Jonathan Feakins

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

My Latest Work

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.
ACS (American Chemical Society) Publications •

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.
ACS (American Chemical Society) Publications •

A Conversation with Alba Álvarez-Martín

Growing up in Salamanca, Spain, Alba Álvarez-Martín saw art taking shape around her─literally. Her father was a sculptor, but she didn’t develop the same artistic skill. Instead, her passions leaned toward physics, math, and chemistry. Today, she’s found her calling as a cultural heritage scientist at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, devising techniques to analyze aging works of art.
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.
ACS (American Chemical Society) Publications •

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.
Atlas Obscura •

A Poet’s Guide to the Moon and Eclipse

In 2017, English professor, poet, and author Christopher Cokinos embarked on a road trip with a fellow poet into the depths of Idaho. The pair found what they were looking for—a small plot of land with a fabulous view of the sky, nestled in the Little Lost River Valley. A few days before the total solar eclipse, Cokinos returned to set up camp. The eclipse he and his friends witnessed was so incredible that it took him two and a half years to craft a poem about it.

Cokinos’ love of the moon (he
Atlas Obscura •

A Palestinian Woman’s Quest to Share the Eclipse With Her Community

One night, when Nadia Abuisnaineh was in 11th grade, Mormon missionaries came knocking. After Abuisnaineh’s sister politely declined their proselytizing, the pair turned to leave—but not before asking, “Do you know that there are auroras outside?” Immediately running out the door of their Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, home, Abuisnaineh witnessed the northern lights for the first time.

From gazing at the night sky while sleeping on her family’s rooftop in Palestine, to buying her first telescope on
Atlas Obscura •

‘Astro Joe’ Invites Chicagoans To Gaze at the Night Sky

If you’ve ever been out late in Chicago, there is a good chance you’ve met a cheerful gentleman setting up a telescope inviting you to look at the sky. For the past 20 years, Joseph Guzman has been endeavoring to connect the city’s star-hungry inhabitants with the glories of the cosmos.

In that time, Guzman has made a name for himself as the “Chicago Astronomer”—or, more affectionately, “Astro Joe.” Guzman regularly sets up his telescope in the city’s parks, or along the city’s 606, a formerly
Atlas Obscura •

The ‘Christmas Tree Boat’ Shipwreck That Devastated 1912 Chicagoans

On November 23, 1912, the storm sweeping down from the north had ships running for cover throughout Lake Michigan—among them, a three-masted schooner, the Rouse Simmons, filled with thousands of evergreens. Having harvested its load from the coniferous forests of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the Rouse Simmons was eagerly anticipated at its regular berth along the Chicago River. But with no sign of the ship by Thanksgiving, five days later, families of the crew began to fear the worst.

Reports so
BirdNote •

Kererū: Pigeons That Get Tipsy

Kererū, green-blue pigeons native to New Zealand, like to sun themselves after a good meal.

Kererū have a distinct preference for fruit. In fact, many local trees depend on these pigeons; they’re the only birds left that can both ingest and pass the seeds from the fruits of many native trees.

But in warm summer months, the bird’s sunbathing has a surprising side-effect. A part of their digestive system called the crop stores their latest snack – where it begins to ferment.

The birds, in essen
BirdNote •

Seabirds Thriving on Volcanic Slopes

Millions of seabirds known as auklets call the Aleutian Islands home — but this volcanic, Bering Sea archipelago can be a treacherous landscape.

In August 2008, Kasatochi Island erupted in the middle of auklet breeding season, burying tens of thousands of chicks in hot ash. At first, the auklets’ future on the island appeared bleak. But in just a few years, the birds had returned in force. Thousands nested within the innumerable chambers left behind by sea-cooled lava.

Volcanic islands are per
BirdNote •

An Unlikely Burrowing Owl Boomtown

The Umatilla Chemical Depot in Oregon, a landscape dotted with a thousand concrete bunkers, may not look like an ideal haven for birds. It’s a place where the military stored nerve gas, now decommissioned. But the site has taken on a new life — as a luxury subdivision for Burrowing Owls.

Burrowing Owls don’t actually burrow themselves, instead moving into lairs abandoned by other creatures, like badgers. In 1969, when the military attempted to reduce the local coyote population, they ended up r
Al-Taqaddum Al-Ilmi •

Hesham Almujamed: A Lifelong Career and Passion Toward Accounting

While teaching his accounting classes at the Public Authority for Applied Education and Training’s College of Business Studies, Hesham Almujamed hopes to provide his students with the tools to understand the stock market and how to read and analyze their own business. Almujamed stated that a fluent grasp of accountancy can reveal not just the transactions on a ledger, but the story of the historical events behind those numbers.
Sliced •

How a French botanist brought famine to Madagascar by weaponizing a parasite

In 1924, a French botanist by the prodigious name of Joseph Marie Henry Alfred Perrier de la Bâthie made an announcement.

In the pages of Bulletin Économique de Madagascar, Bâthie informed his readers that 15 months earlier an “unknown person” had brought a scaled insect, the cochineal, to the Malagasy capital, Tananarive (which is known as Antananarivo today). Bâthie also noted that since the cochineal was introduced to the island, cacti surrounding the capital had withered away.
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