Wondrous talent—like that of mathematical and artistic savants or child prodigies—is exceedingly rare. It occurs so unexpectedly one may be tempted to think of the phenomena as…

It’s hard to tell precisely how big a role biotechnology plays in our economy, because it infiltrates so many parts of it. Genetically modified organisms such as microbes and plants…

On a late summer evening in 1961, biochemist Osamu Shimomura was nearing the end of another frustrating day working with the jellyfish Aequorea victoria at the University of Washington’s…

Corals are marine magicians. As colonies of the tiny ocean organisms grow, they transform the calcium that circulates in seawater into enormous limestone reefs. These reefs—which…

When Leonid Moroz, a gregarious Russian-born neuroscientist and geneticist at the University of Florida, began studying ctenophores nearly a decade ago, he had a fairly simple goal…

In 1994, a Swiss biologist named Pascal Gagneux began a Ph.D. program in zoology. His research plan was to stalk populations of wild chimpanzees in Cote d’Ivoire and Mali. Specifically,…

On August 21, 2015, Anthony Sadler, 23, a California college student, was riding a train from Amsterdam to Paris with his friends, Aleksander Skarlatos and Spencer Stone. Skarlatos…

Siddhartha Mukherjee feels his science deeply. As much as any contemporary science writer, he reminds us that the actors, subjects, and interpreters of science are human beings. His…

Anyone who doubts that genes can specify identity might well have arrived from another planet and failed to notice that the humans come in two fundamental variants: male and female.…

When we think of a scientist at work, the first setting to come to mind is usually the laboratory: sterile equipment, controlled experiments, protective gear. Not so for Robert Pringle,…