175 Years of Discovery – Scientific American

The First Issue of Scientific American

A story lauds Morse code and the telegraph, humanity’s first communication system powered by electricity. In 1887 Alexander Graham Bell would revisit the theme with an article on the telephone.

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Thomas Alva Edison

An article by the prolific inventor highlights his “phonograph”—the forerunner of every device for playing recorded music. Sound was captured on a tinfoil-covered cylinder.

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Marie Sklodowska Curie

The scientist’s pioneering work on radiation, which provided an early glimpse into the atomic nucleus, is lauded in a write-up on the “Twice Recipient of the Nobel Prize.” We also carried eight of her articles between 1902 and 1911.

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From Flight to Air Travel

Since the invention of human flight in 1783, flying machines have become essential. An article reviews trans-Pacific passenger flights, which began in 1935, and celebrates a new regular trans-Atlantic passenger air service.

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“Is DDT Poisonous?”
by D.H. Killiffer

The mosquito-killing chemical was an early entry in the catalog of human changes to the environment that were far more serious than anyone realized.

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Albert Einstein on Gravity

World-renowned for his theories of relativity, in his later years, Einstein tried to find a theory that could combine gravity and electromagnetism and wrote an article for us on his progress to date.

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“The Hydrogen
Bomb: II”
by Hans A. Bethe

The essay by this nuclear physicist contained so many details on the hydrogen bomb (which were all public anyway) that it was censored by the Atomic Energy Commission. It was one of the first of numerous articles on nuclear weapons and nuclear warfare.

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“Vaccines for Poliomyelitis”
by Jonas E. Salk

The inventor of the first vaccine that could prevent this devastating childhood disease describes its development. In 1881 Louis Pasteur had inaugurated Scientific American’s coverage of vaccines with an article on one for rabies.

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“A Witness at the Scopes Trial”
by Fay-Cooper Cole

A famous chapter in the fight over evolution, written by an anthropologist who was called as an expert witness at the “monkey trial” of schoolteacher John T. Scopes in 1925.

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“Carbon Dioxide and Climate”
by Gilbert N. Plass

An astonishingly prescient but little-known scientist discusses data suggesting that human industry and agriculture are changing Earth’s climate.

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“The Evolution of the Physicist’s Picture of Nature”
by P.A.M. Dirac

Paul Dirac, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, discusses the future of physics. The discoverer of “energy quanta,” Max Planck, also described his work for Scientific American in 1910.

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“The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence”
by Carl Sagan
and Frank Drake

Sagan, a scientist with a knack for making the difficult exciting, and astronomer Drake discuss how humanity is looking for other civilizations in the galaxy.

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“The Quantum Mechanics of Black Holes”
by S. W. Hawking

Physicist Stephen Hawking lays out his theory of what came to be known as Hawking radiation, a phenomenon that still bedevils theoretical physicists.

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“The Nerve-Growth Factor”
by Rita Levi-Montalcini
and Pietro Calissano

Nobel Prize–winning scientist Montalcini and her colleague Calissano describe the protein that guides cells to form the brain and nervous system.

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“The Fossil Footprints of Laetoli”
by Richard L. Hay
and Mary Leakey

The famous team of geologist Hay and paleoanthropologist Leakey describe footprints left in volcanic ash in Tanzania by three of our possible forebears 3.6 million years ago.

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Special Issue on AIDS

HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS, spread widely during the 1980s. The disease has killed millions of people around the globe.

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“The Evolution of Life on the Earth”
by Stephen Jay Gould

The science of evolution has been evolving since its discovery by Charles Darwin (who wrote for Scientific American in 1877). In this article, Gould talks about sudden shifts in the process of speciation called punctuated equilibrium.

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“Boundaries for a Healthy Planet”
by Jonathan Foley

Scientists set thresholds for key environmental processes that, if crossed, could threaten Earth’s habitability. By 2010, three had already been exceeded.

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“Long Live the Web”
by Tim Berners-Lee

The inventor of the World Wide Web presciently calls for protecting it from commercial predation and political interference.

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“A Rigged Economy”
by Joseph E. Stiglitz

The economist writes that a rise in inequality and the influence of money in American politics means the fading of opportunity for most of the nation’s citizens.

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“A New World Disorder”
by Claire Wardle

This misinformation expert warns that the growth of automation and microtargeting has made it “easier for agents of disinformation to weaponize regular users of the social web to spread harmful messages.”

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