A Scientist and his T-shirts

When I was a student, university t-shirts were a part of the uniform. They were cheap, didn't need to be ironed, and most of us had bodies that didn't protrude in unfortunate places. When I started to work and travel, I collected these flags of conformity, including a treasured forest green what-used-to-be-called bunny hug, now with the more macho name of hoody. It said UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN. I loved that word, Saskatchewan. When I went overseas to study in the early eighties, I was distressed to learn that at least in my host country, the university Tee did not yet exist. And nobody could pronounce Saskatchewan.

Science t-shirts didn't really exist then either, beyond the institutional ones that aligned you with a particular department, say Physics or Chemistry. In Saskatoon, I found a company that made customized t-shirts for baseball teams and other clubs. I borrowed a joke from a newsletter of so-called teaching humour and then spent hours pencilling in a design that could be transferred to silk screen. There was a bulk discount, so I made a list of every biologist I knew at that time, not so many, and placed my order. Recently, about 35 years later, I visited an old professor of mine and there on his memorabilia wall was a photo of him wearing that t-shirt.

My first commercially produced scientific t-shirt was purchased from National Public Radio, another forest green one (yes, a pattern of repeated behaviour) with STOP PLATE TECTONICS in big white letters across the chest. One colleague interpreted this as the ultimate futile activist cause, but I just thought it was funny. I wore it one day as I walked around in Campbell River, BC, waiting for my cousin to finish work. Near the end of the day, I was on the pier and a man asked me, "Are you on some kind of team?" I was puzzled, and answered, "No." "I've seen a whole bunch of you guys around town today wearing that t-shirt," he continued, "so I figured it must be some kind of team." I laughed and explained my hyperactive walking tour, suggesting it was unlikely that more than one person would have this same t-shirt in such a small town. He then became offended that I thought plate tectonics was funny... this was earthquake territory.

One grows out of such t-shirts of course, as bellies bulge and job etiquette begins to demand that work shirts at least have collars. We graduate then to conference t-shirts, most designed by grad students trying to outdo the previous year's winner, and as I started attending conferences, I started accumulating these. The colours became more and more garish (there are a lot of colour blind scientists) and it was more and more difficult to find suitable situations to wear them. Then the BLACK t-shirt fad came in... and I really don't look good in black. A close colleague started producing a series of black t-shirts with line drawings, first for conferences, and then limited editions for authors of papers in a theme-oriented journal he was publishing. Nice idea, but these days I find myself wearing them mostly as pyjamas, or when I'm painting and don't mind some splashing, so people won't ask me what the heck that t-shirt is about.

Does anyone collect such t-shirts seriously? Has the Internet age made it possible for such collectables to accrue any value? For the average scientist, I doubt it. Perhaps I could try auctioning off my old society t-shirts at the next conference, but I don't think the thought of owning clothing with my dried sweat would be as appealing as possessing fragments of concert clothing from some pop star. The current popularity of the Big Bang Theory with all of the colourful and witty shirts worn by Sheldon and Leonard, makes me wonder whether there might a renaissance in the commercial world of scientific fashion. Indeed, there is, but you won't find it on the BBT website. This past Christmas, I found the CafePress website, full of punny scientific ware, and I bought my microbially inclined nephew a "You can't B. cereus" t-shirt. I wonder if he'll be annoyed if he has to explain what it means...