Snowflake

Wilson A. Bentley, known in his lifetime as "Snowflake Bentley" made a name for himself by doing one thing astonishingly well: photographing the crystalline forms of snowflakes. Self-taught and obsessed with his task, he made his first successful photomicrograph in January 1885 and continued to photograph until his death from pneumonia in 1931. During that time, he produced more than 5,300 images of snowflakes, each one different from the next. The process required painstaking care to avoid melting the fragile specimens: he transferred them one by one with a sharp wooden splint to a microscopic slide, touching the equipment only with gloved hands. Bentley was as much a poet as a scientist. "Every snowflake has an infinite beauty," he wrote, "which is enhanced by knowledge that the investigator will, in all probability, never find another exactly like it."