Tim writes,
I’m a post-doctoral cognitive neuroscientist working in MR research at the University of Pittsburgh. I stumbled across the Science Tattoo Emporium and wanted to share my own science based ink.
The attached image shows my second tattoo and the most directly science-themed ink (although the others are also peripherally linked to the career I love so dear). The four hieroglyphic characters are the earliest written form of the word “brain” and are found in the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus. Dating back to seventeenth century BC Egypt, the papyrus is perhaps the first neurological case study describing the symptoms of head injuries and the odd fleshy matter that was often visible in the most gruesome of head wounds. These symbols and the story of the papyrus are the opening to the classic textbook “Principles of Neuroscience”, which I first came across when taking an undergraduate course in 2000. In honor of starting my graduate research career in studying the brain, I got this tattoo while attending a neuroscience conference in NYC in 2002.
Anyway, hope you enjoy. Thanks for putting together the gallery that lets me know I’m not the only geek crazy enough to make his passion a permanent part of his body.
Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.
Damon writes, “This distribution of ‘isotopic peaks’ on my calf is what a peptide of mass 2,005 Daltons looks like in a high-resolution mass spectrometer. That peak distribution is due to the relative abundance of the different isotopes of the elements that make up peptides, particularly carbon. 2005 is the year I got married and also the year I gave the corporate world the boot in favor of science. I wonder if there are any more proteomics tattoos out there….”
Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.
The Science Tattoo Emporium continues to thrive, long after I first wondered aloud in August 2007 whether scientists had any cool tattoos of their research hidden under their lab coats. I continue to get photos at a regular rate, and as I post new ones, they continue to get noticed anew by places like Digg and Boing Boing.
Initially, I was so stunned by the influx of photos that I posted just about anything that came my way. But as the emporium has grown, I’ve become choosier about which ones I post. So if you are considering sending in your own scientific ink, please read these guidelines:
1. I’m most interested in tatoos that tell a story. The most interesting stories are the ones about how people became scientists. I love this one, for example.
2. When you send in pictures, please include a paragraph in which you tell me who you are and explain the significance of the tattoo. I prefer people to tell the story of their tattoo in their own words.
3. If you’ve been so inspired by the emporium that you’ve dashed out and gotten a tattoo of your own, do NOT immediately take a picture and send it to me. I don’t enjoy staring at raw, bruised flesh. Neither do readers of the Loom. Let yourself heal before grabbing the camera.
4. Make sure the photograph is well lit and at high resolution.
Emily writes, “Ever since I was a kid, I have had a love for astronomy. I studied Earth and Planetary Sciences in college and am now in graduate school, studying to be a middle school science teacher. Another love I had as a kid was reading Calvin and Hobbes. My science tattoo combines these two childhood loves — with Calvin and Hobbes looking up at the 8 planetary symbols and the symbols for a star and water. Just like Calvin and Hobbes, I will always be gazing up at the sky with wonder and awe.”
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“My name is Steve Kleinedler, supervising editor for the American Heritage Dictionary, where I have worked since 1997. One of my many responsibilities is pronunciation. The tattoo is a stylized version of a phonetic vowel chart — it shows the relative position of the tongue in the mouth when those vowel sounds are articulated. I had a smaller, simpler version done on my upper back in 1993, and I’ve been wanting to get the full version for quite some time.
“The design is by Kyle Nelson of Stoltze Design and the tattoo artist was Mike Helz of Stingray Body Art.”
Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.
Hannah Rosa writes: “I am a Science teacher in Central London. My tattoo is part of the Ext-inked project and my endangered species is the narrow bordered bee hawk moth. I decided to sign up for the project as I have worked closely with endangered species in the field as part of my degree studies and understand the importance of closely monitoring and preventing the extinction of these species. I wanted to become a life long ambassador so that I can educate others about the impacts of climate change and other human activites which are threatening hundreds of species in the UK alone.”
(For more pictures from the Ext-inked project, visit Flickr.)
Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.
Check out this project in which people get tattoos of endangered species. Here’s more at New Scientist. If any participants want to submit a piece for the Science Tattoo Emporium, I’ll be waiting!
Ryan writes, “I am a mechanical engineer, and this tattoo was inspired by the cover of my mechanical engineering design textbook.”
Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.
Duygu writes, “I am a developmental biologist by training. Actually, my Ph.D. thesis does not really have an evolutionary focus because I study joint regeneration in embryonic chick limb. However, I have been an evolution enthusiast and also an activist for educating public about the theory of evolution for a long time. I could not imagine a better tattoo: Darwin’s finches arranged to look like a butterfly…I got it in 2009–Darwin’s 200th anniversary and On The Origin of Species‘ 150th anniversary. I spent last few years reading and writing a lot on evolution, as well as playing the “editor-in-chief” for translating UC Berkeley’s Understanding Evolution website into Turkish (Evrimi Anlamak – a completely volunteer work by our group called Hard-workers for Evolution). All in all, I am a biologist and ‘nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution‘… So, I celebrate it with four finches on my shoulder!”
Joshua, a conservation biologist, writes, ” This was a tattoo I got of one of the species that I did my Ph.D. on. The fish is Halichoeres hortulanus and the DNA sequence is the primer for one of the genes I used to study the fish (the mitochondrial control region).”
Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.
Jeff, a pharmacy student in Richmond writes,
One thing about Richmond is that most everyone in the city has a tattoo. After living here for 3 years I finally gave into peer pressure and got a tattoo. The only thing I could think of getting that I wouldn’t regret later in life was something nerdy/chemistry related, organic chemistry to be specific. While searching for inspiration I stumbled upon this story about the German chemist August Kekule who is responsible for discovering the ring structure of benzene.
Kekule claims that he stopped writing and dozed off to sleep. He saw atoms whirling and dancing before his eyes. The atoms then began to reassemble themselves into long rows that seemed to move about in a snake-like motion. As he watched the snake dance, the vision progressed until the snake formed itself into an image he had seen years before at a 1850 murder trial: the snake devouring its own tail.
So there it is…a benzene ring with an Ouroborus around it…
Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.
Chrissy writes, “My science is microbiology, and my tattoo is serotonin with CMP, which happen to be my initials.”
Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.
