioneer of the field, with seven decades of work spanning from the Arctic to the Tropics. George was born in Germany in 1933 and immigrated to the United States as a teenager. He received a BS degree from the University of Alaska in 1955 and a PhD from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1962. He then held positions at Stanford University and Johns Hopkins University before working as a research associate for the Rockefeller University and New York Zoological Society's Institute for Research in Animal Behavior, beginning in 1966. This program evolved into the Center for Field Biology and Conservation, where George worked as the Coordinator. Beginning in 1979, George directed the New York Zoological Society's International Conservation Program. George's many awards reflect his impacts on the conservation of wildlife and ecosystems around the world. These awards include the National Geographic Society Lifetime Achievement Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the World Wildlife Fund Gold Medal, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, and many others. He is also known for his many books on wildlife, including The Mountain Gorilla – Ecology and Behavior, published in 1963, The Year of the Gorilla published in 1964, The Tiger: Its Life in the Wild published in 1969, and The Serengeti Lion: A study of Predator-Prey Relations, published in 1972, for which he received the U.S. National Book Award in Science.

The history of science is punctuated by both the greatest achievements and the greatest tragedies of human endeavors. The development of organic chemistry illustrates this dichotomy, as some scientists improved the human condition while others facilitated the horrors of genocide. The guise of chemistry also has served as a useful front for fraudsters. With us to illuminate chemical accidents, brilliant discoveries, searing evils, and the use and misuse of organic chemistry is Joe Schwarcz. Joe was born in Hungary in 1947. His family escaped to Austria during the 1956 Hungarian uprising, and from there immigrated to Quebec. Joe received BS and PhD degrees in chemistry from McGill University in 1969 and 1973. He held various faculty positions before joining the faculty at McGill in 1980. Joe is the Director of McGill's Office for Science and Society, which has the mission of separating sense from nonsense. He is well known for his informative and entertaining public lectures on topics ranging from the chemistry of food to the mind-body connection. Joe has received numerous awards for teaching chemistry and for interpreting science for the public. For example, he was the first non-American to win the American Chemical Society's Grady-Stack Award for demystifying chemistry, and he was awarded the “Montreal Medal”, which is the Canadian Chemical Institute's premier recognition of lifetime contributions to chemistry in Canada. Joe has hosted a radio show on science for forty years, has appeared hundreds of times on television, writes a regular newspaper column, and is the author of eighteen best-selling books. 

The history of mathematics extends back millennia. The needs of trade, taxation, and time-keeping drove the development of principles of arithmetic, algebra, and geometry, which had already acquired some sophistication by 5,000 years ago. Perhaps most fundamental to the development of mathematics has been discoveries on the nature of numbers themselves, or what mathematicians refer to as Number Theory. Today's topic is the history and development of Number Theory, viewed through the lens of numbers and number systems. Our guide to Number Theory is Bryden Cais, professor of mathematics at the University of Arizona and the Director of the Southwest Center for Arithmetic Geometry.  Bryden completed a BA in mathematics at Harvard University in 2002 and a PhD also in mathematics at the University of Michigan in 2007. He was a postdoctoral fellow at McGill University, a visiting scholar at Universität Bielefeld, and a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison before joining the faculty at the University of Arizona in 2011. We explore the nature and history of different number systems, highlight the obstacles that mathematicians and civilizations faced with new concepts of number, and touch on some unsolved problems in modern number theory. A study guide for this episode is available in PDF form HERE, or as LaTeX HERE.

The most important book in the history of mathematics is Euclid’s Elements. The book – really 13 short books bound together into a single treatise – dates to approximately 300 BC, and is credited to the Greek mathematician Euclid of Alexandria. It is apparently a compendium and expansion of the work of previous Greek mathematicians, such as Pythagoras, Hoppocrates of Chios, and Eudoxus of Cnidus. The Elements is the oldest surviving logical treatment of mathematics as a discipline, and its theorems and constructions are central to the history of scientific discovery and logic. It is likely that only the Bible has been issued in more editions than the Elements since the invention of the printing press. With us to discuss the Elements, and its importance to the development of geometry, is David Acheson. David completed his bachelor’s degree in math and physics at Kings College, London, in 1967, and his Ph.D. in math at the University of East Anglia in 1971. He then held a variety of academic positions and became a Fellow in Mathematics at Jesus College, Oxford in 1977. In addition to his academic and textbook writing, David has written about mathematics for the public, including his books From Calculus to Chaos, published in 1997, 1089 and All That, published in 2002, The Calculus Story, published in 2017, and The Wonder Book of Geometry, published 2020, all by Oxford University Press.

Galileo occupies an inflection point in the history of science and society. Born in 1564, Galileo changed the trajectory of science though his work in astronomy, physics and related fields. He invented various clever devices, and he used the telescope to push the boundaries of knowledge about our solar system and Earth’s place in it. Galileo’s discoveries, and the manner in which he presented them in his 1632 book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, hurled his fate into the judgements of the Roman Inquisition. Galileo recanted after he was found “vehemently suspect of heresy”. The inquisitors sentenced Galileo with the unusual punishment of house arrest, where he remained until his death in 1642. The Dialogue represented much more than a book on Copernican heliocentrism – that is, that the Earth rotates daily and revolves around the sun. The Dialogue also became a cudgel in the European conflicts between Catholics and Protestants, and the fate of the book in the midst of the Inquisition placed Galileo’s lot in a precarious position. Did Galileo give a copy of the book to its Latin translator, which facilitated its distribution throughout Europe? Was Galileo’s recanting of heliocentrism genuine, or did he continue to spread heretical views while under house arrest? How did Galileo run afoul of a Pope who had previously supported his work? The questions surrounding the Dialogue live on, and with us to decipher the controversy is John Heilbron. John received AB and MA degrees in physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1955 and 1958, respectively. He completed his Ph.D. in history, also at Berkeley, in 1964. He then taught at the University of Pennsylvania before returning to Berkeley in 1967, where he worked his way through the ranks of academia to a full professorship and director of the Office for History of Science and Technology in 1973. He served as Berkeley’s Vice Chancellor in the early 1990s, and since then has been active as a professor emeritus. Since 1996, John has also conducted research at the University of Oxford, and since 2012 at the California Institute of Technology. John is a member of the International Academy of the History of Science, for which he served as president from 2001-2005. He is also a member of The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and The American Philosophical Society. He is the recipient of many awards for his scholarship on the history of science. John has written numerous books, and today we discuss his latest, a beautifully written book entitled, The Ghost of Galileo in a Forgotten Painting from the English Civil War, published in 2021 by Oxford University Press.

The creation of a new discipline based upon a single scientific expedition is a rare occurrence, but this is what resulted from the 1872-1876 expedition of H.M.S. Challenger. With us to explain the history and significance of the Challenger Expedition is Doug Macdougall. Doug is a geochemist who received a BS in geology from the University of Toronto, an MS in geology from McMaster University, and a PhD in Earth Sciences from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. After a two-year postdoc in physics at the University of California, Berkeley, Doug returned to Scripps to serve on the faculty. He is now an emeritus professor of Earth Sciences. Doug is a fellow of the Meteoritical Society and the American Geophysical Union. Today we discuss his book Endless Novelties of Extraordinary Interest – The Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger and the Birth of Modern Oceanography, published by Yale University Press.