• Question: Do you wish to follow in the footsteps of some of the great scientists like Albert Einstein?

    Asked by ollymursforever to Christine, Edd, Jess, Nicolas, Zara on 14 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Edward Codling

      Edward Codling answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Definitely!

      Pretty much all the science we do is built upon work that other scientists have done previously. When we are gone then hopefully scientists in the future will look at our work and also find it useful. In this way, the sum of human knowledge slowly increases and over time we should understand more about the world around us.

      Einstein did some great work that actually relates to some of my research. It is not what he is famous for, but in his early studies he did some work on ‘Brownian motion’. This is when you can see very irregular random movements of pollen grains in a dish of water. The movements are due to random collisions with the tiny particles of water that themselves are colliding randomly.

      There is a great video (with music!) here:
      http://www1.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?title=Brownian_motion&video_id=21617

      The work I did on my PhD developed some of these ideas about random movements but I applied the ideas to animal movements not just random particles!

      I actually had to reference Einstein in a couple of my papers from my PhD, so in a sense I have definitely followed in his footsteps – and moved (a tiny little bit) further forward!

    • Photo: Zara Gladman

      Zara Gladman answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Well, I definitely don’t have the same IQ as Einstein (although sometimes my hair is as crazy as his when I wake up in the morning) so I’m not very optimistic about going down in history as one of the greatest scientists of all time 😉

      HOWEVER, if my relatively small contribution to science helps answer some useful questions, then that’s good enough for me!

    • Photo: Nicolas Biber

      Nicolas Biber answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Einstein, Darwin, Newton and many more, they all were remarkable scientists and they set a great example. But I do not wish to follow in the footsteps of any particular one of them. I find them all inspiring, it would be really hard to pick one. And it’s really difficult to try to live up to someone, to try being like someone else. I rather want to pursue my goals in the same way these great men did.

    • Photo: Jessica Chu

      Jessica Chu answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      I would say Dr Marshall is pretty brave, basically no one believed that he has found a cancer causing bacterium so he had to swallow a life sample of the bacterium just to prove his point!!

      I don’t think I will have that much courage to do that but I think soemtimes in science you have other good scientists that may disagree with your work and it is important (within reason) if you really believe in what you are doing is working, stick to it don’t let others put you down!
      But it is also important to take advice from others because there is always someone out there who knows much much more about it- in my research anyway!

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