I saw the above google image on January 11th 2012 and clicked on it. It celebratesthe 347th birthday of Nicholas Steno. WHo? you may ask... well let's hear what Wiki says about this man.
Nicolas Steno (11 January 1638 – 5 December 1686} was a Danish Catholic bishop and scientist who pioneered in both anatomy and geology. By 1659, Steno had decided not to accept a statement as true simply because it was written in a book, but rather to rely on his own research. He is considered one of the founders of modern stratigraphy and, together with James Hutton, the founder of modern geology.Pope John Paul II beatified Steno in 1988.
Steno's law of constant angles, states that the angles between corresponding faces on crystals are the same for all specimens of the same mineral, a fundamental breakthrough that formed the basis of all subsequent inquiries into crystal structure.
After his death in 1686, Steno was venerated as a saint in the diocese of Hildesheim. Steno's piety and virtue have been evaluated with a view to an eventual canonization. His canonization process was begun in Osnabrück in 1938. In 1953 his corpse was exhumed, and reburied in the Capella Stenoniana, but without the missing skull. The Italian state donated a fourth-century Christian sarcophagus that had been found in the river Arno. In 1988 he was declared "beatus" — the third of four steps to being declared a saint — by Pope John Paul II. He is thus now called by Catholics Blessed Nicolas Steno. His feast day is 5 December.
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