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Google has sketched up another doodle this morning.
The latest piece of search engine-based artwork celebrates the life of Nicolas Steno.
Today is the 374th anniversary of the birth of the Danish Catholic clergyman and scientist who was a prominent figure in the fields of anatomy and geology in the 17th Century.
He is most famously regarded as the father of modern geology, and as we all know, geologists rock (sorry, couldn’t resist).
His earlier work was in the field of anatomy, where he made a study of the organs, particularly the heart which he determined was a muscle, and kept the same volume even though it changes shape when it contracts.
Travelling Europe and studying with various authorities, he eventually ended up in Italy where his attention turned to geology.
In 1669 he produced his Dissertationis Prodromus, which included the law of superposition, one of the most fundamental tenets of geology. This refers to how rock forms in chronological layers, the lower down the layer, the earlier its existence; and that the fossils found in the layers could therefore be dated.
The doodle itself displays the Google logo as layers of rock, complete with fossils embedded in them.
He also formulated Steno’s Law, or the law of interfacial angles, which states that the angles between two corresponding faces of any crystal are constant and a property of that particular material.
Steno passed away in 1686, and was beatified (given the title ‘Blessed’) by the Catholic church in 1987.
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