The Royal Society is celebrated in a collection of stamps by the Royal Mail, released yesterday. I can't wait to get my hands on some!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.
It is a pity to only see one female in the line-up, out of eight scientists. Admittedly, I
don't know what 'x-ray crystallography' actually is, so I used Wikipedia to bring me up-to-speed:"X-ray crystallography is a method of determining the arrangement of atoms within a crystal, in which a beam of X-rays strikes a crystal and diffracts into many specific directions. From the angles and intensities of these diffracted beams, a crystallographer can produce a three-dimensional picture of the density of electrons within the crystal. From this electron density, the mean positions of the atoms in the crystal can be determined, as well as their chemical bonds, their disorder and various other information."
Not that I really feel incredibly up-to-speed now! I really wish I'd done A-levels in Chemistry and Physics (not helping that geek vibe). Anyway, to explain the relevance of this seemingly random discovery, it made it possible to explain why a snow flake has such a precise symmetrical structure (arrangement of hydrogen bonds around water molecule). Pretty cool, huh? Can I claim to be working the 'geek chic' look with this latest fascination?!
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