The Great Exhibition: The event that established Imperial

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Hyde Park, London, Summer 1851— Atop the grassy plains stands a quite remarkable structure; a regimented iron skeleton adorned with glass of bewildering grandeur. Catching the sun, the Crystal Palace lords over Knightsbridge. A greenhouse of unimaginable proportions, the building stretches almost 40 metres into the sky, engulfing the tallest trees, and stands upon 90,000 square metres of earth. Within, the forefront of human endeavour in industry and manufacturing is housed. Nation’s flags and canvas awnings add a shock of colour to the engineered interior. Items from all around the modern world are paraded to the tens of thousands of

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Filling the skills gap: How can we inspire the next generation of scientists?

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“You mean those tiny bumps on my tongue mean I can taste chocolate?” “Yes.” “Wow!” The girl’s face flushes with excitement as she beckons for the handheld camera to continue examining her taste buds. It’s mid-August and the summer holidays are in full swing at the @Bristol science centre. Children swarm around the benches and stools that make up the open plan LiveLab area, as they attempt various taste and flavour-themed experiments. The centre is packed; the noise and energy levels indicate clearly that the interactive science on offer is being wolfed down more enthusiastically than the remains of the

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Artist or addict? Painting a picture of the brain on drugs

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The John Sevier apartment complex in Johnson City, Tennessee, is home to a unique combination of different types of people, ranging from disabled veterans to the unemployed. Amongst them, lives artist Bryan Lewis Saunders. His fourth floor flat is both his home and studio, filled with art materials and the sketchbooks in which he has visually documented most of his adult life. Saunders started his collection of self-portraits when he was 26 and has drawn pieces of himself during events throughout his life. The eclectic range of portraits catalogue an unusual life and feature himself on the Appalachian hiking trail,

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An interview with… Richard Barnett

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“What were they thinking about? What were their concerns? How did they understand the universe?” These are the questions that Richard Barnett asks as a medical historian. In his most recent book, The Sick Rose: Disease and the Art of Medical Illustration, he asks these questions of anatomists through the 18th and 19th centuries. He uses medical illustrations from this era to tell the story of the changing perception and understanding of human disease. Over a cup of tea, we spoke about this book, medical illustrations and some of the ethical and philosophical questions they raise today. Richard started off

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Behind the smile

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In a dark laboratory in Paris, Pascal Cotte sat back as his prized invention, a multispectral camera, performed its final scan of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. With the imaging complete, he was ready, with the help of some self-coded computer programmes, to unearth each individual brush stroke behind one of the most iconic pieces of the art in the world. Cotte is not your typical art historian. Achieving significant success in the field of optics developing the first Macintosh webcams, the bowtie-clad Frenchman has over 20 years experience in the technology industry. He now finds himself as Director of

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