A Centenary Celebration for Will Burtin: A Pioneer of Scientific Visualization

Visual Revelations

Howard Wainer,

Column Editor

A Centenary Celebration for Will Burtin: A Pioneer of Scientific Visualization

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008 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Will Burtin (1908–1972), one of the foremost graphic designers of the 20th century. During his career, he had an enormous influence on the character of modern design, and more specifically to the point of this column, he was an early developer of what has come to be called scientific visualization. Burtin was born in Ehrenfeld, a suburb of Cologne, the only son of August and Gertrude Bürtin. He successfully began his career in Germany, despite the dismal economic conditions of Germany after World War I and the Great Depression. In the summer of 1938, he fled Germany with his Jewish wife, Hilde Munk (1910–1960) after the rise of the Nazis. One event that must have weighed heavily in the timing of his decision to leave was Josef Goebbels’ 1937 request that he become the design director of the Propaganda Ministry. This request led his wife to ask her American cousin, Max Munk, to sponsor their immigration to the United States. His sponsorship led to permission that arrived just in time, because in 1938, Adolf Hitler repeated Goebbels’ request and Burtin could stall no longer. His departure from Germany was also a departure from most things German; Burtin adamantly refused to speak German. In 1946, he visited Albert Einstein as part of his research for a Fortune article, “The Physics of the Bomb.” Einstein was then actively trying to convince the world of the dangers of nuclear weapons that were not under international control. He would not speak English with Burtin, and Burtin would not speak German with him, so the interview was conducted bilingually. Despite his limited English, Burtin was an almost instantaneous success. Within months of his arrival, he won a contract to design the Federal Works Agency Exhibition for the U.S. Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair. By 1939, he had designed the cover for the World’s Fair issue of The Architectural Forum magazine, which won the Art Directors’ Club medal for cover design. Thus began a rich career, which included a long relationship with Upjohn Pharmaceuticals. During this time,

German-born American graphic designer Will Burtin poses for a portrait in front of a display of his work in the fields of science and medicine, USA, 1950s. (Photo by Arnold Newman/Getty Images)

he was responsible for the design of much of the content of Upjohn’s magazine, Scope, which was focused on communicating technical material to physicians. CHANCE

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Table 1—The Effectiveness of Three Antibiotics Against 16 Bacteria Shown as Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (µg/ml) Antibiotic Bacteria

Penicillin

Aerobacter aerogenes

Streptomycin

870

1

Gram Staining

Neomycin 1.6

negative

1

2

0.02

negative

Brucella anthracis

0.001

0.01

0.007

positive

Diplococcus pneumoniae

0.005

11

10

positive

Escherichia coli

100

0.4

0.1

negative

Klebsiella pneumoniae

850

1.2

1

negative

Mycobacterium tuberculosis

800

5

2

negative

3

0.1

0.1

negative

850

2

0.4

negative

1

0.4

0.008

negative

10

0.8

0.09

negative

Staphylococcus albus

0.007

0.1

0.001

positive

Staphylococcus aureus

0.03

0.03

0.001

positive

1

1

0.1

positive

Streptococcus hemolyticus

0.001

14

10

positive

Streptococcus viridans

0.005

10

40

positive

Brucella abortus

Proteus vulgaris Pseudomonas aeruginosa Salmonella (Eberthella) typhosa Salmonella schottmuelleri

Streptococcus fecalis

The Cell The 1950s were transformational years in biology and, more specifically, 1953 was annus mirabilis. In this one remarkable year, James Watson and Francis Crick published their famous paper on the double helix structure of DNA. In the same issue of Nature, Maurice Wilkins, Alex Stokes, and Herbert Wilson published a paper providing the X-ray crystallographic evidence to support Watson and Crick, and, in that same issue, Rosalind Franklin and Ray Gosling added further support and suggested that the phosphate backbone of the DNA molecule lies on the outside of the structure. A week later, in the next issue of Nature, Watson and Crick added detailed speculation on how the base pairing in the double helix allows DNA to replicate. Information about detailed cellular structure poured from the literature, but because it was hard to visualize, it was hard to integrate. Burtin convinced Upjohn president Jack Gauntlett that it would be worthwhile to fund the construction of a giant (24 feet across and 12 feet high) model of a human red blood cell

