Google honors Anna Atkins and the first published book with photographs.

Anna Atkins would have been 216-years old today, yet odds are you don't know who she is. But she makes note today because Google has honored her with a Doodle on their web page. Because if Google is good for anything these days with their Doodles, it's to make you scratch your head as to who they're actually honoring.

So who was Anna Atkins?

Atkins looking less blue than usual.

Atkins was a botanist by trade, born in 1799 at a time when very few women entered scientific specialties. As a botanist, she started to use a very early method of photography called cyanotype to document her plants. (Cyanotype photos are a precursor to what we think of as 'blueprints'--hence the word we know today.) As the name so subtly implies, the method creates a cyan blue colored photograph of sorts (call it her blue period)--and it was through this method that Atkins used to publish a book of her observations. And, because of her early adoption of this method, this is why Atkins is sometimes considered history's first female photographer.

Atkins' main publication of note is Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions, a name entirely much drier than her revolutionary work, which features handwritten notes and the cyanotype works--a white picture on a blue background. The blue/white contrast comes mainly from the chemical makeup of the cyanotype, which is largely iron-based.

When she died in 1871, Atkins donated all her work and photographs to the British Museum.


But today she gets a Doodle.

Oh, the 21st century...