Friedrich Schmidt

The annals of scientific have produced some fine beards; Hippocrates, Pythagoras, Leonardo da Vinci, Charles Darwin, but even those scientists who are less well known have been able to contribute to the art of masculinity.

Take Herr Schmidt, for example. Surely, you have never heard of him but he was academician extraordinarious of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Director of the Mineralogical Museum in St. Petersburg, he received awards from many institutions and societies, the highest being the Wollaston Medal from the Geological Sociey of London in 1890. He was a prolific writer and his publication list numbers more than 200 titles.

I learned of Herr Schmidt and his fine beard while searching the archives for information of trilobites. The Schmidt Trilobite Collection, housed in several museums in St. Petersburg and Moscow, amount to 1408 specimens representing what when he collected them were 255 different species of which 120 were new.

Does he not look filled with the joy of discovery?

Hurrah for Friedrich Schmidt! Hurrah for trilobites! Hurrah for science! Hurrah for beards.

Wheelmen

Other venues have played on a perceived deep philosophical divide between those gentlemen with only mustaches and those with full beards. It is our assertion that an abundance or dearth of facial hair is part of a broad spectrum of masculinity and there is no reason for the bearded and the beardless not to be friends.

Here then is proof of such comradery. Two fine gentlemen sharing a lunch on a country ride, dressed identically, their matched velocipedes waiting to carry them on their brotherly way once their repast is complete.