Rosalind Franklin's 93rd Birthday

Today's Google spotlight features the doodle of a famous British biophysicist and X-ray crystallographer, Rosalind Elsie Franklin. She was most noted for her contributions into our understanding of the fine molecular structures of coal, graphite, DNA, RNA and viruses.

Rembrandt van Rijn's 407th Birthday

The doodle found on Google's homepage today celebrates the 407th birthday of Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, a Dutch painter and etcher who was generally considered to be an important figure in the European art and Dutch history. However, despite being hailed as such, it seems that his life was sort of a downhill ride whereby the height of his success was during his youthful days and things just went downwards ever since.

Excuses

Excuses...
It is most probably the worst ever invention made by Man
Made to be used as a shield to defend or justify one's fault or offense
An attempt to lessen the blame attached to the deed

And although it may sometimes be inevitable that some things occur
That doesn't make the fact that it did happen go away

To always be hiding behind the back of an Excuse
Or to strive and not live a life full of Excuses

Knowing that I might forget about it someday
And so I'm leaving it here for just in case

That one day I might forget
Perhaps even that is just an Excuse

- BuLaDiFu -

Li Shizhen's 495th Birthday

Today is the 495th birthday of Li Shizhen, reputed to be one of the greatest Chinese doctors in history.

His most important contribution was in writing the Compendium of Materia Medica which he took 27 years to complete. In this medical text features 1,892 entries, detailing more than 1,800 drugs or items believed to have medicinal properties (like plants, animals and minerals), 1,100 illustrations and 11,000 prescriptions.

Although not all of its information is scientifically correct (some have been proven to be erroneous due to the contemporary limited scientific and technical knowledge of those times), it still remains as a premier reference work for herbal medicines, has been translated into more than 20 languages and contains information valuable to a wide variety of subjects such as botany, zoology, mineralogy and metallurgy.