Exploring London’s scientific museums, statues, plaques and locations.
Where? Rooms 38 and 38a of the National Portrait Gallery on Charing Cross Road. Note: Please click links below to view portraits online.
What? For me, London’s National Portrait Gallery is more alluring than its bigger and better known neighbour, the National Gallery. Perhaps it’s the appeal of studying familiar faces rather than endless reinterpretations of biblical set pieces (adoring magi, I’m looking at you). Or maybe it’s because the National Portrait Gallery shares its initials with a certain scientific publishing house.
On my last visit, I made a particular beeline for room 38 and its small collection of scientific portraiture. There’s some cracking stuff in here. The first thing to catch the eye is Sir Paul Nurse. You can’t miss the fellow. An almost-three-metre-wide photo hangs outside the room, every pore visible on his knightly countenance. Brave man.
Within, the space is dominated by Baroness Susan Greenfield, head of the Royal Institution, who faces the newcomer from across the room. As you study the portrait, it shimmers and changes like a newspaper image from the Wizarding Times. The projected likeness is constructed from a shifting tableau of 22,500 separate frames. This techno-trickery by artist Tom Phillips effectively gives Greenfield more portraits than anyone else in London (adoring magi, that includes you).
Perhaps the most famous portrait in the room shows chemist Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin behnd her model of insulin. Never mind the crow feet – it’s her multiple hands that draw attention. Artist Maggi Hamblin shows the great crystallographer with a surfeit of limbs to convey energy and activity. Beside her, MRI pioneer Sir Peter Mansfield sits in a more relaxed attitude surrounded by the everyday accoutrements of administration. As if in deference to this master of medical imaging, Stephen Shankland captures every trivial detail in his hyper-real painting, from the plug sockets at the knight’s elbow to the car keys on his desk.
Nearby, Arthur C. Clarke occupies the window seat. Or is it Junior Soprano Other portraits include a tiny Sir Robert May, a suitably charcoal-heavy etching of organic chemist Ewart Jones, and a busy diptych of surgeon Sir Roy Calne.
Neighbouring room, 38a, currently displays a temporary exhibition of eminent physicists and astronomers. Most are simple black and white photographs, but there’s a lovely colour painting of Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees, with the latest copy of Nature adorning his coffee table.
If you’re in London, I’d highly recommend popping in to see these images, along with the wider gallery which contains further scientists in the Victorian section. Those of you overseas can get a flavour by visiting the Room 38 web page.
Previous installments of the Scientific Tourist in London.