In this course, we will explore the lives, ideas, and influence of those who created modern science from the Renaissance to today. We will think about what problems scientific ideas solved, what made them controversial and exciting, and how they were related to contemporary art, religion, and politics. Our focus will be on the spaces in which science was done, the tools and techniques used, and the media through which it was communicated. Topics will range widely, from Newtonian mechanics to atomic weapons, from Darwin to DNA sequencing, and from an eighteenth-century defecating mechanical duck to the first twentieth-century computer game.