• Question: Why did you become scientists?!!!!

    Asked by Tobs124 to Chris, Josh, Rebecca, Rob, Susan on 15 Jun 2015. This question was also asked by tom, Gizmo020227, Im Mr Khan's Botoi, 514hafc29.
    • Photo: Rebecca Dewey

      Rebecca Dewey answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      I became a scientist because I want to get involved in increasing how much knowledge there is in the world. I want to find out about things that are of interest to other people, and then I will be remembered as the person who found that thing out. I want to make the world a bit better by hopefully making people’s lives a bit better. If I can do that by making someone live a little bit longer or making someone hear a little bit better or helping someone understand why their brain is different, then I will be very happy!

    • Photo: Chris Armstrong

      Chris Armstrong answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      Oo cracker of a question.

      You know those kids obsessed with puzzles? Who would finish their mum’s Sudoku when she turned her back and actually enjoyed maths.. yeah I was one of those. As I grew up I realised the best place to find puzzles that didn’t have answers in the back of a book was science. I like the idea of figuring something out for the first time, to be that guy that writes the answer in the back of a book.

    • Photo: Rob Temperton

      Rob Temperton answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      I did a physics degree because I liked the subject at school. I carried on and did research stuff because I enjoyed my undergraduate project (trying to make super cheap solar cells using blackberry juice!). I am now not so in love with hard core physics. I now like more interdisciplinary stuff and work on the interface between physics and chemistry. I have also collaborated with people working in bio and pharmacy departments.

      I was also probably highly influenced by my parents. My mum is a science teacher and my dad is a medical physicist… although I never did fall in love with medical physics!

      So far in life, I have got away with doing what I enjoy. This is advice I would give to anyone – pursue an area that you love.

      Rob

    • Photo: Susan Cartwright

      Susan Cartwright answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      I find this one quite hard to answer, because it was *always* what I intended to do, so I can’t now remember what made me think that way when I was 6!

      Probably a lot of it was down to my father, who was an industrial chemist (he worked for ICI) and had been an RAF radio mechanic during the second world war. My mother had also been a lab technician before she married my dad (this was in 1953, when it was standard practice for women to stop work once they married), so it was a very science-oriented household. I enjoyed reading about science (and science fiction) from the age of 7 or 8, and it just became a settled fact that I wanted to do science when I grew up. I think it’s basically because I like to know how things work, and I like solving problems.

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