Diatoms and the Meaning of Life

In 1703, the world’s most esteemed scientific journal published a surprising letter from an anonymous correspondent. (At the time, until well into the twentieth century, anonymity often meant the scientist writing was a woman, though the word “scientist” itself was more than a century away, to be coined for a woman.) The letter reported an astonishing discovery in the roots of pond plants placed under a microscope, still a relative novelty: Adhering to the delicate aquatic stalks were “many pretty branches, compos’d of regular oblongs and exact figures… the longest side not exceeding 1/2 of...