so long blues: an homage to marjorie thompson

The following tribute marks one year since the passing of
Marjorie Thompson, beloved biology professor, dean,
musician, and friend to thousands.
It was high noon on a picture-perfect Memorial Day, 1999, the unofficial beginning of summer and the official beginning of the rest of my life. As photons from our home star beamed down through gothic mullioned windows, I and several hundred biology concentrators — the lot of us clad in black from head to shin — lined the pews of the First Unitarian Church in Providence, Rhode Island, waiting to receive our undergraduate diplomas.

One by one, we made our way toward the moment many of us had been anticipating since the word "college" first crossed our synapses. As O's and P's yielded to V's and W's, my name finally rang out across the hall. With my family proudly looking on, I strode with purpose to the podium, toward a petite brunette with wavy, chin-length hair and thin, metallic spectacles. We exchanged knowing smiles, and I reached out my right hand. I was soon holding onto a small rectangular paper that read, in part, "et huic omnia privilegia lura honores us ad hunc gradum evectis pertinentia fruenda dedit" — "and to she has given to enjoy all the privileges, rights, honors, and symbols pertaining to those advanced to this degree." Thanks in no small part to the woman with the wire-rimmed glasses, Brown University was about to make its appearance in the rear-view mirror of my life.

Marge (right) with Jen, a fellow bio concentrator and my former roomie, at our graduation in 1999.

Now, 15 years, five months, and three weeks later, I am sitting in the same hallowed hall, once again dressed in black. The flood of brilliant sunlight from that memorable May day has given way to a smattering of amber-stained rays, soon to disappear behind our earthly orb. On this bitter-cold November afternoon, students, colleagues, family, and friends have come to say goodbye to Marjorie Thompson, the woman who helped me and thousands of others at Brown become who we are: scientists, doctors, engineers, writers — and much, much more.

It had been a shock to hear the news some two months prior that Marge, a two-time Brown graduate, longtime adjunct professor, and beloved dean, had died at the age of 60 from cancer. While I hadn't been in touch for quite a few years, Marge had always seemed so dynamic and vital — the kind of person you'd imagine would be doling out time-tested truisms well into her 80s or 90s. Tragically for her family and for everyone she touched, cancer took Marge at the pinnacle of life: In addition to her flourishing career, she'd found recent success outside of the university as a singer-songwriter; at home, her children were all thriving, the two youngest actively studying at Brown.

Her youngest son, Griffin, was, in fact, still a bun in the oven when I first met Marge in the summer of 1994, between my junior and senior years of high school. I'll never forget that muggy June morning when the dozen or so members of our histology class discovered that our petite 5'2" professor was very pregnant with her seventh — seventh! — child. The fact was incredible on several fronts: that such a small person could seemingly double her size while carrying a baby; that someone as young as she could have already birthed six other children; and that as a profoundly busy professor and dean she could have had much time for family at all, much less a fairly large one.

And yet, here she was, introducing us starry-eyed teenagers to the basics of cellular and tissue biology in what was, for most of us, our first academic venture away from home. I don't think I ever told Marge how much of an impact she had on my decision to apply to Brown and to ultimately matriculate, but for 10 weeks, she was my ambassador to a world where I could become whomever I wanted to become — even if I didn't know who that was quite yet.

It was during this time, for instance, that I first entertained the thought of combining art with a career in science. While I sometimes struggled to memorize the functional differences between fibroblasts and osteoblasts, I excelled in our labs, in which we were to draw and describe what we saw in stained tissue slides magnified by standard light microscopes. The positive feedback she gave upon seeing my lab work encouraged me at various points to consider a career as a scientific illustrator/designer, or to work in some way to bring science to life through art.

To be sure, Marge was also an excellent teacher of biology: Her analogies were always illuminating, and she mixed fact and humor in a way that made learning challenging material fun. But Marge made it clear to us in word and in deed that science could be interdisciplinary — and that we didn't have to abandon our multiple interests and passions as we came into our adult years. As someone who went on to take many science courses across a wide range of subject areas, I can say that few professors encouraged cross-disciplinary thinking the way Marge did. She was a proponent of STEAM — Arts in connection with Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math — before the term even existed.

​Cellular fun: Marge's handmade jewelry fused science and art.

And by the way, she really walked the walk. Well before Etsy, Marge was a budding crafts entrepreneur in her own right, with a line of biologically inspired jewelry she called Cellular Fun. She produced and sold vibrant pins, earrings, and necklaces of neurons, white blood cells, and skin cells made from colored polymer clay.

