Fighting Fire with Fire: how a Nobel Prize Winning Scientists Used Malaria to...
<p>The history of science is full of disproved experiments, revised textbooks, and rewritten hypotheses. Even Nobel prize-winning research, which is often viewed as the best work science has to...
View ArticleThe First Canadian Nobel Prize
<p>As we approach the week during which the 2023 Nobel Prizes will be announced (October 2-9, 2023), it is perhaps timely to consider the events that surrounded the first Nobel Prize awarded to a...
View ArticleCan the Problems of the Future be Solved with Technology from the Past?
<p>Electric cars are often portrayed as an invention created to solve the issue of pollution generated from the exhaust emission of gasoline cars, but the electric car has been around the block...
View ArticleNot A Laughing Matter
<p>When I was growing up, “looning” meant one thing. You would fill a balloon with water and throw it at a target that usually did not welcome such activity. Today, “looning” has taken on another...
View ArticleA Houdini Low Point
<p>National Magic Day is celebrated annually on October 31<sup>st</sup> in memory of Harry Houdini who passed away on that day in 1926.</p>
View ArticleDMSO Is Not a Cure-All. But the FDA’s Panic Over It Birthed a Myth.
<p>Imagine a drug so powerful, your government didn’t want you to have it. Now, add the claim that this drug is all natural (it’s not) and that people report it cured them of any ailment you can...
View ArticleA Hundred Years Ago Life Changed for Diabetics
<p>November 26th marks the 100th anniversary of a splendid dinner held at the University of Toronto to recognize perhaps the greatest Canadian achievement in science. A few weeks earlier, the...
View ArticleGoing Bananas
<hr /> <p>Once upon a time, there was a banana plant.</p> <p style="text-align:center"><img height="243" width="160" class="media-element file-default no-float"...
View ArticleFaraday, Dickens and Lighthouses
<p>I have a longstanding fascination with Victorian arts and sciences. It was the era when Darwin published the “Origin of the Species,” Perkin synthesized dyes, Lister introduced antiseptic...
View ArticleAn Ancient Memory Technique Still Puzzles Scientists
<p>Spend enough time watching fictional geniuses on television and you will undoubtedly see the trope of the mind palace. Brainiacs, we are told, have mind palaces, ornate libraries that live...
View ArticleThe molecular structure of DNA — and a dream staircase that wasn’t
<hr /> <p><em>This article was first published in the <a...
View ArticleThe Uncertainty of What Happened When Heisenberg Met Bohr
<p>It isn’t often that the subject matter of a play on Broadway is science. “Copenhagen” opened on Broadway in 2000 after a run in London’s West End. Its focus was a 1941 meeting in Bohr’s...
View ArticleChicken Soup's Label As 'Jewish Penicillin' Is More Whimsy Than Fact
<hr /> <p><em>This article was first published in the <a...
View ArticleSeaweed, Chernobyl and the World’s First Functional Food
<p>Back in the early 1800s the production of potassium nitrate (saltpeter), an essential component of gunpowder, was a booming industry.</p>
View ArticleMarathoners Owe Debt of Gratitude to Remarkable Research Team
<hr /> <p><em>This article was first published in the <a...
View ArticleFrom the Jungle to the Operating Room
<hr /> <p><em>This article was first published in the <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/columnists/the-right-chemistry-from-the-jungle-to-the-operating-room">Montreal...
View ArticlePhenylethylamine is Said To Stoke the Fire of Love. Here Comes the Water Bucket.
<p>American humorist James Thurber reputedly once remarked that “love is a strange bewilderment which overtakes one person on account of another person.” Anyone who has ever been in love will...
View ArticleNothing Memorable About Memory Supplements
<hr /> <p>This article was first published in the <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/columnists/the-right-chemistry-nothing-memorable-about-memory-supplements">Montreal...
View ArticleIt’s A Chemical World!
<p>It’s a chemical world out there! We are awash in some fifty million known chemicals, the majority of which are created by nature, a minority by chemists. They’re not good or bad, not safe or...
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