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\n\t\t\tIn 1703, the world\u2019s most esteemed scientific journal published a surprising letter from an anonymous correspondent. (At the time, until well into the twentieth century, anonymity often meant the scientist writing was a woman, though the word \u201cscientist\u201d itself was more than a century away, to be coined for a woman.)
\nThe letter reported an astonishing discovery in the roots of pond plants placed under a microscope, still a relative novelty: Adhering to the delicate aquatic stalks were \u201cmany pretty branches, compos\u2019d of regular oblongs and exact figures\u2026 the longest side not exceeding 1\/2 of a hair\u2019s breadth\u201d \u2014 mysterious beauties smaller than any life-form anyone had seen, and yet appearing to be more than inert matter. \u201cThey may be rather Plants than Salts,\u201d the shy scientist speculated shyly, but concluded that \u201cthey being so very minute that no judgment can be made of them but by the Eye,\u201d it is impossible to \u201cdetermine any thing positively.\u201d
\nThese beguiling marvels \u2014 tiny stars and fans and ribbons organized along exquisite radial and lateral symmetries \u2014 confused Darwin when he encountered them a century and a half later in the dust of the Cape Verde Islands and in the face paint of the native inhabitants Tierra del Fuego. All he managed was to gasp that \u201cfew objects are more beautiful,\u201d seemingly \u201ccreated that they might be examined and admired under the high powers of the microscope.\u201d
\nModern micrograph of diatoms (NOAA)
\nToday, we know that diatoms \u2014 thousands of species of unicellular algae, each a living Noether theorem housed in a shell of opal \u2014 are not created for admiration but create the admirer: Every life-form on Earth depends on them. Tiny powerhouses of photosynthesis populating every body of water, these phytoplankton generate close to half of our planet\u2019s oxygen, pillar its biomass, and absorb the atmospheric carbon dioxide that dissolves in the ocean.
\nTo know of this extraordinary power makes the delicate beauty of diatoms all the more beguiling \u2014 nowhere more so than in Diatom Atlas by the German naturalist and clergyman Adolf Schmidt (1812\u20131899), who spent the better part of his life sampling cells from all over the world \u2014 Japan to Chile, Java to Barbados \u2014 to compose his pioneering portrait these miniature masterpieces of evolution.
\nArt from Diatom Atlas by Adolf Schmidt, 1890 edition. (Available as a print and more.)
\nOriginally published in 1874 in black and white, the atlas was later reproduced on blue paper \u2014 a medium that originated in ancient China, then made its via the Middle East and Spain to Renaissance Italy to be used as a base for drawing and prints, giving two-dimensional artwork a hauntingly beautiful three-dimensional quality.
\nArt from Diatom Atlas by Adolf Schmidt, 1890 edition. (Available as a print and more.)
\nArt from Diatom Atlas by Adolf Schmidt, 1890 edition. (Available as a print and more.)
\nArt from Diatom Atlas by Adolf Schmidt, 1890 edition. (Available as a print and more.)
\nArt from Diatom Atlas by Adolf Schmidt, 1890 edition. (Available as a print and more.)
\nArt from Diatom Atlas by Adolf Schmidt, 1890 edition. (Available as a print and more.)
\n\u201cI died for beauty,\u201d Keats wrote with the requisite melodrama of the Romantics. Diatoms are a dazzling defiance of this aesthetic nihilism, urging us to remember that we are here to live with beauty. They could have remained mere producers of chemical energy no handsomer than a factory, and yet here they are, living jewels of the blue world. Pulsating beneath their shimmering shells and mathematically perfect symmetries is the elemental question: Why did the world have to be beautiful? And beneath that still, the eternal answer: No why; just is.
\nArt from Diatom Atlas by Adolf Schmidt, 1890 edition. (Available as a print and more.)<\/p>\n