In celebration of the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, we examine its essential insights, its lingering questions, the latest work it has sparked, and the allied fields of research that have resulted.

Every generation benefits from the insights and discoveries of the generations who came before. “If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants,” …

Watching ants and playing with robots is biologist Simon Garnier’s Cool Job as he studies how people and animals swarm in large groups. Garnier discovers these animals work together to …

Paralyzed patients are starting to walk with the aid of exoskeletons and doctors are testing artificial retinas in the blind thanks to neuroprosthetics: surgical brain implants that restore some function …

What are the special challenges, pitfalls, opportunities and rare triumphs of seeking and synthesizing the essence of someone whose passion—quantum physics, number theory, nucleic acids, atomic species, computational design, gravitational phenomena—is so thoroughly foreign to the concerns of everyday life?

For all that Darwin contributed to our understanding of the biological world, he was haunted by one vexing question: How does the incremental process of evolution suddenly produce, say, humans—animals who walk upright, communicate through language, and possess the brainpower to travel to the moon?