Author: lauraspinney

  • The twin boom

    IN Greek mythology, twins Castor and Pollux are so tightly bound that when mortal Castor dies, divine Pollux surrenders half his immortality to stay with him, and the pair are transformed into the constellation Gemini. In a modern reversal of the myth, twin astronauts Scott and Mark Kelly were reunited in March after Scott returned…

  • What if the sun…

    In English at last: Swiss writer Charles Ferdinand Ramuz’s magnificent 1937 novel Si le soleil ne revenait pas, or What if the sun… as translator Michelle Bailat-Jones has rendered the title. Read more here.  

  • In death, there is life

    MAX PLANCK, the inventor of quantum theory, once said that science advances one funeral at a time. He meant—or, at least, is presumed to have meant—that the death of a dominant mind in a field liberates others with different points of view to make their cases more freely, without treading on the toes of established…

  • China and the Great War

    IMPERIAL War Museum, London, 4 May 2016. China’s participation in the First World War was a defining moment in modern Chinese and world history and the beginning of China’s journey toward internationalisation. The aim of this symposium was to extend the dimensions of our collective memory of the war – and the ensuing ‘flu pandemic…

  • On shared memories

    WHAT were the greatest human catastrophes of the 20th century? When asked this question, most people answer the Second World War, followed by the First World War. The former killed around 50 million people, the latter 17 million. But there was another catastrophe that dwarfed both of these, that is rarely mentioned. The influenza pandemic…

  • Roots of brutality

    WHY would an apparently normal young adult drop out of college and turn up some time later in a video performing a cold-blooded execution in the name of jihad? It’s a conundrum we have been forced to ponder ever since a group calling itself ISIS declared war on infidels. But 70 years ago we were…

  • Sedition in the stores

    IN 1942, French photographer Robert Doisneau (perhaps best known for his image of a couple kissing outside the Hotel de Ville in the French capital) was commissioned to record life behind the scenes at the various arms of the National Museum of Natural History (MNHN) in Paris. Most of the images have never been published.…

  • To sing of one origin

    NOBODY understood the power of boundaries better than Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz (1878–1947). A Swiss writer who had to go to Paris to find his voice, he returned to his native canton of Vaud during the First World War to create a distinctively French-Swiss body of literature. He was loyal to his patrie but his patrie was…

  • Under the influence

    IT MIGHT sound strange to suggest that flu is, in any sense, a hereditary illness. Classic inherited diseases, such as sickle-cell anaemia and cystic fibrosis, are caused by broken genes that come from a sufferer’s parents. Flu is caused by a virus… This article first appeared in The Economist on 28 March 2015. To continue reading, click…

  • A Faustian bargain

    HUNTINGTON’S disease is awful. It slowly robs its victims of mobility, wits and emotions. And there is no cure. The idea that it might be the obverse of something good sounds, to say the least, counter-intuitive. Yet that is the contention of a small band of neuroscientists who have been studying it. They suggest the…