She also betrayed her love of music to us on more than one occasion — gushing in class, for example, over Lyle Lovett and the Beatles. Years later, well after I'd graduated from Brown, she followed her own advice and took her guitar-playing talents to the next level, becoming an accomplished singer-songwriter. "Time doesn't wait for you," she told Oprah Winfrey when interviewed about this mid-career shift on Winfrey's eponymous TV show. "I knew that it was now or never." In her 50s, Marge toured the country, playing in coffee shops and on stage; she produced five albums of original music as well as a series of instructional guitar videos. In short, she'd found a second calling, and instead of writing it off as too late to start anew, she'd embraced it with full force.



It was the kind of move that didn't surprise for one moment those who knew her. As associate dean of biology, Marge headed up the advisory system for one of Brown's most popular concentrations. Hundreds of students each year engaged directly with Marge, who made sure their academic requirements were on track, who gave advice regarding courses of study and career paths, and who organized and advertised events and opportunities encouraging them to follow their love of the sciences — or whatever it was they were passionate about.

Sitting now at the First Unitarian Church, I am moved by the stories spoken aloud by former students who have returned to Providence to pay their respects to Dean T (as Marge was known to many). One in particular brings the congregation to tears when he plays an original recording of her singing a song she'd written some years back. The words of colleagues and friends make plain the enormous impact Marge had on her family and her community.

That, of course, includes me. In addition to drawing me back to Brown for my undergraduate years, Marge helped me choose my major, an interdisciplinary concentration that drew from biology but also anthropology, psychology, and sociology to better understand human evolution. She also led me to my future concentration advisor, Anne Fausto-Sterling, a noted professor and science writer on topics relating to the sociology and biology of gender. Anne helped guide me toward a path where I could explore the STEM fields through writing — and, ultimately, the photography, animation, and design that gave it additional color through the popular science outlets I've worked for throughout my career. More recently, Marge has been in my thoughts as the public has started to know me as a "LEGO artist" for my photographic depictions of scientists and engineers in minifigure form. As she quipped in her interview with Oprah, "this is not how I imagined my life!" Yet I've enjoyed this new avenue of expressing appreciation for the work that scientists do, and these vignettes have become an project of which I'm extremely proud.

So thank you, Marge, for your insights, encouragement, and grace. In the lives that you have touched, you will live on for generations to come, once again and more.

15 works of art depicting women in science

This post originally appeared March 7, 2014 on Scientific American online.

Research into why women continue to drop out of the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math) despite high aptitude in these areas at early ages increasingly points to factors that include the stereotypical treatment and unequal representation of females in popular culture. It is becoming clear that toys, visual media, and written media, from books to references such as Wikipedia, could do wonders to encourage girls and young women by adding more and better representations of females in STEM. Fortunately this is starting to happen, as evidenced by new offerings such as the latest LEGO scientist, whom I have written about at length on the heels of my own LEGO scientist minfigure project; by the runaway success of Gravity, a film with a medical engineer-astronaut as its protagonist and hero; and by the recent popularity of Wikipedia edit-a-thons, including several I have organized in the U.S. focusing on articles about women in STEM.

But there's another sea change taking place right now, and that is the morphing of STEM into STEAM, an acronym acknowledging that art and design have always been integral to the fields of science and technology. Scientific and mathematical crafts have become easier to find and purchase in recent years, thanks to the growth of online artist communities and marketplaces. And although depictions of scientists remain overwhelmingly male, an increasing number of artworks are beginning to highlight women as thinkers and creators. The artists in the following collection of works featuring women in science have contributed boldly to the dual goals of celebrating women in the STEM fields and portraying them positively through the lens of visual media. A selection of these will be featured at a women-in-STEM art exhibit that I will guest curate at the Art.Science.Gallery. in Austin, Texas, from September 13 through October 15, 2014.

"Marie Curie" - Jeff Fenwick
(goache and ink)

This provocative painting of renowned physicist Marie Curie gazing curiously at a serpent ghost appears at first glance to reference the fact that what Madam Curie became most famous for—her tireless work uncovering the mechanisms of radioactivity—was also what ended up killing her. But Jeff Fenwick, a Toronto-based illustrator and craftsman, describes a secondary symbolism to his work: The snake and vial, he says, were designed to evoke a Rod of Asclepius, the universal symbol of medicine. "The piece is meant to represent Curie's research being a miraculous breakthrough for medical science," Fenwick explains, "while also suggesting the immanent danger Curie was in while working with radioactive materials."

After learning of Curie's life story, and of the circumstances behind her death from overexposure to radiation, Fenwick decided she would make an ideal model for a painting. He began and finished the piece during his first year at OCAD University in Toronto, where he is pursuing a degree in illustration. "I chose Marie Curie because she has a very particular melancholy expression which I felt makes her portrait interesting to study."

