Scientist of the Day

Mary Proctor, an Irish/American popular science writer, died Sep. 11, 1957, at the age of 95. She was born on Apr. 1, 1862, in Dublin, Ireland, a...

John Turberville Needham, an English microscopist, experimental naturalist, and Catholic priest, was born Sep. 10, 1713. Like many English...

Mary Clymer, an American operating-room nurse, died on Sep. 9, 1942 (some sources say Sep. 28). Clymer was born on Jan. 8, 1861, in Hamilton, New...

Peter Simon Pallas, a German naturalist who spent much of his career at the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences at the direct invitation of Empress...

Isaac Sprague, an American painter of birds and plants, was born Sep. 5, 1811, in Hingham, Mass., on the south shore of Boston Harbor. We know...

Lewis Howard Latimer, a Black American inventor and patent consultant, was born Sep. 4, 1848, in Chelsea, Mass. His parents were both escaped...

Loren Eiseley, an American nature writer and anthropologist, was born Sep. 3, 1907, in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Lysander Button, an American inventor and manufacturer, was born in North Haven, Conn., on Sep. 2, 1810 (or perhaps Sep. 12). He moved to New York...

On Aug. 29, 1927, Carl Schwachheim, a blacksmith turned amateur archaeologist from Raton, New Mexico, found a projectile point nestled between the...

The very first issue of Scientific American magazine was published on Aug. 28, 1845, 180 years ago today. It was the brainchild and handiwork of...

On Aug. 27, 1883, the volcano on the island of Krakatoa, between Java and Sumatra, after spitting lava for several months, exploded...

Friedrich Miescher, a Swiss physician and biochemist, died Aug. 26, 1895, at the age of 51.