• Question: Who is your favourite scientist? (past, present or future)

    Asked by kiwicles to Davie, Gemma, James P, James V, Nuala on 26 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by xlaurax, akhisam786, molly97.
    • Photo: James Pope

      James Pope answered on 26 Jun 2012:

      Hi kiwicles,

      I guess I don’t have just one favourite scientist. In terms of the past, I think how people like Archamedies, Newton and Marie Curie discovered things when we knew so little is just incredible. They moved the planet on so far and will be remembered for ever.

      Living scientists that I really look up to are Brian Cox, because I think the way he gets people interested in science with his energy is inspirational for me, because I do a lot of work like that going into schools and talking about science, and having a career in science.

      But in my field, my favourite scientists are James Hansen (from NASA) and the late Stephen Schnedier (who died last year). Those two men have done so much for getting the idea of climate change and global warming moving in the 1980’s when no one knew about it. They started the field I work in and have kept going ever since then. Without their determination who knows where we would be with respect to climate change, probably far worse off than we are now.

      Sadly I have only met James Hansen once, I haven’t met the others, which is a shame, although a friend of mine is the former PhD student of Brian Cox, I keep trying to get her to set me up to meet him!

      Who is your favourite scientist?

    • Photo: Gemma Purser

      Gemma Purser answered on 26 Jun 2012:

      I think Marie Curie was an amazing lady, when I was in Poland I went to visit where she lived in Warsaw. She discovered the radioactive element called Polonium, which she named after the country she was born in, Poland. She actually died of a condition brought on by years of exposure to radiation, so really she actually lived and died in persuit of her science!

    • Photo: James Verdon

      James Verdon answered on 26 Jun 2012:

      Hi kiwicles,
      I was always really inspired by the physicists who developed relativity and quantum mechanics in the early 20th century. Albert Einstein is the most famous, but there were many others, including Niels Bohr, Paul Dirac, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrodinger, Louis De Broglie, Wolfgang Pauli. You might recognise some of these names, but probably not all of them. But the work they did completely revolutionised our understanding of the way the universe works – they were really outstanding.

      I’m not a biologist at all, but I also have a huge amount of respect for Charles Darwin, who developed the theory of evolution. The evidence and data that he gathered completely contradicted his pre-existing views about life (he was originally from a very religious family). Rather than reject the evidence and stick to his beliefs, he changed his mind, and realised that you can’t disagree with evidence – if evidence contradicts what you think is true, then what you think must be wrong. This is one of the fundamental principles of science – you collect data and evidence, and you base your theories on that. If the evidence shows that a theory is wrong, you have to reject that theory – you can’t ignore evidence.

      My favourite scientists who study the earth are the people who developed the idea of plate tectonics in the 1950s and 1960s – Drummond Matthews, Fred Vine and Dan MacKenzie. Plate tectonics is fundamental to the study of earthquakes, so those guys are really important, but you probably won’t have heard of them.

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