This Month in the Archives

Trouble viewing? View in your browser. View all Scientific American publications.

We hope you enjoyed the Nobel Prize announcements this year. They’re worth waking up early for if you’re in North America (or staying up late for if you’re well east of Stockholm). Scientific American has published articles by more than 200 Nobel laureates, including a feature story in 2006 by David Julius, one of this year’s winners for physiology or medicine, whose work shows how we perceive pain. Looking back, canals used to be high-tech transportation. And in October we celebrate World Mental Health Day, so let’s look back at how we’ve covered the subject in the past.

We hope you enjoy this taste of our archives Laura Helmuth, Editor in Chief of Scientific American

The Nobel Prizes

The stickleback: a small fish with an elaborate courtship ritual neatly described by Nikolaas Tinbergen in 1952.

November 1911: Marie Sklodowska Curie: “the greatest woman scientist, twice recipient of the nobel prize”—that would be Physics in 1903 and Chemistry in 1911. October 1951: The dismal science: Wassily Leontief figured out a way of looking at economic data and economies as a whole, and won the economics Nobel in 1973. December 1952: Nikolaas Tinbergen shared the 1973 Nobel for Physiology or Medicine for work on animal behavior. He wrote several articles for us; this one is on sticklebacks.

Canals This huge elevator for canal barges (and the water floating them) in Peterborough, Ontario, graced the cover of a July, 1906 issue. It’s still in operation. July 1906: Before railroads and trucks carried our goods, canals carried them. The huge elevator on the Trent canal in Ontario dispensed with a vertical challenge. August 1926: The Panama Canal created a shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and carried military power (mostly American) and trade between oceans. December 1988: Archaeologists have pieced together the network of canals that a pre-Inca kingdom on the coast of Peru relied on to carry water to their fields.   Access 176 Years of Scientific Knowledge Mental Health “Dancing mania” (image from our February 1995 article) spread across Italy and Europe in the Middle Ages. July 1880: Back when psychiatrists were called “alienists,” an article on “insanity” advises physicians to be aware of changes in personality or long-held habits. March 1954: Using the science of epidemiology, can we know whether one group has a pattern of mental illness differing from that of another? February 1995: Kay Redfield Jamison goes beyond the anecdotal to look at data supporting the links between manic-depression and creativity. Current Issue: November 2021 Check out the latest issue of Scientific American For more highlights from the archives, you can read November's 50, 100 & 150 Years Ago column.   Questions?   Comments? Download the Scientific American App To view this email as a web page, go here. You received this email because you opted-in to receive email from Scientific American. To ensure delivery please add news@email.scientificamerican.com to your address book. Unsubscribe    Email Preferences    Privacy Policy    Contact Us