Control strategies were integral parts of the research that led to the discovery of Argon.

Thomas Kuhn discusses the Chemical Revolution in some detail in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, that is, the great changes in...

Can false theories successfully predict previously unknown phenomena? This post discusses one such example: the discovery of boron.

How are simple substances identified when it is difficult to tell whether a substance has been decomposed or not?

Starting from the history of aluminium, this piece reflects on the nature of scientific discovery.

How come an element was forgotten for 30 years? This article tells the exciting story of the discovery, loss and rediscovery of vanadium.

Following the 150th anniversary of the periodic table, Chris Campbell highlights the forgotten work of Josiah Parsons Cooke (1827-1894).

In his 1991 book Inference to the Best Explanation, Peter Lipton argued that identification of the best explanation out of a pool of...

From 1869 to 1870, a new element was the object of a heated priority debate. Who deserved to be called the discoverer of jargonium?