In 1749, Emilie du Châtelet feared bearing a child at 42 would be the last thing she did. In her final year, she worked furiously on a magnum opus that would change the world.

We climb glaciers and take minute measurements to understand the threats to our future. This is the story of my last, and most dramatic, trip to the Arctic.

Williamina Fleming was just supposed to help the director of the Harvard Observatory with household tasks. Instead, she changed the course of astronomy.

“Plant collection” may not sound perilous, but while scaling boulders and dodging snakes, I learned just how much these intrepid explorers risk to help understand our world.

Did Maryon Cooper Hewitt want to suppress “bad genes” or steal her child’s inheritance? Their battle over genetics and motherhood riveted the nation in 1936.