"Just wanted to jump on the bandwagon with my own tribute to my scientific style. This is a tattoo of the word for Body, Spirit, Person, People, and Life in Owens Valley Paiute, written in International Phonetic Alphabet. I am a Linguist that specializes in Endangered languages and thought I needed this tagged on me."–Russ

Will tattoos be all that remains of some languages? Something to ponder as you peruse the science tattoos I’ve posted on Flickr–76 and rising.

"My tattoo is from an Irving Geis illustration of DNA. I was attracted to his attention to the molecular detail while also drawing in a representational spiral that doesn’t ignore the basic beauty of the double helix. This particular sequence (I’ve BLASTED) is too short to be specific to only one gene, but one human gene it’s found it is the 5′ UTR of one of our tight junctions.”-Matthew MacDougall, 4th year medical student

Is there no end to the science tattoos out there?
See the 70 I’ve gotten so far at the Flickr set.

Mark sent this picture in, with this explanation:

I don’t quite have a science tattoo, but I have a math tattoo. That’s close enough, right?

Now, for the explanation. This is a formula called the Y Combinator. It is a fixed-point combinator in the lambda calculus and was discovered by Haskell Curry, a rather prolific mathematician and logician whose work helped start Computer Science.

What this formula does is calculates the fixed point of a function, which in turn allows for recursion by calling on that fixed point; recursion is perhaps the single most important concept in Computer Science. Being a computer scientist and a mathematician, this formula is very important to me and represents the innate beauty of computer science and mathematical logic.

Four more tattoos added to the Flickr set this week, each with its own story. Check them all out.

Update 9/21 8:30 am: Ouch. jwz hints that Mark forgot a parenthesis. Any comment from math folks out there?

Update, 1:50 pm: Mark says his parentheses are all in order, thank you.

“Attached is a photo of a tattoo I got immediately after turning in the final paperwork a little over two weeks ago for the completion of my Ph.D. in biological anthropology. It’s the first evolutionary tree that Darwin sketched in his 1837 Notebook B on the transmutation of species.” –Julienne

We’re up to 64 tattoos in the flickr set, which has been seen by over 96,000 people since I set it up last month (which doesn’t count the 130,000+ pageviews of the original post). I think I’ll just post my favorite of the week each Friday until people stop sending them to me.

(See Darwin’s original sketch here)

Your scientific body art just keeps getting more attention. Can I just say that, as a science writer, I find it strange to get calls from other reporters wanting to interview me about other people’s tattoos? Who put that in my job description? Anyway, here are a few links–

Wired: The Coolest Science Tattoos

Metro (UK newspaper): Sci-ink-tific tattoos all the rage

Chemical and Engineering News: Science Tattoos

Long Island Press: “These pics, collected by science writer Carl Zimmer, capture nerdiness in its most badass form.”

So, if you want the world to see your inky love of science, send in your pictures…

“I’m an evolutionary biologist who investigates the evolution of sperm form, sperm-female interactions and sperm competition. So…yeah, it’s pretty much about sperm. Wanted to bring the concept of the homunculus to life, as all illustrations of it have always been rather cartoonish." –Scott Pitnick, Syracuse University

The science tattoo collection now has 56 images. See the full set at flickr. Any more illustrated lurkers out there?

Here’s the latest addition to the Loom’s science tattoo collection: from a food scientist, the molecule capsaicin, which makes chiles spicy.

To see all the new tattoos, check out my Flickr set. And keep them coming–either in the comment thread here, or emailed directly to me.

