Turd of the Century
An exhibition celebrating one of the greatest scientific advances of the 20th Century has an unexpected centrepieceThe greatest turd of the twentieth century is currently on show in London's Science Museum. Its heavy brown coils can be found in a glass cabinet on the second floor, impaled on a forest of sticks to preserve their shape. The colour and texture leave little to the imagination, but what is this obnoxious coprolite doing in a science museum, next to displays on the history of mathematics and computing?Clearly this is no ordinary ordure. The poop is in fact a molecule called myoglobin, a protein from muscle that can absorb and store a single molecule of oxygen. It has pride of place in a small exhibition celebrating the centenary of the development of X-ray crystallography because it was the first biological molecule to submit to the technique, thanks to the efforts of a team...