Re-Discover the Science Tattoo Emporium

ByCarl Zimmer
July 30, 2008

If you’re new to the Loom, you may not be aware that I have a thing for science tattoos. It’s been exactly a year since I noticed a tattoo on the shoulder of a friend who’s a geneticist at Columbia. The tattoo was DNA, and it spelled his wife’s initials in the genetic code. So I wondered aloud if there were other scientists who had inked themselves with science, and the answer was a shockingly loud yes. In fact, I was soon inundated with so many pictures of tattoos (and enlightening stories behind them) that I had to separate them from my old blog to keep them organized. The tattoos have become fodder for stories in places like New Scientist and Wired. Now that the Loom has arrived at Discover, I’m bringing them back into the fold.

Right now you can look at them here as a gallery, or as a category of blog posts. We’ll be fine-tuning the interfaces, and all comments on them are welcome.

I’ve got a backlog of tattoos that I’ll be posting here, but if you’ve got one, please send it along with some explanation. (And let me know if you want to be anonymous for tenure or other reasons.)

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