Fenwick plans to focus on creating comics and other illustration works after he graduates. "I also see a future," he says, "in marrying my love of design and art with my professional career as a carpenter."

Image credit: © Jeff Fenwick. Used by permission.

"Lise Meitner and Nuclear Fission" - Orlando Leibovitz
(acrylic on jute)

Both Marie Curie and German-born physicist Lise Meitner were responsible for some of the most important physics of the 20th century. Meitner's contribution was the discovery of nuclear fission, the splitting of atoms that led to the development of nuclear energy and atomic weapons. Unlike Curie, who was showered with two Nobel Prizes, Meitner was snubbed when her collaborator, Otto Hahn, took home a solo Nobel in physics for their work. But Meitner's accomplishments eventually earned her something even more enduring: a place on the periodic table of elements. She is the namesake of meitnerium, element 109.

I was pleasantly surprised by the whimsy with which Orlando Leibovitz, a self-taught artist based in Santa Fe, N.M., represented Meitner's signature work. In stark contrast to Jeff Fenwick's cautionary vision of a transformational breakthrough, Leibovitz provides a simpler, more joyful look at an iconic scientist and her discovery. The portrait belongs to a 10-piece series called "Painted Physics," which also includes paintings of Richard Feynman dancing in front of a chalkboard filled with Feynman diagrams and Ernest Shroedinger juggling cats. "Since my teenage years," says Leibovitz, "I have been intrigued by the way theoretical physics explains our universe. Artists seek the same explanations. Art, of course, does not require the same rigorous verification. But creativity and the desire to penetrate the mysterious connect art and physics."

Leibovitz adds: "Lise Meitner's discoveries continue to have a monumental impact on our lives. The way she overcame the discrimination she faced as a woman, as a physicist, and as a Jew in Nazi Germany is a dramatic story. Meitner wrote, 'Science makes people reach selflessly for truth and objectivity. It teaches people to accept reality with wonder and admiration...' She lived that sentiment every day of her life. That is a story worth painting."

Image credit: © Orlando Leibovitz. Used by permission.

"Inge Lehmann and the Earth's Core" - Ele Willoughby
(ink on kozo paper)

Ele Willoughby is a marine geophysicist based in Toronto whose research focuses on gas hydrate deposits in underwater environments. She is also a highly accomplished printmaker who creates screen prints, etchings, and linocut prints on topics in science and the natural world. This wonderful piece depicting Danish seismologist Inge Lehmann, who in 1936 demonstrated that our planet contains a solid inner core, is part of Willoughby's linocut series on famous and lesser-known scientists. "I'm rather passionate about the history of science, particularly physics and geophysics," says Willoughby. "I am more than happy to be sharing it through art—especially under-appreciated female superstars like Inge Lehmann."

The print's geometric red figure is a representation of Earth in cross-section as depicted in Lehmann's seminal paper, "P'," one of the most succinctly titled articles in the history of science. "The three concentric spheres are the mantle, outer core, and inner core, which she postulated," Willoughby explains. "'E' marks the epicenter of a massive earthquake. The numbered rays from E show the waves we would expect to observe at various angular distances around the Earth, as time progresses and they propagate through the planet."

"I'm not sure when I realized," Willoughby adds, "that the Lehmann of the Lehmann discontinuity or the American Geophysical Union's Lehmann Medal recognized a woman whose career spanned a period when it would have been unusual for her to achieve what she did. The more I looked into her story, the more interesting she was. It was not only really clever to infer that what she was seeing in the data were earthquake waves that shouldn't have been there if the core was fluid as it was believed; it was really a paradigm shift. She decided that these needed a proper, systematic explanation, and her bold hypothesis fit. It isn't widely recognized—even among earth scientists—that this fundamental discovery about the structure of our planet was the work of a pioneering woman in the field."

Image credit: © Ele Willoughby. Used by permission.

"Portrait of Gabrielle-Émilie le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet" - Nicolas de Largillière
(oil on canvas)

The great 18th-century mathematician, physicist, and natural philosopher Émilie du Châtelet has been the subject of quite a few artistic renditions, but this radiant portrait by French painter Nicolas de Largillière is my favorite by far.

It dates to around 1735, a period in history when it was almost unheard of for a female scholar—particularly one who worked in the natural sciences—to be depicted by a master painter such as De Largillière. The work also dates, roughly, to the time when Du Châtelet reconnected with her childhood friend, Voltaire, the historian and philosopher who would become her lover, intellectual partner, and lifelong friend.

