All photos on this page courtesy Robert C. Lautman

Larry Kirkland Keck Center Lobby Installation Etched limestone and granite and bronze 2002 Keck Center of the National Academies 500 Fifth Street, NW, Washington, DC

How does one convey, at the outset of the 21st century, the origins and evolution of human investigation of the world as well as the contributions to society made by the sciences, medicine and engineering? This was the task set for artist Larry Kirkland in developing the engraved murals for the lobby of the National Academies Building at 500 Fifth Street, NW in Washington, DC. This visual encyclopedia encompasses investigations past and present, and it includes phenomena from the microscopic to the cosmic.

The side walls are of "crema dorado" limestone, quarried in Alicante, Spain; the center wall of Cambrian black granite from Quebec. To etch the images, rubber was applied to the wall and the intricate image was cut through the rubber to create a stencil, revealing the stone beneath. The exposed stone was then cut away with a sandblasting tool and the image sprayed with a lithochrome stain to enhance the engraved pattern. Finally, the stencil was removed.

South wall:
Beginning on the far left (as one enters from Fifth Street), there are two drawings of maize – one from a pre-Columbian pot from Ancient Peru (ca. 2500 to 1800 BC) and another by a contemporary geneticist.

These represent a continuum of human invention spanning four centuries. This important New World plant that we know as corn, was produced by the careful breeding of plants by humans. It now feeds a large proportion of the world's population.

Images that follow on the same wall represent attempts to understand the universe– from Galileo's star map of 1610, which includes a detailed study of the moon, to the Lunar Rover designed in 1969 and used during the final three Apollo lunar missions of 1971 and 1972. Attached to the wall is a meteorite and a tidal rhythmite, a sedimentary rock whose stripes record changing tides hundreds of millions of years ago, providing a visual record of the moon's orbit around the earth. Other images illustrate the history of technology. From the Chinese abacus and Edison's 1880 design sketch of an incandescent light bulb, to the exploration of computer aided artificial intelligence and nanotechnology, inventors have developed tools that benefit society.

West wall: Two themes dominate the black granite wall: biology and medicine in the service of society an dour relationship to our environment. One ongoing focus of medical research is malaria, represented by the parasite that is attacking a human cell in the large circle at the lower left.

Spread by mosquitoes, this disease causes 300 million people each year to become ill and more than a million deaths, primarily in children. The malaria parasite continually evades new drugs by becoming resistant and is a major target for efforts to create a vaccine. The map of London (1854) represents the investigations of John Snow, known as the Father of Public Health, who discovered the source of a cholera epidemic to be contaminated water – delivered by a public pump marked here with a gold dot.

The large Atlantic salmon documents an endangered species at risk of extinction from overfishing and destruction of spawning grounds. The small Northwest Coast Native American drawing of a Pacific salmon suggests the complex issues relevant to this valuable fish. The transformation of its natural habitat by dams, farming, forestry practices and the co-mingling of farm-raised fish with native species

The tree branch is that of a pacific yew, a low growing evergreen whose habitat has been destroyed through the clear cutting of Douglas Fir forests. The yew is a natural source for taxol, which has proved beneficial in the treatment of some cancers. The short-term benefits brought by the practices that threaten the yew must be weighed against the benefit that might otherwise be reaped from lost species.

North wall :

The theme of our relation to the environment continues in the third wall. The Golden Gate Bridge celebrates both a feat of engineering, as well as the human will to shape the environment.

The internal combustion engine benefits society, but raises myriad problems by burning fossil fuels. The graph shows the continuing increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, as measured by Charles Keeling, who began taking measurements in the 1950s. One half century later, these clearly show how the burning of oil, coal, and natural gas is altering the earth's atmosphere. A chemical model of octane, a major component of gasoline, casts a shadow on the graph. Other images celebrate our evolving knowledge of the storage and replication of hereditary information, through recognition of Mendel, Darwin, and twentieth century research on DNA.

The finches from the Galápagos Islands are an illustration from the published edition of the diary kept by Charles Darwin during his five-year expedition on the HMS Beagle. From observing the beaks of these birds on neighboring islands, Darwin concluded that the species had evolved to accommodate the varieties of available food.

Among the images inscribed on the double helix of DNA are a chimpanzee (whose DNA is closest to humans), a gingko leaf and a fruit fly. The cast pea-pod commemorates the experiments by the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel (1822-84), which led to the conclusion that inherited traits are determined by a combination of genes.

The metal plate on the far right is an x-ray photograph of crystalline DNA obtained by Rosalind Franklin (1920 – 1958), whose research was crucial in helping James Watson and Francis Crick to discover double-helical structure of DNA in 1953.