A Snow Scientist
January 17, 2019
Wilson A. Bentley
WHAT magic is there in the rule of six that compels the snowflake to conform so rigidly to its laws? Here is a gem bestrewn realm of nature possessing the charm of mystery, of the unknown, sure richly to reward the investigator.
These are the words of Wilson A. Bentley, a self-taught Vermont farmer who from early childhood was fascinated by the crystalline structure of snow and was the first person to photograph the snowflake. Born in 1865 and educated by his mother, he taught himself the craft of microphotography so that he could document the snow crystals that fell outside his home in the rural town of Jericho, which typically received about 120 inches of snowfall a year.
Bentley would gather snow on a black wooden tray, removing the excess with a feather duster. He then separated the crystals with the filament of a broom. Having attached a microscope, his only serious piece of scientific equipment, to a bellows camera, he glued the snowflakes to microscopic slides and photographed them inside in an unheated room, with light from a window for illumination. He washed his negatives in a nearby brook. He eventually amassed more than 5,000 microphotographs, starting with his first, made in 1885 when he was 20 years old. They appeared along with his explanatory articles in journals and in a book, Snow Crystals, published the year of his death in 1931.
He wrote in his later years:
For something over a quarter of a century I have been studying [the snow crystal] and the work has proved to be wonderfully fascinating, for each favorable snowfall, during all these years has brought things that were new and beautiful to my hand. I have never yet found a time when I could entertain an idea of relinquishing it. During the time that I have carried on the work, I have secured sixteen hundred photo-micrographs of snow crystals alone, and no two are alike. Is there room for enthusiasm here? Doubtless these pictures serve to represent with some fairness almost every type and variety of snow that occurs in nature, but they show scarcely an infinitesimal fraction of the individual variation of form and interior design among the countless myriads of crystals comprising each type.
The issue of whether any two snowflakes are alike always comes up in regard to Bentley. Technically, no two snowflakes could be composed of the same particulate matter and water, but might two have the same crystalline appearance? Bentley did not find any two crystals that were the same. However, the question is of little scientific value and also seems to have little metaphysical importance. If someone were to discover two snowflakes that were alike, would that make snowflakes any less interesting or suggestive?
