mineralogy

17d

This week's #NewBooks at the library: second-hand copies of...
- Charles Lyell: The Years to 1841: The Revolution in Geology. Having reviewed Radical by Nature two years ago made me want to read up on other historical natural historians of this time period. There is no good recent book on the early geologist Charles Lyell. The standard is still the two books written by Leonard G. Wilson, which are the first two parts of an unfortunately unfinished trilogy. I obtained the second book some time ago, and now managed to buy the first part at a very decent price via eBay.
- The Feejee Mermaid and Other Essays in Natural and Unnatural History
- Biominerals and Fossils Through Time. Reviewing Fossilization made me want to understand more about the physical basis of fossilisation.

#Geology #EarthSciences #HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci #NaturalHistory #Fossils #Fossilisation #Mineralogy #Books #Scicomm #Bookstodon @bookstodon

A photo of three books standing on a small, brown, wooden table. The out-of-focus background shows black shelves full of books and part of the beech-coloured laminate floor.

On the left, Charles Lyell: The Years to 1841: The Revolution in Geology, showing a black-and-white portrait drawn (possibly) in charcoal of a young Charles Lyell in 19th-century garb, showing him from the chest up.

In the middle, lying down, The Feejee Mermaid and Other Essays in Natural and Unnatural History, showing a drawing of an old-fashioned glass bell jar with a taxidermic oddity, a fake mermaid that has the lower body of a fish and the arms and head of a small man. The head is contorted in a grotesque scream, and he has his arms raised to cover his ears with his hands.

On the right, Biominerals and Fossils Through Time, showing a close-up colour photo of a sectioned fossil under a microscope, displaying abstract blue and gold shapes. The figure legend explains that this is a calcareous skeleton of a fossil sponge observed under a polarising microscope.

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12d

I've just dicovered this amazing website about tesselated materials in nature (thanks @gregeganSF 😊 🙏 )

https://tessellated-materials.mpikg.mpg.de/collection

A lot of pals at Glasgow did work in biomineralization. In 2017 there was a residency + exhibition with the artist Rachel Duckhouse, which I think was one of the best such things I've ever been involved with 😊 🤓 🤩.

Lots of beautiful stuff on Rachel's website here:

https://www.rachelduckhouse.co.uk/shell-meets-bone

#Geology #Mineralogy #Art #Biomineralization #Tesselation #ShellMeetsBone

$View of a framed artwork behind glass on the white all of a gallery. The work consists of scanned pages from the artists notebooks/sketchbooks dealing with the crystallography and nanostructure of mollusc shells examined by scanning electron m icroscope and electron back-scater diffraction.$

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