Notable Biologists Posters and Prints, “Q...-R...-S...-”
for the science classroom, home schoolers, science education scholars.

Ed Ricketts
b. 5-14-1897; Chicago, IL
d. 5-11-1948; California (car-train accident)

Marine biologist, ecologist, and philosopher Ed Ricketts is best known for Between Pacific Tides (1939), a pioneering study of intertidal ecology, and for his influence on writer John Steinbeck, which resulted in their collaboration on the Sea of Cortez, later republished as The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951). [Mexico posters]

FYI - Steinbeck fictionalized Ricketts' lab in Cannery Row; Ricketts was also friends with Joseph Campbell.

French Scientist Jean Rostand Doing Biological Study of Toads and Frogs, Photographic Print

Jean Rostand
b. 10-30-1894; Paris, France
d. 9-4-1977

Jean Rostand was an experimental biologist who was a philosopher about the responsibilities of humanity and our place in nature, a science writer, and activist against nuclear proliferation and the death penalty.

His father was playwright Edmond Rostand most noted for his play Cyrano de Bergerac.

Jean Rostand quotes ~
• “A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us worthy of using it.”
• “It is sometimes important for science to know how to forget the things she is surest of.”
• “I should have no use for a paradise in which I should be deprived of the right to prefer hell.”
• “Kill a man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conquerer. Kill everyone, and you are a god.”

Jonas Salk
b. 10-28-1914; NYC
d. 6-23-1995; La Jolla, CA

“To a scientist fame is neither an end nor a means to an end.”

Dr. Salk was a biologist and physician best known for the research and development of the first effective polio vaccine.

• more Heroes of the 20th Century posters
• Jonas Salk and the Polio Vaccine

Frederick Sanger
b. 8-13-1918; Gloucestershire, England

Biochemist Frederick Sanger was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1958 and 1980 for work with DNA. Sanger was the fourth person to be awarded two Nobel Prizes (others Marie Curie, Linus Pauling and John Bardeen).

• Selected Papers of Frederick Sanger

Theodor Schwann
b. 12-7-1810; Neuss, Germany
d. 1-11-1882

Physiologist Theodor Schwann was instrumental in the development of cell theory (with Schleiden and Virchow), the discovery of cells in the peripheral nervous system that were named for him, the discovery and study of pepsin, the discovery of the organic nature of yeast, and the invention of the term “metabolism”.

• The Biology of Schwann Cells: Development, Differentiation and Immunomodulation

Herbert Spencer
b. 4-27-1820; Derby, England
d. 12-8-1903

Victorian era biologist, anthropologist and philosopher Herbert Spencer was a polymath, “an enthusiastic exponent of evolution”, described as “the single most famous European intellectual in the closing decades of the nineteenth century”. His best known theory was Social Darwinism, or “the survival of the fittest”; he was also the inventor of the paper clip.

Herbert Spencer quotes ~
• “Science is organized knowledge.”
• “Time: That which man is always trying to kill, but which ends in killing him.”
• “Man needed one moral constitution to fit him for his original state; he needs another to fit him for his present state; and he has been, is, and will long continue to be, in process of adaptation.”
• “Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect.”
• “No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy.”
• “Architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry, may truly be called the efflorescence of civilised life.”
• “Volumes might be written upon the impiety of the pious.”
• “... But this survival of the fittest, implies multiplication of the fittest.”
• “The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.”
• “Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.”

Albert Szent-Györgyi
b. 9-16-1893; Budapest, Austria-Hungary
d. 10-22-1986; Woods Hole, MA

Albert Szent-Györgyi was awarded the 1937 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology “for his discoveries in connection with the biological combustion process with special reference to vitamin C and the catalysis of fumaric acid”.

• The Crazy Ape: Written by a Biologist for the Young