Biology - Sci-Philately: A Selective History of Science on Stamps

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Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) of Belgium who flourished in Italy, chiefly in Padua, was the founder of modern anatomical science. He revived the dissection of human bodies as practiced in ancient Rome and Alexandria and described his findings precisely in classic Latin in his groundbreaking work, De Humanis Corporis Fabrica. This book was illustrated with woodcuts of the anatomist at work over a human corpse, surrounded by a mass of spectators, and by pictures of the musculature and skeleton, the venous and arterial systems. It set a standard for clarity and accuracy not previously achieved and was plagiarized extensively over the centuries.

William Harvey (1578-1657) was an English physician who had studied in Padua. He discovered the mechanisms of circulation of blood and the action of the heart and its various chambers. Considering the sheer volume of blood in the body, Harvey did not expect it could constantly be generated by the liver, as previously supposed. He explored the functioning of veins and arteries and laid to rest many other erroneous beliefs held since the time of Galen. His studies of embryos and chicks in the egg produced insights into the development of organs and limbs in the fetus.

Carolus Linnaeus (Carl von Linne, 1707-1778) had a medical education, receiving his doctorate in the Netherlands. Here he associated with Hermann Boerhaave (1668-1738) who was the pre-eminent teacher and professor of medicine at the University of Leyden. But Linne's interest lay more in identifying and classifying the flora and fauna of his native Sweden and the increasingly great numbers of foreign specimens brought to his attention. One of the great 18th century naturalists, he devised a binomial system of taxonomy that has endured to this day. Earlier naturalists had felt free to name specimens as they thought best described them. But besides assigning a species (for the specific organism) and a genus (for a group of similar organisms) Linne assigned each organism to a hierarchy of higher orders, classes, and kingdoms, based on ever more general shared physiological properties. Throughout his life he made lengthy collecting trips and walking tours in Sweden and Lapland, collecting plants and animals. He wrote accounts of these travels, which are the basis for the remarkable stamp booklet at the left. Descriptive phrases from his writings are inside the booklet cover. The sweep of the highlands, the diverse shorebird population, the high sandstone cliffs mentioned in his journals here come to life for the philatelist. Bedecked in furs, the young Linne posed in native Lapp costume for an artist after his first journey to Lapland. The twin flower, linnaea borealis, was Linne's favorite flower (red stamp).

	Jean Henri Fabre (1823-1915) was a French entomologist and writer who studied insect behavior and wrote Marvels of the Insect World, Life of the Spider and many other descriptions of insects.
	August Krogh (1874-1949), Danish physiologist, showed that diffusion is the process by which oxygen passes through capillary walls into tissue. As muscles respond to a stimulus and more oxygen is needed, more capillaries open up to provide extra blood flow and with it oxygen to the muscle. For this discovery of the capillary motor mechanism he was awarded the 1920 Nobel prize in Physiology.
	Alexander Fleming (1881-1955) was a Scottish bacteriologist and physician. His accidental discovery of the mould penicillin in a culture of streptococcus revealed to him the antibacterial action of this organism which moreover was not harmful to living tissue. The Gabonese stamp displays the molecular structure of penicillin while commemorating the 50th anniversary of Fleming's discovery of antibiotics in 1928. Fleming shared the 1945 Nobel prize for medicine for this discovery.
	Robert Koch (1843-1910) was a German bacteriologist who revolutionized the methods of culturing and staining bacterial organisms, and discovered the tubercle bacillus, the cause of tuberculosis. His study of the anthrax bacillus determined that its spores can survive in the ground for years, and he identified the cholera bacillus in victims of the disease in Africa and India, where he traveled to study other tropical diseases.
	The biochemist Otto Warburg (1883-1970) worked on the problem of respiration of tissue, the role of enzymes in this process, and the metabolism of cancer. He received the 1931 Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology.
	Karl Landsteiner (1868-1943), Austrian born biologist and physician, discovered the existence of different blood groups in the human body, and the fact that they were not always compatible, the transfusion of the wrong type of blood causing the destruction of the original cells by agglutination, or clumping. With Alexander Wiener he discovered the Rh factor in blood, and with Erwin Popper, the polio virus.
	Frank Macfarlane Burnet (1899-1985), an Australian, studied the mechanism of immunity and the formation of antibodies. He speculated that the ability to form antibodies in response to a foreign organism or protein in the body, which then combine with it and render it harmless, is not inborn but takes place soon after birth. Exposure to antigens of an embryo produced immunological tolerance. For this he shared the Nobel prize in medicine and physiology in 1960. His clonal selection theory of acquired immunity is of great importance for organ transplants. This Australian stamp is one of a set of four equally illegible issues crowded with text.
	The scales of some fishes, such as these herring, have annular rings that can be counted to determine their age.

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