“Visual Science” exhibit at Harvard

New Harvard exhibit explores “Visual Science: The Art of Research”

A color-paper collage used by Edwin Land to develop an influential theory of color vision

(click on arrow at right to see full image) A color-paper collage used by Edwin Land to develop an influential theory of color vision
Photograph courtesy of the Harvard Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments

“Visual Science: The Art of Research,” opening September 20, explores how objects and images have long been used to prove or convey scientific principles. The works, drawn from collections and laboratories across the University, can “record fleeting observations, whether a painting of an animal glimpsed in the field, or an interaction between sub-atomic particles that lasts a fraction of a second,” the exhibit notes. “They can also make unseen things visible.”

Like vibrational patterns of sound. “Sand plate” images, based on experiments by eighteenth-century German physicist and musician Ernst Chladni, reveal how stroking a string instrument’s bow across the edge of a metal plate sprinkled with sand shifts the grains into variable designs that trace the vibrational waves.


The image shows an electron spiraling in a high-powered magnetic field.
Image courtesy of the Harvard Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments

Also on display at the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments gallery in the Science Center is the picture of an electron spiraling in a high-powered magnetic field (above), recorded at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, in Berkeley, California. (Lab founder Ernest Orlando Lawrence, Sc.D. ’41, won the 1939 Nobel Prize in physics for inventing the atom-smashing cyclotron, a pivotal breakthrough in conducting high-energy physics.)

The “Mondrian” color-paper collage (at top) is among the 1970s materials used by scientist Edwin H. Land ’30, S.D. ’57, to develop his influential “Retinex Theory of Color Vision.” Land studied chemistry at Harvard, but dropped out and went on to invent Polaroid photography (and co-found the eponymous Cambridge-based corporation; see Treasure, March-April 2017, page 76), which popularized the art form—arguably setting the stage for today’s image-driven digital revolution. 

Read more articles by Nell Porter-Brown

You might also like

Radcliffe Acquires a Black Feminist’s Archive

An architect of Black women’s studies, Barbara Smith introduced the concepts of “identity politics” and “intersectionality.”

The Celts in Art and Imagination

A new exhibition at the Harvard Art Museums traces 2,500 years of Celtic art.

Yesterday’s News

How a book on fighting the “Devill World” survived Harvard’s historic fire.

Most popular

The True Cost of Grade Inflation at Harvard

How an abundance of A’s created “the most stressed-out world of all.”

Jerome Powell Talks Risk, Resilience, and AI at Harvard

The Fed Chairman laid out the U.S. central bank’s approach to global conflict and an unpredictable future.

What Trump Means for John Roberts’s Legacy

Executive power is on the docket at the Supreme Court.

Explore More From Current Issue

A person climbs a curved ladder against a colorful background and four vertical ladders.

Harvard’s Productivity Trap

What happened to doing things for the sake of enjoyment?

A diverse group of individuals standing on stage, wearing matching shirts and smiling.

How a Harvard and Lesley Group Broke Choir Singing Wide Open

Cambridge Common Voices draws on principles of universal design.