Science
The forgotten Einstein
Why isn’t John von Neumann better known?
Sometimes wrongs make a right
It is interesting to consider what would have happened if the Covid virus had emerged in 1921. Or 1821. Or…
Alan key
Given my affection for M*A*S*H, I can’t think why I haven’t listened to Alan Alda’s podcasts before now, besides the…
Spin doctors
How the Lancet lost our trust
An orange or an egg?
Simon Winchester follows the volatile French mission to Ecuador in 1735 to determine the shape of the Earth
Problems of communication
I could never muster much enthusiasm for the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking. His work, on the early universe and the…
Keeping girls out of the lab
Jina and the STEM Sisters is a blatant act of propaganda. And its intentions are excellent. This is a musical…
Letters
Meghan’s adroitness Sir: Tanya Gold suggests that people criticise Meghan Markle because she is mixed race and a woman, and…
Initial impressions
The Finborough’s new show is a love story with the male partner absent. Two women, one Irish and one American,…
Diary
Safe spaces, diversity quotas, gender-neutral pronouns, culturally relative facts, heteronormative hegemony. Are my right-on credentials right on enough? Am I…
The enquiring minds of Egypt
The government has plans to fund a new research agency to back ‘cutting-edge science’. Ptolemaios (Ptolemy) I (367-282 bc), the…
The triggers of memory
Can you remember when you heard about 9/11? Chances are you’ll be flooded instantly with memories — not only where…
Letters
Veritas vincit Sir: Professor Dawkins eloquently and engagingly defines true truth for us (‘Matters of fact’, 19 December). It seems…
Matters of fact
What is truth? You can speak of moral truths and aesthetic truths but I’m not concerned with those here, important…
A singular mind
Roger Penrose on his Nobel Prize, the beauty of physics – and why AI is nothing to fear
A Titan of science
This book, soaked like the Dutch Republic itself ‘in ink and paint’, is enchanting to the point of escapism. The…
The science of scent
Harold McGee’s Nose Dive: A Field Guide to the World’s Smells is an ambitious and enormous work. Indeed it’s so…
The solving of a biological mystery
DNA is the blueprint that encodes the instructions to make proteins. Proteins are the building blocks and the machines that…
Confirmation bias
Diversity training doesn’t work
The politics of mask-wearing
We are enjoined by certain experts to wear face masks while having sexual intercourse. No change there, then, for me.…
How we can overcome Britain’s problem with scientific illiteracy
It occurs to me that one of the most important lessons we’ve learnt so far during this time of plague…
Do face masks work? A note on the evidence
Should we, or should we not be compelled to wear face masks during a virus epidemic? It sounds a simple…
The corona puzzle
There is still plenty we don’t understand about the virus
Back to basics
How British science can flourish after Brexit
The purity myth
In the award-winning musical Avenue Q, filthy-minded puppets sang about schadenfreude, internet porn, loud sex, the uselessness of an English…
