June Gallery

Polarised LM of a thin section of gabbro rock

Gabbro. Polarised light micrograph of a thin section of gabbro, an igneous rock. Gabbro is coarse-grained, containing the minerals olivine and plagioclase feldspar. Olivine is recognised here by its irregular shaped crystals, with randomly oriented fractures. Plagioclase feldspar forms lath- shaped crystals. Specimen of rock obtained from the Bushveld range in the Transvaal, South Africa. Magnification: x8 at 6x7cm size

© PASIEKA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Phrenology bust by L.N. Fowler

Phrenology bust by L.N. Fowler. Phrenology was a popular pseudoscience of the nineteenth century. The basis for the theory lay in a misplaced belief that a person's character and mental faculties effected the shape of their head. It was thought that this was because the skull became modified over the different functional areas of the cortex of the brain. Practitioners of the technique claimed that they could read a person, that is assess their personality, by feeling the bumps on their head. In this bust, a wide range of personality traits are mapped across the various bones that comprise the skull

© DAVID PARKER/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY