Felice Frankel

Felice Frankel is a science photographer and research scientist in the department of chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with support from Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering. She began at MIT in 1994. Felice is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a Guggenheim Fellow. She has served as a Senior Research Fellow in Harvard’s Initiative for Innovative Computing and as a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School. Frankel’s work has been featured in Science, Nature, National Geographic, the New York Times, WIRED, Life, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and “Science Friday.” Her limited-edition photographs reside in corporate and private collections and have been exhibited widely, including at MoMA’s “Design and the Elastic Mind,” the Kennedy Center Arts Summit, the New York Hall of Science, along the Champs-Élysées in Paris, and in a Bracco Imaging–supported traveling show across Italy and at NYU’s Casa Italiana.

Phenomenal Moments - In a nutshell

The main point I am trying to make in this book is to introduce the idea that science is everywhere. Everything we see. Everything we touch. Everything we look at. It is all science. And it's very beautiful. Stunningly beautiful. I want to get people to understand that ideas and discoveries in science can be accessible. We don't have to always describe these scientific ideas using jargon and technical language that may make a reader turn away. I want people to see the importance of science. I truly believe that if people were more engaged in science, we wouldn’t be in the trouble we are in. And we are in deep trouble. People don't trust scientists, they don't trust science, and of course, the politics are hardly helping the issue. Through Phenomenal Moments, I am trying to say to readers and to their parents and grandparents that science can be very beautiful and fascinating. Just take a look at what is around you. I hope – and perhaps this is my fantasy – that readers will not only look at the images in the book. But when they walk through their parks, and even in their kitchens, they're going to see something similar to what they saw in the book, and they can tell their grandmother, you see that? The reason why that is there, is because this or that scientific argument. And the more fantastical piece would be for them to take their own picture, store it, and keep it as a portfolio for their own science book. Maybe that's a long shot. But just maybe they can do something with it.

Curator: Bora Pajo
December 4, 2025

Felice Frankel Phenomenal Moments: Revealing the Hidden Science Around Us Candlewick Press 128 pages, 7.8 x 9.3 inches ISBN 978-1536234893‍

When the bottom of a copper pan is exposed to heat and air, it oxidizes, forming a thin layer of copper compounds—mainly copper carbonate. This patina develops through ongoing reactions that produce its colors.

Students were instrumental in helping me make selections for what to include in the book

Chlorophyll helps the leaves extract energy from sunlight, but in autumn chlorophyll is not being replenished. Yellowish and red pigments can now be seen.

Silica spheres align over time, creating opal’s rainbow through light diffraction.‍

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