Science Tattoos
loom | May 13, 2008
Last fall the Loom was awash in tattoos from scientists. Since then, I've moved them over to my Science Tattoo Emporium. If you haven't checked it out recently, let me invite you over. Incredibly, someone sends me a new science tattoo just about every day. I post them as fast as I can, but I've still got a backlog. And most of them are astonishingly cool--both beautiful and enlightening. I particularly like today's post, today's post, an homage to Darwin's finches. Plenty more where that came from.
loom | February 22, 2008Let's hope the phylogeny of life doesn't get revised drastically anytime soon, for the sake of this woman...More details--and lots of new tattoos over at my Science Tattoo Emporium. (Plus a cool new category cloud for browsing!)
loom | February 18, 2008
After six months of science tattoo madness, the ink keeps flowing. To keep up with the rising tide, please visit their new home: The Science Tattoo Emporium. (You can also get there via http://sciencetattoo.com ) I have an amazing backlog of tattoos to post there, which I will be doing so once at day--with an increasing amount of my own commentary on the story behind the picture.
loom | January 25, 2008"Here are my two Copernicus/scientific revolution homages. I teach science at a public school in eastern MA. It's nice to see the size of the subculture of science geeks that are also tattoo geeks." --Chris
They're two of the newest contributions to the my flickr set of science tattoos, but they're two of my personal favorites. Check out all 131 images.
loom | December 20, 2007"My right forearm has a 8" ruler on it that I use for everything from measuring PVC diameter to wire lengths. My background is in embedded hardware design, but I choose to spend my time doing experimental building, transportation, and energy these days. The tattoo gets used daily."--Mikey
The science tattoo train started to peter out this month. But then Boing Boing unleashed a tidal wave of scientific ink in my direction. Now we're up to 111 pictures, with over 296,000 views of the Flickr set. I don't even know what those numbers mean anymore.
And the press's fascination does not stop. The…
loom | December 7, 2007""I did my Ph. D on olfaction in sea turtles, sequencing the olfactory receptor genes of the three species featured in my tattoo (leatherback, loggerhead and green). The "bubbles" represent DNA."--Dr. Michelle Vieyra, University of South Carolina.
Congratulations, Dr. Vierya--your submission is the 100th addition to my Flickr set of science tattoos. Make full use of your bragging rights.
[See also New Scientist's droll blog coverage of this project.]
loom | November 20, 2007 "This neuron tattoo was done a few months ago. When I was 18, my dad passed away from Lou Gehrig's, which is a disease of motor neurons that innervate muscles. His battle with neurodegeneration helped me decide on a career in medical research, and I am currently pursuing my PhD in Neuroscience."--Lindsay
I fell behind on my Friday uploads to the Flickr site. But the tattoos keep coming. We're up to 97...so if you want to be tattoo #100, email me soon.
loom | November 9, 2007 1. From this week's crop of new tattoos: Abraham writes: "I got mine in grad school (PhD materials science and applied physics, 2004 Cal). The tatoo is a convergent beam electron diffraction (CBED) image of 6-4 Ti alloy (hexagonal, or beta phase) one of the first 'super alloys'. Being light-weight, high-strength, and corrosion resistant, I felt it was appropriate to put on my back, to keep it strong."
2. We are now actually inspiring people to get new science tattoos. Janet Stemwedel, my estimable fellow scienceblogger, send the following request:
I'm planning a mini-midlife crisis for…
loom | November 1, 2007 "Here is a picture of my serotonin tattoo. I don't know that it needs much more explanation than it's my favorite neurotransmitter."--Hayley
I thought there were more science tattoo out there. Last week brought nothing, but this week brought the collection up to 85.
loom | October 26, 2007It appears that I didn't receive a single new science tattoo this week! Could it really be that on the entire planet, there are only 81 people passionate enough about their science to go under the needle? If so, thanks to everyone for a fascinating experiment. If not...keep them coming.
loom | October 19, 2007"I am a biochemist, studying to be a molecular biologist, and the tattoo I am sending is the entry for carbon on the periodic table of elements. Since all living things on this planet at least are carbon based, from a chemical standpoint, it doesn't get much more basic than carbon. Hence the tattoo." --Erin
The call for science tattoos has brought 81 images now. After two months, they keep coming.
