• Question: who is your favourite scientist who ever lived?

    Asked by samandaashishlgs to Carys, Chris, Jeremy, Katherine, Simone on 16 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Katherine Jones

      Katherine Jones answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      I like a lot of different scientists, but I think I would choose Marie Curie. She was the first person ever to get two Nobel Prizes, one for chemistry and one for physics. This is amazing because Nobel Prizes are awards for major advances in science, and you only get one in each subject every year. And she won two! She was also the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize.

      Marie Curie made advances in understanding radiation, and she discovered two new elements on the periodic table (radium and polonium). These discoveries helped other scientists to discover how to attack cancer with radiotherapy, and also to work out the structure of an atom. But what was also really impressive about her was that she did all this whilst most people in science didn’t think that women should be doing scientific research – so as well as being very clever, she also must have been very determined.

    • Photo: Carys Cook

      Carys Cook answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      That has to be Carl Sagan, who was less know for his scientific achievements and more know for his ability to communicate how wonderful science was to many millions of people through his various TV programmes and books. Our generations probably arent too familiar with him, but just ask your parents if they remember him. The character Spock from Star Trek was actually based on him! He was the David Attenborough of the 70’s! What a legend.

      Another favourite was a lady called Mary Anning – she was a famous paleontologist who lived in Lyme Regis in Dorset in the 19th Century – the famous limmerik ‘she sells sea shells on the sea shore’ was based on her! Mary Anning was a pretty awesome woman, although had a very difficult time being recognised as anything but a dinosaur bone hunter because women were not considered capable of being scientists back then…how rude!

    • Photo: Christopher Phillips

      Christopher Phillips answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      My favorite scientist has got to be the late Carl Sagan.
      He was the first scientist to really try and engage with the public. He made science seem easy and watching him on TV helped me understand a lot of the really far out space science that scares people off becoming an astronomer. He was the king!

    • Photo: Jeremy Green

      Jeremy Green answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      I have a real soft spot for Galileo, even though I’m a biologist and he was a physicist. He discovered early laws of motion, refined the telescope and did some serious astronomy. Not only that, but he had to cope with the powerful Catholic Church who, at that time, thought his discoveries were against the church. Finally, what many people don’t know about him, is that he wrote really accessible books for the general public, often as a kind of play in with three characters – one on his side, a bad guy and the third a kind of hero tempted by both sides. They would debate the big questions of the universe. Very cool.

      I’ve come to appreciate Charles Darwin more and more just recently. He made the natural living world into something that we could study in a really scientific way. Although other people had similar ideas as his at the same time, he was not only slightly ahead of them but he did an amazingly good job of fitting all the pieces of Evolution by Natural Selection together. And, like Galileo, he wrote books that were accessible to non-specialists.

    • Photo: Simone Bijvoet

      Simone Bijvoet answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      I think I would go for Jean Piaget, mainly because he was the person who got me really excited about child development and psychology in general when I had to give a presentation about him when I was 13.

      Jean Piaget is best known for his theory on developmental stages that all kids have to go through before they get to understand abstract thinking. He also used some really fun games to study these changes. In one game for example Piaget had two glasses, one tall thin glass filled with water and one short broader glass that was empty. He poured the water in the shorter glass and asked a child whether there now was more, less, or the same amount of water. Children around 5 years old would say there was less water although in reality there was still the same amount but it just looked lower. Kids of younger age didn’t understand this ‘principle of conservation’ yet.

      Also another reason he was very important for psychology is that he started using very precise observations when studying child behaviour. Something that is still very important to make your research reliable.

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