Curating quirky science since 1943 Darwin’s kids illustrate ‘On the Origin of Species’ hey say a picture is worth a thousand words. If that’s true, then the children of Charles Darwin dramatically increased their father’s word count by doodling over his original manuscripts. Totaling 94 different images, the playful artwork by Darwin’s kids was unearthed by the American Museum of Natural History’s Darwin Manuscripts Project. DMP is currently in the process of creating digital copies of Cambridge University Library’s prolific collection of Darwin-penned writing. It was during this process of scanning Darwin’s oeuvre and post“Fish with Legs”: Watering the electronic copies online that loving animal protects DMP stumbled upon the drawings. itself from the rain in Produced using pencil, ink, and this drawing by Darwin’s watercolor, the colorful pictures progeny. appear on the back of original manuscripts for books such as the landmark “On the Origin of Species.” There are realistic-looking caricatures of uniformed riflemen, but there are also whimsical depictions of soldiers riding fruits and vegetables into battle and of a walking fish holding an umbrella. According to David Kohn, director of DMP, it is fortunate that Darwin’s children doodled on their father’s work. Otherwise, the documents might not have survived. In the case of “Origin of Species,” Kohn tells
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“Battle of Fruits and Vegetables”: Darwin’s kids imagine soldiers riding produce into battle. Jeff Huber wrote this week’s column. Please send comments and suggestions to newscripts@ acs.org.
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C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | MARCH 21, 2016
Antimony trips the light fantastic or those looking for further creative insight into humankind, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) has just the thing: a dance performance inspired by the chemical element antimony that also doubles as a meditation on the human condition. The work, titled “Antimony (51),” comes from the mind of Ben Munisteri. The choreographer tells Newscripts that the 51st chemical element provided a wealth of inspirational material from which to draw in the development of a dance. For starters, antimony typically appears alongside other elements in nature, a fact that led Munisteri to “think about the metaphor of human coupling” and choreograph duets into his performance. The pinging sounds produced when antimony is heated and then cooled inspired Munisteri to set his dance to chiming cello music. And because antimony is the 51st element and Munisteri will be turning 51 this year, he says the dance has “sort of an autobiographical element to it.” Munisteri then adds with a smile, “Excuse the word ‘element.’ ” To give “Antimony (51)” a solid basis in chemistry, Munisteri, who is choreographer-in-residence at Lafayette College, enlisted the help of Lafayette chemistry professor Roxy Dancer in her element: Lowry Swails. Munisteri Katie Weir appears in a says Swails’s counsel had performance inspired by a huge impact on the creantimony. ation of his dance. For instance, at the beginning of the dance’s development, Munisteri had choreographed movements meant to mimic an electron orbiting a nucleus. But after hearing Swails describe the concept of electron clouds, “I cut out all the orbiting motifs that I had in my work, and I tried to go for something like a cloud around a nucleus,” he says. “To her, she was explaining very simple concepts,” Munisteri adds. “But to me, it was completely eye-opening.” Chemists hoping for their own eye-opening antimony experience can check out Munisteri’s play at the BAM Fisher Fishman Space from April 21 to 23.
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AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY AND CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY (DRAWINGS); WILLIAM CHAFKIN (WEIR)
Newscripts
Newscripts, fewer than 40 pages of the book’s original approximately 600-page manuscript still exist. And of those 40 pages, the four pages featuring doodles by Darwin’s kids most likely survived because the illustrations were cherished by the Darwin family, he says. Kohn adds that the drawings are important because they paint a more complete picture of who Darwin actually was. “These drawings,” he says, “give a sense of the great scientist as a real person.”
