Percy Lavon Julian was born in 1899 in Montgomery, Alabama. He would grow up to change the history of medicine and US agriculture through his discoveries in natural products chemistry. He also managed to get rich doing it. He was a gifted teacher and speaker. He engaged undergraduates in productive (i.e. published) research, hired a … More Percy Julian, Natural Products Chemist.
Images have always been important to science. The revolutions in biology and astronomy took off with the invention of the microscope and telescope, respectively. It was a new perspective on things. Images opened up whole new worlds to explore. In the study of botany and plants one of the main ways to capture nature was … More Pioneering New Ways to Capture Life.
Friday, January 22nd was the 151st anniversary of Wilbur Scoville’s birthday commemorated by the Google Doodle with a fun game: Scoville was born in 1865. Another famous Wilbur, Wilbur Wright, just a few years late (A post US Civil War baby Wilbur boom?). Both of course were contributors to our modern age and culture (and … More Wilbur Scoville and His Famous Heat Scale
The Quiet Branches turns 1 year old in a few days. According to wordpress I had 9400 views this year. And readers from a total of 109 countries. Of course, I know most of my readers are from the US, but still cool to have breadth of countries. I started off this blog talking about … More One year of The Quiet Branches
Never did I think I could get almost 10k views of my blog in a year. Thanks to everyone that read, shared, guest posted, or even just took a quick look. The blog even got to join SciLogs this year (I’ll continue to double post)! I’m open to hearing stories and definitely want to talk … More 2015 in review
Perhaps think about photosynthesis as you look at an evergreen tree if you’re reading this in December (maybe even your Christmas tree), or new budding growth in springtime, depending on where you are in the world. Last week, I mentioned how some new research suggests that light harvesting complexes used by some bacteria and plants … More Essential Genes in Light Harvesting.
Reminder that The Quiet Branches has joined Sci Logs. And I’m posting in duplicate both here and there. This month, November 2015, marks 100 years of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. And there’s been a lot written about it all over the internet and scientific journals, etc. There are a few connections to plants that … More Albert Einstein and Plants.
The Quiet Branches is joining the SciLogs network. I’m excited to be a part of it! I’ll continue to crosspost here too. I look forward to continuing to share the world of plant science and the picture of the plant world revealed by plant science there. This first post will discuss some thoughts on communicating … More Plant Biotechnology, black boxes, and the Complex World.
While I work on my next post about plant science I thought I’d inject a short post. There aren’t many poetic/humorous/rich collective nouns for plants that aren’t generic. There are fields, forests, paddies, riparian zones, stands, copses, bouquets, bunches, beds, and cornucopias. These are pretty generic, though. The animal world gets a crash or rhinos, a … More Collective Nouns for plants.
This week is a guest post from Juliet Coates and Sharon Robinson. Mosses are a great example of why I started the Quiet Branches. They’re the kinds of plants many wouldn’t notice and don’t realize just how ancient, important, and interesting they are. I have mentioned mosses before in my review of “The Signature of … More Moss – tiny plants, huge potential
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