Big Bang

In Wondelgem, just outside Ghent, people now push shopping carts through the aisles of a Colruyt supermarket. There is nothing there to suggest that, a little over a century ago, this was the site of an intellectual project that would go on to shape an entire field. In 1912, the first edition of the scientific journal Isis was compiled here, in the home of the Sarton family. Seeds in Wondelgem George Sarton was not yet the “father of the history of science.” At the time, the

We like to think of science as a mirror—an objective, edge-to-edge reflection of the world as it truly is. But mirrors are built by human hands, and the frames we put around them determine what stays in the reflection and what falls into the margins. For decades, we’ve treated the gaps in that reflection as isolated and tragic accidents. A few missing names. A few “historical oversights.” The Matilda Effect. Sounds a bit like a secret code, doesn’t it? The kind of term exchan

The story of Daina Taimiņa, a hidden figure who made an impossible shape visible

Drawn in by its iconic cool-green, die-cut leaf design, I instinctively picked up a copy of FUKT #22 magazine at the Atheneum in Amsterdam. And while it was filled to the brim with lush nature-inspired drawings, there was one image that would etch itself permanently into my memory: a photograph of Marianne North, poised with her easel in front of a giant cactus in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, in 1877.

In this article Miguel Vissers confesses he did not know who Mary Anning was. Whether the name sounds familiar or not, he invites you on a trip through the Natural History Museum of London on his road to discovery amongst fossils, gemstones, and first editions of science books. And as always, he exits through the gift shop. Writing a piece of so-called ‘forgotten figures in science’ is tricky. Claiming that ‘we’—whoever this we may be—have forgotten someone starting from you

In this conversation, Banu Subramaniam and Connor Butler explore how colonialism, scientific classification, and rigid social binaries have shaped the way we understand life on Earth.