If you crave more science tattoos–not just on the body, but of the body, check out an awesome collection of anatomical tattoos. (Thanks to Steve)

Jessica Pikul writes:

I am a Chemistry PhD student at University of Washington. My research is in bioinorganic chemistry, specifically modeling non-heme iron-sulfur metalloenzymes. I am also a Celiac (autoimmune disorder triggered by ingesting gluten). The tattoo on my leg is one of the segments of the gluten protein that I can not digest. The ball and stick molecule is of a Proline-Serine-Glutamine-Glutamine peptide that I can’t break down which then stimulates T-cells to start the fun chain reaction that ends in my small intestine villi being attacked by antibodies. The background to the molecule is an artsy spacescape. I chose this to speak to the universality of the physical laws that govern the microscopic and macroscopic, an idea that has kept me excited about chemistry and in the lab to this day (and hopefully longer).

Jessica’s picture is just one of several remarkable images I got just today. You can see them, along with all the others, on my new Flickr account. (Sorry, Picasa.) The home for the set, with comments, is here. And you can subscribe to an RSS feed of sciencetattoo tagged images here, to keep up with the collection’s additions.

Update: Tip for my fellow Flickr novices: you can see a slide show here. Click the “i” to show the captions.

I’m finding that my post on science tattoos is getting troublesome now that I’ve added in so many images. Slow to load, easily bugged.

Update: Ignore the stuff below about Picaca. I’m going to Flickr. The home for the set, with comments, is here. And you can subscribe to an RSS feed of sciencetattoo tagged images here, to keep up with the collection’s additions.

So I’m experimenting with an album on Picasa. I will continue to add images to it as people send them in, and will include captions from the comments that come with them. If you click on an individual image, you get the caption with live links back to their source. Let me know if you have any tech problems on either end…

Here’s the link:

Science Tattoos

And here, I hope, is an embedded slideshow

Let’s try again, without the captions blocking the screen…

Nope. The slideshow prevents the rest of the blog from loading. Sheesh. How many billions is Google worth now?

A reader writes:

This is my friend, Ira Klotzko, he’s got a doc. in Physics and a great sense of humor.

I won’t share his original plan for the depiction of Uranus…

One we can share is how he jokes that the tattoo is really accurate because, as is the case with his waistline, the universe is always expanding.

Into the science tattoo hall of fame it goes…

Okay. So, the other day I asked an innocuous question about whether scientists get scientific tattoos. I also invited people to send in their own example. I didn’t quite bank on this site becoming a clearinghouse for science tattoos. The traffic of readers coming in from reddit, etc., is startling enough. But the stream of tattoo pictures coming into my inbox is causing me to freak out, ever so slightly. Seriously, think about this: people with Ph.D.’s, who study esoteric aspects of physics and insect neurology are baring flesh, snapping pictures, and sending them to me, a stranger. Just consider today’s addition. It comes from Jay Phelan, a biologist at UCLA, and author of Mean Genes. Phelan writes:

…I think you’re right that you’ve just hit the tip of the iceberg. I thought I’d add mine to your collection.

I got it around 1990 when I was in graduate school. As I got deeper into the study of evolution, genetics, and human behavior, I realized that there was a tension between what my genes “wanted” me to do and what I wanted to do–from the fattiness of the foods I ate, to the selfishness/selflessness I showed to others, to issues with managing my money, my risk-taking, and my relationships, and more. It dawned on me that I was fighting a never-ending battle. Anyway, I tried to come up with a design that captured that tension and, once I did, decided to get it tattooed on my back.

About ten years later, I co-wrote a book called “Mean Genes: From Sex to Money to Food: Taming Our Primal Instincts” (with Terry Burnham) and our publisher ended up including my DNA monster as part of the cover. (Unfortunately, it doesn’t show up too well in this image; I’m on the road and don’t have access to a better image of it.)

Take care,
Jay Phelan

So, without further ado, I give you the DNA monster…(which I’ve inserted, along with all the other tattoos I’ve received, into the original post

&otYesterday I asked whether many scientists tattooed themselves with their science. The answer is yes, at least for about a dozen people who responded with their own bodywork, which now appears at the end of the post. Here’s the latest, from an invertebrate biologist. As a tattoo-free person, I keep wondering, when does the screaming stop?