Paris-born Émilie du Châtelet was drawn to the sciences from an early age, and she benefited from the encouragement and tutoring of many fine academics. As an adult, she became particularly fascinated with the work of Isaac Newton, and she is considered to have been a leading driver of the move among French academics away from Cartesian physics and toward Newtonian physics. Near the end of her short life she contributed her most lasting work, a translation and commentary on Netwton's groundbreaking Principia. It is, to this day, the standard translation of the work into French. Du Châtelet died after the birth of her fourth child at the age of 42.

The symbols and gestures in De Largillière's portrait are chock-full of meaning. First, Du Châtelet is staring skyward, a likely nod to the fact that she was interested in astronomy and the cosmos. She grips with her right hand a gold compass, symbolizing her work in measuring and bringing order to the natural world and universe. Her left hand sits on a celestial globe, probably a cue to her reverence for Newton's theory of universal gravitation. Whether the positioning of this hand just above the constellation Scorpio was related to the fact that her beloved Voltaire was born under that particular sign is up for debate.

Incidentally, this artwork is likely the most valuable among those presented in this collection; the original sold at auction for $134,500 in 2010.

Image credit: Nicolas de Largillière.

"Kathleen Yardley Lonsdale," "Barbara McClintock," "Agnes Pockels," and "Maria Goeppert-Mayer" - Jennifer Mondfrans
(oil, acrylic, and wax pastel)

"I was having a conversation with a male acquaintance, and we were talking scientists," begins San Francisco artist Jennifer Mondfrans. "He thought the only historical woman scientist was Marie Curie. After asking many of my smart friends, I realized that this was a secret history that needed to be known."

Mondfrans's response was two spellbinding series of vivid portraits depicting notable, but not necessarily well-known, women in science and mathematics. One set, "At Least I Have You, To Remember Me," pairs portraits in wild, saturated colors with "autobiographies" in the form of letters to the viewer. These are meant to imprint a story along with Mondfrans's visual interpretation of the scientist in question. The other set, "Women Scientists in History," includes alternate interpretations for some of the same personalities, while introducing yet more individuals to her overall mix. "I chose women who had accomplished great work and who had been photographed," Mondfrans says.

The four women represented here are (clockwise from top left): Kathleen Lonsdale, the pioneering British crystallographer who proved that the benzene ring is a flat hexagon; Barbara McClintock, the American geneticist and Nobel Prize-winner who produced the first genetic map of maize; Agnes Pockels, an underappreciated German pioneer in the discipline of surface science; and German-American Maria Goeppert-Mayer, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who proposed the nuclear shell model of the atomic nucleus.

Mondfrans plans to add even more portraits of women to her science collections, as time allows. High on her to-do list are chemist Irène Joliot-Curie and biologist Lynn Margulis. "I will continue to do scientists as they pass," she says, "to create an ongoing history."

Image credits (4): © Jennifer Mondfrans. Used by permission.

"Henrietta Swan Leavitt" - Raúl Colón
(colored pencil and lithographic crayon on paper)

I live in the same neighborhood where astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt spent a great deal of time, carefully analyzing the brightness of stars as they were observed around the turn of the 20th century. I often pass by her former office at the Harvard Observatory, and by the last apartment building she lived in before she died. I wonder how life might have been for her, walking these same streets.

Physically, much of the area remains unchanged, but in Leavitt's time, women couldn't even dream of matriculating at a university like Harvard. Nevertheless, she was one of a famous group of women who not only worked at the Harvard Observatory (earning next to nothing, I might add) but who also succeeded in making a number of major contributions to the field of astronomy.

Last summer, I came across a children's picture book about Leavitt, written by Robert Burleigh and illustrated by New York artist Raúl Colón. It details her life and greatest work: the discovery of an important relationship between the changing brightness of so-called variable stars and the duration, or period, of their light fluctuations. Leavitt gained little notoriety for it in her lifetime, but this observation proved so fundamental to later discoveries about our place in the cosmos that a number of scholars, including renowned astronomer Edwin Hubble, considered it worthy of a Nobel Prize. "I was impressed by her accomplishment—basically, finding a way to measure the distance of stars," says Colón. In his portrait, the top panel represents the varying brightness of a star, while the bottom is a recreation of how Henrietta and her fellow "computers" noted the changes on paper.

"When I visited Harvard, I saw the transparencies of different stars Henrietta and other astronomers studied," Colón explains. "I also read through some of the notebooks they used to annotate their observations concerning the degree of brightness in each star through a period of time. Having some of the equipment they used—like the glass device to place the transparencies—right there for me to study and sketch really connected me to the past and her story."

Image credit: © Raúl Colón. Used by permission. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. SimonandSchuster.com.