My thanks to Stephen Clyman and Steve Goodman for helping track down the meaning of the dependent variable in Burtin’s antibiotic graph and to Editha Chase for helping put everything together. 52

VOL. 22, NO. 1, 2009

that would provide all the details thus far known about it. It contained structures seen in electron microscopes, but not yet explained. It embodied, on a grand scale, modern scientific visualization. Burtin’s cell was unveiled in San Francisco at the 1958 meeting of the American Medical Association. It was the star of the convention and, subsequently, traveled widely.

Impact of Three Antibiotics on a Variety of Bacteria In the post World War II world, antibiotics were called “wonder drugs,” for they provided quick and easy cures for what had previously been intractable diseases. Data were being gathered to aid in learning which drug worked best for which bacterial infection. Being able to see the structure of drug performance from outcome data was an enormous aid for practitioners and scientists, alike. In the fall of 1951, Burtin published a graph showing the performance of the three most popular antibiotics on 16 bacteria. The data used in his display are shown in Table 1. The entries of the table are the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC), a measure of the effectiveness of the antibiotic. The MIC represents the concentration of antibiotic required to prevent growth in vitro. The covariate “gram staining” describes the reaction of the bacteria to Gram staining. Gram-positive bacteria are those that are stained dark blue or violet; Gramnegative bacteria do not react that way.

Myc oba cter ium tube rcul osis

Sa lm on ell as ch ott mu ell eri

e onia neum us p cocc Diplo

ns da iri sv cu oc oc pt re St

Stre pto coc cus hem olyt icus

0.001.

0.1. 1.

aris vulg us e t Pro

10. 100.

Staphylococc us albus

niae Klebsiella pneumo

Penicillin Streptomycin Neomycin

Bruc ella a bortu s

reus h.au Stap

Ps eu do m on as ae ru gin os a

coli

B.a nth rac is

ia ich her Esc

) erthella ella (Eb Salmon typhosa

Ae r o b a cter a erogen es

s ali fec s u cc co to p e Str

Gram-negative Gram-positive

Figure 1. Will Burtin’s diagram comparing the impacts of penicillin, streptomycin, and neomycin on a range of bacteria (Scope, Fall, 1951)

Figure 2. Box plots showing how the log transformation makes the distributions of MIC symmetric

Figure 3. Dot plots that differentiate gram-positive from gramnegative bacteria tell us clearly that penicillin is unique among these three in its differential response to these two classes of bacteria. CHANCE

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Gram-positive bacteria 0.001

0.01

Effectiveness

0.1

Penicillin Streptomycin

1.0

Neomycin

10.0

Streptococcus fecalis

Staphylococcus aureus

Staphylococcus albus

Streptococcus viridans

Diplococcus pneumoniae

Streptococcus hemolyticus

1000.0

Brucella anthracis

100.0

Figure 4. The MICs of three antibiotics on gram-positive bacteria ordered by the efficacy of penicillin

Burtin, who to my knowledge had no training as a statistician, made a variety of wise choices in the display he constructed of these data (Figure 1). His display is a direct lineal descendent of Florence Nightingale’s famous Rose, in which the radii of the segments convey the amount of the data, rather than a traditional pie chart, in which the angle of each segment is the carrier of the information. Burtin saw the huge range of values the data took and realized some sort of re-expression was necessary. He chose a log transformation. Such re-expression is obvious to someone with statistical training, but it is reassuring that a designer should come to the same conclusion. The box plots in Figure 2 show the distributions of performance for each drug after log transform, oriented so better performance is at the top. We see immediately that the transformation worked, as the resulting distributions are symmetric without unduly long tails. In addition, we can see there is far greater variation in the performance of penicillin than in the other two drugs. Why? A dot plot that identifies Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria shows penicillin works far better for Gram-positive bacteria than for Gram-negative, differential performance that is not evident for the other two drugs. Burtin noticed this and visually segregated the bacteria that were Gram-positive from those that were Gram-negative. His resulting display is compact, accurate, and informative, but with the wisdom borne of a half century of work on statistical display and exploratory data analysis, can we improve matters? 54

