San Francisco

An unusual and highly regarded programme to train scientific illustrators at the University of California (UC) has suffered a setback under state budget cuts. Over the summer it will move from the university's campus in Santa Cruz to its less prestigious extension programme nearby.

The switch illustrates how the less well-known aspects of the scientific enterprise suffer first in lean times. “It's an amazing programme. It has produced brilliant artists,” says Malcolm Margolin, a publisher of natural-history books in Berkeley, California. “But illustration is a neglected art in the age of photography.”

Science illustrators occupy a niche in science communication that photography cannot fill. For instance, in drawing wildlife they can highlight several features of an animal, such as the details of a feather and the shape of an eye, that a photographer would have difficulty capturing in a single image. Illustrators can also render extinct creatures — the four-winged dinosaur on the cover of Nature on 23 January 2003, for example, was drawn by a graduate of the Santa Cruz programme.

Top drawer? Scientific illustration can be used to emphasize details. Credit: RACHEL ROGGE

Illustrators can also draw conceptually difficult processes that are too small to see directly, such as protein synthesis or chemical catalysis. They can produce vibrant landscapes from the murky footage returned by submarines in deep ocean trenches or the transmissions of a martian lander. Their drawings illustrate textbooks, museum exhibits, scientific papers and popular magazines. But the Santa Cruz programme is one of only a handful to train such people.

The programme's move was forced by state budget cuts, says David Kliger, dean of physical and biological sciences at UC Santa Cruz. It was more expensive than other programmes because it retained three faculty members to teach only ten students. “It was a luxury we couldn't afford right now,” he says.

Although Kliger says he does not expect the move to adversely affect the programme, former students worry that reduced access to campus libraries and labs may be a problem. “It was important to be on campus,” says 2004 programme graduate Amadeo Bachar, now an intern at National Geographic in Washington. “At least half of us were working with research professors.”

The move may already have cost the programme some applicants. Only 20 applications had arrived by the 15 May deadline, less than half the usual number, says Andrea Michels, manager of the science-communication department.