Thursday, February 25, 2010

Scientists stamp their authority

When it comes to industrial relations and adopting new technology, our historic postal service may show Luddite tendencies on occasion and individual postmen may well challenge our patience with their silly shorts and their propensity to leave little red elastic bands on our front lawns, but you have to give it to them, they know how to make nice stamps!

The latest series from the Royal Mail features famous scientists of the Royal society and celebrates the 350th anniversary of it's founding (1660) here they are in all their glory, see if you can recognise any of them.


Answers below:
Left to right: Robert Boyle, founder of modern chemistry; Sir Isaac Newton, physicist and optical pioneer; Benjamin Franklin, inventor of the lightning conductor; Edward Jenner, inventor of vaccination; Charles Babbage, developer of programmable computers; Alfred Russel Wallace, pioneer of evolution theory; Joseph Lister, inventor of antiseptic surgery; Ernest Rutherford, founding father of nuclear physics; Dorothy Hodgkin, inventor of x-ray crystallography; Sir Nicholas Shackleton, pioneer of climate research.

4 comments:

Gerrarrdus said...

Dorothy Hodgkin - Nobel laureate, and as founder of the study of protein crystallography she helped lay the foundations for a whole new field - Molecular Biophysics - and on into the world of computer-aided drug design.
Most vaguely scientifically-literate people in this country have heard of Marie Curie, yet so few have heard of Hodgkin.

Steve Borthwick said...

Hi G, I know what you mean, I once took an American visitor to Westminster Abbey, he was amazed to see Isaac Newton's grave, he hadn't realised that he was a "real" person.

Tsk.... I dunno :)

Gerrarrdus said...

You were standing in a building at the time that was five times as old as his nation. He was bound to be confused.

Steve Borthwick said...

G, :)