Science History Podcast

How did the psychiatrist Douglas Kelley end up evaluating high-ranking Nazis at the 1945-1946 International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg? Who were Kelley's patients on trial for war crimes? How did Kelley interpret the responses that he got from the Nazis with the use of the Rorschach test ? What did Kelley learn about the psychology of evil? Kelley killed himself, and he did so using cyanide, j...

Those of us who grew up during the Cold War were keenly aware of the space race between the US and USSR. With us to relive the victories and tragedies of the space race is Leroy Chiao. Leroy is a former NASA astronaut and International Space Station commander. A veteran of four space missions, Leroy most recently served as Commander and NASA Science Officer of Expedition 10 aboard the Internationa...

Marie Curie was one of the most remarkable scientists in history. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win two, and the only person ever to earn Nobel awards in separate fields of science. Today we explore the life and legacy of Marie Curie with the science writer Dava Sobel. Dava is the author of prominent and best-selling science history books, including Longitude ,...

On July 9, 1955, mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell announced the Russell-Einstein manifesto, which warned the world of the dangers posed by nuclear weapons. The 11 signatories included Albert Einstein, who signed it just before his death. Physicist Joseph Rotblat stated that the manifesto was " t he last message from the man who was the symbol of the great heights the human intellect...

What did the ancient world discover about the cosmos? What were the contributions of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo? How did the science of astronomy advance under Newton? And how did everything change again with the discoveries of special relativity, general relativity, and quantum mechanics? With us to answer these questions is Sarah Alam Malik. Sarah  is an expert on dark matter, and her work...

Chemical exposures in the womb can lead to what biologists call organizational effects - that is, impacts on the developing child that are irreversible. How were developmental problems associated with chemical exposures during pregnancy first discovered? And how did these discoveries influence policy? With me to discuss chemicals and child development is Tracey Woodruff. Tracey is a professor in t...

The age of exploration altered the course of human history, but how did early explorers find their way? Calculating their latitude at sea was a relatively straightforward proposition, but calculating longitude presented a vexing problem. Given the big power competition for colonies, conquest, and riches, the search to discover an accurate means of assessing longitude became a scramble. A major pie...

Today we explore the life and legacy of the physicist Niels Bohr through the reflections of his grandson Tomas Bohr. Tomas is an Emeritus Professor at the Technical University of Denmark. He studies fluid dynamics, biophysics, chaos, turbulence and statistical mechanics, and he has a long and distinguished career publishing in these fields. He is a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences an...

Often in the history of science, myths overrun scientific findings and take hold with such force that they are difficult or nearly impossible to dislodge from public understanding. Perhaps no example of this phenomenon is more pronounced than that of the societal collapse of Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui. With us to unravel the myth from the science is Mike Pitts. Mike   is a writer and br...

The Science History Podcast, now in its 9th year, has spanned Trump's first term in office, four years of the Biden Administration, and a year of the second Trump Administration, not to mention a global pandemic, horrific wars around the world, and the emergence of AI. So now seems like the perfect moment for some levity. The master of musical satire, Tom Lehrer, passed away in 2025. Here is my ce...

Today's episode is a discussion on the history of PFAS, or forever chemicals, including their accidental development, incorporation into commercial products, concerns about health effects, and environmental contamination and remediation. My guest is Sharon Udasin. Sharon is a Colorado-based environmental journalist and author of  Poisoning the Well: How Forever Chemicals Contaminated America . She...

The weather has always been a critical element of the human experience - deadly during storms and droughts, sustaining when aligned with the harvest schedule, beautiful and frightening, and integrated into the myths and religions of all societies. How did a scientific understanding of the weather come about? Here to guide us on this question is Simon Winchester. Simon's articles and approximately...

In Episodes 10 and 11 of the Science History Podcast, I interviewed James Muller on the role that Winston Churchill played in the unparalleled advancement of science and technology during the first half of the 20th Century, particularly as it related to the two world wars. In today's episode, Jim returns to discuss Churchill and an earlier war fought in the Sudan at the end of the 19th Century. Ji...

Our health, and the health of wildlife, depends on a clean environment. Since the advent of the industrial revolution, our environment has suffered from waves of pollution as different technologies came to the fore, each with its own set of practical benefits and associated chemical waste. Perhaps the most insidious of these environmental pollutants is lead. With us to discuss the history of lead...

The year 2025 has seen the most aggressive moves ever by the US executive branch against scientific research as the Trump Administration has gutted federal science and regulatory agencies and cancelled billions of dollars in research grants that had already been awarded to universities. With me to discuss the Trump Administration attacks on university research is Claudia Polsky. Claudia is a clini...

In Episode 62, I interviewed two Reuters journalists about how industry and government in the United States use conservation easements to avoid rigorous cleanup of contaminated sites. Today, one of those journalists, Jaimi Dowdell, is back to discuss how a federal agency responsible for community health assessments has a history of failing to protect the communities that seek its aid. Jaimi was pa...

In prior episodes, we examined political interference and bias in science in a few contexts, including episode 3 on the history of U.S. congressional attacks on science, episode 57 on types of bias, episode 65 on ideology and science, and episode 84 on the academy's ideological march to the left and antisemitism on American college campuses. Since those episodes, America went back to the future wi...

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 nuc...

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 peopl...

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 disc...

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, Meitn...

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...

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 Joyc...

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 e...

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...