Re‐visioning Science “Love and Passion in the Scientific Imagination”: Art and science

The often portrayed media image of the scientist is a rather strange one, grim‐looking scientists, usually male, poised beside incomprehensible instruments. It is little wonder that we encounter the stereotype of the bespectacled scientist; thick black rims, coke bottle lenses, roman sandals, dressed in lab coats, trousers up to their necks. A qualitative study designed to produce a series of visual and oral narratives based on the everyday lived realities of “the contemporary scientist” was undertaken. The study was a participative project in which a research team, including the project leaders Anne Noble and Michelle Lunn, together with research assistants and documentary photography students, worked alongside scientists to produce contemporary and deliberately challenging stories of “the scientist” 1 1. Please see acknowledgements for details of the research team and the scientists involved in the project. . In this paper, the most pervasive theme to emerge from the research, the link between art and science, is discussed.