His house in Altadena, a modest bungalow surrounded by exotic fruit trees that he and his wife planted, often serves as a late-night design-and-disputation forum, with a full bar in the living room. (When I visited on the day of the Curiosity landing, the mirror above the mantel was covered in half-erased equations.) The session at J.

NEWYORKER: The Martian Chroniclers

However, at the heart of the Lunar men's interests lay a driving curiosity in the workings of the natural world (fittingly, they had chosen the full moon to meet because it gave the most light as they stumbled home, drunk on fine ideas and clever talk).

ECONOMIST: 18th-century science