• Question: Have you met any famous scientists?

    Asked by anon-175378 to Thomas, hayleypincott, Ella, Alison, Alex, David on 12 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Alison Hughes

      Alison Hughes answered on 12 Jun 2018:

      I have met, and worked for, a famous scientist in my field and have attended a seminar by a Nobel Prize winner, unfortunately I did not meet them. Marine Natural Products Chemistry is an area of science that really only began in the 1950s with improvements to SCUBA diving. Paul Scheuer was one of the first chemists to study the chemistry of the marine world, and his PhD student, Bill Baker, has continued that research. Bill took studying marine environments to the extreme when he began diving in Antarctica in the 1980s. I worked with Bill on Antarctic research in Florida for two years before beginning my PhD

    • Photo: David Mills

      David Mills answered on 12 Jun 2018:

      I met Sir Harry Kroto a few years ago – he won the Nobel prize for the discovery of Fullerenes (C60). He was a very keen teacher and well likes by his students.

      He used to tell us that he couldn’t ever say when he was visiting friends as a university, if the administration heard he was going to visit he’d be invited to give talks, hand out prizes and suchlike because he got the Nobel Prize, he couldn’t just meet friends for lunch unless he arrived unannounced.

    • Photo: Hayley Pincott

      Hayley Pincott answered on 12 Jun 2018:

      I’ve never been fortunate enough to meet a famous scientist however as I work in such a specialist area the pathologists I work with are very well known in their field and also many years ago a forensic dentistry unit was based at University Dental Hospital and they worked on some famous cases.

    • Photo: Ella Mercer

      Ella Mercer answered on 13 Jun 2018:

      I haven’t met any famous scientists but when I studied abroad in Sweden I went to a talk by all of the Nobel Prize winners in 2016 … that was really cool!

    • Photo: Thomas Perriment

      Thomas Perriment answered on 18 Jun 2018:

      I’ve met some amazing people at conferences! The most famous were Robert Winston (medical doctor, professor, and teacher), Michael Palin (formerly of Monty Python, and at the time President of the Royal Geographical Society), and a number of famous explorers! All very inspirational people.

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