Holiday DIY

Last winter, we discovered these physicist snowflakes from Symmetry Magazine and got crafty decorating the library with symmetrical cutouts of Einstein, Curie, and Schrödinger. We were so enthralled by these that we were inspired to create our own! Designed by our creative staff here at AIP and loosely based on some images from our Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, we present you with three snowflake templates to print, fold, cut and enjoy this holiday season!

For a deeper dive into our snowflake subjects, we’ve selected 6 images from our visual archives you can explore. To accompany our Newton snowflake, you’ll see a portrait of Isaac Newton and a photograph of his childhood home in England with a double rainbow, a phenomenon which he wrote about in his work Opticks in 1704. We’re also featuring portraits of Nikola Tesla and Heinrich Ruhmkorff matched with our Tesla snowflake – the Tesla coil (which you’ll notice in our snowflake) was based off the Ruhmkorff coil transformer. Lastly, to accompany our crystal-inspired snowflake, we’re sharing portraits of the first two presidents of the American Crystallographic Association , Isidor Fankuchen and Ralph Wyckoff.

Enjoy the wintery craft and if you make any snowflakes this year, share them with us on social media; find us @AIPhistory on both Twitter and Facebook!

View, download, and print* our snowflakes here:

* Please note that if you are printing the snowflakes, you will need to download them directly to your computer before printing. Thank you!