Thomas Levenson

Scientific truth, and the vast benefits of modern medicine, are under sustained attack from conspiracy theorists. Not since the nineteenth century has there been such a relentless assault on tried and tested science. In this urgent history of anti-vaccine arguments, Thomas Levenson traces the alarming rhetoric of figures such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Ron DeSantis back to its...

In 1665, an infectious disease swept through the British capital and claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people. It would take another two hundred years for the cause of the Great Plague of London to be confirmed: a powerful bacterium called Yersinia pestis. In those centuries, our understanding of diseases was transformed. In So Very Small, Thomas Levenson...

Already famous throughout Europe for his theories of planetary motion and gravity, Isaac Newton decided to take on the job of running the Royal Mint. And there, Newton became drawn into a battle with William Chaloner, the most skilful of counterfeiters, a man who not only got away with faking His Majesty's coins (a crime that the law equated with...