This Month in the Archives

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It’s October and most of us around the world are still trying to avoid the novel coronavirus—or its consequences. The brightest spot this month are the Nobel Prize announcements, when we find out who has been awarded the highest honor for intellectual achievement in the service of humanity. We’ve always been proud of our authors who have won this prize, and there are over 200 of them, and I’ll introduce you to three of them here. For something completely different: canals. These waterways used to be far more important than they are now, for all sorts of reasons. And lastly, in October we celebrate World Mental Health Day, so let’s look back at how we’ve covered the subject. And for our 175th anniversary year, more gems from Scientific American’s history can be found at Artifacts from the Archive.

I hope you enjoy the journey! Dan Schlenoff, Editor of “50, 100 & 150 Years Ago”

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 175 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: October 2020 Check out the latest issue of Scientific American For more highlights from the archives, you can read October'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