• Question: who do you look up to in the science industry?

    Asked by zoro on 7 Jan 2022.
    • Photo: Samuel Ellis

      Samuel Ellis answered on 7 Jan 2022:

      Great question! The boring answer is that I’ve been lucky to work with some brilliant senior scientists and got along very well with my supervisors so far in my science career, who have all taught me a lot.

      For a more interesting (and extreme) story, there is an Australian scientist called Barry Marshall. He believed a bacteria called H. pylori caused some stomach ulcers or even cancers, but other scientists at the time thought nothing could grow in stomach acid. In the end he deliberately drank some of the bacteria so that he could prove that H. pylori did indeed colonise his stomach and cause damage! And eventually he won a Nobel prize for his career’s work on that bacteria.

    • Photo: Jonny Coates

      Jonny Coates answered on 7 Jan 2022:

      I honstely don’t look up to anyone senior but I do admire the new people coming through and the early career scientists. They are amazing people and really want to make academia a better place to work.

      I have always found that the “big names” are not often nice people.

    • Photo: Melanie Krause

      Melanie Krause answered on 8 Jan 2022:

      One of the most important people when it came to developing the Covid vaccines was Katalin Kariko… she worked on mRNA and believed it would be great for therapeutics but no-one believed her for years and years.. she still kept going and I think I really admire that. And in the end she was right 🙂

    • Photo: John Tulloch

      John Tulloch answered on 10 Jan 2022:

      This is a wonderful question! Most of those individuals that I look up to are unsung heroes who work diligently in the background in the fields of public health and epidemiology. Many are quite senior but do not like the public limelight and so are not that well known. In general any one that inspires and supports junior scientists and instils excitement in their research are gets a huge thumbs up from me!

    • Photo: Chris Budd

      Chris Budd answered on 11 Jan 2022:

      I have been working with some amazing people since lockdown. I look up to and repect them all.

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