For over 70 years, photographer and zoology graduate Spike Walker has been fascinated with the worlds too small to see with the naked eye.
As a 12-year-old in 1945, Spike pursued his love of both science and photography by purchasing his first microscope. Sixteen years later, in 1961, he was awarded the Royal Society Award for Scientific Research for his extensive work on work of living freshwater protozoa and algae. This year, the Royal Photographic Society has presented Walker with the Scientific Imaging Award, an accolade given to an "individual for a body of scientific imaging which promotes public knowledge and understanding."
Here are a few of Spike Walker’s most captivating images:
1. The origins of every person on Earth, caught in a single picture.
A living human egg with several sperm trying to fertilize it.
2. The psychedelic crystalized forms of vitamin C.
Vitamin C crystals in a water solution.
3. These beautifully terrifying mouth parts of a water spider.
Mandibles of water spider, cleared and mounted in Canada balsam.
4. Sugar crystals appearing like a surreal scene under a night sky.
Sugar crystals grow in a solution of gelatin, which is used to slow the process down.
5. The intricate mosaic found on the legs of a great diving beetle.
Dytiscus marginalis is a large and powerful freshwater diving beetle. The males have developed plate-like joints on their front legs, covered in suckers, to hold onto the female during mating. The photo shows a portion of such a joint with part of one of the two large suckers and five rows of small ones.
6. The mammoth features of a magnified wingless fly parasite.
A wingless fly that’s parasitic on honeybees. It lives on the body of the bee and sips nectar from the host's mouth parts.
7. The infinite complexity of human neurons found in the medulla oblongata.
Neurons in the medulla oblongata, part of the brain stem that controls our respiration and reflexes.
8. This incredibly fascinating cross-section of a mouse fetus.
9. A dandelion, magnified to reveal its beautiful individual florets.
10. The delicate arrangement of sensory nerve fibers around base of a cat's hair follicle.
11. Tiny marine plankton larvae magnified into monstrous creatures.
Living spionid larvae from marine plankton.
12. A single delicate seed from a red valerian plant.
Seed head of Centranthus ruber (red valerian).
13. The perfect symmetry of a one-celled freshwater algae dividing into two.
14. The cascading structures of a magnified amino acid.
Histidine, an amino acid, crystalized in a water solution.
15. A feeding frenzy of bacteria and ciliate protozoa — all occurring within the water of a flower vase.
Bacteria and the ciliate protozoa that feed on them in water from a flower vase.
16. The mesmerizing fractals of oxidized vitamin C.
17. And this remarkable cross-section of a human artery and the blood pumping through it.
A 1.5-micrometer-thick cross-section of the wall of an artery.
