In these days before antiseptics, doctors themselves also suffered high mortality rates. Florence Nightingale, a nurse during the Crimean War (1853-1…

- Sam Kean

Never underestimate spite as a motivator for genius.

- Sam Kean

If anything runs deeper than a mathematician’s love of variables, it’s a scientist’s love of constants.

- Sam Kean

Lithium tweaks many mood-altering chemicals in the brain, and its effects are complicated. Most interesting, lithium seems to reset the body’s circad…

- Sam Kean

Art, in other words, betrays a sexy mental fitness.

- Sam Kean

Because our lungs regularly deal with carbon dioxide, they see nothing wrong with absorbing its cousin, SiO2, which can be fatal. Many dinosaurs migh…

- Sam Kean

Iron is the final peal of a star’s natural life.

- Sam Kean

Mendeleev, unlike the squeamish Meyer, had balls enough to predict that new elements would be dug up. Look harder, you chemists and geologists, he se…

- Sam Kean

So if big enough droplets fell far enough fast enough, someone floating right near the metallic hydrogen layer inside Jupiter maybe, just maybe, coul…

- Sam Kean