While the influence of Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) looms large over the natural sciences, his legacy reaches far beyond the field notebooks of naturalists. Von Humboldt's 1799-1804 research expedition to Central and South America with botanist...

In 1968, the director of USAID coined the term "green revolution" to celebrate the new technological solutions that promised to ease hunger around the world – and forestall the spread of more "red", or socialist, revolutions. Yet in China, where mode...

Over the centuries, natural history museums have evolved from being little more than musty repositories of stuffed animals and pinned bugs, to being crucial generators of new scientific knowledge. They have also become vibrant educational centers, fu...

What new insights become available for historians when emotions are included as an analytical category? This volume of "Osiris" explores the historical interrelationships between science and its cultures and cultures of emotions. It argues that a dia...

From Blaise Pascal in the 1600s to Charles Babbage in the first half of the nineteenth century, inventors struggled to create the first calculating machines. All failed – but that does not mean we cannot learn from the trail of ideas, correspondence,...