Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK

This is the statue of Sir William Thomson outside the Ulster Museum in the Botanic Gardens adjacent to Queens College, Belfast. The museum is nearing the completion of a major refurbishment scheduled for 2009. It would nice if the lettering on the statue could be restored as well. More latterly known as Lord Kelvin (Baron Kelvin of Largs) he was born in Belfast in 1824, as the monument plinth declares proudly 'of Ulster lineage' and died at Largs in Ayrshire (Scotland) in 1907. In between times he had become President of the Royal Society and Chancellor of the University of Glasgow having filled the Chair of Philosophy for 53 years...nobly resigning in 1899 at the age of 75, he claimed to make way for someone younger The inscription on the side continues to the effect that he was 'Pre-eminent in elucidating the laws of nature and in applying them to the service of man'. His areas of specialism included electricity, magnetism and thermodynamics. He was knighted in 1866 and elevated to the Peerage for his work on the first transatlantic cable. This statue features a ships binnacle which presumably marks the fact that he took part in the actual laying of the cable at sea, at significant risk to his person. One should also note, however, that he also owned a private yacht because in those days it was still possible to be both a scientist and a rich man. It is a cliched phrase but he probably can be termed a 'father of modern physics'. He was a mentor to James Clerk Maxwell and a collaborator with, amongst others, Helmholtz and Joule. Of course his name (Kelvin) lives on in the unit for absolute temperature.

These two pictures show a blue heritage plaque and the building on which it is placed in the Jewellery Quarter of Birmingham, England's 'Second City' and 'Workshop of the World'. It was erected by the Birmingham Civic Society in 2004 and commemorates Alexander Parkes (1823-1890) the inventor of Parkesine, usually cited as the first 'plastic', although naturally occurring materials with plastic properties had been in use for centuries. Parkes worked on this site for a firm of electroplaters, Elkington, Mason & Company, c.1840-1850.

Budapest, Hungary

A tram line and the local road layout have not been kind to this fine temple to the sciences on the north side of Roosevelt Square (though the square was not so-named until 1947). The Hungarian Academy of Sciences (or Magyar Tudomanyos Akademia) was begun in 1862 and completed in 1864 in the neo-Renaissance style by Friedrich August Stuler with decorative statuary by Emil Wolf and Miklos Izso. The four corners, of which one is shown here, feature statues of renowned scientific thinkers, including a very 19th century depiction of Galileo, whilst allegorical sculptures adorn the facades. The ornate interior, with its splendid debating hall, features more of the work of Izso and ceiling paintings by Karoly Lotz.

Gdansk, Poland

These two pictures show a rather attractive statue of the astronomer Hevelius (1611-1687) in the modern Polish port city of Gdansk, formerly Danzig where he made a living from brewing and served on the city council. A Danzig Protestant by birth, he lived there permanently from 1634 after a period of international study and travel. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and knew key figures including Kircher and Halley. He is buried with his family in the 14th century Church of St Catherine (Kosciol sw Katarzyny). You'll find him all over the city, for example in the names of bars and hotels.His name is generally given in the Latin form but can also be spelled Hevelke, Hewel, Hewelcke, Höwelcke or in Polish (perhaps least appropriately of all), as here: Heweliusz. In the 1640s he observed sun spots from his 'Sternenburg' observatory, named in a deliberate echo of Tycho Brahe's observatory from the previous century, which he built in 1641 and which occupied the top floor of several houses. Based on these observations he determined solar rotation to a high degree of accuracy. He observed comets over a period of nearly forty years and published his maps of the moon in Selenographia (1647). His work is interesting for having been carried out largely without the use of telescopic sights or lenses, though many of his fellow scientists felt that this was an ill-advised attachment to outdated methods. His quadrant is included in this statue. Although many of his instruments were destroyed by fire in 1679 he recovered to publish more important work in the 1680s, engraving many of the plates himself. He died on his 76th birthday and has a lunar crater and an asteroid named after him.

