In the 1480s, Italian Renaissance artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci came up with an ingenious design for an “aerial screw.” A rotor in the shape of a helix measuring about 13 feet in diameter, the ...

Katie has a PhD in maths, specializing in the intersection of dynamical systems and number theory. She reports on topics from maths and history to society and animals. Katie has a PhD in maths, ...

Leonardo da Vinci was, by any metric, a genius – but he was still limited by his time. The man may have been a secret authority on anatomy, music, art, engineering, and even frickin’ paleogeography, ...