The strange tale of the Snowflake Man

Using chilled velvet, tiny wood chips and turkey feathers, Wilson Bentley caused a flurry with his pioneering pictures of these miniature wonders. His results are astonishing – so why was he seen as an oddball outsider?The structure of a snowflake is one of the most beautiful things in nature. Every flake is different, they say; each one an intricate lattice of frozen water molecules with spectacular symmetry. Everybody knows this. When children make paper snowflakes they cut them out to m