Scientists on the money

I don't often re-churn the blogosphere, trying to keep as much as possible original content on The Blob.  But liked this series of pages featuring scientists-on-banknotes, put together by physicist Jacob Lewis Bourjaily.  So much of the media and business is dominated by by graduates from The Arts Block, that science gets far less coverage than other aspects of the human condition - sport, literature and history for obvious examples.  Bourjaily is looking for scans of notes which he knows exist to add to his collection - perhaps you could have a rummage through your small change from holiday bin for him?

I taught a course in Turkey several years ago and found myself in the airport going home with 100,000 lira - just about enough to buy a box of chocs or a bottle of wine.  But I thought that was a self-indulgent waste, so I kept the money resolving to send it to the poor graduate student who had been our runner.  I didn't do it - tsk!  A very few years later we were cleaning out and I took all my obsolete foreign money to the bank to exchange for Euro, I got cash for Norwegian Kroner and Swiss Francs.  But my Turkish folding money was now worth much less than a Mars bar - 17c or something close.

The gallops of inflation are neatly illustrated here where Ruggero Boscovich appears between 1991 and 1993 on essentially the same bank note of 1, 5, 10 and 50,000 Croatian dinars.