"Mae Jemison" - Muhammad Yungai
(oil on canvas)

You may know that Mae Jemison was the first African American woman in space, but did you have any idea that she's a serious dancer? That she spent two and a half years as a Peace Corps doctor in Africa? Or that she fulfilled a childhood dream by playing a small role on Star Trek: The Next Generation?

Mae Carol Jemison has become an inspiration to women and children everywhere, not only because she earned the call from NASA, but because she has, in her post-astronaut years, excelled as a multifaceted and highly successful businesswoman, tech developer, and social leader.

These credentials, plus her commitment to education, are just a few of the reasons why Atlanta-based artist and teacher Muhammad Yungai decided to create this expressive portrait of Jemison as part of his colorful "29 Black People You Should Know" series. "Mae Jemison is an amazing woman whose story should be known," he says.

Yungai is a self-taught painter who grew up in New Orleans with a passion for artistic expression. "After receiving praise and guidance at a very early age from my father, my fascination with art bloomed into an unquenchable thirst," he writes on his website.

Today, Yungai lives in Atlanta, where he teaches visual arts to children at the KIPP WAYS Academy. His portrait of Mae Jemison was created to honor Black History Month and to serve as a fundraiser for his students. Along with the other 28 paintings of historical black leaders from Langston Hughes to Whitney Houston, Jemison's portrait was auctioned off, with proceeds going toward materials to help Yungai instruct a new generation of artists.

Image credit: © Muhammad Yungai. Used by permission.

"Jane Goodall Darwin Day Portrait Project 2013" - Hayley Gillespie
(paper collage and acrylic on wood panel)

In 2012, ecologist, conservation biologist, and artist Hayley Gillespie began the Darwin Day Portrait Project, a community endeavor in Austin, TX, that celebrates great naturalists on Charles Darwin's birthday (February 12th). After crafting a collage of Darwin himself for the inaugural event, Gillespie decided to focus this year on primatologist Jane Goodall, a chimpanzee expert and one of the most celebrated scientists of the 20th century.

By happy coincidence, Gillespie learned she would have the opportunity to show her work to Goodall just a few months later, during a public lecture at Southwestern University, where Gillespie was a visiting professor. "I felt a lot of pressure to get the portrait just right because I knew she might see it," Gillespie admits. "'Very good likeness,' was her calm assessment, so I felt really good about that!"

The collage, now signed by Goodall (top right), is on display at the Texas Memorial Museum in Austin—not far from Art.Science.Gallery., another of Gillespie's creative endeavors. She began the project in response to her popular blog about science and art. "I met so many amazing artist-scientists through my blog who were searching for a place to exhibit their work," she explains. "I woke up one morning and said, 'Why not start a gallery specifically for science and nature-inspired work?'" Art.Science.Gallery. existed in pop-up mode for some time, but it now has a permanent space a few miles east of downtown Austin, where it not only showcases artworks but also provides a home for science communication activities.

"My mother, several aunts and grandmother are all artists, and my grandfathers were engineers, so art and science have just always been a part of my life," Gillespie says. "I think they were just as much a part of Darwin's life—who had to draw, sketch, etc.—or Earnst Haeckel's life, who became famous for his Art Forms in Nature. Somehow the two fields became more separated in the 20th century as science became more quantitative. But, I think we're on the verge of a major resurgence of integrating arts and sciences."

Image credit: © Hayley Gillespie. Used by permission.

"Rosalind Franklin" - Geoffrey Appleton
(acrylic on board)

This unique painting of renowned x-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin was commissioned in the late 1990s by the science department of Staffordshire University in England. "I wanted to show Franklin at work," says British artist Geoffrey Appleton, who was trained at St. Albans College and the Canterbury College of Art, now part of Kent University. "I knew more about her as a figure that had been sidelined in the DNA structure discovery, rather than as a committed crystallographer. But I got the impression from reading about her that she was very hard-working and thorough and solitary."

Appleton's intent was to portray Franklin "as an innocent in a dark, male-dominated world," with the feet of scientific rivals James Watson and Francis Crick "waiting in the wings." The figure before Franklin represents Photograph 51, her famous DNA x-ray image. Without her knowledge or permission, Franklin's colleague Maurice Wilkins showed Photo 51 to Watson and Crick shortly before they introduced the world to DNA's double helix structure in 1953. This photo led directly to Watson and Crick's discovery, and today Franklin is often credited as a co-discoverer of DNA's structure.

But only Watson, Crick, and Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize—and the early glory—for this achievement. Franklin died at age 37 from ovarian cancer, likely a result of her work with high-energy particles. This left her ineligible for a share of the Nobel, since the prizes may not be awarded posthumously. It also left her unable to defend herself when Watson and others publicly belittled her in books and interviews. In more recent years, Franklin has become a revered symbol of the history of discrimination against women in science.

