16 stories tagged history-of-science, newest first.
62 points by ibobev | 38 comments
ScienceAlert article on a rediscovered unpublished Schrödinger manuscript presenting a hidden-variable model rebutting 1940s claims that determinism was impossible.
15 points by benbreen | 4 comments
JHI Blog essay on how late-medieval writers like Oresme, Mézières, and Froissart used mechanical clocks, which needed constant maintenance, as metaphors for cosmic and political order.
83 points by gumby | 22 comments
Open-access research article in the Journal of the History of Biology arguing that Photograph 49 is key to understanding the history of Rosalind Franklin's DNA Photograph 51.
8 points by benbreen | 0 comments
A Public Domain Review collection post presenting the engraved plates of the Mutus Liber, a wordless 1677 alchemical book.
281 points by pavel_lishin | 95 comments
Science news article reporting a new analysis arguing Rosalind Franklin recognized the helical structure in her Photograph 51, refuting James Watson's claim.
![Screenshot of gwern.net: The Legend of von Neumann (1973) [pdf]](https://hn.urlbox.com/shots/renders/2026/10/2/f40e3e6d-db7b-4d6b-8562-1f3d9460447c.jpg)
292 points by suopspaces | 163 comments
A 1973 essay by mathematician Paul Halmos recounting the life, achievements, and legends of John von Neumann, presented as a scanned PDF.
8 points by conorcleary | 1 comments
New Yorker essay by Alex Wellerstein marking the 75th anniversary of Chicago Pile-1, the world's first nuclear reactor, which achieved criticality in 1942.
116 points by gumby | 48 comments
Ars Technica article on scientists finding that a 19th-century Nature account of a geomagnetic storm delaying a train got the year wrong due to a typo.
![Screenshot of exhibitdb.cmog.org: Pyrex catalog from from 1938 with hand-drawn lab glassware [pdf]](https://hn.urlbox.com/shots/renders/2025/10/27/178b2c3f-98fc-46ea-9ede-6d233315011e.jpg)
350 points by speckx | 71 comments
A scanned PDF of Corning Glass Works' 1938 Pyrex brand laboratory glassware catalog, featuring hand-drawn illustrations of lab equipment, hosted by the Corning Museum of Glass.
470 points by arbesman | 127 comments
An article from The Appendix about drawings, such as pink birds and carrot soldiers, that Darwin's children made on the manuscript pages of On the Origin of Species.
420 points by groseje | 407 comments
Steve Blank blog post on how WWII-era science advisors and policy choices made the U.S. a science and engineering superpower while Britain fell behind.
486 points by bookofjoe | 239 comments
Caltech Archives image record of Richard Feynman's blackboard as it appeared at the time of his death in 1988.
532 points by mailyk | 185 comments
Substack essay on how Ben Franklin and Lord Rayleigh used oil spread on water to estimate the size of a single molecule.
465 points by signa11 | 311 comments
A blog post explaining why π² is approximately equal to g (9.81 m/s²), tracing the connection to the historical seconds-pendulum definition of the metre.
355 points by rmason | 116 comments
Scientific American opinion piece explaining how the Student's t-test, a common test of statistical significance, originated at the Guinness brewery and how it works.
534 points by wglb | 130 comments
Blog post recounting the book Newton and the Counterfeiter, about Isaac Newton's career as Warden of the Mint hunting counterfeiters.