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The Uncertainty of What Happened When Heisenberg Met Bohr

19 Jan 2024

It isn’t often that the subject matter of a play on Broadway is science. “Copenhagen” opened on Broadway in 2000 after a run in London’s West End. Its focus was a 1941 meeting in Bohr’s Copenhagen...

An Ancient Memory Technique Still Puzzles Scientists

12 Jan 2024

Spend enough time watching fictional geniuses on television and you will undoubtedly see the trope of the mind palace. Brainiacs, we are told, have mind palaces, ornate libraries that live solely...

Faraday, Dickens and Lighthouses

22 Dec 2023

I have a longstanding fascination with Victorian arts and sciences. It was the era when Darwin published the “Origin of the Species,” Perkin synthesized dyes, Lister introduced antiseptic surgery,...

Going Bananas

8 Dec 2023

Once upon a time, there was a banana plant. This banana plant lived in an English estate in the 1830s, and was named “the Cavendish”, after the Cavendish Family who lived on this estate.

A Hundred Years Ago Life Changed for Diabetics

22 Nov 2023

November 26th marks the 100th anniversary of a splendid dinner held at the University of Toronto to recognize perhaps the greatest Canadian achievement in science. A few weeks earlier, the Nobel...

DMSO Is Not a Cure-All. But the FDA’s Panic Over It Birthed a Myth.

17 Nov 2023

Imagine a drug so powerful, your government didn’t want you to have it. Now, add the claim that this drug is all natural (it’s not) and that people report it cured them of any ailment you can think...

A Houdini Low Point

27 Oct 2023

National Magic Day is celebrated annually on October 31st in memory of Harry Houdini who passed away on that day in 1926.

Not A Laughing Matter

25 Oct 2023

When I was growing up, “looning” meant one thing. You would fill a balloon with water and throw it at a target that usually did not welcome such activity. Today, “looning” has taken on another...

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