The National Science Foundation is running their annual Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge.
Some of science’s most powerful statements are not made in words. From the diagrams of DaVinci to Hooke’s microscopic bestiary, the beaks of Darwin’s finches, Rosalind Franklin’s x-rays or the latest photographic marvels retrieved from the remotest galactic outback, visualization of research has a long and literally illustrious history. To illustrate is, etymologically and actually, to enlighten.
You can do science without graphics. But it’s very difficult to communicate it in the absence of pictures. Indeed, some insights can only be made widely comprehensible as images. How many people would have heard of fractal geometry or the double helix or solar flares or synaptic morphology or the cosmic microwave background, if they had been described solely in words?
To the general public, whose support sustains the global research enterprise, these and scores of other indispensable concepts exist chiefly as images. They become part of the essential iconic lexicon. And they serve as a source of excitement and motivation for the next generation of researchers.
They’ve been accepting submissions since September of last year and will continue to do so until May 31, 2008. The rules are pretty wide open with last year’s winners in the area of photography, illustration, and interactive and non-interactive media. Basically, it’s whatever you want it to be. The winners will be published in the the journal Science, and one of the winning submissions will get to be on the cover of the prestigious journal.
