Visualizing the Invisible World of Molecules

Abstract

In my career, I have had the great pleasure to be able to combine two of my interests: science and art. I started my studies at a serendipitous time, when the field of molecular visualization was just getting off the ground. When I started my studies as a graduate student, computer graphics was brand new, and those of us who knew how to use the hardware, and how to write the software to make it work, had a monopoly on the new technology. Scientists routinely came to use to create figures for papers, or movies for talks, or just to sit and explore their molecules. It was a wonderfully exciting time—we were making things up as we went, developing new methods for viewing molecules and trying to make them practical enough that we could use them in research.