All History articles – Page 10
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Opinion
Ancient antidotes
Favourites of emperors and royalty, theriacs were the universal cures of their day
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Research
Keep The Scream dry to preserve its pigments, chemical analysis suggests
Moisture – not light – hastens the degradation of yellow cadmium colours in Edvard Munch’s 1910 painting
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Opinion
Nazarov cyclisation
We are all shaped by the opportunities afforded us, by the social structures and politics of our day
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Opinion
Eunice Foote: the mother of climate change
The first person to link carbon dioxide to atmospheric warming has almost been forgotten. Rachel Brazil uncovers her story
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Feature
The birth of the polymer age
Mike Sutton unravels Hermann Staudinger’s long hunt to understand macromolecules, which began 100 years ago
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Opinion
Jimmy Robinson and the atom bomb elements
USAF pilots flew into mushroom clouds to bring back samples that turned out to contain new elements – one of them didn’t make it home
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Review
Scientifica Historica: How the World’s Great Science Books Chart the History of Knowledge
A book about books by veteran science communicator Brian Clegg
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Opinion
Theodora Greene’s protecting groups
Katrina Krämer uncovers the woman behind the book on every organic chemist’s shelf
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Podcast
Sodium cyanide
This week marks the 20th anniversary of the Baia Mare disaster, when toxic sodium cyanide spilled from a gold processing plant led to ecological damage on a huge scale.
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Podcast
Terephthalic acid
Once thought of as an interesting – but useless – turpentine derivative, this oddly-named acid became the precursor to one of the world’s most widely used plastics
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Opinion
Ellie Knaggs and tetrahedral carbon
Ellie Knaggs’ claim to be the first to use x-rays to prove carbon’s tetrahedral bonding in molecules has been overlooked, finds Andy Extance
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Review
Science in Moscow: Memorials of a Research Empire
A book cataloguing the monuments to Russia’s scientific past
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Opinion
The story of Quickfit, part three: Scorah’s Quickfit
In the final part of our Classic Kit series, Andrea Sella delves into the life and work of Leslie Scorah, the patenter of Quickfit
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Review
Antimony, Gold, and Jupiter’s Wolf: How the Elements Were Named
Accessible to chemists and non-chemists alike, this book traces the evolution of our understanding of the nature of matter itself