Geoffrey Appleton has been a freelance illustrator since the 1980s. If you look closely, you can make out his likeness as a symbol of genetic inheritance on the bottom right of his Franklin portrait. "The picture is based on a family photo, showing my Mum and Dad with me as a baby," he says. "It's a sort of nod toward my identity."

Image credit: © Geoffrey Appleton; Staffordshire University. Used by permission.

"Rita Levi-Montalcini" - Francesca Mantuano
(digital)

On the penultimate day of 2012, the world said goodbye to Rita Levi-Montalcini, a spirited and highly decorated Italian neurologist best known for her Nobel Prize-winning discovery of nerve growth factor. That same day, Italian artist Francesca Mantuano created this digital portrait of the esteemed scientist.

Levi-Montalcini was 103 years young when she died, and by all accounts she lived each of those years to the fullest. Born an identical twin in 1909, Levi-Montalcini's early career was colored by the dark cloud of World War II. After studying chicken embryos in hiding, she moved to the U.S., where she spent three decades on the faculty of Washington University in St. Louis, MO. There, she focused her work on a mysterious protein responsible for nerve growth and maintenance. She would eventually return to her homeland, first part-time and later for good. Levi-Montalcini never stopped working or supporting the causes that were important to her. A longtime champion of women in science, she was also, from 2001 until her death, a fiery member of the Italian senate. "I've always admired her for her work and contributions that she gave to science," says Mantuano, "but also for her personality and importance in the Italian social contest. I wanted to make a tribute because I think it's important to honor this kind of character, especially nowadays, when the Italian social-political-cultural situation is not the most prosperous and shiny."

Mantuano dabbles in various media, but her first love is comics. She has completed programs in comic, cartoon, and animation design, and she is soon to finish a program in Web design at the New Institute of Design in Perugia. Mantuano takes pride in the achievements of Levi-Montalcini and hopes the illustration of her fellow countrywoman might serve as an inspiration: "We must remember that we, as a nation and people, can do a lot and bring a lot of enrichment to others."

Image credit: © Francesca Mantuano. Used by permission.

"(Augusta) Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (1815-1852) Mathematician; Daughter of Lord Byron" - Margaret Sarah Carpenter
(oil on canvas)

Augusta Ada King, the 19th century Countess of Lovelace, is best known for her work on the Analytical Engine, an early computing machine devised by her mentor and friend, Charles Babbage. Her predictions on how this and other machines might one day move beyond simple arithmetic calculation were unique for her time, and for this reason she is considered a visionary in the field of computational technology. She is also said by many to be the first computer programmer for the notes she contributed to an Italian article about the Analytical Engine.

But Ada Lovelace is way more than the sum of her intellectual, mathematical achievements. She has become, especially in the last five years, an influential symbol of the celebration of women who have contributed significantly, oftentimes silently or without reward, to the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

This regal painting of Lady Lovelace was completed by British portraitist Margaret Carpenter in 1836. It was the same year that Lovelace gave birth to the first of three children with her husband William King, a.k.a. the Earl of Lovelace.

The piece was greeted with critical acclaim at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, but Lovelace herself was far from pleased with the likeness. In fact, she responded rather brusquely to it, and to Carpenter's effort. "I conclude she is bent on displaying the whole expanse of my capacious jaw bone," Lovelace wrote, "upon which I think the word Mathematics should be written."

Image credit: Margaret Carpenter.

"Sally Ride" - Andrea Del Rio
(mixed media)

It is fitting that astronaut, physicist, and science educator Sally Ride would strike a pose in this portrait so similar to that of her fellow pioneer, Ada Lovelace. Standing tall with her characteristic bright, inviting smile, Ride provides hope for the next generation of explorers, whether out in the cosmos or here on Earth.

In becoming the first American woman in space, Ride captured the world's attention when she flew on the shuttle Challenger in 1983. But in her post-NASA career, up until the day she died of pancreatic cancer in the summer of 2012, Ride made her living as a steadfast champion of STEM education. She particularly encouraged young girls to "reach for the stars."

Andrea Del Rio, a Peruvian art student at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, attempted to capture that inspiration in her unique artwork. To create Ride's likeness, Del Rio utilized a variety of media, including watercolor, charcoal, india ink, colored pencil, chalk pastels, and acrylic paint. "The pose is empowering," Del Rio says. "Her helmet represents what the world saw her accomplish, and her suit shows what perhaps she saw out there in space. Sally did great things that before her time were not possible. As she smiles and looks away, I believe she is thinking how everything turned out just fine. Nothing is impossible."

