• Question: How did you end up becoming a scientist?

    Asked by anon-255874 on 2 Jun 2020. This question was also asked by anon-257890.
    • Photo: Scott Lawrie

      Scott Lawrie answered on 2 Jun 2020:

      I always wanted to be a scientist, since I was very little! There’s actually a little story about this on my profile 🙂 Basically, I wanted to be the inventor of Star Trek’s ‘warp drive’ so I went to study astrophysics at university. After finishing my degree, I went straight into work at the UK’s biggest national laboratory and have been there ever since. I love it!

    • Photo: Marios Kalomenopoulos

      Marios Kalomenopoulos answered on 2 Jun 2020:

      I became a scientist because of my school physics teacher!
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      Originally, I was thinking of doing something rather applied, like mechanical engineering, but at about when I was 15-16 years old, we had an amazing physics teacher at school that really infuenced me.
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      The subject was super interesting and he explained thing in a very nice way, from first principles! It was like physics could explain everything!
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      So I changed my mind, and I decided I wanted to become a physicist and learn more about the world!

    • Photo: Susan Cartwright

      Susan Cartwright answered on 29 Jun 2020:

      I always wanted to be one, from as far back as I can remember (in fact, from before I really understood that “being a scientist” was an actual job). I was not aware of it at the time, but with hindsight I think that the fact that my father was a scientist (an industrial chemist) was a big influence. I’m afraid school wasn’t: most of my science teachers were not very good.

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