• Question: Who's your favourite scientist?

    Asked by WillTDaBeastAndLucyO to Scott, Ry, Maggie, Hannah, Daniel on 7 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Maggie Lieu

      Maggie Lieu answered on 7 Nov 2017:

      My favourite scientist is Dava Newman, she’s my role model because growing up everyone said I would be the first person to design a pink space suit (I loved space and fashion!). Anyway Dava is a Professor at MIT who works on designing space suits for astronauts to help them manoeuvre around in space and to ease some of the problems that astronauts typically face, like lack of gravity and back pain. Also she’s a female in a male dominated field AND she used to be the deputy administrator of NASA. I think Dava is the boss!

    • Photo: Ry Cutter

      Ry Cutter answered on 7 Nov 2017:

      Alive, Margret Geller. She has made a lot of discoveries in astrophysics, one of the most talked about is the ‘giant wall’ which is the largest known structure in the universe. A lot of crazy theories were born because of that. For me, her discovery of hypervelocity stars (stars that travel through space really quickly) was really inspiring. Hyper velocity stars get there speed by being ‘kicked’ by the gravity of a heavy object like a black hole.

      My favourite of all time is Richard Feynman. He was a theoretical physicist, but he was a super chill guy and was really good at explaining very difficult concepts. They still use his teachings today he was that great a teacher.

    • Photo: Hannah Middleton

      Hannah Middleton answered on 8 Nov 2017:

      I reckon I would choose Jocelyn Bell Burnell. She is the person who discovered the first pulsar in 1967. Plus I got to meet her a little while ago!

      Pulsars are rotating neutrons stars, which are very dense stars at the end of their lives. They are called pulsars because they “pulse” – each time they rotate we see a flash of radio waves from them, just like a lighthouse. Here’s a neat animation of one

      Pulsars are really interesting, but they can be used to do lots of other things too – like searching for gravitational waves and testing Einstein’s theories of gravity.

      Jocelyn Bell Burnell has also done lots of work to encourage diversity in science. And earlier this year I got to interview her for the LIGO magazine to celebrate 50 years since her discovery!

      http://www.ligo.org/magazine/LIGO-magazine-issue-11.pdf#page=6

    • Photo: Scott Melville

      Scott Melville answered on 9 Nov 2017:

      I’ll second Ryan’s vote for Richard Feynman, he’s very cool (his Lectures on Physics are pretty accessible too, if you’re an advanced student).
      But I think my favourite is Michio Kaku – I watched a lot of his Youtube videos when I was in high school,

      He talks calmly and clearly about all kinds of things, I remember leaving his videos on in the background when I was doing other (more boring) things 🙂

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