What is it like being a scientist?
Great Fun! Always challenging but always rewarding. If you have an enquiring mind, perhaps as a child you grew up always asking questions such as ‘how does a plant grow?’ or, ‘how does a radio work?’, then being a scientist could be for you. I could not think of a better career, and it is a great privilege. Being a scientist can also take you to wonderful places in the world and lead to working with some very enthusiastic, and interesting people.
What inspired you to become a scientist?
I think a television programme called “A blank on the map” that I saw when I was 6 began my curiosity in the natural world. My school biology teacher who was also a great inspiration; I think everyone can name a teacher who inspired them at some stage. I remember being asked when I was 12 what I wanted to be when I grew up and I replied then that I wanted to be a ‘researcher’, although I am not sure that I really knew what ‘research was’, probably, I just wanted to ‘find things out’. I also knew that I wanted to be a zoologist, and although I am now a molecular biologist, I still study animals.
What is the best thing about being a scientist/ your job?
I can have ideas, test them and if I’m lucky achieve that ‘eureka’ moment when I make a discovery. The science I do also helps us understand the natural world, which is increasingly important as our activities place greater and greater pressures upon natural resources.
If you could go back in time which scientist would you like to meet and what would you ask them?
Actually, two Scientists, one older and one more modern. The older scientist has to be Charles Darwin, perhaps even being with him on the ship HMS Beagle during his voyage of discovery. I would ask him if he would like to travel with me to the present so that I could show him the molecular basis to his theory. The more modern scientist I would like to have met was Richard Feynman who epitomised to me the enquiring, creative and fun mind of a scientist.
What do you do in your free time?
Think! I don’t think scientists ever stop thinking! But I also go camping, hiking, keep a horse, take photographs, play the piano.
What is the first science you remember doing?
It is a tie between boiling the petals of flowers to extract their pigments and then separating the different pigments by chromatography using blotting paper, I think I was about 8 years old, or, around the same time, watching our science teacher climbing a very tall pine tree and carrying a long tube filled with coloured water to demonstrate Torricelli’s vacuum.
What advice would you give a school child who is interested in science?
Work hard and play hard, live life to the full. Never be afraid to ask questions and, when it is time, choose the best university department for the topic you want to study, and the same applies for your PhD. How would I inspire a child or non-scientist? Buy them a microscope or a telescope, or a simple pond net so that they could see new worlds. I would ask them questions about nature, or how things work, or why things are like they are. I would try to make them ‘inquisitive’.
What’s the funniest/strangest/most surprising experience you have had in your career?
I was camping alone in a very remote tropical dry forest and during the night my tent was lit up from the outside with tall shadows of people on the walls with large guns over their shoulders. When I got up in the morning, another scientist had arrived with his team and had set up nets to catch butterflies. The ‘guns’ were just the poles for the nets. You can have a vivid imagination in the middle of the night !
What discovery or invention could you really not live without?
It has to be the ability to record and report information – starting with the written word - as this allows information to be passed reliably from one generation to the next. If you think about it, everything we do relies upon reporting information.
What do you think is the most important thing yet to be discovered/invented?
Whether we are alone in the universe.