My sister Camilla and I stepped off the passenger ferry onto the dock at Vineyard Haven, Martha’s Vineyard’s main port, with a group that had already begun their party. They giggled,…

Anyone who believes that life is a battlefield full of individual warriors should go out into the meadows on a spring night. There, you can learn that the biosphere does not spawn…

Solastalgia is the definitive disease of the 21st century but only a few even know its name. The symptoms include an underlying sense of loss, a vague sensation of being torn from…

Many scientists love to sing the praises of their own specialties, but few proclaim them with the confidence of Andrew Dobson, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton…

When the Dutch arrived in New York Harbor in 1609, Staten Island—or Staaten Eylandt, as they named it—was a wild wonderland, woodland in the middle and tidal salt marsh on the…

Ellen Swallow Richards was not going to be intimidated by a room full of health experts and officials. Children were dying and their parents, Boston’s taxpayers, and city officials…

The first day of June 1988 was sunny, hot, and mostly calm—perfect weather for the three young researchers from the University of Windsor who were hunting for critters crawling across…

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,…

The former Luis Guillermo Baptiste began her transformation into Brigitte in the mid 1990s, when she was part of a cadre of scientists helping to establish the Bogota-based Humboldt…

Joyce Poole can tell you exactly why she loves elephants: They share many of our best characteristics, and avoid many of our worst. They are familiar, social and intelligent, like…