Google's doodle was launched last night as a tribute to Robert Bunsen of Bunsen burner fame. He is best know for being a chemist and investigated emission spectra of heated elements. Wikipedia describes Bunsen with the following: Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen was a German chemist. He investigated emission spectra of heated elements, and discovered caesium (in 1860) and rubidium (in 1861) with Gustav Kirchhoff. Bunsen developed several gas-analytical methods, was a pioneer in photochemistry, and did early work in the field of organoarsenic chemistry. With his laboratory assistant, Peter Desaga, he developed the Bunsen burner, an improvement on the laboratory burners then in use. The Bunsen–Kirchhoff Award for spectroscopy is named after Bunsen and Kirchhoff.

What is so cool about the doodle is the animation and they are not using flash or javascript, but sprites. Very cool. very browser friendly and no chance for malware injections. Wikipedia defines sprites as: In computer graphics, a sprite (also known by other names; see Synonyms below) is a two-dimensional image or animation that is integrated into a larger scene. Initially used to describe graphical objects handled separately of the memory bitmap of a video display, the term has since been applied more loosely to refer to various manner of graphical overlays.

See the google sprite below.