Part of Max Finger-Bou’s winning cover. Why would a scientist honour their musical hero on the cover of their dissertation? There are plenty of reasons not to. Despite all those considerations, Max Finger-Bou went ahead and did just that. With success, his cover won him the 2023 Resource Cover Award. In no small part, thanks to the jury.
Never before was the outcome this near a tie. Finger-Bou won the jury’s favour quite convincingly. The jury comprised outgoing rector Arthur Mol, conservator Special Collections Forum Library Anneke Groen, creative designer Alfred Heikamp, beadle Renata Michel, and PhD candidate Chrysanthi Pachoulide of the PhD Network Wageningen.
Saxophone
‘An intriguing cover that prompts you to look twice’, Groen says, describing the winning cover. ‘The saxophone is great and links science to the personal. I like it. It invites you to read!’ ‘Coltrane, I am a fan also’, Heikamp says, who, incidentally, did not put Finger-Bou at the top of his list.
An intriguing cover that invites you to look twice
Anneke Groen, conservator Special Collections WUR Library
FFinger-Bou’s dissertation, Giant Steps, is about the production of proteins in bacteria. Giant Steps is also the title of a record by sax player John Coltrane, which loosely inspired the cover. Finger-Bou makes fun of himself in the design of the i in Giant: the dot is made up of the words “not so”. His steps were not so gigantic.
An online poll put Lette Hogeling’s colourful cover, Embracing Complexity, at number one. Her cover features a stylised sun. The dissertation deals with how vulnerable families may be prompted towards a healthier diet. ‘The best in terms of design’, says Heikamp. ‘But it is not entirely clear what the illustration refers to.’
Public vote
That lack of clarity is probably what caused Hogeling to score lower in the eyes of the jury. But others had fewer issues. Hogeling won the public vote, ahead of Identifying the cold spots and hot spots of crops, pests and diseases by Chinese Bingxin Wang and More than Florigen by Italian Francesca Bellinazzo. Finger-Bou came in fourth in the online poll.
In the final result, Finger-Bou surpassed Bingxin Wang and Floortje Kanits, who share second place. Kanits’ Sleep Safe on infant mortality came in second for the jury. ‘First by a landslide, in my opinion’, says juror Michel. ‘The dissertation honours all children who died in infancy. The cover is heart-wrenchingly difficult to look at.’
