Historical

‘The Onion Madonna’ of physics

February 8, 2016
The child of a doctor and a piano teacher, Maria Goeppert-Mayer was born in Ger­­­­­­many, immigrated to the United States and became only the second woman, after Marie Curie, to win a Nobel Prize in physics. Goeppert-Mayer’s work in­­volved discovering how the nucleus of an atom is arranged in a series of shells.

IT help from an early adopter

August 14, 2015
Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone and tech leader of his time, set sail for Scotland after attending the first shareholders meeting of the Bell ­Telephone Co., still unincorporated and without capitalization as it cranked out 25 new phones per day …

Grab the audience with a prop and they won’t soon forget it

March 25, 2015
Do you know about what happened when Richard Feynman testified at a hearing on what caused the Challenger disaster? His brief display became a legend in how to powerfully convey a point.

The universe and beyond: Words from Sally Ride

March 4, 2015
Sally Ride was among the first six female astronauts chosen for the NASA spaceflight program. Trained as a physicist, she served as a mission specialist during two Challenger missions starting in 1983, becoming the first woman to operate the shuttle’s robotic arm. She also became the only person to serve on both commissions investigating the Challenger and Columbia disasters.

‘A leader leads, a boss drives’

December 24, 2014
“Credit belongs to he who is in the arena,” Theodore Roosevelt said, “his face marred by dust, sweat, and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs to come short and short again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming.”

How a young scientist saved the bomb

November 10, 2014
In July 1945, 25-year-old Don Hornig babysat the atomic bomb. It was a nerve-wracking task, but he kept his cool. On the day before its first full-scale test, he and Robert Oppenheimer worried that lightning over the New Mexico desert might accidentally trigger the bomb prototype…

Nellie Bly cut new paths for women

November 3, 2014

She started her career in journalism by rebuking a columnist in the Pittsburgh Dispatch who called working women “a monstrosity.” Her fiery rebuttal impressed the editor. Hired under a pen name, she produced investigative articles about terrible conditions for female factory workers. In 1887, Bly talked her way into an assignment to get herself committed to an asylum so she could report on conditions there.

The power of contrarian thinking

July 16, 2014
In 1962, editors at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists judged that the world was perilously close to a nuclear holocaust. It was at this moment that physicist Freeman Dyson, a visionary in math to medicine, weighed in on bomb shelters …

A lesson in how power can corrupt

May 29, 2014
Frank Lloyd Wright did not endear himself to his team. In the half-century since his death, many experts have reflected on his inability to lead. The lesson? As you gain authority, work harder than ever to support others’ success.

Red Cross: ‘One woman alone’

October 31, 2013
A time machine interview with the resourceful and fearless Clara Barton, who was the first female clerk at the U.S. Patent Office. She ultimately founded the American Red Cross, serving as its first president.