• Question: Who Is your favorite scientist?

    Asked by fordprefect101 to Aled, Ellie, Fiona, Kev, Willem on 11 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Kevin Arbuckle

      Kevin Arbuckle answered on 11 Mar 2014:

      It depends really what you mean. If you mean who in history has done really fantastic work then a lot of people deserve mention. Of course the obvious answer here (as a biologist) is Charles Darwin, but Alfred Russell Wallace and Henry Bates (amongst others) should be recognised too.

      If you mean who has influenced me most as a scientist, then perhaps I would have to say Graeme Ruxton, Rod Page, and Andrea Fidgett. All three have supervised research projects when I was at university (before I got my masters degree) and had a big impact on my career. Andrea massively helped to make my scientific writing better, which is an important part of science. Rod introduced me properly to evolutionary trees and how they can be used to study evolution, and I now use these in most of my research and think of it as one of my main specialties. Graeme is a legend in his own right. He gave me a lot of encouragement and is very generous with ideas (of which he has many!) and is a really nice person to speak to.

    • Photo: Fiona Heesen

      Fiona Heesen answered on 11 Mar 2014:

      Hi fordprefect101,

      Great question! I think my favourite scientist is a woman called Ada Lovelace. She was an English mathematician who helped invent what we now consider to be the first computer program – all the way back in the 1850s! Although she obviously wasn’t able to use a computer herself, she designed an algorithm that was meant to be run on a machine, or an early model for a computer.

      Thanks for the question 🙂

      Fiona

    • Photo: Willem Heijltjes

      Willem Heijltjes answered on 11 Mar 2014:

      Hi Fordprefect!

      My favourite scientist is Kurt Gödel, a German mathematician. In the 1930s he proved that to show that mathematics is “complete”, you need a stronger mathematics. And to show that the stronger mathematics is “complete”, you need a still stronger mathematics… etc!

      What it means, that our mathematics is not “complete”, is that there are things that are true, but we can never prove they are true! (Is your mind blown yet?)

      Here is a picture of Gödel with another famous scientist 🙂

    • Photo: Eleanor Parker

      Eleanor Parker answered on 12 Mar 2014:

      I think my favourite scientist from history is Charles Darwin. He really is the king of historical biologists. I actually grew up near the house he used to live in, Down House, and it’s still a place I love to visit. It terms of more recent scientists, I think David Attenborough and Gerald Durrell, because both inspired me to love biology and both brought the importance and the wonder of the natural world to the general public through their TV shows and books.
      I also really admire Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell. I recommend everyone google her and watch her Christmas lecture series.

Comments