Patricia Fara

The debate over whether nature or nurture guides who we are is as dependent on politics and ideology as it is on scientific research.

The Antikythera Mechanism is ingenious, intricate and highly sophisticated. But what is it?

Is lightning natural or divine? Opinion split royalists and republicans. 

The Water-Babies was a fairytale that straddled religion and science, railing against logical rationality in the face of nature’s mysteries. 

What does it take to establish a new scientific truth? In the case of Galileo and heliocentrism, the death of its sceptics. 

The railway revolutionised Victorian Britain, but were its trains on the right track? It was difficult to gauge.

When widespread vaccination was introduced there were objections – some justified, some not. 

A search for the first doctor.

Cures and treatments have always offered potential riches to their inventors. But how was one supposed to know what worked and what didn’t? 

The pursuit of astronomical study led a Victorian woman from Surrey to the Indian foothills.