Mark Ronan
Standing The Test Of Spacetime
The greatest scientists, such as Einstein, often made their greatest discoveries by thought experiments
Glorious Summer
When it comes to summer festival opera, Britain tends to get it right
Fiddler And The Proof
There is a link between a great Jewish musical and the search for a historic mathematical proof
The Ultimate Space Explorer
Alexander Grothendieck was a genius who reshaped mathematics but then withdrew from society
The Prime Numbers Have It
New mathematics prizes show the public that the subject is constantly renewing itself with new ideas
High pressure
A new play shows how weather forecasting affected the Normandy landings
Antediluvian Ark
An extraordinary cuneiform tablet has provided a mine of information about pre-biblical flood legends
Overrated: Ptolemy
The Egyptian astronomer’s dubious methods dominated the science for over a millennium
Underrated: Tycho Brahe
This great Danish astronomer made a heliocentric theory credible
Wotan’s Trolley
After a request to exchange a shopping trolley in Germany was lost in translation, I now know the eurozone must fail
Tolerating the intolerant
“For those who thought that a global pandemic would sound the death knell for identity politics, think again”
How to prevent the next pandemic
‘I have been reporting as a science journalist for years that the world is at increasing risk of pandemics like this; that this was predicted; that we know what we need to do to prepare and we simply haven’t done it; and that more and worse pandemics are coming so we need to do that, now’
D’où parles-tu? The post-truth world
Power, illusion and the open society: how postmodernism undermines our foundational concepts