loom | October 11, 2007
It is an approximation of the locus of connectedness for the Julia sets of the family of functions f(z) = z^2 + lambda/(z^2) (rotated by pi/2). This is analogous to the standard Mandelbrot set (which applies to the family f(z) = z^2 + c), but holds additional fascination because for lambda values which are in the interior of one of the subdomains of the connectedness locus, the Julia set is a Universal Curve. To me this represents the structure unifying chaos (since Julia sets are chaotic) and order (since Universal Curves act as a sort of catalog of all planar curves).--Aaron
The tattoos…
loom | October 4, 2007
"Just wanted to jump on the bandwagon with my own tribute to my scientific style. This is a tattoo of the word for Body, Spirit, Person, People, and Life in Owens Valley Paiute, written in International Phonetic Alphabet. I am a Linguist that specializes in Endangered languages and thought I needed this tagged on me."--Russ
Will tattoos be all that remains of some languages? Something to ponder as you peruse the science tattoos I've posted on Flickr--76 and rising.
loom | September 27, 2007
"My tattoo is from an Irving Geis illustration of DNA. I was attracted to his attention to the molecular detail while also drawing in a representational spiral that doesn't ignore the basic beauty of the double helix. This particular sequence (I've BLASTED) is too short to be specific to only one gene, but one human gene it's found it is the 5' UTR of one of our tight junctions."-Matthew MacDougall, 4th year medical student
Is there no end to the science tattoos out there?See the 70 I've gotten so far at the Flickr set.
loom | September 20, 2007
Mark sent this picture in, with this explanation:
I don't quite have a science tattoo, but I have a math tattoo. That's close enough, right?
Now, for the explanation. This is a formula called the Y Combinator. It is a fixed-point combinator in the lambda calculus and was discovered by Haskell Curry, a rather prolific mathematician and logician whose work helped start Computer Science.
What this formula does is calculates the fixed point of a function, which in turn allows for recursion by calling on that fixed point; recursion is perhaps the single most important concept in Computer…
loom | September 13, 2007"Attached is a photo of a tattoo I got immediately after turning in the final paperwork a little over two weeks ago for the completion of my Ph.D. in biological anthropology. It's the first evolutionary tree that Darwin sketched in his 1837 Notebook B on the transmutation of species." --Julienne
We're up to 64 tattoos in the flickr set, which has been seen by over 96,000 people since I set it up last month (which doesn't count the 130,000+ pageviews of the original post). I think I'll just post my favorite of the week each Friday until people stop sending them to me.
(See Darwin's original…
loom | September 7, 2007Your scientific body art just keeps getting more attention. Can I just say that, as a science writer, I find it strange to get calls from other reporters wanting to interview me about other people's tattoos? Who put that in my job description? Anyway, here are a few links--
Wired: The Coolest Science Tattoos
Metro (UK newspaper): Sci-ink-tific tattoos all the rage
Chemical and Engineering News: Science Tattoos
Long Island Press: "These pics, collected by science writer Carl Zimmer, capture nerdiness in its most badass form."
So, if you want the world to see your inky love of science, send in…
loom | September 4, 2007
"I'm an evolutionary biologist who investigates the evolution of sperm form, sperm-female interactions and sperm competition. So...yeah, it's pretty much about sperm. Wanted to bring the concept of the homunculus to life, as all illustrations of it have always been rather cartoonish." --Scott Pitnick, Syracuse University
The science tattoo collection now has 56 images. See the full set at flickr. Any more illustrated lurkers out there?
loom | August 21, 2007Here's the latest addition to the Loom's science tattoo collection: from a food scientist, the molecule capsaicin, which makes chiles spicy.
To see all the new tattoos, check out my Flickr set. And keep them coming--either in the comment thread here, or emailed directly to me.
If you crave more science tattoos--not just on the body, but of the body, check out an awesome collection of anatomical tattoos. (Thanks to Steve)
loom | August 10, 2007 Jessica Pikul writes:
I am a Chemistry PhD student at University of Washington. My research is in bioinorganic chemistry, specifically modeling non-heme iron-sulfur metalloenzymes. I am also a Celiac (autoimmune disorder triggered by ingesting gluten). The tattoo on my leg is one of the segments of the gluten protein that I can not digest. The ball and stick molecule is of a Proline-Serine-Glutamine-Glutamine peptide that I can't break down which then stimulates T-cells to start the fun chain reaction that ends in my small intestine villi being attacked by antibodies. The background to the…