Here is the Yeard

Terminalbeard (of terminalbeard.wordpress.com) recently shared some fascinating thoughts and measurements after a full year of unrestricted facial hair growth at his internet blog.  He has not limited his quest for terminal length solely to whiskers, however; TB began his journey twelve months ago with a completely blank canvas: head, chin, even eyebrows.  The resulting growth measurements will surely prove useful to research here, at The Center for Beard Related Studies, but we imagine that, as TB’s fieldwork progresses, the rest of the scientific and academic community will take note.  To read more of the journey, and see the measured results for yourself, please head over to Terminalbeard’s Here is the Yeard.  Beard on, indeed.

Beard of Action: Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann

Consummate beardivist and scientific revolutionary, Boltzmann was instrumental in furthering Man’s understanding of both statistical mechanics and the modern atomic theory of matter, despite a contemporary academic environment that frequently resisted or misunderstood his ground-breaking work.  His speculation about the nature of chaos, disorder and the physical world, are said to be reflected in the unruly, yet mysteriously methodical shape of his beard.  Boltzmann, long suffering from his own chaotic emotional fragility, unfortunately took his own life before seeing his greatest work recognized by his peers.  For his tremendous contributions to the fields of thermodynamics (see eponymous Boltzmann Constant) and philosophy (see Boltzmann Brain), we hereby name Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann an inherently indeterministic Beard of Action.

The Beard in Psychiatry

Reprinted with author’s permission from The Journal of Humanistic Psychiatry Vol 1, Issue 1. Final draft to be published via www.humanisticpsychiatry.com, early 2013.
 

Fernando Espi Forcen, M.D., Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Chicago, United States.
 

“Why do many psychiatrists grow a beard?”  This is a typical question that we commonly get after revealing our professional identity. One could make a case that psychiatrists grow beards to emulate some of the most important historical figures in the field, or to hide their emotions and maintain a position of neutrality while in therapy with their patients.

Beard of Action: Walter “Walt” Whitman

As a medical volunteer during the American Civil War, a school teacher and one of America’s most celebrated poets, Whitman’s pursuit of public lives was rivaled only by his much storied pursuit of private life.  Without question, his was a beard that saw through the surface of humanity, into the clandestine crux of culture and spirituality.  Thus we present this Beard of Action’s When I Heard the Learn’d Astromoner:

When I heard the learned astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

[Please excuse the line breaks]

LOW: That Wikileaks Site

Beard of Action: William Thomson, Lord Kelvin

Born William Thomson, this Belfastian Beardivist was later elevated to The House of Lords as Baron Kelvin of Largs for his achievements in thermodynamics.  Few feats of modern mechanical or electrical engineering are performed without due respect paid to one of the many eponyms named for this prolific Beard of Action.