A Sketch of Science [Science Tattoo]

Caitlin, a graduate student, writes:

About four years ago, a close friend from college got her first tattoo – something meaningful and marking a particular point in her life – and she asked me if I would ever get one. I said sure, but that at that point in my life there was nothing I could come up with that was meaningful enough to have permanently etched in my skin. That was my first year of graduate school and I was still very unsure of myself and my future.

Four years of graduate school later finds me in the final stages of earning a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology – a place I was not convinced I was cut out to reach at the start of graduate school. After 2009’s year of Darwin celebrations, including my own involvement organizing a conference celebrating 150 years of evolutionary biology, the perfect tattoo came to me in class one day in March, and I found myself at the tattoo parlor by the end of that week.

My tattoo is Darwin’s very first phylogeny, from his Notebook B on Transmutation of Species and it is on my right shoulder. These notebooks contained much of his brainstorming on evolution after returning from the Beagle, and I was able to see this one in person at the American Museum of Natural History’s Darwin exhibit in 2006. I also added his signature and the date which can be found on the inside cover of the notebook.

I chose this particular piece of Darwinia for several reasons. As a perpetual student of science and of nature in particular, I love the slight hesitation and perhaps excitement in the “I think.” I am amazed that Darwin was thinking about phylogenies in 1837, 22 years before the Origin was published – that you can see the seed of his great work (and the preface to the only figure in the Origin) so early in his writings. The phylogeny itself as an image is meaningful because I study speciation, and spend a great deal of time studying, thinking about, and building my own phylogenies. I had also selected it to be part of the cover of the program for the conference I was involved in, and many attendees asked me about it.  In short – it carries a lot of meaning to me.

So, my tattoo honors Darwin, the father of my field; it represents my own personal research; and it exemplifies the slight hesitation and excitement of scientific discovery that I hope will stay with me always as I launch my academic career. It is a mark of confidence, in myself, and my chosen profession. I have no doubt that I will never regret permanently etching this image on my skin, and I know that it will serve as a reminder to me that even though the pursuit of scientific knowledge is a long, sometimes daunting journey, I love what I do and I can’t imagine doing anything else.

You can see the rest of the Science Tattoo Emporium here or in my book, Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed.