Jonathan Feakins

Freelance science and history writer with a love for our absurd, astonishing, and fabulous world.

My Latest Work

Core77 •

The Tactile Media Alliance: Rescuing Touch in a World of Screens

When Lindsay Yazzolino was young, she made an origami Christmas tree out of a one-dollar bill. Impressed with how sharp she'd made the topmost point, she urged her mother to examine it for herself. Although her mother assured her that she could see the paper, Yazzolino insisted. Upon touching the point, her mother yelped in pain.

"And I said: 'See, I told you!" Yazzolino recalls. "It's just a different experience."

Blind since birth, Yazzolino didn't expect to make her professional career in...
Trails •

Biology By Canoe: How a Scientific Paddling Trip Through the Arctic Wilderness Opened the Door to Connections with the Land, People, and Culture.

Danielle Nowosad cut her backcountry teeth on the edge of the Arctic. Hired in 2017 as a research technician at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre in the far north of her home province of Manitoba, Nowosad would conduct studies on nutrient dynamics one day, and serve as a bear guard for school groups and visiting researchers the next.
Arts Midwest •

The ‘Prosthetic Guy’ Who Crafts Artful Appendages to Empower Patients

In addition to his day-to-day work as a prosthetic technician, Harrier designs custom, free-of-charge “jackets”: bespoke pieces of art, slipped over a patient’s artificial limb, in whatever form they so desire—be it dragon skin, body horror, or the iconic aesthetics of H.R. Giger. On Instagram, Harrier documents his work as @prostheticguy.

“Every prosthetic place should have a prosthetic guy. It shouldn’t just be me and a few companies doing it,” Harrier says. “They need to up their game...
Core77 •

Algorithmic Artificial Reef: From Industrial Design School Project to Legacy at Sea

Every couple of days in early 2024, Leonardo Hummel would free-dive into the shallow waters surrounding Koh Tao, Thailand. Amidst the growing communities of reef fish, Hummel liked to document the progress of the first artificial reefs he'd created and deposited two years earlier while at nearby New Heaven Dive School. The original 9mm rebar had grown multiple times in size, with the accretion of calcium carbonate.

Sandra Rubio, one of Leo's colleagues at Black Turtle Dive, remembers the passion with which Leo would speak about his work...
Atlas Obscura •

How Can National Parks Be Made Accessible to All?

“Trees have been my antidepressants,” says María José Aguilar-Carrasco, “after my accident in the mountain[s].”

During a mountaineering expedition in 2013, Aguilar-Carrasco suffered a spinal cord injury that resulted in 10 days in a coma, three months in intensive care, and five operations. Even in the wake of her accident, however, she still managed to complete her bachelor’s degree in environmental science at the Polytechnic University of Valencia. Her thesis focused on the protection...
Core77 •

HIIVE: From An Industrial Design Thesis to Market

Although Phillip Potthast has been reading Core77 since his time as an industrial design student, he never anticipated that he might one day appear in its pages talking about bees. "I was more into automotive and car design, actually," he reminisces. "And I've just pivoted, one hundred and eighty degrees, into tree hollows."

Phillip Potthast's novel beehive design, HIIVE, evolved out of an industrial design thesis that originally sought to create a more ergonomic hive. After venturing into the...
Al-Taqaddum Al-Ilmi •

Innovating Water Treatment with Local Resource

Abdalrahman Alsulaili did not expect to build a research career around water. After a love for mathematics led him to a bachelor’s and master’s in civil engineering at the University of Kuwait, he received a scholarship to pursue a PhD at the University of Texas at Austin. The scholarship, however, was for environmental engineering. His resulting research on water treatment, as it turns out, propelled him toward a field of study of incalculable significance for the whole Gulf region.
Chemical & Engineering News •

Stephanie Beaupark Sees Chemistry Through an Indigenous Lens

Describing the benefits of combining laboratory-based techniques and Indigenous knowledges, Stephanie Beaupark harks back to her experience as a weaver. Much like how she once wove Lomandra grass together to create ropes as a collaborating artist at the University of Melbourne, Beaupark hopes that mixing the two distinct traditions of knowledge acquisition can create something stronger.
Al-Taqaddum Al-Ilmi •

A Decades Long Passion in Surface Chemistry

As a child growing up in Tunisia, Hedi Mattoussi developed his interest in physics and chemistry while trying to understand how a light bulb worked and how mirages formed on hot sunny days. Not quite satisfied with these youthful musings, Mattoussi indulged his insatiable curiosity by studying physics at the University of Tunis El Manar before obtaining his doctorate in Physical Chemistry at Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie in 1987.
Nursing Clio •

The Labor of Love: Transforming Dementia Research With Alexandre Baril and Marjorie Silverman

From intersex Revolutionary War generals to Indigenous identities that predate colonization, transgender and non-binary people have a long and storied legacy. And yet, the priceless presence of trans elders has often remained rare, even within LGBT communities. Between societal pressures to remain hidden, gendered violence, and the toll on their own mental health, many trans people tragically never get to enjoy their twilight years.
Chemical & Engineering News •

The Animation Lab Brings Molecules to Life

Janet Iwasa’s interest in animation took shape while she was earning her PhD in cell biology at the University of California, San Francisco. A neighboring lab at UCSF, as it turned out, specialized in motor proteins including an enzyme called a kinesin, which transports cellular cargo by “walking” along microtubules. In 1999, a member of the lab animated the kinesin’s industrious strut to accompany a paper. After witnessing a finished animation of the spirited locomotion during a joint lab meeting, Iwasa began to wonder what parts of her own research might benefit from a little visual wizardry.
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