TeeFury is at it again! They’ve put an awesome LEGO t-shirt in their Twofury matchup. This one features great men of astronomy as LEGO minifigures. In the design you’ll find Neil deGrasse Tyson, Carl Sagan, Albert Einstein, Sir Issac Newton, and Galileo Galilei on a background of the Classic Space logo.
As usual, the shirt comes in 3 different color choices: navy, royal blue, and black, costs $11 and will be available for 24 hours.
Oh, and if you make a visit to the comments section, you’ll see someone already complained there were no female scientists drawn in the photo… The thing is, if it was a design including all science fields, I might jump on that boat. However, this design is astronomy-specific…
If you studied the field of astronomy (I did!), you know there are many female astronomers. Some of their discoveries include the star classification system and distance measuring in the universe. Sadly, female scientists, much less astronomers, are far from house-hold names. You probably would have a hard time coming up with the name of even one visually recognizable female astronomer. I’m not surprised the design doesn’t include any female minifigures and interestingly enough, the design was created by a female.
Do you think she should have made the design with a female minifigure?
As a professional physicist, I can safely say that Newton, in terms of direct astronomy, basically achieved nothing, although his theory of universal gravitation is of course, immensely important to actual astronomers. More was achieved by Caroline Herschel, who at least discovered some comets (https://herschelmuseum.org.uk/whats-on/events/) but the woman who should really be on here in place of Newton is Jocelyn Bell, who discovered Pulsars during her PhD work. (https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Jocelyn+Bell&rlz=1C1ASUT_enGB526GB526&oq=Jocelyn+Bell&aqs=chrome..69i57&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=0&ie=UTF-8).
But the average person has no knowledge of that. Put one of the females on the shirt and people would be asking “who’s that?”
I agree entirely, but then, Carl Sagan and deGrasse Tyson are not household names outside the USA, Newton is only guessable because of the apple and Galileo just looks like some old bloke with a telescope and Einstein, Newton and Galileo weren’t principally astronomers but rather physicists, which is why the whole concept is flawed. Why not do some research, put their names on there and educate people?
You make excellent points! I guess we should just enjoy it for the design. ;)
It is a nice piece of design, but I do strongly feel that an opportunity has been missed.