Del Rio's own aspirations include becoming a full-time portrait painter and textile designer. On this particular work, she adds: "I wanted to represent someone who had overcome many obstacles to achieve her dreams, to serve as inspiration for me and other people, to realize that the possibilities are endless. Like saying, 'Look at her! She did it. Now get to work!'"

Image credit: Andrea Del Rio. Used by permission.

smiling for cassini

Remember when we all smiled and waved at Saturn back in July, while the Cassini spacecraft snapped our photo? Well, the full mosaic from that magical day has finally been processed by Cassini's imaging team, and boy, is it a stunner. I'm not at all embarrassed to admit that it brought a tear to my eye the moment I saw it in full size...

Like a lens that might be utilized to view either the incredibly small or the incredibly distant, this mosaic compels us both to look inward, at how we might improve ourselves and the health of our only home, and to keep dreaming, about what else awaits us so long as we continue on in our quest to explore the solar system and beyond. (Indeed, if ever an image were appropriate to use as a call to action for those deciding the budgetary fates of our national space program, this one would be it.)

The timing of today's release coincides with the ceremonial hand-off of the late Carl Sagan's papers to the Library of Congress, where they have recently been archived for future generations to examine. We can all be sure that Sagan would have been quite pleased with this most magnificent interplanetary portrait... It is, of course, not only a thing of beauty, perfectly planned to take advantage of a breathtaking alignment of the sun, Saturn, and Earth. The image also reminds us just how tiny we are in the grand scheme of the cosmos—and how important it is to connect regularly with our fellow human beings so that we may reflect on our shared place in the universe.

I'm proud to have played a minor role in the planning of the #DayEarthSmiled and will remember these past months, and those 15 peaceful minutes in July, for many moons to come. For further insight, I highly recommend the latest Captain's Log from Cassini's imaging leader, Carolyn Porco, which beautifully summarizes her intent for the project and describes the many hidden treats you'll find if you take a closer look at the final mosaic.

Even if you missed the big event this past summer, take heart in knowing that your essence was captured in time and in space in this spectacular image in the year 2013. ∞

seeing is believing

"I watch Bill O'Reilly every day. I love Bill O'Reilly. I'm proud to be an American. But I saw this movie, Chasing Ice, today. And it hasn't just changed me about global warming. It has changed me as a person."

And that's where I'll begin my review of the marvelous new Chasing Ice, a feature-length documentary from director Jeff Orlowski about a scientist-cum-environmental photographer who's out to change the world, one snapshot at a time. The quote is from an anonymous woman caught in the iPhone crosshairs of one Justin Kanew, a reality-TV star who recently walked out of a screening alongside this visibly moved mystery lady...

"I did not believe in global warming," she explains. "Every time someone mentioned global warming to me, I told them if they wanted to remain in my home they needed to step out. I said it was bullshit. I didn't believe it. And that is because I listened and I—this is the truth—I believed Bill O'Reilly. And I saw this movie, and I apologize to anyone I ever talked into believing there was no global warming. I have talked every friend, every person I know into believing there was no global warming. And now I have to undo my damage. And I will."

I recommend you take a moment to watch the rest of her soliloquy below.



To be sure, many global warming deniers are so deeply brainwashed entrenched on this issue that nothing save an abrupt about-face by the Faux News pundits would allow them consider otherwise. And of course, there are plenty of climate change skeptics who don't deny the existence of global warming or its effects, but who refuse to believe that the current warming trend is human-caused or that there's anything we can or should do about it. For a more comprehensive look at this cohort, you'd be better served watching Climate of Doubt, a recent Frontline documentary that deals head-on with the modern politics of climate change. In that film, viewers come to understand the anatomy of one of the biggest scientific smear campaigns of our time. It's at once eye-opening and maddening, but not surprising in the least; as with many things in life, just follow the money...

Chasing Ice takes an entirely different—and, in many ways, more powerful—appeal-to-your-gut approach. It does little to communicate the nuts-and-bolts science of our planet's rapid warming, other than to borrow a key graph from 2006's An Inconvenient Truth—the one with a carbon spike at the present day that leaves previous "natural cyclical rhythms" of atmospheric CO2 in the dust. Perhaps this is because the film's lead subject, James Balog, admits that he, too, was once skeptical about climate change's human origins...until he began to see things for himself.

At its heart, Changing Ice is a love story. It projects the passion and dedication of a small army of scientists and engineers with Balog's Extreme Ice Survey, an "arts meets science" project aimed at conveying the reality of global climate change with cold, hard, breathtaking visual evidence. The painstaking lengths this team goes to to mount and check their time-lapse cameras, to fight the often blistering elements, and to overcome severe technical and personal challenges hints at the urgency of the tale Balog and his colleagues are trying to tell.

