Richard Conniff

  • Arts & Culture

    Object lesson

    When Thomas Jefferson visited Yale

    April 30 2009
  • features

    The man who saved the dinosaurs

    Dinosaurs were lumbering, stupid, scientifically boring beasts—until John Ostrom rewrote the book on them.

    July 1 2014 | Ico comments 7 comments
  • Christopher Gardner

    features

    The brain cutter

    Harvey Cushing, father of modern neurosurgery, performed his first operation as a Yale undergraduate. (The “patient” was a dog.) He didn’t work at Yale again for 40 years. But in his will, he left Yale the fruits of his labor.

    December 31 2010
  • Mark Morosse

    features

    A tale of two windows

    In 1970, Yale's stained-glass Tiffany masterpiece disappeared. Or did it?

    December 31 2009
  • Julie Brown

    features

    The fraud detective

    Jim Chanos saw through Enron, Tyco, and the subprime mortgage mess. And made money on them.

    August 31 2013 | Ico comments 2 comments
  • features

    Nature, nurture, or network?

    Your friends and family influence your drinking, sleep, weight, and happiness—more than you think.

    September 1 2014 | Ico comments 1 comment
  • features

    The founder of modern ecology

    At five, G. Evelyn Hutchinson collected water mites. At Yale, his research on freshwater species reshaped scientific thinking about natural history.

    November 1 2015
  • American Philosophical Society

    features

    God and white men at Yale

    In the 1920s, leading thinkers—including the greatest economist America ever produced—focused their efforts on eugenics, preserving the Nordic stock, and the problem of “race suicide.”

    April 30 2012