Washington, Jan 11 (IANS): An exhibition titled "Sketches of Science: Photo Sessions with Nobel Laureates" that opened at the University of California - Davis campus recently featured some crayon drawings done hastily by some of the most esteemed scientists in the world.

Photographer Volker Steger decided to put the Nobel laureates' colouring skills to the test in order to capture something "spontaneous".

Each laureate was provided with a handful of crayons and a large sheet of paper and was asked to sketch out his or her Nobel Prize-winning discovery, LiveScience reported.

"All the laureates I met for a photo shoot were quite surprised by my exceptional request because I did not inform them beforehand," Steger said.

The laureates' approach to Steger's request varied widely.

Carlo Rubbia - winner of the 1984 Nobel Prize for physics for work that led to the discovery of W and Z bosons - drew himself cooking up atoms in a frying pan.

Virologist Christiane Nusslein-Volhard drew a swarm of fruit flies.

Nusslein-Volhard won the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1995 for her research on the role of genetics in embryonic development.

"But all of the photos do have at least one thing in common: they all feature 'playful people'," Olov Amelin, director of the Nobel Museum in Stockholm, was quoted as saying.