Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe Carl Zimmer Dutton (2025)
In the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, one of the most pressing questions for researchers was how the SARS-CoV-2 virus was transmitted. Some physicians and public-health specialists argued that the virus spread solely in wet droplets from coughing. Others — backed by aerosol scientists — thought that it also spread through the air.
In Air-borne, acclaimed science writer Carl Zimmer examines why it took more than a year of vociferous debate to establish that the second theory was correct. His book is an enthralling historical exploration of the role of airborne microorganisms in disease, and examines why these pathogens have been overlooked for centuries.
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The beginning of ‘aerobiology’, as -Zimmer labels it, had its roots in ancient Greece. -Hippocrates, a physician and philosopher, was the first to propose that a miasma — “an invisible corruption of the air” — caused disease. The concept endured: from the fourteenth century onwards, miasmas were often wrongly blamed for plague outbreaks that devastated cites across the world. Now, we know that the disease was caused by a bacterium carried by fleas that live on rodents.
A long history
In the sixteenth century, Italian physician -Girolamo Fracastoro wrote a book about tiny, invisible ‘seeds’ that could