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Our songs of love to those who bridge the arts and the sciences – #2: Four scientists wax lyrical about colours, shapes, elements, beauty and human relationships
Of the wonderful scientists who built artistic bridges to and from the sciences, one Italian chemist stands out for having left us with some very significant and distinctive writings. In fact, Primo Levi started out as a scientist and eventually made his name very much as a literary figure. In his book “The Periodic Table”, first published in 1975, Levi spun 21 brilliant stories about chemistry as a metaphor for life, human characters and properties of human relations. One of the most compelling stories, “Zinc”, is about the element with the atomic number 30. Levi was working with zinc samples...
Our songs of love to those who bridge the arts and the sciences – #1: fruitful conversations, a scientific discovery, and the beginnings of environmental thinking
[A note to travelers and museum-goers: Happily, Humboldt seems to be coming back into fashion a little in the last few years, and Berlin is embracing its own son as well as bringing the arts and the sciences together with the opening of Humboldt Forum expected on 17 December 2020.] [A 2nd note, to hikers: Humboldt’s influence on America itself can be seen in the Humboldt Redwoods State Park (just over 200 miles north of San Francisco along the 101) which has wonderful red woods, the tallest living trees on Earth (and so far spared from this year’s fires); walk in...
In honour of 20 years since “the most wondrous map”
In honour of the 20th anniversary of the completion of the first draft sequence of the human genome, on 26 June 2000, a ground-breaking achievement that was the result of many years of work and the joint effort of 2,400 scientists across 6 countries, we thought to remind ourselves of 6 numbers related to this seminal scientific breakthrough. (Image: a graphic representation - called a cyclo-plot - of the genome of a cancer cell including various mutations, adapted from Stratton et al, Nature, 2009) 2 meters: The sequencing project had built on the discovery of the double helix some 50 years...
Obsessive April thoughts about our common universe – the “Pale Blue Dot” that reminds us that we are all on the same boat
This April, we are all reminded of the fragility as well as the interdependence of everything on our planet; and we certainly hope humanity can get out of the current crisis re-setting itself to bring into being a system that is more resilient, responsible, and incorporates more long-term thinking. Those of us who like scientific and artistic thoughts to collide and mingle are reminded of the pale blue dot (that tiny dot in the middle image of the top row in the image) is the NASA spacecraft Voyager 1‘s view of Earth seen from the outer edge of the Solar System, an...
Our favourite poem about planets and stars for this Lunar New Year Day
We celebrate Lunar New Year’s Day by sharing a favourite poem that is about our desire to get to know more about planets and stars, our search for life beyond our own planet, and our longing for cosmic companionship. We are listening ~ Dianne Ackerman (you can also listen here for the poet herself reciting the poem) I. As our metal eyes wake to absolute night, where whispers fly from the beginning of time, we cup our ears to the heavens. We are listening on the volcanic lips of Flagstaff and in the fields beyond Boston in a...