Today is the birthday of Rosalind Franklin, English chemist and X-ray crystallographer. 

Besides being instrumental to the discovery of DNA and its double-helix shape, Franklin had a rich life outside of her science work. One thing she enjoyed most was trekking. She would take off on multi-day trips with a backpack full of supplies and hike wherever was convenient. After a particularly stunning trek through the French Alps, Franklin declared “I am quite sure I could wander happily in France forever.” 

Despite James Watson’s critical account of Rosalind Franklin’s personality, by accounts of friends, she was truly fun. First there was her adventurous spirit as evidenced by her trekking. Second, her consorting with colleagues in America led them to think she had quite an entertaining sense of humor. In fact, Watson’s words regarding Rosalind in his biography are likely stained with self-importance. Francis Crick admits he and Watson treated Franklin with a “patronizing attitude.” 

Franklin and Crick and Crick’s wife enjoyed a friendship later on in life. During Franklin’s fight against cancer, likely caused by her exposure to X-rays, the Cricks spent plenty of time with her as she healed from a round of treatment. 

Today is the birthday of Maxfield Parrish, American artist and illustrator. 

Parrish was born in 1870 in Pennsylvania and raised in a Quaker Society. An early predilection for drawing was cheered on by his parents, his father being a painter.  His parents went so far as to take him to Europe to show him the great works of artists and helped him enroll at an art school in Paris for a time. 

He returned to America and pursued further art and design schooling in his teens and early 20s. He gladly took commissions and illustrated works such as an edition of Arabian Nights, Eugene Field’s Poems of Childhood, and Oz series author, Frank L. Baum’s book Mother Goose in Prose.

Besides illustrations for children’s books, calendars, magazines, and greeting cards, it’s Parrish’s painting that stands out as spectacular. His imaginative scenes combined with almost iridescent color, particularly the blue of the skies, earned him fortune and fame. His Quaker roots kept him humble, however, and he went so far as to say "I am hopelessly commonplace, I don't know what people see in me!" 

The blue in his paintings would come to be known as “Parrish blue” it was so unique and striking. Digital copies of his work don’t do his blue justice. Parrish would apply layers of glaze and varnish over a monochromatic color, the effect being that the color looks as fresh and vibrant 100 years later as it did when it was first applied. 

Parrish’s art is on display at museums across the country, including a beautiful piece titled Interlude at the Memorial Art Gallery in my hometown of Rochester, NY. (See this link for a few of his works and see this one for Interlude) 

And today is the birthday of Maria Weston Chapman, American abolitionist. One of her great achievements was editing, for nineteen years, The Liberty Bell, a ‘giftbook’ whose proceeds directly benefited the abolitionist cause. The Liberty Bell included works by writers such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who all contributed without payment and as a show of their support of the abolitionist cause.

D. H. Lawrence

 

When the bare feet of the baby beat across the grass

The little white feet nod like white flowers in the wind,

They poise and run like ripples lapping across the water;

And the sight of their white play among the grass

Is like a little robin’s song, winsome,

Or as two white butterflies settle in the cup of one flower

For a moment, then away with a flutter of wings.

 

I long for the baby to wander hither to me

Like a wind-shadow wandering over the water,

So that she can stand on my knee

With her little bare feet in my hands,

Cool like syringa buds,

Firm and silken like pink young peony flowers.