Contemplation of Oevre

October 4, 2022 by joachim

Today’s picture of Svante Pääbo, 2022 Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medicine , reminded me of iconographic images I have been collecting, of scientists contemplating their work in staged paintings or photographs. They include two striking photographs of me with my beloved ribosome, one at the Wadsworth Center in Albany, and one in a little cafe in Great Barrington 23 years later.

When I searched for images of similar kinds with the help of Google, I found that the practice goes back into Medieval Times, but probably much, much earlier.

What is apparent in all those pictures is that the scene is fully imagined, without any grain of reality. No astronomer who would respect him/herself would sit at the desk with instruments of celestial navigation that required free access to the night sky.

In the case of the late Don Caspar, he is depicted in a medieval setting contemplating his quasi-equivalence theorem governing the arrangement of virus capsid proteins with the help of a nonexisting model.

And it all makes you wonder if the historic prince Hamlet ever took a skull in his hand for dramatic effect, or if this is just another figment of Shakespeare’s imagination?