And then there's the imagery. Jaw-dropping deep blue crevasses that seem to lead straight into the center of the Earth. A bright green aurora dancing wildly in the starry night sky above a stunningly beautiful icy scene below. A gigantic ice slab, miles long and hundreds of feet high, eviscerated in an instant as it calves off and crashes thunderously into the choppy Arctic sea.

All of which led me to ponder a familiar phrase: If a tree falls in the forest and no one's around to hear it, does it make a sound? The old adage kept popping into my mind as these incredible scenes filled the screen before me. It is clearly Balog's mission to make sure someone is present to witness and record for humanity what is happening in these glacial forests. And now, thanks to his work, a once doubting woman is starting to hear the reverberating din that these disappearing ice sheets have begun to make.

"There must be something I can do to help this, to help our children, to help my grandkids," she says, almost pleadingly, to Kanew and the phone camera in his hand. "I don't know what I can do ... But I'm gonna change it, because this movie was fantastic. Every human being in this world should watch this movie. Every one."

I could not agree more. ∞

CHASING ICE: OFFICIAL TRAILER

home is where the nerdy art is

One of the nicer aspects of moving is getting to make your mark on a new space. Now that I've finally started thinking seriously about in-home design for my new pad, I'm realizing how tough my decor decision-making is going to be. I've got a ways to go yet, but I thought I'd share some fun sciencey/geeky stuff I've come across recently:

Endless Forms Most Strange
Alexander Ross is one of my favorite contemporary artists. His works recall fantastically detailed biological films and cellular structures at once beautiful and weird. I adore the glossy, green Play-Doh-like appearance of his paintings and can only hope that someday I'll be able to place one of his unique pieces in my home. For now I'm happy to know that he's just published a new collection via the David Nolan Gallery in New York.


On the Origin of Species... Down to the Letter
Whether you choose the single finch or the evolving primate set, nothing says "I love science" quite like Darwin's entire manifesto printed out line for line on your living room wall. Posters by Spineless Classics.


See the Solar System
Physics professor and graphic designer Tyler Nordgren created a lovely poster series for the National Parks Service stressing clear skies perfect for stargazing. Last year he also drummed up some fantastic prints depicting travel scenes from around the solar system, including these two gems from Saturn's moon Enceladus and Jupiter's moon Io.


Stop and Feed the Robotic Lions
What can I say? This Voltron print by Scott C., titled "Super Hungry," is super cute.


Cheat Sheet
Last, but certainly not least, is this clever Mac shortcuts print by birdAve on Etsy. Who says wall art can't also be useful? ∞

the art of science

One of my favorite things in the whole wide universe is when art and science get a little wild and make some sweet music together. With Valentine's Day fast approaching, it was inevitable that I'd spy some new pairings that clearly just need to get a room. To wit, first there were the cute scientist valentines, featuring the likes of Ada Lovelace, Nikola Tesla, and Carl Sagan. But my heart truly went aflutter for the Periodic Table Printmaking Project, an outstanding work by 97 graphic artists from around the globe who obviously adore science as much as I do. As you can see from the samples above, the idea was to identify each element in a way that's some combination of historical, whimsical, and (of course) scientific. What can I say? I'm in love. The full complement of 118 elements can be seen as a group in periodic table form or individually on the project's Flickr set. ∞

the year that was - 2010 in photos

2010 has been a whirlwind year. Here are some of my best shots from the last 12 months! (Click on images for larger versions.) ∞

Brandi Carlile rocking out. Ridgefield. January.

Snowpocalypse I. Brooklyn. February.

Architecture. Barcelona. March.

Avia's street. Masnou. March.

White House bowling alley. Washington. May.

Shuttle engines. Kennedy Space Center. May.

Liftoff. Kennedy Space Center. May. (w/thx to George)

The library. Brooklyn. June.

The eminent cosmologist. Manhattan. June.

Obligatory feline snapshot. Brooklyn. June.

Ice. Rocky Mountain National Park. June.

Walt Disney Concert Hall. Los Angeles. July.

Caltech. Pasadena. July.

Hairpin walkway at the Getty. Los Angeles. July.

Michael Jackson party. Brooklyn. August.

A new mark. Mount Monadnock. September.

The Huntington Library gardens. Pasadena. October.

Ceiling of the Civic. Pasadena. October.

Palm trees and condos. Cali coast. October.

Rolling hills. Cali coast. October.

Sea stuff. Monterey. October.

Cal Academy of Sciences. San Francisco. October.

Cargo. Oakland. October.

Snowpocalypse II. Brooklyn. December.