• Question: Who is your favourite/inspiration scientist?

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      Asked by anon-283359 on 4 Mar 2021. This question was also asked by anon-285897, anon-287292, anon-287527.
      • Photo: Isolda Romero-Canelon

        Isolda Romero-Canelon answered on 4 Mar 2021:

        I think someone like Rosaling Franklin – who worked on the discovery of DNA – is a very inspirational lady

      • Photo: Jesko Koehnke

        Jesko Koehnke answered on 4 Mar 2021:

        Newton. So far ahead of his time, simply incredible.

      • Photo: Soneni Ndlovu

        Soneni Ndlovu answered on 4 Mar 2021:

        Prof Richard Jackson who was my lecture of organic chemistry. I barely managed to pass organic chemistry in my first semester of first year because I couldn’t understand a lot of principles. In my second semester, Prof Jackson taught the course and his teaching style (filled with a lot of practice) and his enthusiastic character won me over and by the end of the year I moved from barely passing to acing organic chemistry. My love grew so much I’m even doing a research on it!

      • Photo: Martin McCoustra

        Martin McCoustra answered on 4 Mar 2021:

        I’d say James Clerk Maxwell… He’s one of the giants that Einstein spoke about when talking about standing on the shoulders of giants.

      • Photo: Nikita King

        Nikita King answered on 5 Mar 2021:

        Einstein – some of his theories have only recently been proven e.g. gravitational waves, and his formula E = mc^2 seems so beautifully simple and complex at the same time! I also really admire Katherine Johnson, a brilliant mind that worked against the challenges of her time to accomplish something bigger – space travel!

      • Photo: Andrew Parrott

        Andrew Parrott answered on 5 Mar 2021:

        For inspiring me to become a scientist it has to be my secondary school science teachers who made the subjects so much fun (lots of interesting experiments). Also my PhD supervisor, Martyn Poliakoff, who I actually first met when I was still doing A-levels and I was trying to decide between different courses and universities – he was so enthusiastic I chose chemistry straight away!

        Based on the work I do now I am always impressed by early analytical chemists, such as Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman who discovered the Raman effect. To make such important discoveries with the equipment they had in the 1920s always amazes me.

      • Photo: Zuzanna Konieczna

        Zuzanna Konieczna answered on 5 Mar 2021:

        Marie Curie was a great chemist, she discovered two elements and was a first woman to get a Nobel Prize. That’s super impressive to me!

      • Photo: Michael Walford

        Michael Walford answered on 9 Mar 2021:

        My inspiration was my Chemistry teacher at school, and the Brainiac tv show.
        My favourite scientist is Graham Garden, who is far more famous as a comedy writer, but he did originally study to be a doctor, so i feel like he still counts

      • Photo: Philip Camp

        Philip Camp answered on 13 Mar 2021:

        Lars Onsager – he was a chemical engineering student, received a PhD for a mathematics thesis, was a theoretical physicist, and won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry!
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_Onsager#Yale_University

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