• Question: what is your favorite scientist

    Asked by anon-202837 to Rebecca, Raashid, Matthew, Marie, Hanna, Gareth on 4 Mar 2019. This question was also asked by anon-202544.
    • Photo: Gareth Nye

      Gareth Nye answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      My favourite scientist was a man named John Hunter who was born in Scotland in 1728!

      He was a biologist and doctor who specialised in surgery and anatomy.

      Whats amazing about him is he never completed any studies or went to university he just loved the science of the human body and took every chance he could to get experience!
      Even though he was born ages ago he made a massive contribution to understanding teeth and bones, disease and vaccines, digestion, child development and how the baby grows in the mum as well as treating war related wounds.

    • Photo: Marie Cameron

      Marie Cameron answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      Ooh, tricky, as there are so many to choose from. I might have to go for Marie Curie, and not just because we share the same name! 🙂 She was an incredible chemist/physicist, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize (a really big deal in the science world), and the only person to win two Nobel prizes in different sciences. She was a groundbreaker in so many ways, and really led the way for women in science. She developed the science behind x-rays, and was instrumental in some of the early radiotherapy treatments for cancer. She died from exposure to the radiation that she worked with in her research, so she literally gave her life to science.

    • Photo: Rebecca Gosling

      Rebecca Gosling answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      I would say Alexander Fleming. He is most famous for discovering antibiotics ( the medications we use to treat infections). He made his discovery by accident when he noticed that mould had grown on one of his culture dishes and that this had stopped the bugs from growing. Not all discoveries are planned and not everything we do in science goes as we plan it to and I think this is a reminder of this and how even when things go ‘wrong’ we can learn really important things from it.

    • Photo: Hanna Jeffery

      Hanna Jeffery answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      One of my favourite stories in history lessons at school was the story of Edward Jenner, who discovered in 1796 that cowpox could make people immune to smallpox. He introduced immunisation injections. I love the cartoons that people in the newspapers drew at the time – people growing cows out of their arms! I don’t think they trusted scientists much in those days!

    • Photo: Matthew Smith

      Matthew Smith answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      All of the names mentioned are fantastic scientists but I think I will go for Charles Darwin. He is most famous for proposing the theory of evolution, a principle that has now become a fundamental concept. I think he stands out even more as much of this work stemmed from observing his surroundings and questioning why things were organised in a certain way. This inquisitiveness is a really key trait of all scientists and reminds us that the smallest observation can lead to the biggest discoveries.

    • Photo: Raashid Ali

      Raashid Ali answered on 5 Mar 2019:

      Watson and Crick are my favourite scientists, they discovered the DNA in 1953 and later went on to winning and sharing the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1962.

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