pplpod

Pierre Curie was a brilliant physicist in his own right — a pioneer in crystallography, magnetism, and radioactivity research — before he became known primarily as Marie Curie's husband. Together they...

14 Jun 22min

Niels Bohr revolutionized physics with his model of the atom, built the Copenhagen institute that became the world capital of quantum mechanics, and then fled Nazi-occupied Denmark in a fishing boat w...

14 Jun 24min

John Locke wrote the philosophical foundations of liberal democracy — natural rights, government by consent, the right of revolution — ideas that directly shaped the American and French revolutions. B...

14 Jun 20min

James Watson shared the Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of DNA — one of the most important scientific breakthroughs of the twentieth century. Decades later, he became the first living Nobel ...

14 Jun 21min

Isaac Newton invented calculus, discovered the laws of gravity and motion, and built the foundations of modern physics. But he spent far more of his life on pursuits he kept hidden — decades of secret...

14 Jun 24min

Alexander Fleming did not discover penicillin through careful, methodical research. He discovered it because he left petri dishes unwashed before going on vacation, and a stray mold spore drifted in t...

14 Jun 23min

Hannibal Barca crossed the Alps with war elephants, invaded Italy, and spent fifteen years defeating every Roman army sent against him — including the catastrophic Roman loss at Cannae, still studied ...

14 Jun 23min

Erwin Schrodinger gave physics one of its most powerful tools — the wave equation that bears his name — and one of its most famous thought experiments, the cat that is simultaneously alive and dead. B...

14 Jun 20min