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Archaeology, Evolution, History, History of science or medicine, Journalism

History lessons

ns_logo“MY NAME is Ozymandias, king of kings: look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!” So run the famous lines of Percy Shelley’s poem about Ramses the Great, a pharaoh who ruled Egypt’s New Kingdom in the 13th century BC, when it was the world’s most sophisticated society. But the poem’s theme is the transience of glory. It describes the ruins of a giant statue to Ramses that lie scattered in the desert: “Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away…”

This article first appeared in New Scientist on 15 October 2016. To continue reading, click here (paywall).

 

Journalism

The twin boom

lzuB88p2IN 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 from a year’s stint on the International Space Station – an event eagerly awaited by medical researchers who saw their chance to conduct tests on the twins to assess the effects of space on the human body…

This article first appeared in Aeon on 18 August 2016. To continue reading, click here.

History, History of science or medicine, Journalism, Medicine, People

In death, there is life

the-economist-logoMAX 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 authority. It might also rearrange patterns of funding, for they, too, often reflect established hierarchies…

This article first appeared in The Economist on 26 March 2016. To continue reading, click here.