Envisioning Science


lennart_nilsson_award87.jpg

(Photo by Felice Frankel

Reseacher, author and science photographer Felice Frankel is the winner of this year's Lennart Nilsson Award for Medical, Technical and Scientific Photography.

Frankel is a researcher at MIT and a senior research fellow at Harvard University's Faculty of the Arts and Sciences, where she is head of the Envisioning Science Program, which emphasizes the use of images to communicate science.

Frankel has written several books on this subject (the latest one, called Envisioning Science, was published by MIT Press in 2002), and some of her writing on it can be found in her column for American Scientist magazine.

More of Frankel's photographs can be seen on the Lennart Nilsson Award website, and in this recent article from the NY Times. And here are some photos by Satoshi Kuribayashi, the winner of last year's award.  

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Nobel Prizes are not the only awards given in Stockholm these day. Karolinska Institute also gives an annual Lennart Nilsson Award for photography. This year's prize has just been announced and I am happy to report that the recepient is a friend of mine (and Scifoo camper), Felice Frankel for her…
Paul J. Steinhardt Paul J. Steinhardt is the Albert Einstein Professor in Science at Princeton University and is on the faculty in the Department of Physics and in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences. He received his B.S. in Physics at Caltech in 1974; his M.A. in Physics in 1975 and Ph.D. in…
As you know you can see everyone who's registered for the conference, but I highlight 4-6 participants every day as this may be an easier way for you to digest the list. You can also look at the Program so see who is doing what. Felice Frankel is a famous science photographer. She works at Harvard…
Felice Frankel is a model of consilience: When people call Felice Frankel an artist, she winces. In the first place, the photographs she makes don't sell. She knows this, she says, because after she received a Guggenheim grant in 1995, she started taking her work to galleries. "Nobody wanted to…

From the award website: Those viewing her images are initially captivated by their form and colour. No sooner is their curiosity aroused than they want to know what the photograph depicts. She has thus fulfilled a scientific reporters paramount task: to awaken peoples interest and desire to learn.

I'll agree with that; however, the Lennart Nilsson folks have frustrated me (and many others, I'd guess) by failing to provide captions or any other explanation of the photos. Disappointing. I'd really like to know what I'm seeing.

The link to the Lennart site isn't working at the moment so I haven't seen Frankel's images yet. Kuribayashi is fantastic. I'm showing those galleries on his site to my grandson. We share a fascination with bugs and other backyard wildlife.

By carolyn13 (not verified) on 17 Oct 2007 #permalink