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Asked by SD1901 to Anna, James, Joe, Leonie, Olivia on 16 Mar 2015.
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Joe Spencer answered on 16 Mar 2015:
I think my favourite scientist is a combination of Tesla, Hawkin and Darwin.
Tesla: Because he was ahead of his time and paved the way for a revolution of technology that we have today
Hawking: Because he’s alive today and continues to inspire people
Darwin: As he wasn’t afraid to go against the grain of thought with this theories, depsite being laughed and and ridiculed he stuck to his guns about evolution and time has shown him to be right.Although no one inspired me to do science, i got into science because of my own motivation and desires.
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James Pope answered on 16 Mar 2015:
Hi SD1901,
My favourite scientist is Alan Turing. I only came across the work of Alan Turing after I started working with climate models and super computers, but basically he invented computers.
He was starting out in his career in computers when World War II began. He worked at Bletchley Park, part of the team tasked to break the German Enigma code. Despite strong opposition, Turing stuck to his guns and designed a computer to crack the enigma machine. Whilst enigma had been cracked by Polish mathematicians already, Turing’s machine did it in a way that crunched through the messages so fast that we knew exactly what the Germans were planning in almost real time.
Cracking Enigma is estimated to have knocked 2 years off the length of the war, without doubt Alan Turing was a real war hero, but his work was so secret it was not revealed for 50 years!
After the war, he continued his work in computers. Sadly though he committed suicide in 1954, 2 years after being convicted of being gay and forced to be “treated”. I often wonder how far behind our society is in terms of computers because he killed himself.
Alan Turing is probably one of the fathers of our digital and computerised age, he helped us win WWII and therefore is my favourite scientist.
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Leonie Oostwoud Wijdenes answered on 16 Mar 2015:
My favourite scientist is David Franklin. Not only is he a great scientist in my opinion, he’s also a very nice person and always happy to answer any questions! I didn’t know him before I started working in my field, and I don’t think he’s know outside his field, but one of the first great papers I read about the topic of my PhD was his work. Since then I’ve met him a couple of times and he’s always been very friendly and helpful.
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Olivia Lynes answered on 16 Mar 2015:
I don’t have just one favourite scientist, I love discovering new scientists and what they did, especially a hundred years ago when equipment was severely lacking compared to what we have today. The top two of the moment:
Marie Cure- She discovered two chemical elements Radium and Polonium, she carried out the first research into the tratement of tumors with radiation, and she’s the only person who win a Nobel Prize in both physics and Chemistry. Pretty Awesome for someone around before Women were allowed to graduate from many universities. There are some great quotes attributed to her as well-
“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more so that we may fear less.”
“Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.”
Another great woman is Ada Lovelace often referred to as the first computer programmer (although computers weren’t around in her time). She was a mathematician and wrote the algorithms for two machines which were capable of solving problems. In the same way that my supercomputers solve the chemical problems I set them.
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