• Question: which scientist in history would you most like to go back in time and meet? and what work did they do?

    Asked by superkingtom to Aled, Ellie, Fiona, Kev, Willem on 18 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Aled Roberts

      Aled Roberts answered on 18 Mar 2014:

      Hi Superkingtom

      I think I would like to go back and meet alexander flemming! He was the discoverer of penicillin and kick started the antibiotic era from what was a very simple observation! He found that mould could kill bacteria due to a substance it was producing! From that he managed to save millions of lives over the years! I would like to talk to him about antibiotic resistance and see if he ever saw it coming! As we are now running out of antibiotics… as they discover it would be nice to have his thoughts on it!

      What about you? Who would you like to meet?

      🙂 Don’t forget to vote! 🙂

    • Photo: Fiona Heesen

      Fiona Heesen answered on 18 Mar 2014:

      Hi superkingtom,

      I would definitely go back and meet Ada Lovelace, an English mathematician who wrote what we consider to be the first computer program in the 1840s! I would love to talk to her about the evolution of computing and get her thoughts on where we might go next 🙂

      Thanks for the question,

      Fiona 🙂

    • Photo: Kevin Arbuckle

      Kevin Arbuckle answered on 18 Mar 2014:

      Alfred Russell Wallace. He came up with the theory of evolution (by natural selection) separately from Darwin, and in fact they both announced their discovery under both of their names. He also studied how animals got to where they are now (such as finding animals that can’t swim on Indonesian islands) and why animals are coloured the way they are. He was also a very interesting person and his field notebooks and diaries record interesting activities such as trips to exotic and dangerous places, interactions with native people from all over the place, and casually shooting orangutans (acceptable back then, even if it isn’t now!).

    • Photo: Eleanor Parker

      Eleanor Parker answered on 19 Mar 2014:

      I love to go back in time and meet Hippocrates, the father of western medicine. He was the first to discover diseases had natural causes rather than being caused by “the gods”. I’d also love to meet Rachel Carson, she was a pioneer in creating awareness for protecting the environment and the fight against pesticides. She also helped create the environmental protection agency (EPA, like from the Simpsons movie).

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