Stories about discovery and its consequences, from the laboratory and the clinic to the history of science and the people whose achievements were overlooked.
ON SCREEN / 08
The screen selection
Thought-provoking cinema and television. Lessons in Chemistry is first overall, and Ikiru is the first film; each entry distinguishes interpretation from documented evidence.
01 / SERIES
Chemistry / scientific independence
Lessons in Chemistry
Apple TV · 2023 · Limited series
Elizabeth Zott’s struggle to pursue chemistry in an institution that dismisses her becomes a story about intellectual independence, discrimination and the art of communicating science to a wider audience.
A dramatization of a nuclear disaster in which the concealment of technical evidence and the suppression of dissent become as consequential as the initial failure.
A terminal diagnosis forces an ordinary civil servant to reconsider a life of bureaucratic routines and find meaning through a modest act of public service.
In a jury room, a single dissenter begins to examine how evidence, stereotypes, confidence and group pressure can lead people toward an irreversible judgment.
A linguist works to interpret an unfamiliar language following the appearance of extraterrestrial visitors. The film explores how models of communication shape perception, inference and ideas about time.
A story about Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, and the mathematical labor behind the American space program. It examines who gets access to scientific work and who receives credit for doing it.
The story of a physicist working at the intersection of fundamental discovery, wartime necessity and political authority. A prompt to consider how far scientists remain responsible for technologies that grow out of their research.
An imagined outbreak told through epidemiological investigation, medical response and rapidly changing public behavior. The film is especially useful for considering how evidence, institutions and public communication interact.
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