Faces of Science

exhibition at the US National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC until 30 September.

This arresting portrait of Nobel prizewinner Harold Varmus is one of many images of scientific luminaries by Mariana Cook on public display in the Faces of Science exhibition at the US National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC until 30 September.

Credit: M. COOK

Cook, who studied with the pioneering nature photographer Ansel Adams, hopes to “humanize” scientists through her work, to illuminate individual characters and explore possible commonalities.

Each portrait is paired with a short essay explaining how the subject became drawn to his or her chosen field — as in Cook's book of the same name (W. W. Norton, 2005). Other leading researchers captured in iconic shots include E. O. Wilson, Elizabeth Blackburn and Frederick Sanger.

Wilson sits beatifically in a pile of autumn leaves; Sanger smiles beneath an orchid. Sitters such as these share “an elasticity of mind uncommon to most of us”, Cook has said. Collections of her photographs are also held by the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.