The world's tiniest periodic table

Tonight, I got to meet Martyn Poliakoff — the fabulously frizzy-haired University of Nottingham chemist who you might recognize from a series of awesome videos about the periodic table that Xeni first blogged about back in 2008.

This is his business card.

It's a microscope image of the world's tiniest periodic table, which Poliakoff's friends inscribed on a strand of his own hair as a birthday gift in 2010. The hair, which Poliakoff keeps in a glass vial, has earned him a spot in The Guinness Book of World Records.

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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BookGuy

Just as long as he never shows this to Patrick Bateman. You know how he gets.
http://twitter.com/drmikefay Mike Fay

It still tickles me every time this comes up.
http://www.facebook.com/bazimmerman Brad Zimmerman

I’m jealous; I’d love to meet the Prof.