In 1967, a failed waxy byproduct taught chemist Charles Pedersen how to drag purple salt into oil, …

Discover how Paul Lauterbur used magnetic gradients to turn a blind chemistry tool into the MRI sca…

Discover how Katharine Blodgett used a simple water trough and 44 molecular layers to create invisi…

Discover how Emil Fischer's frustration with bubbling sugar flasks led to the 'lock-and-key' model,…

Discover how Judah Folkman's rabbit eye experiment in the 1970s proved tumors need blood to grow, c…

In 1973, Martin Cooper stepped onto a Manhattan street with a brick-sized phone and dialed his bigg…

In the 1960s, physicists gave up on sending light through glass. Charles Kao proved them wrong by f…

In 1857, John Speke searched for the Nile's source. Fever couldn't stop him from finding Lake Victo…

In 1859, Alfred Russel Wallace discovered that ocean depth, not just climate, split Asian and Austr…

Discover how Barry Sharpless replaced messy chemical synthesis with click chemistry, using a copper…

In 1868, astronomers spotted a mysterious yellow band in the sun's spectrum. Learn how this cosmic …

How Frederick Sanger used a yellow chemical bookmark to sequence insulin and prove that proteins ha…