Hosts Kevin Hong and Ethan Perets speak to Dr. Emily Candela about her research on the history of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2020 image of the coronavirus and how this visualization became an icon of the COVID-19 pandemic. The interview touches on critical understandings of scientific visualization at the intersection of science studies and the history of design, and the role of medical illustrators as ‘transformers’ sitting between two different kinds of image making. Unexpected connections are made between the coronavirus visualization and the parallel histories of X-ray crystallography and design in mid-20th century England, especially through the work of the Irish scientist and artist Helen Megaw, who crossed scientific and artistic networks during the period, and who has been a subject of Emily’s research on the historical relationships between the X-ray crystallography and design.

Picturing Knowledge is a Yale University podcast, part of the Order of Multitudes project.