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What Has Wool Ever Done For Us…?

Apart from clothing us, weaving a path to unravelling structure of DNA & helping forge the science of molecular biology??? Looking forward to hearing Monica Stenzel from the Centre for History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Leeds explain all this eve in her talk ‘Fuzzy Logic: History of Wool Science in Leeds’ to the Thoresby Society

https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/thoresby-society?mc_cid=d19c875f2d&mc_eid=ac35265fcd

Litterbag Sisyphus

Sisyphus and his boulder have become something of a theme of late – whilst writing about him for new book on the discovery of DNA that I’ve been working on, it struck me that all the volunteers in our area of Leeds who go out on a regular basis and pull discarded drinks cans and bottles from hedges to fill bulging purple bags as part of Leeds City Council’s #LitterFreeLeeds scheme face a similar Sisyphean task. Inspired by this thought, I had a little play on an AI image generator, and here’s what it came up with…

Sisyphus from Greek mythology struggling to push a bulging bag of litter up a mountain of discarded drinks cans and bottles

It’s Electron Microscopy, Jim – But Not As We Know It…

For moment, I thought I was on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise …but no, it was actually the launch of Leeds Electron Microscopy & Spectroscopy Centre (LEMAS) at the University of Leeds Bragg Centre for Materials Research. We’ve come a long way since 1943 when textile physicist and pioneer of molecular biology William Astbury first installed an electron microscope in the toilets of the Textiles Deptartment at the University of Leeds!

Powerful electron microscopes at LEMAS centre, University of Leeds with slide detailing history of electron microscopy at Leeds in the background
Physicist William Astbury peers down one of the very first electron microscopes to arrive in the UK, in 1943
Physicist William Astbury peers down one of the very first electron microscopes to arrive in the UK, in 1943
Powerful electron microscopes at LEMAS - Leeds Electron Microscopy and Spectroscopy Centre
Powerful electron microscopes at LEMAS – Leeds Electron Microscopy and Spectroscopy Centre

Science and the Struggle of Sisyphus

Does science advance thanks to lone geniuses and their Eureka moments?…or is it more like Sisyphus in Greek mythology, doomed by the gods to spend eternity rolling a boulder up a mountain slope? 19thC Swiss scientist Friedrich Miescher who discovered DNA and is the subject of the new book I’ve been working on with Ralf Dahm, tragically compared himself to the latter. For this reason, we were hoping to get Sisyphus rolling his boulder up the DNA double-helix on the front cover of our book, but as that hasn’t proved possible…

… I took up my pencil and paper and have been busy not just writing the book, but also drawing these figures for the close of each chapter…

…and if you’re wondering why Sisyphus has been transformed into a crash-test dummy…well, all is explained in the intro to our book…(in my first sketches, he looked too much like Iron Man!)

Sisyphus from Greek mythology struggling to roll a boulder up the coils of the DNA double helix
Sisyphus from Greek mythology struggling to roll a boulder up the coils of the DNA double helix
Sisyphus from Greek mythology struggling to roll a boulder up the coils of the DNA double helix
Sisyphus from Greek mythology struggling to roll a boulder up the coils of the DNA double helix