SCIENTISTS at Rothamsted Research are being turned into comic book characters to encourage people to take an active interest in science.

The crop research centre in Harpenden is developing five comic strips, each featuring a scientist at Rothamsted, describing their research work on bacteria, beetles, butterflies, moths and sulphur.

The driving force behind the project is Ms Emma Napper, a PhD student studying the interaction between rare butterflies and ants at Rothamsted the largest agricultural research institute in the country.

Ms Napper, who also appears in one of the comic strips, said: "I wanted to produce the comics as I think a lot of interesting and diverse science goes on at Rothamsted Research.

"This is a different way to tell people about it.

"A lot of people know about the GM crop work that we do but that's just one of many projects we have running.

"The cartoons will be aimed at youngsters with a reading age of 12 to 15 but will be interesting to a much wider audience."

The project, to develop resources and activities to encourage people to take an interest in science, is funded by Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

The comic is created by Phil Elliott, who has worked as a freelance illustrator since 1984, and has had his illustrations commissioned by Fleetway and Marvel Comics in the UK and Dark Horse Comics and Fantagraphics Books in America.

He has also had his work published in Ghostbusters comics and had a regular comic strip in NME and Melody Maker.

Ms Lucy Gilliam, a PhD student studying bacteria at Rothamsted, said the cartoons were a fantastic way of opening science up to the community.

Rothamsted plan to produce a comic book containing all five cartoons and a general comic about Rothamsted for schools in the area.

People can ask the scientists questions about their work and they will reply.

Contact them by e-mail at rothamsted.stories@bbsrc.ac.uk.

October 1, 2002 18:30