Frank A. von Hippel
100 episodes listed below
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Monthly interviews on important moments in the history of science.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Historical testimony and careful questioning reveal how evidence, institutions, and personal risk shape the scientific record.
Frank von Hippel approaches scientific history through the people who made discoveries, interpreted evidence, or watched institutions shape what could be said.
Rapa Nui's collapse myth gets questioned here; your neat version of history might want a lawyer.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded PFAS history linking military firefighting foam, groundwater contamination, and downstream wells.
Forever chemicals come into focus through accidental development, commercial use, health concerns, and the long work of environmental cleanup.
Claudia Polsky traces canceled university grants from water systems and biomaterials to a threatened research generation.
University research is framed here through what happens when its public-facing work is interrupted. Claudia Polsky, a clinical professor of law and founding director of the Environmental Law Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley, discusses canceled grants connected to…
A measured look at how physicists came to genes through education, war work, and second chances.
Physics meets biology through scientists who came to genes and basic biological questions by very different routes. The strongest moments are personal ones: one speaker recalls how Erwin Schrodinger's What Is Life?
A spontaneous Gottingen conversation traces quantum mechanics through people, institutions, and philosophical unease.
A spontaneous tea conversation in Gottingen turns a nostalgic university visit into a compact history of how the city became a focal point for physics.
Szilard's postwar work becomes a grounded story of diplomacy, arms control, and the arithmetic of political influence.
Leo Szilard's postwar career comes through as a portrait of nuclear worry turned into practical politics. In conversation with writer and public policy analyst William Lenouette, the Science History Podcast follows Szilard's push to move Nikita Khrushchev toward a…
A wide-ranging conversation that turns nuclear policy into a question of political will.
Steve Fetter shapes nuclear history into a clear policy argument, with patience and range. The discussion moves from the Black Sea Experiment and nuclear archaeology to White House service, missile defense, the weaponization of space, and the hard practical questions around…
PCR is presented as a scientific breakthrough that reshaped both genetics and criminal justice.
The episode treats PCR as one of those ideas that only feels inevitable after the fact. Henry Ehrlich walks through the jump from Taq polymerase to amplifying a single DNA molecule, then to using PCR on tiny fragments of crime scene evidence. The Earl Washington Jr.
A clear-eyed account of Szilard, reactor science, and the less romantic machinery of the atomic age.
The piece gives Leo Szilard a wider frame and uses that scope to show how much of the nuclear-age story turned on careful judgment, stubborn preparation, and technical discipline.
Fast histories of familiar things.
Human origins, told from the field.
The deep past, argued into the present.
Science History Podcast Episode 98 is Frank von Hippel’s retrospective on Tom Lehrer, whom he frames as a source of levity after nine years of the show spanning Trump, Biden, a second Trump administration, a pandemic, wars, and AI.
Frank Von Hippel opens Science History Podcast episode 87 with Lisa Meitner as the key figure behind the idea of fission, and Marissa Moss joins to discuss her book The Woman Who Split the Atom, The Life of Lisa Meitner.
Frank von Hippel hosts James Muller, a Churchill scholar and professor emeritus at the University of Alaska Anchorage, to discuss Muller’s new edition of Churchill’s The River War and the Sudan campaign behind it.
Science History Podcast episode 93 features host Frank von Hippel and Claudia Polsky, a UC Berkeley law professor and founding director of the Environmental Law Clinic.
Science History Podcast episode 97 centers on PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” with Frank von Hippel interviewing Colorado journalist Sharon Udasin, author of Poisoning the Well.
Science History Podcast episode 79 brings together Frank von Hippel and Patricia Hunt, a Regents Professor at Washington State University, to trace endocrine disruption from DES to BPA.
Frank von Hippel’s episode 78 of Science History Podcast continues his interview with William Lanouette about Leo Szilard after World War II, after an earlier episode on Szilard and the atom bomb.
Science History Podcast episode 92 features host Frank von Hippel and Reuters journalist Jamie Dowdell discussing Reuters' August 2024 investigation, “How a U.S.
Science History Podcast episode 96 features Frank von Hippel and Simon Winchester discussing The Breath of the Gods, a book about how humans came to understand wind and weather.
This episode explores the Franck-Hertz experiment, a pivotal 1914 study that provided the first experimental evidence for the quantum nature of atoms, aligning with Niels Bohr's model.
Frank von Hippel and archaeologist Mike Pitts trace how Rapa Nui was turned into a “great mystery” by European visits that lasted less than a week over 80 years, beginning with the 1722 Dutch landing that left at least 10 or 12 islanders shot dead.
Science History Podcast marks its 100th episode by looking back at Niels Bohr’s life and legacy through his grandson, Thomas Bohr.
This episode explores the history and impact of PCR with Henry Ehrlich, covering its development from DNA discovery to applications in forensics, exonerations, and human evolution.
Frank von Hippel frames scientific espionage as a history of power.
Frank von Hippel opens episode 81 of the Science History Podcast by placing Steve Fetter in the show's larger run of nuclear arms race and disarmament conversations.
Frank von Hippel opens by marking the show’s first episode of its eighth year.
Frank von Hippel opens by pushing back on the habit of turning major scientific history into a story about one celebrated figure.
Frank von Hippel opens with Peter Agri’s aquaporin work, then moves into malaria’s long history.
Frank von Hippel opens with a wide historical frame.
Frank von Hippel opens by tracing chemical warfare back to ancient Greece and the attack at Delium.
Frank von Hippel introduces lead as perhaps the most insidious environmental pollutant of the industrial age.
Frank von Hippel frames Pascual Jordan as a brilliant quantum theorist whose politics drifted toward Nazism even as he worked with Jewish colleagues.
Frank von Hippel speaks with archaeologist Jodi Magnus about the archaeology of Jerusalem.
Frank von Hippel opens on the post-October 7 turmoil on American campuses.
Frank von Hippel and William Lenouette examine why physicists have repeatedly moved into biology, using Leo Szilard, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger, and Francis Crick as anchor points.
The host opens on current battles over political bias in American universities.
Frank von Hippel records episode 89 of the Science History Podcast in Göttingen while attending the Göttingen Peace Prize ceremony for his uncle Frank, and he frames the conversation around why the University of Göttingen mattered so much before Nazism.
Frank von Hippel frames Episode 75 of the Science History Podcast around a 1994 Oliver Sacks lecture called "awakening revisited," recorded at UC Berkeley and introduced as a bootleg from his alma mater.