VOL. 22, NO. 1, 2009

An obvious nit is his omission of a circular reference line at .01. When interpolating between reference points, humans have a tough time with a log scale. Thus, it seems useful to provide as many intermediate waypoints as possible so linear interpolation is not too far off. But, perhaps it isn’t important to judge accurately between .1 and .001. If so, improving the level of visual precision might not be necessary. A place where real improvement may be possible is in the ordering of the bacteria. Let us consider just the Gram-positive bacteria. Suppose we order the graph by the success rate of penicillin. One possible display is shown in Figure 4. Now, we can see clearly that for Gram-positive bacteria— except Streptococcus fecalis—penicillin works well. For Staph infections however, neomycin seems to have an edge. The second panel of this display (shown here as Figure 5) would then be the Gram-negative bacteria, this time ordered by the effectiveness of neomycin. From even a cursory examination of this two-panel display we can easily decide which drug is best for what bacteria. We note that, for these bacteria at least, the other two drugs dominate streptomycin. I contend that this two-panel display, although it lacks the compactness of Burtin’s original design, has a small edge in exposing the underlying structure of drug effectiveness. I suspect the rank order of the bacteria in each panel exposes an underlying molecular structure, but I leave it to others to uncover its meaning. Also, by including the component data, I challenge readers to come up with further improvements

Gram-negative bacteria 0.001

Penicillin

0.01

Streptomycin Neomycin

Effectiveness

0.1

1.0

10.0

Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Aerobacter aerogenes

Klebsiella pneumoniae

Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Escherichia coli

Proteus vulgaris

Salmonella schottmuelleri

Brucella abortus

1000.0

Salmonella (Eberthella) typhosa

100.0

Figure 5. The MICs of three antibiotics on gram-negative bacteria ordered by the efficacy of neomycin

and send them to me, which could easily form the basis of a future column.

Postscript A sensitive reader might plausibly ask why an article honoring Will Burtin would spend much of its time offering suggestions on the improvement of one of his designs. A fine question. An answer, of sorts, is found in a framed letter that hangs next to his daughter, Carol Burtin Fripp’s, bed. It is dated April 18, 1959, on specially designed letterhead of the Type Directors Club of New York and says: Dear Will: This comes from four guys who sat in the 18th row during the forum session. First we are friends who appreciate your work for the TDC; second, we are aware of your talent as designer. But may we help you—and future meetings that you chair—by saying that, to put it plainly on the line, you talk too long. You don’t have to be eternal to be immortal. Your audience will get much more from you if you say more briefly—and more orderly—what you have to say.

Someone should write a letter like this to statisticians.

Further Reading Franklin, R. and Gosling, R.G. (1953) “Molecular Configuration in Sodium Thymonucleate.” Nature, 171:740–741. Nightingale, F. (1858) Notes on Matters Affecting the Health, Efficiency and Hospital Administration of the British Army. London. Remington, R.R. and Fripp, R.S.P. (2007) Design and Science: The Life and Work of Will Burtin. Lund Humphries: Hampshire, England. Watson, J.D. and Crick, F.H.C. (1953) “A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid.” Nature, 171:737–738. Watson, J.D. and Crick, F.H.C. (1953) “Genetical Implications of the Structure of Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid.” Nature, 171:964–967. Wilkins, M. H. F., Stokes, A. R. & Wilson, H. R. (1953). Molecular structure of Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid. Nature, 171, 738-740.

Yours, for a better meeting in the future and for a better Will Burtin who knows when to stop… . Four Friends in the 18th Row who wish you well

Column Editor: Howard Wainer, Distinguished Research Scientist, National Board of Medical Examiners, 3750 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104; [email protected] CHANCE

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