• Question: why did you decide to become a scientist?

    Asked by pgcw to Duncan, Kiran, Paul, Sarah, Sharon on 15 Mar 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Duncan Murdock

      Duncan Murdock answered on 15 Mar 2010:

      I’ve always been interested in the natural world, and what makes things the way they are. I enjoyed Science most at school and started to read popular science books and visit geology museums whenever I could. The more I learnt, the more questions I wanted to answer, and that’s the best thing about science – there’s always more to know.

    • Photo: Paul Stevenson

      Paul Stevenson answered on 15 Mar 2010:

      I’ve been interested in science ever since I can remember. I think (like a lot of physicists) it came from a sense of amazement every time I looked up at the night sky. I thought it was just so incredible that there should be anything there to see at all. When I discovered what it all was and what it all meant, the answers were so much more amazing than anything people had imagined, and I just wanted to learn more. Now I do research in nuclear physics, a lot of which deals with how all the elements are made in the stars.

    • Photo: Kiran Meekings

      Kiran Meekings answered on 15 Mar 2010:

      I’ve always found human bodies and how they go wrong (diseases) fascinating so it made sense that I’d want to do something as a career that uses that interest. I love to find out things about how we work, and how we can fix ourselves when we go wrong so researching drugs was a natural choice!

    • Photo: Sharon Sneddon

      Sharon Sneddon answered on 15 Mar 2010:

      well, I have always been interested in how things grow, especially when my mum was having my little brother, I was constantly questioning her what was going on inside her! I was fascinated by creepy crawlies, particularly worms and spiders!
      I really enjoyed doing biology and chemistry at school so when it came to decide what to do at University, I decided to continue with those subjects and eventually I specialised in Developmental Biology, and this led me to becoming a scientist! Do you think you would like to become a scientist?

    • Photo: Sarah Mount

      Sarah Mount answered on 15 Mar 2010:

      I guess if you want a job in computers you have a few choices, you can either start your own business, get a job in someone else’s company or become a teacher or an academic. The thing that makes academia stand out in all those choices is that you get a lot more control over what you work on. You do still have to answer to your boss and funding agencies and so on, but you don’t have to worry about making a profit or pleasing shareholders, or lots of other things that go along with commercial work. Teaching is fun, but school teachers don’t (usually!) get the chance to do much research. So, academic work gives you a lot of flexibility to work on fun projects.

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