[1] The magazine was founded in 1956 by Tom Margerison, Max Raison and Nicholas Harrison[2] as The New Scientist, with Issue 1 on 22 November 1956, priced at one shilling[3] (equivalent to £1.58 in 2023[4]).

[8] In December 2021, DMGT announced that both New Scientist and the DMGT-owned daily i newspaper would be moved to a new division of the company, to be called Harmsworth Media.

[13] Throughout most of its history, New Scientist has published cartoons as light relief and comment on the news, with contributions from regulars such as Mike Peyton and David Austin.

The Ariadne pages in New Scientist commented on the lighter side of science and technology and included contributions from David E. H. Jones, Daedalus.

In the 21st century, until May 2019, New Scientist contained the following sections: Leader, News (Upfront), Technology, Opinion (interviews, point-of-view articles and letters), Features (including cover article), CultureLab (book and event reviews), Feedback (humour), The Last Word (questions and answers) and Jobs & Careers.

Readers contribute observations on examples of pseudoscience to Feedback, and offer questions and answers on scientific and technical topics to Last Word.

A dedicated "Views" section was added between news reports and in-depth features, including readers' letters, comment, and reviews on science, culture and society.

Overall global views of an online database of over 100,000 articles are 10.8m by 7m unique users according to Google Analytics, as of January 2019[update].

[26] In September 2006, New Scientist was criticised by science fiction writer Greg Egan, who wrote that "a sensationalist bent and a lack of basic knowledge by its writers" was making the magazine's coverage sufficiently unreliable "to constitute a real threat to the public understanding of science".

In particular, Egan found himself "gobsmacked by the level of scientific illiteracy" in the magazine's coverage[27] of Roger Shawyer's "electromagnetic drive", where New Scientist allowed the publication of "meaningless double-talk" designed to bypass a fatal objection to Shawyer's proposed space drive, namely that it violates the law of conservation of momentum.

[28] The editor of New Scientist, then Jeremy Webb, replied defending the article, saying that it is "an ideas magazine—that means writing about hypotheses as well as theories".

Some evolutionary biologists who actively oppose the intelligent design movement thought the cover was both sensationalist and damaging to the scientific community.