Someone on Mathstodon recently tooted about AMS Daily Epsilon of Math Calendar which got me thinking about making custom calendars of my own. I thought to keep the theme Sciency and ended with an interesting monthly calendar, or so I think.
In recent years I have resisted total digitalization of my life, and have carved out a space for handwritten notes in my day, and heart. What got me started with analog writing was watching a few penmanship videos on Reddit. But a part of me also kept faint memories of handwritten manuscripts by revered people of Science. Specifically I recall looking at images from da Vinci's journal, full of beautifully written texts and machine diagrams. These journal pages were beautiful not only in appearances, but also in the way they capture thoughts that can't be compared to lower dimensional systems like what comes out of modern typesetting.
In addition to the non-linearity of the inked marks—which themselves convey more than words—these pages also maintain a sort of frozen-in-time snapshots of moments of awe. Consider this page from Rosalind Franklin's journal that captures the discovery of Helix structure for DNA:
Anyway I thought to collect a few of these and make a desk calendar. My choices follow, in no particular order.
1. The Images
1.1. Notebook B - Charles Robert Darwin, 1837-1838
I had to start with Darwin's notes. I find his work to be exemplary of Scientific process and his notebooks testify that. For the calendar I picked this famous image showing a rudimentary tree of life:
You can check out more of his works in Darwin Online.
1.2. Letters to Royal Society - Isaac Newton, 1672
Then there is Newton, one of whose letters with a reference to prism is what I am going with. Probably unlike many, my first introduction to Newton was the splitting of colors using prism, not gravity.
Find more in Cambridge Digital Library.
1.3. Of Things that Float on Water - Galileo Galilei, 1611-1612
I remember Galileo more for his non-astronomical, classical physics work involving pendulums, free fall, motion, etc. Maybe this is because of a biography I read in childhood where I found his Earthly exploits to be more understandable.
1.4. Mass Energy Equivalence - Albert Einstein, 1905
Probably cliché to include this, but also hard to skip.
1.5. Codex Forster II - Leonardo da Vinci, 1495-1497
For da Vinci, I picked this illustration that has a bit of everything, even a flower, probably connected with the rotating machine's blades below.
Once you see the following description of Codex Forster II—the source of the image above—you begin to see why Leonardo passes strongly as a Polymath.
Codex Forster II is made of two notebooks bound together. Both were compiled in Milan, while Leonardo was in the service of the duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza (1452 – 1508). The first notebook (up to folio 63, about 1495) contains notes and diagrams on the theory of proportions, but also miscellaneous sketches, including frames for weaving (folios 49 verso – 50 recto), architecture (as on folio 52 recto) and some figurative drawings such as a Virgin and Child (folio 37 recto). The second notebook (from folio 64, about 1495 – 97) includes notes on the theory of weights and balances, as well as sketches on perpetual motion (as on folios 90 verso – 91 recto), drawings of helmets (folio 65 recto), and a recipe for making paints (folio 159 recto).
1.6. π - Srinivasa Ramanujan, 1913
Even though it's a known impossible problem, we have had some approximate constructions for squaring the circle. I picked this image from Ramanujan that uses the \(π \approx \frac{355}{113}\) approximation for building the square.
I never got to really appreciate Ramanujan since I didn't go deep enough in pure Mathematics during my formal education and outside of it. This is something I would like to change in the future.
1.7. A Fountain Pen - Alan Turing, c1923
For Turing I picked this note from his hand made fountain pen at the age of 11. You can see the varieties of strokes, nib problems, and his fingerprint on this. Here is a bit of history.
1.8. Lectures - Richard Feynman, 1961-64
A lot of us grew reading Feynman in some form. In my mind he always come out as a great educator and communicator first. For this reason, I took a page from his lecture notes.
You can find more of his lecture notes here.
1.9. Purkinje Cells - Santiago Ramón y Cajal, early 1900s
Cajal gave us extremely detailed and beautiful illustrations of neurons and neural pathways that form the basis of biological intelligence. These images have been part of neuroscience ever since.
You can get a physical collection to check them out at leisure.
1.10. Radioactive Notebook - Marie Curie, 1899-1902
Her experiments notebooks were the obvious place to take images from, specially since they are literally radioactive and will continue to do so for many thousands of years.
1.11. Helix - Rosalind Franklin, 1951-1954
I picked the page already covered in the beginning of this post above.
1.12. Bat - Carl Linnaeus, 1727-1730
Linnaeus' work and its repercussions were one of the reasons why a lot of us school kids reduced biology merely to the science of observation and naming species. This seemed daunting earlier, but wondrous now. Finding patterns and categorizing information is what we do to start making sense of the world around us. And if you want a challenge, do this with living forms.
Even after 300 years of this study,
… the taxonomy and phylogeny of bats has been tweaked a fair amount, and even today there’s still ongoing discussion on their evolutionary timeline.
That's twelve months, and a calendar! It's truly wonderful that most of these old artefacts are open access now and you can make your own set from pages and illustrations of your choice. And I hope you do. We romanticize a lot of things and hang all kinds of posters in our homes but usually keep Science locked away for the museums. Maybe Science is not something that's thought to bring awe or pleasure. But, the truth couldn't be farther from it.