Maastricht, Netherlands

I love this statue in the main southern city of the Netherlands, just off the town hall square. It attracts attention due to the burning gas flame that emits from it. Johannes Petrus (Jean-Pierre) Minckelers (1748-1824) was born and died in the city but spent time during his career at Louvain and Brussels. He was part of a Dutch/Netherlandish movement that excelled in original chemistry experiments. He devised oil gas for the nascent pursuit of hot air ballooning but his pupil's writings inform us that he also used this substance as a means of illuminating his laboratory. At the back of the statue is a splendid depiction of the oil tank...seldom is a scientist's apparatus so clearly included in his memorial. I don't know how accurate the depiction is. We should certainly take into account the time gap before the statue was erected. Sculpted by Bart van Hove (1850-1914), it dates from 1904.

Riga, Latvia

The chemist Wilhelm Ostwald has rather an unusual memorial sculpture on the edge of the Vermanes darzs (Wohrmann's Gardens) in Riga, the former Hanseatic trading centre, now the capital of the independent Republic of Latvia. As with so many eastern European memorials we should not be fooled by the dates of the person commemorated. This memorial, by the sculptor Andris Varpa, was only erected in 2001. Presumably a great figure of German ethnicity is more palatable to the modern Latvians than any Russian, although judging by his shoulder it looks like one of the local birds didn't approve! Ostwald (1853-1932), born in Riga, taught successively physics and chemistry at Dorpat and was a chemistry lecturer in the Riga Polytechnical Institute for six years in the 1880s before being poached by the University of Leipzig in 1887. He would live there for the rest of his life. Regarded as one of the founders of physical chemistry, whilst still in Riga he produced his first textbook of general chemistry, in the German language, (Lehrbuch der Allgemeinen Chemie, 1884). He also did pioneering work on the standardisation of colours. Retiring in 1906 he went a bit loopy supporting the peace movement and becoming an advocate of monism, a philosophical position that declines to distinguish between the mental and the physical, arguing a materialist view that all things are physical and questioning religious precepts such as the Creator God. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1909 for his work on catalysis and associated fundamental studies on chemical equilibria and rates of reaction. The citation is reproduced on the open book in the top left of the memorial, above the conical flasks. I love the detail of the laboratory equipment represented here. Another work by Varpa, of the graphical artist Karlis Padegs, may be found nearby.

St Helens, England, UK

This picture is of the Number 9 Jubilee Cone building adapted by Mr Windle Pilkington in 1887 to house the No 9 Tank Furnace which utilised the regenerative principle patented by Siemens in 1872 and was a site for the production of high quality window glass until 1922. About half the original structure survives next to the Sankey navigation (in itself a potential claimant for the title of the first canal). Visitors can explore the underground brick vaults which, although still in use just over eight years ago, had to be rediscovered by industrial archaeologists. The complex is adjacent to the World of Glass visitor attraction which doubles up as the local authority museum for the social history of the town...so you actually learn a lot less about glass than you might expect. Pilkingtons was founded in 1826 by Pete Greenall (brewer) and his brother-in-law William Pilkington. The company was called the St Helens Crown Glass Company. The partnership was then joined by William's brother Richard and effected a change of name to Pilkington Brothers when Greenall died. Scholars of optical glass can switch off, however, until the story reaches 1939 when Pilkingtons first got together with Chance Brothers of Birmingham.

Utrecht, Netherlands

Why is FC Donders shown seated? He was no sedentary character! I have paid homage at his feet twice, in 2002 and 2008. Working at the university in this small city-province Franciscus Cornelis Donders (1818-1889) is sometimes referred to as an ophthalmologist though his contributions to eyecare stretched well beyond the narrow confines of ophthalmology (a much misused term) and indeed to many other areas of the medical and physical sciences. He was the university's professor in Physiology from 1847 and director of the Netherlands Hospital for Eye Patients founded in 1858. In optometry he is significant for his work concerning refraction, prismatic and cylindrical lenses and their use in the correction of astigmatism though Sir George Airy in Great Britain is thought to have been the first to use cylindrical lenses for his personal correction and few practitioners today have ploughed through On the anomalies of accommodation and refraction of the eye with a preliminary essay on physiologic dioptrics (1864). He is a significant figure in the history of colour vision deficiency, producing a diagnostic test utilising coloured wools and he also investigated biological heat and cognitive processes including the concept of 'thinking time'. There is a Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour in Nijmegen which works in conjunction with several other academic centres including Utrecht.